(2013) Collateral Damage Read Online Free PDF

through the
gate and sat on the top step, so that he was slightly lower than the level of the
road. He was beginning to wish he had not included those extra slabs of explosive.
He just didn't know how powerful the bomb would be. It was the wrong bomb, of course,
he knew that. It was a very crude bomb indeed. He should have had one of the mercury-fused
types which you place under the driving-seat to detonate as soon as the car starts
moving and the wobbly chemical connects the circuit.
    For some reason they didn't have that equipment in London just
as they only had pistols that looked as though you were carrying half a house-brick
under your jacket. If the publisher had not got into his car by the time it exploded
he was banking that the noise would bring him immediately to his front door and
that he would get him then. Koller calculated that the distance from where he was
sitting to the entrance of the publisher's apartment block was about three hundred
metres, perhaps slightly less. The accurate range of the Browning was no more than
seventy metres maximum. He would have to close in quickly, preferably to a range
of about ten metres. He couldn't miss him from there. Whether he could kill him
was another matter. It never ceased to amaze him how much lead human bone and tissue
could take.
    Two minutes to go. The publisher had been delayed by a telephone
call. One of his contributors wanted to extend his deadline. He had a block; the
piece was a pig to write; the situation was so fluid it was like trying to write
on water. His deadline had already been extended once, but the publisher was a patient
man. 'Don't worry, my friend,' he said, 'the 24th will do. Perhaps the situation
will have solidified by then. But no later. OK?'
    He put the receiver down, checked his trouser pockets for his
car keys, and walked down a short hallway hung with Roberts prints of idyllic Levantine harbours and Grecian ruins. He was on the first floor
and therefore in the habit of taking the stairs down as a token gesture towards
keeping fit, like his occasional games of squash. Why, he wondered, did journalists
need so much attention? They were like children. First of all they gave you nothing
but excuses as to why they had not done the thing they had promised to do. Then,
when they had done it, despite the fact that it was late and twice the length you
had asked for, they pestered you on the phone every day until you told them it was
a work of genius. Strangely, although they were usually quite poor, they rarely
quibbled about money. They seemed to be entirely held together by their enormous
egos.
    Outside, Emma had rounded the corner from Toby's flat in Cadogan
Square and was about to pass the publisher's Jaguar. She had decided to take the
tube from Sloane Square rather than attempt the impossible and try to find a free
taxi at that time of the evening. Her mind was still battling with the problem of
how she would tell Dove she was leaving him. It was not helped in its task by the
first faint drumbeats of a hangover.
    Thirty seconds to go.
    Koller stamped out a cigarette, pulled the Browning from beneath
his jacket, slid back the cocking mechanism, sat with the weapon held loosely in
his two hands between his knees.
    He watched the blonde-haired girl approach the car. She walked
slowly as if her mind was somewhere else. He could see she was a good-looking young
woman, wearing the same sort of boots with narrow, rolled jeans on top as the cabinet
minister's daughter. It would be a waste if she was killed. Hurry you fool, he thought,
walk faster. Schnell! Schnell! But Emma continued to walk like a somnambulist, looking
neither to left nor right, her Londoner's feet instinctively missing the dog turds
on the pavement.
    The publisher emerged just as Emma was level with his car. At
the same time the bomb went off with two distinct reports. First there was the crumph
of the plastic explosive followed, perhaps a second later, by the dull whumf of
the