Double Exposure by Alfred Gough

Author:Alfred Gough [Gough, Alfred]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Amazon: B07M9KKPF2
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter

Twenty-Seven

As guards rushed into the room, shouting, the ambassador yelled, “Heil Hitler!” Then he jammed the barrel of the Makarov into his own mouth and pulled the trigger.

A deafening bang filled the room. David’s ears rang. Gore painted the tall bay windows behind the desk with Jackson Pollock spatters. The spatters hung against the glass for a moment, as if in midair.

Then Paris ran red in the background.

Lana screamed and threw up her hands as Balcon’s lifeless body slumped in the chair, double chin to chest. She began jabbering in breathless French so rapidly that David could only snatch bits and pieces: Oh my God! He asked me to bring food! What’s happening?

David and Simon fell in with her immediately, dropping their trays and shoving their hands toward the ceiling. David couldn’t help looking at Balcon slumped in the chair; the craven survivor had been a coward at heart after all. Given the few men of Balcon’s ilk he’d encountered in the service, he didn’t know why that should have come to him as a surprise.

The guards included two men in military uniforms brandishing MAT-49 submachine guns, followed by the same two plainclothes men in tuxedos David had gone out of his way to avoid back in the ballroom.

The tuxedos recognized Lana at once as Balcon’s surreptitious conquest-in-waiting. They rushed to escort her from the room. One of the military men took David by the elbow, ushering him and Simon in the same direction.

They were left in the outer hallway under the supervision of a third man in military dress. David estimated this guard to be at least a decade junior to the others. He carried only his sidearm—a MAC 1950 autoloader—and looked almost as unnerved as David felt himself.

The tuxedos rushed back into the office to join the excited chatter already underway inside. The doors slammed shut.

More voices approached from another corridor. These voices were close enough to hear, but distant enough that David couldn’t quite pinpoint their direction.

What he could pinpoint was the meaning in Lana’s glance just before she set upon the young guard with the same breathless pleading she’d test-driven inside the office. She collapsed into his chest, sobbing.

The guard awkwardly holstered his weapon and took her gently by the shoulders.

David used that moment to attack the poor unwitting soldier from behind, applying a choke hold that performed—after a brief but vein-popping struggle across the corridor and back again—more or less exactly as designed.

He eased the unconscious guard to the floor as Lana stripped the sidearm from his belt.

“Oh,” Simon said. “Bully.”

“You were supposed to break his neck,” Lana hissed.

“Just before the new year?” David said. “Not my style.”

The approaching voices grew louder. Lana slipped the MAC 50 into the waistband of her skirt and untucked her blouse to cover it.

“This way,” she said.

They followed her at a run, taking left turns and right turns, slowing to a brisk walk as they emerged into the state dining room.

Simon said, “May I presume by the confidence in your stride, dear, that you have an exit strategy?”

“Staff cloakroom,” Lana said.

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.