Anthony Horowitz - Eagle Strike

Alex waited for the bull to turn round and lay into him. But he had been lucky. The animal hadn"t seen him go down. It had continued its run to the other side of the arena, leaving him alone.

Alex got to his feet. He put a hand down to his stomach. The jacket had been ripped open and when he took his hand away there was bright red blood on his palm. He was winded and shaken, and the side of his body felt as if it were on fire. But the cut wasn"t too deep. In a way, Alex was disappointed. If he had been more badly hurt, they would have had to stop the fight.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a movement. Yassen had stood up and was walking out. Had the ten minutes passed or had the Russian decided that the entertainment was over and that there was no point staying to watch the bloody end? Alex checked around the arena.

Raoul was leaving too. But Franco was staying in his seat. The man was in the front row, only about ten metres away. And he was smiling. Yassen had tricked him. Franco was going to stay there. Even if Alex did manage to escape the bull, Franco would take out his gun and finish it himself.

Weakly Alex leant down and picked up the cape. The material had got torn in the last encounter and it gave Alex a sudden idea. Everything was in its right place: the cape, the bull, the single banderilla, Franco.

Ignoring the pain in his side, he started to run. The audience muttered and then roared in disbelief. It was the bull"s job to attack the matador, but suddenly, in front of them, it seemed to be happening the other way round. Even the bull was taken unawares, regarding Alex as if he had forgotten the rules of the game or decided to cheat. Before it had a chance to move, Alex threw the cape. There was a short wooden handle sewn into the cloth and the weight of it carried the whole thing forward so that it landed perfectly—over the creature"s eyes. The bull tried to shake the cloth free, but one of its horns had passed through the hole. It snorted angrily and stamped it the ground. But the cape stayed in place.

Everyone was shouting now. Half the spectators had risen to their feet and the president was looking around him helplessly. Alex ran and snatched up the banderilla, noticing the ugly hook, stained red with the blood of the last bull. In a single movement he swung it round and threw it.

His target wasn"t the bull. Franco had started to rise out of his seat as soon as he"d realized what Alex was about to do; his hand was already scrabbling for his gun. But he was too late. Either Alex had been lucky or sheer desperation had perfected his aim. The banderilla turned once in the air, then buried itself in Franco"s shoulder. Franco screamed. The point wasn"t long enough to kill him, but the barbed hook kept the banderilla in place, making it impossible to pull out.

Blood spread along the sleeve of his suit.

The whole arena was in an uproar. The crowd had never seen anything like this. Alex continued running. He saw the bull free itself from the red cape. It was already searching for him, determined to take its revenge.

Take your revenge another day, Alex thought. I have no quarrel with you.

He had reached the barrera and leapt up, grabbed the top and pulled himself over. Franco was too shocked and in too much pain to react; anyway, he had been surrounded by onlookers trying to help. He would never have been able to produce his gun and take aim. Everybody seemed to be on the edge of panic. The president signalled furiously and the band struck up again, but the musicians all began at different times and none of them played the same tune.

One of the men in jeans and black shirts sprinted towards Alex, shouting something in French.

Alex ignored him. He hit the ground and ran.

At the very moment that Alex shot out into the night, the storm broke. The rain fell like an ocean thrown from the sky. It crashed into the town, splattered off the pavements and formed instant rivers that raced along the gutters and overwhelmed the drains. There was no thunder. Just this avalanche of water that threatened to drown the world.

Alex didn"t stop. In seconds his hair was soaked. Water ran in rivulets down his face and he could barely see. As he ran he tore off the outer parts of the matador"s costume, first the hat, then the jacket and tie, throwing each item away, leaving their memory behind.

The sea was on his left, the water black and boiling as it was hit by the rain. Alex twisted off the road and felt sand beneath his feet. He was on the beach—the same beach where he had been lying with Sabina when all this began. The sea wall and the jetty were beyond it.

He leapt onto the sea wall and climbed the heavy boulders. His shirt hung out of his trousers; it was already sodden, clinging to his chest.

Yassen"s boat had left.

Alex couldn"t be sure, but he thought he could see a vague shape disappearing into the darkness and the rain and he knew that he must have missed it by seconds. He stopped, panting. What had he been thinking of anyway? If the Fer de Lance had still been there, would he really have climbed aboard a second time? Of course not. He had been lucky to survive the first attempt. He had come here just in time to see it leave and he had learnt nothing.

No.

There was something.

Alex stood there for a few more moments with the rain streaming down his face, then turned and walked back into the town.

He found the phone box in a street just behind the main church. He had no money so was forced to make a reverse charge call and he wondered if it would be accepted. He dialled the operator and gave the number that he had found and memorized in Yassen"s mobile phone.

“Who is speaking?” the operator asked.

Alex hesitated. Then… “My name is Yassen Gregorovich,” he said.

There was a long silence as the connection was made. Would anyone even answer? England was an hour behind France but it was still late at night.

The rain was falling more lightly now, pattering on the glass roof of the phone box. Alex waited.

Then the operator came back on.

“Your call has been accepted, monsieur. Please go ahead…” More silence. Then a voice. It spoke just two words.

“Damian Cray.”

Alex said nothing.

The voice spoke again. “Hello? Who is this?”

Alex was shivering. Maybe it was the rain; maybe it was a reaction to everything that had happened. He couldn"t speak. He heard the man breathing at the end of the line.

Then there was a click and the phone went dead.

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCE

« ^ »

ondon greeted Alex like an old and reliable friend. Red buses, black cabs, blue-uniformed policemen and grey clouds … could he be anywhere else? Walking down the King"s Road, he felt a million miles from the Camargue—not just home, but back in the real world. The side of his stomach was still sore and he could feel the pressure of the bandage against his skin, but otherwise Yassen and the bullfight were already slipping into the distant past.

He stopped outside a bookshop which, like so many of them, advertised itself with the wafting smell of coffee. He paused for a moment, then went in.

He quickly found what he was looking for. There were three books on Damian Cray in the biography section. Two of these were hardly books at all—more glossy brochures put out by record companies to promote the man who had made them so many millions. The first was called Damian Cray—Live! It was stacked next to a book called Cray-zee! The Life and Times of Damian Cray. The same face stared out from the covers. Jet-black hair cut short like a schoolboy"s. A very round face with prominent cheeks and brilliant green eyes. A small nose, almost too exactly placed right in the middle. Thick lips and perfect white teeth.