Private Games by James Patterson Read Free Book Online Page A

– you know, the fellow who has that show
Secrets of the Past
on Sky – see if he can decipher it for me.’
    ‘I’ve seen him,’ Pope snorted. ‘Nattering boob thinks he’s Indiana Jones.’
    Hooligan shot back, ‘That “nattering boob”, as you call him, holds doctorates in anthropology and archaeology from Oxford and is the bloody curator of Greek Antiquities at a famous museum.’ The science officer looked at Knight. ‘Daring
will
know what that says, Peter, and I’ll wager he’ll have something to say about Cronus and the Furies too. Good call.’
    Through the glass plate of her hood Knight could see the reporter twist her lips, as if she was tasting something tart. ‘And then?’ Pope asked at last.
    ‘Guilder, I suppose.’
    ‘His partner?’ Pope cried. ‘I’m coming with you!’
    ‘Not likely,’ Knight said. ‘I work alone.’
    ‘I’m the client,’ she insisted, looking at Jack. ‘I can trot along, right?’
    Jack hesitated, and in that hesitation Knight saw the weight of concern carried by the owner of Private International. He’d lost five of his top agents in a suspicious plane crash. All had been integral players overseeing Private’s role in security at the Olympics. And now Marshall’s murder and this lunatic Cronus.
    Knight knew he was going to regret it but he said, ‘No need for you to be on the spot, Jack. I’ll change my rules this once. She can
trot
along.’
    ‘Thanks, Peter,’ the American said, with a tired smile. ‘I owe you once again.’

Chapter 17
    IN THE DEAD of night, forty-eight hours after I opened fire and slaughtered seven Bosnians sometime in the summer of 1995, a shifty-eyed and swarthy man who smelled of tobacco and cloves opened the door of a hovel of a workshop in a battle-scarred neighbourhood of Sarajevo.
    He was the sort of monster who thrives in all times of war and political upheaval, a creature of the shadows, of shifting identity and shifting allegiance. I’d learned of the forger’s existence from a fellow peace keeper who’d fallen in love with a local girl who was unable to travel on her own passport.
    ‘Like we agree yesterday,’ the forger said when I and the Serbian girls were inside. ‘Six thousand for three. Plus one thousand rush order.’
    I nodded and handed him an envelope. He counted the money, and then passed me a similar envelope containing three fake passports: one German, one Polish and one Slovenian.
    I studied them, feeling pleased at the new names and identities I’d given the girls. The oldest was now Marta. Teagan was the middle girl, and Petra the youngest. I smiled, thinking that with their new haircuts and hair colours, no one would ever recognise them as the Serbian sisters that the Bosnian peasants called the Furies.
    ‘Excellent work,’ I told the forger as I pocketed the passports. ‘My gun?’
    We’d left my Sterling with him as a good-faith deposit when I’d ordered the passports. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I was thinking just that.’
    The forger went to a locked upright safe, opened it, and took out the weapon. He turned and aimed it at us. ‘On your knees,’ he snarled. ‘I read about a slaughter at a police barracks near Srebrenica and three Serbian girls wanted for war crimes. There’s a reward out. A large one.’
    ‘You stinking weasel,’ I sneered, keeping his attention on me as I slowly went to my knees. ‘We give you money, and you turn us in?’
    He smiled. ‘I believe that’s called taking it coming and going.’
    The silenced 9mm round zipped over my head and caught the forger between the eyes. He crashed backward and sprawled dead over his desk, dropping my gun. I picked it up and turned to Marta, who had a hole in her right-hand jacket pocket where a bullet had exited.
    For the first time I saw something other than deadness in Marta’s eyes. In its place was a glassy intoxication that I understood and shared. I had killed for her. Now she had killed for me. Our fates were not