"That's not possible." Drevin reached for the pa.s.sport. He looked at the expiry date, then at Alex. "The man is correct," he said.

"No." Alex was shocked. It was true he hadn't looked closely at his pa.s.sport for a long time, but he was certain he'd only had it four years. There was an absurd photograph of him aged ten; he remembered going with Jack to have it taken. "It can't be!" he protested.

Drevin handed him the pa.s.sport. Alex studied it. It was the same photo. The terrible haircut embarra.s.sed him as it always did. There was his signature, and Ian Rider's name and address as next of kin. But the immigration man was correct. His pa.s.sport had expired the day before he left London.

"But how can it have happened?" Alex asked. He couldn't believe he'd been so stupid. "Why didn't they notice at Heathrow?"

"I guess they didn't look closely enough," the American said.

"What does this mean?" Drevin asked. His voice was cold.

"Well, sir, I'm very sorry but we can't allow your guest to enter the United States. In normal circ.u.mstances he'd be sent back home, but I guess we can work something out. How long do you plan to be here?"

"Less than twenty-four hours," Drevin replied. "We leave tomorrow."

"In that case, we can hold Mr Rider here at the airport. It'll be like he's in transit. You can pick him up again when you leave."

"But the child only wishes to stay here one night. Surely he can't be such a threat to American security that you won't allow him to stay with me!"

"I'm very sorry, Mr Drevin. It's like I say. Really he should be on his way back to the UK. I'm stretching things as it is. But I can't allow him in."

"I don't understand it," Alex insisted. "I only got it four years ago I'm sure of it." He was feeling wretched. Both Drevin and his son were staring at him as if this were all his fault, which, he supposed, in a way it was.

"It seems we have no choice in the matter, Alex," Drevin said. He turned to the immigration officer. "Where will you hold him?"

"We have rooms here at the airport, sir. He'll have a TV and a shower. I can a.s.sure you he'll be fine."

"Then it seems we'll have to pick you up tomorrow, Alex."

Drevin got up and left the aircraft. Paul and Tamara followed. The a.s.sistant had said nothing throughout the discussion. Alex looked out of the window as they got into the limousine. A moment later they drove away and he found himself alone with the two Americans.

"Do you have any hand luggage?" the immigration man asked.

"No."

"OK. My name's Shulsky, by the way. Ed Shulsky. You'd better come with me."

Alex followed the American down onto the tarmac, the customs official close behind. There was another car waiting for them and Alex climbed into the back. Shulsky took the front seat. The other man stayed behind.

"Just relax. This won't take long," Shulsky said.

The doors had locked themselves automatically. Feeling far from relaxed, Alex sat back and watched where they were going.

They drove out of the airport, pa.s.sing through a double barrier and a gate. That already struck him as odd. Hadn't Shulsky just said he was going to have to spend the night at JFK? But it seemed they were heading for Manhattan. The driver joined the traffic on the freeway that led to Brooklyn Bridge, and suddenly Alex found himself looking across the water to the most famous skyline in the world. Even now, even in these circ.u.mstances, the view couldn't fail to thrill him, the magnificent arrogance of the skysc.r.a.pers packed together on the cramped, chaotic island a monument to power and success and the American way of life.

Alex leant forward. "Where are we going?" he demanded.

"We'll be there soon," Shulsky answered.

"I thought you said we were staying at the airport."

"Relax, Alex. We'll look after you just fine."

Alex knew something was going on. There had been nothing wrong with his pa.s.sport. He was sure of it. But there wasn't anything he could do. He was locked in a car on the other side of the world and he might just as well sit back and as the Americans would say be taken for the ride.

He looked out of the window as they crossed the bridge and turned north, heading past the terrible empty s.p.a.ce where the World Trade Center had once stood. He had visited New York a couple of times and had happy memories of the city. Now he was being driven through SoHo, in south Manhattan.

