Eagle Strike (8 page)

Jack was waiting for him when he got home.

“So how did it go?” she asked.

Alex told her.

“What a cheater!” Jack scowled. “Mind you, Alex. A lot of rich men are bad losers and Cray is very rich indeed. Do you really think this proves anything?”

“I don’t know, Jack.” Alex was confused. He had to remind himself: a great chunk of the Gameslayer profits was going to charity. A huge amount. And he still had no proof. A few words on a phone. Was it enough to tie Cray in with what had happened in Saint-Pierre? “Maybe we should go to Paris,” he said. “That was where this all began. There was a meeting. Edward Pleasure was there. He was working with a photographer. Sabina told me his name. Marc Antonio.”

“With a name like that, he should be easy enough to track down,” Jack said. “And I love Paris.”

“It still might be a waste of time.” Alex sighed. “I didn’t like Damian Cray. But now that I’ve met him…” His voice trailed off. “He’s an entertainer. He makes computer games. He didn’t look like the sort of man who’d want to hurt anyone.”

“It’s your call, Alex.”

Alex shook his head. “I don’t know, Jack. I just don’t know…”

The launch of the Gameslayer was on the news that night. According to the reports, the entire industry had been knocked out by the graphic quality and the processing power of the new system. The part that Alex had played in the demonstration wasn’t mentioned. However, something else was.

An event had taken place that had cast a cloud over what would otherwise have been a perfect day. It seemed that someone had died. A picture flashed up onto the screen, a woman’s face, and Alex recognized her at once. It was the school-teacherly woman who had put Cray on the spot, asking him awkward questions about violence. A policeman explained that she had been run over by a car as she left Hyde Park. The driver hadn’t stopped.

The following morning Alex and Jack went to Waterloo and bought two tickets for Eurostar.

By lunchtime they were in Paris.

RUE BRITANNIA

“D
o you realize, Alex,” Jack said, “Picasso sat exactly where we’re sitting now. And Chagall. And Salvador Dalí…”

“At this very table?”

“At this very café. All the big artists came here.”

“What are you trying to say, Jack?”

“Well, I was just wondering if you’d like to forget this whole adventure thing and come with me to the Picasso Museum. Paris is such a fun place. And I’ve always found looking at pictures a lot more enjoyable than getting shot.”

“Nobody’s shooting at us.”

“Yet.”

A day had passed since they had arrived in Paris and booked into a little hotel that Jack knew, opposite Notre-Dame. Jack knew the city well. She had once spent a year at the Sorbonne, studying art. But for the death of Ian Rider and her involvement with Alex, she might well have gone to live there.

She had been right about one thing. Finding out where Marc Antonio lived had been easy enough. She had only telephoned three agencies before she found the one that represented the photographer, although it had taken all her charm – and rusty French – to cajole his telephone number out of the girl on the switchboard. Getting to meet him, however, was proving more difficult.

She had rung the number a dozen times during the course of the morning before it was answered. It was a man’s voice. No, he wasn’t Marc Antonio. Yes, this was Marc Antonio’s house but he had no idea where he was. The voice was full of suspicion. Alex had been listening, sharing the receiver with Jack. In the end he took over.

“Listen,” he said. His French was almost as good as Jack’s, but then he had started learning when he was three years old. “My name is Alex Rider. I’m a friend of Edward Pleasure. He’s an English journalist—”

“I know who he is.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

A pause. “Go on…”

“I have to speak to Marc Antonio. I have some important information.” Alex considered for a moment. Should he tell this man what he knew? “It’s about Damian Cray,” he said.

The name seemed to have an effect. There was another pause, longer this time. Then…

“Come to la Palette. It’s a café on the rue de Seine. I will meet you there at one o’clock.”

There was a click as the man hung up.

It was now ten past one. La Palette was a small, bustling café on the corner of a square, surrounded by art galleries. Waiters with long white aprons were sweeping in and out, carrying trays laden with drinks high above their heads. The place was packed but Alex and Jack had managed to get a table right on the edge, where they would be most conspicuous. Jack was drinking a glass of beer; Alex had a bright red fruit juice – a
sirop de grenadine
– with ice. It was his favourite drink when he was in France.

He was beginning to wonder if the man he had spoken to on the telephone was going to show up. Or could he be here already? How were they going to find each other in this crowd? Then he noticed a motorcyclist sitting on a beaten-up Piaggio 125cc motorbike on the other side of the street; he was a young man in a leather jacket with black curly hair and stubble on his cheeks. He had pulled in a few minutes before but hadn’t dismounted, as if he was waiting for someone. Alex met his eye; there was a flash of contact. The young man looked puzzled but then he got off his bike and came over, moving warily as if afraid of a trap.

“You are Alex Rider?” he asked. He spoke English with an attractive accent, like an actor in a film.

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t expecting a child.”

“What difference does it make?” Jack demanded, coming to Alex’s defence. “Are you Marc Antonio?” she asked.

“No. My name is Robert Guppy.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“He asked me to take you to him.” Guppy glanced back at the Piaggio. “But I have only room for one.”

“Well, you can forget it. I’m not letting Alex go on his own.”

