Eagle Strike

it—that this man, Roper, might have turned traitor. He was heavily in debt. An addict…”
    “Drugs?” Alex asked.
    Marc Antonio shook his head. “Gambling. It can be just as destructive. Ed heard that Roper was here in Paris and believed he had come to sell secrets—either to the Chinese or, more likely, the North Koreans. He met me just over a week ago. We‟d worked together often, he and I. He got the stories; I got the pictures. We were a team. More than that—we were friends.” Marc Antonio shrugged. “Anyway, we found out where Roper was staying and we followed him from his hotel.
    We had no idea who he was meeting, and if you had told me, I would never have believed it.”
    He paused and drew on his Gauloise. The tip glowed red. Smoke trickled up in front of his good eye.
    “Roper went for lunch at a restaurant called la Tour d‟Argent. It is one of the most expensive restaurants in Paris. And it was Damian Cray who was paying the bill. We saw the two of them together. The restaurant is high up but it has wide glass windows with views of Paris. I took photographs of them with a telescopic lens. Cray gave Roper an envelope. I think it contained money, and, if so, it was a lot of money because the envelope was very thick.”

    “Wait a minute,” Alex interrupted. “What would a pop singer want with someone from the NSA?”
    “That is exactly what Ed wanted to know,” the photographer replied. “He began to ask questions.
    He must have asked too many. Because the next thing I heard, someone had tried to kill him in Saint-Pierre and that same day they came for me. In my case the bomb was in my car. If I had turned the ignition, I wouldn‟t be speaking to you now.”
    “Why didn‟t you?”
    “I am a careful man. I noticed a wire.” He stubbed out the cigarette. “Someone also broke into my apartment. Much of my equipment was stolen, including my camera and all the photographs I had taken at la Tour d‟Argent. It was no coincidence.”
    He paused.
    “But why am I telling you all this, Alex Rider? Now it is your turn to tell me what you know.”
    “I was on holiday in Saint-Pierre—” Alex began.
    That was as far as he got.
    A car had stopped somewhere outside the building. Alex hadn‟t heard it approach. He only became aware of it when its engine stopped. Robert Guppy took a step forward, raising a hand.
    Marc Antonio‟s head snapped round. There was a moment‟s silence—and Alex knew that it was the wrong sort of silence. It was empty. Final.
    And then there was an explosion of bullets and the windows shattered, one after another, the glass falling in great slabs to the floor. Robert Guppy was killed instantly, thrown off his feet with a series of red holes stitched across his chest. A light bulb was hit and exploded; chunks of plaster crumbled off the wall. The air rushed in, and with it came the sound of men shouting and footsteps stamping across the courtyard.
    Marc Antonio was the first to recover. Sitting by the kitchen, he had been out of the line of fire and hadn‟t been hit. Alex too was shocked but uninjured.
    “This way!” the photographer shouted and propelled Alex across the room even as the door burst open with a crash of splintering wood. Alex just had time to glimpse a man dressed in black with a machine gun cradled in his arms. Then he was pulled behind one of the screens he had noticed earlier. There was another exit here—not a door but a jagged hole in the wall. Marc Antonio had already climbed through. Alex followed.
    “Up!” Marc Antonio pushed Alex ahead of him. “It‟s the only way!”
    There was a wooden staircase, seemingly unused, old and covered in plaster dust. Alex started to climb … three floors, four, with Marc Antonio just behind him. There was a single door on each floor but Marc Antonio urged him on. He could hear the man with the machine gun. He had been joined by someone else. The two killers were following them up.
    He arrived at the top. Another door barred his way. He reached out and turned the handle and at that moment there was another burst of gunfire and Marc Antonio grunted and curved away, falling backwards. Alex knew he was dead. Mercifully, the door had opened in front of him. He tumbled through, expecting at any moment to feel the rake of bullets across his shoulders. But the photographer had saved him, falling between Alex and his pursuers. Alex had made it onto the roof of the building. He lashed out with his heel,