Eagle Strike

rest of it was gone. Alex saw a brass bed hanging at a crazy angle, somehow suspended in mid-air. A pair of blue shutters lay in the grass about fifty metres away. The water in the swimming pool was brown and scummy. The blast must have been immense.

    A fleet of cars and vans was parked around the building. They belonged to the police, the hospital, the fire department and the anti-terrorist squad. To Alex they didn‟t look real: more like brightly coloured toys. In a foreign country, nothing looks more foreign than its emergency services.
    “Mum! Dad!”
    Alex heard Sabina shout the words and saw her leap out of the truck before they had stopped moving. Then she was running across the gravel drive, forcing her way between the officials in their different uniforms. The truck stopped and Alex climbed down, unsure whether his feet would come into contact with the ground or if he would simply go on, right through it. His head was spinning; he thought he was going to faint.
    Nobody spoke to him as he continued forward. It was as if he wasn‟t there at all. Ahead of him he saw Sabina‟s mother appear from nowhere, her face streaked with ashes and tears, and he thought to himself that if she was all right, if she had been out of the house when the explosion happened, then maybe Edward Pleasure had escaped too. But then he saw Sabina begin to shake and fall into her mother‟s arms, and he knew the worst.
    He drew nearer, in time to hear Liz‟s words as she clutched hold of her daughter.
    “We still don‟t know what happened. Dad‟s been taken by helicopter to Montpellier. He‟s alive, Sabina, but he‟s badly injured. We‟re going to him now. You know your dad‟s a fighter. But the doctors aren‟t sure if he‟s going to make it or not. We just don‟t know…”
    The smell of burning reached out to Alex and engulfed him. The smoke had blotted out the sun.
    His eyes began to water and he fought for breath.

    This was his fault.
    He didn‟t know why it had happened but he was utterly certain who was responsible.
    Yassen Gregorovich.
    None of my business. That was what Alex had thought. This was the result.

THE FINGER ON THE TRIGGER

    The policeman facing Alex was young, inexperienced, and struggling to find the right words. It wasn‟t just that he was having difficulty with the English language, Alex realized. Down here in this odd, quiet corner of France, the worst he would usually have to deal with would be the occasional drunk driver or maybe a tourist losing his wallet on the beach. This was a new situation and he was completely out of his depth.
    “It is the most terrible affair,” he was saying. “You have known Monsieur Pleasure very long time?”
    “No. Not very long time,” Alex said.
    “He will receive the best treatment.” The policeman smiled encouragingly. “Madame Pleasure and her daughter are going now to hospital but they have requested us to occupy us with you.”

    Alex was sitting on a folding chair in the shadow of a tree. It was just after five o‟clock but the sun was still hot. The river flowed past a few metres away and he would have given anything to dive into the water and swim, and keep swimming, until he had put this whole business behind him.
    Sabina and her mother had left about ten minutes ago and now he was on his own with this young policeman. He had been given a chair in the shade and a bottle of water, but it was obvious that nobody knew what to do with him. This wasn‟t his family. He had no right to be here. More officials had turned up: senior policemen, senior firemen. They were moving slowly through the wreckage, occasionally turning over a plank of wood or moving a piece of broken furniture as if they might uncover the one simple clue that would tell them why this had taken place.
    “We have telephoned to your consul,” the policeman was saying. “They will come to take you home. But they must send a representative from Lyon. It is a long way. So tonight you must wait here in Saint-Pierre.”
    “I know who did this,” Alex said.
    “Comment?”
    “I know who was responsible.” Alex glanced in the direction of the house. “You have to go into the town. There is a yacht tied to the jetty. I didn‟t see the name but you can‟t miss it. It‟s huge
    … white. There‟s a man on the yacht; his name is Yassen Gregorovich. You have to arrest him before he can get away.”
    The policeman stared at Alex, astonished. Alex wondered how much he had