The Camel and the Crossbow
in which two professionals deal with the murkier end of the super spy game
MARSEILLES, FRANCE. 1971.
Nowak and Jensen had been watching their target for three weeks and all this jaybird did was sit at the café, read his little newspapers, and drink enough espresso to jump start a dead elephant. It did not take long for them to hate him in the deep and specific way that only professional observers could. More than that, their distaste was rooted in the feelings that only somebody gainfully employed could have about the willfully idle. It bucked their protestant souls. The failed company men inside them could wretch. The problem was they knew that there was a life out there worth living and the jerks they watched were the ones doing it for them. It boiled their vestigial Puritan blood.
There were plenty of points Nowak could have fixated on. He could have fixated on the two cops the target had on his rap sheet (big deal, they were cops and, even worse, Spaniards—"dos muerte puercos,” as Jensen pointed out), or on the statutory rape case he was dodging in England (strange decision for the limeys to suddenly start keeping track of that, they noted), or on the fact that this slick, no-standards grease stain of an operator somehow managed to find a line working for both the radical reds and revanchist fascists.. Instead, he fixated on the bastard’s codename.
“The Arbalest.” Nowak spat. The sand of this boychik. “Who is this cat to have a nickname?”
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