The Double Eagle Read Online Free PDF Page A

angular face, messy brown hair, and deep-set blue eyes that nestled under thick brown eyebrows.

    He was more athletic than his father, though; a lithe, sinewy five-foot-eleven physique that suggested someone both quick enough to steal second base and strong enough to crack a shot into the bleachers if he had to. The irony, of course, was that he’d never been much of a big hitter in high school, his signature play instead being a split-fingered fast-ball that had batters swinging at thin air as it broke violently downward. It fooled them every time.
     
    Perched on the chest opposite him, a large backgammon board threatened to slide onto the floor at any moment. It was an intricately inlaid set that he’d picked up for next to nothing in some dusty side street off the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul years ago. It still smelled of glue and grease and spices. When he couldn’t sleep, he would sometimes play against himself for hours, checking the probabilities, shifting the pieces around the board, studying how different moves and strategies evolved. The half empty bottle of Grey Goose on the floor next to him suggested that it had been a long night.

    But Tom wasn’t even looking at the board. Instead he was considering the black ski mask that lay in his lap, carefully cradled as if made from the finest Limoges porcelain. With a half smile, he slipped his right hand into the neck opening and then stuck a finger out of each of the eye holes, wiggling them playfully up and down like fish chasing each other in and out of a skull’s eye sockets.
     
    He had long elegant fingers that made graceful, precise movements, each joint flexing like individual links in a chain, large white half moons at the bottom of each neatly clipped nail. And yet the back of his knuckles were covered in small white scars and his palms were rough and worn. It was almost as if he were a concert pianist who moonlighted as a bare-knuckle fighter.

    Tom knew that he couldn’t avoid making the call any longer. He’d been out of contact for three weeks now and didn’t have a choice. But would Archie understand? Would he even believe him? Abruptly his smile vanished and he flung the mask as far as he could across the room, willing it to shatter into a thousand pieces against the opposite wall.
     
    He took his phone out of his back pocket and dialed, the high-pitched tones echoing back over the traffic’s low rumble. It was answered almost immediately, but there was silence from the other end. Tom coughed and then spoke, his voice smooth and soothing, his slight American accent more pronounced than usual as it often was when he was nervous.

    “Archie, it’s Felix.”

    “Jesus Christ, Felix!”

    Felix. A name that he’d been christened with years ago when he had first got going in the game. A name that he was stuck with now.

    “Where the hell have you been?”

    “I got…held up,” Tom answered.

    “Held up? I thought you’d been nicked.”

    Archie. The best fence in the business. Tom had often wondered whether his was an invented name, too, a shield to hide behind. On balance, he thought that it probably wasn’t. Somehow it seemed to fit.

    “No. Just held up.”

    “Spot of aggro?”

    For once Archie sounded genuinely concerned.

    “No, but I’m not doing the States again. I’ve told you, it’s too risky doing jobs back there. I know I’m the last person they expect to see alive but one day they might get lucky.”

    “How did it go?”

    “Pretty much like we planned. Except they were having some construction work done and I was worried about extra security until it was finished. So I staked it out for about three weeks in the end before I went in, you know, just to be sure. I dealt with the pressure pads and the combination hadn’t been reset, so it was all pretty simple.”

    “Nice one. Usual place, then?”

    “My stuff already there?”

    “What do you think?” Archie almost sounded offended.

    “Fine. I’ll drop it off