Three Tales From the World of Cotton Malone Read Online Free PDF Page A

director. Twenty years of experience certainly qualified Wyatt. Moving up had always been in the back of his mind.
    So the message had been clear.
    We rise together.
    But at the admin hearing, instead of backing him up, Combs sold him out, testifying that, in his opinion, a finding of recklessness was warranted.
    Combs garnered his directorship.
    Wyatt had been pink-slipped, spending the past eight years working contract jobs for various intelligence agencies in need of his experience but not his liability. They paid great, but were no substitute.
    He wanted his career back. But that was gone.
    Revenge?
    Seemed that was all he had left.
    And he’d been patient. Watching Combs. Waiting for the right moment.
    Like now.
    Combs had taken two weeks’ leave and flown alone to Chile. Doing something outside the agency.
    What exactly? He actually wanted to know.
    So while Combs enjoyed himself at the Ritz-Carlton, and before he killed the bastard, he decided to find out.

    He slowed the rental car as he drove into Turingia. The tiny Chilean hamlet’s claim to fame was a popular thermal spring. Placards announced that asthma, bronchitis, digestive disorders, even dry skin could be cured—all of course for a price.
    He navigated around a busy central plaza.
    An ocher-colored church rose at one end, flanked by an arcade of shops, the quaintness stained only by gangly electric-wire poles. A residential section, west of town, looked more like the English countryside with timbered houses, angled roofs, and flowery trees. He knew about the old woman because a few days ago he’d followed Combs to her house. She lived amid a stand of tall araucaria, their puffy pine boughs stretching toward the sky. The house was a two-story structure longing for paint, its gabled tin roof thick with rust. Two horses grazed within an enclosure. He eased the car down a bumpy lane and parked near a fence trellised with morning glories.
    The front door was answered by a birdlike woman with burnished gray-gold hair. Forked veins lined her spindly arms, and liver spots dotted her wrists. She appeared to be pushing seventy, but there was a spry look in her hazel eyes. When he introduced himself her eyebrows rose in apparent amusement and she threw him a smile that featured teeth like a jack-o’-lantern.
    She invited him inside, her English laced with German. He sat on a settee upholstered in pink velveteen, while she reclined in an oversized chair draped with a flowered slipcover.
    He learned her name was Isabel.
    â€œAnd what is it you want?” she asked him.
    â€œYou had a visitor a few days ago.”
    â€œOh, yes. He was a lively one.”
    â€œWhat did he want?”
    She studied him with a calculating gaze, a tremor rocking her right eye. Her breaths came in low wheezes. Only the tick of a clock disturbed the tranquility.
    â€œThe same as you, apparently,” she said. “You seem like a lively one, too.”
    She was playing him. Okay. He could do the same. “Have you lived here a long time?”
    â€œAll my life. But my family is from Heidelberg. My parents came here after the war. My father erected this house. Built with one-third heart, one-third hands, one-third understanding.”
    He smiled, trying to place her at ease.
    â€œAn old German wisdom,” she noted.
    â€œWas your father a solider?”
    â€œHeavens, no. He worked for the postal service. He felt that Germany would never be the same after the war, so he left. I daresay he was right.”
    He decided to return to what he wanted to know. “What did Mr. Combs want with you?”
    â€œHe showed me two photographs, a man and a woman, and wanted to know if I knew the faces. I told him they once lived near Lago Todos los Santos, at the Argentina border.”
    â€œWhy were those pictures so important to him?”
    The corners of her eyebrows turned down. “Why is his business yours?”
    He decided honesty might work best.