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137 pages

English

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Jimmy Vanesco's trade is tracing missing persons - husbands, mobile debtors, rich kids with itchy feet. When he flies back into New York from a successful trace, he finds a message for him to call a high-powered lawyer with Mafia connections. When he finds the same insistent messages at his office, in his apartment and on his answering service, it seems a good idea to go and see the man: and to take a gun.The job Vanesco is offered is to trade six men who have been missing for 11 years. When he discovers, using inside contacts, that the FBI files have been removed within the last 72 hours, the dimensions of the contract begin to dawn on him.The search will take him halfway round the globe and back into the past of America. Back into shrouded identities of the dead, back to one ugly moment that is etched ineradicably in the memory of the world - the assassination of President John F Kennedy.

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Publié par	eBook Versions
Date de parution	18 novembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781843962397
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0180€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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THE MEN
WITH
THE GUNS

GF Newman
This ebook edition
first published 2013 by
One-Eyed Dog Books
Cherry Hill House
Brockweir
Gloucestershire NP16 7PH

email
admin@one-eyed-dog.co.uk

Author s website
www.gfnewman.com

Copyright © 2013 G F Newman

G F Newman has asserted his right
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 to be identified as the
author of this work.

ISBN-13 978-1-84396-239-7

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

ePub ebook production
www.ebookversions.com

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or
introduced into a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form
or by any means electronic,
photomechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without
the prior written permission
of the publisher. Any person who
does any unauthorised act in
relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution.
Contents

