The Taste of Fear Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the employee area. A WWF poster on one wall showed a sea turtle swimming in marine-blue water. The caption read: “Warning: It is illegal to kill turtles in Fiji.” Fitzgerald wondered how many East Africans were flying ten thousand miles away to Fiji to kill turtles.
    In the employee area two black men clicked away at their computers while a white woman was wading through a sheaf of papers with a fluorescent yellow highlighter. The woman saw Fitzgerald, smiled, and approached the counter. She was dressed in maroon slacks and a cream blouse. A colorful silk scarf was knotted around her neck. It was just like the one around Fitzgerald’s own neck, only his was mud brown, and he didn’t think she was wearing hers to conceal a six-inch-long scar.
    “Can I help you?” she asked him in the same South African voice he’d heard over the phone.
    He took off his sunglasses and hooked them on the V-neck of his black T-shirt. “I called earlier,” he said, the words coming out raspy, like a man who smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. He barely noticed. He’d been speaking like that for the better part of thirty years, ever since he’d been garroted and left for dead in the hills of Northern Ireland. “I asked for Salvador Brazza’s itinerary.”
    Her smile faltered. “I told you. We cannot give out that information.”
    “Yes, you can.”
    “No, we can’t.”
    Fitzgerald withdrew the Glock 17 from the holster beneath his jacket. The barrel was outfitted with a Gemtech threaded suppressor. He pointed the pistol at her face. “Yes, you can,” he repeated.
    She froze. The two men at the computers jumped to their feet.
    “Stay still,” Fitzgerald warned them without taking his eyes off the woman. She was young, early twenties, just a girl really, somewhat pretty. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks flushed, her heart probably racing. The funny thing about fear was that it produced the exact same symptoms as excitement, the only difference being willingness. “I would like Salvador Brazza’s itinerary.”
    She didn’t move.
    He nodded to her computer. “Go on, lass. Go print it off.”
    Still didn’t move.
    He slapped the counter. “Go on!”
    That broke her paralysis. She hurried to her desk and fiddled with the mouse. Her hand shook badly.
    The older of the two men said, “You don’t need a gun, man. Put away the gun. We’ll give you whatever you want. Just take it easy, hey?”
    There was always a hero. Fitzgerald pointed the Glock at the hero and squeezed the trigger. The term “silencer” was a bit of a misnomer because you could never truly silence the report of a gunshot. But you could suppress it. Now the suppressed shot made only a soft pop. A purple dot appeared in the man’s forehead, leaking a line of blood. He toppled backward.
    The woman screamed.
    The second man bolted for the back door. Fitzgerald fired three rounds into his back. The impact threw him forward onto his chest.
    “Shut up,” he said, returning his attention to the girl.
    She stopped screaming, though her mouth was quivering, as if she was keeping it closed by force of will alone.
    “Did you print the itinerary?”
    She hunkered down over the keyboard and hit a few keys. Made a frustrated noise, like she’d screwed something up. Her hands were shaking worse than ever. Then the freestanding laser printer in the corner clicked and hummed and spat out a sheet of paper into the tray.
    “Go get it,” Fitzgerald said.
    She went to the printer, retrieved the single piece of paper, and brought it back. The flush had drained from her cheeks, leaving her face an alabaster white. Her mouth was still quivering, and she was making small, pathetic noises. She was no longer very attractive.
    Fitzgerald snatched the paper from her hand and gave it a quick scan. It was what he wanted. “If you had given me this information over the phone,” he told her, “none of this would have happened.”
    “Please don’t kill me.”
    “Why