Free Killer Elite (previously published as the Feather Men) by Ranulph Fiennes Page B

lobster he had selected from the tank where the poor creatures waited to be boiled alive. He sat with his back to the steaming lobster vat. That way he could see the café entrance but not the tortured sea creatures. Their silent screams occurred at precisely the same time as those of Patrice Symins, by now in a state of solitary suspension. The lobsters, by contrast, had done nothing to deserve their torment.
    Over coffee and cognac the three members of the Clinic discussed business, their conversation drowned between the babble at the bar and the bargaining sessions at the
brocanteurs’
stores opposite the café. Meier, unlike the others, spoke French. He reported on the media’s treatment of the murder, or rather the conspicuous absence of such treatment.
    This did not please de Villiers.
    “Why the silence? This is just the sort of smut they adore to headline. All the right ingredients.” He shrugged. “Too bad; she has paid up regardless.”
    Meier, who had been ferreting, had partial answers.
    “The judge was involved with international rights in Mururoa Atoll five years ago. The French had burned their fingers with their nuclear tests. They maybe have some reason for a hush-up now.”
    Davies was more lively than de Villiers had seen him in years. The Paris job had suited his temperament, and de Villiers, having received the client’s full payment that morning, had already given both men their checks. Fifteen percent of the total payment of $450,000 would go to Tadnams, the agents, thirty-five percent to de Villiers, and the balance was split down the middle between theother two. The ten percent differential between his slice and theirs helped to reinforce his position as leader. He maintained these percentages for any job completed by the Clinic even when only two members were involved in the action.
    Meier, a naturally uncommunicative sort, came alive only when able to indulge his passion for technical innovation. He would, de Villiers knew, spend all his Paris money on advanced radio-controlled model aircraft kits and on whoring somewhere exotic.
    Davies would rush back to his pretty little wife in Cardiff laden with gifts and a fat check made payable to her interior-decorating business. Mrs. Davies, de Villiers suspected, was unfaithful to her husband during his long absences on sales tours, but realizing she might never find another man as blindly doting or as generous, she strung him along and depended on his paychecks to fill the voracious purse of her business. She had been born devoid of taste and stayed that way despite expensive courses at London’s Inchbold School of Design. Each decorating job that she obtained—and many came about through liberal application of her body to middle-aged bachelors who did not really want their penthouses redecorated—became a new glaring testament to her reputation for appalling judgment.
    One day, de Villiers feared, Davies would arrive home to find his missus wrapped around some poor yuppie whose flat she wished to face-lift. The results, he reflected, would not be a pretty sight, for when in a rage Davies did not respect the niceties of civilized life.
    Although there was very little de Villiers did not know about his colleagues, his own circumstances and background were forbidden topics that both men had long since learned never to broach. They trusted de Villiers simply because he had always, to the best of their knowledge, played fair with them. He trusted them because hetook the trouble to keep abreast of their problems and to know their limitations.
    In a world of deceit and back-stabbing, a profession where over ninety percent of practitioners work alone, the Clinic had managed to remain an effective and cohesive working group for four years. This was, of course, largely due to de Villiers’s personality, which was sincere and straightforward, giving the impression of a positive individual unlikely to suffer from anxiety or indecision. This stemmed from