Read Online The Holcroft Covenant by Robert Ludlum - Free Book Online Page B

Then I began to think. Why did they come at night? I mean, what with overtime and everything, why didn’t they come in the daytime? So I just called Louie at home. He said they came
yesterday
. So who the hell were those other guys.”
    “Do you remember anything about them?”
    “You’re damned right I do! One of them in particular. You could pick him out in a crowd at the Garden! He had—”
    There was a loud, sharp report over the line.
    A
gunshot!
    It was followed by a crash. The telephone in the lobby had been dropped!
    Noel slammed down the receiver and ran to the door, yanking it open with such force that it crashed into a framed sketch on the wall, smashing the glass. There was no time to consider the elevator. He raced down the stairs, his mind a blank, afraid to think, concentrating only on speed and balance, hoping to God he would not trip on the steps. He reached the landing and bolted through the lobby door.
    He stared in shock. The worst had happened. Jack the doorman was arched back over the chair, blood pouring out of his neck. He had been shot in the throat.
    He had interfered. He had been about to identify one of the men of Wolfsschanze and he had been killed for it.
    Baldwin, Manfredi … an innocent doorman. Dead.
    … 
all those who interfere will be stopped.… Any who stand in your way, who try to dissuade you, who try to deceive you … will be eliminated
.
    … 
As you and yours will be should you hesitate. Or fail
.
    Manfredi had asked him if he really had a choice. He did not any longer.
    He was surrounded by death.

5
    Althene Holcroft sat behind the desk in her study and glared at the words of the letter she held in her hand. Her chiseled, angular features—the high cheekbones, the aquiline nose, the wide-set eyes beneath arched, defined brows—were as taut, as rigid, as her posture in the chair. Her thin, aristocratic lips were tight; her breathing was steady, but each breath was too controlled, too deep, for normalcy. She read Heinrich Clausen’s letter as one studying a statistical report that contradicted information previously held to be incontrovertible.
    Across the room, Noel stood by a curving window that looked out on the rolling lawn and gardens behind the Bedford Hills house. A number of shrubs were covered with burlap; the air was cold, and the morning frost produced intermittent patches of light gray on the green grass.
    Holcroft turned from the scene outside and looked at his mother, trying desperately to conceal his fear, to control the occasional trembling that came upon him when he thought about last night. He could not allow the terror he felt to be seen by his mother. He wondered what thoughts were going through her head, what memories were triggered by the sight of the handwritten words in blue ink put down by a man she once had loved, then had grown to despise. Whatever she was thinking, it would remain private until she chose to speak. Althene communicated only that which she cared to convey deliberately.
    She seemed to sense his gaze and raised her eyes to his, but only briefly. She returned to the letter, allowing a briefer moment to brush away a stray lock that had fallen from the gray hair that framed her face. Noel wandered aimlessly toward the desk, glancing at the bookcases and photographs on the wall. The room reflected the owner, he mused. Graceful, even elegant; but, withal,there was a pervading sense of activity. The photographs showed men and women on horses at the hunt, in sailboats in rough weather, on skis in mountain snow. There was no denying it: There was an undercurrent of masculinity in this very feminine room. It was his mother’s study, her sanctuary where she repaired for private moments of consideration. But it could have belonged to a man.
    He sat down in the leather chair in front of the desk and lighted a cigarette with a gold Colibri, a parting gift from a young lady who had moved out of his apartment a month ago. His hand trembled