The Trade by Hallahan William H.;

Author:Hallahan, William H.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2019-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

7

Thomas had drawn that strange wiggling line from memory on a piece of paper. During most of the evening at the Bismarck Club, the night before, he’d sat gazing at it over the fireplace where it was cut into the plaster wall and painted red. It had looked for all the world like a line done in wet plaster with the tip of a fencing foil dipped in red paint or blood.

Now drawn on a piece of paper it was still utterly meaningless. Kaethe Dorten had said it was a private symbol, meaningful only to club members. But it was so odd in appearance, not a square or a cross or a triangle. Just a squiggle. He stood by his hotel room window looking out at the rain and wondered what the line represented.

Actually, he was using the jagged line as a mental diversion, a brain twister that kept him from thinking about last night’s setback. Fritzsche was their only lead and they’d been decoyed from a great opportunity to eavesdrop. Fritzsche had attended a key meeting with someone and it must have been very important, for he put a lot of effort into deceiving Brewer. If only he hadn’t gone to that picnic.

He was in trouble. He admitted that he had no alternatives, no more moves to make. Someone had completely covered over Parker’s trail. He could spend days wandering around to no avail while Frank Gorman waited impatiently in London for him to return to work. Parker’s death could remain a mystery for a very long time.

He thought of Kaethe Dorten. He could recall the old farm with striking vividness, the grasses leaning in the wind, the high old trees, the farmhouse and barn. And most of all he could see her: he could see her face, that superb skin and those vital brown eyes, saw her nude figure and shapely limbs. He heard her voice again, heard her laugh, inhaled her scent, felt her hair on his face and felt her embrace again. Haunting: he’d never met anyone like her before, never felt passion like that before, and his mind insisted on dwelling on it.

Thomas had to admit he was smitten. Kaethe Dorten could make an event out of opening a door. And the wild glint in her eye made her unpredictably fascinating. And he’d never met a woman before who seemed to become happiest when she was in the gravest danger. There were dozens of moments when they could have been killed in that plane yesterday.

He tried to shrug it all away. He had an overpowering desire to see her again, to make sure that yesterday wasn’t just an illusion. He was being drawn to her like a nail to a magnet. Love had overwhelmed his freedom like a wild sea.

Thomas took the piece of paper with the squiggled line he’d drawn on it and carried it down to breakfast with Brewer.

“What do you make of that?” he asked.

“What is it?”

“That’s what I want to know, Charlie.

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