Crocodile Tears - Anthony Horowitz [6]
Of course, if the disaster had been any greater, they would have raised much, much more.
2
REFLECTIONS IN A MIRROR
ALEX RIDER TOOK ONE last glance in the mirror, then stopped and looked a second time. It was strange, but he wondered if he recognized the boy who was looking back. There were the thin lips, the slightly chiseled nose and chin, the light brown hair hanging in two strands over the very dark brown eyes. He raised a hand and, obediently, his reflection did the same. But there was something different about this other Alex Rider. It wasn’t quite him.
Of course, the clothes he was wearing didn’t help. In a few minutes, he would be leaving for a New Year’s Eve party being held at a castle on the banks of Loch Arkaig in the Highlands of Scotland—and the invitation had been clear. Dress: black tie. Reluctantly, Alex had gone out and rented the entire outfit . . . dinner jacket, black trousers, and a white shirt with a wing collar that was too tight and squeezed his neck. The one thing he had refused to do was put on the polished leather shoes that the shopkeeper had insisted would make the outfit complete. Black sneakers would have to do. What did it all make him look like? he wondered as he straightened the bow tie for the tenth time. A young James Bond. He hated the comparison, but he couldn’t avoid it.
It wasn’t just the clothes. As Alex continued his examination, he had to admit that so much had happened in the last year that he’d almost lost track of who—and what—he was. Standing in front of the mirror, it was as if he had just stepped down from the merry-go-round that his life had become. He might be still, but the world around him was spinning.
Just two months ago, he had been in Australia . . . not on vacation, not visiting relatives, but, incredibly, working for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, disguised as an Afghan refugee. He had been sent to infiltrate the people-smuggling gang known as the snakehead, yet his mission had taken him much further than that, setting him against Major Winston Yu and the potential devastation of a huge bomb buried deep beneath a fault line in the earth’s crust. It had also brought him face-to-face with his godfather, the man he had known only as Ash. Thinking about him now, Alex saw something spark in his eyes. Was it anger? Grief? Alex had never known his parents, and he’d thought Ash would somehow be able to explain where he’d come from, to make sense of his past. But his godfather had done nothing of the sort, and their meeting had led only to betrayal and death.
And that was really it, wasn’t it? That was what the boy in the mirror was trying to tell him. He was still only fourteen years old, but the last year—a year whose end they were about to celebrate—had almost destroyed him. If he closed his eyes, he could still feel Major Yu’s walking stick smashing into the side of his head, the crushing weight of the water under the Bora Falls, the punishment he had taken in the Thai boxing ring in Bangkok. And those were just the most recent in a string of injuries. How many times had he been punched, kicked, beaten, knocked out? And shot. His wounds might have healed, but he would still be reminded of them every time he undressed for bed. The scar left by the .22 bullet fired into his chest by a sniper on a rooftop on Liverpool Street would always be with him. Along with the memory of pain. They say that never leaves you either.
Had it changed him? Of course it had. Nobody could come through what he had and stay the same. And yet . . .
“Alex! Stop admiring yourself in the mirror and get downstairs.” It was Sabina. Alex turned and saw her standing in the doorway, wearing a silver dress with lots of glitter around the collar. Her dark hair—she had grown it long—was tied back. Unusually for her, she was wearing makeup: pale blue eye shadow and pink, glossy lipstick. “Dad’s waiting. We’re about to leave.”
“I’ll just be one minute.”
Alex twisted