Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [0]
Once a Spy
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by TriStar Pictures, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY and the DD colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Jacket design and photo of figure and street scene: www.henrysteadman.com
Helicopter photo © Photolibrary.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Thomson, Keith
Twice a spy / by Keith Thomson. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Fathers and sons—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3620.H745T95 2011
813′.6—dc22
2010049447
eISBN: 978-0-385-53404-8
v3.1
For Richard and Winyss
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
—Edmund Burke
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One - Ghosts in the Snow
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part Two - Trade School
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Part Three - Lucidity
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
“Do you see a ghost?” Alice asked.
“You’d know if I did because I’d mention it.” Charlie fixated on someone or something behind her, rather than meet her eyes as he usually did. “Or faint.”
“Ghost is trade lingo for someone you take for a surveillant, but, really, he’s just an ordinary Joe. When you have to look over your shoulder as much as we have the past couple of weeks, it’s only natural that everybody starts seeming suspicious. You imagine you’ve seen one of them before. It’s hard to find anybody who doesn’t look like he works for Interpol.”
“Interpol would be an upgrade.” Charlie laughed a stream of vapor into the thin Alpine air. “After the past couple of weeks, it’s hard to find anybody who doesn’t look like a veteran hit man.”
Charlie Clark owned no Hawaiian shirts. He didn’t chomp on a cigar. In no way did he match anyone’s conception of a horseplayer: He was a youthful thirty with a pleasant demeanor and strong features in spite of Alice’s efforts to alter them—a brown wig hid his sandy blond hair, fake sideburns and a silicone nose bridge blunted the sharp contours of his face, and oversized sunglasses veiled his intelligent blue eyes. But—tragically, Alice thought—until being thrust on the lam two weeks ago, Charlie had spent 364 days a year at racetracks. And that number would have been 365 if tracks didn’t close on Christmas Day. He lived for the thrill not merely of winning but of being right. As he’d often said: “Where else besides the track can you get that?”
So why, Alice wondered, had his attention veered from the race?
Especially this race, a “white turf” mile with thoroughbreds blazing around a course dug from sparkling snow atop the frozen Lac de Morat in Avenches, Switzerland, framed by hills that looked like they had been dispensed by a soft-serve