Damian Cray
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Damian Cray is a fictional character from the novel Eagle Strike from the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz.
Damian Cray was born in North London on October 5, 1950, and baptised Harold Eric Lunt. His father was Sir Arthur Lunt, who made his fortune building multi-story parking lot|car parks. As a child, he had a remarkable singing voice and at the age of 11, was sent to the Royal Academy of Music in London. He hated it there, however; he wanted to be a pop star, not a classical musician. His parents kept him there against his wishes, however. When he was 13, his parents were killed in a bizarre car accident: a car fell on them after rolling off the top floor of one of their own car parks. He left the Royal Academy and travelled the world. He changed his name and became a Buddhist as well as a devoted vegetarian.
He returned to England in the 1970s and formed a band called "Slam!" in which he was the lead singer. They were very successful and rocketed Cray to stardom. At the end of the 1970s, the band split up and Cray began a solo career which took him to new heights. His first solo album, Firelight, went platinum. He won five Grammys and an Academy Award for Best Original Song. In 1986 he visited Africa and arranged a concert at Wembley Stadium with all proceeds going to charity. "Chart Attack" was a huge success and that Christmas, he released the single Something for the Children. The single sold four million copies and all the money was given to charity.
Cray is a tireless campaigner for a range of world issues, including saving the rainforests, protecting the ozone layer and ending world debt. He built a rehabilitation centre and spent two years fighting to have an animal testing lab closed down. In 1989, he performed in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A year later, he made two visits to Buckingham Palace. He played a solo for Princess Diana's birthday and was rewarded the next day with knighthood. He appeared on the cover of Time under the headline "Man of the Year: Saint or Singer?" He is a multi-millionaire with a Thames penthouse and a Wiltshire mansion outside Bath. Since the early 1990s, Cray has owned a popular television station, branched into hotels and even has his own gaming system, Gameslayer. He is a personal friend of the Prime Minister and donated a million pounds to the government before the 2001 election.
Cray, however, also has a dark side. Over the years, he has had countless people murdered to serve his various causes. The first person he had killed was Professor Milburn of the Milburn Institute in Bristol to force them to stop animal testing. He is also obsessed with eliminating drugs, which he blames for everything that is wrong in the world. He has done advertisements for the government, spent millions building treatment centres and has written songs, such as "White Lines", to discourage drug use.
Under the cover of building his new Gameslayer console, he duplicated the key to the NSA defence systems. He then hijacked the President's plane, Air Force One and planned to launch 25 nuclear missiles at various targets around the world. His goal was to wipe out the entire world's drug supplies and major exporters — even if it meant killing hundreds of millions in the process. By attempting to murder a journalist in Saint-Pierre who had threatened to expose him, Cray had made an enemy of teenage spy Alex Rider. Cray's plan, codenamed "Eagle Strike" failed, and he was sucked into the jet turbine of Air Force One and atomized.
