The Dark Frontier A. Decker (i like reading TXT) 📖

quiet countenance of death reminded him of his mother the last time he had seen her.

Frank licked the sweat from his upper lip. The saltiness mingled with the sweet satisfaction of seeing this evil expunged forever not only from his own life, but from the lives of countless others. It was hard to imagine this man had enjoyed such influence. He looked so ordinary and forgettable in death. His eyes even emptier now. And his body more vulnerable than it must have been since his first few minutes as a new-born infant. Now he lay at Frank’s feet like a meaningless overgrown afterthought, parenthesised by the blood that trickled from the gaping wound in the promontory of his skull and onto the file caught half-open under his head when he fell.

Like a nightmare, it screamed from the slowly filling claret lake. Patricia’s photo staring up at him. The unmistakable beauty of her eyes mocking his revenge and crying through the sickly, congealing pool of Breitner’s blood. This was her file that he had fetched from his desk. But before Frank could do anything with the discovery, his mind took another jolt when a heavy pounding on the door seemed about to bring the walls down around him.

“Mr Breitner! Mr Breitner!”

The voices rang in his ears and came with the desperate sound of breaking glass. Instinctively, he pulled the blood-wet file out from under Breitner’s body and ran. By the time he reached the hallway, the first intruder was already through the door. Frank recognised him instantly as one of the two German sports youth louts who had been so suspicious of him in Davos. The other one was close behind. Elated by the power of the weapon in his hand, Frank fired another indiscriminate blast in their direction. He saw the first of his pursuers go down and turned tail through the kitchen door. Once again, his presence of mind took him by surprise when he scooped up a briefcase that lay on a chair in the hall and slipped the file inside it as he went. A freshly blood-soaked document was not the kind of thing to be seen carrying through the streets in the early hours of the morning.

He did not sense any attempt to pursue him out into the darkness. But he would not feel safe until he was on the train back to St Moritz and Patricia. He was late. He had long since missed their dinner together. It was a knowledge that left him with the uncomfortable image of her sharing their Chateau Haut-Brion with the colonel. The earliest he could be there now would be early afternoon. At least this had the advantage that the colonel should have left to return home by then, Frank told himself. And above all, he had accomplished his mission. He was beginning to feel that time was on his side again.

The feeling was confirmed when he saw the early tram into town coming down the line just as he approached the tram stop. It was not until the doors were closing behind him, and he looked back, that his growing sense of security suddenly cracked. He watched in despair as both his pursuers slipped into the last carriage just before the tram moved off.

‘So I missed,’ Frank muttered to himself, recalling how the first of the sports youth louts slumped to the floor when he turned the gun on them as they burst into the house.

He knew this tram would not take him directly to the station. At some point, he would have to get off and either change trams or walk. He fancied that taking the side streets to the station from the centre of town would offer the best chance of giving his predators the slip. So, when the tram was about to leave the market square, he leapt out through the closing doors and into the side street that led up to the wine tavern where he had arranged in vain to meet Patricia all those weeks ago, and encountered Lutz instead.

Frank glanced back to see the tram carrying off his pursuers. They had not even noticed that he had jumped off. He could relax. Could now make his way to the station without the need for furtive backward glances. But to be on the safe side, he kept to the side streets anyway.

When he reached the station, the next train was due to leave in ten minutes. He found an empty compartment at the front of the train, put the briefcase he had snatched up on the seat beside him and took a deep breath. He smelled the cordite still clinging to his memory of that moment. His heart still pounding from the execution of Breitner, from the sight of his prostrate, bloated body.

The solitude of the empty compartment was the first opportunity he had had to catch his breath since the crushing tension of that moment. He closed his eyes and contemplated the clear, crisp mountain air that lay ahead. The gentle crunch of snow underfoot. And above all the snug warmth of Patricia in his arms and the fragrance of her unique perfume enveloping his senses.

He was not prepared for the scene that greeted him when he felt the train begin to move and opened his eyes. Leaping onto the train several carriages back were the new bane of his life: the two youth sports louts in their forage caps.

‘They clearly have an idea where I’m heading,’ he told himself. The palm of his hand rested on the gun in his pocket for reassurance. There was no way he would lead them to Patricia. He knew he would have to find some way of shaking them off.

When the train pulled into Zurich about an hour later, Frank jumped out, made for the ticket office and bought a single to Como. A quick glance back told him his stalkers were following his every move. But with the ticket to Italy in his wallet,