He had taken only two steps when he turned around. “How are you getting on here?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” Alex said.
“But you must be missing your friends in London.”
“Yes. But I’ve got a lot of friends here too.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it.”
Gunter clumped his way down the corridor, leaving Alex wondering how he could possibly have known that he came from London. Of course, Gunter could have looked at his file. But that was in the main office—and why would he have bothered to search it out? It was an interesting slip. Alex made a mental note of it.
The corridor was empty. It was three thirty-five. Alex was still holding the iPhone, cradling it in the palm of his hand, being careful not to place his own fingers on the screen. He hadn’t actually found it. In fact, it had arrived over the weekend, sent by Smithers and delivered in a padded envelope with a single sheet of instructions. Alex tilted the iPhone, checking the screen. Yes. Gunter had left a perfect thumbprint. He searched for the little button on the side and pressed it. There was a slight buzzing sound and the whole thing began to vibrate in his hand as the image was reversed and then reproduced. It took about twenty seconds, and then a thin sheet of pink latex slid out of a slot where the power cable would normally have been attached. Alex pressed his own thumb onto it, then wrapped the sides around. If the machine had worked, he would now be “wearing” Gunter’s thumbprint—but then, when had Smithers ever let him down?
He touched his thumb with the latex covering to the screen. The machine read the thumbprint, at the same time registering the blood temperature behind it, and the door clicked open immediately. Somewhere, in the near distance, someone called out. Alex didn’t move. It was one of the guards. If he came along the corridor now and saw the open door, that would be the end of it. But then he heard footsteps going up the stairs to the first floor. He looked left and right. He knew there were no cameras here, but anyone could appear at any moment. Gunter would be back in around twenty minutes. He had to move fast.
He went in and shut the door behind him.
The office was exactly as he had imagined it would be: clean, very tidy, half empty. There was a desk, a couple of chairs, a steel filing cabinet, bookshelves, and very little else. A large window, barred on the outside, looked toward the main gate. This was surely where the boy had been standing, spying on Alex as he left. Fortunately, Gunter had lowered the blinds before he left, so Alex could move freely without fear of being seen.
He began with the desktop. There was a diary with a few notes scribbled in English—but they all seemed to relate to meetings within the school and there were no addresses or telephone numbers of any interest. Gunter had received about a dozen letters. Alex flicked through them. There were several job applications. A salesman from an alarm company was trying to make an appointment. The wife of the Italian ambassador had written in to complain about locals at the school gates wolf-whistling Gabriella. Again, there was nothing to suggest any conspiracy, but then of course Gunter was a careful man. Even though his office was locked, he wouldn’t have left any evidence in view.
Alex examined the bookshelves. Gunter seemed to like murder mysteries and thrillers. There were books by Agatha Christie and Andy McNab. A guide to Egypt stood next to a thick volume called
Teach Yourself Arabic.
Neither of them seemed to have been opened. Otherwise the shelves were empty. Nor were there any pictures on the walls. The room gave the impression of someone who had just arrived or who was about to leave. Maybe Gunter didn’t expect to be at Cairo College very long.
Next, Alex turned to the filing cabinet. It was locked and he was annoyed that he hadn’t asked Smithers for something to help him break in. He remembered the zit cream he had been given on his first assignment. A few drops of that would have quickly burned through the metal. Well, he could always come back to the office another time, provided he hung on to the latex thumb.
He returned to the desk and tried the drawers. The first contained pens, envelopes, a flashlight, and a pile of report sheets, which Gunter must have been expected to fill in every day. The second drawer looked like a medicine chest. It was filled with different pills and a bottle of some sort of white liquid that smelled of peppermint. It reminded Alex that Gunter was a sick man, a wounded soldier—and for a brief moment he was tempted to leave. He had no right being here, trawling through someone’s private life. But it was too late to worry now. He had a job to do. He might as well get it over with.
Somebody knocked on the door.
Alex froze as a voice on the other side called out in Arabic. It might have been the guard he had heard earlier. Was he looking for Gunter? Or had he somehow worked out that there was an intruder inside? There was nothing Alex could do. If the door opened, there was nowhere to hide. Ten seconds passed. Alex listened to the sound of his own heart beating. Nobody came in. Whoever had been there must have gone.
Moving more quickly now, afraid that he might be discovered at any minute, Alex tried the third drawer. It was empty apart from a couple of brochures, advertising the college. He swung it shut again, then opened it a second time. Was it his imagination, or had something metallic moved somewhere inside the drawer? He had heard it, a distinct rolling sound followed by the clunk as it had hit the wooden edge. He took the brochures out. There was nothing underneath them. Unless . . .
Alex placed his hand flat on the bottom of the drawer and pushed. It tilted and he saw that he had discovered a false bottom, that there was a secret compartment underneath. Gunter had dropped a Biro into the hidden space and it had rolled from one end to the other with the movement of the drawer.
What else was there? Alex put his hand in and pulled out a gun, made in Russia with a star engraved in the handle. Was that something Gunter kept for his job at the school? And if so, why was it concealed here? It had been resting on top of a map . . . the edge of the Sahara and an oasis town called Siwa. It seemed an unlikely vacation destination, although Cairo College did sometimes organize trips into the desert. Next out was a newspaper, a copy of the
Washington Post
, about a week old. The front page was given over to a big article about the president’s plummeting approval ratings and, underneath it, a smaller one about pollution in the Gulf of Mexico. There might be something relevant inside, but Alex didn’t have time to read it. MI6 could buy the same edition and do that for themselves. Alex memorized the date and set the paper aside.
