The Game of X: a Novel of Upmanship Espionage
“The night wind whispered threats to the chimneys. The waters of the canal chewed with a soft toothless mouth on decaying stone piles. The high-shouldered old houses huddled together for comfort. Renaissance figures walked on the sunken street, dressed in twilight blue and pretending they were alive. They didn’t fool me; I knew a danse macabre when I saw one.
I came to the end of the Via di San Lazzaro where it turned into the Rio Terra Maddalena. I was looking for number 32, but the street ende...d with number 25. I looked, I searched, I stared. There was no 32. The back of my neck began to tingle.
I retraced my route and tried to think. Unfortunately, my mind wasn’t interested in house numbers. It insisted upon showing me an illuminated slide show of a sniper high above the street leaning through a shuttered window, with my head trapped in his telescopic sights.
I forced myself to think of pleasanter things. Of strangling Forster, for example, or disemboweling Colonel Baker. Of miraculously escaping from Venice and living out the rest of my life as a simple sheep herder in South Australia.MoreLess
I came to the end of the Via di San Lazzaro where it turned into the Rio Terra Maddalena. I was looking for number 32, but the street ende...d with number 25. I looked, I searched, I stared. There was no 32. The back of my neck began to tingle.
I retraced my route and tried to think. Unfortunately, my mind wasn’t interested in house numbers. It insisted upon showing me an illuminated slide show of a sniper high above the street leaning through a shuttered window, with my head trapped in his telescopic sights.
I forced myself to think of pleasanter things. Of strangling Forster, for example, or disemboweling Colonel Baker. Of miraculously escaping from Venice and living out the rest of my life as a simple sheep herder in South Australia.MoreLess
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