Dearest readers,
It has recently come to my attention that I am, in fact, made of win. It's taken me a while to come to terms with this, but I'm now certain of it. I have - wait for it - downloaded a whole load of podcasts from iTunes in French and Spanish, and I survived 5 days in Madrid speaking Spanish, AND I just helped my parents to organise the repairs on our house. Which since we live in France means that it was all in French. Yes, I am made of win.
Kinda. My French and Spanish research for my A-Level orals ent going so well, so if any of you happen to be experts on La Carte Scolaire, Michelle Alliot-Marie or Rama Yade, OR Gibraltar, or Las Elecciones '08... feel free to share your knowledge...
I'm sorry that this chapter is a week late, when I promised that nothing short of a major natural disaster would stop me updating - my trip to Madrid had to be organised and then took place, so I'm sure you can all understand that fanfiction took a bit of a backseat... By the way, Madrid is AMAZING. The Prado in particular; they had an exhibition on 19th century art which was mindblowingly good... I know NOTHING about art, but they gave a really good booklet to go with the exhibition, and I learnt so much, and the art was amazing...
...Being the total tourist I am, I now have a 'Museo del Prado' T-shirt. Intellectual one-up-man-ship at it's best.
On the subject of everyone understanding that fanfiction took a bit of backseat - and I HATE how often I've had to say this, so please, the majority of you can ignore this, because the greater part of you wonderful, kind readers are very tolerant and understanding - but, let's get this clear once and for all. I am NOT providing a government service here, people. I update when I can, or, to be blunt, even when I WANT to. I enjoy writing and I'm thrilled that people like what I write, but I'm not - as my dear friend Von so brilliantly put it - a Fanfic vending machine. Please, quit the Private Messages, OK?
Dedicated, as always, to Von who puts up with me so well, and xaritomene who is as mad as I am, and helps me to feel half-way normal. Most of the time.
DISCLAIMER: I thank God fairly regularly that I don't own Alex Rider. I get none of the money for writing fanfiction, but escape all of the responsibility as well...
Four and a half hours later, Eagle was still waiting for Cub to appear; all the other mechanics had left – including the man who was, Eagle had gleaned from watching the place for half a day, the owner – but Cub hadn't appeared.
An hour after that, Eagle was pretty certain that he'd missed the kid – that Cub had somehow given him the slip, and stood up from the little café he'd been sitting in for the past two hours. In the fuss of paying his bill, and gathering up all his belongings, he managed to miss the boy slip out the garage, carefully locking the place up, and heading down the street in a dead run.
Alex was all too aware that Eagle was watching him, and he couldn't help but wonder how much of an idiot the man thought he was – it wasn't like he was being particularly subtle – and after a couple of days trusting to luck, he came up with a strategy. The alarm he had to set every day before he left gave the person who locked up a two minutes to get out, which gave him just enough time to run to the back door and get out that way. He was careful to check that Eagle was always at the front of the garage, and that he hadn't clued into his strategy, but so far, he seemed oblivious to it, something Alex couldn't help but be grateful for.
He managed to give Eagle the slip like that for almost a week, putting in as many shifts at the pub as he could. After all, as he saw it, Eagle's visit could only mean one thing – his MI6-free time was coming to an end, and he needed as much money as he could save. If he could, he would have stopped working at the garage altogether, but he was far from sure he'd find any more work, and he didn't want to let Don and the rest of them down.
Ironically enough, though, it was because of his increased shifts at the pub that Eagle found him again.
Eagle rang Wolf at seven the Friday after he'd 'found' Cub, thoroughly depressed.
"Lost him again." He told his team-mate, disgustedly. "I swear to God, James, it's like he just disappears – like he evaporates at the end of the day, or something."
Wolf sighed. "Fine. Can you – I don't know… talk to his boss, or something? See if we can find an 'in' there?"
Eagle shook his head, despite knowing the other man couldn't see it. "No. Cub already feels threatened by us, the last thing we want to do is make him see us in an even worse light."
"Right." Wolf agreed, tiredly, before heaving another sigh. "Look, call it a day for now. We've been looking for the kid for weeks now, we're probably not going to find him tonight. Why don't we all go out for a drink or something? All four of us. We've all been so stressed over Cub recently, it'd probably do us some good to get out. Clear our heads."
