Read Online Hard Rain by David Rollins - Free Book Online

been kind to those fingers. They’d been broken twice within the last twelve months, the first time by a small-calibre bullet fired from a handgun at close range, the second when I fell on them during a mission in Pakistan – and from a height of around 20,000 feet. But that’s another story.
    ‘You want a coffee?’ I asked Masters. ‘I’m buying.’
    ‘Come into some money?’
    ‘Yeah, I won a bet.’ I dug my hands into my pockets.
    ‘I saw a place down there,’ she said, indicating the general direction with a nod of her head – a narrow road opposite our hotel that dived down the hill. The road was lined on both sides by jumbled pink, cream and tan buildings like shoebox stacks about to fall into each other.
    ‘Well, luck before experience,’ I replied, gesturing at her to lead on.
    Masters stepped off the sidewalk and headed for a place with a couple of empty, windblown tables out the front, their white tablecloths snapping in the wind. I hesitated before crossing and waited for an old guy the colour of smoked fish who was trudging up the steep road towards me. He was bent over double with a heavy load strapped to a wooden brace across the small of his back. A BMW, a big new one, came up behind him and blew its horn. The old guy ignored it – didn’t alter his line or step one iota. If I were the sensitive type and open to metaphors, I might have caught that this city was engaged in a war between the new and the old, one that had probably been going on for a very long time. But I’m not the sensitive type, so I missed it and belched instead with mild hunger.
    ‘Hey, Mr Experience, you coming?’ called Masters from the other side of the road, impatient.
    The café was warm and filled with the aromas of scorched sugar and coffee. The décor was early ’90s, the colour scheme a mixture of orange, dark wood and chrome. Only a few of the tables were occupied. We took one beside a couple of Nordic backpacker types: blond hair, long-sleeve T-shirts, shorts and hiking boots. They could have been brother and sister, though the girl was twice the size of her companion. She wore her hair in plaits. I could picture her in a helmet with horns.
    A waiter came over, took our order and left. I caught the Nordic guy staring at Masters, regarding her as she removed her New York Fire Department cap and shook out her hair. The guy was embarrassed when he realised I’d busted him in the middle of performing a little eyeball striptease. He swallowed, turned away, and self-consciously pointed at something in the guidebook before Brunhilde also caught him and maybe slugged him. She looked like she could pack a punch.
    Masters missed all this, as she always does, completely ignorant of the effect she has on a room. The immediate important business taken care of, namely breakfast, I said, ‘I have a few questions about this morning.’
    ‘Me too.’
    ‘You wanna start?’
    ‘Ego before talent,’ she said.
    ‘Okay,’ I began. ‘Karli, the cop hung like a sock drawer, said something about following the drain all the way to the Bosphorus.’
    ‘So what’s the question?’
    ‘What’s the Bosphorus?’
    Masters scoffed. ‘You’ve never heard of the Bosphorus?’
    ‘And what if I haven’t?’
    Masters shook her head. ‘It’s only possibly one of the most famous stretches of water in the world.’
    ‘Because . . . ?’
    ‘It’s less than a mile wide, divides the continents of Europe and Asia, splits Istanbul in half, connects the Black Sea with the Mediterranean, and people have been fighting for control of it for more than two thousand years.’
    ‘I thought it might be related to phosphorus – its evil sister, maybe.’
    ‘I’ll get you a guidebook,’ she said.
    ‘I don’t need one,’ I replied. ‘I’ve got you. I’ll get you a stick with a little flag on it.’ I was going to say something about her fiancé, the JAG lawyer, but I let it go. We still hadn’t had The Talk. The Talk would be when