On The Lisbon Disaster E-Book

Olen Steinhauer

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

In a thrilling e-exclusive short story, New York Times bestselling espionage master Olen Steinhauer introduces the enigmatic John Calhoun, an international security contractor who plays a prominent role in Steinhauer's latest novel, The Cairo Affair. Before his assignment to the CIA's Cairo office, John worked in Lisbon, Portugal, where he took part in an extraordinary rendition - the apprehension of a wanted individual for interrogation. But from the beginning of the operation nothing goes as planned, and for John, it soon becomes much more than a career-defining moment; how he handles this crisis will define who he is as a person.

Leseprobe

Photo credit: Rana Faure

OLEN STEINHAUER, the New York Times bestselling author of eight previous novels, is a two-time Edgar award finalist and has also been short-listed for the Anthony, the Macavity, the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, and the Barry awards. Raised in Virginia, he lives in New York and Budapest, Hungary.

Also by Olen Steinhauer

The Cairo Affair

An American Spy

The Nearest Exit

The Tourist

Victory Square

Liberation Movements

36 Yalta Boulevard

The Confession

The Bridge of Sighs

ON THE LISBON DISASTER

Olen Steinhauer

First published in the United States in 2014 by Minotaur Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, part of Macmillan.

Published in e-book in Great Britain in 2014 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © 2014 by Third State, Inc.

The moral right of Olen Steinhauer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Ervin Serrano

Cover photograph by shutterstock.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 521 8

Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26–27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

1

“Look, I understand the anger,” says Jacob Keenan, and in the van’s dim, dirty light his face looks convincing. “I mean, who doesn’t? You toured Afghanistan; you know. Mud huts and ignorance. When you’re born into that world, you might as well take the coward’s way out. Lot easier than dealing with hope, thinking that one day you’re going to get a color TV. And the mullahs, they know this. They have their special way of saying the same thing, over and over again, to a long line of teenaged no-hopers: If you’re gonna off yourself, then why not add a big pile of kafir to the body count? We’ll sing your praises and watch your martyrdom video while you, dear boy, are getting it three ways from Sunday with forty virgins in Paradise.” He straightens, then stretches his neck on each side, the way muscular men do. “Yeah, I get the anger. You’d have to be a numbskull not to. What I don’t get is why we don’t have more people on the ground, convincing them that they actually can get the color TV, once they’ve worked for us a bit. Save everybody a lot of hassle.”

“Maybe it’s not about the color TV,” I say.

Jake shoots me a look. “You’re kidding, right? If there’s one thing that unites all of humanity, it’s that we can be bought off. Walk into the Swat Valley with ten Wii consoles, and you’ve bought the loyalty of the first ten kids you meet. Probably even their dads. It’s always about the color TV.”

As he talks, I find myself wishing we had our phones. But Andy made it clear this morning: No phones. No embassy passes. No IDs of any sort. Only Sam’s allowed a driver’s license, and that’s under a different name. So for the past two hours Jake and I have been stuck in a humid van parked on tree-lined Carmo Square outside the Museu Arqueológico, Baixa neighborhood, empty-handed, nothing to distract us. With phones, we could play some games, read the Times, or catch up on correspondence. I’ve owed my kids an e-mail for at least a week. But no. I’m stuck with Jake Keenan’s anxious conversation instead. Always so quiet at the embassy, he’s turned out to be a talker once the lights go out. Operational anxiety does that to some.

He says, “They like you to think the only thing they care about is God, but that’s just not how humans are made.”

“Our literature,” I say, “is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.”

“What?” Jake’s eyes, just visible in the darkness, narrow.

I shake my head. “Nothing.”

“You a philosopher now?”

“It’s from Eliot.”

“From what?”

“T. S. The poet.”

As he struggles to understand, it strikes me that I don’t really know anything about Jacob Keenan, despite nearly a year working alongside him. He’s ex-marine CIA—unlike, say, Andy, who’s civilian CIA. The shared military background is why we get along, if this can be called getting along. With his right hand, he taps each of his fingers with his thumb, index to pinkie and then back again, rapidly. It’s the only blatant sign that he’s wound up, and I wonder, watching his mood shift, if he’s on something. I hope to hell not.