The car slowed down and he noticed an art gallery with a window full of cartoons, its name printed in gold letters on the gla.s.s. They turned into a parking garage. Alex sighed and shook his head. Now he knew exactly where he was.

In Miami they had called themselves Centurion International Advertising. The gallery here in New York was called Creative Ideas Animation. Two different names but the same three letters.

CIA.

The car drove up to the first floor of the garage and stopped. Shulsky got out and opened the door for Alex. "This way," he announced.

Alex followed him to a bare metal door that could have led into a storage cupboard or perhaps an electric generator room. A keypad was built into the wall and Shulsky entered a seven-digit code. There was a buzz and the door opened. Alex walked through into an empty corridor with a closed-circuit television camera pointing down at him from above and another locked door at the end. It swung open as he approached.

There was a comfortable reception area on the other side, and, beyond that, open-plan offices filled with phones and computers. Two telephonists sat behind the main desk, and men and women in suits walked along the carpeted corridors. A black man with white hair and a moustache was waiting to greet him. Alex recognized him at once. His name was Joe Byrne. He was the deputy director for operations in the Covert Action section of the Central Intelligence Agency of America.

"Nice to see you again, Alex," he said.

"I'm not so sure," Alex replied. He remembered how his pa.s.sport had briefly disappeared into Shulsky's attache case. "You swapped my pa.s.sport," he said. "The one you showed Drevin was a fake."

Joe Byrne nodded. "Come this way. Let me show you to my office. I think it's time you and I had a little chat."

THE BIGGEST CRIMINAL IN THE WORLD.

Byrne's office was identical to the one that Alex had visited in Miami. It had the same ordinary furniture, the same blank walls, the same air-conditioning turned up one notch too high. Only the view was different. Alex guessed he probably had something similar in just about every major city in America.

"You fancy a drink?" Byrne asked as he sat down behind his desk.

"Some water, thanks." There were a couple of bottles on a sideboard. Alex helped himself.

"It's good to see you again, Alex." Byrne sounded tired. He looked as if he hadn't been to bed for a week. "I was never able to thank you for the work you did for us on Skeleton Key."

"I was sorry about your agents."

"Tom Turner and Belinda Troy. Yeah, it was too bad. I was sorry to lose them. But that wasn't your fault. You did a great job." Byrne ran his eyes over Alex. "You look in good shape," he went on. "I was sorry to hear you got hurt in London. I told that boss of yours, Alan Blunt, that it wasn't a good idea getting a kid involved in this sort of work. Of course, he didn't listen to me. He never does. In a way, that's why you're here now."

"Why am am I here now?" I here now?"

"We had to get you away from Drevin without alerting him to the fact that the CIA was involved," Byrne explained. "Like you said, we swapped your pa.s.sport, so now he thinks you're tied up with customs and immigration. That gives us a chance to have a talk. As a matter of fact, I was rather hoping you might be able to help us."

"Forget it, Mr Byrne." Alex shook his head. "I'd already made up my mind before we landed. I don't want anything more to do with Drevin. So if you don't mind putting me on a plane to Washington, I'll say goodbye."

"Washington?" Byrne raised an eyebrow. "It's funny you should mention that. But I'm afraid you can't just walk out of here, Alex. Apart from anything else, you're an illegal immigrant, remember?" He quickly raised a hand in a conciliatory gesture. "Just hear me out. What I've got to say may be of genuine interest to you. And when I've finished, then you can tell me what you think. The truth is, right now you're in a unique situation. You could be very useful to us. And you have no idea how much is at stake."

Alex sighed. "Where have I heard that before?" He opened the bottle of water and sat down opposite the CIA man. "OK. Go ahead."

"Well, as you've probably guessed, this is all about Drevin," Byrne began. "Nikolei Vladimir Drevin. By our count, he's the fourth or fifth richest man alive and, of course, the British just love him. He's bought a soccer team; he's a big businessman; he gives money to charity. And then there's Ark Angel. Thanks to him, you British are going to corner the market in s.p.a.ce tourism, and that's a prize worth having. But I'm afraid it's not as easy as that. You see, for the last eighteen months the CIA and the State Department have been investigating Drevin, and we've discovered that he isn't quite what he seems. I'm talking about organized crime, Alex. And all roads lead straight to him. To put it in a nutsh.e.l.l, we think he's just about the biggest criminal in the world."

