Eagle Strike

surprisingly large, a long rectangle with a white carpet and modern wooden fittings along two of the walls. The third wall was taken up by a low double bed with a table and a lamp on each side. There was a man stretched out on the white cover, his eyes closed, as still as a corpse. Alex stepped forward. There was no sound in the room, but in the distance he could hear the band playing at the bullring: two or three trumpets, a tuba and a drum.
    Yassen Gregorovich made no movement as Alex approached, the gun held out in front of him.
    Alex reached the side of the bed. This was the closest he had ever been to the Russian, the man who had killed his uncle. He could see every detail of his face: the chiselled lips, the almost feminine eyelashes. The gun was only a centimetre from Yassen‟s forehead. This was where it ended. All he had to do was pull the trigger and it would be over.
    “Good evening, Alex.”

    It wasn‟t that Yassen had woken up. His eyes had been closed and now they weren‟t. It was as simple as that. His face hadn‟t changed. He knew who Alex was immediately, at the same time taking in the gun that was pointing at him. Taking it in and accepting it.
    Alex said nothing. There was a slight tremble in the hand holding the gun and he brought his other hand up to steady it.
    “You have my gun,” Yassen said.
    Alex took a breath, “Do you intend to use it?”
    Nothing
    Yassen continued calmly. “I think you should consider very carefully. Killing a man is not like you see on the television. If you pull that trigger, you will fire a real bullet into real flesh and blood. I will feel nothing; I will be dead instantly. But you will live with what you have done for the rest of your life. You will never forget it.” He paused, letting his words hang in the air. “Do you really have it in you, Alex? Can you make your finger obey you? Can you kill me?” Alex was rigid, a statue. All his concentration was focused on the finger curled around the trigger. It was simple. There was a spring mechanism. The trigger would pull back the hammer and release it. The hammer would strike the bullet, a piece of death just nineteen milli-metres long, sending it on its short, fast journey into this man‟s head. He could do it. “Maybe you have forgotten what I once told you. This isn‟t your life. This has nothing to do with you.” Yassen was totally relaxed. There was no emotion in his voice. He seemed to know Alex better than Alex knew himself. Alex tried to look away, to avoid the calm blue eyes that were watching him with something like pity.

    “Why did you do it?” Alex demanded. “You blew up the house. Why?”
    The eyes flickered briefly. “Because I was paid.”
    “Paid to kill me?”
    “No, Alex.” For a moment Yassen sounded almost amused. “It had nothing to do with you.”
    “Then who—”
    But it was too late.
    He saw it in Yassen‟s eyes first, knew that the Russian had been keeping him distracted as the cabin door opened quietly behind him. A pair of hands seized him and he was swung violently away from the bed. He saw Yassen whip aside as fast as a snake—as fast as a fer de lance. The gun went off, but Alex hadn‟t fired it intentionally and the bullet smashed into the floor. He hit a wall and felt the gun drop out of his hand. He could taste blood in his mouth. The yacht seemed to be swaying.
    In the far distance a fanfare sounded, followed by an echoing roar from the crowd. The bullfight had begun.

MATADOR

    London 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