Free THE PERFECT KILL by A. J. Quinnell

Gleneagles, with her friends. That policeman, Mario, was trying to chat her up. You know Mario, don’t you?…The tall one, good-looking with the black moustache.”
    Joey grunted, picked up the empty wine jug and went through into the kitchen.
    Paul laughed softly.
    “If I’d said that, he’d have gone off in a sulk for days.”
    “She is a fine girl, Paul, and from a good family. The trouble with Joey is that he keeps thinking of the coming summer and dancing with the blonde tourist girls in the discos.”
    The farmer nodded.
    “You’re right. We hardly see him in July and August and Maria’s father won’t let her out after ten o’clock at night. Any suggestions?”
    Creasy thought for a while and then said, “That old ruined farmhouse down the edge of your land, the one your uncle used to have, tell Joey to start fixing it up…He’s good with stone and like me, he enjoys working with his hands. Tell him you’re thinking of selling it. Prices for old farmhouses are shooting up, with foreigners buying them. Once it’s fixed up, you’ll get thirty thousand or more for it. I’ll come and help him. It’ll be like the old days when he and I used to work together, rebuilding the rubble walls on this farm.”
    The farmer smiled back.
    “And then he thinks about a family.”
    The American nodded and said quietly, “Paul, it’s time that you and Laura had grandchildren again.”
    After Creasy had left with Joey, to have a drink at Gleneagles, Laura walked out onto the patio, sat down with her husband and had her first glass of wine.
    “She’s a good cook, Paul.”
    The farmer glanced at her with an enquiring look.
    Laura said, “Normally, he’d have eaten twice as much. She’s been feeding him well”
    “I suppose that’s something,” the farmer said.
    “Yes,” Laura said firmly. “That is something.”

Chapter 10
    He did not look like a ruthless leader of a highly successful terrorist unit. He looked more like a successful salesman or an upmarket con man.
    Ahmed Jibril sat in his well furnished, massively defended office in the heart of Damascus. He was small, plump and sleek, and dressed in neat grey trousers, a double-breasted blue blazer with silver buttons, a cream shirt and a maroon tie. He had been born in 1937 in the village of Yazur, near Jaffa, in the then state of Palestine. His whole life had been devoted to returning to that village in the new state of Israel. At nineteen, he joined the Syrian Army and, with his driving ambition and determination, rapidly rose through the ranks to become Captain in the Engineering Corps. Perhaps not coincidentally, he was obsessed with explosives, and became a demolition expert.
    During the mid-nineteen sixties, when Syria began to mount incursions into Israel, they sponsored the formation of several terrorist organisations. Many Palestinian officers in the Syrian Army were assigned to them, including Ahmed Jibril. For a while, he spent time with George Habash in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, but later he broke away to form his own group, which he called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command. By now he had a wife called Samira, who became head of the group’s women’s committee. They had two sons, Jihab and Khaled, who held senior positions in the organisation.
    With strong financial backing from Syria and others, Jibril quickly built up a reputation for spectacular action. PFLP-GC became the best trained terrorist group in the Middle East and the most highly motivated.
    It was responsible for the bombing of Swissair Flight 330, en route from Zurich to Tel-Aviv. They were also able to plant a bomb on an Austrian Airline flight from Frankfurt to Vienna, but the pilot made an emergency landing. The bombing of civilian aircraft in flight became Ahmed Jibril’s trademark. In 1986, he proudly informed a press conference that there would be no safety for any traveller on US or Israeli airlines.
    During the