Honeymoon With A Stranger. Frances Housden

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СКАЧАТЬ the sound wasn’t loud enough to drown out the man’s slurred words, or the suggestions she read in them.

      He wanted to intimidate her, but he didn’t succeed.

      Wine sloshed wildly as she dodged the bottle waved in her face. She batted it out of her way with a forehand swipe of her purse before swooping low to avoid retaliation.

      “Missed me,” she taunted under her breath, more for her than for him, and dove into the courtyard like a runner crossing the winning line.

      With any luck the drunk would have gone by the time she’d completed her task, and if not, she’d be ready for him.

      Without due haste, Mac flicked his black shirt collar up ’til it brushed the curled ends of his longer-than-usual hair, framing the planes and angles of his hawkish features.

      Just as casually, he removed the Makarov from its snug place under his arm, then strode across the sparsely furnished living space of the apartment.

      Even in boots his footsteps were soft, silent, those of a hunter. And, as if someone stage left called out, “Lights, cameras, action,” his expression took on the appearance of fierce determination before he wrenched open the door to an enemy who hadn’t heard him coming.

      Butt of his pistol held high to knock, Zukah took a couple of involuntary backward steps, landing up against the men with him.

      With his forearm resting on top of the door frame, McBride let his broad shoulders fill the doorway. He kept the hand gripping the Makarov hidden alongside his thigh, then slipped it behind a door that wasn’t built to stop a bullet.

      Mac eyed the pistol in the Algerian’s red-knuckled fist with a lift of an unimpressed eyebrow, before his gaze dropped to Zukah.

      A slovenly dresser, the man always looked as if he’d just stepped off the boat at Marseille, but Mac’s eyes saw beyond the front Zukah put on public view. Zukah was a hell of a lot shrewder than he wanted generally known.

      Almost as quickly as he dropped his hand, a peevish frown drew the Algerian’s bushy eyebrows into a saturnine line. Looking foolish obviously wasn’t part of the act he cultivated.

      That performance seemed confined to his beige crumpled suit straining over a creased shirt and protruding gut.

      Sticking with French so there could be no misunderstanding, Mac said, “I see you brought your calling card, Monsieur Zukah, and some compagnie. There was no need for such diligent precautions. I’m quite aware who I’m dealing with.”

      Zukah’s tar-colored mustache quivered above a smirk. “As I do, Makj…pah, your name is unpronounceable.”

      “Stick with Mac, everyone does. And forgive me if I’m wrong, hadn’t we arranged to meet at La Grappe d’Orgueil?”

      Mac’s eyelids narrowed as he spoke, and his smile when it arrived, though lethal, was a mere feral-baring of white teeth.

      Only he knew that the smile was because his cover had withstood the test that he’d assumed the Algerian would put it through.

      IBIS was nothing if not thorough when it came to cover stories. If only they’d been as successful at discovering how the Algerian had gotten his hands on a biotech weapon called Green Shield that the French military had supposedly destroyed.

      Ahmed’s dark irises disappeared behind a mass of wrinkles as he grunted. No way could the sound erupting be taken for a laugh. “Precisely, mon ami. I decided meeting you here might save time.”

      Mac couldn’t summon up any humor.

      Though the bureau knew who had designed the weapon Zukah had on offer, no one had discovered how it had come into his hands.

      Green Shield—named after a sap-sucking beetle—was a designation that gave no hint of the true nature of the beast.

      Even the slick gel in Mac’s hair wasn’t enough to prevent it from lifting at the back of his neck, as he pondered the kind of sick mind it had taken to devise such a weapon.

      “A pity you didn’t think to call first,” he said. “I’m particular about whom I invite into my place.”

      Mac perused the Algerian’s self-loading pistol, a small Mauser, old, well-cared-for but no longer seen on the streets for sale. “For you, I’ll make an exception,” he said, stepping back, allowing Zukah a view of the Makarov he’d had pointing through the door at an extremely vulnerable target.

      He’d never entertained the notion that the two men covering Ahmed’s back wouldn’t be armed. Though they’d hardly make a move with the Algerian’s bulk blocking the line of fire.

      That Zukah was aware of the danger in his position showed in a sideways movement of his eyes that revealed their whites.

      In or out, there was no way to dodge a bullet.

      Mac generously decided to let him off the hook.

      It was too late to back off now. The damn biotech weapon was reputed to be of awesome consequence. And no matter what, Mac’s mission was to obtain it at all cost.

      He didn’t need telling his life was on the line.

      What was one man’s life when millions might face a slow, lingering death from starvation? With that in mind, he said, “Since you and your friends don’t appear overly dangerous, come on in and let’s deal.”

      To put a spin of honesty on his announcement, Mac turned his back on the Algerian filling his doorway to return to the living room, wondering, where was a Kevlar vest when you needed one?

      Roxie paused, at the other side of the courtyard, winded by her frantic pace. Her boots were made for walking, not the hundred-yard dash.

      Besides, she’d heard nothing to suggest the man had followed her, no shambling footsteps that signaled his approach.

      The open square she’d crossed appeared dependent on the windows facing down into it for light. Luckily, the bleak weather had kept people at home and the lights showed her the way as she ran.

      By now, she’d come to the sensible conclusion that the man was un clochard, one of the homeless, who’d been sheltering in the entrance to escape the worst of the weather.

      Still breathing hard, she stood at the foot of the stairs and heard a door close, and wondered which floor the men ahead of her in the gloom had been going to.

      As the apartment door closed, Mac decided that for the moment, he had nothing to fear from these wiseguys.

      The dealer running Zukah and Co. was asking an arm and two legs for the weapon, and only the wealthiest terrorist groups could afford that kind of lump sum.

      Al Qaeda hadn’t come sniffing around as far as IBIS knew, but then they preferred their weapons to go off with a bang, not the whimper of dying vegetation.

      That was one of the few facts on Mac’s side.

      The Palestinians couldn’t afford it, and since most of North Africa was pretty barren, anyway, the Israelis weren’t interested.

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