The Operative by Falconer Duncan

Author:Falconer, Duncan [Falconer, Duncan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780751544770
Publisher: Hachette Digital
Published: 2010-10-06T23:00:00+00:00

18

A shiny black stretch limousine slowly pulled off the road and onto an uneven patch of sun-baked mud on the edge of a large bustling construction site. It came to a stop outside a chain-link security fence and a grey Cadillac sedan pulled alongside it. Three dark-skinned Caucasian Neanderthals in expensive suits climbed out of the sedan with muscle-bound slowness and spread out around the limo, checking in all directions, hands hovering close to pistols and sub-machine guns hidden inside their jackets. One of them nodded to the passenger in the front of the limo and he climbed out and opened one of the rear doors.

Skender eased out of the spacious interior, buttoning up the jacket of an immaculate cream suit, the collar of his shirt turned down outside it in a style that would provoke feelings of nostalgia in any who enjoyed the fashions of the 1970s. He walked over the hard ground in his patent-leather shoes and in through the security gate, followed by two of his men. The security guard, a redneck type who had never seen proper military service, saluted Skender and bid him good afternoon as he passed his sentry box. Skender ignored him and walked several yards onto the site before stopping to look up, a smile growing on his craggy face.

‘It’s beautiful,’ he said to his thugs without looking at them, not that he was addressing them in particular but he wanted to say it to someone. ‘I love watching it grow day by day.’

Skender was gaping at a huge new office building near completion, a startling design emulating ancient Egyptian pyramids. Shimmering plates of dark green glass locked into copper-sheathed steel frames covered all four steeply sloping sides from the second floor to the sixteenth. The seventeenth or top floor was also glass but was gold in colour. Two smaller pyramids were located at opposite corners of the site, creating an overall impression like a typical picture postcard of Giza. The ground around the building was paved in Italian marble that continued out several metres from the base of the building, with towering newly planted palms springing from it in places.

To some critics the edifice verged on the kitsch but it was eye-catching nevertheless. Hundreds of workers were busy operating cranes, earth-movers and dumper trucks as the exterior cosmetics – landscaping, lighting and pathways – were well under way. Lorries ferried their loads in and out through the main entrance where kerbstones were being laid in preparation for the tarmac fill that would connect the lavish drive to Washington Boulevard that ran along one side. The site took up an entire block in Culver City, a modern development of Los Angeles a couple of miles from Beverly Hills and occupied by the likes of Sony and MGM studios, fine restaurants and expensive art shops. The business premises were interspersed with middle-class residential buildings.

Skender traced the steep, imposing façade with his eyes from the pinnacle down to a magnificent main entrance of bronze-coloured glass and copper and steel supports.

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