Back in June of 2013, Pro Se Press released my first spy novel, NOBODY DIES FOR FREE. This book was the result of the interest in spy stories I've had since I saw my first James Bond movie at the age of 7. The novel features my American intelligence agent Richard Monroe, who then went on to appear in the sequel, UNDER THE RADAR, which was published in May of 2015.
I'm pleased to announce that the third Richard Monroe novel, NEVER THINK TWICE, will be coming soon.
Today, for those who haven't read it and might be curious about Monroe, I'm posting here, free to read, the first chapter of the original Monroe book, NOBODY DIES FOR FREE.I hope you enjoy it. If you'd like to know what happens to Monroe next, links to order the book, which is available in print, Kindle, and audio book editions, are at the end of the chapter.
NOBODY
DIES FOR FREE
Chapter 1: The Cradle
or the Grave
Richard Monroe
had invested his entire soul in one woman, and then she died. It was as simple
as that.
Her blood ran out through his
fingers, the last product of her slowing heartbeat, and Monroe knew that it was
too much red, far too fast, for his hand to contain and save her. It spilled
out and stained the street outside the Paris Opera where, only seconds earlier,
they had been joking about the Phantom as they waited their turn to enter.
At that moment, Monroe did not care
where the bullet had come from, why it had struck, or what the gathering crowd
of policemen and gawkers were shouting. He cared only that he was about to lose
her, and five years suddenly seemed shorter than the blink of an eye.
He whispered her name one last time
as her soft brown eyes closed.
“Genevieve.”
And she was gone. Richard Monroe
held her until the police dragged him away from the body, but already he was
alone.
Six months later, the CIA seemed a
world away, a different lifetime for Monroe. The week after the shooting had
gone by in a mostly emotionless blur as Monroe had gone through the necessary
motions: identification of the body, burial arrangements, and notification of
Genevieve’s few scattered relatives. Then he saw to the distribution of their
money, most of which had come from her inheritance, into various accounts tied
to various banks in various nations. Finally, he put down onto paper his
official resignation from the agency that had stationed him in Paris five years
earlier. When Genevieve was gone, Richard Monroe severed all ties to his old
life, abandoned everything he had planned for the future, and erased himself
from the eyes of those who had known him in the years before the shot outside
the opera hall.
Genevieve had softened him; he was
fully aware of that. With her by his side, he had shifted from a life of
movement, change, upheaval, and violence to one of tranquility, happiness, music,
fine food and high style.
But she was gone and now the
softness of proper civilization had to go away, too. Monroe sharpened himself
again, let the cultured, educated façade slip away into the night and hardened
into something like what he had been before her, but perhaps worse. He set into
motion a metamorphosis that would have made him unrecognizable to his friends,
if he had any left who might happen to see him in the dark places he now traveled.
He stopped shaving and let his hair
grow until he took on a grizzled appearance and his hair became a semi-hippie
mop. He discarded his perfectly tailored suits and took to wearing clothes that
put him just one level above a bum. He became the sort of man who nobody looked
at twice, who nobody would want to look at twice. Easier to blend in that way.
His face went from the younger side of thirty-nine to the ragged wilderness of
the far side of fifty. He made the changes in Paris while crashing in a small rented
room all the way across the city from the spacious home he had shared with
Genevieve. When he was satisfied with his transformation, he put it to the
test.
Monroe shuffled into the bank where
he had been a frequent customer, his height disguised with a slouch, his face
peering out from the jungle of his beard, his movements cautious and without
his traditional smooth confidence. He roamed into the bank and stood less than
six feet from the bank manager, who knew him very well, and stared the man down,
glad to see not a sliver of recognition cross the French moneylender’s face.
Having satisfactorily melted from
the face of the Earth, Richard Monroe began the hunt. He had no personal
computer now, having abandoned it along with his house, car, and suits. He went
into an internet café in one of the rougher corners of Paris and hacked his way
into the United States Federal computer system. The US government has over a
dozen levels of classified files and Monroe knew how to get into all but the
highest of them. He had five minutes in there and began to check statuses and
memorize the contents of the secret sites. In minutes though, the intrusion was
detected and the visit shut down. No matter. He left the place.
