Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz Page A

up. They disappeared through the ceiling and
kept going. Alex slept on as he was carried back through the shaft, finally
arriving in the space that he knew as room 13.
    There was
nothing to show what had happened. The whole experience had evaporated, as
quickly as a dream.

    ----
"MY NAME IS GRIEF"
    ^ >>
    THE
ACADEMY AT POINT Blanc had been built by a lunatic. For a time it had been used
as an asylum. Alex remembered what Alan Blunt had told him as the helicopter
began its final descent, the red and white helipad looming up to receive it.
The photograph in the brochure had been artfully taken. Now that he could see
the building for himself, he could only describe it as ... crazy.
    It was a
jumble of towers and battlements, green sloping roofs and windows of every
shape and size. Nothing fitted together properly. The overall design should
have been simple enough: a circular central area with two wings. But one wing
was longer than the other. The two sides didn't match. The academy was
four floors high, but the windows were spaced in such a way that it was hard to
tell where one floor ended and the next began. There was an internal courtyard
that wasn't quite square, with a fountain that had frozen solid. Even the
helipad, jutting out of the roof, was ugly and awkward, as if someone had
thrown a giant Frisbee that had smashed into the brickwork and lodged in place.
    Mrs. Stellenbosch
flicked off the controls. "I will take you down to meet the
director," she shouted over the noise of the blades. "Your luggage
will be brought down later."
    It was cold
on the roof. Although it was almost the end of April, the snow covering the
mountain still hadn't melted and everything was white for as far as the
eye could see. The academy was built into the side of a steep slope. A little
farther down, Alex saw a big iron tongue that started at ground level but then
curved outward as the mountainside dropped away. It was a ski jump--the
sort of thing he had seen at the winter Olympics. The end of the curve was at
least fifty feet above the ground, and far below, Alex could make out a flat
area, shaped like a horseshoe, where the jumpers were meant to land.
    He was
staring at it, imagining what it would be like to propel yourself into space
with only two skis to break your fall, when the woman grabbed his arm.
"We don't use it," she said. "It is forbidden. Come
now! Let's get out of the cold."
    They went
through a door in the side of one of the towers and down a narrow spiral
staircase (each step a different distance apart) that took them all the way to
the ground floor. Now they were in a long, narrow corridor with plenty of doors
but no windows.
    "Classrooms,"
Mrs. Stellenbosch explained. "You will see them later."
    Alex followed
her through the strangely silent building. The central heating had been turned
up high inside the academy, and the atmosphere was warm and heavy. They stopped
at a pair of modern glass doors that opened into the courtyard Alex had seen
from above. From the heat back into the cold again, Mrs. Stellenbosch led
him through the doors and past the frozen fountain. A movement caught his eye,
and Alex glanced up. This was something he hadn't noticed before. A
sentry stood on one of the towers. He had a pair of binoculars around his neck
and a submachine gun slung across one arm.
    Armed guards?
In a school? Alex had been here only a few minutes and already he was unnerved.
    "Through
here!" Mrs. Stellenbosch opened another door for him, and he found
himself in the main reception hall of the academy. A log fire burned in a
massive fireplace with two stone dragons guarding the flames. A grand staircase
led upward. The hall was lit by a chandelier with at least a hundred bulbs. The
walls were paneled with wood. The carpet was thick, dark red. A dozen pairs of
eyes followed Alex as he followed Mrs. Stellenbosch down the next
corridor. The hall was decorated with animal heads: a rhino, an antelope, a
water buffalo, and, saddest of