Eagle paused for a long moment. "OK, who are you, and what have you done with James?" Wolf made a disgruntled noise, but Eagle cut him off before he could start his protest in earnest. "Seriously, James, I've known you for nearly three years and that's the first time you've ever suggested 'going out for a drink'."
"Well, I'm suggesting it now." Wolf returned, rather sharply, but Eagle could practically hear the uncomfortable shrug in his tone.
"Fine, OK." He shrugged; he wasn't about to go looking a gift horse in the mouth. "There's a pub near me, The Goose on the Green…"
"I was thinking about my local pub, it does a nice-" Wolf started, but Eagle interrupted almost immediately.
"James. I've been on a stake out for the past five days, on your orders, during my downtime. The least you can do is shift your arse over to my local pub." Wolf grunted his agreement, sounding thoroughly pissed off about the entire situation. Eagle grinned. "Oh, and, James?"
"What?"
"You're buying."
He met his three team-mates half an hour later at a corner table in the little pub.
"Nice place." Snake commented peaceably, and Eagle just nodded.
"Thanks."
They kept the conversation deliberately light, all of them steering clear of the subject of Cub – the elephant at the table, so to speak – by tacit agreement. It was only when they were half-way through their first, and only, pint that the 'excitement' started.
A slim blond boy, wearing the pub's 'uniform' of a black shirt and a long black apron tied around his hips, had been clearing the tables over the other side of the pub. Fox happened to glance up as the boy passed their table to take the dirty glasses back to the kitchen; the boy just happened to look down at them. Fox spilt half of his remaining beer over Eagle's jeans.
"Matt, what the hell-" Eagle started, indignantly, but was cut off by Fox himself.
"Cub?" All eyes flew to the boy, who was already trying to make his escape when Fox grabbed his wrists. The tray full of glasses wobbled, but thankfully didn't fall.
It was undoubtedly Cub – a tiredly, older, thinner Cub, but still indubitably Cub.
Now a rather pissed off Cub, if his expression was anything to go by.
"Are you lot stalking me, or something?" he asked, voice tight with sheer frustration, balancing the tray in one hand and shaking off Fox's grip on his other wrist. "Can't you just leave me be for a couple of days?!" His eyes flickered to Eagle as he said this, and the man reluctantly admitted, if only to himself, that he could, maybe, have been a little subtler.
He shook his head, quickly, trying to allay the kid's evident suspicions. "No. I- we.. this is my local pub."
Cub looked at him for a long, uncomfortable moment, before shrugging and turning away. "I'll send someone out to clear up the mess." He told them, tersely, nodding at the beer Fox had spilt.
The moment he disappeared, Eagle hissed, "Quick. Someone go out and cover the back entrance – I'll wait out the front."
If the other men thought he was overreacting, they didn't mention it; there would be time for explanations afterwards. They only had a specific window of time in which to act.
So when Alex tried to slip unnoticed out the back, having cut his shift short by arrangement with William, he found Wolf lounging indolently against the opposite wall, hands in his jeans pockets, one foot up against the bricks, which he used to push himself away from the wall.
"Nice try, Cub. But a bit sloppy for MI6, don't you think?"
Alex treated him to a poisonous glare, but Wolf just raised an eyebrow, the beginnings of a sardonic smile lurking around the corners of his mouth.
Alex only just bit back a swearword. "Why can't you lot just leave me alone?!" he asked, somehow managing to keep voice low when each word was heavy with defeat, the expression on that too-thin, too-pale face more exhausted than Wolf could look at comfortably.
"We're just trying to help, Cub." He said, taking a step towards the boy, who immediately took a step back, hands coming up instinctively to warn him off.
"Yeah, help." He said, with a hollow laugh. "Like I haven't heard that one before."
"Cub…" Wolf began, racking his brains for something to say, some way to get through to the boy.
"Stop calling me that and I might just believe whatever shit you're about to try and feed me." Alex shot back, immediately.
Wolf frowned; he had no idea where to go from here, and it was making him antsy. "OK – we just want to help you, Alex."
There was no reaction from the boy, who remained pale, and unmoved in the dark alley, lithe frame taut with suspicion. The lips drew back in a painful mockery of a smile, totally without humour, his teeth glinting yellow in the sickly light from the streetlamp. Wolf realised, with a start, that the boy looked practically feral, and wondered for the first time whether their 'rescue mission' had started too late – whether there was even anything of the normal teenager in Cub to save.
