Crocodile Tears - Anthony Horowitz [50]
Alex took out the postcard that had arrived the day before. It showed a picture of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. On the back, someone had written a date—2/25—and a message: Paris is beautiful and fortunately we didn’t manage to get lost. I hope you have a great time. The signature was unreadable, but Alex recognized Smithers’s writing. He had been expecting the card, and Smithers had told him how to use it. He slipped it away and turned to Tom.
“Can you do me a favor?” he said casually.
“Sure. What sort of favor?”
“While we’re on this trip, I might have to disappear for a bit. So if there’s any roll call, could you answer when you hear my name?”
Tom frowned. He spoke quietly so his voice wouldn’t carry above the sound of the engine. “The last time you asked me to cover for you, we were in Venice,” he said. “You’re not doing that stuff again, are you?”
Alex nodded gloomily. He wasn’t going to lie to his best friend.
“But I thought you’d finished with all that.”
“Yeah. Me too. But it didn’t quite work out that way.” Alex sighed. “It’s not anything dangerous, Tom. And it shouldn’t take very long. I just don’t want anyone to notice I’m missing.”
“Okay. Don’t get yourself killed.”
They had been following a series of minor roads through swathes of green countryside that stretched to every horizon. This wasn’t the England of pretty fields and hedgerows. There was something ancient and untamed about Salisbury Plain. It seemed to be completely deserted, with nothing—no buildings, no fences, no power lines, no people—for as far as the eye could see. There were a few clumps of trees huddled together on the hillsides, boulders and bits of debris thrown carelessly around. The wind was rippling through the grass, making strange patterns, like silent music chasing ahead of them as they rumbled slowly toward the top of a hill.
“Here it is,” James said.
He was right. The Greenfields research facility had suddenly appeared in front of them, concealed in a miniature valley. It was somehow shocking after so much emptiness, like a glass-and-steel city, or perhaps a prison, or even a colony on another planet. It certainly looked completely alien here, in the middle of Wiltshire. The complex was shaped like a diamond, completely surrounded by a fence with links so tightly meshed that it was almost like a metal wall, glinting in the sun. A single sliding gate, heavily guarded, stood at the end of the tarmac road. At least the guards didn’t seem to be armed—but they looked threatening enough, even without weapons.
“What is this place?” James muttered, staring out the window. “It seems like a lot of fuss for a bunch of vegetables.”
There were about twenty buildings on the other side of the fence. Many of them were indeed greenhouses, but they were enormous, taller and more solid than anything that might be found in any garden. The rest were either offices, warehouses, or factories, most of them low-rise but some of them five or six stories high, with radio antennas, satellite dishes, and tall silver chimneys built onto the roofs. To one side, Alex saw what might have been a welcome center, sleek and white. A second building right next to the gate was square and solid with a sign marked SECURITY. But his eye was drawn to the construction at the very center of the complex. It was a huge dome, like something out of a science-fiction film, filled with vegetation. He could make out the leaves of palm trees licking at the glass, twenty or thirty yards high. Vines and knotted foliage hung down on all sides. It was connected to other buildings by four glass corridors, radiating out like points on a compass. The Biosphere, Alex thought. He didn’t know where he had gotten the name from, but it seemed right.
Greenfields looked brand-new. There was a network