Free Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz Page A

will be expecting you to say anything.”
    The flight had seemed endless. ASIS had booked him in business class, but in a way that made him feel all the more alienated and alone. He watched a movie, ate a meal, and rested. But nobody spoke to him. He was in a strange metal bubble, surrounded by strangers, being carried once again toward danger and possible death. Alex looked out the window at the gray-pink light glowing at the edge of the world and wondered. Was he making a mistake? He could get another plane at Bangkok and be back in London in twelve hours. But he had made his decision. This wasn’t about ASIS or the snakehead.
    â€œHe was the last person to see your parents alive.”
    Alex remembered what Brooke had told him. He was about to meet his father’s best friend. His godfather. This wasn’t just a flight from one country to another. It was a journey into his own past.
    The 747 rumbled into its gate. The Fasten Your Seat Belt signs blinked off and the passengers stood up as one, scrabbling for the overhead bins. Alex had one small suitcase and quickly passed through immigration and customs and out into the hot, sticky air of the arrivals area. Suddenly he found himself in a crowd of shouting, gesticulating people.
    â€œTaxi! Taxi!”
    â€œYou want hotel?”
    It felt strange emerging from business class into this. He was suddenly back in the noise and chaos of the real world. Down to earth in more senses than one.
    And then he saw his name, being held on a placard by a Thai man—black-haired, short, casually dressed like almost everyone around him. Alex went over to him.
    â€œAre you Alex? Mr. Ash send me to collect you. I hope you had a good flight. The car is outside…”
    It was as they made their way out of the airport that Alex noticed the man with the poppy in his buttonhole. It was the poppy that first drew his attention. Of course, it was November. Remembrance Sunday, when the whole of England wore poppies and held two minutes’ silence for those killed in wars, would be taking place in England sometime around now. It was just strange to see any sign of it out here.
    The man was wearing jeans and a leather jacket. He was European, in his twenties, with dark hair cut short and watchful eyes. He had very square features with high cheekbones and narrow lips. The man had stopped dead in his tracks and seemed to be staring at something on the other side of the arrivals area. It took Alex a moment to realize that the man’s attention was actually fixed on him. Did the two of them know each other from somewhere? He was just asking himself the question when a crowd of people moved between the two of them, making for the exit. When the floor cleared again, the man had gone.
    He must have imagined it. Alex was tired after the long flight. Maybe the man had simply been one of the other passengers on the plane. He followed the driver to the parking garage, and a few minutes later they were on the wide, three-lane highway that led into Bangkok—or, as the Thai people called it, Krung Thep. City of Angels.
    Sitting in the back of the air-conditioned sedan, gazing out the window, Alex wondered quite how it had gotten that name. He certainly wasn’t impressed by his first sight of the city, a sprawl of ugly, old-fashioned skyscrapers, blocks of apartments that were like discarded boxes piled up on top of each other, electricity and satellite towers. They stopped at a toll booth where a woman sat in a cramped cubicle, her face hidden behind the white mask that protected her from the traffic fumes. Then they were off again. Next to the road, Alex saw a huge portrait of a man: black hair, glasses, open-neck shirt. It was painted on the entire side of a building, twenty stories high, covering both the brickwork and the windows.
    â€œThat’s our king,” the driver explained.
    Alex looked again at the figure. What would it be like, he wondered, to work at a desk