Free The Great Game by Michael Kurland Page A

nodded, and the Ferret handed him six well-greased cartridges from the paper-wrapped box and watched him leave. Three minutes later the Ferret extinguished the oil lamp and left himself, carefully locking the small door behind him.
     
    -
     
                  As the Ferret's footsteps faded away outside, there was a stirring from inside one of the small packing crates. The end popped off, and a man's feet appeared. Slowly the rest of the man emerged from the crate, a tall, lean man with a large, hawklike nose and piercing eyes. He stood and dusted himself off, then stretched and twisted his body in an effort to relieve the cramped tension that four hours crouching in a small box had given to his muscles.
     
                  "So," the man said, softly, "the game is afoot!" He let himself out the door with a key that was a duplicate of the one the Ferret had used, and then carefully locked the door behind him.
     

CHAPTER FIVE — LAKE COMO
     
    There is a time, we know not when,
    A point we know not where.
    That marks the destiny of men,
    For glory or despair.
    —Joseph Addison Alexander
     
                  The Villa Endorra stretched precariously along a steep hillside outside of Bellagio, overlooking Lake Como. Above and behind it a thick stand of pine forest cut off the view of all but the surrounding mountains, providing, as the joyously random English of the Italian guidebook put it, "a splendiferous emotion of isolation among the beatitudes of Italian harmonies without the necessitude of discommoding the tourist with the inconvenience of veritably being isolate."
     
                  Before and below the villa, a hundred feet down a vine-cluttered, rocky hillside, the blue waters of the lake reflected dappled April sunlight off its choppy surface; the azure near the shore quickly deepening to a somber dark blue as the bottom fell away to uncharted depths.
     
                  Benjamin Barnett ended his morning run at the lakeside of the villa and, panting heavily, leaned over the rail that separated the path from the hill to watch a trim white sloop beating across the lake. As he watched, it made a final tack that would bring it alongside the pier below. The blue-jacketed man at the boat's helm handled the wheel and sails with an agility and grace that spoke of years of practice.
     
                  "What are you watching, my love?" Cecily came across the garden and joined him at the rail. "Has a monster of the deeps suddenly surfaced?"
     
                  "It's that white sailboat," Barnett explained, putting his arm around her waist. The week they had been at the villa had been good for her, he thought. The pain was disappearing from her face. The spring air, the beautiful countryside, and even the continuing mystery of who was interested in them, and why, seemed to take her mind off the recent past, and the dreadful miscarriage that had so debilitated her.
     
                  "Oh." Cecily sounded disappointed. "I was so hoping for a monster of the deeps." She leaned over the rail and, shading her hazel eyes from the morning sun, peered down at the lake. "It certainly is a trim-looking craft. Is craft the right word? Boat people get so annoyed when you use the wrong word."
     
                  "Notice how she's being handled," Barnett said. "Yon gentleman in the blue jacket is doing the job of three men and making it look simple. I find it hard not to instantly dislike such a man."
     
                  Cecily slipped her arm through his. "You cannot do everything well," she said. "And those things you do well, you do very well indeed. I never knew you had a secret desire to be a master mariner."
     
                  "Nor did I until I watched the performance of our friend below."
     
                  A woman in a white dress emerged from the sloop's cabin, unfurled a red-trimmed