Assassin: A Novel - Softcover

Bell, Ted

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1668034751 ISBN 13: 9781668034750

Verlag: Pocket Books, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

From New York Times bestselling author Ted Bell, this “highly imaginative thriller ” (James Patterson) follows intelligence operative Lord Alexander Hawke as he races to avert an American armageddon.

In an elegant palazzo on the Grand Canal, an American ambassador’s tryst turns deadly. In the seedy underbelly of London, a pub-crawling killer is on the loose. And in a storybook chapel nestled in the Cotswolds, a marriage made in heaven turns to hell on earth. Isolated incidents? Or links in a chain of events hurtling towards catastrophe?

A shadowy figure known as the Dog is believed to be the ruthless terrorist who is systematically and savagely assassinating American diplomats around the globe. As the deadly number increases, Alexander Hawke and Navy SEAL Stokely Jones are asked by the United States government to track him down. From London to the Florida Keys to a remote Indonesian island, Hawke and Jones are on a breakneck race to stop a bloodthirsty psychopath with plans to throw the United States into cataclysmic ruin.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ted Bell was the former vice-chairman of the board and creative director of Young & Rubicam, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. He was the New York Times bestselling author of the Alex Hawke series. Ted Bell passed away in 2023.

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Assassin

Chapter One

The Cotswolds

THE GODS WOULD NEVER HAVE THE NERVE TO RAIN ON HIS wedding. Or, so Commander Alexander Hawke told himself. The BBC weather forecast for the Cotswolds region of England had called for light rain Saturday evening through Sunday. But Hawke, standing on the church steps of St. John’s, basking in the May sunshine, had known better.

Hawke’s best man, Ambrose Congreve, had also decided today, Sunday, would be a perfect day. Simple deduction, really, the detective had concluded. Half the people would say that it was too hot, while the other half would say that it was too cold. Ergo, perfect. Still, he had brought along a large umbrella.

“Not a cloud in the sky, Constable,” Hawke pointed out, his cool, penetrating blue eyes fixed on Congreve. “I told you we wouldn’t need that bloody umbrella.”

Hawke was standing stiffly in his Royal Navy ceremonial uniform, tall and slender as a lance. Marshal Ney’s ornamental sword, a gift from his late grandfather, now polished to gleaming perfection, hung from his hip. His unruly hair, pitch-black and curly, was slicked back from his high forehead, every strand in place.

If the groom looked too good to be true, Ambrose Congreve would assure you that this, indeed, was the case.

Hawke’s mood had been uncharacteristically prickly all morning long. There was a definite tightness in his voice and, were Ambrose to be perfectly honest, he’d been rather snappish. Curt. Impatient.

Where, Congreve wondered, was the easygoing, carefree bachelor, the blasé youth of yore? All morning long the best man had been giving this storybook groom a decidedly wide berth.

Heaving one of his more ill-disguised sighs, Ambrose peered hopefully up into the now cloudless sky. It wasn’t as though Ambrose actually wished for rain on this radiant wedding day. It was just that he so despised, detested really, being wrong. “Ah. You never do know, do you?” he said to his young friend.

“Yes, you do,” Hawke said, “Sometimes you actually do know, Constable. You’ve got the ring, I daresay?”

“Unless it has mysteriously teleported itself from my waistcoat pocket to a parallel universe in the five minutes since your last enquiry, yes, I imagine it’s still there.”

“Very funny. You must amuse yourself no end. And, why are we so bloody early? All this lollygagging about. Even the vicar isn’t here yet.”

The Scotland Yard man gave his friend a narrow look and, after a moment’s hesitation, pulled a small silver shooter’s flask from inside his morning coat. He unscrewed the cap and offered the flagon to the groom, who clearly was in need of fortification.

Rising early that morning, a cheery Congreve had breakfasted alone in the butler’s pantry and then hurried out into the Hawkesmoor gardens to paint. It was delightful sitting there beside the limpid stream. Lilacs were in bud and an unseasonably late snowfall had all but melted away. The light haze of spring green in the treetops had recently solidified. Beside the old dry-stone wall meandering through the orchard, a profusion of daffodils thick as weeds.

