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smiled to himself. “I thought there was someone.” Then he was serious again. “You were staying in the house.”
    “I was invited by a friend,” Alex said. A thought suddenly occurred to him. “Her dad’s a journalist. Was he the one you wanted to kill?”
    “That is none of your business.”
    “It is now.”
    “It was bad luck you were staying with him, Alex. I’ve already told you. It was nothing personal.”
    “Sure.” Alex looked Yassen straight in the eye. “With you it never is.”
    Yassen went back over to the two men and at once Franco began to jabber again, spitting out his words. He had poured himself a whisky which he downed in a single swallow, his eyes never leaving Alex.
    “The boy knows nothing and he can’t hurt us,” Yassen said. He was speaking in English – for his benefit, Alex guessed.
    “What you do with him?” Raoul asked, following in clumsy English too.
    “Kill him!” This was Franco.
    “I do not kill children,” Yassen replied, and Alex knew that he was telling only half the truth. The bomb in the house could have killed anyone who happened to be there and Yassen wouldn’t have cared.
    “Have you gone mad?” Franco had slipped back into French. “You can’t just let him walk away from here. He came to kill you. If it hadn’t been for Raoul, he might have succeeded.”
    “Maybe.” Yassen studied Alex one last time. Finally he came to a decision. “You were unwise to come here, little Alex,” he said. “These people think I should silence you and they are right. If I thought it was anything but chance that brought you to me, if there was anything that you knew, you would already be dead. But I am a reasonable man. You did not kill me when you had the chance, so now I will give you a chance too.”
    He spoke rapidly to Franco in French. At first Franco seemed sullen, argumentative. But as Yassen continued, Alex saw a smile spread slowly across his face.
    “How will we arrange this?” Franco asked.
    “You know people. You have influence. You just have to pay the right people.”
    “The boy will be killed.”
    “Then you will have your wish.”
    “Good!” Franco spat. “I’ll enjoy watching!”
    Yassen came over to Alex and stopped just a short distance away. “You have courage, Alex,” he said. “I admire that in you. Now I am going to give you the opportunity to display it.” He nodded at Franco. “Take him!”
    It was nine o’clock. The night had rolled in over Saint-Pierre, bringing with it the threat of a summer storm. The air was still and heavy and thick cloud had blotted out the stars.
    Alex stood on sandy ground in the shadows of a concrete archway, unable to take in what was happening to him. He had been forced, at gunpoint, to change his holiday clothes for a uniform so bizarre that, but for his knowledge of the danger he was about to face, he would have felt simply ridiculous.
    First there had been a white shirt and a black tie. Then came a jacket with shoulder pads hanging over his arms and a pair of trousers that fitted tight around his thighs and waist but stopped well short of his ankles. Both of these were covered in gold sequins and thousands of tiny pearls, so that as Alex moved in and out of the light he became a miniature fireworks display. Finally he had been given black shoes, an odd, curving black hat, and a bright red cape which was folded over his arm.
    The uniform had a name. Traje de luces . The suit of lights worn by matadors in the bullring. This was the test of courage that Yassen had somehow arranged. He wanted Alex to fight a bull.
    Now he stood next to Alex, listening to the noise of the crowd inside the arena. At a typical bullfight, he had explained, six bulls are killed. The third of these is sometimes taken by the least experienced matador, a novillero , a young man who might be in the ring for the first time. There had been no novillero on the programme tonight … not until the Russian had suggested otherwise. Money