(2013) Collateral Damage Read Online Free PDF Page A

a rare occurrence. When it did happen people were outraged.
    The publisher was one of those foreigners who lived in a manner
few Englishmen born in the reign of George VI could afford. It had become a habit,
at about 6 p.m. every Wednesday evening, to drive his Jaguar to his club in Pall
Mall for drinks with a friend and then on to dinner somewhere. Afterwards, if the
mood was right, they might cruise around Shepherd Market and pick up a couple of
the whores. Despite the sighting of the first Saudis and Iranians of the season,
you could still find quite a lively young thing for less than one hundred pounds.
    Koller was placing his bomb under the driving-seat of the publisher's
metallic blue XJ6. There had been no trouble getting a door-key for it because the
name of the dealer who supplied it was still plastered across the back window. It
had been a simple matter to go there posing as a friend of the publisher and explain
that he had lost his keys and wanted another one.
    At moments like this Koller worked very calmly. The nervousness
came before. Once he started, everything was all right. A fatalism came over him, something akin to that feeling of levitation sometimes experienced
by people who have survived a bad car crash: a sensation of hovering above events
watching his fate quite dispassionately.
    He opened the driver's door and then, crouched on his haunches,
laid the executive case on the seat and opened it. The lid of the case would have
obscured the view of any passer-by on the pavement who happened to glance in the car, and Koller's body shielded it from observation from
the road. Carefully, he removed the clothes-peg and set the hands of the clock.
He checked that the battery connections were secure, and that the detonator was
correctly attached to the grey slabs of plastic explosive. For good measure he had
put in some extra slabs that were unconnected to the main charge, but was fairly
certain that it would be enough to set them off too. He didn't trust bombs. He much
preferred bullets, but his instructions in this case had been quite specific.
    Even so he had brought with him a big FN Browning 13-shot service
automatic that did not improve the cut of his Harris tweed jacket. Ideally, he would have liked the gun he had in Paris, one of the new snub-nosed
.44 magnums, the sort some American police were beginning to carry as a backup gun
and guaranteed to stop a Mercedes if you got close enough. He was always fearful
that the butt of the huge Browning, which he kept in a shoulder-holster, was poking
out from beneath his jacket and constantly tugged at his left lapel to make sure it was well hidden.
    He closed and re-locked the car door, then crossed the wide street
and walked down it a little way until he came to some black-painted iron railings
above the basement entrance to a large, white-painted Georgian town house.
    It was the very worst time for a bomb. The evening rush-hour
was approaching its peak and the overspill from the main arteries of the city was
beginning to clog the side-streets. Several taxis passed the booby-trapped car. Then a couple of teenagers from an international school, mostly
attended by the sons and daughters of diplomats, cycled slowly by. Koller,
his mind frozen on his target, watched their progress with all the detachment of
a tennis umpire. First they were in court, then they were line ball, then they were
out. The fading spring sun cast long shadows.
    The terrorist was standing about three hundred paces from the
car. He wondered whether that was far enough away. He thought it was, but you could
never really be sure with these things. He looked at his watch. Three minutes to
go. His man was slightly behind schedule; he should have been coming out of the
front door by now. He looked around. There was a gate in the railings with some
steps leading down to what was obviously a basement flat. It had a window in its
front door, but this was covered with a white muslin curtain. He went