Anthony Horowitz - Eagle Strike

They might not believe him again.

Ignoring his first instincts, Alex went over to the desk. There were about a dozen framed photographs on the surface, each and every one showing a picture of Damian Cray. Ignoring them, Alex turned his attention to the drawers. They were unlocked. The lower drawers contained dozens of different documents but most of them were nothing more than lists of figures and hardly looked promising. Then he came to the last drawer and let out a gasp of disbelief. The metallic capsule that Cray had been holding when he talked to the American was simply sitting there. Alex picked it up and weighed it in the palm of his hand. The flash drive. It contained computer codes. Its job was to break through some sort of security system. It had come with a price tag of two and a half million dollars. It had cost Roper his life.

And Alex had it! He wanted to examine it, but he could do that later. He slipped it into his trouser pocket and hurried over to the stairs.

Ten minutes later the alarms sounded throughout the compound. The two men that Alex had seen had indeed gone into the mirror maze to pick up the body and discovered that it wasn"t there.

They should have raised the alarm at once, but there had been a delay. The men had assumed that one of the other teams must have collected it and had gone to find them. It was only when they discovered the dead snake and the spear with the coil of wire that they put together what had taken place.

While this was happening, a van was driving out of the compound. Neither the tired guards at the gate nor the driver had noticed the figure lying flat, spreadeagled on the roof. But why should they? The van was leaving, not arriving. It didn"t even stop in front of the security cameras. The guard merely checked the driver"s ID and opened the gate. The alarm rang seconds after the van had passed through.

There was a system in place at Cray Software Technology. Nobody was allowed to enter or leave during a security alert. Every van was equipped with a two-way radio and the guard at the gate immediately signalled to the driver and told him to return. The driver stopped before he had even reached the traffic light and wearily obeyed. But it was already too late.

Alex slipped off the roof and dropped to the ground. Then he ran off into the night.

Damian Cray was back in his office, sitting on the sofa holding a glass of milk. He had been in bed when the alarm went off and now he was wearing a silver dressing gown, dark blue pyjamas and soft cotton slippers. Something bad had happened to his face. The life had drained out of it, leaving behind a cold, empty mask that could have been cut out of glass. A single vein throbbed above one of his glazed eyes.

Cray had just discovered that the flash drive had been taken from his desk. He had searched all the drawers, ripping them out, upturning them and scattering their contents across the floor.

Then, with an inarticulate howl of rage, he had thrown himself onto the desktop, flailing about with his arms and sending telephones, files and photograph frames flying. He had smashed a paperweight into his computer screen, shattering the glass. And then he had sat down on the sofa and called for a glass of milk.

Yassen Gregorovich had watched all this without speaking. He too had been called from his room by the alarm bells, but, unlike Cray, he hadn"t been asleep. Yassen never slept for more than four hours. The night was too valuable. He might go for a run or work out in the gym. He might listen to classical music. On this night he had been working with a tape recorder and a well-thumbed exercise book. He was teaching himself Japanese, one of the nine languages he had made it his business to learn.

Yassen had heard the alarms and known instinctively that Alex Rider had escaped. He had turned off the tape recorder. And he had smiled.

Now he waited for Cray to break the silence. It had been Yassen who had suggested quietly that Cray should look for the flash drive. He wondered if he would get the blame for the theft.

“He was meant to be dead!” Cray moaned. “They told me he was dead!” He glanced at Yassen, suddenly angry. “You knew he"d been in here.”

“I suspected it,” Yassen said.

“Why?”

Yassen considered. “Because he"s Alex,” he said simply.

“Then tell me about him!”

“There is only so much I can tell you.” Yassen stared into the distance. His face gave nothing away. “The truth about Alex is that there is not a boy in the world like him,” he began, speaking slowly and softly. “Consider for a moment. Tonight you tried to kill him—and not just simply with a bullet or a knife, but in a way that should have terrified him. He escaped and he found his way here. He must have seen the stairs. Any other boy—any man even—would have climbed them instantly. His only desire would have been to get out of here. But not Alex. He stopped; he searched. That is what makes him unique, and that is why he is so valuable to MI6.”

“How did he find his way here?”

“I don"t know. If you"d allowed me to question him before you sent him into that game of yours, I might have been able to find out.”

“This is not my fault, Mr Gregorovich! You should have killed him in the South of France when you had the chance.” Cray drank the milk and set the glass down. He had a white moustache on his upper Lip. “Why didn"t you?” he demanded.

“I tried…”

“That nonsense in the bullring! That was stupid. I think you knew he"d escape.”

“I hoped he might,” Yassen agreed. He was beginning to get bored with Cray. He didn"t like being asked to explain himself, and when he spoke again it was almost as much for his own benefit as Cray"s. “I knew him…” he said.

“You mean … before Saint-Pierre?”

“I met him once. But even then … I knew him already. The moment I saw him, I knew who he was and what he was. The image of his father…” Yassen stopped himself. He had already said more than he had meant to. “He knows nothing of this,” he muttered. “No one has ever told him the truth.”

But Cray was no longer interested. “I can"t do anything without the flash drive,” he moaned, and suddenly there were tears brimming in his eyes. “It"s all over! Eagle Strike! All the planning.

Years and years of it. Millions of pounds. And it"s all your fault!” So there it was at last, the finger of blame.

For a few seconds, Yassen Gregorovich was seriously tempted to kill Damian Cray. It would be very quick: a three-finger strike into the pale, flabby throat. Yassen had worked for many evil people—not that he ever thought of them in terms of good and evil. All that mattered to him was how much they were prepared to pay. Some of them—Herod Sayle, for example—had planned to kill millions of people. The numbers were irrelevant to Yassen. People died all the time. He knew that every time he drew a breath, at that exact moment, somewhere in the world a hundred or a thousand people would be taking their last. Death was everywhere; it could not be measured.

But recently something inside him had changed. Perhaps it was meeting Alex again that had done it; perhaps it was his age. Although Yassen looked as if he was in his late twenties, he was in fact thirty-five. He was getting old. Too old, anyway, for his line of work. He was beginning to think it might be time to stop.

And that was why he now decided not to murder Damian Cray. Eagle Strike was only two days away. It would make him richer than he could have dreamt and it would allow him to return, at last, to his homeland, Russia. He would buy a house in St Petersburg and live comfortably, perhaps doing occasional business with the Russian mafia. The city was teeming with criminal activity and for a man with his wealth and experience, anything would be possible.