The Swan and the Jackal Read Online Free PDF Page A

the woman says, stepping from beside me. “What about me ?” She crosses her arms and glares at Dorian, but then looks to me for the answer. “You’re not leaving until I get what you promised me.”
    Growing more anxious every passing second, Dorian takes things quickly into his hands. He raises his gun and a shot zips through the room. The woman falls against the marble floor with a bullet in her temple.
    “Fucking druggie bitch,” he says and jerks his head back. “Let’s go.”
    I dust off my suit and step over her body.
     
     

Chapter Two
     
     
    Fredrik
     
     
     
    I’m back in Baltimore the next day, waiting for my employer and friend, Victor Faust, to arrive. It’s three o’clock in the afternoon and it has been difficult to refrain from going into the basement. I usually visit her long before the afternoon hours, but today is a different day and sometimes things must be done out of order.
    She gets very distraught when she doesn’t see me for a long time. It kills me to leave her like that, but she understands that my job requires much of my time and attention. But I make it up to her the best I can. And she always forgives me.
    Besides, she is also a job—a private and very personal one—and no matter what my responsibilities are to Victor Faust, I make time to spend with her. There has been progress and I’d hate to lose any of it by being away from her for too long.
    After a late lunch, I’m sitting in the kitchen with my laptop open on the bar when Victor arrives.
    “It’s good to see you.” I offer him a smile at the front door and gesture him inside.
    Victor takes a seat in the den in one of two black leather chairs with carved wooden legs—imported from Italy—beside a matching wooden table. I take the one opposite him.
    Reaching into the pocket of my white dress shirt, I retrieve the key I acquired from France and set it on the round table between us.
    Victor leaves it there for the moment, his eyes only skirting it.
    “I take it Moreau wasn’t very cooperative,” he says.
    He sits with his arms resting across the length of the chair arms, the sleeve of his black suit jacket barely covering the thick silver watch he wears on his right wrist.
    I smirk and shake my head.
    “Monsieur François Moreau was exactly as you said he’d be. A stubborn and overly confident bastard.” I motion two fingers in front of me when I see my maid, Greta, enter the room. “Please, get my guest and I a…,” I glance over at Victor.
    “A beer would be fine,” he says.
    I hold up two fingers to Greta. “Two Guinness’.”
    She nods her gray head and slips into the kitchen.
    Victor finally takes the safety deposit box key from the table between us, sliding it carefully across the shiny wooden surface. He examines it closely, the gold chain draped across the backs of his fingers.
    “So, this box in New York,” I begin, propping my right ankle atop my left knee, “it contains all the information you need? Or will I be making another trip to France soon?”
    Victor drops the key into the secret pocket of his suit jacket and shakes his head. He props a foot on a knee just as mine is.
    “It contains enough,” he tells me. “Sébastien Fournier may be difficult to track down, but I don’t need him to take over his black market operations. He entrusted the identities and personal information on his operatives to François Moreau. Called him the Gatekeeper. Moreau did an excellent job keeping the information hidden by securing it on an independent device and clear across the ocean. But he was a fool to think it would stay hidden forever.”
    Greta enters the den with an opened bottle of beer in each hand. She offers the first to Victor.
    “Would you like me to prepare extra for dinner this evening?” Greta asks after she hands me my beer.
    She stands before us dressed in a calf-length navy skirt and a short-sleeved, button-up pink blouse. Her long, gray hair is fixed into a bun at the back of her