The International Assassin: A Sexy Times Crime Thriller

by Asher, Adele

  He rang up the items and put them all in a bag for me which was polite given I had no intention of paying for services rendered but why bother with a smash and grab - set your own agenda I say.

  “That is two-hundred and ninety seven Euros,” he told me.

  “Gosh. Is it really?” I replied. “Well that’s a problem then isn’t it?”

  “Why is that a problem?” he replied warily.

  “Because I don’t have any Euros.”

  “You have Aston Martin sports car but you have no money?” he asked confused.

  “It’s not technically a sports car. It’s more of a grand tourer. G.T. We’re on a grand tour. I have money…well honestly speaking I did have money but then this conman called Johnny…actually Roy, his real name is Roy, not that he would have got anywhere with me had I know he was called Roy…Roy stole it all. And now I’m going to get it back.”

  “You have no money?”

  “Technically? No, I don’t.”

  “Then why did you buy all this shit?” he said annoyed realising he was going to have to put it all back again.

  “I’m all for French liberty. So I just thought I would help myself like France does with the agricultural subsidy every year. Look on this as an EU rebate for the UK.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about EU subsidy, you have to pay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Unless you want to do me a favour…” he suggested sleazily.

  “Sorry my fat Gallic chum. I don’t do charity fucks.” I smiled apologetically. “And to fuck an obese Gallic troglodyte like you, I’d want more than a bloody OBE.”

  “In that case you have a problem.”

  “I don’t have any problem. Well apart from the Johnny thing but that will get resolved eventually.”

  “I’m going to call the police. We will keep your car, when you pay you can have it back.”

  “What is it with the bloody French and my car? You’re just a bunch of legalised carjackers! Bollocks to that!” I said at which point I produced my Beretta and shot the fat French fuck three times in the chest.

  He collapsed to the ground in shock. I was surprised he was still alive but it seems sixty-plus pounds of excess body lubber was a great defence against a nine millimetre hollow point. I walked round the counter and stepped over him.

  “You alright down there Pierre?” I asked him.

  “You bloody shot me!” he whimpered coughing up blood.

  “Yes I did. Three times and by all normal measures you should be dead. Your poor choice of diet has led to an exceptional waste of bullets. In retrospect I should have shot you in the head but it’s a lesson learnt. You only figure these things out in the field.”

  I pressed the till to open it and emptied the Euros into a carrier bag.

  ‘Don’t bleed or be sick on my Loubi’s” I told him. My suede Louboutin boots were pristine and I hadn’t had them scotch-guarded yet. By my estimate I managed to secure several thousand Euros from the till. “It’s been a pleasure frequenting your premises shopkeeper. But I must be off now. Things to do.”

  “I need help! Call an ambulance!”

  “Afraid an ambulance won’t do you much good my friend…you need a hearse.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re French. That’s about it really.”

  I shot him in the head, which finally silenced him.

  I ejected the security VHS tape out of the player from under the counter, collected my goods and departed the store returning to the waiting Aston where Nick was still sound asleep. Tucking the bag of cash and goodies into the foot-well I pressed the glowing red starter button and fired up the rehydrated V12 and made good my escape.

  While my actions may have appeared to be brutal and cold-blooded, I can assure you my dear friends that there more to it than just a random act of life-ending violence.

  He was fat, French and ugly.

  More justification to rid the world of such a useless waste of carbohydrate consuming DNA could scarcely be needed.

  Chapter 10

  AFTER THE excitement of the fuel stop I reluctantly kept the speed of the Aston to a more sensible level principally to avoid catching up with the Gendarme who was somewhere ahead of us. While prone to shrieking like Maria Callas at an operatic convention, the Aston’s highly tuned V12 could be persuaded to purr softly if kept below three-thousand rpm - anything above which the exhaust bellows opened to release a full soundtrack of tenors, soprano’s and an accompanying concert orchestra. Thus I was content to bimble along at a mere hundred miles per hour in the hope of avoiding more law enforcement induced excitement.

