Stormbreaker Read Online Free PDF Page B

hope. Please come this way.
    Mr. Blunt is expecting you for lunch.”
    Alex hadn’t spoken a word to her. He followed her out of the room, along a corridor and down a flight of stairs. The house was indeed Elizabethan, with wooden panels along the corridors, ornate chandeliers, and oil paintings of old bearded men in tunics and ruffs. The stairs led down into a tall galleried room with a rug spread out over flagstones and a fireplace big enough to park a car in. A long, polished wooden table had been set for three. Alan Blunt and a dark, rather masculine woman sucking a peppermint were already sitting down. Mrs. Blunt?
    “Alex.” Blunt smiled briefly as if it was something he didn’t enjoy doing. “It’s good of you to join us.”
    Alex sat down. “You didn’t give me a lot of choice.”
    “Yes. I don’t quite know what Crawley was thinking of, having you shot like that, but I suppose it was the easiest way. May I introduce my colleague, Mrs. Jones.”
    The woman nodded at Alex. Her eyes seemed to examine him minutely, but she said nothing.
    “Who are you?” Alex asked. “What do you want with me?”
    “I’m sure you have a great many questions. But first, let’s eat…” Blunt must have pressed a hidden button or else he was being overheard, for at that precise moment a door opened and a waiter—in white jacket and black trousers—appeared carrying three plates. “I hope you like meat,” Blunt continued. “Today it’s carre’d‘agneu.”
    “You mean, roast lamb.”
    “The chef is French.”
    Alex waited until the food had been served. Blunt and Mrs. Jones drank red wine. He stuck to water.
    Finally, Blunt began.
    “As I’m sure you’ve gathered,” he said, “the Royal and General is not a bank. In fact, it doesn’t exist … it’s nothing more than a cover. And it follows, of course, that your uncle had nothing to do with banking. He worked for me. My name, as I told you at the funeral, is Blunt. I am the chief executive of the Special Operations Division of MI6. And your uncle was, for want of a better word, a spy.”
    Alex couldn’t help smiling. “You mean … like James Bond?”
    “Similar, although we don’t go in for numbers. Double 0 and all the rest of it. Your uncle was a field agent, highly trained and very courageous. He successfully completed assignments in Iran, Washington, Hong Kong, and Havana … to name but a few. I imagine this must come as a bit of a shock for you.”
    Alex thought about the dead man, what he had known of him. His privacy. His long absences abroad. And the times he had come home injured. A bandaged arm one time. A bruised face another. Little accidents, Alex had been told. But now it all made sense. “I’m not shocked,” he said.
    Blunt cut a neat slice off his meat. “Ian Rider’s luck ran out on his last mission,” he went on. “He had been working undercover here in England, in Cornwall, and was driving back to London to make a report when he was killed. You saw his car at the yard—”
    “Stryker and Son,” Alex muttered. “Who are they?”
    “Just people we use. We have budget restraints. We have to contract some of our work out. We hired them to clean things up. Mrs. Jones here is our head of operations. It was she who gave your uncle his last assignment.”
    “We’re very sorry to have lost him, Alex.” The woman spoke for the first time. She didn’t sound very sorry at all.
    “Do you know who killed him?”
    “Yes .
    “Are you going to tell me?”
    “No. Not now.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because you don’t need to know. Not at this stage.”
    “All right.” Alex considered what he did know. “My uncle was a spy. Thanks to you he’s dead. I found out too much so you knocked me out and brought me here. Where am I, by the way?”
    “This is one of our training centers,” Mrs. Jones said.
    “You’ve brought me here because you don’t want me to tell anyone what I know. Is that what this is all about? Because if it is,