“It’s all right, Jack,” Alex cut in. He smiled at her. “It looks like you get to visit the Picasso Museum after all.”

Jack sighed. Then she nodded. “All right,” she said. “But take care.”

Robert Guppy drove through Paris like someone who knew the city well – or who wanted to die in it. He swerved in and out of the traffic, ignored red lights and spun across intersections with the blare of car horns echoing all around. Alex found himself clinging on for dear life. He had no idea where they were going but realized there was a reason for Guppy’s dangerous driving. He was making sure they weren’t being followed.

They slowed down on the other side of the Seine, on the edge of the Marais, close to the Forum des Halles. Alex recognized the area. The last time he had been here, he had called himself Alex Friend and had been accompanying the hideous Mrs Stellenbosch on the way to the Point Blanc Academy. Now they slowed down and stopped in a street of typically Parisian houses – six storeys high with solid-looking doorways and tall frosted windows. Alex noticed a street sign: rue Britannia. The street went nowhere and half the buildings looked empty and dilapidated. Indeed, the ones at the far end were shored up by scaffolding and surrounded by wheelbarrows and cement mixers, with a plastic chute for debris. But there were no workmen in sight.

Guppy got off the bike. He gestured at one of the doors. “This way,” he said. He glanced up and down the street one last time, then led Alex in.

The door led to an inner courtyard with old furniture and a tangle of rusting bicycles in one corner. Alex followed Guppy up a short flight of steps and through another doorway. He found himself in a large, high-ceilinged room with whitewashed walls, windows on both sides and a dark wood floor. It was a photographer’s studio. There were screens, complicated lamps on metal legs and silver umbrellas. But someone was also living here. To one side was a kitchen area with a pile of tins and dirty plates.

Robert Guppy closed the door and a man appeared from behind one of the screens. He was barefoot, wearing a string vest and shapeless jeans. Alex guessed he must be about fifty. He was thin, unshaven, with a tangle of hair that was black mixed with silver. Strangely, he only had one eye; the other was behind a patch. A one-eyed photographer? Alex couldn’t see why not.

The man glanced at him curiously, then spoke to his friend.

“C’est lui qui a téléphoné?”

“Oui…”

“Are you Marc Antonio?” Alex asked.

“Yes. You say you are a friend of Edward Pleasure. I didn’t know Edward hung out with kids.”

“I know his daughter. I was staying with him in France when…” Alex hesitated. “You know what happened to him?”

“Of course I know what happened to him. Why do you think I am hiding here?” He gazed at Alex quizzically, his one good eye slowly evaluating him. “You said on the telephone that you could tell me something about Damian Cray. Do you know him?”

“I met him two days ago. In London…”

“Cray is no longer in London.” It was Robert Guppy who spoke, leaning against the door. “He has a software plant just outside Amsterdam. In Sloterdijk. He arrived there this morning.”

“How do you know?”

“We’re keeping a close eye on Mr Cray.”

Alex turned to Marc Antonio. “You have to tell me what you and Edward Pleasure found out about him,” he said. “What story were you working on? What was the secret meeting he had here?”

The photographer thought for a moment, then smiled crookedly, showing nicotine-stained teeth. “Alex Rider,” he muttered, “you’re a strange kid. You say you have information to give me, but you come here and you ask only questions. You have a nerve. But I like that.” He took out a cigarette – a Gauloise – and screwed it into his mouth. He lit it and blew blue smoke into the air. “All right. It is against my better judgement. But I will tell you what I know.”

There were two bar stools next to the kitchen. He perched on one and invited Alex to do the same. Robert Guppy stayed by the door.

“The story that Ed was working on had nothing to do with Damian Cray,” he began. “At least, not to start with. Ed was never interested in the entertainment business. No. He was working on something much more important … a story about the NSA. You know what that is? It’s the National Security Agency of America. It’s an organization involved in counter-terrorism, espionage and the protection of information. Most of its work is top secret. Code makers. Code breakers. Spies…

“Ed became interested in a man called Charlie Roper, an extremely high-ranking officer in the NSA. He had information – I don’t know how he got 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, slamming the door shut behind him.

He found himself in a landscape of skylights and chimney stacks, water tanks and TV aerials. The roofs ran the full length of the rue Britannia, with low walls and thick pipes dividing the different houses. What had Marc Antonio intended, coming up here? He was six floors above street level. Was there a fire escape? A staircase leading down?

Alex had no time to find out. The door flew open and the two men came through it, moving more slowly now, knowing he was trapped. Somewhere deep inside Alex a voice whispered – why couldn’t they leave him alone? They had come for Marc Antonio, not for him. He was nothing to do with this. But he knew they would have their orders. Kill the photographer and anyone associated with him. It didn’t matter who Alex was. He was just part of the package.

And then he remembered something he had seen when he entered the rue Britannia, and suddenly he was running, without even being sure that he was going in the right direction. He heard the clatter of machine-gun fire and black tiles disintegrated centimetres behind his feet. Another burst. He felt a spray of bullets passing close to him and part of a chimney stack shattered, showering him with dust. He jumped over a low partition. The edge of the roof was getting closer. The men behind him paused, thinking he had nowhere to go. Alex kept running. He reached the edge and launched himself into the air.