Cub's voice was soft. "Once more, with conviction – James."
To a normal person, it would have looked as though Wolf remained as truly impassive as Alex had when Wolf used his real name – but Cub had been trained by MI6 since he was fourteen, and by his uncle for long before. So when he gave a truly chilling little chuckle, Wolf knew exactly what it was the teenager was mocking. If Cub had walked away from him at that moment, Wolf genuinely didn't know whether he would have been able to follow him.
Luckily, Fox appeared at the mouth of the alleyette, and broke the moment, Cub was no longer a frightening, experienced operative who had managed to get the intellectual drop on Wolf, but a tired, white-faced boy, vulnerable and very young, on the offensive to stop people getting past his defences.
"Wolf." Fox said, breaking the awkward, dangerous moment, his voice laced with confusion, and not a little impatience. "What are you doing?"
Wolf waved a hand at him, and shrugged. Squaring his shoulders, he turned back to Cub, and said, firmly, "C'mon, Cub. Home."
"What are you, strays?" The boy shot back, but it was half-hearted at best. He held Wolf's gaze for a moment or two, before simply nodding. It was an utterly defeated little gesture, and Wolf frowned for a moment – the kid shouldn't have to look like that, no kid should have to look like that, and it sat badly with him that a government he supported and fought for could have let something as serious as this go anything like this far – before steeling himself and following Cub out of the alley.
From the Tube station, Alex led them to the nicely kept house a few streets away.
In all honesty, he couldn't be at all surprised that K-Unit had found him again – Eagle had been hanging around the garage for days and he obviously lived in this area, it was only a matter of time before they found him again. It was more of a surprise that he'd never met anyone he knew while working at the pub before. Either way, he'd had a couple of days to prepare for this meeting and he was ready for them now; he wouldn't be wrong-footed the way he had been last time with Eagle.
Reaching the house, he retrieved the key from it's hiding place under the rosemary bush by the door, and let them all in.
"Make yourselves at home." He told them, rather sardonically. "Tea? Coffee?"
They all opted for tea, and Alex ushered them firmly into the kitchen, where they all stood, looking awkward while trying to appear intimidating.
"Oh, sit down." Alex snapped, while the kettle boiled. "Who takes sugar?"
The conversation over their tea was predictable – why had he tried to commit suicide? He'd had a particularly rough assignment. It had torn him up for a bit. Didn't MI6 try to help? Well, yeah, but there was only so much they could do. Was he going to try again? It wasn't exactly on his 'To-Do' List, no.
Alex had been able to predict the questions, and so had been able to prepare his answers – safe, factual, dispassionate answers, nothing which would arose their sympathy and engender any further interference – he didn't want to put a foot wrong, and find himself cut adrift from MI6s dubious protection.
But – K-Unit didn't seem to be too pro-MI6. It was a thought Alex shook off for the moment to consider later when he had the time to turn the situation over in his head properly and could be sure he was coming to the correct answers. Either way, he didn't trusts them any further than he could throw them, so they weren't going to be hearing the truth from him any time soon. Not until he could be certain of them.
He finally got them out of the house at a quarter past eleven, and watched them go with a sigh.
Another obstacle safely navigated.
The four of them met the next morning at the HQ at Wolf's flat, to discuss their next move.
"We need to tell the high-ups that we've found him." Snake said, sensibly enough. "So they can decide where to go from here."
Eagle shook his head. "No; Cub'd freak. We need to talk to him – establish a… a.. rapport."
Fox raised an eyebrow. "A 'rapport'?" he mocked gently, and Eagle shrugged
"First word I could think of which fitted."
Wolf nodded, slowly, apparently ignoring this little byplay. "Fair enough. And for what it's worth, I agree with Neal. I say we inform Command that we've found him, and strongly suggest that we take the next move in trying to establish a," his eyes flickered momentarily to Eagle, and his lips twitched into a brief smile, "Rapport with him. The kid obviously needs emotional support, and – well, we might not be the most sensitive people in the world, but we can least lay the groundwork for some kind of support base, right?"
He looked around. Fox and Snake nodded, and Eagle gave him a quick shrug and a smile. "I'm in. Though we'd better not start today, or you'll be totally useless, Jamie." Wolf gave him a confused, impatient look. "You've just used up your entire word quota for the day."
Wolf felt entirely justified for throwing his cushion at him.