  While my actions at the fuel stop may have seemed a frivolous and senseless slaughter of innocent life they did in fact serve a useful side purpose, at some point a Citroën wielding peasant would stop for a gallon or two of diesel, find the crime scene and summon whatever bumpkin cops they had on patrol to deal with this horrific outrage. Since it generated a much more critical investigation for the police than chasing after some dippy tarte-anglaise and her consort speeding about in their Aston it was a cunning ruse.

  I had not however counted upon the level of personal insult I had waged upon the Gendarme in question. Belatedly realising his error of passing me he had set up a roadblock at the tollbooth ahead. Penned in by the crash barriers I had little option other than to slap the anchors on and perform a handbrake induced J-turn then retreat against the traffic flow back in the opposite direction.

  Being around three a.m the traffic was incredibly light but also mostly comprised of half-asleep or half-drunk French country yokels who were ill-prepared for an Aston DBS blistering towards them at one hundred and thirty plus miles per hour. I flashed the LED tipped double-xenon headlights at them suggesting they should get out of the way but like a rabbit frozen in the lights they seemed to plough on oblivious and it was left to me to swerve between them. The Gendarme was giving chase on the correct side of the carriageway. With my speed vastly reduced to one hundred miles per hour as I weaved between the oncoming traffic he was able to keep pace with me followed by what I presumed was a gaggle of Citroën patrol cars.

  Since we were now heading straight back towards Calais this wasn’t really going according to plan. In retrospect I would have saved a lot of aggravation if I had shot the idiot gallic copper when he first stopped me.

  Aware I needed to get some road-space between myself and the pursuit team I spotted my opportunity when a gap in the metal central reservation barriers approached lined with cones. I quickly swerved into the gap sending the cones flying - hopefully not bruising the poor Astons nose too badly then managed to get onto the right side of the carriageway where I unleashed the full fury of the five hundred or more horses and watched as the Aston’s needle climbed around to the one hundred and eighty mark leaving the chasers far behind.

  Having pulled out a sufficient gap I was acutely aware we were now going in the wrong direction, which would be difficult to explain to Nick when he eventually woke up. Spotting a sign for a turn off I decided to resort to more extreme measures to end this cat and mouse chase that would probably have continued the entire night. As the slip road approached I repeated my lights off stealth-mode hoping they would fall for it a second time and shot up to the top of the junction exit road.

  I barely slowed down for the junction at the top since I had to make every second count and pushed the Aston into a wide power-slide left catching the tail with a swirl of opposite lock and power before I ran out of road and ended up in the banking below. I then accelerated onto the bridge over the carriageway and came to an abrupt stop leaving the engine running as I jumped out.

  Quickly I ran round to the boot and popped it, opened the gun safe and extracted a high powered MP5 and spare magazines then dashed across to the railing over the carriageway where the flashing orange and blue French police lights were now approaching on the horizon. I cocked the MP5 then put it in full auto-mode and waited.

  As my French polic
e nemesis on his motorbike appeared I gave careful aim and squeezed the trigger. The MP5 erupted angrily spitting bullets into the dark. Sparks flew off the front of the bike as the rounds found their mark, realising I was firing low I aimed higher and the bullets ripped into his chest. He swerved trying to avoid the hail of deadly fire and in doing so the bike fell from under him sending him skidding down the tarmac two hundred meters before his bike exploded into a fireball.

  The three Citroën’s from the roadblock were now approaching across all three lanes of the carriageway. As they approached I let rip across their windscreens with a hail of deadly fire, they swerved to avoid the fire and bounced off each other. The right most car veered off into the bank, the left most crashed into the central barrier before pirouetting out of control and coming to a stop while the centre car kept going before swerving as it hit the oil-trail left by the motorcycle.

