Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz Page A

nature was taking one final breath. He turned and there it was. The Cribber was coming.
    It was hurtling towards him. Now it was too late to change his mind.
    For a few seconds Alex stared in astonishment at the rolling, curving, thundering water. It was like watching a four-storey building wrench itself out of the ground and hurl itself onto the street.
    It was built entirely out of water, but the water was alive. Alex could feel its incredible strength.
    Suddenly, awesomely, it rose up in front of him. And went on rising until it had blotted out the sky. Techniques that he had learned a long time ago took over automatically. Alex grabbed the edge of the board and turned round so that he was once again facing the shore. He forced himself to wait until the last second. Move too late and he would miss everything. But too early and he would simply be crushed. His muscles tensed. His teeth were chattering. His whole body seemed to have become electrified. Now!
    This was the most difficult part, the movement that was hardest to learn but impossible to forget.
    The pop-up. Alex could feel the board travelling with the pulse of the wave. His speed and the speed of the water had become one. He brought his hands down, flat on the board, arched his back and pushed. At the same time, he brought his right leg forward. Goofy-footed. When he was snowboarding, he was exactly the same. But he didn‟t care, as long as he could actually stand up without losing his balance, and already he was doing just that, balancing the two main forces, speed and gravity, as the thruster sliced diagonally across the wave.

    He stood straight, his arms out, his teeth bared, perfectly centred on the board. He had done it!
    He was riding the Cribber. Sheer exhilaration coursed through him. He could feel the power of the wave. He was part of it. He was plugged into the world and although he must be travelling at sixty, seventy kilometres per hour, time seemed to have slowed down almost to a halt and he was frozen in this one, perfect moment that would be with him for the rest of his life. He yelled out loud, an animal cry that he couldn‟t even hear. Spray rushed into his face, exploding around him.
    He could barely feel the thruster under his feet. He was flying. He had never been more alive.
    And then he heard it over the roar of the waves. It was coming up fast to one side of him, the whine of a petrol engine. To hear anything mechanical here, at this time, was so unlikely that he thought he must have imagined it. Then he remembered the jet ski. It must have gone out to sea and then circled round, behind the waves. Now it was coming in fast.
    His first thought was that the rider was “dropping in”. It was one of the unwritten laws of surfing. Alex was up and riding. This was his wave. The rider had no right to cut into his space.
    But at the same time, he knew that was crazy. Fistral Beach was practically deserted. There was no need to fight for space. And anyway, a jet ski coming after a surfer…it was unheard of.
    The engine was louder now. Alex couldn‟t see the jet ski. His entire concentration was fixed on the Cribber, on keeping his balance, and he didn‟t dare turn round. He was suddenly aware of the rushing water, thousands of gallons of it, thundering under his feet. If he fell he would die, ripped apart before he could drown. What was the jet ski doing? Why was it coming so close?
    Alex knew he was in danger quite suddenly and with total certainty. What was happening had nothing to do with Cornwall and his surfing holiday. His other life, his life with MI6, had caught up with him. He remembered being chased down the mountainside at Point Blanc and knew that the same thing was happening again. Who or why didn‟t matter. He had just seconds to do something before the jet ski ran him down.
    He flicked his head and saw it for just a second. A black nose like a torpedo. Gleaming chrome and glass. A man squatting low over the controls, his eyes