Critical Mass Read Online Free

people?” Cladstrup asked, looking over toward the cop who was still talking on the phone.
    â€œFirst I will prove to you that they mean business. And then we will discuss what you will do for me.”
    â€œWe’ll see.”
    â€œYou know they killed him because he was stupid. He threatened to go to the police unless they gave him more money. But the police couldn’t help him.”
    â€œSo he told you instead.”
    â€œWe were friends,” DuVerlie said. “I was supposed to be his insurance.”
    â€œRight,” Roningen said wearily. Already he was getting tired of the man, but Langley thought DuVerlie’s story was interesting enough for at least a preliminary follow-up. Depending on what they found or didn’t find in Lausanne, they would decide what to do next. But the Swiss engineering
firm built, among other things, electronic triggers for nuclear weapons.
    Â 
    Capretz had the presence of mind to grab his weapon from the desk before he rushed across to the van. Something was drastically wrong but he couldn’t put it together. The phone was out of order; no matter what number he dialed he was connected to a recording asking him to wait. And now this.
    Thumbing the Uzi’s safety to the off position he came around to the open door at the rear of the van. Léon was a couple of yards off to his right.
    Gallimard was down and not moving inside the van. Something was definitely wrong. “Eugène,” Capretz called out. He didn’t know what to do.
    â€œSomething happened to him and he just collapsed,” Léon said, excitedly. “Maybe it’s his heart. Do you know CPR?”
    â€œHe has nothing the matter with his heart.”
    â€œWell, I don’t know. He didn’t say anything. He just fell down.”
    â€œEugène,” Capretz called and stepped closer. There was something on the side of Gallimard’s head, but the interior of the van was in relative darkness and Capretz couldn’t make it out. But he understood that he was going to have to call for help somehow.
    He turned to ask the Air Service man if there was a two-way radio in the van in time to see a large pistol suddenly materialize in the man’s hand. The first shot hit him in the right arm, driving him nearly off his feet. He started to bring the Uzi around, when a thunderclap burst in his head.
    Shoving the pistol in the belt of his coveralls, Léon safetied the Uzi, laid it in the back of the van and then hefted the security guard’s body in the back as well.
    Closing the door, he scuffed dirt over the bloodstains on the road so that if anyone came along they would not notice that anything had happened here.
    Around front he raised the road barrier, then went into the hut where he took the phone off the hook, listened, then replaced it. He wore thin leather gloves so that he would
leave no fingerprints, and the patterns in the soles of his boots were common. He’d purchased the boots at Prisunic, a discount store in Paris, five days ago. They were untraceable, as was the van which was nevertheless legitimately registered to Air Service here at the airport, though the company did not own it.
    He drove beyond the barrier, then went back and lowered it.
    Behind the wheel he checked his watch before he headed the rest of the way to the ILS installation just off the end of the main east-west runway. He had twenty-eight minutes to go.

2
    KIRK CULLOUGH McGARVEY HAD ALWAYS HAD BAD LUCK WITH women, especially saying goodbye to them. This instance was no different, except that it was the second time he was saying goodbye to Marta Fredricks.
    â€œI don’t understand why you don’t just come back to Lausanne with me now,” she said. They sat together in the back seat of a taxi heading out of Paris to Orly Airport. She was tall, athletically thin and wore her dark hair long, nearly to the center of her back.
    â€œI have a few more things to take