  I quickly changed magazines and opened fire again bringing the final central car to a halt. With its windscreen completely peppered with bullet holes it ran over the body of the stricken motorcyclist with a sickening thud before it smashed into the remnants of the bike carnage.

  I let go of the trigger. The barrel smoke curled gently into the crisp night air as I waited for survivors to appear. A passenger of the first patrol car pushed his door open and staggered out clutching his neck. I took aim and let him have it with a short burst of five rounds to the chest. Since he was wearing body armour it had little effect other than to wind him so I took aim down the Swarovski scope, turned on the laser pointer, took careful aim at his head and one-shotted him between the eyes. Satisfied there were no more target opportunities I returned to the Aston stowed the MP5 back in the safe and locked it.

  I took out one of the many spare registration plates in the boot and affixed a set of German tags over the top of the current UK ones before returning to the car where despite the re-enactment of the Somme on the northbound carriageway Nick was still sleeping like a baby. For an espionage agent he had a remarkable lack of environmental awareness when sleeping. I suspect he had done military service and was too used to sleeping in war-zones to notice or our constant shagging had finally worn him out.

  I quietly put the car in gear and drove off sedately to return to the southbound carriageway and departed the scene. Two of the patrol cars had now caught fire from the leaked petrol and oil of the motorbike and the late night motorway users were starting to stop and investigate. I drove steadily to the tollbooth as several more police cars drove south to investigate the devastation I had unleashed.

  Arriving at the tollbooth I was pleased the roadblock had now been fully cleared as its participants all raced to the belated aid of their fallen comrades. I duly paid the toll fee with the proceeds of the petrol station heist and pulled away sedately when Nick finally woke up.

  “Everything okay?” he asked sleepily rubbing his eyes.

  “Everything’s fine. Motorways. Boring. You know,” I said innocently.

  “Yeah,” he replied as more police sped past with their lights on. He looked behind to see what the fuss was about. “Wonder what that’s about.”

  “Small accident a few miles back.”

  “Drive carefully. You know what the French are like.”

  Nick went back to sleep.

  With the autoroute suddenly free of police I floored it and returned to my preferred cruising speed of one hundred and sixty miles per hour. Nick had originally suggested we stop en-route at a hotel to break the journey. At around six hundred and fifty miles to Geneva it was normally a ten hour drive but at one hundred and fifty miles per hour average it could be done in a little over four and the sat-nav indicated we had already passed the halfway point, since he was already fast asleep and in light of my nocturnal activities it seemed wise to push on and reach the neutrality of Switzerland as quickly as possible.

  Only a couple of hours had passed before the Aston demanded feeding again with her pricy concoction of flammable breakfast. Despite having imbibed enough Red Bull to wake the dead I was feeling sleepy enough that I had nearly parked the two hundred thousand pound supercar in the crash barriers twenty minutes earlier having misjudged a corner whilst falling asleep at the wheel. Stopping and letting Nick who was now fully awake take over seemed a good idea.

  “You made good progress,” he said checking the sat-nav in disbelief. “You been speeding?”

  “Not much,” I replied innocently. “Traffic was light.”

  We stopped at the petrol station and got out. Nick seemed happy to stretch his legs having been asleep for most of the last four hundred miles so he went to refuel the car while I paid a visit to the ladies room to wash and clean up.

  I don’t know how long I was asleep on the toilet. I went in and clearly had just passed out through exhaustion but I awoke to the sound of gunfire. Realising there was probably only one person who would be the agent-provocateur of such confrontations I tried to pull myself together, dashing out the cubicle I splashed water on my face to wake myself up before pulling out the gun I still had in my jacket pocket. I pushed open the toilet door onto the forecourt carefully.

