The Freedom Trap

The Freedom Trap
Desmond Bagley

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in Malta.The Scarperers, a brilliantly organised gang which gets long-term inmates out of prison, spring a notorious Russian double agent. The trail leads Owen Stannard to Malta, and to the suave killer masterminding the gang. Face to face at last with his opponents, Stannard must try to outwit both men – who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by his death…

DESMOND BAGLEY

The Freedom Trap

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_40b77a2f-0d66-5e8b-a284-cd74fd74428a)

HARPER

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1971

Copyright © Brockhurst Publications 1971

Cover layout design Richard Augustus © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Desmond Bagley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780008211233

Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN 9780008211240

Version: 2017-03-13

CONTENTS

Cover (#ud80cdf6b-b770-5fd3-9c4c-78e02dd1080b)

Title Page (#u4fe51ba5-ac72-5155-bd43-ba997fb55f10)

Copyright (#u606b2a62-5dd8-5108-a889-d69ed5905dbc)

The Freedom Trap (#ue36f1ea0-f8d3-50f9-a8c0-991471323d9f)

Dedication (#ue3b12314-c6f5-5ded-88e1-838157eae48c)

One (#u3d20cfbe-f0da-5a0a-8f9e-29e1665cabeb)

Two (#u2492098e-8f37-5cc2-9021-8d70a5373b25)

Three (#ud5ba56d5-a5f0-5498-aa72-d03994209eb6)

Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By the Same Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

THE FREEDOM TRAP (#ulink_4bb8fe85-0cae-5379-8b59-40426951bdcd)

DEDICATION (#ulink_2105462d-8cfe-5adc-82a1-8c269e870daa)

To Ron and Peggy Hulland

ONE (#ulink_a99cee41-d774-5012-8288-3146aa1db7b9)

Mackintosh’s office was, unexpectedly, in the City. I had difficulty in finding it because it was in that warren of streets between Holborn and Fleet Street which is a maze to one accustomed to the grid-iron pattern of Johannesburg. I found it at last in a dingy building; a well-worn brass plate announcing innocuously that this Dickensian structure held the registered office of Anglo-Scottish Holdings, Ltd.

I smiled as I touched the polished plate, leaving a smudged fingerprint. It seemed that Mackintosh knew his business; this plate, apparently polished by generations of office boys, was a sign of careful planning that augured well for the future – the professional touch. I’m a professional and I don’t like working with amateurs – they’re unpredictable, careless and too dangerous for my taste. I had wondered about Mackintosh because England is the spiritual home of amateurism, but Mackintosh was a Scot and I suppose that makes a difference.

There was no lift, of course, so I trudged up four flights of stairs – poor lighting and marmalade-coloured walls badly in need of a repaint – and found the Anglo-Scottish office at the end of a dark corridor. It was all so normal that I wondered if I had the right address but I stepped forward to the desk and said, ‘Rearden – to see Mr Mackintosh.’

The red-headed girl behind the desk favoured me with a warm smile and put down the tea-cup she was holding. ‘He’s expecting you,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if he’s free.’ She went into the inner office, closing the door carefully behind her. She had good legs.

I looked at the scratched and battered filing cabinets and wondered what was in them and found I could not possibly guess. Perhaps they were stuffed full of Angles and Scots. There were two eighteenth-century prints on the wall – Windsor Castle and the Thames at Richmond. There was a Victorian steel engraving of Princes Street, Edinburgh. All very Anglic and Scottish. I admired Mackintosh more and more – this was going to be a good careful job; but I did wonder how he’d done it – did he call in an interior decorator or did he have a pal who was a set dresser in a film studio?

The girl came back. ‘Mr Mackintosh will see you now – you can go right through.’

I liked her smile so I returned it and walked past her into Mackintosh’s sanctum. He hadn’t changed. I hadn’t expected him to change – not in two months – but sometimes a man looks different on his home ground where he has a sense of security, a sense of knowing what’s what. I was pleased Mackintosh hadn’t changed in that way because it meant he would be sure of himself anywhere and at any time. I like people I can depend on.

He was a sand-coloured man with light gingery hair and invisible eyebrows and eyelashes which gave his face a naked look. If he didn’t shave for a week probably no one would notice. He was slight in build and I wondered how he would use himself in a rough-house; flyweights usually invent nasty tricks to make up for lack of brawn. But then Mackintosh would never get into a brawl in the first place; there are all sorts of different ways of using your brains.