Title: The Manhattan Puzzle
Author: Laurence O'Bryan
Genre: Thriller
Publish Date: August 26, 2014
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9781847562906
Synopsis
An international cover-up that could change the course of history…Sean has been tracking a symbol from another age. It provides a clue to a barbaric conspiracy. A puzzle with an answer feared for millenia.
When Isabel wakes to find Sean hasn't come home she doesn't worry. At first. But when the police turn up on her doorstep wanting to interview him, she has to make a decision.
Does she keep faith in him or does she believe the evidence?
The symbol Sean and Isabel have been chasing will finally be revealed in Manhattan as one of the greatest banks in the world totters. Can Isobel uncover the truth before time runs out…or will she too be murdered?
A thrilling, high-octane race to save civilisation that will engross fans of Dan Brown, David Baldacci and James Patterson.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="104"]
Buy on Amazon[/caption]
About the Author
Laurence was born in Dublin. He studied business, then IT at Oxford University.After going to England he paid for his own courses and began rising at 4AM so he could study and work at the same time. One early job was as a kitchen porter near the Bank of England cleaning the plates of the well connected. Laurence was first published by a school newspaper when he was ten, for a short story about aliens getting lost. Thirty-five years later, he attended an authonomy workshop and not long after was offered a publishing contract for three books. The Manhattan Puzzle is his third novel.
Connect with the Author
Giveaway
Follow the Tour[/caption]
Title: The Manhattan Puzzle
Author: Laurence O'Bryan
Genre: Thriller
Publish Date: August 26, 2014
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 9781847562906
Synopsis
An international cover-up that could change the course of history…Sean has been tracking a symbol from another age. It provides a clue to a barbaric conspiracy. A puzzle with an answer feared for millenia.
When Isabel wakes to find Sean hasn't come home she doesn't worry. At first. But when the police turn up on her doorstep wanting to interview him, she has to make a decision.
Does she keep faith in him or does she believe the evidence?
The symbol Sean and Isabel have been chasing will finally be revealed in Manhattan as one of the greatest banks in the world totters. Can Isobel uncover the truth before time runs out…or will she too be murdered?
A thrilling, high-octane race to save civilisation that will engross fans of Dan Brown, David Baldacci and James Patterson.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="104"] Buy on Amazon[/caption]
About the Author
Laurence was born in Dublin. He studied business, then IT at Oxford University.After going to England he paid for his own courses and began rising at 4AM so he could study and work at the same time. One early job was as a kitchen porter near the Bank of England cleaning the plates of the well connected. Laurence was first published by a school newspaper when he was ten, for a short story about aliens getting lost. Thirty-five years later, he attended an authonomy workshop and not long after was offered a publishing contract for three books. The Manhattan Puzzle is his third novel.
Connect with the Author
Giveaway
Follow the Tour[/caption]
The Manhattan
Puzzle Excerpt
1
‘Go for it. The rougher the better,
girl.’ The man had a black silk blindfold tied around his head. He spoke
slowly, his voice thick with desire.
Xena went to the door and unlocked
it.
‘What’s that? Getting your toys out? Wow,
this is even better than you promised.’
Lord Bidoner walked into the panic
room. He closed the door behind him and pressed the button to turn on the air
management system. The scrubber in the roof could remove the smoke from a
blazing fire and turn the output into a vapour trail.
The man, spread-eagled and handcuffed
to the stainless steel bed frame, had an expectant smile on his face.
‘Go on, do it,’ he said.
The navy Calvin Klein silk suit
hanging from the stool beside the bed gave an indication of who he was. Lord
Bidoner examined the man’s wallet. His bank ID card, a credit-card-sized piece
of aluminium with an embedded proximity chip and his family name, Hare,
embossed on it, confirmed what they already knew.
The head of global security at BXH,
one of the world’s few truly global banks, was lying face-up and naked in front
of him.
‘Don’t keep me waiting, girl.’
‘I won’t,’ purred Xena. She stroked
his leg, then his inner thigh. He quivered in anticipation.
The man’s wife would surely
appreciate photographs of this event, but Lord Bidoner had more pressing
concerns.
He nodded at Xena.
She was dressed in a low-cut
skin-tight black catsuit that fitted her thin frame perfectly. The man laid out
in front of them was expecting something memorable from the woman he’d met in
the champagne bar opposite Grand Central, two weeks before. Xena’s story, about
being an Ethiopian diplomat’s daughter, and her eager smile, had captivated
him.
She ran her finger down the man’s
stomach. It trembled under her touch.
‘Don’t stop, honey. Don’t stop.’
With her other hand Xena clicked on
the silver Turboflame blowtorch, the most expensive model in the world with its
1500C flame. She held the gently hissing blue, inch-long flame up and watched
it glow brighter as her fingers moved slowly down his stomach.
‘What’s that?’ he said.
She didn’t reply.
Hare’s voice was still confident when
he spoke. ‘Was that your sister who just came in? Is she gonna join us?’
‘We have a surprise for you,’ said
Xena.
The man pulled on the handcuffs, which
began to cut into his skin. It had taken a bit of persuasion, since this was
their third meeting, for Xena to get him to go this far, but he trusted her
now. And he’d made it clear that he wasn’t going to put up with any crap. He’d
break the bed if she didn’t release him when he gave the password.
