Starfire by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Why are we still wallowing in this rathole of a country?”

It was a good question, one for which Heinrich Grumner didn’t have a ready answer. The truth was, the former GSG-9 covert specialist and ex-security attaché for his country’s diplomatic corps to the UN didn’t know much at all. Or at least anything of note and merit beyond the huge sums of cash that had been sliding through any number of dirty hands the past few years, all of which he believed were designed to pave the way to the future, and which was still an open riddle. Yet the future—whatever it really was—had arrived, those original money shipments having long since evolved into more than just keeping clandestine oil shipments flowing from Dagestan into Europe.

Ah, he considered, how life had changed, forced to wonder if it was all for the better or worse. Those first weeks, after he’d accepted the proposal to help advance a “certain cause” for alleged ESA operatives out of Darmstadt—and where he began personally handling in the area of ten to twenty million dollars—were long gone. The taste of fat easy money was as extinct, he decided, as the abandoned Samur One Refinery he viewed from behind the smudged office window. Yes, the Euros and American currency were still transported in steamer trunks tucked in special compartments cut into the floorboard of SUVs that flew the UN flag. But so many nameless faceless shadows had become involved since he verbally signed on that it was virtually impossible anymore to sift through the web of agendas and intrigue. That, and the milk runs to collect or dispense exorbitant sums of cash were becoming rare, as agendas multiplied and mystery mounted to the point he was considering a permanent retirement, but on his terms.

Exactly why he was lately ordered to cast his lot among gangster and terror rabble he didn’t know. There again, more madness, and to what end? These days, he decided, it was much easier to simply accept his role as cash courier and cutout, with information shuttled back and forth between Dagestani contacts and the black ops who ostensibly worked for the European Space Agency. Why complain? He was earning an even one million dollars American with each trip, to be deposited into his Frankfurt account, whether he delivered information, men or matériel to the Serb, Dagestani or Russian connection.

“We should have heard from Colonel Shistoi by now.”

That was a good point, and once again Grumner was stymied to deliver an answer. He gave the two Serbs a look, fighting to keep the contempt off his face. They were brute animals, by and large, more interested in grabbing up obscene amounts of money in the long term, while consuming vodka and heaping the ashtray with cigarettes butts in the short haul. They were notorious war criminals who had bought or murdered their way out of extradition, he knew, forever lurching from one crisis to the next, it seemed, while bulling their way into the future.

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.