Alex Rider: Luck of the Goddess

Old Memories and an Old Lady

It was half past six when Alex woke up, once again covered in sweat. He had another shower and put on a fresh T-shirt. He had decided to leave the hotel. According to the Internet, a bus left for Siwa every night at eleven o'clock and that suited him well. It was better to keep on the move. He could grab another few hours' sleep on the way.

Siwa.

The location of Razim's desert fort. The place where Jack had died. Even thinking about it made him feel sick.

It was only a short distance to the Cairo Gateway bus station and Alex decided to walk. He would hopefully meet Simon on the bus. Alex would try to have as little connection to Simon as possible in case someone was watching Alex. They had already probably blown it with the cafe meeting, but it was better to try to play it safe.

The city was quieter and cooler now that the evening had come, and he could grab some street food on the way. He glanced out of the window and was about to leave when the screech of tires on the road told him that a car had just pulled in and that it was in a hurry. He looked down and saw a black SUV outside the hotel. Even as he watched, two men climbed out and disappeared through the front door. He knew at once that they had come for him. It wasn't just the fact that they were wearing suits in a hotel where the dress code was most definitely torn jeans and T-shirts. There was something too definite, too serious about the way they moved. Police? Military intelligence? Or something worse? It didn't matter, they couldn't be monsters anyway, A) he was in Cairo and B) Monsters don't drive cars, or as far as Alex could tell they didn't. He had less than a minute to work something out. The receptionist would have already told them he was here. In another few seconds they would be on their way upstairs.

There was no lift. There was only one staircase. Alex could go up or he could go down. He could try to find somewhere to hide in the hotel – but where? All the doors along the corridor were closed. There was nowhere to hide inside the room. He had tested the window. It didn't open. He couldn't climb out and he could already hear footsteps at the end of the corridor, coming up the stairs. Somehow, he had to disappear immediately, and if they did turn out to be monsters, he was screwed unless Simon decided to come and help early.

Thirty seconds later, the two men reached the third floor and began to move down the corridor. They pushed past an old Arab woman wrapped in a traditional cloak – an abaya – with a huge basket of laundry on her head, and continued down to the door. It was locked. Ibrahim pounded his fist on the door and waited for it to open.

Meanwhile, Alex Rider turned the corner and hurried down the stairs. The disguise would only have worked in the darkness of the corridor. The cloak was his bedspread, the basket taken from outside the room. In the shadows, his face had been invisible to the two men, and now confirmed as men, since they were clearly not monsters, something Alex was very grateful for. Monsters in Cairo would have complicated things a lot. Now he ran down the three floors and out through the reception area, still carrying the basket. Outside, the sun was setting but it was still light and he knew that the trick would no longer work. Sure enough, he saw the black car parked in front of the hotel. Inside there was a third man, a driver, rising out of his seat, reaching inside his jacket for a gun. Alex didn't hesitate. The man was half out of the car when Alex hurled the bedspread and laundry basket at him, dirty clothes spilling over his face. Alex kicked out, slamming the door. The man shouted and fell back, and at the same time Alex slid over the bonnet and ran across the road, dodging between the traffic.

He didn't stop when he reached the other side. There were three men after him and he had only held them up briefly. He ducked down an alleyway between a café and a stall selling pancakes. Breathless and already sweating – the shower had been a waste of time – he emerged into another main road and flagged down the first taxi he saw. Once again, the car had no meter. The driver was a smiling, bearded man, missing one of his front teeth. Wooden beads and several air fresheners hung from the mirror beside his head.