Deceptions Read Online Free PDF Page A

through a patch of purple-green darkness when he suddenly came upon the soldiers.
    There must have been a full squad, patrolling no more than fifty yards from where he had hidden his car beneath some thickets
     and branches. Bunched much too close together for effective patrolling, they whirled in shock as he came dashing down the
     slope.
    It was too late for him to change direction or take cover, and he was quite prepared to die for his blunder. And by any reasonable
     show of logic, he should have died, because he just kept running straight at them like a maniac, his rifle slung over one
     shoulder and both hands working at the grenades, pulling and throwing, pulling and throwing, a madman at a carnival, grabbing
     at brass rings and tossing fireballs.
    But whatever cosmic forces could have gone right for him during the next few moments did so. The sun angled blind-ingly over
     the hill behind him. The soldiers were startled enough by his lunacy to throw off their fire. His grenades exploded precisely
     where they should have. And if the heavens themselves had opened and rained steel, the shower could not have been more deadly.
    Then still running, he had the rifle off his shoulder and in his hands, feeling it spit at the smoking earth that smelled
     of gunpowder and seared flesh, at the faces that rose up out of it with open mouths and blood and dirt darkening the skin.
    Seconds later, he was over and past the carnage.
    The sirens were still going, but he saw no other soldiers. Sprinting to his car, he removed the camouflage branches and drove
     out from behind the brush to the dirt trail just beyond. In fifteen minutes he was mingling with the traffic on the main highway to Zagreb.
    Before he reached the city, he made a short detour and dropped his rifle and remaining ordnance into a convenient river. Then
     he continued on to his hotel.
    There he showered and trimmed the full moustache and neat Vandyke beard that had become so accustomed a part of his carefully
     chosen persona that it was hard for him to remember how he had once looked without them.
    Adding to the changed appearance were the contact lenses that turned his hazel eyes an electric blue, and the fair, sun-streaked
     hair that had replaced the almost blue-black color with which he had been born.
    He dressed and checked his papers.
    At home, he had stashed away passports, driver’s licenses, and credit cards under half-a-dozen different names and nationalities.
     But on this trip he traveled as Peter Walters, an American businessman born in Miami, Florida, and living in Positano, Italy.
     A name he had lived under for almost ten years.
    Carrying only a single carry-on bag, he left his hotel room and paid his bill in cash.
    Then he drove himself to the airport and returned his rental car at the main terminal.
    His 5:00 P.M. flight to Naples was airborne at exactly 5:17. I’
m going home.
    There were severe electrical storms on their flight path so they were diverted to Rome and forced to lay over for several
     hours. When the man known as Peter Walters finally walked off the plane in Naples, it was well into the night and he was stiff
     with frustration.
    But he had left his car parked at the airport, and once he was behind the wheel and moving, he could feel himself ease out
     of it. There was a full moon, and with its light catching the calm sea, the trip along the Amalfi Drive was even more spectacular
     than usual.
    Walters drove slowly, wanting to stretch the vista. He had been living on the Amalfian Coast for close to nine years. How
     familiar it had become. Yet he still remembered thesharp pain that had come with his first sight of it, with his understanding of how much he had missed in his life, and how
     much his parents had missed and would now never have a chance to experience.
    Still, he was trying.
    When he finally reached Positano, he saw the moon silver the old Arab-Saracen-style houses rising up the mountain from the
     sea, and felt the