The Samurai Inheritance Read Online Free PDF

and brown contours of the map. Even on paper Bougainville sent a shiver through him. Mountains and jungles and active volcanoes . He still wasn’t certain he would find the shrunken head, but if he ever did, he pitied the poor bugger who had the job of repatriating it.
    Keith Devlin watched the elevator door close as a second man appeared from the far end of the corridor. Wiry and alert, the newcomer walked with a soldier’s economy of movement and his suspicious blue eyes swept the ground ahead like an IED detector. He had tanned, gaunt features and wore his silver hair swept back from his forehead in an old-fashioned style that made people he met think of a Fifties matinée idol. All it would take to complete the effect was a thin moustache, but he’d never worn one, not even in the field, and he never would.
    ‘What did you think, Doug, is he up to it?’
    ‘He’s capable enough, I grant you,’ Devlin’s head of security said thoughtfully. ‘That poncy English-gent stuff is just an act and there are a few unexplained bodies in his file I’d like to know a bit more about. But …’
    ‘But what?’
    ‘The psychological profile says he’s an idealist who sometimes makes decisions based on instinct, not logic. When he finds out what’s really happening on Bougainville he may decide he has to take sides. What if he chooses the wrong one?’
    Devlin’s face twisted in a grimace of distaste. ‘That would be too bad.’
    ‘The woman and the girl …’
    ‘Yes.’ Devlin saw the possibilities immediately. That was what he liked about Doug Stewart: the combination of practicality and ruthlessness he brought to the corporate decision-making process. The same practicality and ruthlessness that had seen him through Australia’s short and comparatively glorious involvement in America’s Vietnam fiasco. He nodded. ‘Keep them close, they might come in handy somewhere down the line. And Doug?’
    ‘Yes, chief?’
    ‘No mistakes this time. I want him watched every step of the way. There’s too much riding on this to take any chances.’

IV
    ‘It will be for two weeks at most.’ Jamie tried to sound upbeat, but Fiona’s narrowed eyes informed him he wasn’t succeeding. Lizzie mirrored her mother’s disapproving frown. ‘You’ll be able to spend a bit of quality time with your aunts and uncles, and we’ll still have a fortnight together as a … a family at the end of it.’ Fiona sucked in a breath and he knew he’d made one of those male mistakes that are only perceptible to women. Sweat prickled in his thick dark hair as they sat on the grass beneath a big palm tree in the botanical gardens. ‘It’ll be great.’ He hurried on, hoping to bypass the storm. ‘No expense spared on my client’s private island up by Cairns. Koalas, possums and platypuses, er, platypii, and whatever. We can explore the Barrier Reef and scuba dive, swim with dolphins and turtles …’ He ended with a winning smile at the little girl, which didn’t change her expression one bit.
    ‘In a real family the hu— … head of the family doesn’t just up sticks and abandon the rest without so much as a discussion.’ Fiona’s tight smile was as dangerous as the fire that flickered in the depths of her dark eyes and Jamie decided he’d much rather be facing gun-toting Al-Qaida assassins than this woman he … No, it was too soon after Abbie for that kind of emotional commitment, but he liked and respected Fiona too much to hurt her and he was already regretting accepting Keith Devlin’s offer. All he’d said was that someone had commissioned him to track down something and the client was in a hurry. She hadn’t asked what the something was or the client’s name. He saw another change in her expression as she read his mind and didn’t like what she found there. ‘Maybe you don’t realize what I – what we – invested in this trip. It’s not about a free holiday and a chance to see the old country again, Jamie, it’s