Nobody Dies For Free Read Online Free Page A

about five years ago where you met and fell
in love with a Genevieve Piaget, married her and went soft around
the edges. She dies, you crack, dump Uncle Sam and go rogue on us,
but manage to track down and take out one Baltasar al-Hamsi, a very
skilled assassin who’s been on our radar for quite some time. Is
all that about right,
    Monroe?”
    “ It is,” Monroe
confirmed.
    “ Good,” said Mr. Nine. “And
now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, are you ready to
put the weeping widower act aside and get back to
business?”
    “ Maybe I’ve had enough of
that business,” Monroe challenged.
    “ This isn’t quite the same
game,” Mr. Nine said.
    “ Different rules
then?”
    “ Very different,” Mr. Nine
promised.
    “ Keep talking.”
    “ I color outside the lines,
Monroe,” Mr. Nine said. “This is no big network of agents, just me
and one operative, although there are occasional interactions with
the other boys in the business. No high-tech crap either. Too much
of that makes things unnecessarily complicated and too easy to
bungle if the system goes down or gets hacked. Cell phones,
computers when needed, GPS if we must, but we do not rely on those
things. I much prefer good old-fashioned espionage and shadows.
What I oversee, Monroe, are operations where we don’t want multiple
agents in multiple locations tripping over each other to get to the
prize. I need one man out there doing the dirty work that I’m too
old—and too ugly—to do.”
    “ And you think I’m that
man,” Monroe said.
    “ I hope you might be,” Mr.
Nine confirmed. “You’re a two-sided coin, Monroe. There’s the sleek
side: the handsome, laughing seducer with the looks and the charm
to find a niche in any tribe. And then there’s the serpent: the
hidden killer, ready to strike when needed, venomous to the core,
even if that core doesn’t come to the surface too often. That
little business in Istanbul proved to me that the core is still
intact, even after five years of lovey-dovey mush in Paris. So,
basically, Monroe, here’s what I’m offering: I pay you well. I set
you up in the sort of lifestyle you learned to enjoy in Europe with
all the fine food, fine wine, nice cars, women, too, when you’re
ready for them again. In return, you keep your mind and body sharp
and make sure you’re ready when I need you. That could be tomorrow
and it could be months from now; the sort of situations I deal with
tend to pop up unpredictably. All I really ask is that you stay in
the States so it doesn’t take you days to get back here when
something comes up.”
    “ So this is purely
domestic?” Monroe asked.
    “ Not at all,” Mr. Nine
answered. “I could need you in Shanghai tomorrow for all I know,
but I’d rather have you here as a starting point. So what do you
think of my offer?”
    “ Oh, I’m intrigued,” Monroe
said, “but I need one more thing before I answer.”
    “ What would that
be?”
    “ I need proof that you’re on
the right side of the fence and not pulling some scam for some
foreign power trying to turn an American agent to their own
devices.”
    “ If you hadn’t asked for
that proof,” Mr. Nine said with his voice cold and hard now, “I’d
have shot you where you sit. You may have run off in your grief,
Monroe, but you don’t have a drop of treason in your blood, do
you?”
    “ No, sir,” Monroe
said.
    And then Mr. Nine spoke.
From his lips flowed a series of numbers and names and codes and
secrets that very few men in the world and certainly none outside
the highest levels of the CIA and comparable agencies within the
United States and its closest allies would know. That was enough
for Richard Monroe. He smiled and nodded. He suddenly trusted the
mysterious Mr. Nine, and the future looked interesting
again.
    Mr. Nine lifted a small
square box from his seat to the table and slid it across to Monroe.
“This is for you,” he said. “Inside, you’ll find a new cell phone.
Don’t try to