Byrne paused. Alex showed no reaction. After all he'd been through, he no longer had it in him to be surprised.

"It's complicated," Byrne went on. "And even though you flew over here on Drevin's sky palace, I guess you're probably jet-lagged. So I'll give it to you in broad strokes.

"To understand Drevin, you have to go back to the break-up of the Soviet Union in the early nineties. Communism was finished and the whole country was looking forward to a fresh start. But there was a problem. The new Russian government was broke. It needed money badly and it decided to sell off all its a.s.sets, which is to say, its car manufacturing centres, its hydroelectrical plants, its airline and most crucial of all its oilfields. They sold them cheap, often for a fraction of their real value. They had no choice, because they needed the money fast and they needed it up front. In the next few years a new group of businessmen appeared. They were in the right place at the right time and they saw that this was a fantastic opportunity. These people weren't going to become millionaires overnight. As share prices rose, they were going to become billion billionaires and that's exactly what happened.

"Nikolei Drevin was one of these people, but he was very different to the rest. We don't know a lot about his past. It's hard to find out anything that's happened in Russia in the last twenty years. We believe that Drevin started off in the army. He was certainly a senior figure in the KGB. Then we lose track of him until he re-emerges with a successful business selling of all things gardening equipment. He also dabbled in shares, particularly oil. He was doing well, but not that well, and when the sale of the century started he didn't have enough money to cut himself a slice.

"And this was when he had his big idea. His work with the army and the KGB had brought him into contact with the Russian underworld I'm talking about the mafiya. He knew all the big names and so he went to them for a loan. You see, he was a respectable businessman. He'd seen the future, and with their support he could buy into it big time. He needed about eighty million dollars, enough to buy a controlling interest in Novgerol, one of the big Russian oil companies. The mafiya met with him and decided they liked him, but they didn't have enough money, so they turned to their friends in j.a.pan. You've heard of the yakuza? Well, they were interested too, and just to round things off, the Chinese triads also decided to join the party. Between the three of them they raised the finance and Drevin was in. Suddenly he was a major player.

"So he bought into Novgerol. He got it for a song and the people who suffered in the end were the Russian people. It was their oil and it was more or less stolen from them. I doubt that Drevin lost any sleep over that. His shares doubled and trebled and multiplied by about a hundred, and he was able to pay back all his criminal friends with interest, and that was the end of that. Of course, there were people who got in his way. There were protesters. The police launched an inquiry. And do you know what? They were all murdered. You only had to sneeze at Drevin and someone would call round at your house with a machine gun. Kill you. Kill your family. Kill everyone who knew you. It was easier to keep quiet and, believe me, after a while, people did just that.

"So Drevin is in with the mafiya. He's in with the yakuza. And he's in with the triads. And of course, once these people know him, they're not going to leave him alone. Not that Drevin cares. He's got as much money as anyone could possibly want; but the funny thing is, people like that they always want more. So he keeps working with them. He becomes, if you like, the banker for half the criminal organizations in the world. The yakuza are selling Russian energetics weapons to terrorist groups; the triads are running drugs out of Burma and Afghanistan; the mafiya are moving into drugs and prost.i.tution throughout the West: Drevin provides the cash flow. I would say that around the world there are hundreds of dirty deals done every day and Drevin's money is behind just about all of them."

"If you know so much about him, why don't you arrest him?" Alex asked. His head was spinning. He had just spent almost a week living with this man and he was trying to marry what Byrne was saying with what he had himself observed. He had guessed that Drevin was no saint; but he had never suspected anything like this.

