The fist of God [antikvár]

Chapter OneThe man with ten minutes to live was laughing.The source of his amusement was a story just told him by his personal aide, Monique Jaminé, who was driving him home that chill, drizzling evening of 22 March 1990 from his office to his apartment.It concerned a mutual colleague in the offices of the Space Research Corporation at rue de Stalle, a woman regarded as a real vamp, a man-eater, who had turned out to be gay. The deception appealed to the man's lavatorial sense of humour.The pair had left the offices in the Brussels suburb of Uccle at ten to seven, Monique driving the Renault 21 estate. She had, some months earlier, sold her employer's own Volkswagen because he was such a rotten driver she feared he would end by killing himself.It was only a ten-minute drive from the offices to his apartment in the centre block of the three-building Cheridreu complex off rue François Folie, but they stopped halfway at a baker's shop. Both went inside, he to buy a loaf of his favourite pain de campagne. There was rain in the wind; they bowed their heads, failing to notice the car that followed behind them.Nothing strange in that. Neither was trained in trade-craft; the unmarked car with its two dark-jowled occupants had been following the scientist for weeks, never losing him, never approaching, just watching; and he had not seen it. Others had, but he did not know.Emerging from the shop just in front of the cemetery, he tossed his loaf into the back seat and climbed aboard to complete the journey to his home. At ten minutes after11