Scorpia (12 page)

“It’s very strange that you should say that. I mean, I don’t notice Damian Cray at the next table. I wonder what happened to him? Or how about that nice Dr Grief? I understand he didn’t survive his last meeting with you.”

“They were accidents.”

“You seem to have had an awful lot of accidents in the last few months.”

She paused. When she spoke again her voice was softer, like a teacher talking to a favourite pupil.

“I can see you’re still upset about Dr Liebermann,” she said. “Well, let me reassure you. He wasn’t a nice man and I don’t think anybody’s going to miss him. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if his wife didn’t send us a thank-you card.” She smiled as if at some private joke. “You could say his death was a shot in the arm for us all. And you have to remember, Alex. It was his choice. If he hadn’t lied and cheated his company and come to work for us, he would still be alive. It wasn’t all our fault.”

“Of course it was your fault. You killed him!”

“Well, yes. I suppose that’s true. But we’re a very large international business. And sometimes it does happen that people get in our way and they end up dead. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is.”

A waiter came and took away the plates. Alex finished his orange juice, hoping the ice would help clear his head.

“I still can’t join Scorpia,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I have to go back to school.”

“I agree.” Mrs Rothman leant towards him. “We have a school; I want to send you there. It’s just that our school will teach you things that you might find a little more useful than logarithms and English grammar.”

“What sort of things?”

“How to kill. You say you could never do it, but how can you be sure? If you go to Malagosto, you’ll find out. Nile was a star student there; he’s a perfect killer – or he would be. Unfortunately he has one rather irritating weakness.”

“You mean his disease?”

“No. It’s rather more annoying than that.” She hesitated. “You could be better than him, Alex, in time. And although I know you don’t like me mentioning it, your father was actually an instructor there. A brilliant one. We were all devastated when he died.”

And there it was again. Everything began and ended with John Rider. Alex couldn’t avoid it any longer. He had to know.

“Tell me about my father,” he said. “That’s the reason I’m here. That’s the only reason I came. How did he end up working for you? And how did
he die?” Alex forced himself to go on. “I don’t even know what his voice sounded like. I don’t know anything about him at all.”

“Are you sure you want to? It may hurt you.”

Alex was silent.

Their waiter arrived with the main course. Mrs Rothman had chosen roast lamb; the meat was slightly pink and garlicky. A second waiter refilled her glass.

“All right,” she said when they had gone. “Let’s finish eating and talk about other things. You can tell me about Brookland. I want to know what music you listen to and what football team you support. Do you have a girlfriend? I’m sure a boy as handsome as you gets plenty of offers. Now I’ve made you blush. Have your dinner. I promise it’s the best lamb you’ll ever eat.

“And after we’ve finished, I’ll take you upstairs and then I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”

S
he led him to a room at the top of the hotel. There was no bed, just two chairs and a trestle table with a video player and a few files.

“I had this flown down from Venice as soon as I knew you were here,” Mrs Rothman explained. “I thought it was something you’d want to see.”

Alex nodded. After the bustle of the restaurant, he felt strange being here – like an actor on stage when the scenery has been removed. The room was large with a high ceiling, and its emptiness made everything echo. He walked over to the table, suddenly nervous. At dinner he had asked certain questions. Now he was going to be given the answers. Would he like what he heard?

Mrs Rothman came and stood beside him, her high heels rapping on the marble floor. She seemed completely relaxed. “Sit down,” she invited.

Alex slipped off his jacket and hung it over the
back of a chair. He loosened his tie, then sat. Mrs Rothman stood next to the table, studying him. It was a moment before she spoke.

“Alex,” she began. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

“I don’t want to,” he said.

“It’s just that, if I’m going to talk to you about your father, I may say things that will upset you and I don’t want to do that. Does the past really matter? Does it make any difference?”

“I think it does.”

“Very well…”

She opened a file and took out a black and white photograph. It showed a handsome man in military uniform, wearing a beret. He was looking straight at the camera with his shoulders back and his hands clasped behind him. He was clean-shaven, with watchful, intelligent eyes.

“This is your father, aged twenty-five. The photograph was taken five years before you were born. Do you really know nothing about him?”

“My uncle spoke to me about him a bit. I know he was in the army.”

“Well, maybe I can fill in some gaps for you. I’m sure you know that he was born in London and went to a secondary school in Westminster. From there he went to Oxford and got a first in politics and economics. But his heart had always been set on joining the army. And that’s what he did. He joined the Parachute Regiment at Aldershot. That
in itself was quite an achievement. The Paras are one of the toughest regiments in the British Army, second only to the SAS. And you don’t just join them; you have to be invited.

“Your father spent three years with the Paras. He saw action in Northern Ireland and Gambia, and he was part of the attack on Goose Green in the Falkland Islands in May 1982. He carried a wounded soldier to safety even though he was under fire and, as a result of this, he received a medal from the Queen. He was also promoted to the rank of captain.”

Alex had once seen the medal: the Military Cross. Ian Rider had always kept it in the top drawer of his desk.

“He returned to England and got married,” Mrs Rothman went on. “He had met your mother at Oxford. She was studying medicine and eventually became a nurse. But I can’t tell you very much about her. We never met and he never spoke about her, not to me.

