Honour Among Thieves by Jeffrey Archer Read Free Book Online Page A

large black Mercedes and were whisked away, while Hannah turned
west and began to retrace her steps to the Norfolk Hotel.
    T.
Hamilton McKenzie spent most of the night trying to work out what the man with
the quiet voice could possibly want. He had checked his bank statements. He
only had about $230,000 in cash and securities, and the house was probably
worth another quarter of a million once the mortgage had been paid off- and
this certainly wasn’t a sellers’ market, so that might take months to realise.
All together, he could just about scrape up half a million. He doubted if the
bank would advance him another cent beyond that.
    Why
had they selected him? There were countless fathers at Columbus School who were
worth ten or twenty times what he was – Joe Ruggiero, who never stopped
reminding everybody that he owned the biggest liquor chain in Columbus, must
have been a millionaire several times over. For a moment, McKenzie wondered if
he was dealing with a gang that had simply picked the wrong man, amateurs even.
But he dismissed that idea when he considered the way they’d carried out the
kidnap and the follow-up. No, he had to accept that he was dealing with professionals
who knew exactly what they wanted.
    He
slipped out of bed at a few minutes past six and, staring out of the window,
discovered there was no sign of the morning sun. He tried to be as quiet as he
could, although he knew that his motionless wife must surely be awake – she
probably hadn’t slept a wink all night. He took a warm shower, shaved, and for
reasons he couldn’t explain to himself, put on a brand new shirt, the suit he
only wore when he went to church, and a flowered Liberty tie Sally had given him
two Christmases before and which he had never had the courage to wear.
    He
then went down to the kitchen and made coffee for his wife for the first time
in fifteen years. He took the tray back to the bedroom where he found Joni
sitting upright in her pink nightgown rubbing her tired eyes.
    McKenzie
sat on the end of the bed and they drank black coffee together in silence.
During the previous eleven hours they had exhausted everything there was to
say-He cleared the tray away and returned downstairs, taking as long as he
could to wash and tidy up in the kitchen. The next sound he heard was the thud
of the paper landing on the porch outside the front door.
    He
dropped the dishcloth, rushed out to get his copy of the Dispatch and quickly checked
the front page, wondering if the press could have somehow got hold of the
story. Clinton dominated the headlines, with trouble in Iraq flaring up again.
The President was promising to send in more troops to guard the Kuwaiti border
if it proved necessary.
    ‘They
should have finished off the job in the first place,’ McKenzie muttered as he
closed the front door. ‘Saddam is not a man who works by the book.’
    He
tried to take in the details of the story but couldn’t concentrate on the
words. He gathered from the editorial that the Dispatch thought Clinton was
facing his first real crisis. The President doesn’t begin to know what a crisis
is, thought T. Hamilton McKenzie. After all, his daughter had slept safely in
the White House the previous night.
    He
almost cheered when the clock in the hall eventually struck eight. Joni
appeared at the bottom of the stairs, fully dressed. She checked his collar and
brushed some dandruff off his shoulder, as if he were about to leave for a
normal day’s work at the university. She didn’t comment on his choice of tie.
    ‘Come
straight home,’ she added, as she always did.
    ‘Of
course I will,’ he said, kissing his wife on the cheek and leaving without
another word.
    As
soon as the garage door swung up, he saw the flickering headlights and swore
out loud. He must have forgotten to turn them off the previous night when he
had been so cross with his daughter. This time he directed his anger at
himself, and swore again.
    He
climbed in behind the wheel, put