This United State
Page 48
'We have you both to thank,' said Tweed.
'That's nice. I can't linger. Felt I just had to come over to see you. Washington is in a state of chaos. The Ambassador here has been recalled — he'll be replaced. And I'm resigning as Deputy Director of the CIA. There's a new director at Langley. Old friend of Cord Dillon's. Guess who's going to get my job.' He stood up. 'Great to see you all survived.' He went round, shook everyone by the hand. 'Take care. I'm off with Chuck.'
'I'm staggered,' Paula said when they had gone. 'But I suspected you had someone on the inside. Incidentally, who was the Phantom's paymaster?'
'Paymistress. Sharon, I'm sure. She must have disguised her voice, phoned Rupert about the targets. She'd guard her identity.'
'And I've wondered about a coincidence. Sharon's parents were killed in a car crash. Years later poor Denise's parents are killed in a car crash on the same bridge.'
'I'm sure Sharon gave orders for Denise's father to be murdered by staging a fake collision on that same old bridge in Virginia. The bridge would linger in her memory as a place where accidents did happen. Never prove it, of course.'
'Another thing,' Paula went on. 'Monica struggled like mad to fill in those mysterious gaps in Ed Osborne's life. She never could find out where Osborne was when he seemed to disappear off the face of the earth for longish periods. Where on earth was he during those long disappearances?'
'That,' said Tweed, 'is something I'd decided to apologize for to Monica. During those gaps he was working for me, so any record was carefully erased. So, that's it. Although I do have one more problem.'
'What's that?' enquired Newman.
'Paula,' Tweed pleaded, 'can you think of some way I can decently avoid that lunch with Howard? I can't stand the food at his club. And I can't stand the other members - they sit there like waxworks.'
COLIN FORBES
Terminal
Pan Books
When international news correspondent Bob Newman gets a tip-off about a mysterious package smuggled across an eastern border, it's yet another link in a chain of sinister incidents that have one thing in common — they are all connected with the Berne Clinic and Teiminal.
But what is Terminal? And why are the British SIS so desperate to find out? What is an ex-CIA hit man turned private investigator doing in Switzerland? And who is he working for? What terrible secret lies behind the barbed wire surrounding the Berne Clinic, guarded by Dobermans and the Swiss Army? And why do the people who can answer these questions keep getting murdered?
From the first page to the last, TERMINAL has all the hallmarks of a Colin Forbes novel. With all the surprises and twists, the violence and the tension that make his thrillers the most exciting... and the most terrifying.
COLIN FORBES