"We're going to arrest him," Byrne replied. "I told you. We've been investigating him for over a year. But when you're dealing with the really big criminals, Alex, it's not as easy as you might think. I mean, look at Al Capone. He was one of America's worst gangsters. n.o.body knows how many people he had killed. But despite all the work of the FBI, in the end all they could get him for was fiddling his income tax. It's the same with Drevin.

"He's clever; he's covered his back. A deal here, a deal there he leaves no trace. We get whispers and hints that he's involved, but it's like trying to build a castle out of individual grains of sand. Witnesses are too scared to talk. Anyone who comes forward gets killed. Even so, slowly but surely, we've been building a case against him. The State Department has collected over two thousand doc.u.ments. There are transcripts, tape and video recordings, photographs. There's been a team of thirty people working round the clock for months; there still is. And they've all had to be protected. From the start, we've been afraid that Drevin might try to get to them. He might even send people in to destroy the evidence. Mercenaries. Suicide bombers. I wouldn't put anything past him. So we've stored it all somewhere really safe."

"Where?"

"That's why I was interested just now when you mentioned Washington. The case against Drevin is lodged in probably the safest place in the United States. Inside the Pentagon."

Byrne got up and helped himself to a bottle of water. All the talking had made him look more exhausted than ever.

"We plan to arrest Drevin one week from today. I hardly need tell you that this information is highly cla.s.sified. The real problem is Ark Angel. The British government's invested billions in the s.p.a.ce station, and when we arrest Drevin, the whole project could collapse. That's why we've had to wait. We've had to be absolutely sure that we've tied up all the loose ends before we make our move.

"Of course, MI6 know what we're doing. There's no way we could stop them finding out. We've shown them the evidence but they don't want to believe it. They can't afford to believe it. When Drevin goes down, there's going to be a scandal that'll rip the whole financial market apart. But that's too bad. The man is a crook; he belongs in jail."

"So why do you need me?" Alex asked.

Byrne sat down again. "Because something's happened," he admitted. "Something we don't understand and you seem to be in the middle of it."

"Force Three."

"Exactly. Here's a group of people who call themselves eco-warriors and who seem to have picked a fight with Drevin, supposedly because he wiped out a few bird species on Flamingo Bay. But we don't know where they came from. We don't know who they are. We even wonder if Drevin himself isn't using them as some sort of diversion to distract us from our investigation. Your Mrs Jones is trying to get to the bottom of it right now but we're running out of time. I'm worried Drevin is going to pull some kind of stunt in the next seven days and slip through our fingers. Maybe he's going to disappear. He could head off to South America, or there are parts of Australia where we'd never find him. A man with his connections wouldn't find it difficult to build himself a new ident.i.ty. We need to know if he's planning to leave and, if so, where he might be going. That's where you come in.

"I've already got one agent inside his organization, but that's not enough. Drevin's too careful. He's not giving anything away. But you're different. You're right in the middle of the family. You're buddies with Paul Drevin. And the best thing is, they don't know anything about you. You're above suspicion. They certainly don't know about your connection with us.

"Tomorrow they're going to take you with them to Flamingo Bay. It's like Skeleton Key all over again. We can't get anyone in there. He's got the rocket base on the south of the island and the whole place is protected by his own private security force. It's not even American soil. The island is ten miles off the coast of Barbados and it just happens to belong to the British. Drevin leased it from your government when he built his s.p.a.ce centre there. So we can't go storming in.

"All I'm asking is for you to hang in there for one more week and report back if you see anything going on. It'll just be a vacation as far as you're concerned. You're Drevin's guest-"

"I was was Drevin's guest," Alex cut in. "I told you. I'm leaving." Drevin's guest," Alex cut in. "I told you. I'm leaving."

"Why?"

Alex shrugged. "What you've told me about him I didn't much like him anyway. And now I don't want to go anywhere near him."

"You won't be in any danger."

"That's what you said last time, Mr Byrne. And I nearly got killed. Two of your agents did did get killed." get killed."

