Night Moves Read Online Free PDF Page B

have been here for dinner last night, and he had simply gotten it wrong. And even if this had been the proper day, he

was still half an hour late.
The stereotype of the absent-minded professor certainly had a basis in fact, if Bascomb-Coombs was the indicator. Goswell himself had shrugged off the slight. One had to suffer such things. What could one expect from the working class, geniuses or not? Goswell wasn't entirely foolish, save for his mania about the Empire, and he certainly had sense enough to know that Bascomb-Coombs was too valuable to toss away because he got a dinner date wrong. Peel smiled and adjusted the black SIG 9mm in the Gaico paddle holster on his right hip. He was a big enough man so the pistol was easily concealed under the white linen Saville Row sport coat he wore. Six-two, fourteen stone and a bit, and still in fighting shape. Naturally, his lordship wasn't the kind of man to have some thug in camouflage clothes standing about with a submachine gun, menacing guests. Peel, though retired from His Majesty's service under a cloud, was presentable.
Good regiment, decent schools, still fit at forty-five, able to choose the right fork at formal dining if need be. An educated, civilized man, he could chat with the rich and famous and not seem out of place. He'd be a colonel by now, had it not been for that... unpleasant business in Northern Ireland on his final tour. Bloody country, bloody savages living in it. The small com unit in his jacket pocket cheeped. That would be Hawkins, at the gate, confirming the arrival of the Volvo at the house, checking to be sure no terrorists had boiled from out of the car's boot to blast Peel.
"G-l here. Package arrive?"
"Roger that, G-l. We are green at the house." "Copy green. All clear here, as well."
Peel looked at his watch, a black-faced Special Forces analog with glow-in-the-dark tritium inserts, a gift from his men when he retired.
None of them had been happy to see him go. The rest of the security team should be reporting in about... now... "R-1. No activity here." "R-2. Got a couple of the fat man's cows chewing cud over here, otherwise clear." "Rover-3. Fence is clear from Grid 4 to Grid 7." "Gate-2. Slow as bloody Christmas out here." Peel acknowledged each of the gate guards and rovers as they called in their reports. He had ten men, all ex-army, spread out over the perimeter. This was not nearly enough for realistic coverage in a shooting situation, but most of his lordship's enemies weren't the kind of men who would try to storm The Yews to attack him. More likely they'd skewer him with sharp bonds or pointed hostile stock deals.

He grinned. Of course, his lordship had enemies who didn't know they were on his list, and now and
again, they had to be ... attended to, in a circumspect manner, of course. Which is how Tap Peel came to be in his lordship's service. It was because Peel's father and Lord Goswell had been classmates at Oxford, of course, and that the senior Peel had managed a knighthood of his own before he died. One kept these things in the family, or, failing that, among the chums. Looked like rain to the north. Supposed to do that in London today. A little shower wouldn't hurt the vegetation hereabout, either, though the troops would bitch about it. Well, there was a soldier's lot, wasn't it? If you signed on, you signed on rain or shine, cold or hot, and that was that. God knew, he had stood in enough downpours, water running into his collar, cursing the officers who had posted him wherever he happened to be.
He smiled. It was a great life, being a soldier. Too bad this was as close as he could come these days. Well, unless he wanted to traipse off to some third-world republic to be a hired mercenary. Hardly. In his grandfather's day, a soldier of fortune had been a more or less honorable profession, but now, a fool without any military service could answer an ad in an American magazine and wind up protecting your rear in some African jungle.