How It All Goes Down
Night Visitors
- Alex goes to Herod Sayle's room for dinner. Sayle is already there playing Snooker when he arrives.
- They decide to make a bet: Alex will get one hundred pounds for each point if he wins, but will owe Sayle one hundred hours of work for each point if he loses.
- Although Sayle takes an early lead, Alex pulls off a tricky maneuver and wins with four thousand points. That's what we like to call ballin'.
- They sit down for dinner. Sayle seems like he's getting suspicious of Alex, offhandedly mentioning that he "look a lot like" (9.59) the late Ian Rider. Uh oh...
- Alex goes to bed, but wakes with a start at 1:30AM. He sneaks out of the mansion and sees Mrs. Vole and Mr. Grin getting into a truck at the head of a convoy; Alex slips into the trunk without being seen.
- The convoy stops and Alex waits until everyone leaves before creeping out and emerging on "a deserted beach" (9.82).
- Everyone is standing by the water, but Alex can't figure out what they're doing. Then he sees it: a submarine.
- A man with a "sleek dancer's body" (9.87) emerges and Alex knows that this is none other than Yassen Gregorovich. Why is he here?
- Without warning, the men begin delicately unloading small metal boxes from the sub—there are so many that it takes them an hour and a half to finish the job. One man actually drops a box and he's rewarded with a bullet from Yassen's pistol.
- Confused and more than a little scared, Alex sneaks back into one of the trucks and rides back to Sayle Enterprises.