Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz

him. But in fact the walls weren't moving. It was the floor that was
sinking downward on hidden hydraulics, taking the bed--with Alex on
it--into the depths of the hotel. The entire room was nothing more than a
huge elevator that carried him, one inch at a time, into the basement and
beyond.
    Now the walls
were metal sheets. He had left the wallpaper, the lights, and the pictures high
above him. He was dropping through what might have been a ventilation shaft
with four steel rods guiding him to the bottom. Brilliant lights suddenly
flooded over him. There was a soft click. He had arrived.
    The bed had
come to rest in the center of a gleaming underground clinic. Scientific
equipment crowded in on him from all sides. There were a number of cameras:
digital, video, infrared, and X-ray. There were instruments of all shapes and
sizes, most of them unrecognizable to anyone without a science degree. A tangle
of wires spiraled out from each machine to a bank of computers that hummed and
blinked on a long worktable against one of the walls. A glass window had been
cut into the wall on the other side. The room was air-conditioned. Had Alex
been awake, he might have shivered in the cold. His breath appeared as a faint
white cloud, hovering around his mouth.
    A plump man
wearing a white coat had been waiting to receive him. The man, who was about
forty, had yellow hair that he wore slicked back, and a face that was rapidly
sinking into middle age, with puffy cheeks and a thick, fatty neck. The man had
glasses and a small mustache. Two assistants were with him, also wearing white
coats. Their faces were blank.
    The three of
them set to work at once. Handling Alex as if he were a sack of
vegetables--or a corpse--they picked him up and stripped off all his
clothes. Then they began to photograph him, beginning with a conventional
camera. Starting at his toes, they moved upward, clicking off at least a
hundred pictures, the flash igniting and the film automatically advancing. Not
one inch of his body escaped their examination. A lock of his hair was snipped
off and put into a plastic envelope. An opthalmoscope was used to produce a
perfect image of the back of his eye. They made a mold of his teeth, slipping a
piece of putty into his mouth and manipulating his chin to make him bite down.
They made a careful note of the birthmark on his left shoulder, the scar on his
arm, and even the ends of his fingers. Alex bit his nails; that was recorded
too. Finally, they weighed him on a large, flat scale and then measured
him--his height, chest size, waist, inside leg, hand size, and so
on--making a note in their books of every measurement.
    And all the
time, Mrs. Stellenbosch watched from the other side of the window. She
never moved. The only sign of life anywhere in her face was the cigar, clamped
between her lips. It glowed red, and the smoke trickled up.
    The three men
had finished. The one with the yellow hair spoke into a microphone.
"We're all finished, he said.
    "Give
me your opinion, Mr. Baxter." The woman's voice echoed out of
a speaker concealed behind the wall.
    "It's
a cinch." The man called Baxter was English. He spoke with an upper-class
accent, and he was obviously pleased with himself. "He's got a good
bone structure. Very fit. Interesting face. You notice the pierced ear?
He's had that done recently. Nothing else to say, really."
    "When
will you operate?"
    "Whenever
you say, old girl. Just let me know."
    Mrs. Stellenbosch
turned to the other two men. "
Envoyez
lui
!" She snapped the two words.
    The two
assistants put Alex's clothes back on him. This took longer than taking
them off. As they worked, they made a careful note of all the brand names. The
Quiksilver T-shirt. The Gap socks. By the time they had dressed him, they knew
as much about him as a doctor knows about a newborn baby. It had all been noted
down.
    Mr. Baxter
walked over to the worktable and pressed a button. At once, the carpet, bed,
and hotel furniture began to rise