Bell-Ends and Brownies
Sometime between the chocolate lunch and now, it had turned to dusk; a fact Alex's stomach made sure to remind him of, with a sulky grumble.
After wandering the streets outside icy's house, Alex managed to wrangle himself to Lau Pa Sat, a hawker centre arrange in a circle with the stalls on the periphery and in the middle, and the chairs and tables in between. Dinner was rojak, with wintermelon juice to drink.
As Alex left the centre, a disturbance caught his attention. He glanced towards it, and was stunned when a hand from behind him punched his head, sending him teetering around the cooking fires of street-food stalls.
No doubt icy or the mysterious 'she' had paid of some thugs to beat some sense into him. Between the glittering lights of the business district buildings, and the orange flicker of the fires, he tried to spot where his attacker was. There were too many people.
Alex dodged several more blows as he escaped the crowd, still being chased, and caught a taxi to the airport.
xxx
Alex was in a bit of a daze. Up until now, his little jaunt had seemed like a bit of a holiday, an adventure – albeit with snipers in the beginning and a fire in Brazil – but now he was coming to the crux of his quest. He felt sure that this 'she' whom icy had spoken of was the ringleader of the hunt to eliminate him. fishhead and icy were pawns. 'She', whoever 'she' was, was the queen.
His mind wandering in distraction, Alex settled down in what he deemed to be the centre of Changi airport, to the side of an Angry Birds thing for children. With vague interest, he noticed that the stairs to the thing lit up when the children ran up them. Some children noticed the lights, while others didn't even spare them a glance. To his amusement, the adults accompanying their children were even less likely to notice, even if their own children tried to show them.
In an hour, Alex managed to wrangle a ticket for the soonest plane ride to Ireland, board the plane, and survive the take-off.
xxx
From the Belfast airport, Alex caught a taxi to the city centre, where he navigated his way to a butcher shop. Specifically, The Butcher of Belfast. It sounded inviting.
A bell hanging off the door tinkled as Alex entered. From behind the plastic semi-opaque strips that divided the front of house from the back emerged a grey-eyed, thirty-something year old. "Can I help you?" the man asked softly, smiling slightly.
Alex told him that 'Neris Veran' had sent him.
The man's eyes widened imperceptibly and the corner of his mouth quirked up further. "I see. Well, you've found the right man – I'm Dick Poven – but I'm afraid I'm going on holiday soon, and so I can't help you. Unless it's quick?"
So much for finding help. "Right, no," said Alex, and he turned to exit the shop.
"That's directly help you," called the man, Dick. "I never said I couldn't help you indirectly. Do you have a place to stay, yet?"
"No."
"Well, then. How about you stay at my place? I benefit by not having to hire someone to maintain my house; you benefit by free board."
Alex frowned. This was really strange. Who was Neris Veran to this man for him to offer his house (temporary though it was)?
Dick noticed Alex's hesitation. "Do you have anywhere better to go?"
The blond admitted he didn't.
"Consider it conciliation for my not being able to help you. Or, if you like, I'm obligated by politeness to offer you a place to stay." He waved a hand dismissively. "My mother was very strong on courtesy."
A trap, or a serendipitous find? Experience told Alex to never trust offers from strangers, but then he'd never experienced anything like this before. He might as well check out the house. He could keep a distance and run at the first sign of danger. "Sure," he said, "just let me see the house before I commit, okay?"
xxx
Dick's house was a typical small stone cottage, with a wrought iron gate. The black metal bars twisted like vines, spelling out the name of the house: Omaksin. Despite its forbidding exterior, the inside of the house was warmly furnished, with golden-hued furniture, a fireplace, and modest but well-stocked kitchen.
It was the small things that changed this house from a mere building to the Weasley Burrow: a framed polaroid of Dick with two others, 'Eleanor, Dick and Kersh at Avakas' scrawled across the bottom; a letter on cream writing paper with navy ink – the letter was folded up, so that all Alex could read was a name, ' –han Thorn' – and a calendar that depicted eclipses at various times of the year. It looked as though someone had been doing maths homework in the margins.
