AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Wren’s eyebrows rose. “Good eye. What tipped you off?”
He jerked a thumb towards the entrance. “The massive slab of beef with the military haircut sitting by the front door with a newspaper that he’s clearly not reading was no big trick. He’s not subtle, but I wouldn’t mind his big ass on my side in a fistfight. The small, wiry guy on the balcony has been flashing his eyes this way now and then. Not a big tell unless you’ve been doing this as long as I have.”
“I knew I hired the right bloke.” Wren said it with a satisfied grin.
“A ten-man team?”
Wren nodded. “They’re carrying pistols, which is bloody hard to get away with here in the UK, but I arranged all the paperwork with the home office and the Metropolitan Police.”
“It’s not that hard.” Zack opened up his sports coat. The knurled butt of a large 2011-style handgun protruded from his waistband at his appendix, the rest of the weapon hidden inside his pants.
Wren laughed. “That took some doing, you know? Bloody hell, just off the plane and you’re walking through the City of Westminster with a firearm on your person.”
Wren looked at the weapon, then back up at Zack. “Don’t recognize it.”
“Staccato. Made in the great state of Texas.”
“You used to be a Glock man.”
“I used to shit my diapers. Then I grew up.”
Wren laughed. “Please tell me it’s a nine. We don’t have any .357 or anything else you Americans love in our locker.”
The 9-millimeter was the most common cartridge used in pistols in the world, but especially in Europe. Many Americans preferred other calibers, something foreigners didn’t ever seem to understand.
Zack said, “It’s a nine.”
“Well then, it will work fine.”
“So…where are we off to next?”
“Still to be determined. Hinton has eighteen homes and three labs around the world. Some with better security than others. We’re in the process of checking with local officials in the potential countries, looking to see what further support we can get on the ground there, and we’ll decide where we’re going accordingly.
“Ideally,” he added, “I’d like to be wheels up by tomorrow morning, but we’ll see what happens today.”
Wren reacted to the chirping of his phone on the table, answering it. “Yeah?”
He made no movement for several seconds, then said, “When?” There was another delay. “Have you told Anton?” Then he said, “I’ll do it now.”
He hung up the phone and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “My assistant, Trudy. She says a former colleague of our principal just died in a glider crash in Austria.”
“A glider crash?”
Wren shrugged. “He was an amateur pilot. I met him once. A Taiwanese national, he went to school at Cambridge, was working at a robotics lab in Bayreuth, Germany. He was piloting his single-seat glider near Innsbruck when, witnesses say, it broke apart in flight.”
“I’m gonna go out on a limb here,” Zack said. “Somebody tampered with that dude’s glider.”
“I won’t take that bet,” Wren replied wryly. Then he let out a defeated sigh. “Anton’s going to be devastated. The two had been partners a decade or so ago, remained friends.”
“What’s he like? The boss?”
“You’ll see for yourself in a bit. Bloody brilliant, but as can sometimes be the case, a curse comes along with that blessing.”
“I really wouldn’t know.”
Wren laughed. “He’s a good man, though. Wants to do what’s right, and if anyone can put things right in this world, it’s him. He knows this, too, which means he doesn’t go lacking for confidence.”
“I read he was worth like thirty billion dollars.”
