Free The Dead Yard by Adrian McKinty

problem. I think, if you recall, I warned you not to go

abroad."
    "I needed a vacation."
    "Try Disney World next time."
    "You wouldn’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like to be in my shoes with a bloody

contract on your head," I said.
    He rolled his eyes.
    "As to that—" Dan began, but before he could continue Samantha popped her head round the

door.
    "Is everything going all right?" she asked. "We really have to get back to business, Michael,

time is of the essence."
    "Everything’s not going all right, actually, Samantha. Dan is refusing to help me get out of

this bloody Faustian bargain."
    Dan looked at me cross-eyed, knowing that he should have gotten the reference but he just

wasn’t quite smart enough to remember it. Dan would be the guy on
Jeopardy
who wouldn’t

get to play the final game because he had a negative score. Samantha, though, considered it an

insult, for if I were Faust she was Satan. She stepped completely into the room. She was wearing

a fetching yellow sundress that was see-through from certain angles.
    "We have a deal. Don’t make me cross this early in the day," Samantha said.
    "Why don’t you come over here and tell me that," I said with mock aggression that she took to

be real. Samantha was not one to be bullied. She thought stabbing me in the foot had already

established that but clearly she had to do more. She walked right up to me and stared. All five

foot six of her glaring at me. I moved back a little and sat on the edge of the table. The angle

was now perfect and I could see the outline of her breasts. I don’t know if it was an English

thing or the humidity but whatever the explanation Samantha sometimes did not wear a bra. Her

breasts were pale, very large, and inviting. And there was no getting around the fact that she

was an attractive woman. A beautiful face, seductive, heavy-lidded eyes, a cleavage that would

have fitted snugly in the court of Louis Quatorze. Even Dan was impressed and had to look away, a

big grin spilling over the edges of his face.
    "You are not getting out of this, Michael. The FBI and the United States government are fully

on board. The only way you’ll get out of it is if I say that your services are no longer

required," Samantha said, those eyes flashing imperiously, the voice that of Thatcher about to

invade the Falklands.
    "Or I get killed," I muttered.
    "Quite," she said, indifferently, and the coldness in her face repelled and aroused me in

confusing ways.
    "Well, comforting as always. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to talk to Dan alone, please,"

I demanded, flitting between an urge to either throw the scalding coffee at her and push her out

the window or squeeze her bum.
    Samantha said nothing, nodded to Dan, and exited the room, closing the door gently behind

her.
    "I like her," Dan said. "They say she sleeps with her agents. Jeremy told me something about a

Stasi colonel."
    "Is that so?"
    "Apparently. Word of advice. Don’t do it. It’s not good for anybody. Get emotionally involved

and all that."
    "Aye, that would be terrible, if she got overly concerned about me getting topped."
    "You’re not going to get killed."
    I stood up, walked around the room, and gazed through the window at the godforsaken flatlands

of Queens Boulevard. Manhattan was a distant dream. Out of the question with all the goons and

exgoons that I knew. I sipped some more of the rancid coffee and sat down again.
    "Please, Dan, as a friend," I said as a jet on its way to La Guardia shook the building. Dan

groaned and closed his eyes.
    "Michael, all this is bigger than you or me. If those idiots up in Massachusetts manage to

blow up a British consulate or kill an ambassador or something it will jeopardize the entire

peace process in Northern Ireland. With things screwing up in the Middle East, with the president

stuck with an angry Congress, rumors about his sexual activities, basically, apart