They decided that their first course of action should be to go and check on Cub – "we should really start calling the kid 'Alex'." Wolf said, firmly, recalling his conversation with the boy from the night before – and they all dutifully trooped over to the house Alex had taken them to the day before.
Ringing the doorbell, they waited for a good few minutes ("He's probably at work…" Eagle pointed out, voice just a little smug, and Wolf retorted that they could always check the garage after this; they were just covering all the possibilities), and were just about to ring again when the door opened to reveal an old man, in an ancient beige, moth-eaten cardigan, and carpet slippers which had apparently once been scarlet, but which were now much the same colour as the cardigan, and about as moth-eaten.
"What do you want" he asked, frowning blearily at them, "If you're here about the TV licence, I've told you, I ent got a bloody TV…"
"We're not hear about the TV licence, Mr. er…" Snake said, soothingly, shooting Wolf a confused glance, and receiving the standard "buggered if I know" shrug in return from his team mate.
"Estherson. Roy Estherson." The old man told them, a little wheezily. "Well, what do you want then?"
"We're here for you – grandson? Alex?"
"Ent got a grandson." Estherson informed them, firmly. "Never married." He suddenly gave them an uncomfortably shrewd glance. "Which little blighter's been passing himself off as me grandson, then?"
Wolf frowned, darkly. It was starting to become unpleasantly clear what had happened. "Alex Rider?" he asked, in one last ditch effort. "D'you know him at all?"
"Never heard of him." Estherson told him, promptly.
"Right." Snake, ever the diplomat, said, apologetically. "We're sorry to have wasted your time then, Mr. Estherson."
Estherson muttered something which smelt strongly of whiskey and sounded distinctly uncomplimentary, before shutting the door in their faces.
On the doorstep, they stood for a moment, looking helplessly at each other – it was back to Square One with a bump.
Eagle summed it up for all of them. "Well – shit."
Colonel Andrew Markham was having a frankly terrible day. His meeting the day before with the Prime Minister concerning the Rider child had gone well – surprisingly well in fact. But everywhere he looked, there were dead-ends.
Markham had been assigned this situation for several reasons. He knew when to tell it straight, and when to talk in half-truths and manipulations – he knew how to get things done – and, despite all appearances to the contrary, he was a sincere philanthropist. It helped that he was under no illusions concerning his current Prime Minister. He had been the SAS' unofficial liaison with Number 10 for several years now, and he knew how to get things done.
Appealing to the PM's terror of bad publicity, allowing him to feel that he was saving face, as well as preserving a national asset, and taking down an organisation he perceived to be a threat – that was the way to work. If there was anything Markham had learnt about politicians over the years, it was that they never did anything for one reason alone; it was never enough. This time, though, Markham had the wherewithal to get things moving in the Rider boy's favour, and he had used everything he had shamelessly.
His own boy, his only child, had been killed by governmental incompetence, and he was damned if he was going to sit by and let them kill off someone else's.
So he had been busy pulling every string he had, in the government, the Ministry of Defence, Child Protection Services, Public Records, even MI5. There were several leads which he religiously followed, only to come to several frustrating dead-ends. MI6 had done a (deliberately?) poor job of completely erasing the boy from the records, but a frighteningly thorough one of keeping all information to an absolute minimum. As far as the public were concerned, Alex Rider didn't exist. A little more digging showed an Alex Rider who fitted the description of the boy he knew they were dealing with, an Alex Rider who had been living in an orphanage near St. Catherine's Docks for two years.
John and Helen Rider didn't appear to have any children; Alex's relationship with them had disappeared, and Markham, who had known John and his kind, pretty wife a little, vowed to set that right as soon as he could.
However, for all his vows and promises, by 6.30 that night, he was ready to throw it in for the rest of the day and start afresh tomorrow – when the phone rang.
"Markham."
"Colonel Andrew Markham?"
"Speaking. Who is this?"
"Timothy Smithers, Q-Section, MI6."
Markham sat a little straighter in his chair. "How can I help you, Mr. Smithers?"
"Well, a little bird from MI5 told me that you were looking for information on one Alex Rider."
"That's right." Markham agreed, a little warily.
"I just thought you might welcome a little help, dear boy…"
And there it is. The long awaited chapter. I hope you enjoyed! Oh, and this week, reviewers get peanut M&Ms for reviewing.; I have a big bag of 'em Those of you with nut allergies can have Yorkie bars.
-amitai