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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 65: Kondor 277
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 272
Seated on his thundering motorcycle at the end of the drive, Kondor could see neither Zeke on his bike or Amanda in a red convertible sports car. It didn’t help that he knew less about the streets of Tuolorca than he did about those in London. He could wander the city for the rest of his life and not find either of them.
That’s an exaggeration, he chided himself. Relax; this is not an insoluble problem. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
As he did so, the scriff sense kicked in. He felt the equipment he had left in the parking lot, and a few things he had left in London--but he also felt Zeke, moving somewhere to his right ahead. Hopefully the lieutenant still had their quarry in his sight. He gunned the bike and headed straight out, crossing the street into an alley which he hoped would let him begin cutting across the city to catch up. Amanda might know the city better than he did--that was certainly likely--but she was disadvantaged by having to drive a car through city traffic.
Coming out on the next block, he turned to the right and shot down alongside a line of cars. He realized, dimly, that these people drove on the right, as they did back home--but he didn’t learn to drive the motorcycle back home, he learned it in England, where they drove on the left. He would have to be more attentive. He went a few blocks this way, then skidded left around the corner in the shadow of a large building that took up the whole of a city block, and roared up to what appeared to be a main road. Dodging into thicker traffic with horns sounding all around him, he still managed to relax again to feel the direction to his partner, and to move to the center of the road to slip up between the vehicles.
It struck him that if the gendarmes stopped him, he would be in a bind. What could he say? Excuse me, officer, I’m a British secret agent in pursuit of a suspect who has just stolen something of international value from an auction house in Paris? Well, his best hope was that he didn’t get into that situation. Best care, he thought; don’t give them a reason to come after you.
He was making better speed than Zeke, or at least, he had now come to a point that the vector to his partner pointed slightly behind him. He cut right again to move toward them, and sped through another alley, moving too fast while too focused ahead to notice anything around him. He went two blocks this direction, and as he came out onto the next road and looked to his right he saw a motorcycle a couple blocks down--and between him and it, a red convertible sports car with an elegant black woman at the wheel.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #529: Characters in Action. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
