Point Blanc (5 page)

Then Blunt
looked up. "I hadn't expected to see you again so soon," he
said.

"That's
just what I was going to say," Alex replied. There was a single empty
chair in the office. He sat down.

Blunt slid a
sheet of paper across his desk and examined it briefly. "What on earth
were you thinking?" he demanded. "This business with the crane.
You've done an enormous amount of damage. You practically destroyed a three-million-dollar
conference center. It's a miracle nobody was killed."

"The
two men who were in the boat will be in the hospital for months,"
Mrs. Jones added.

"You
could have killed the home secretary!" Blunt continued. "That would
have been the last straw. What were you doing?"

"They
were drug dealers," Alex said.

"So
we've discovered. But the normal procedure would have been to call the
police."

"I
couldn't find a phone." Alex sighed. "They turned off the
crane," he explained. "I was going to put the boat next to the
police department. On the doorstep."

Blunt blinked
once and waved a hand as if dismissing everything that had happened.
"It's just as well that your special status came up on the police
computer," he said. "They called us--and we've handled
the rest."

"I
didn't know I had special status," Alex said.

"Oh,
yes, Alex. You're nothing if not special." Blunt gazed at him for a
moment. "That's why you're here."

"So
you're not going to send me home?"

"No.
The fact is, Alex, that we were thinking of contacting you anyway. We need you
again."

"You're
probably the only person who can do what we have in mind,"
Mrs. Jones added.

"Wait a
minute!" Alex shook his head. "I've still got two weeks of
school before Easter. I'm far enough behind as it is. Suppose I'm
not interested?"

Mrs. Jones
sighed. "We could, of course, return you to the police," she said.
"As I understand it, they were very eager to interview you."

"And
how is Miss Starbright?" Blunt asked.

Jack
Starbright--Alex still didn't know if the name was short for Jackie
or for Jacqueline--was the housekeeper who had been looking after Alex
since his uncle had died. She was a bright, red-haired American girl who had
come to London to study law but had never left. Blunt wasn't interested
in her health--Alex knew that. The last time they'd met, he'd
made his position clear. So long as Alex did as he was told, he could keep
living in his uncle's apartment with Jack. Step out of line and
she'd be deported to America.

Alex liked
Jack. For ten years, she'd almost been like a big sister to him. He also
needed her. He knew that he was too young to live on his own and that once she
was out of the picture, the authorities would have custody of him. That would
mean some grim institution in the north of England. Blunt had made that clear
too.

"Have
you told Jack where I am?" he asked.

"Of
course. She doesn't seem to like the idea of our ... employing you.
Actually, I must remember to get her to sign the Official Secrets Act. I
wouldn't want her talking to the wrong people."

Mrs. Jones
took over. "Come on, Alex," she said. "Why pretend
you're an ordinary schoolboy anymore?" She was trying to sound more
friendly, more like a mother. But even snakes have mothers, Alex thought.
"You've already proven yourself once," she went on.
"We're just giving you a chance to do it again."

"It'll
probably come to nothing," Blunt continued. "It's just
something that needs looking into. What we call a search and report."

"Why
can't Crawley do it?"

"We
need a boy."

Alex fell
silent. He looked from Blunt to Mrs. Jones and back again. He knew that
neither of them would hesitate for a second before pulling him out of
Brookland, taking him away from his friends, and sending him ... wherever.
Anyway, wasn't this what he had been asking for only the day before?
Another adventure. Another chance to save the world.

"All
right," he said. "What is it this time?"

Blunt nodded
at Mrs. Jones, who unwrapped another peppermint and began.

"I
wonder if you know anything about a man called Michael J. Roscoe?" she asked.

Alex thought
for a moment. "He was that businessman who had an accident in New
York." He'd seen the news on TV "Didn't he fall down an
elevator shaft or something?"

"Roscoe
Electronics is one of the largest companies in America," Mrs. Jones
said. "In fact, it's one of the largest in the world. Computers,
videos, DVD players ... everything from cell phones to washing machines.
Roscoe was very rich, very influential--"

"And
very clumsy," Alex cut in.

"It certainly
seems to have been a very strange and even careless accident,"
Mrs. Jones agreed. "The elevator somehow malfunctioned. Roscoe
didn't look where he was going. He fell into the shaft and died.
That's the general opinion. However, we're not so sure."

"Why
not?"

"First
of all, there are a number of details that don't add up. On the day
Roscoe died, a maintenance engineer by the name of Sam Green called at the
office building on Fifth Avenue where Roscoe worked. We know it was
Green--or someone who looked very much like him--because we've
seen him. They have closed-circuit security cameras, and he was filmed going
in. He said he'd come to look at a defective cable. But according to the
company that employed him, there was no defective cable and he certainly
wasn't acting under orders from them."

"Why
don't you talk to him?"

"We'd
like to. But Green has vanished without a trace. We think he may have been
killed. We think someone may have taken his place and somehow set up the
accident that killed Roscoe."

Alex
shrugged. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry about Mr. Roscoe. But
what's it got to do with me?"

"I'm
coming to that." Mrs. Jones paused. "The strangest thing of
all is that the day before he died, Roscoe telephoned this office. A personal
call. He asked to speak to Alan Blunt."

"I met
Roscoe at Cambridge University," Blunt said. "That was a long time
ago. We became friends."

That
surprised Alex. He didn't think of Blunt as the sort of man who had
friends. "What did he say?" he asked.

"Unfortunately,
I wasn't here to take the call," Blunt replied. "I arranged
to speak with him the following day. By that time, it was too late."

"Do you
have any idea what he wanted?"

