Hugendubel.info - Die B2B Online-Buchhandlung 

Merkliste
Die Merkliste ist leer.
Bitte warten - die Druckansicht der Seite wird vorbereitet.
Der Druckdialog öffnet sich, sobald die Seite vollständig geladen wurde.
Sollte die Druckvorschau unvollständig sein, bitte schliessen und "Erneut drucken" wählen.

People on the Edge

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
336 Seiten
Englisch
novum pro Verlagerschienen am15.06.2022
Entanglement with Nadia, a beautiful, half-Arab, multi-lingual Italian girl leads Dale Connors' curiosity back over the previous fifty years as he uncovers an historical motive for a devilish terrorist plot in Libya. As sanctions against Libya are lifted he reluctantly leads a race against time to prevent a disaster as he and a young team from three of Europe's secret service agencies put together the pieces of a puzzle that stretches to Egypt, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. A tantalising and thoughtful thriller, built around real people doing real jobs. 'People on the Edge' twists its way to a fast-paced, unexpected finale.mehr
Verfügbare Formate
BuchKartoniert, Paperback
EUR18,40
E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
EUR15,99

Produkt

KlappentextEntanglement with Nadia, a beautiful, half-Arab, multi-lingual Italian girl leads Dale Connors' curiosity back over the previous fifty years as he uncovers an historical motive for a devilish terrorist plot in Libya. As sanctions against Libya are lifted he reluctantly leads a race against time to prevent a disaster as he and a young team from three of Europe's secret service agencies put together the pieces of a puzzle that stretches to Egypt, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. A tantalising and thoughtful thriller, built around real people doing real jobs. 'People on the Edge' twists its way to a fast-paced, unexpected finale.
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9783991311126
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Erscheinungsjahr2022
Erscheinungsdatum15.06.2022
Seiten336 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Dateigrösse1379 Kbytes
Artikel-Nr.9565208
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe



Prologue

Five and a half weeks had passed and Raya knew something was wrong. Sunlight streamed through the inadequate curtains, billowing slightly in the breeze and she desperately wanted to jump out of bed and wrench them aside. She yearned to throw open the apartment window and gulp in the fresh early morning air before the traffic in the almost touchable street below stirred up its daily dose of acrid pollution; but something seemed to be holding her down, like a great hand on her body, and so she lay timorously inert, unable, or maybe not daring to move until the feeling in her stomach subsided. She had experienced this yesterday and almost convinced herself that the feeling was simply caused by tiredness and too much lonely, late night red wine, but in the end, she had had to sprint to the bathroom where she had very inelegantly succumbed to the demands of what was politely called morning sickness. Would it be the same today? She hoped not but suspected gloomily that it might.

She chose not to think of the future. That could wait a few minutes longer, at least. Instead, she allowed her mind to phase backwards to happier times, as if the mere thought of the past would undo what she dreaded might be happening to her. Memories flooded into her brain as she recalled her first sight of Gerald at London airport when she had landed. He had been the same tall, smiling, lean faced, well-dressed professional she held in her mind s eye, with his windswept straw-coloured hair flopping seductively over one eye. Looking relaxed and sophisticated in his own surroundings, he was completely in his element as the immigration and customs officers rushed around to process his young VIP guest. She had been treated like royalty, in a quiet office very separate from the madding hoards who were queuing up in their hundreds to push to the front of the impossibly long others line in the terminal building.

Gerald had arrived first after his three-year tour of duty in the Libyan deserts and had managed to pull some long strings in the British Embassy to help her visa application along. She had been nervously impatient, waiting for the process to be completed but then pleasantly surprised that the forebodings of her sister Hasna, about the British propensity for refusing entry to unmarried young women from unusual countries, had proven unfounded. She had simply done as Gerald requested and paid in advance for a run of the mill language school course. Then, waving the receipt at the embassy visa desk all manner of normally closed doors had been magically opened. She knew that Gerald had orchestrated this, and she would be forever grateful to him for that.

Raya now spent her daytime hours happily studying while Gerald went about his mysterious foreign office business. Occasionally, he travelled, often for days on end. She had no idea where, although his capability in Arabic, Italian, French and Swahili probably gave her an indication. Mostly, he stayed at her apartment in Earls Court, after all, he had paid for it, but he apparently still kept his own apartment elsewhere in London. She did not know why, and she had never been invited to visit him there. When she asked to see it, he politely demurred, citing vague national security reasons. Her upbringing had taught her not to question government officials too much and so she had pushed this to the back of her mind. There were more urgent and exciting things to entertain her thoughts.

