Читать онлайн «Blood Count»
Автор Роберт Годдард
About the Book
There’s no such thing as easy money. As surgeon Edward Hammond is about to find out. Thirteen years ago he performed a life-saving operation on Serbian gangster Dragan Gazi. Now Gazi is standing trial for war crimes at the international court in The Hague. After Hammond saved his life, Gazi’s men went on to slaughter thousands in the Balkan civil wars.
Gazi’s family have a favour to ask: in exchange for keeping Hammond’s dirty little secret – and a bigger secret he hadn’t even realized he was implicated in – they want him to find the man who holds the key to al the money Gazi squirrel ed away before his arrest. But Italian financier Marco Piravani doesn’t want to be found, not by Hammond, not by anyone. No sooner has Hammond tracked him down than he disappears again. Hammond has no choice but to set off in pursuit.
The trail leads first to The Hague, where he makes an unlikely al y of Gazi’s former mistress, Zineta Perovíc.
They head for Italy, in search of Piravani, then Switzerland, where the money may be hidden, before Hammond is forced to return to Belgrade. There he must confront the bloody legacy of Gazi’s career – and his share of the blame for it.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Robert Goddard
Copyright
BLOOD COUNT
Robert Goddard
ONE
‘The holiday starts here,’ Edward Hammond murmured to himself. He took a sip of sparkling mineral water and gazed idly across the club lounge, out through the wide windows at the gated and taxiing aircraft on the runway. Heathrow, on a grey February afternoon, made for an uninspiring vista, but Hammond’s sights were already set on the ski slopes of Austria, where conditions, according to the newspaper, were outstanding: superb powder at Obergurgl, no less.
Peter and Julie were already in Austria, in the middle of a fortnight’s break. Hammond had spoken to Julie last night and learnt for the first time that a friend cal ed Sophie had joined them. This sounded to him suspiciously like a matchmaking ploy – not the first such effort on Julie’s part to find him a wife during the thirteen years that had passed since Kate’s death. Maybe something would happen between him and Sophie, maybe not, but marriage was certainly not on the horizon as far as he was concerned.