There was nothing else in the drawer except for a bundle of photographs. Alex spread them out over the surface of the desk and examined them. Most of them showed a large domed building that reminded him of the Albert Hall in London but that, from the palm trees that surrounded it, was more likely to be somewhere in Cairo. The pictures had been taken from every angle. There were cars parked outside and people—many of them young and carrying books—crossing the lawns that surrounded it. Some sort of school or university? This was a modern, liberated place. Some of the women were in jeans and hardly any of them were wearing head scarves or veils.
And then there was a picture of a room, perhaps inside the domed building. It wasn’t so much a room as a wide storage closet or a cellar. Alex saw red tiles, old paint cans, and a mop in a bucket, leaning against a corner. What on earth could Gunter want with a photograph of this? The next picture was even stranger. It was a close shot of a coat hook, presumably in the same room. The hook was in the middle of a brick wall, shaped like a swan’s neck. The edge of the metal had caught the flash, which was blurring much of the image. It certainly wasn’t going to win any prizes in a “Views of Cairo” competition.
There was one picture left. Alex turned it over and frowned. He was looking at a photograph of himself. It must have been taken sometime in the past two weeks. It showed him in full school uniform, walking through the gates at the end of the day. The photographer must have been inside Gunter’s office. Alex was in the far distance, barely more than an inch high. But it was definitely him. The definition was good enough for him to see his own face. Even so, there was something about it that puzzled him. He examined it carefully. There was definitely something wrong.
Alex took out his own iPhone—a real one with a three-megapixel camera—and took snaps of all the photographs he had looked at. Then he carefully returned them to the secret drawer, making sure they were in the same order he had found them, and laid the gun on top. He wondered if MI6 would be able to make anything out of them. Well, it was up to them now. He had finally achieved something. Maybe he had even bought his ticket back home.
Alex made sure he had left nothing behind, then tiptoed over to the door and listened. There was nobody outside.
He slipped out into the corridor and quickly walked away.
It was almost four o’clock. He was very late leaving. If anybody asked him what he was doing, he would say he had forgotten his homework and gone back for it. He passed the school secretary’s office—there was nobody there—and went through the main doors, back into the searing heat of the yard. The gates were ahead of him. A couple of guards were standing there, smoking cigarettes, thinking their work was done.
And then he saw Gunter on the far side of the yard. He was talking on his mobile phone with his back slightly toward the school as if he was afraid of being seen. It was too good an opportunity to miss. Alex was already wearing his sunglasses. He stepped back into the shadows and took out his water bottle. He pointed it in the right direction, and a second later he heard Gunter’s voice, so clearly that he could have been standing next to him.
“The House of Gold. Yes, of course I know it.” There was a pause. “Five o’clock tomorrow. I’ll come alone . . . Do you think I’m an idiot? And if I’m satisfied, I’ll authorize the final payment.”
Gunter hung up, then walked away, disappearing around the side of the building. Alex waited a minute, then darted toward the main gate. Suddenly, things seemed to be happening very quickly. The head of security must be on his way to some sort of secret meeting. A payment was involved. It had to be part of the conspiracy that MI6 was looking for. Alex had passed through the gate and realized he was standing in exactly the same spot where his picture had been taken. And it was then that he knew what was wrong.
In the photograph that he had seen, he had been standing on his own . . . as he was now. But he had never once left the school on his own. He was sure of it. Simon or Craig walked home with him every day. If it wasn’t them, it was Andrew or one of the other Scottish boys. Always there were other kids around. Alex left at the same time as everyone else.
So where had they gone? Had they all been airbrushed out? Or was he simply wrong? Had there been a moment when his image could have been captured with nobody else about?
It didn’t matter. The House of Gold at five o’clock the next day. Wherever it was, Alex planned to be there, and in his hurry to get back to the apartment, he didn’t look around and didn’t see Gunter emerge from the side of the school to watch him, his lips stretched in a thin smile. Nor did he hear him make a second call.
“He listened in on the conversation. He’s taken the bait. He’s clearly not quite as clever as he’s cracked up to be. He’ll be there tomorrow. I know what to do.”
13
THE HOUSE OF GOLD
ALEX FOUND IT EASILY enough on the Internet. The House of Gold turned out to be some sort of shopping center specializing in jewelry.
Fine gems and all your gold & silver dreams.
That was how it advertised itself on the website.
Come and seek us for the best prices in Cairo.
The name should have given it away, but it still seemed an unlikely destination for a man like Erik Gunter.
“Perhaps he’s just going to buy a ring for his girl-friend . . . or his wife, if he has one,” Jack suggested.
“He said he was going to authorize the final payment,” Alex said. “You don’t do that with a wedding ring.”
“He doesn’t have to be meeting a jeweler. He could be meeting anyone.”
“It’s a strange place to want to meet . . .”
The two of them were sitting in the living room of their apartment. Jack had been waiting for Alex with two glasses of ice-cold lemonade and a plate of sandwiches. He was normally hungry when he got back from school. Outside, the swimming pool was crowded . . . There was a rough version of water polo going on, and Craig and Jodie had called out to Alex to join them as he passed. But he had gone straight to the computer.
houseofgold.org
. Then he had told Jack what had happened, what he had found inside Gunter’s office. It wasn’t a lot to go on, he realized. Not after two and a half weeks in Egypt.
“He wasn’t buying jewelry,” Alex insisted. “He sounded . . . I don’t know . . . mysterious. As if he didn’t want to be overheard.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t leading you on? Maybe he wants you to follow him.”
Alex shook his head. “He couldn’t have known I was listening to him. I was a long way away, on the other side of the yard.”
“What about the pictures you found in his desk?” Jack had Alex’s iPhone. She flicked through the images on the screen.