He hit two more pay by the hour
computers in Paris and then moved on to Nice, travelling by train and sometimes
by bus. Lyon and Toulouse were next, and then back to Paris, followed by a
quick side trip to Marseille. He avoided hitting the cities or their internet cafés
in any sort of logical pattern; his travels were now as random as his hair. He
did not confine his jumps to Paris either, but made it into Belgium once or
twice, then Portugal, and finally all the way over to Sofia, Bulgaria. All the
while, he memorized names and faces and the details of those to whom the faces
belonged. He knew that there were a limited number of men in the world capable
of setting up, taking a shot like the one that had stolen Genevieve away from
him, and then fading into the night almost before their presence was realized.
What Monroe needed to do was figure out which one of those men had been in the
right place at the right time to have been the one who destroyed his life.
He had lost count of how many times
he had hacked into those files for a minute here and ten minutes there and
sometimes as little as thirty seconds before being detected and tossed like a
drunk who just pissed off the bouncer. But finally, late one night in Sofia,
Richard Monroe struck gold and his blood felt like ice as he saw the face of the
man who had indeed been in that place at that time. He would no longer need to
go to those classified sites. He would not need to print any documents. That
face, that name, that dossier were burned into his memory as if branded with a
white-hot iron.
His name was Baltasar al-Hamsi.
A former Syrian intelligence man now gone freelance, al-Hamsi was a killer, and
a good one. He would shoot anyone for the right price and had never come close
to being caught. It was only due to a few small leaks in the chain of darkness
that binds together men in al-Hamsi’s profession that the CIA and DHS had any
idea who he was. In any case, they had never had sufficient evidence or reason
to go after him, to finish him. He was simply on a handful of watch-lists.
Those lists had failed to keep Genevieve safe.
Monroe had no idea who might have
hired al-Hamsi, for he had spat in the faces of many nations in his CIA career,
but he knew who had pulled the trigger and, for now, that was something. And
what was more, the CIA, at that moment, according to the information Monroe had
just stolen, knew where the son of a bitch was. Richard Monroe would have to go
to Istanbul.
Turkey was hot as Hell and Monroe
was sorely tempted to shave off the beard; it made him itch terribly, but he
resisted. He had to keep looking like a man who nobody wanted to look at twice,
had to blend in. It was no problem locating Baltasar al-Hamsi. Monroe, despite
his ragged appearance, still had a nice chunk of money in his possession and
buying information was easier and easier the further east one went. The Syrian
sniper was apparently taking a break between jobs. He had done one a month
earlier, although the provider of the information did not know who the target
was and the CIA’s files had not made mention of the job, either. But that was
nothing new; it had not made the connection between al-Hamsi’s sights and
Genevieve. But al-Hamsi had certainly been in Paris that evening and left on
the next flight available after Monroe had desperately tried to keep his wife’s
blood in her veins. That was proof enough.
After the information was in
Monroe’s mind—al-Hamsi’s address in Istanbul, his favorite café, the brothel he
frequented—Monroe spent a bit more of his vengeance fund. He found a dealer of
antiquities, medieval in specialty, and he purchased a misericorde. This was
the instrument of the final death-thrust for warriors of the Middle Ages, a
long, thin blade easily concealed—such as up a sleeve—with a narrow point that
could quickly and quietly be slipped right between the ribs to pierce the heart
and stop it cold with a minimum of noisy fuss. While Monroe had often
entertained the thought of taking al-Hamsi somewhere secluded and giving him a
lifetime’s worth of pain before putting him down, it was not his style. Not after
Genevieve any more than it would have been before she had softened him. He was
willing to stoop to being a beast to end her killer’s life, but he would not
become a complete animal. He had to hang on to some part of Richard Monroe. If
he did not, he would be as dead as Genevieve, and she would not have wanted
that.
It was after midnight on Monroe’s
fifth day in Turkey when he caught al-Hamsi’s scent. The Syrian had gone for a
woman, spent almost three hours in his preferred whorehouse, and finally
wandered back onto the streets looking exhausted but content. Good, Monroe
thought, a tired target goes down easier.
