Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz

began.
    “For heaven’s sake!” the woman exploded. “You think I’m going to see anything I haven’t seen before?” She turned to Ash, who was watching from the other side of the room. “And it’s the same for you, Ash. I don’t know what you’re grinning about. You may look a bit more like an Afghan than him, but I’m going to have all your clothes too.”
    She unzipped the suitcase and took out half a dozen plastic bottles filled with various dark liquids. Next came a hairbrush, a vanity bag, and several tubes that might have contained toothpaste. The rest of the bag was packed with clothes that looked—and smelled—as if they had come out of a trash can.
    “The clothes are all from the thrift store,” she explained. “Donated in England and picked up in the market in Mazar-i-Sharif. I’ll give you two sets each, which is all you’ll need…you’ll wear them day and night. Ash—go and run a bath.” She unscrewed one of the bottles. The smell—seaweed and mineral spirits—reached Alex even on the other side of the room. “Cold water!” she added sharply.
    In the end, she let Alex take a bath on his own. She had mixed two bottles of brown dye with half a bath of cold water. Alex was instructed to lie in it for ten minutes, submerging both his face and his hair. He was shivering by the time he was allowed out and he didn’t dare look in the mirror as he dried himself—but he noticed that the hotel towels now looked as if they’d been dragged through a sewer. He pulled on a pair of ragged, shapeless boxers and came out.
    “That’s better,” Mrs. Webber muttered. She noticed the scar just above his heart. It was where Alex had been shot and nearly killed by a sniper following his first encounter with Scorpia. “That might be useful too,” she added. “A lot of Afghan boys have bullet wounds. Together, the two of you make quite a pair.”
    Alex didn’t know what she meant. He glanced at Ash—and then he understood. Ash was just pulling on a shapeless, short-sleeved shirt, and for a moment his chest and stomach were exposed. He too had a scar—but it was much worse than Alex’s, a distinct line of white, dead skin that snaked across his belly and down below the waistline of his trousers. Ash turned away, buttoning up the shirt, but he was too late. Alex had seen the terrible injury. It was a stab wound. He was sure of that. He wondered who had been holding the knife.
    “Come and sit down, Alex,” Mrs. Webber said. She had produced a tarp, which she had spread underneath a chair. “Let me deal with your hair.”
    Alex did as he was told, and for next few minutes he heard only the click of scissors and watched as uneven clumps of his hair tumbled to the ground. From the way she worked, he doubted that Mrs. Webber had received her training in a London salon. A sheep-shearing farm was more likely. When she had finished cutting, she opened one of the tubes and smeared a thick, greasy ointment over his head. Finally, she stepped back.
    “He looks great,” Ash said.
    “The teeth still need work. They’d give him away in a minute.”
    There was another tube of paste for his teeth. She rubbed it in, using her own finger. Then she produced two small plastic caps. They were both the size of a tooth, but one was gray and one was black.
    “I’m going to glue these in,” Mrs. Webber warned him.
    Alex opened his mouth and allowed her to fix the fake teeth into place. He grimaced. His mouth no longer felt like his own.
    “You’ll notice them for a day or two, but then you’ll forget them,” she said. She stepped back. “There! I’m all done. Why don’t you get dressed and take a look at yourself?”
    “Cloudy, you’re damn good,” Ash muttered.
    Alex pulled on a faded red T-shirt and a pair of jeans—both of them dirty and full of holes. Then he went back into the bathroom and stood in front of the full-length mirror. He gasped. The boy he was looking at certainly wasn’t him. He was