Their nights together were the times she looked forward to most. She realised that inventiveness came second nature to her, and they rarely spent more than a few hours asleep before luxuriating again in intimacy. Every surface in every room in their tiny apartment had its own special memories and she pondered these when Gerald was away, like now. Raya found that she pined for his touch to such an extent that she seriously wondered whether she was simply addicted to sex. This idea of physical pleasure went against her childhood education so much that the thought had at first startled her, but her newly improved English and her ventures into the London libraries had calmed her concerns. She concluded that she was normal after all. Her research proved illuminating and she became an avid devourer of all things to do with erotic arts; so much so that she doubled the number of borrower s tickets she held and set herself the challenge of educating her ever-willing Gerald.

The past few months since she had arrived in London had been a whirl of dazzling nightlife, from the London theatres to curious restaurants and weekend breaks in the country. She had visited his parents country estate twice but had never actually stayed there. For some reason she had not been able to fathom why, they had always moved on before nightfall and found some delightful out-of-the-way village inn with splendid food and a huge four-poster bed; but she was deliriously happy and saw no negative motives in anything her handsome lover might do.

As she lay there in the brightening daylight, her attention refocused on the second visit to his family s estate. She had met his father then and the memory still made her shudder a little. Gerald had introduced her as a friend, rather than a girlfriend, but otherwise, there was nothing specific she could put her finger on. However, she recalled his cold looks and the limited conversation that had taken place, and it had scared her. Gerald had dismissed her concerns as being nervousness on her part, but in her heart she knew there was something wrong. Like today, she thought, there s something wrong; and as if to prove the point she threw off the quilt and sat up quickly. Immediately she felt the urge to be sick and only just managed to reach the bathroom in time. After a few minutes to recover she managed to crawl back to bed, and into a safe horizontal position.

Gerald was due back that evening and she thought back carefully, to the crazy time they had had in Paris only a few weeks ago. That had been another display of family influence, in getting her a tourist visa at almost no notice, but that wasn t the thought that occupied her at that moment. She realised that, of late they had become casual and lazy about contraception and had been taking ever more risks. It had become an exciting game to see how long they could engage in erotic play without actually reaching an orgasm. She realised too, that it was almost certainly her own pushing that had prompted this change in behaviour and her thoughts began to turn more towards regret. She wondered if another change of pace was needed although every erogenous zone her body argued for more, not less. She had no wish to disrupt their idyllic lifestyle and had fond hopes that one day soon they might be able to make their relationship legal, although she dreaded the obstacles that her family would raise to block her way, so she decided that some sort of plan was necessary. Firstly, she needed to be sure of her condition; no point in worrying unduly, she thought. Her stomach seemed to be behaving at last, so she forced her thoughts towards nearby pharmacies and looked up the English words related to pregnancy tests in her dictionary.

On the other side of London, Gerald was on a high. He had just completed a difficult negotiation to open the way for an exclusive oil deal in the Middle East for British companies. He regretted the fact that his recent three-year tour of duty in North Africa had not been as fruitful, during which he had been amazed at how little could be achieved when policy outranked money as the official language between governments. He was in a taxi from the airport and looking forward to seeing Raya. It had been nearly two weeks since they had been together, and he smiled in anticipation at the thought of their imminent reunion. Their parting was still burned into his brain, coming as it had a few days after their wonderful Paris holiday. It had been an emotional, if not completely exhausting occasion and he mentally urged the chattering cockney in front to drive faster.

He closed his eyes, and his near photographic memory captured her image and subconsciously catalogued his thoughts. Beautiful (of course, he thought), twenty-two years old, tall, slim, with an oval face, olive skin, and long, long black hair. How he loved the feel of that hair, and she knew exactly what to do with it too. He relaxed into the grinding cab and daydreamed his way back to her apartment. Memories of the tiny hotel with the huge bed near the Louvre, the cafés where water was more expensive than wine, and the romantic river trips all flooded back. He had been surprised, and pleased that Raya had taken such an interest in the Crazy Horse show, as if she was trying to see whether there was anything to be learnt. It certainly seemed there had been, as he found out late that evening back in the hotel. They had finally fallen asleep at eight o clock the next morning before a wake-up call for the airport taxi dragged them back to reality two hours later. Happy days, he thought.

Gerald climbed the stairs eagerly to their second-floor apartment and pulled out his keys. He made a display of rattling and banging them against the lock, while he deliberately fumbled his way into the slot. Finally, he pushed open the door in the full expectation of having Raya fling her arms around his neck, shrieking joyously as she normally did when she heard him at the door; but she did not throw her arms around his neck, and there was no shriek, no sound at all. In fact, she wasn t there.

He looked around the two small rooms quickly, searched...

mehr