The Head of the Snake by Lucy Hooft

Author:Lucy Hooft [Hooft, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 29

Sarah has a week to wait for Kuznetsov to return. She follows his advice, laying low and staying away from any occasion where she might run into Skarparov until she has the ammunition she needs to make her attack. She has plenty of time to consider whether what she is doing is utter madness. But ends up no closer to an answer.

She tries a few more leads to tease out information from the Uranium company’s PO Box address, but each one leads in a dead end. She wants to try again with the High Commissioner but can’t risk running into Chris while preparing for a collaboration with the enemy.

She’s short on cash. With most of the money she saved from Tbilisi wiped out by her Namibia trip, and without Elias’s access to Michael’s ill-gotten gains, she is forced to leave the relative luxury of the hotel on the hill and move into a shabby guesthouse close to the centre of town. Perhaps it is just the new location—out of the rarefied air of the expat enclave and into the hot and gritty life of the city. Perhaps it is just the yawning chasm created by Elias’s absence. But something about Freetown feels more hostile; a wound reopened. The city rattles like a simmering pot.

She seeks comfort and company in Ibrahim and Mammy Kamara, spending days and evenings in their small house in Hastings, finally feeling well enough to eat the steaming plates of food pressed on her by her generous host. The pair of them with their gentle teasing, maternal bickering and their stories of Freetown before the war help make Sarah smile, but their house is so infused with memories of losing Elias that she can never stay for long. At least her charmless hotel room has nothing to remind her of him.

Returning to the hotel one evening, she picks up Kuznetsov’s message. It does not even surprise her he found her here. Of course he had. His message is brief—he is back in Freetown and has what she needs. She should come to the Cotton Tree the following morning at 9am.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.