Well, that was nothing too suspicious, and if Dick was leaving anyway, what was there to be worried about? If anything, the stone walls would protect him a lot better than the normal walls of his flat. Alex shrugged and turned to Dick. "I'll take it."
And that was that. Dick handed Alex the keys to the house, packed his bags and left. Bemused at Dick's apparent needless haste, Alex waved goodbye from the front door, and then re-entered the house.
Right.
What to do now? There was none of the usual unpacking to be had. In this situation, it was best to leave everything packed in case of an emergency. If anything happened, Alex could just grab and go.
That left… food. Maybe he was becoming a little obsessed, but when one went travelling, it was a waste to not capitalise on the opportunities for trying food that couldn't be found elsewhere. And yes, the same was true for sight-seeing, but it was a lot more efficient to eat while planning than to sightsee.
Less than twenty minutes after Dick had left, Alex also left the house known as Omaksin to hunt for some brunch, riding an old but sturdy bike that had been left leaning against the side of the house.
An hour of riding later, and Alex was ravenous. He chained the bike to a nearby lamppost and entered a café called "Brights". Well, the décor definitely fit the name: the interior glowed golden, a sharp contrast to the dull blues, greys and greens outside. Alex was so blinded that he passed through the seating and menu-receiving debacle without even seeing his waiter's face.
Reeling from the overflow of sensory information like a bat blasted with ultrasonic death metal, Alex didn't hear what his waiter said, but muttered yes anyway. Minutes later, it turned out that he had ordered the Ulster Fry: Irish soda and potato bread, a golden fried egg, two pork sausages bursting with grease, a few rashers of bacon that were equal parts fat and flesh, some mushrooms and grilled tomato, and the star of the show, black pudding. His mouth watered.
In no time at all, Alex was smacking his lips and reclining contentedly. When he was sure that none of the food he had eaten would resurface, he made his way to the counter and paid the very reasonable price of £4.95, plus a tip.
Thus fed, he returned to Omaksin.
xxx
Alex was sleeping off his very large and very satisfying lunch, stretched out on the sofa before the fireplace – somehow, it felt very wrong to be sleeping in another person's bed – when a noise awoke him. It took him a few long moments to finally recognise that the sound was the doorbell, because its tune was the innocuous La Cucaracha.
With sleep-mussed hair that was quite probably not at all like the 'bedhead hair' sported by many male models who Sabina liked to discuss, Alex shuffled over to the door. "Yes?" he yawned, managing to not completely mangle the word.
A friendly-looking face smiled at him, with another not-so-friendly face beside it, a little closer to the ground. Some seconds later and Alex's mind processed the picture. It was a girl – neat brown hair in a bob, with scholarly brown leather shoes and a modest floral calf-length dress – and an older woman, who sported a mane of 80s-streaked hair, bright pink lipstick and lashes like the teeth of a comb, not to mention the rings and bangles that jangled as she shook a … box at him.
"Oh!" cried the woman, "you're not Dick!"
Obviously. "No. I'm not."
The girl rolled her eyes. "Come on, mum. Let's go."
The elder woman widened her already widened eyes and pouted beyond what Alex believed possible. "But what about these Guinness brownies?" she addressed her child. "You know if we leave them at home, your Da will eat all of them."
Alex looked at the girl. The girl looked at Alex. "Take them," she instructed him.
Tentatively, Alex took the brown package being proffered. Food was food, after all. Apparently the Guinness brownies were homemade, you know, not like in the shops. He was touched, really.
However, it seemed that acceptance of her generosity was not all the woman was looking for. She opened her maw. "How is Dick, anyway? He was very much attached to my husband, was Dick. Poor Dick. Dear, dear…"
Alex tried not to cringe at the burgeoning tears that magnified her bloodshot eyes. "Um, he's doing well, I think. I know. Yes. He's on holiday."
