Chapter Four: "So what do you say?"

Alex opened her eyes. So they hadn't drugged her to drag her off and murder her somewhere far away from the bank. That was a relief.

She was laying in a large bed, in a very spacious room. The bed was modern, but the room was old. Elizabethan, if she guessed right. She hadn't liked Shakespeare much, he was too much of a sexist for her to actually like his work. But she had learned something from being forced to have that god awful book preserved in her memory banks for eternity.

She was somewhere in the country. There was no sound of traffic and she could see trees out the large bedroom window.

Someone had undressed her. That was very creepy. A few men drugged her then changed her clothes. She shuddered, hoping desperately it was a female who changed her. She looked outside. Judging by the lighting she would guess it was mid-morning. Looking at the digital clock the numbers 12:01 glowed back at her. So it was noon. She had been shot with a tranquilizer at around half past four so she had lost about eleven and a half hours.

She stood up and padded barefoot around the room. She tried the one door and it was locked but the second door was unlocked and it led to a bathroom so she didn't count the locked door as a total defeat. She looked around quickly and found the closet which was full of her clothes from her house. Now that was creepy. Who in the world would sneak into someone's house to steal their clothes after kidnapping them in the first place? Did they sneak in or did they feed Jack some sort of lie to get her to let them in?

Maybe that MIb thing she had saw earlier had some promise. Maybe they were aliens trying to abduct her or something. She grabbed some clothes and headed into the bathroom locking it firmly behind her. Bad enough someone had undressed her, they didn't need to see her shower too.

She stripped and let the clothes drop to the floor then she carefully unwound both bandages. The cut on her head had scabbed over and she hadn't bothered to bandage it. She looked in the mirror so she could examine her should/neck juncture more clearly. The graze had scabbed over slightly so that was good. Hopefully it would be healed in about two weeks or so. She would have a scar but it wouldn't be the worst scar to have. At least she didn't get hit somewhere else and at least it was only a graze.

She looked at her leg. It was fine. She had thoroughly cleaned that wound, she had used two whole bottles of Hydrogen Peroxide. She had then used antiseptic cream and bandaged it firmly. She turned on the shower and waited a couple seconds for the water to warm up before stepping directly under the spray. She sighed and gently washed her hair wincing when she accidentally prodded the scab on her head open. She rinsed more cautiously careful not to get shampoo into the now open cut. She gently washed her neck then her leg then quickly washed the rest of her. Then she got out. She towel dried quickly before putting on her undergarments and then searched through the bathroom for the first aid kit. She found a mini first aid kit in the compartment behind the mirror and took it down. She gently used a few cotton balls to clean the wounds more thoroughly and then bandaged it quickly if not unsteadily.

She slipped her shirt on being careful not to move her neck to much encase she pulled the skin and caused the scab to break. Then she hurriedly bandaged her leg as well and slipped her sweat pants. She didn't want to chance jeans rubbing the bandage and causing it to rip the scab open.

She tousled her hair with the towel a little more vigorously than need and ran a brush through it quickly taking the knots out of it. Then she padded out to the bed to put her socks and shoes on.

About five minutes after she got her shoes on a knock sounded and then seconds later an young Asian woman in nurses' uniform entered beaming.

'Wow. Ever heard of waiting for an answer.' Alex thought irritably.

"Oh, you're awake. And dressed. How are you feeling? Not to groggy, I hope. Please come with me. Mr. Blunt is expecting you for lunch." She said not letting Alex get a word in edge wise.

'I'm glad she's so concerned about the fact a bank chairman had a young girl shot with a tranquilizer. It's nice to know there are some decent people out there.' Alex thought to herself following the nurse mulishly. 'At least a man didn't undress me.' She decided optimism was the only way she was going to be able to keep from punching someone.

She was led down a flight of stairs into a beautiful dinning room with a long polished wooden table set for three.

Alan Blunt and a rather masculine looking woman sucking on a peppermint were already seated. Mrs. Blunt? Not likely. Blunt didn't seem like a person able to date let alone marry anyone.

"Alexandria." Blunt smiled briefly as if it were physically painful to hold it longer than three seconds. "It's good of you to join us."

Alex sat down. "You didn't give me much choice. And call me Alex. Alexandria makes me feel like I'm in trouble." She ordered firmly not even caring who the man was.

"Yes. Well, I don't know what Crawley was thinking having you shot like that. I suppose it was the easiest way. And if you insist I will call you Alex." Blunt agreed. "May I introduce my colleague, Mrs. Jones." He continued gesturing to the woman next to him.

The woman nodded in acknowledgement, and her eyes seemed to study her like a fascinating bug under a microscope.

"Who are you? What do you want with me?" Alex demanded once more.

"I'm sure you have many questions but first, let's eat." Blunt must've pressed a hidden button or someone was waiting for a cue because a door open and a waiter came out carrying three plates.

