Turn of the Cards Read Online Free PDF

Northern Lights of an evening was a dignified, hardwood-paneled sort of place, where a man might sit and sip his coffee and peruse his Neudeutsscher Zeitung and choke some hemp in congenial surroundings.
    “Certainly, Ms. Carlysle. I wasn’t sure whether your ace name might be what the Japanese call bashō-gara, ’appropriate to the circumstances.’ You can dispense with my title, too, by the way. Plain Mr. Belew is fine. Or Bob — J. Robert to my friends, whom I’d be honored if you’d count yourself among.”
    “ Mister Belew,” she said.
    “The elusive fourth man arrives,” Lynn said, sitting back in his chair.
    Belew nodded. “We can play bridge now, if that’s what you were waiting for.”
    “What’ve you been up to?”
    “Going to and fro in the Earth, and walking up and down ’in it.’” He looked from one agent to the other. “The Dutch are mightily ticked about that little shooting spree in the Damplein yesterday. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about it?”
    Helen bit her lip. Hamilton glanced quickly at Saxon. His buddy just kept steady eyes on Belew.
    “They can’t prove anything,” Hamilton said sullenly.
    Saxon laughed suddenly. “These fuckin’ Dutch. They’re in a war, and they don’t even know it.”
    “They’re operating under the quaint illusion that it is their country. And their cops aren’t as fat and sleepy and complacent as they look.”
    Saxon looked at him with apparent shock. “Then what about all this?” he demanded, taking in the hash café with a sweep of his hand. Heads raised at the American shrillness. “Look at this shit. They’re selling smoke in public. The cops do nothing.”
    “They have a tradition of tolerance hereabouts.”
    “Well, excuse me. But we’re the American DEA. And we have a new tradition of tolerance: zero tolerance.”
    “It’s the New World Order,” Hamilton said.
    “It’s still hard time for assault with a deadly weapon if they make you for it.”
    Saxon leaned forward. Small points of light glittered in his black eyes. “Hey, I thought you were Captain Combat. Real hardcore Nam vet. Cowboy for the Company. All that jazz.”
    “Nobody calls it the Company except in the movies. They say the weapon used in yesterday’s attack was a Czech Skorpion, or something very much like it. Tell me, Agent Saxon, just where is your sidearm? You have it on you? Of course you do; you sleep with your piece. I’ve seen your jacket.”
    He turned to the other agent and plucked at his lapel.
    “And I’ve seen your jacket, too, Agent Hamilton. That Miami Vice coat isn’t quite enough to hide your bulge, big boy. Well,” he said, leaning back, “all God’s children got guns — best-armed pot party in Amsterdam. Except, of course, for Ms. Carlysle?”
    She was staring at the dark-stained hardwood tabletop and blushing angrily. “I don’t like guns.”
    “Ah, yes. ’Guns don’t die — people do.’ Guns are evil, wicked, mean and nasty. Not benevolent, like ace powers.” He put his head to the side. “I remember your dad from, oh, my third tour in the Nam. Cyclone. Real kick-in-the-pants, that guy. Used to take your captured Charles up with him to, oh, about a thousand feet. If Charles didn’t want to talk to him then, your old man let him come back by himself.”
    She gave a strangled tiny scream, like a snared rabbit. “No! That’s a lie. My father — my father would never do anything like that.”
    “You know him best, I guess.”
    “She should,” Saxon said, and sniggered. “She killed him.”
    She went white and started to rise. Then she controlled herself with visible effort, settled back into the chair. For a moment she stared down at her hands, knotting and unknotting in her lap.
    “It wasn’t me,” she said in a tight, tiny voice. “I’d been jumped. It … wasn’t me.”
    “He’s a tactful young bloke,” Belew said cheerfully. “Would you like me to kill him?” Saxon was glaring at him when the waiter