She’d smiled, hugged him and agreed.
They’d even laughed about making a
written contract.
‘What’s the surprise?’ He shook the
bed, testing its resilience and the strength of the handcuffs. He’d assumed
they were easily breakable toys, like a previous pair she’d shown him. But he
was wrong.
And he didn’t know that the bed was
bolted to the reinforced slab of the panic room floor, either. Though he might
have guessed that there was something wrong when it refused to move under him.
‘Just a friend of mine. We have a
little question for you,’ said Xena.
‘Yeah?’ He was still curious, still
expectant of further delights.
‘What is the password for the
security system at BXH?’
The man didn’t reply verbally. He
shook the bed from side to side, trying to break free. He didn’t know that his
only hope was if his thrashing managed to separate his hands from his wrists,
and his feet from his ankles. And very few people have strength enough to do
that.
Xena waved the blue flame, raised it,
as if offering it up. It flickered higher.
The odour of the burning butane gas
filled the room like bad perfume. The sound of the blow torch was a threatening
hissing now. Xena placed the tip of the flame against the top edge of the
whiskey tumbler the man had been drinking from. The glass turned blue.
‘Wait until you feel this. Then you
will tell me,’ said Xena. Her tone had changed. It was demanding now.
‘What? Fu . . .’ The end of that
confident word was bitten off by the piercing scream that came from deep within
his throat. Xena had touched the flame against the pale skin of his shoulder.
He began thrashing. Like a fish
flailing. He moved from side to side, squirming away from the skin-blistering
heat. But he couldn’t move fast enough. And his legs and arms were stretched
out tight.
Easy targets.
The smell in the room changed and the
atmosphere with it. Pain and whimpering, sizzling and guttural roars filled the
air.
The man had become a dog.
Then Xena asked him again.
‘The password, please.’ She spoke
softly, as if they were still playing a game.
‘If you give it up, I will release
you. You can explain these little burns to your wife. But the ones I will
inflict next will require hospital treatment. Or the services of a morgue.’ She
clicked the flame off, then pressed the hot tip hard and fast into the biggest
blister she had inflicted, near his ankle.
‘What do you say, Mr Hare?’
The man answered with a defiant,
animal roar. He shook the bed under him. The last vestige of his pride in
working at BXH bellowed out of him.
Xena lit the flame again. She reached
forward, touched it to his chest, and ran it fast down the middle until smoke
from his burning body hair filled the room with a sickly odour.
‘Stop, stop!’ he screamed. His body
squirmed to escape the heat.
‘It’s #89*99,’ he shouted. ‘Please!
Stop!’
Bidoner keyed the password into his
phone and pressed send.
‘I hope you’re not lying,’ said Xena.
‘I want all this to have a happy ending.’
She squeezed his thigh with her hand,
then stroked it.
Tears streamed from under his
blindfold. His cheeks were red. It was good he couldn’t see the weals on his
body, because he would know immediately that he wouldn’t be able to explain any
of them to his wife.
‘Please, let me go. I promise not to
tell anyone. I swear, on my children’s lives.’
Lord Bidoner’s mobile beeped as an
incoming message came in. He nodded at Xena. The code had worked.
‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘But there
is one more thing I must do for you.’
She put the Turboflame down and went
to the fridge. She took out a six-inch-long serrated knife, honed with care to
a perfect blade, from the freezer section.
She held it in the air, admiring its
cold edge.
‘Now you will find release,’ she
said.
The man’s body went still. His toes,
which had scrunched up, half straightened. The only sound was his pain-filled
whimpering.
The panic room in the apartment on
Fifth Avenue, overlooking the skyscrapers of Manhattan, was soundproof. It was
why they used the room.
Xena flicked the blade across the
man’s pale skin, once, then twice, fascinated by how quickly blood gushed, how
fast it flowed from a few simple cuts.
‘This is for my brothers,’ she said.
‘Don’t,’ he whimpered. Fear trembled
in his voice. ‘I have two children, a wife.’
She growled, psyching herself up.
‘Prima quattuorinvocareunum,’ she
said, as she grabbed him, jerking him upwards and castrating him with one
swinging motion.
She held the bloody remains up in the
air.
His screams of terror and pain
vibrated through the room as blood spurted two feet high. A foul smell followed
and the man’s words became a babbling.
Lord Bidoner held his nose. He’d seen
enough. He went out to the main room of the apartment, with its view towards
the glittering Jazz-era spire of the Empire State Building.
‘You did good, my dear. The first
offering has been done correctly,’ he said, when Xena joined him.
She was panting.
‘Come here.’
He pushed her up against the
inch-thick glass of the window, as Manhattan glittered behind them.
Afterwards, he handed her a balloon
glass containing a large shot of Asbach 21. She sipped the brandy, then downed
it in one gulp.
Then she lay down on the sleek oak
coffee table that dominated the room. The canyon of lights stretching into the
velvet Manhattan night reflected all the way along the length of the table and
onto her ebony skin.
He reached down and stroked her
shoulder. It was trembling.
‘Three more before the moon rises
again. That is what the book says. That is what we will do.’
She smiled up at him. Her white teeth shone as she leaned her
head back and stretched.
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