"I hope you like meat." Blunt continued. "Today it's carre'd'agneu."

"You mean roast lamb." Alex stated.

"The chef is French."

Alex waited until the food had been served. Blunt and Jones had red wine with theirs. She stuck with water. She poked her food, a bit and took a small bite before her stomach turned unpleasantly with nerves and she put her fork down.

Finally Blunt began. "As I'm sure you've gathered the Royal and General is not a bank. In fact it doesn't exist...it's nothing more than a cover. And it follows of course that your uncle had nothing to do with banking. He worked for me. My name, as I told you at the funeral, is Alan Blunt. I am the chief executive of the Special Operations Division of MI6. And your uncle was, for lack of a better word, a spy."

Alex smiled thinly. "You mean like James Bond?"

"Similar. Though we don't go for numbers, double-oh and all the rest of it. Your uncle was a field agent, highly trained and very courageous. He successfully completed assignments in Iran, Washington, Hong Kong, and Havana to name but a few. I imagine this must be a surprise for you."

Alex thought about her uncle and what she knew of him. His privacy. His long absences abroad. And the times he came home injured. A bandaged arm one time, a bruised face another. Little accidents he had claimed. But now it all made sense.

"I'm not shocked." Alex admitted.

Blunt cut a piece of his lamb with surgical precision. "Ian Rider's luck ran out on his last mission." he continued. "He had been working undercover here in England, in Cornwall to be precise, and was driving back to London to report when he was killed. You saw his car in the yard-"

"Stryker and Son," Alex muttered to herself. "Who are they?"

"Just people we hire. We have budget restraints. We have to contract some of our work out. We hire them to clean things up. Mrs. Jones here is our head of operations. It was her who gave your uncle his last assignment."

"We are very sorry to have lost him Alex." The woman spoke for the first time. She didn't sound very sorry at all.

"Do you know who killed him?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to tell me?"

"No. Not now."

"Why not?"

"Because you don't need to know at this point."

"Alright. My uncle was a spy. Thanks to you he's dead. I found out too much so you knocked me out and brought me here. Where is here by the way?"

"This is one of our training centers." Jones answered. Alex didn't like where this was going. They wouldn't have brought her here without a reason.

"You've brought me here so I won't tell anybody what I know? Is that what this is all about? Because if it is, I'll sign the Official Secrets Act or whatever. But I'd like to go home. This is crazy. I've had enough, I'm ready to get out of here."

Blunt coughed quietly, falsely. "It's not quite as easy as that."

"Why not?" Alex demanded.

"While it's true you did draw attention to yourself both at the junkyard and at our offices on Liverpool Street, and you know what we've said can go no further. The fact of the matter is we need your help, Alex."

"My help?" Alex was sure her voice sounded incredulous. She certainly felt that way. They were the government they were supposed to deal with problems not drag fourteen year old girls to settle their problems.

"Yes, have you heard of a man called Herod Sayle."

Alex's photographic memory flickered on and she remembered everything she read. She was reciting word for word the account from the file before she could stop herself.

"Herod Sayle was born in complete poverty in the backstreets of Cairo. His father was a failed oral hygienist. His mother took in washing. He had nine brothers and four sisters, all living together in three small rooms along with the family goat. Young Herod never went to school and he should have ended up unemployed, unable to read or write, like the rest of them.

"But when he was seven, something occurred that changed his life. He was walking down Fez Street-in the middle of Cairo-when he happened to see an upright piano fall out of a fourteen story window. Apparently it was being moved and it somehow overturned. Anyway, there were a couple of English tourists walking along the pavement underneath and they would both have been crushed-no doubt about it except at the last minute Herod threw himself at them and pushed them out of the way. The piano missed them by an inch.

"Of course, the tourists were enormously grateful to the young Egyptian wife and it now turned out that they were very rich. They made inquiries about him and discovered how poor he was ... the very clothes he was wearing had been passed down by all nine of his brothers. And so, out of gratitude, they more or less adopted him. Flew him out of Cairo and put him into a school over here, where he made astonishing progress. He got excellent exam results and-here's an amazing coincidence-at the age of fifteen he actually found himself sitting next to a boy who would grow up to become prime minister of Great Britain. Our present prime minister, in fact. The two of them were at school together.

"After school, Sayle went to Cambridge, where he got a degree in economics. He then set out on a career that went from success to success. His own radio station, computer software ... and, yes, he even found time to buy a string of racehorses, although I believe they seldom win. But what drew him to our attention was his most recent invention. A quite revolutionary computer that he calls the Stormbreaker." (Almost all of the last four paragraphs are word for word from the book.)

Alex recited word for word out of the folder. Then snapped her mouth shut when she saw both Jones and Blunt had dropped their impassive masks to show shock.