“Anyway, I’m afraid it was shortly after he got married that things started to go wrong … not, of course, that I’m blaming your mother. But just a few weeks after the wedding, your father was in a pub in London when he got involved in a fight. There were some people making remarks about the Falklands War. They were probably drunk. I don’t know. There was a skirmish and he struck a man and killed him. It was a single blow to the throat
… just like he had been trained to inflict. And that, I’m afraid, was that.”

Mrs Rothman took out a newspaper clipping from the file and handed it to Alex. It had to be at least fifteen years old. He could tell from the faded print and the way the paper had yellowed. He read the headline:

There was another photo of John Rider but now he was in civilian dress, surrounded by photographers, getting out of a car. The picture was a little blurred and it had been taken long ago, but looking at it Alex could almost feel the pain of the man, the sense that the world had turned against him.

He read the article.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs Rothman said softly. She had been watching Alex closely. “You didn’t know.”

“My uncle showed me the medal once,” Alex said. He had to stop for a moment. His voice was hoarse. “But he never showed me this.”

“It wasn’t your father’s fault. He was provoked.”

“What happened next?”

“He was sent to jail. There was quite an outcry about it. He had a lot of public sympathy. But the fact was, he had killed a man and he was found guilty of manslaughter. The judge had no choice.”

“And then?”

“They let him out after just a year. It was done very quietly. Your mother had stood by him; she never lost faith in him and he went back to live with her. Unfortunately his army career was over; he had received a dishonourable discharge. He was very much on his own.”

“Go on.” Alex’s voice was cold.

“He found it difficult to get a job. It wasn’t his
fault; that’s just the way it is. But by this time, he had come to the attention of our personnel department.” Mrs Rothman paused. “Scorpia are always on the lookout for fresh talent,” she explained. “It seemed quite obvious to us that your father had been unfairly treated. We thought he would be perfect for us.”

“You approached him?”

“Yes. Your parents had very little money by this time. They were desperate. One of our people met your father, and two weeks later he came to us for evaluation.” She smiled. “We test every new recruit, Alex. If you decide to join us, and I still hope you will, we’ll take you to the same place we took your father.”

“Where is that?”

“I mentioned the name to you. Malagosto. It’s near Venice.” Mrs Rothman wouldn’t be any more precise than that. “We could see at once that your father was extremely tough and exceptionally talented,” she went on. “He passed every test we threw at him with flying colours. We knew, by the way, that he had a brother – Ian Rider – working for MI6. I was always a little surprised that Ian didn’t try to help him when he got into trouble, but I suppose there was nothing he could do. Anyway, it made no difference, the two of them being brothers. Your father was indeed perfect for us. And after what had happened to him, I have to say that we were certainly perfect for him.”

Alex was getting tired. It was almost eleven. But he knew there was no way he was leaving this room until the whole story had been told.

“So he joined Scorpia,” he said.

“Yes. Your father worked for us as an assassin. He spent four months in the field.”

“How many men did he kill?”

“Five or six. He was more interested in working as an instructor in the training school where he had been evaluated. You might like to know, Alex, that Yassen Gregorovich was one of the assassins he helped train. Your father actually saved Yassen’s life when they were on an assignment in the Amazon jungle.”

Alex knew that Mrs Rothman was telling the truth. Yassen had said as much himself in the final seconds before he died.

“I got to know your father very well,” Mrs Rothman went on. “We had dinner together many times, once even in this hotel.” She threw her head back, letting her black hair trail down her neck, and for a moment her eyes were far away. “I was very attracted to him. He was an extremely good-looking man. He was also intelligent and he made me laugh. It was just unfortunate that he was married to your mother.”

“Did she know what he was doing? Did she know about you?”

“I very much hope not.” Suddenly Mrs Rothman was businesslike. “I have to tell you now how your
father died. I wish you hadn’t asked me to do this. Are you sure you want me to carry on?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” She took a deep breath. “MI6 wanted him. He was one of our best operatives and he was training others to become as effective as him. And so they set about hunting him down. I won’t go into the details, but they set a trap for him on the island of Malta. As it happened, Yassen Gregorovich was there too. He escaped – but your father was captured. We assumed that would be the last of him and that we would never see him again. You may think that the death penalty has been abolished in Britain, but – as they say – accidents happen. But then there was a development…

“Scorpia had kidnapped the eighteen-year-old son of a senior British civil servant, a man with considerable influence in the government – or so we thought. Again, it’s a complicated story and it’s late, so I won’t give you all the details. But the general idea was that if the father didn’t do what we wanted, we would kill the son.”

“That’s what you do, is it?” Alex asked.

“Corruption and assassination, Alex. It’s part of what we do. Anyway, as we quickly discovered, the civil servant was unable to do what we wanted. Unfortunately this meant we would have to kill the son. You can’t make a threat and then have second thoughts about it, because if you do, nobody will ever fear you again. And so we were about to kill
the boy in as dramatic a way as possible. But then, out of the blue, MI6 got in touch with us and offered us a deal.

“It was a straight swap. They’d give us back John Rider in return for the son. The executive board of Scorpia met and, although it was only carried by a narrow vote, we decided to go ahead with the deal. Normally we would never have allowed an operation to become entangled in this way, but your father had been extremely valuable to us and, as I said, I was personally very close to him. So it was agreed. We would make the exchange at six o’clock in the morning – this was March. And it would take place on Albert Bridge.”