False Impression (2006) by Jeffrey Archer

Author:Jeffrey Archer [Archer, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Jeffrey Archer
ISBN: 9781845793142
Publisher: Macmillian
Published: 2006-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

Krantz watched attentively as the green taxi edged across to the inside lane and drew up outside a modern, white marble building in Otemachi. The sign above the entrance, Maruha Steel Company, was in Japanese and English, as is common with most international companies in Tokyo.

Krantz allowed her taxi to pass the front of the building before she asked the driver to draw into the kerb. She turned and watched through the rear-view window as Anna stepped out. Her driver walked to the back of the taxi and opened the trunk. Anna joined him, as the doorman came running down the steps to assist. Krantz continued to watch as the two men carried the wooden box up the steps and into the building.

Once they were out of sight, Krantz paid her fare, stepped out of the car and slipped into the shadows. She never kept a cab waiting unless absolutely necessary. That way, they were unlikely to remember her. She needed to think quickly, in case Petrescu suddenly reappeared. Krantz recalled her brief. Her first priority was to repossess the painting. Once she had done that, she was free to kill Petrescu, but as she had just got off a plane she didn’t have a weapon to hand. She was satisfied that the American no longer posed a threat, and briefly wondered if he was still roaming around Hong Kong in search of Petrescu, or the picture, or both.

It was beginning to look as if the painting had reached its destination; there had been a full page on Nakamura in the file Fenston had given her. If Petrescu reappeared with the crate, she must have failed, which would make it that much easier for Krantz to carry out both of her assignments. If she walked out only carrying her briefcase, Krantz would need to make an instant decision. She checked to make sure that there was a regular flow of taxis. Several passed her in the next few minutes, half of them empty.

The next person through the door was the taxi driver, who climbed back behind the wheel of his Toyota. She waited for Petrescu to follow, but the empty green cab swung onto the street, in search of its next customer. Krantz had a feeling that this was going to be a long wait.

She stood in the shadows of a department store on the opposite side of the road and waited. She looked up and down a street full of designer label shops, which she despised, until her eyes settled on an establishment that she had only read about in the past and had always wanted to visit: not Gucci, not Burberry, not Calvin Klein, but the Nozaki Cutting Tool Shop, which nestled uneasily among its more recent neighbours.

Krantz was drawn to the entrance as a filing is to a magnet. As she crossed the road, her eyes remained fixed on the front door of the Maruha Steel Company in case Petrescu made an unscheduled reappearance. She suspected that Petrescu’s meeting with Mr Nakamura would last some considerable time.

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.