The Labyrinth of Osiris Read Online Free PDF

generally used the civilian ones. No point advertising he was a cop.
    He slowed and swung into a space between a pair of Polaris Ranger ATVs. As he climbed out of the car someone held an umbrella over his head.
    ‘ Toda , Ben-Roi. You just won me fifty shekels.’
    A paunchy, bearded man handed him a cup of Turkish coffee. Uri Pincas, a fellow detective.
    ‘Feldman spotted you in the traffic jam,’ he explained, his voice a gruff baritone. ‘We had a little sweepstake on how long you’d last before you used the siren. I guessed right. Five minutes. You’re getting patient in your old age.’
    ‘I’ll split it with you,’ said Ben-Roi, taking the coffee and locking the car.
    ‘The hell you will.’
    They walked across the compound. Pincas held the umbrella over the both of them against the rain while Ben-Roi sipped from the Styrofoam cup. He might have been a sarcastic bastard, but his colleague certainly made a good coffee.
    ‘So what’s happening?’ he asked. ‘They said there was a body.’
    ‘In the Armenian Cathedral. They’re all down there now. The chief as well.’
    Ben-Roi raised his eyebrows. It wasn’t usual for the chief to get involved, not at this early stage.
    ‘Who’s the investigator?’
    ‘Shalev.’
    ‘Thank God for that. We might actually solve this one.’
    They came to the tunnel that led into the compound. To their left a single-storey annexe ran off the back of the main building, the control centre for the 300-odd security cameras that monitored the Old City.
    ‘I’m in here,’ said Pincas. ‘See you when you get back.’
    ‘Can I borrow the umbrella?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You’re inside!’
    ‘I might go out.’
    ‘ Ben zona . Son-of-a-bitch.’
    ‘But a dry son-of-a-bitch,’ chuckled Pincas, grinning. ‘Better get a move on, they’re waiting for you.’
    He walked towards the annexe’s glass doors. When he reached them he turned. Suddenly his expression was serious.
    ‘He garrotted her. The bastard garrotted the poor bitch.’
    He fixed Ben-Roi with a hard, cold stare. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. His meaning was perfectly clear. We’ve got to catch this guy . Their eyes held, then, with a nod, Pincas threw open the doors and disappeared into the building. Ben-Roi drained the last of the coffee.
    ‘Welcome to the promised land,’ he muttered, scrunching the Styrofoam cup and launching it towards the basketball hoop at the far end of the compound. It didn’t even get close.
    G OMA , D EMOCRATIC R EPUBLIC OF C ONGO
    Jean-Michel Semblaire settled back into the brushed cotton of his hotel bed and reflected on a job well done.
    It had been a trying fortnight. A renewed outbreak of rebel activity had closed Goma airport shortly after his arrival in the country, forcing him to kick his heels in Kinshasa for a week before he’d finally managed to get a flight east to the Rwandan border. Then there had been another four-day hiatus as his fixers hammered out the fine detail of the meeting, which had already taken the best part of three months to set up. Finally a Cessna ride out to the remote airstrip at Walikale, followed by a rattling two-hour drive through dense jungle, had brought him face to face with Jesus Ngande. The Butcher of Kivu, whose militias had turned mass-rape into a fine art and who, more important, controlled half the cassiterite and coltan mines in this part of the country.
    After all the build-up, the meeting itself had lasted little more than an hour. Semblaire had handed the warlord a goodwill down-payment of $500,000 cash, there had been some rambling discussion of tonnages and how the ore would be moved north across the border into Uganda, and then Ngande had produced a bottle and proposed a toast to their new business partnership.
    ‘ C’est quoi? ’ Semblaire had asked, examining the reddish-purple liquid in his glass.
    Ngande had beamed, the boy-soldiers around him collapsing into fits of doped-out giggling.
    ‘ Sang ,’ came