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and if they knew of any others.
And then&
And then they would all have to die.
Kemel did not relish that. In fact, he had been dreading this moment. He had
known about the bomb on JAL 27, but that hadn't been his idea. It had
disturbed him that so many innocent lives had to be sacrificed in order to
take one, yet he had also understood the absolute necessity of preventing
Ronald Clayton from reaching Japan. And what were 247 lives compared to the
well-being of the entire Arab world? A relative few had been sacrificed for a
far greater good. Was it not so throughout all history?
But at least those faceless deaths had occurred far away, and by the
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impersonal agency of an explosive device. Today would be different. The dead
would have names and faces, and their killers would look into those faces,
watch them die. By his order.
But he had his orders, and agreed with their wisdom, their implacable
necessity: No one outside of Iswid Nahr must know about this technology.
He watched Barlowe hold his assault weapon to the Oriental's head while
Baker's other man, the one he called Kenny, took the lamp from him and removed
two pistols. They followed the same procedure with Alicia Clayton's man who,
surprisingly, was unarmed. Baker moved them and the Clayton woman to the side,
allowing Thomas Clayton access to the file cabinets.
Baker had finally proved useful. In fact, despite all the setbacks, he
finally had accomplished what he had been hired to do. The little transponder
he'd placed in the bottom of the woman's handbag had allowed them to stay
miles behind as they'd followed her here. But he would not be rewarded with
the huge bonus and lifetime of easy employment he anticipated.
Baker and his men would dispose of these three and bury their bodies far from
here. And not long after today as soon as tomorrow, perhaps Kemel was sure
that Iswid Nahr would pay Baker in his own currency.
Thomas Clayton would have to go as well, Kemel suspected.
No loose ends.
"It's all here," Thomas Clayton said, looking up from an open filing cabinet
drawer. "Everything you need to know to broadcast power. And it usessolar
energy. You owe me big time. I think I underpriced our deal."
"You should feel lucky you're getting a dime," his sister said.
Thomas looked at her with raised eyebrows. "Oh, really?" he replied, drawing
out the words.
"The minute you walked through that door," she said, "you went from asset to
liability. They don't need you anymore. You've become as disposable as the
rest of us."
"No," he said, turning Kemel's way. "We've got a deal, right, Kemel?"
Kemel held his gaze and tried his best to give nothing away. He found Thomas
Clayton a reprehensible human being, but did not want to deal with him now.
Let Iswid Nahr handle him.
"Of course. And we will honor our word."
But some hint of what the future held must have seeped into his eyes, for
Thomas's expression hardened.
"I was afraid of that," he said, reaching into his pocket.
He withdrew a pistol and pointed it at Kemel.
6.
Tommy-boy, Jack thought as he saw the little .32 appear, you're a class-A
jerk, but I love you.
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All eyes Alicia's, Kemel's, Baker's, and his men's were on Thomas now.
Almost all&
Jack glanced at Yoshio and found him looking his way. A quick lift of one of
his eyebrows told Jack that he knew it too: This just might be their chance&
the only one they'd get.
"That is not necessary, Thomas," Kemel said.
"Yeah," Baker told him. "Put that away before you hurt yourself& or someone
hurts you."
Jack had gathered from talk between their captors that Baker's two men were
Kenny the redhead and Barlowe the dark-haired guy with the big nose.
"No," Thomas said. His voice wavered as much as the muzzle of the .32, but
the little weapon remained trained on Kemel, who was only half a dozen feet
away. Jack doubted even Thomas could miss at that range. "I think it'svery
necessary. I half suspected that I might get the short end of the stick once [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]