Hooded Man by Paul Kane Read Free Book Online Page B

that very bar.
    Drawing nearer, the Frenchman watched, increasingly impressed, as the fighter picked up men and swung them over his head, using moves he’d never come across before to floor others (De Falaise had later found out this fighting style was called krav maga, a martial art taught by the Israeli army, which Tanek had adapted to suit his own purposes). Breaking one man’s nose, driving his fist so hard into it that there was nothing left of the bridge, Tanek had incapacitated another by arcing his forearm and crushing the man’s windpipe with a crack that made De Falaise wince. It was then that De Falaise spotted an attacker creeping up on Tanek, knife drawn and ready to spring. He shouted out to the big man to warn him, but Tanek was already pivoting – with a grace that belied his size – and was unslinging what looked like a rifle. It wasn’t until the two bolts had been fired, striking the man squarely in the chest, that De Falaise recognised it as a crossbow; but no ordinary one (modified by Tanek himself based on ancient Chinese chu-ko-nu repeater designs, able to fire from a magazine without the need for reloading). The rest of the men fled from the scene after that, leaving Tanek and De Falaise alone.
    Tanek had raised the crossbow, inserting another magazine, and for a moment De Falaise thought he might shoot him too. But no. Tanek walked over, kicking fallen chairs and bodies aside, and stood before him. Then, in that hybrid Southern European-Middle Eastern accent of his barely anyone got to hear, Tanek thanked him for the warning.
    Taking a couple of bottles of whiskey and two glasses from behind the now deserted bar, De Falaise and Tanek drank and talked, though the larger man would only disclose the least amount of information about himself that he could get away with, all in that monotone voice of his. Information like the fact that he’d once worked as a torturer and knew every single pressure point on the body, especially those that caused the maximum of pain. De Falaise, in turn, told Tanek why he was there, what he was doing, and what he was about to do next.
    “I’ve been in this business for some time, mon ami , but have always had a craving to see the guns I sell put to better use. To build up an army of my own.” He recalled joyous times as a child, playing with toy soldiers – when he wasn’t constructing gallows out of Meccano, much to his parents’ dismay – sending his troops into ‘battle,’ relishing the authority it gave him even at that young age. “It strikes me that we can look upon this little... incident as either a setback or an opportunity,” De Falaise had said, knocking back a shot of the whisky. “And I, for one, have always been an opportunist. There is much to gain from being organised where others are not, from being able to take advantage of a certain situation and use it fully. History teaches us that, if nothing else.” And to emphasise his point, he quoted the Carpetbaggers at the end of the American Civil War, who had come from the North, exploiting the South’s weakened state to gain money and power. He laughed when he saw Tanek’s eyes glazing over. “I apologise. The subject has always fascinated me. History goes in cycles, that is what my old teacher once said. Now he was a dying breed of patriot.”
    The more he talked, about moving up into Europe, about gathering a band of men as he went, about taking their fair share of the glory on offer, the more De Falaise convinced himself that night. Before, he hadn’t really had much of a clue what to do, but now, as he explained the basics of his spur of the moment plan, the more it sounded like the one and only course of action.
    There was scope here to take control fully. But where to start? Germany? Italy? Or – De Falaise’s dream – his homeland of France? But, as they were to discover, it would not prove so easy to achieve. Others, just like De Falaise, had already had the same idea. They