  Bullets were ricocheting around like fireworks. Next to the Aston with an MP5 stood Nick, surrounding him at the entrance to the petrol forecourt was a line of unmarked police cars with blue lights flashing, behind them several armed police were returning fire - half of whom were now stricken on the floor. With Nick suppressing the fire I quickly took aim at the closest threat and started picking them off accurately with my pistol. Having emptied my entire magazine I dashed for the cover of the Aston with Nick laying down a full automatic cover fire. I grabbed a spare magazine from the car and using the door for cover helped Nick finish off the stragglers.

  “Get in!” he yelled at me as he made a dive for the driver’s seat.

  I jumped in the passenger seat and pulled the door shut as he tore off the forecourt in a plume of wheel-spin and tyre-smoke.

  “What the hell was all that about?” I asked him.

  “I have no idea!” he replied turning around to check for pursuers.

  “I came out the petrol station and they were all there. They started yelling at me to lie down on the floor…and well you can guess the rest!”

  “Bloody French,” I said disparagingly. “They are very intolerant of tourism these days aren’t they?” Nick looked at me suspiciously. “Don’t look at me!” I replied innocently. “I was on the toilet.”

  Nick frowned trying to work out exactly why the French police had decided to send their S.W.A.T team to attack him at six a.m on a Shell Station forecourt. I declined to inform him the obvious reason for this sudden intrusion into his early morning fuel stop. It seemed prudent to keep the nights activities to myself for the benefit of the continued harmony of our relationship.

  “You do seem to cause a lot of trouble,” he said.

  “I was on the toilet!” I protested.

  “And you didn’t kill anyone in there?”

  “Why would I kill someone in the toilet?”

  “I don’t know,” replied Nick. “But if anyone could find a reason to kill someone in a toilet I think it would be you.”

  “Really Nick. I’ve been as good as gold. I come out the toilet and you’ve started a Waterloo re-enactment and you want to pin this on me! You need to go to anger management.”

  “Anger management?”

  “You must have done something to upset them.”

  “What could I have possibly done to upset them?”

  “Maybe you were walking in a threatening manner. I don’t know they are French…they are easily scared.”

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “They are crazy,” said Nick shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Too much cheese.”

  “What?” said Nick with a confused frown.

  “It’s eating too much cheese. You know how when you go to bed after eating cheese you get nightmares? It’s the fat. Interferes with your brain process. They eat to
o much cheese so they are all paranoid.”

  Nick looked at me. I nodded at him in support of my thesis on cheese consumption causing madness in the French.

  “You are the strangest girl.”

  I kissed him on the cheek.

  “I’m not the one who gets shot at for filling up with petrol.”

  Nick made a continued speedy getaway and within the hour we finally approached the Swiss border. Nick pulled in to a lay-by to hide the guns back in the safe.

  “I’m sure I brought more ammo than this,” he said.

  “I had to throw some away,” I replied with a casual shrug.

  “Why would you do that?”

  “They’d gone off.”

  “Bullets don’t go off.”

  “Yes they do. They looked past their sell-by date. You can’t be too careful with these things.”

  “We’ll have to find an arms dealer and get some more.”

  “Make sure they aren’t short dated.”

  We got back in the car, which just goes to show even the best espionage agents are no match for a woman’s ability to bend the truth.

  We managed to cross the border into Switzerland without drama. As driving holidays in France go my jaunt with Nick had so far certainly lived up to expectations.

  Chapter 11

  NICK HAD booked us a suite at the grandiose Swissotel Metropole overlooking Lake Geneva. We arrived just before lunch. After the long drive through France I was ready for a shower and a room service lunch. Nick opted to park the car himself rather than trust it to the valet which was probably prudent given the lethal cargo in the boot, although this meant we had to walk with our luggage the short distance to the main entrance which felt less dignified than rolling up to the red carpet in the Aston. Such sacrifices a girl has to make in the name of discretion when travelling with a spy.

  We approached the check in desk.

  “Good Morning Sir. Welcome to Geneva. Checking in?” asked the receptionist.

  “Yes. Mr. and Mrs. Salinger,” Nick replied handing over our passports.