Jack Higgins Read Online Free PDF Page A

what he was all along, didn’t you?”
    â€œMy dear Jack, don’t be absurd.”
    He tried to shrug it off, but I wouldn’t let him off the hook. “Now I get it. All those trips to Kyros. You were channelling stuff out for them. They must have been paying you a fortune.”
    He actually smiled at that. “One of my more lucrative ventures, I must admit.” I was unable to stifle my laughter. “It takes a rogue to recognise one, Jack,” he added calmly.
    â€œWhich doesn’t help me. I’ve nothing against the Israelis, even if one of their damned frogmen did blow me out of the water back in Jaffa harbour in forty-seven, but I’m damned if I want to take sides. What in the hell am I going to do?”
    â€œHang on,” he said. “If things turn nasty, make a run for it in the Gentle Jane . Wait for me in Kyros. Plenty of work for you in the Aegean, I’ll see to that.”
    â€œAnd leave a business worth two hundred thousand quid to Ibrahim and his pals? Not on your life.”
    â€œSo what will you do if Guyon comes to you for help? Turn him in?”
    Which was the one question I didn’t want to hear, the one I wanted to avoid at all costs. “I won’t take sides,” I said. “I’ve done my share. Palestine, Malaya, Korea, Cyprus. Other men’s wars. To hell with that for a game of soldiers.”
    I turned away, the Celt in me well in control, and found Sara Hamilton seated at a nearby table taking it all in.
    â€œAnd you can fry in hell, too,” I said, and stormed out through the French window to the terrace and the garden beyond.
    Â 
    The new moon was hooked into the branches of the cypress tree by the far wall and on either side, palm trees nodded gravely in the slight breeze. The garden was another of Yanni’s special prides and the night was fresh and alive and filled with its perfume.
    I wandered aimlessly from one tiled path to another,shoulders hunched, hands pushed into my pockets, a cigarette hanging from one corner of my mouth, unlit because I couldn’t find a match. The fountain drew me as it always did, a piece of pure Victoriana. An impossibly virginal-looking lady spraying water from her mouth assisted by half a dozen cherubs of doubtful sex.
    I stood with one foot on the raised rim of the pool and stared into the night. A hand appeared in front of my face holding a gold lighter. That damned perfume again . I touched my cigarette to the flame and turned to her.
    â€œIs it really called Intimacy or were you kidding?”
    She sat on the edge of the pool and made ripples in the water with one hand. “I like fountains, they relax me. We had one something like this at Hambray Court when I was a little girl. My earliest memory.”
    â€œA thousand years ago?”
    â€œAt the very least.” When she looked up her face was quite different. For a moment, she was that little girl again in the secret garden, life held at bay by a mile of Elizabethan brick wall. “Sometimes I think it was just a dream. A story I read somewhere, or had told to me. Does that make any sense?”
    â€œThe only kind there is.”
    I don’t know what happened exactly, but she changed gear again, assumed her usual role. Even the tone of voice altered, became harsher.
    â€œSo, Kytros sold you out?”
    I glanced down at her sharply. “Shame on you, listening to other people’s conversations.”
    For some reason she was angry. “Do you have to make a joke of everything?”
    â€œCan you think of a better way of keeping your sanity in this loving world?”
    â€œSeveral.”
    â€œOh, sure. I’d forgotten you were a swinger,” I said. “The Kama Sutra beside your bed and fifty-seven varieties with every third man you meet walking down the King’s Road. Wasn’t that last year’s newest kick for the jet set?”
    â€œIt was marvellous,” she said calmly.