‘I’ll look forward to that,’ Charlie Martz said. ‘Let’s hope that I’ll still be around to rescue you when you’ve got yourself shot and to stop you from bleeding to death.’
‘What about the girl?’ I asked.
‘She might get off with two years. You never can tell with the courts here. They don’t really know what to do with criminals, let alone beautiful spies. But you’ll be back …’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
A woman’s voice called the flight in English and Icelandic. We shook hands, very hard, and grinned at each other.
The two Russians didn’t move.
‘They’re waiting for new recruits,’ I said. ‘They’re your pigeons, Charlie. Better get a tail on to them now. It’s all just beginning again.’
‘Pigeons,’ he said. ‘Once a bird watcher, always a Goddamn bird watcher.’ He turned and walked out of the civilian building towards his headquarters at the NATO Icelandic Defence Force.
Far below, Iceland slipped away. Black, brown and mint-sauce green. The Ice Age melted in the south by the Gulf Stream. The key to the North Atlantic. The tip of the volcano that was the world.
There was only the metallic sea beneath us when I smelled her perfume. And from the corner of my eye saw the blue blouse and soft blonde hair.
‘Would you like a drink, sir?’
I looked up into the blue eyes of a stranger.
‘Yes please,’ I said. ‘Do you have a Black Death?’
The Twisted Wire
Richard Falkirk
The 1970s Middle East conflict is the setting for this high-octane thriller by the author of The Chill Factor.
A crossed telephone wire causes a call from the President of the United States to his Ambassador in London to be overheard by geologist Tom Bartlett. Tom, preoccupied with thoughts of the conference he is to attend in Israel, puts the incident from his mind, unaware that he might not have been the only person listening in …
He has not been in Tel Aviv a day, however, before the first attempt is made on his life. As Arab, Israeli, Russian and American agents begin to converge on him, it’s clear that someone wants Tom’s briefcase – and will stop at nothing to obtain it.
‘Unflagging action and good writing.’
NEW YORK TIMES
Available to buy here
The Gate of the Sun
Derek Lambert
On the bitter battlefields of the Spanish Civil War, an unlikely friendship is forged. Tom, an idealistic American, and Adam, a wayward young Englishman, fight on opposing sides, yet they have one thing in common – a passionate love for Spain …
With a fervour to match their own, a woman of Madrid is battling in the same bloody struggle. She is Ana, the Black Widow; young, beautiful, bereaved – and a dangerous freedom fighter.
But the end of the armed conflict will not end the conflicting emotions that draw these people together. For over forty turbulent years, from the dark days of Franco’s victory to the birth of modern Spain, they will be bound together in an intricate web – of love, betrayal, ambition and revenge …
‘Gripping … a cross between Harold Robbins and Hemingway.’
SUNDAY EXPRESS
Available to buy here
About the Author
Richard Falkirk was a pseudonym of Derek Lambert, who was born in 1929. He served in the RAF for two and a half years and then worked as a journalist for local newspapers, becoming a foreign correspondent on the Daily Mirror and then the Daily Express, travelling the world to dangerous locations that later inspired his books. His first novel, Angels in the Snow (1969), was based on first-hand knowledge from a year’s assignment to Moscow and entailed him smuggling the manuscript out of the country in a wheelchair. From journeying up the Himalayas in a jeep to being shot at in Israel, his experiences informed his authentic tales of espionage and adventure that helped turn him into a bestselling author of more than 30 thrillers. Derek’s last book, Spanish Lessons, is an affectionate and often hilarious account of giving up life as a globe-trotting journalist to settle down to life in rural Spain with his wife Diane, where he died in 2001 at the age of 71.
By the same author
Angels in the Snow
The Kites of War
For Infamous Conduct
Grand Slam
The Chill Factor
The Twisted Wire
The Red House
The Yermakov Transfer
Touch the Lion’s Paw
The Great Land
The Saint Peter’s Plot
The Memory Man
I, Said the Spy
Trance
The Red Dove
The Judas Code
The Lottery
The Golden Express
The Man Who Was Saturday
Vendetta
Chase
Triad
The Night and the City
The Gate of the Sun
The Banya
Horrorscope
Diamond Express
The Killing House
Historical Fiction
Blackstone
Blackstone’s Fancy
Beau Blackstone
Blackstone and the Scourge of Europe
Blackstone Underground
Blackstone on Broadway
Autobiography
The Sheltered Days
Don’t Quote Me … But
And I Quote
Unquote
Just Like the Blitz
Spanish Lessons
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The Chill Factor Page 21