Facing interrogators before had not prepared him for this onslaught of … what was it? He'd smelled it on Jack, once, before – when he was very little. It was… magnolia. The magnolia attacked his nose and went straight to the back of his throat. "Where is Dick holidaying?" came the accompanying voice.
Right. Pick a country. "Thailand!"
A shrill giggle was the response. "One night in Bangkok, indeed!"
Alex wondered what on earth the woman was on about.
"Anyway," she continued, still chuckling, "I met Dick's friend's friend – what was it, darling? Mr Frost? Yes that's it – anyway, I met Mr Frost's lady friend. She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. I remember, all very hush-hush, nudge-nudge, say no more…" She tapped the side of her nose and winked twice.
Cutting through the ramble in a herculean effort, Alex managed to understand the gist of what the woman was going on about. And it may have been merely coincidence, or Alex's muzzy brain finding patterns where there were none, but he latched on to the worm-bait hidden in the muddy waters of the woman's speech. 'Lady Friend'? Mr Frost? Was she this 'she' who had influenced Icy into targeting Alex? "Where did you meet her?" he interrupted.
"Oh, know her, too, do you?" The woman tried valiantly to disguise her look of intense curiosity.
Alex nodded emphatically and tried to plaster a polite, enquiring look on his face. The girl – he'd almost forgotten she was there – didn't seem to buy it, and snorted delicately.
Her mother didn't notice. "She's here for that big dinner party, you know. All the toffs from all over, gathering like you wouldn't know!"
He did know. Goodness knew Ian had taken him to such events – 'business outings', he'd called them. Thinking back, it probably wasn't quite the kind of business Alex had had in mind.
"And all the town's helping – good money, you know – and I'm a waitress, and I saw her, and I thought, why, dear Dick knows her! Or knows Mr I. C. Frost, who knows her, and so on. And so I came to tell Dick, but he wasn't here, but here you are, and there you have it."
Alex stood stupefied. "Ah yes," he smiled banally. "Thank you. You may go." He waved a hand at them.
The girl with the brown bob gave a 'pfft' and smirked as she led her mother away. Alex closed and locked the door. Mr Frost's 'lady friend', was it? Hmm.
He opened the box of brownies she'd given him and sat down at the coffee table to think. Guinness brownies – or at least, these Guinness brownies – were not so much brownies, Alex decided, as mounds of sweet, alcoholic goo. They were very, very gooey. The top was deceptively crispy, hiding the melted centre and chunks of caramel that stuck his teeth together. It was this alcohol-, sugar- and most of all chocolate-induced haze of bliss that inspired Alex's next plan of action.
He would go to this function, yes, and find She-Who-Influenced-Icy, and discover who exactly she was. 'She' was, after all, probably someone Alex knew; why else would 'she' target him? That done, he could work something out to resolve this farrago of events and get back to his football team back in Chelsea.
xxx
By seven o'clock that night at a manor house in Ballywalter, Alex was all dolled up in a hired suit from the city centre. He had enquired around town as to what the big event actually was, but there was no consensus. Some said it was a meeting of all the brightest teachers in Europe; others, more fanciful, gushed that it must be a conference for all the governments for each country in the world.
One of the strangest speculations Alex heard came from the suit-store attendant, and involved something along the lines of a matchmaking event for all of the beautiful, young royals of Europe and how she wished she could sneak in somehow and maybe find the perfect prince… In a way, she reminded Alex of Jack, so exuberant and a recent expatriate from America, but she was also eccentric and (more so) strangely naïve.
Upon arriving at the event, Alex began surveying the populace. From first appearances, it was obvious that the attendees of the conference were neither royals nor teachers. In his time with MI6, Alex had grown to know the royals very well through research – Blunt, a traditionalist, had been adamant that Alex should never fail to recognise them, should any sort of trouble arise and they were present… The attendees were not teachers, either. Too normal, too disconnected, too wrong. It was clear these people lacked that je ne sais quoi eccentricity that, somehow, all teachers seemed to possess, at least in Alex's experience.