"I
spoke to his assistant," Mrs. Jones said. "She wasn't
able to tell me very much, but she understood that Roscoe wanted to talk to us
about his son, He had a fourteen-year-old son, Paul Roscoe.'

A
fourteen-year-old son. Alex was beginning to see the way things were going.

"Paul
was his only son," Blunt explained. "I'm afraid the two of
them had a very difficult relationship. Roscoe divorced a few years ago, and
although the boy chose to live with his father, they didn't really get
along. There were the usual teenage problems, but of course, when you grow up
surrounded by millions of dollars, these problems sometimes get amplified. Paul
was doing badly at school. He was playing hooky and spending time with some
very undesirable friends. There was an incident with the New York
police--nothing serious, and Roscoe managed to hush it up--but still,
it upset him. I spoke to Roscoe from time to time. He was worried about Paul
and felt the boy was out of control. But there didn't seem to be very
much he could do."

"So is
that what you want me for?" Alex interrupted. "You want me to meet
this boy and talk to him about his father's death?"

"No."
Blunt shook his head and handed a file to Mrs. Jones.

She opened
it. Alex caught a glimpse of a photograph: a dark-skinned man in military
uniform. "Remember what we told you about Roscoe," she said,
"because now I want to tell you about another man." She slid the
photograph around so that Alex could see it. "This is General Major
Viktor Ivanov. Ex-KGB. Until last December he was the head of the Foreign
Intelligence Service and probably the second or third most powerful man in Russia
after the president. But then something happened to him too. It was a boating
accident on the Black Sea. His cruiser exploded ... nobody knows
why."

"Was he
a friend of Roscoe's?" Alex asked.

"They
probably never met. But we have a department here that constantly monitors
world news, and their computers have thrown up a very strange coincidence.
Ivanov also had a fourteen-year-old son... Dimitry. And one thing is
certain. The young Ivanov certainly knew the young Roscoe because they went to
the same school."

"Paul
and Dimitry..." Alex was puzzled. "What was a Russian boy doing
at a school in New York?"

"He
wasn't in New York." Blunt took over. "As I told you, Roscoe
was having trouble with his boy. Trouble at school, trouble at home. So last
year he decided to take action. He sent Paul to Europe, to a place in France a
sort of finishing school. Do you know what a finishing school is?"

"I
thought it was the sort of place where rich people used to send their
daughters," Alex said. "To learn table manners."

"That's
the general idea. But this school is for boys only, and not just ordinary boys.
The fees are fifteen thousand dollars a term. This is the brochure here. You
can have a look." He passed a heavy square booklet to Alex. Written on
the cover, gold letters on black, were two words: POINT BLANC.
"It's right on the French-Swiss border," he explained.
"South of Geneva. Just above Grenoble, in the French Alps. It's
pronounced
Point Blanc
."
He spoke the words with a French accent. "Literally, white point.
It's a remarkable place. Built as a private home by some lunatic in the
nineteenth century. As a matter of fact, that's what it became after he
died--a lunatic asylum. It was taken over by the Germans in the Second
World War. They used it as a recreation center for their senior staff. After
that it fell into disrepair until it was bought by the current owner, a man
called Grief. Dr. Hugo Grief. He's the principal of the school."

Alex opened
the brochure and found himself looking at a color photograph of Point Blanc. Blunt
was right. The school was like nothing he had ever seen, something between a
German castle and a French chateau, straight out of a Grimms' fairy
tale. But what made Alex draw his breath, more than the building itself, was
the setting. The school was perched on top of a mountain, with nothing but
mountains all around, a great pile of brick and stone surrounded by a
snow-covered landscape. It seemed to have no business being there, as if it had
been snatched out of an ancient city and accidentally dropped there. No roads
led to or from the school. The snow continued all the way to the front gate.
But looking again, Alex saw a modern helicopter pad projecting over the
battlements. He guessed that it was the only way to get there ... and to
leave.

He turned another
page.

Welcome
to the Academy at Point Blanc
, the introduction began. It had been printed
with the sort of lettering Alex would expect to find in the menu of an
expensive restaurant.
A
unique school that is much more than a school, created for boys who need more
than the ordinary education system can provide. In our time, we have been
called a school for
"
problem
children
,"
but
we do not believe the term applies. There are problems and there are children.
It is our aim to separate the two
.

"There's
no need to read all that stuff," Blunt said. "All you need to know
is that the academy takes in boys who have been expelled from all their other
schools. There are never very many of them there--just six or seven at a
time. And it's unique in other ways too. For a start, it takes only the
sons of the super-rich."

"At
fifteen thousand dollars per term, I'm not surprised," Alex said.

"You'd
be surprised just how many parents have applied to send their sons
there," Blunt went on. "But I suppose you've only got to look
at the newspapers to see how easy it is to go off the rails when you're
born with a silver spoon in your mouth. It doesn't matter if
they're politicians or pop stars, fame and fortune for the parents often
bring problems for the children ... and the more successful they are, the
more pressure there seems to be. The academy went into business to straighten
the young people out, and by all accounts it's been a great
success."

"It was
established twenty years ago," Mrs. Jones said. "In that time
it's had a client list you'd find hard to believe. Of course,
they've kept the names confidential. But I can tell you that parents who
have sent their children there include an American vice president, a Nobel
Prize-winning scientist, and a member of our own royal family."

"As
well as Roscoe and this man, Ivanov," Alex said.

"Yes."

Alex
shrugged. "So it's a coincidence. Just like you said. Two rich
parents with two rich kids at the same school. They're both killed in
accidents. Why are you so interested?"