"Sorry. Photographic memory. I take it you didn't expect me to know all that?" Alex asked humorously. Nothing was more entertaining than seeing to impassive people imitating a fish and doing a very fine job of it.

"I'm going to assume you know the rest. He sent a letter to the Prime Minister about donating all those computers." Blunt continued.

Alex nodded she had remembered the note. It was worded carefully. Too carefully to be entirely truthful and straightforward as they assumed it was.

"You think he's hiding something." Alex interrupted. She was probably the only one that had ever done that judging by the annoyance that swept across Blunt's features before he blanked his face again.

"But why are you telling me this?" Alex asked. His question was ignored as Blunt went on.

"Quite right. We know Rider had found out something. We need to know what. But since he already caught one spy he'll be on the look out for another. We were thinking of sending a woman in as a secretary or kitchen helper. We need to find out soon. Before the Stormbreakers come on the air, which will be on March 31st."

"It's essential to send someone in to Port Tallon to finish your uncle's work." Mrs. Jones interjected.

"I hope you aren't looking at me." She said smiling queasily, feeling quite sick to her stomach.

"We can't just send in another agent. He'll be expecting that. So we have to trick him." Jones stated.

"We have to send in someone he won't expect and that's how I came up with this idea." Blunt started. "A few months ago a computer magazines ran a competition "Be the first boy or girl to use the Stormbreaker, Travel to Port Tallon and meet Herod Sayle himself" That was the first prize won by a young chap who's apparently some sort of whiz kid when it comes to computers. Name of Felix Lester. Fourteen years old. Same age as yourself. He'd even look a bit like you if you cut your hair. He's expected at Port Tallon two weeks from now."

"Wait!" Alex cried. "You want me to cut my hair, pretend to be a boy, and spy on some rich guy because you can't be bothered to find someone to work in the kitchens?"

Blunt ignored her objections and continued. "You've proven yourself to be brave and resourceful. First at the junkyard...that was a karate kick wasn't it. How long have you been learning karate?"

Alex was silent so Blunt continued.

"And then there was the test of getting into Ian Rider's office. How many people would climb out a fifteenth story window just to satisfy their curiosity? Not to mention your recently revealed photographic memory."

"We're suggesting you work for us. You get two weeks of training then we send you to Port Tallon you stay for a week and report anything suspicious back to us. It's very low risk, all you have to do is keep your eyes and ears open. We send the boy off to Florida or something and you take his place. You'll be in no danger. After all, who expects a fourteen year old girl pretending to be a fourteen year old boy to be a spy?" Jones finishes.

"Three weeks of time is all. All you have to do is report back to us. A chance to make sure these computers are fine and a chance to serve your country. So what do you say?"

Blunt's plate was completely clean at this point. If Alex hadn't put down her utensils a while ago they would've dropped out of her hands in shock. The government had gone mad, crazy, out of their minds.

"No." Alex stated as calmly as she could.

"I'm sorry?"

"It's a stupid idea. You want me a fourteen year old girl who is in fact developing curves to play a teenage boy. And on top of that you want me to cut my hair, the only part of me that I actually have that's really girly. Why don't you get Felix or whatever his name is to do it for you?" Alex asked.

"He won't be as resourceful as you." Blunt stated bluntly.

"He'd be better at playing a boy and he'd be better at computer games. I'm sorry but I don't want to get involved."

"That's too bad." Blunt stated and then his face changed. It was like a plug had been pulled and the human part of him had just gone down the drain.

"We'd better move on to discussing your living conditions then. Like it or not Alex, the Royal and General is now your legal guardian."

"The Royal and General doesn't exist." Alex quoted back angrily.

Blunt ignored her. "Your housekeeper's visa has run out. She'll be sent back to America. I'm afraid we'll have to put your house up for sale and you'll be sent to an all girl's boarding school until you reach majority." Blunt stated.

"You can't do that!" Alex objected harshly.

"I think St. Helen's Institute in Sourbridge. Not a pleasant school but I'm afraid there's nowhere else."

"You're blackmailing me!"

"Not at all."

"But if I agree with what you asked...?"

"You help us, we help you." Mrs. Jones stated.

Alex considered for several seconds. She didn't have a choice. "Fine." She ground out feeling angry tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. "You talked about training." He reminded.

"Yes. We'll have a hair dresser meet you before we ship you off to train with the SAS in Brecon Beacons in Wales. You will pretend to be a boy even there. You will have to take showers when the other men are asleep, and you will have to keep your gender hidden at all times from everybody. We have our technician working on a body suit for you so you will pass as a boy easier after training." Mrs. Jones stated.

"Yeah, alright." Alex mumbled unhappily looking down at her plate. The lamb had gone cold by now. Dead meat. Suddenly she felt exactly the same way.

A/N: Sorry a lot of this is just like the book but I needed to get the cold hard information out of the way so it can change later on in the story line.