He’d been sitting at his easel, slaving over what he judged to be one of his better watercolour efforts to date, when the memory of Hawke’s earlier remark stung him like a bee. Hawke had made the comment to the aged retainer, Pelham, but Ambrose, lingering at the half-opened Dutch door leading to the garden, had overheard.

I think Ambrose’s paintings are not nearly as bad as they look, don’t you agree, Pelham?

Of course, Hawke, his oldest and dearest friend, had meant the jibe to be witty and amusing, but, still—that’s when a solitary raindrop spattered his picture and interrupted his revery.

He looked up. A substantial pile of gravid purple clouds was building in the west. More rain today, of all days? Ah, well, he sighed. The fat raindrop’s effect on his picture was not altogether unpleasant. Gave it a bit of cheek, he thought, and decided the painting was at last finished. This lily study was to be his gift for the bride. The title, whilst obvious to some, had for the artist a certain poetic ring. He called it The Wedding Lilies.

Packing up his folding stool, his papers, paints, pots and brushes, he looked again at the purple clouds. The best man had decided on the spot that, while an umbrella may or may not come in handy on Alexander Hawke’s wedding day, the brandy flask was a must. Grooms, in his experience, traditionally needed a bracer when the hour was at hand.

Hawke tilted back a quick swig.

When Ambrose recapped the flask and slipped it back inside his black cutaway without taking a bracer for himself, Hawke shot him a surprised look.

“Not even joining the groom in a prenuptial?” Hawke demanded of his companion. “What on earth is the world coming to?”

“I can’t drink, I’m on duty,” Congreve said, suddenly busy with his calabash pipe, tamping some of Peterson’s Irish Blend into the bowl. “Sorry, but there it is.”

“Duty? Not in any official sense.”

“No, just common sense. I’m responsible for delivering you to the altar, dear boy, and I fully intend to discharge my duties properly.”

Ambrose Congreve tried to appear stern. To his lifelong chagrin, achieving that cast of expression had never been easy. He had the bright blue eyes of a healthy baby, set in a keen but, some might say, sensitive face. His complexion, even at fifty, had the permanent pinkish pigmentation of a man who’d once had freckles lightly sprinkled across his nose.

For all that, he was a lifelong copper who took his duties extremely seriously.

Having gained an upper rung at the Metropolitan Police, he had had a distinguished career at New Scotland Yard, retiring four years earlier as Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department. But the Yard’s current Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, unable to fill Congreve’s shoes at CID, still retained his services from time to time. Sir John was even kind enough to let him keep the use of a small office in the old Special Branch building in Whitehall Street. In the event, however, Congreve spent precious little time in that cold, damp chamber.

Numerous globe-trotting escapades with the fidgety groom now standing beside him on the church steps had mercifully kept the famous criminalist away from his humble office and hot on the trail of various villains and scoundrels these last five years or so. Their last adventure had been a somewhat heated affair involving some rather unsavory Cuban military chaps down in the Caribbean.

Now, on this bright morning in May, on the steps of this small “chapel of ease” in the picturesque if unfortunately named village of Upper Slaughter, the groom was giving a first-rate impression of a lamb on his way to the slaughter. Hawke’s glacial blue eyes, normally indomitable, finally wandered from the study of a lark singing in a nearby laurel to rest uneasily upon Congreve’s bemused face. Hawke’s gaze, Congreve often noted, had weight.

“Interesting. Since I was a child, I’ve always wondered why they call this place a ‘chapel of ease,’ ” Hawke remarked.

“Any sense of ‘ease’ being notable by its current absence?”

“Precisely.”

“These small chapels were originally built to ease the overflowing congregations at the main...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pocket Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1668034751
• ISBN 13: 9781668034750
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 608
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV, GPSR Europäische Union; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; AA Utrecht; 3584; Niederlande