Top Hook. Gordon Kent

      

      Top Hook

      Gordon Kent

      

      To those who drive the ships

      Table of Contents

       Cover Page

       Title Page

       Dedication

Part One Betrayal

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

       9

       10

       11

       12

       13

       14

       15

       16

       17

       18

       19

       20

       Part Two Flight

       21

       22

       23

       24

       25

       26

       27

       28

       29

       30

       31

       32

       33

       34

       35

       36

       37

       38

       39

       Part Three Last Words

       St Anselm’s Cemetery, Washington

       About the Author

       Praise

       The Alan Craik Novels

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

Part One Betrayal

       1

      Venice.

      The streets were a river of color in the dark, sequins and silks swirling around bare flesh. Masks and cloaks fought the assault of the rain and the splashes of the sea underfoot. Costumes flowed toward San Marco, just as the tide of the Adriatic ebbed away, leaving salt puddles to reflect the glare of carnival.

      The pounding music from the palazzi and the manic orchestration of voices, Italian and foreign, stunned Anna’s senses as she ran. Her masculine costume had saved her in the seconds when the meeting had gone bad, and now it freed her to move, thrusting through the tangle of the crowd. The sword at her side caught at passersby until she took the sheath in her left hand and lifted the hilt off her hip.

      She stopped with her back against a medieval shop at the base of a bridge. Music pulsed through the stone at her back, and her lungs burned as she peered around the corner at the arch of the footbridge. Two lovers embraced against the stone railing; a reveler in a black cloak and white Pantalone mask strode past her toward the bridge. At the top of the arch stood another of the Serbs who had tried to kill her, talking into a cellphone, his head moving like an owl’s. None of the Serbs had bothered to wear masks or costumes; all had leather jackets and mustaches. High on adrenaline, she drew the sword and shrugged off her cloak in one unconsciously dramatic motion. She gathered the cloak in her left hand and risked one glance back into the thick of the crowd. Then she drew herself up and flung herself around the corner at the bridge.

      Because the Serb was