"And if you hadn't helped us, thousands more people would have died too." Byrne looked genuinely puzzled. "What's the matter, Alex? Are you scared? Is it because of what happened with the sniper?"

Alex felt a twinge of pain in his chest. It happened every time anyone reminded him of his bullet wound. Perhaps it always would. "I'm not scared," he said. "I just don't like being used."

"We only use you because you're so d.a.m.n good," Byrne replied. "And this time I'm not lying to you. You're not working for MI6 and you're not working for us. I just want you to continue with your vacation and if you see Drevin packing his suitcases or if a submarine turns up in the middle of the night, give us a call. I've already told you, I've got an agent on the island and there'll be a back-up team just ten miles away on Barbados. You'll be watched all the time. Nothing's going to happen to you. I'm only afraid that somehow Drevin is going to get off the hook. Seven more days, Alex. Then we can make the arrest and you can go home."

"What about Paul?" It was only now that Alex thought about Paul Drevin. He wondered if he knew the truth about his father.

"Nothing will happen to him. He'll be well looked after. I guess he'll go back to his mother."

Alex didn't speak. He wanted to refuse but something was stopping him. He didn't want Byrne to think he was afraid. Maybe it was as simple as that.

"One week," Byrne promised. "Drevin won't suspect a thing. And just in case you do run into trouble, we've got someone here who might be able to help you."

"Who?"

"He's waiting for you outside."

He stood up and Alex followed him out of the office and down a corridor to an open-plan area. There was a man sitting at a table and Alex recognized him instantly. It would have been hard not to. The man was enormously fat. He was bald with a black moustache and a round, smiling face. He was wearing a brightly coloured Hawaiian shirt that couldn't have looked more inappropriate among the dark suits of the CIA operatives. Alex had never seen so many flowers on one piece of material.

"h.e.l.lo, Alex!" the man boomed.

"h.e.l.lo, Mr Smithers," Alex replied.

"What a great pleasure to see you again. You're looking tremendously well, if I may say so. Mrs Jones sends her best wishes."

"She knows I'm here?"

"Oh yes. We've been keeping an eye on you. As a matter of fact, it was she who sent me here." Smithers lowered his voice, although it could still be heard across the room. "We thought you might like one or two new gadgets, and although the Americans do produce a few of their own, I rather think we lead the field. Not that they'd agree, of course!"

"Gadgets..." Alex watched as Smithers reached down and lifted a briefcase onto the table.

"Absolutely. It wouldn't be any fun without gadgets, would it? And I've come up with some quite interesting ideas. This, for example." He produced an object that Alex recognized immediately. It was an inhaler, identical to the one Paul Drevin used. "Now, we happen to know that Drevin's son has one of these," Smithers explained. "So if anyone notices this in your luggage, they'll simply a.s.sume it's his. But it's fingerprint sensitive and I've programmed it for your personal use. When you press the cylinder, it'll send out a puff of knockout gas. Effective up to about five metres. Alternatively you can twist the cylinder round twice clockwise; that turns it into a hand grenade. Five-second fuse. I tested it on one of my a.s.sistants. Poor old Bennett ... he should be out of hospital in a couple of months."

He pa.s.sed it across and dived back into the case.

"Eavesdropping," he went on. "Part of your brief is to listen to anything interesting that Mr Drevin may be saying, and for that you'll need this." He brought out a slim white box with a set of headphones. Alex picked it up. It was an iPod. At least, it looked like one. "This uses microwave technology," Smithers explained. "Point the screen at anyone up to fifty metres away and listen through the headphones. You'll hear every word they say. You can also use it to contact the CIA. Rotate the click wheel three times anticlockwise and speak into it. I've got another version, by the way, packed with enough plastic explosive to blow up a building, but Mr Blunt said you weren't to have it. Shame, really. I call it the i-x-Plod.

"And one last thing. Flamingo Bay is a tropical island with lots of creepy-crawlies. So this might help..." Once again he reached into the case and this time came out with a gla.s.s bottle marked: