Disclaimer: I don't own any characters blah blah blah owned by Anthony Horowitz blah blah blah don't sue me.
Summary: Some rules are meant to be followed. Others were made to be broken. John decided the rule of not writing about his ordeals was one of the latter. Years later, Alex finds a notebook in the attic and decides he needs to know what it means. His decision changes a lot.
Slight AU (Alternative Universe), characters acting slightly OOC (Out Of Character).
'Cause you're a Natural
Chapter 3
He spotted the tail less than ten seconds after the man started. The tail was too obviously looking everywhere but his direction, stayed exactly 10 metres behind him on the opposite side of the road, and somehow managed to make a call without touching the keypad (1).
Amateurs. MI6 must be getting desperate if they were letting the likes of that out of the training camp. Walking eastwards along Imperial College Road (2), he instinctively timed his approach to the pathway with the moment the car coming up behind them would break his tail's line of vision. As expected, everyone arrived at their designated spot on time, and Yassen "vanished" up the path towards the entrance to the college's library. He'd never been inside, but it would kill a few minutes and annoy his tail while the man tried to figure out where he went - a small bonus, to his mind.
At 30 (3), he still looked young enough to fit in with the college students and made his way to the foreign languages section. Yassen decided to brush up on his Arabic. He chose a book randomly and picked a spot to lean against, which afforded him the best view of the library while keeping his back protected.
After a few minutes, his tail hadn't found him, but a child had wandered into his view range. He abandoned his book - he'd never intended to read it. He just grabbed it to blend in - in favour of finding out why a young boy was in a college library. He was showing people something written on a page and then asking a question. The boy was turned so that Yassen couldn't read his lips, but he could see the responses.
Most shook their heads after a few seconds, with a few people replying with a sentence or two before the boy shrugged and moved on to someone else, only to repeat the process. Yassen's opinion of the boy went up a few notches when he was spotted. Appearing resigned, the boy strolled over with the page still clutched in his hand.
"Excuse me. You wouldn't happen to know what this means, or even what language it's written in?" the fair-haired child inquired, holding out the page towards him. After subtly checking no one was nearby - you never knew what organisation could sink so low as to use a child to do their dirty work or even use one as a distraction - Yassen examined the child. He looked around 8 or 9, with brown eyes, and though he was sure they had never met, the boy looked familiar (4).
Filing that thought away to be examined later, he turned his attention towards the page and allowed one blink to show his surprise.
"It's Russian. It translates as diary," he stated and just curbed his instinctively violent response when the child leapt at him. The boy wrapped his arms around Yassen's waist, getting closer to him than anyone else had in years.
He froze, not knowing how to respond, and it was only when the boy had let go of him that Yassen realised he had been hugged.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou! Now I can get started!" the boy declared. Yassen was still trying to understand what had happened when he heard the boy exclaim, "Sorry! Wasn't looking where I was going". He saw the child had managed to run into his tail, knocking him over. He allowed the corner of his lip to twitch before turning around and heading towards the back exit.
Walking north along Wells Way (5), he decided that children's motives were hard to understand, even for him.
(A.N: Who realised it wasn't Alex's POV before I wrote Yassen's name?
(1) Touchscreen phones didn't become popular until the late 2000s / early 2010s.
(2) That was the only college near Alex's house I had heard of. According to Google Maps, it's only a 1.1-mile walk.
(3) This is set in 2004; Yassen was born in 1974 and Alex in 1996 (according to the books).
(4) According to the books, John Rider looked (like / similar to) this.
(5) I don't know if there is an actual exit onto Wells way. There looks to be, according to Google Street View, but I could be wrong.)