No, the people whose function Alex was crashing had a characteristic surreptitious behaviour. They didn't mill about on the greens or announce each other's presence with exuberance and fanfare. There wasn't anything strange about them, either – no dodging through the shadows, no sneaking or sidling. In fact, they were unremarkable. But not unbelievably unremarkable, not noticeably unnoticeable.
They were spies, of some description, he concluded. These were people who operated in the grey, leaving the white limelight to others. Unluckily, this also meant that Alex would stand out. He was too young to fit in properly, even with a suit.
It was a shame this wasn't like the SCORPIA party in Venice. The fancy dress and atmospheric lighting had meant he could sneak in with nary a second glance. Here, he could whiten his hair with baby powder, but no amount of frowning would even suggest the hint of wrinkles. And he was no makeup artist.
Then he spotted them. The waiters. For some reason – perhaps on the ironic assumption that teenagers could never be a danger? Or perhaps whoever had organised the thing didn't want to spend more than was absolutely necessary – all the waiters ranged from about fifteen to seventeen. Perfect.
The only problem remaining was how to blend in with all the waiters… Alex surveyed the white-shirted forms dotted about the dimly-lit grounds like dandruff, their black aprons hidden in the darkness.
White shirts, no jackets. Black aprons that couldn't be clearly seen. Well, there was his solution. His jacket would make a fine apron. He would look strange to anyone who really looked, sure, but in the gloom it wouldn't be too obvious and if anyone asked, he could say he'd forgotten his apron and was afraid of the authoritarian chef – there was bound to be one of those about – lecturing him…
Hastily, Alex removed his black jacket and tied it round his front with the sleeves at the back. Then he headed off to the kitchens – or wherever all the waiters seemed to spawn from. Once there, he could get a tray of food and begin mingling, and singling out Mr Frost's 'lady friend'.
xxx
The kitchens were warm. Hot, even. Stifling. Alex was hit by a wave of heat and noise as he stepped into the fray, and, coughing slightly, he waved a hand in front of his face to clear the steam. He spotted the trays immediately and shuffled over to them, dodging a tray-laden fellow waiter on the way, who grimaced at him with shared sympathy.
Alex grabbed a tray of pastry-wrapped things (it looked a little like salmon, but who knew with all this modern cuisine) placed down by a sweating, breathless chef who gave him a brief, "Thanks, mate," and balanced it on his hand. Unable to resist, he scooped up one of the pastry things and popped it into his mouth. Definitely salmon. Or trout.
Balancing the tray precariously on his inexperienced hands, he neatly stepped aside to avoid a waiter behind him bringing in an empty tray and was jostled by yet another chef wielding a large bunch of celery. Someone towards the back of the kitchen let out a blood-curdling scream, which was followed by a thunderous crashing and loud cursing, some of it sounding suspiciously like 'Bork! Bork! Bork!', but most of it in a female's posh English that sounded somehow familiar. "How dare you spill hot soup on the Head Chef?!"
The woman who'd given him the Guinness brownies earlier hustled past him, covered in some sort of gravy. She rushed out of the room, was gone for no longer than twenty seconds, then was back in a clean uniform and in Alex's face. "You!" she burst. "I knew I recognised you, dear! You're one of my waiters! What a joy to have you here!"
"Er, yes," Alex blinked, thankful she was clearly too distracted to notice his jacket-cum-apron.
The Head Chef beamed at him. "Well, I'll see you around, duck," she said, and rushed back towards the bowels of the kitchen.
Alex, now slowly being pushed into the corner behind a large table, turned carefully to face the door through which he'd entered. Before he could take a step, the door whipped open, giving everyone in the kitchen a blast of freezing – even icy – air. At the faint and slightly familiar smell of peppermint, Alex, frowning slightly, looked up towards the door.
"Hello," Mrs Jones greeted the general area. "I'd like to speak to the Head Chef?"