Title Page
Copyright Credits

BOOK ONE
Prolog
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11

BOOK TWO
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23

BOOK THREE
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30

Epilog
BOOK ONE

Remember, that despite your
optimism, inside you are wailing.
Prolog

Tension had clamped his neck and shoulders like a vise, locking in a lot of pain. He considered taking another pill, but had been using a lot as if they were they answer to what he carried around. How many pills would be needed to remove the cause of this tension? The whole damned bottle. Maybe that was the answer.
Colonel Alan Parker stood at the top of the wide stairs and listened to the stillness through the house. He was alone, having lived that way for ten years, ever since his sister died. That had been at Fort Worth; this was Fort Lauderdale. He was used to being on his own and was never scared, but he had had confirmed the rumor about the man who was to become America s first ambassador to China in 25 years. This would frighten a lot of people.
The lower part of the house was so still and quiet it was eerie. The cause of his unease was more a feeling than any particular noise which had disturbed him, Parker realized as he reached round and massaged the locked muscles of his neck, trying to release the tension. He wondered about venturing downstairs. This was crazy. No was one down there.
Despite wanting to believe that, the creepy feeling he had stayed put.
Take a couple more pills, an inner voice urged, get some sleep. If there was an intruder it would be a burglar, so let the insurance company take care of the problem.
Colonel Parker knew the notion of it being a burglar was fanciful. His philosophy told him there was no such thing as coincidence, instead there was cause and effect. He believed he now represented a present danger to that man going to China.
Take some pills, everything ll be fine...
Okay, I ve called the police. They ll get here anytime. His voice quaked.
Parker trembled and rubbed his hands across his face, trying to get control of himself. His palms were sweating and he felt chilled. Spring evenings in Florida could get cold enough for frost, but the house was warm. This reaction was insane, he told himself, as he wiped his hands on his silk robe. The house was safe against burglars, the insurance company had insisted on that, living as he did in a neighborhood which attracted such trash. If someone had beaten his alarms then he could take care of it, having handled more threatening situations when running his own oil business in Texas and later working for Exxon, who had bought him out. Sure, he was no longer a young man, nor as foolhardy as he had been in his army days, but he could take care of a burglar.
This resolve was shredded by the knowledge that if it were someone in the house it would be no one as ordinary as common burglar.
Then he remembered the Luigi Franchi double twelve-gauge shotguns with the Purdy locks he had had tailored in London and had used to shoot grouse with some success in Scotland back in August. The guns were in their cabinet in the study. Get one, load it, check the house, every room, every closet, and make sure there was no intruder and so end this nonsense.
Starting down the stairs, a sound he heard caused him to go rigid: it was like someone breathing inside an iron lung. When he realized it was his own breathing the knowledge seemed to accentuate rather than relieve his fear.
The study door was open. He ran across the wide hall and went in, throwing on the light, looking neither left nor right as he headed to the cabinet, wrenched it open and seized one of the shotguns. His hands shook when he pushed the shells into the breach.
Prickles of apprehension ran along his spine as he sensed movement to his left. Whipping round, he brought up the shotgun, finger against the first trigger. Drapes stirred in the gentle breeze and he noticed the door to the terrace was open. His breathing eased and his heartbeat began to slow. A lamp was overturned on the table and he decided its falling must have woken him, the breeze through the window having upset it. This line of reasoning was by the moment making him calmer. He considered the open window. Having walked around the pool after dinner and having entered the house via the terrace door, he now accepted that he might have been too preoccupied to notice he had left the door open.
He shut the door and set the locks. Yet still he searched the house with great care, taking the loaded shotgun. There was no one on the first floor. He switched out the lights and climbed the stairs, feeling more confident. He went through the spare bedrooms and bathrooms, but found no one.
When he returned to his bedroom, he felt both a sense of relief and a might foolish for reacting as he had. He leaned the shotgun against the bedroom wall and went into the bathroom for another pill to sleep and blot out his fears. There was nothing he could do about the cause right then. Maybe he should have gone to live in Europe, only was afraid it was being overrun by communists. At one time he figured the would-be ambassador to China had the answers. He remembered the men who had been brought to his ranch at Big Springs, their training and the persistent brainwashing, remembered also the people who had called out to see them, all unshakable in their belief that what they were doing was right. Each with that same unmistakable look about them, coldness in the eyes, faces which revealed no kind of emotion. Remembering such things disturbed Colonel Parker further. History would always remember that morning of their departure and what followed and, like Parker, many would sooner forget it, if for different reasons. Since that time he had made no move to discover any additional information. Rather he had tried to forget. He wanted to believe the man who had set it up had forgotten all about his involvement, but his sister s death had never been explained to his satisfaction, or soon after the deaths of the husband and wife who had worked for him at the ranch. Why had the man waited this long to get to him? Maybe he should run, get far away from his sphere of influence. Tomorrow he would decide.
Swallowing the valium, Parker pushed the bathroom cabinet shut when his heart missed a beat. The mirror revealed a man in the doorway between the bathroom and the bedroom, his own elegant shotgun held in the intruder s gloved hands.
Parker swung around, unable to speak, his jaw making spastic movements as a choking sound struggled from his throat.
The intruder beckoned Parker forward and he found himself responding. When close enough the unsmiling intruder tipped the muzzle of the shotgun up against the slack flesh on his neck and Parker made no move to resist.
I have money, he managed to whisper.
The intruder nodded, his face remaining expressionless as if set in plaster until without warning his top teeth dropped over his bottom lip in a joyless smile.
Parker s tension eased, believing now that the two thousand dollars he had in the house would buy him out of this nightmare.

Seeing the sudden resignation in the old soldier, he let the butt of the shotgun drop, while keeping the muzzle against his neck, estimating the correct angle before squeezing the trigger. The explosion was a muffled thump that blew the old man against the washbasin before he crashed to the floor.
He placed the shotgun in Parker s fingers, the barrels turned toward him, like this had been his answer. He didn t leave the gun in that position as no suicide would be left holding it like that after such recoil. Knowing ballistic science as well as he did he could work out just where the gun might have finished, and then placed it there. He checked his black jacket for blood. It was difficult to tell if there was any in artificial light. Reaching for some Kleenex, he wiped it across his coat. Flecks of blood had hit him, but most of the mess had blown away from him. He kept the tissue rather than flushing it. Blood was splattered on the lavatory and had he flushed it a smart cop might have worked out that someone had been here after Parker s death.
The phone startled him on reaching the bottom of the stairs, the bell shrieking in the darkness. The only possible danger this signaled was that a neighbor had heard the explosion and might call the cops if there was no reply. There were no lights burning at the house to the left of Parker s. The one to the right was farther away, perhaps a hundred yards with a lot of shrubbery in between. Lights showed there. The phone stopped. He waited now. If the call was from a worried neighbor, he reasoned,