A Darker Place
Dillon and company are back in the ultimate blockbuster from the ‘legend’ that is Jack HigginsDisillusioned with the Putin Government, famous Russian writer and ex-paratrooper Alexander Kurbsky decides he wants to disappear into the West. However he is under no illusions about how the news will be greeted at home - he has seen too many of his countrymen die mysteriously at the hands of the thuggish Russian security services, so he makes elaborate plans with Charles Ferguson, Sean Dillon and the rest of the group known informally as the "Prime Minister's private army" for his escape and concealment.It's a real coup for the West…except for one thing. Kurbsky is still working for the Russians. The plan is to infiltrate British and American intelligence at the highest levels, and he has his own motivations for doing the most effective job possible. He does not care what he has to do or where he has to go…or whom he has to kill
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A Darker Place
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2009
Copyright © Jack Higgins 2009
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2009
Digital illustration © Rob Wood/Wood Ronsaville Harlin, Inc.
Jack Higgins 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 authorâs 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 non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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.
Source ISBN: 9780008124977
Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780007318292
Version: 2015-09-09
Once again, for Denise and Brewer Street
Avoid looking into an open grave.
You may see yourself there
â Russian Proverb
Fresh from the shower, Monica Starling sat at the dressing table in her suite at the Pierre and applied her make-up carefully. Sheâd dried and arranged her streaked blonde hair in her favourite style as she always did, and now sat back and gave herself the once-over. Not bad for forty and she didnât look that ancient, even she had to admit that. She smiled, remembering the remark Sean Dillon had made on the first occasion they had met. âLady Starling, as Jane Austen would have Darcy say, itâs always a pleasure to meet a truly handsome woman.â
The rogue, she thought, wondering what he was up to, this ex-enforcer with the Provisional IRA and now an operative in what everyone referred to as the âPrime Ministerâs private Armyâ. He was a thoroughly dangerous man, and yet he was her lover. Look at you, Monica, she thought, shaking her head â a Cambridge don with three doctorates, falling for a man like that. Yet there it was.
She put on a snow-white blouse, beautifully cut in fine Egyptian cotton, and buttoned it carefully. Next came a trouser suit as black as night, one of Valentinoâs masterpieces. Simple diamond studs for the ears. Manolo Blahnik shoes, and she was finished.
âYes, excellent, girl,â she said. âFull marks.â
She smiled, thinking of her escort, dear, sweet old George Dunkley, Professor Emeritus in European Literature at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, bless his cotton socks and all seventy years of him, and thrilled out of his mind to be here tonight. Not that she wasnât a little thrilled herself. When sheâd accepted the United Nationsâ invitation to this international scholarsâ weekend, sheâd had no idea who the guest of honour would turn out to be.
Alexander Kurbsky â the greatest novelist of his generation, as far as she was concerned. On the Death of Men and Moscow Nights â astonishing achievements, born out of his experiences as a paratrooper in Afghanistan and then the years of hell during the first and second Chechen wars. And he was only, what? Thirty-four, thirty-five? Hardly anyone outside Russia had actually met him since the publication of those books, the government kept him on such a short leash, and yet here he was, in New York. It was going to be quite an evening.
She turned from the mirror and the phone rang.
Dillon said, âI thought Iâd catch you.â
âWhat time is it there?â
âJust after midnight. Looking forward to meeting Kurbsky?â
âI must admit I am. Iâve never seen George so excited.â
âFor good reason. Kurbskyâs an interesting guy in lots of ways. His father was KGB, you know. When his mother died giving birth to his sister, an aunt raised them both for several years, and then one day, Kurbsky just up and ran away to London. The aunt was living there by then, and he stayed with her, studied at the London School of Economics for two years, and then â gone again. Went back, joined the paratroops, and the rest is history or myth, call it what you like.â
âI know all that, Sean, itâs in his publisherâs handout. Still, it should be quite an evening.â
âI imagine so. How do you look?â
