Island of Doom: Hunchback Assignments 4 (The Hunchback Assignments) by Arthur Slade Read Free Book Online

exert such power? Even Alexander the Great had failed to accomplish it.
    Though the Guild Master was small and lean, Miss Hakkandottir feared him. For his mind could outpace hers a hundred times over. And though his face was pleasant, behind those glasses his eyes were ice. Rarely did he express anything resembling an emotion. Many years before, when she’d been captain of a Chinese pirate ship, she’d first been summoned to his Hong Kong lair. It had stunned her to discover that this nondescript white man was at the heart of a massive criminal organization that ran half of China and nearly all of the opium trade. Even then he had an aura of power.
    She knew nothing of his earlier life. He could be Danish or French or Russian. Even British. He had no accent, and she’d lost count of how many languages he spoke.
    She waited. It was best not to interrupt him during his work. He wrote a final missive and spoke to a telegrapher in German. Then the Guild Master turned to her.
    “Ah, Ingrid.” His tone was flat. His eyes, such a consistent dark brown that they appeared almost black, examined her. “You’ve been so helpful over the years.”
    She tensed. “Am I about to be retired?”
    He let out a dry chuckle. “No. I only experienced a moment of sentimentality. I apologize. I have also been disappointed by your mistakes: the sinking of the
Wyvern
under your command is a fine example.”
    The loss of that ship had nearly broken her heart. The Guild Master had allowed her to name it so that it truly belonged to her, though he’d expressed some regret that she’d chosen a name that wasn’t from the Greek pantheon. How she’d loved those iron decks and perfect guns. But now it languished at the bottom of the Atlantic. All due to Modo. “I should have done better.”
    “Ah, that is true. My design for the
Wyvern
was tempered by my hubris, though. I should have closed the interior compartments so that a blow to the hull would not have allowed all the lower chambers to fill.” Had he just admitted a mistake? She almost fell over. “But don’t forget, Ingrid, you lost our henchman Fuhr in the Thames and allowed our mechanical giant to be captured by the British, and you failed to retrieve the God Face in the jungle. A disturbing pattern of losses.”
    She squeezed her metal hand into a fist. “Am I here to be chastised?”
    “No. I seek only to remind you that you are not perfect.”
    “I am aware of that.”
    He nodded. “Do you have any thoughts about the disappearance of Mr. Socrates?”
    “He is hiding in one of his lavish homes. Do you want me to hunt him down?” The mere thought of it made her heartbeat quicken, her bloodlust rise. How she would love to corner Alan Reeve—or Mr. Socrates, as he fancied himselfnow—and skewer him right through the heart with her saber. After all, he’d been the one who’d cut off her hand. She should perhaps thank him for that, since the metal hand was her greatest gift. But she still remembered the pain of the blow during the sword fight. He would pay for that.
    “You’re dreaming of revenge, aren’t you?” the Guild Master said. His eyes were measuring her again. “Don’t deny it. You get a crinkle between your eyebrows when you dream of such things. I’ve toyed with the idea of flushing him out, along with the rest of the Association. We shall remove the members of the Association from the board one by one. But at this point, I don’t want to take any resources away from Project Hades and the myrmidons.”
    She’d heard him mention this project several times and she knew that the bodies arriving daily at the island were part of it. She also knew that
myrmidon
meant “warrior”; she’d asked Dr. Hyde for the definition. She was growing tired of having to know every single Greek myth. If only she understood the grand plan behind it all.
    “What is it you want me to do?” she asked.
    “There’ve been interesting developments in France. Our search for