The Viper Read Online Free PDF Page A

allowed to finish? Or should he just remain sitting there on the bench in some kind of limbo?
    In order to pass the time, he tried to sort through his still very sketchy plans of setting up his own consulting firm. All that talk about never having to work again was of course just a ploy for talking about money without having to mention a concrete sum. He had no intention of retiring. People who strived for economic independence just to devote the rest of their lives to playing golf and lying on beaches baffled him.
    The plan was to start out with a core management group of ten senior consultants and then bring in other professionals and support staff as necessary on a project-to-project basis. He counted on a planning and build-up phase of one year, during which time he would fine-tune his ideas and establish the appropriate contacts. It would be something completely different from the solo projects he had heretofore handled; not unsuccessfully, it had to be said, but having his own company would open up a whole new range of possibilities. It would probably be difficult to remain in Sweden, but he had nothing against the idea of moving to London or possibly Zurich. And this time he would take Kristina with him.
    Two Asians, a man and a woman, were engaged in an intense, hushed discussion on the bench along the opposite wall. He could hear that they were Japanese and was able to place them, with 95 percent certainty, in high positions within the business community.
    One of Pricom’s board members had committed suicide, after first having shot his wife and their seven-year-old daughter. It was so typically Japanese—assuming the information was correct that is—they could never handle a setback. It was so feudal somehow, as if they couldn’t reconcile themselves to the fact that people in a modern society climbed and fell, got up and continued climbing, constantly taking up new positions depending on choice and performance and sometimes as a result of events that lay outside an individual’s control. There was no place for honor and shame in that world.
    Arvid concealed an involuntary yawn behind his hand.
    *   *   *
    KRISTINA HAD RUSHED up from the kitchen table and into the living room to watch the morning show that was on the TV. The woman with the warm ginger hair, the friendly smile, and the slightly sad eyes was speaking about London. A fire had broken out at Heathrow International Airport just outside London.
    Kristina felt a warm surge spread through her. There was a fire at the airport. Misfortune, terror, bombs, twists of fate, death, destruction.
    Hope rekindled.
    The warmth stayed with her. She embraced it, tried to hold on to it, felt how it comforted her heart, settled her soul. Images started to flash before her, images of the future. It would look much the same. She would continue to live as she had done for most of the past two years. Only she would be able to continue living that way for the rest of her life. And better still: there would be no more chilling apprehension, no more visits on short notice, no more 2 p.m. phone calls every afternoon, no more days where she counted the seconds and expected that any minute he’d scent something out, expose her with his sensitive nose and destroy everything she had come to live for. There would only be now.
    “Emergency crews quickly brought the fire under control. There was no report of any casualties, but an airport representative said that passengers should count on delays of between two and nine hours.”
    The redhead took back the warmth. Kristina went all cold.
    Hope extinguished.
    Then she felt ashamed, lowered her gaze from the TV screen. First she had cheated on him, then she had wished him dead. Wished another human being dead. She felt ashamed, though she didn’t think she ought to. The feeling of shame filled her once the warmth had disappeared, and all the rationalizing in the world could not stop her from feeling that she was bad. Who was