Eric van Lustbader - Nicholas Linnear 05 by Floating City

Author:Floating City
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

That hair! It shone in the sun like spun gold, like caramel being pulled, like cream spilling from a glass pitcher. Croaker, skulking in the trees like some part-time poacher, followed Vesper as she drove the golf cart slowly along a rutted dirt service track.

Deeper and deeper they went into Dedalus’s estate. He noted that she gave a wide berth to the main house, looping around a pond and a conifer garden, over a ridge tawny with the roughage of dead summer grasses, down into a glen where a smaller house sat, made of fieldstone and logs. It looked like an elegant fishing cabin. Blue smoke curled from the stone chimney, and teak furniture in the traditional Adirondack style of the thirties and forties was ranged along a wraparound porch. The cabin overlooked a rough-seeded lawn that ran down to thick patches of underbrush and large zelkovas, whose upper reaches towered over even the old oaks that dominated much of the property. Beyond, Croaker could glimpse slivers of a rushing stream that, no doubt, Dedalus yearly stocked with trout.

Vesper ran the golf cart to a dirt area at the side of the house and stopped it beside her black Nissan 300ZX ragtop. She climbed out and, dusting off her overalls, went up onto the porch and into the cabin.

Croaker detached himself from the trees and, running in a semicrouch, made his way to the edge of the porch, where he carefully and silently climbed the wooden steps. He crept from window to window until he saw Vesper. She was standing beside an oversize stone hearth within which flames flickered. Someone was pouring her a glass of white wine. When the figure turned to put the bottle on a side table, he caught a glimpse of the face: it was Margarite.

Edging closer, he put his ear against the cold glass. In this manner he could hear what was going on inside.

“I don’t understand why you have to go to London,” Margarite said. “You’ve given me the latest intelligence from Nishiki.”

Vesper smiled at her. “I told you, this is different. I’m not merely a Nishiki courier. I have other duties. There seems to be a problem and I have to be briefed in person. Besides, that bit about Congressman Martin I just gave you is incomplete. I know he’s important to you because he’s drafted the new banking-regulation bill that could hurt your family’s interests. Before you move on it and put pressure on him to amend the bill, you’ve got to have all the dirt on him. So sit tight until I get back.”

“How much danger are you going to be in over there?”

Vesper put down her glass, went to where Margarite stood. “Why worry about it? This is what I was trained to do.” Her laugh was oddly carefree, making her seem nothing more than a happy schoolgirl. “Nothing is going to happen to me.”

“But the danger inherent in the Nishiki network -“

“You really must curb this morbid streak, darling.”

Margarite shuddered.

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