Al-Hamsi would take the subway home
and Monroe followed him into the tunnel, boarded the same car, and sat five
seats away from him. They were the only two men in the car. They were alone,
and yet al-Hamsi glanced only once at the bearded, bedraggled stranger.
Monroe got up, shambled over to al-Hamsi,
doing his best to feign slight inebriation, and finally swayed back and forth
for a moment in front of the assassin.
Al-Hamsi mumbled something in
Turkish. When the ragged man showed no clue, he tried Arabic but still got
nothing. French came out next and Monroe understood but did not show it.
Finally, the irritated Syrian let English fly out.
“Fuck off, you stupid asshole! I
have no money for beggars!”
At those words, Monroe unfurled his
hand and let something slip from his grasp and fall like a leaf into the lap of
Baltasar al-Hamsi. The seated Syrian looked down and saw the photograph settle
gently into his lap. It was a picture of a woman, the head and shoulders of a
stunning brunette with a joyous twinkle in her eyes.
Recognition came to al-Hamsi like
sudden thunder, putting the fear of all gods into him as he understood what was
happening and what the ragged man wanted with him. He went for his gun. It was
too late.
The arm that tried to get the gun
from the belt left an open space, just a few inches, between the elbow and the
side of the body. Monroe leaned forward, thrust the misericorde in, felt the
slight scrape against the bars of the ribcage, and watched Baltasar al-Hamsi
cease to exist.
Monroe did not smile, did not
display any emotion whatsoever. He pulled the thin blade out of the dead man’s
body and wiped al-Hamsi’s blood onto the subway seat. The misericorde went back
into Monroe’s sleeve where it would stay until he let himself think normally
again and could decide whether to get rid of it, perhaps in some river
somewhere, or keep it as a souvenir of the mission that had meant the most to
him of all his assignments over his many years in and out of the business of
secret lives and secret death.
Monroe made it out of the subway at
the next stop. He walked out casually and roamed in random circles around many
streets before taking a room at a small, cheap inn. He fell into bed at
one-thirty in the morning and slept better than he had in months, better than
he had since the last time he could feel the warmth of Genevieve’s body beside
him in the darkness.
He rolled out of bed when the light
of the sun came through the window. He stepped into his shoes, having slept in
the rest of his clothes, and sauntered out onto the streets just as the imams
were calling out for morning prayers. Coffee was needed, the Turkish kind,
strong and bitter and all-powerful. He glanced around for a café and caught the
scent of one. At that moment, he thought of Genevieve and it hit him hard that
finally justice had been done and she was avenged. He allowed himself to smile
and, just for an instant, his automatic guard dropped, his years of training
lost to sentimentality and satisfaction. That instant was all it took. He was
grabbed, counted four strong hands taking him all at the same time, smelled
cheap aftershave, and felt a heavy blow to the back of the head, and that was
all.
His head still throbbed when he woke
up in the Turkish prison. He cursed in his mind. Had he been on camera in the
subway? Where had he slipped up? He was screwed now, and he knew it. Turkish
prisons were the worst, and murder counted for, at the very least, life inside
the walls. He found himself hoping for execution and wondered—and religion was
not a frequent subject in his mind—if he might possibly find Genevieve in the
afterlife.
His death hopes were short-lived. A
key rattled in the cell door and a small Turkish man in a tan suit waltzed in.
The mouth opened and smooth English poured out.
“I am the warden here and I want you
to leave my prison immediately.”
He tossed an envelope onto the floor
in front of the slab Monroe had slept on.
“In there,” the warden said, “is the
money my men found on you, as well as two tickets for an airplane trip and a
new passport bearing your real name, Mr. Monroe. You will leave here and go to
a hotel where you will make yourself not stink so much. You will purchase new
clothing. You will go to the airport and board a flight to Chicago in the
United States. When you land there, you will get on a bus, one of those Gray
Dog buses that are so famous in your country, and you will ride to the small
town of Cradle, located in the state of Wisconsin. If you do not go to Cradle,
then you will be sent to your grave.”
Monroe almost laughed at the
warden’s unintended abuse of an old expression, but he refrained and let the last
words come from the small Turk’s lips.
“Do these things now. Get out of my
jail!”
***
NOBODY DIES FOR FREE can be found on Amazon in