Alex sucked in his breath and darted behind a large piece of meat hanging from the ceiling. Well, he shouldn't be surprised; after all, she was a spy. He frowned at his automatic reaction to hide. He had no reason to hide. She of all people would fight to keep his cover from being blown. Alex peeked out from behind the meat in time to see the Head-Chef-Guinness-Woman bustle up to the MI6 deputy.
"Oh, it's so nice to see someone take an interest!" she burbled at Mrs Jones, casually shunting a waiter out of the way. "These teenage waiters, honestly," she gave a pained smile, "but someone has to be kind and generous enough to give them work experience! Me," she added. "That's me."
Mrs Jones nodded patiently. "My group truly appreciates the work you've put into all this," she placated the woman. Looking about the chaotic room and giving the barest hint of a smirk, she added, "Your efforts will of course be remembered, by, hmm…" And Alex was shocked to see Mrs Jones trail off dramatically with a dramatic bout of staring into the middle distance.
It seemed to work on the Guinness brownies Head Chef, though, who looked as though she were about to collapse. "Oh, yes," she gushed, "you are too kind, too kind! You were always so sweet, I remember. You always were. So sweet."
"Oh?" For the first time in the encounter, Mrs Jones looked faintly confused. "You… 'remember'?"
"Yes, yes," cried the Head Chef. "Of course, you wouldn't remember me..."
Alex wondered if he could sneak past the pair without them noticing. He doubted it. No one could. There was a line of waiters waiting to leave the kitchen, trays ready and loaded, but the Head Chef's bulk was not about to budge.
She was in the process of continuing her delighted address to Mrs Jones. "We haven't actually met before (it's a pleasure to do so now, of course), but I've seen you around and you always seemed so sweet, you did, dear."
"Hmm," responded Mrs Jones, who seemed to be edging away slightly. She had the door half open behind her. "Well, so nice to meet—"
"And Dick was always talking about Mr Frost, and so on," interrupted the Head Chef, oblivious. "And Mr Frost was always so eager to talk about you, you being his lady friend and all." She winked. "He seems quite taken with you, as I recall…"
Clutching the tray to his chest, Alex felt adrenalin begin to flow through his body. Mrs Jones? She was icy's so-called lady friend?
MI6 wanted him dead?
Over the rushing sound in his ears, Alex heard the Head Chef carry on. "Speaking of which, I recently met a friend of Dick's, I think he's here, actually—" she spun around, and Alex was too surprised by her change of subject to duck back behind the meat— "over there, in fact," the Head Chef declared, waving a hand towards Alex.
Rooted to the spot, Alex could felt the blood drain away from his face as Mrs Jones' flicked her disinterested gaze over to him. He felt himself drop the tray as her eyes widened just a fraction.
"Alex!" Mrs Jones called. "What a surprise to see you here," she smiled.
Fear coursing through his veins, Alex distantly ordered himself to pull himself together, to pretend that this was all some sort of coincidence. It was no use. MI6 wanted Alex Rider dead. Silently, still staring disbelievingly at the woman he had thought was on his side, he felt himself jerk his head, once, in a small headshake.
Mrs Jones blinked, her face a picture of innocent confusion. "Alex?" she tried, suspicion creeping into her tone. "Alex, just what are you doing here, anyway?" She stepped forwards.
Alex ran.
AN: AHAHAH :D Cliffhanger!
To 'Guest' whose review started with ":|":
:D Thank you so much for reviewing in detail. I'm glad to hear that you were intrigued by my writing! Even more so, I'm thrilled that I've apparently moved you to review when you normally wouldn't :)
Also, a question to my readers: Did y'all really really like 'A Chronicle of Alex's Adventure with CHERUB'? Like, more than my other stories? I'm getting a lot of reviews/favourites/followers for it… I hope I don't sound rude, but why? I wrote that story a while ago, and I'd like to think that my writing is getting better, not worse. Don't get me wrong; I'm delighted, but confused. Anyone willing to clarify?