James Patterson - Thriller - Stories to Keep You Up All Night

Cobb nodded. "That you did. But we have friends real high on the food chain. After all, this is a gold mine for the military, too. Nobody wants this gravy train to end. So they called us and, luckily, we were nearby."

"So you brought him back here and killed him."

"Good a place as any. His people ran like scalded dogs after you two drove off. I sent a few additional men to keep an eye on this place. So instead of driving south to the Afghan border, we just doubled around and came here. Over and done with it in two hours. His body burned fast."

Something else he wanted to know. "Why use real military-personnel names? We checked, there's a Colonel Rick Cobb."

The man shrugged. "Makes it easier to move around. Damn computers allow everybody to be monitored. We choose the guys on leave. Our friends at the Pentagon kept us informed. Like I said, can't let the gravy train end."

"Why would it?"

"Get real. You know the answer. Americans have short memories. They get blown up on 9/11, they invade a few places, kick some butt, then capture Saddam. Next thing they want is it all to end. Public opinion is already fading. Politicians are feeling the heat. That means budget cuts, priorities shifting-all bad things for my employers. Last thing they need is for bin Laden to be corralled. No. Keep him out there. Make him a threat. Let 'em wonder. Stalin did the same thing with Hitler after World War II. He knew the bastard was dead, but fueled everyone's fear that the devil may still be alive and kicking. All to keep his enemies off guard."

"So you now control bin Laden's existence."

"Every damn bit of it. And we plan on making him quite the badass."

"What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you. I have a message. My employers want you to stop snooping around. Leave it be." "Why would I?"

"'Cause you got squat to show for anything. What are you going to do? Claim you captured bin Laden? You'd sound like a nut. No body, no photo. There's nothing left of him for any DNA match with one of those twenty or so kids he supposedly fathered. It's over. Let it be. Move on."

"And if I don't?"

"We're not in the habit of killing our own, but we're not opposed to it either."

"You're no better than he was." He started to leave, but Cobb quickly blocked the way. "I'd move if I were you."

The gun came level. "You a tough guy, Malone?"

"Tough enough I don't need a rifle to protect myself from you."

He stood rock still. He wasn't going to let Cobb know for a second he was scared. But who wouldn't be? The dark end of a rifle barrel was not a pleasant sight.

Cobb lowered the gun.

Malone had guessed right. They wanted him alive. Who better to start the ball rolling than some American agent who claimed bin Laden surrendered to him and that there was some sort of conspiracy designed to conceal bin Laden's death. The military would deny the assertions and, in the process, supercharge the world's fear of bin Laden. He'd have nothing for proof and they'd have the terror of the past. Easy to see who'd win that battle.

"Go on, Malone. Get out of here. Go tell the world what you know."

Not a chance.

He slammed the heel of his boot into Cobb's right knee. The move clearly caught the man off guard. Maybe he'd thought him incapable? He heard bone break and he planted a fist into the jaw. Cobb cried out in agony as he crumpled to the ground, clutching his wounded leg. Malone lifted the rifle from the ground.

"I'll say it again. You're no better than he was. He killed for Allah. You do it for profit." "The…devil…got his due."

Malone slung the rifle out into the open air, beyond the crumbled wall, and left.

Malone zipped his suitcase shut and checked out of his hotel. Downstairs, he stepped out into the frigid evening and searched the crowded street for a taxi to the airport. One appeared and he quickly climbed into the back seat. The driver eased his way through stop-and-start traffic. Darkness came quickly this time of year to central Asia and night had enveloped the city by the time they stopped at the terminal. He handed the driver forty rubles and was about to leave when the man said in Russian, "Mr. Malone, my president has something for you."

He stared at the driver from the rear seat as the man handed him a brown envelope.

"He also said to wish you well."

Malone thanked the man and added another twenty rubles for his trouble. Sharma's reach was extensive, he'd give the man that. Through the envelope he felt the distinctive outline of a CD.

Inside the terminal he checked his bag, then, with his carry-on draped over his shoulder, headed for the gate. There, he opened the envelope and saw that it contained a disk, along with a note. He read the message, then inserted the CD into his laptop.

On the screen appeared a video. He watched while the phony colonel named Cobb shot Osama bin Laden. Then, with the help of the other paramilitary members, whose faces Malone recognized, Cobb burned the body. The screen went dark, then a new video began. This one featured him and Cobb hours earlier. Mal-one found his earphones and switched on the audio. The sound of their voices was excellent and their entire encounter, including Malone's assault, was recorded.

Then the screen went black.

He shook his head.

Yossef Sharma had been watching. Though he was the head of a nation that possessed no means of adequately protecting itself, the president was a clever man. He'd wanted the United States to have bin Laden because that's what bin Laden wanted. But that had not happened. So Sharma had delivered another gift. One that Malone would this time personally hold on to until the moment was right. A little legwork would be needed, but it shouldn't be hard to track down Cobb, his cohorts and their employers. After all, that was the Magellan Billet's specialty.

He read again the note that had been included with the disk.

MAKE SURE ALL THE DEVILS GET THEIR DUE. Damn right.

He stood and headed for his plane.

Katherine Neville's award-winning first novel, The Eight, is widely regarded as a cult classic, translated into thirty languages. That story begins at the dawn of the French Revolution when a fabulous, bejeweled chess set, once owned by Charlemagne but buried for a thousand years, is dug up by the nuns of a French abbey and scattered around the world to preserve its mysterious powers. The nonstop suspense moves from the 1790s of the French Revolution to the 1970s of the OPEC oil embargo. The plot itself is a giant chess game, and the characters are pieces and pawns.

When Neville began her long-anticipated sequel, she was glad that she could retrieve many fascinating historic figures, characters like Benjamin Franklin who, due to earlier schedule constraints, she'd had to limit to walk-on parts. But even despite the recent flurry of additional histories, biographies and films heralding Franklin's three hundredth birthday, Neville's research offered her a big surprise that, inexplicably, none of the experts appeared to have noticed. When it came to her character's well-documented, almost obsessive, penchant for creating or joining private clubs, here was an enigmatic gap in his life.

The Tuesday Club fills that void.

Franklin would not have been Franklin without a club, and his club in France was the Lodge of the Nine Sisters. -Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin

August 31, 1784, 7:00 a.m. Auteuil, France

today, the day of the crisis, was a Tuesday.

As always, thought Mme Helvetius with irony, things went more to the mark in French-non? For example, in French, the name Tuesday was mardi, Mars Day, the day of the god of war. And given the impending crisis, and the message she'd just received, any thought of Mars spelled more than it seemed- indeed, it could spell la calamite!