Minimally Odd
Lynx, a valued member of Oddball’s secretive Aequum team, discovers that his brother, Dan, is not who he said he was. At the same time, he finds out that Dan has disappeared – feared killed for the knowledge he had obtained. So Lynx and his partner Jade, launch a search that will eventually take them into France and the high Alps where his brother was sent hundreds of metres over the edge of an almost sheer drop.
Meanwhile at the top secret agency, N2K, a take-over bid is underway by Sir David Mayhew – head of MI6. But Crocker, the current head of N2K has no intention of leaving quietly. She asks the most trusted members of her team to do what they can to confound Mayhew. It turns out they are very good at it.
Harold Ralston, a man with few scruples, is planning a take-over of his own which will leave him many millions better off. Unfortunately, he was also involved in the disappearance of Dan Freeman. When Lynx and Jade connect the dots they are straight on his case. Meanwhile, the inept Toby Wivell seems destined to do everything wrong.
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MINIMALLY ODD
A final hit from the car behind, and the Suzuki’s front tyre thudded into a buried rock in the narrow verge. The bike was catapulted upwards and outwards. The neck-twisting bounces stopped, and Dan was riding on air with a deep, deep void beneath him. The motorbike flew away from the edge of the Route de Nice in a long, graceful parabola, its engine revving but with nothing to grip. Dan rode the brakes all the way down – the handlebars still cramped full left. He plunged two hundred vertical metres to his first point of impact. He had time to think about the damndest of things. How clear the air was. How it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing – one of Tim’s quips. How this was going to ruin his new leather riding jacket. How he should have stayed at home. Insanity. It was all insanity. Jesus Shit! Carla, Lily, I’m sorry. Tim goddammit, do something about this. But they were his final thoughts before he and his beloved Suzuki GSX hit the side of the mountain for the first time. He smashed into the rock, as cold and hard as steel – his body as malleable as a lump of clay – then bounced high into the air, bending and twisting like a discarded marionette.
The bike – black as ebony – scraped, cartwheeled and nosed straight down into a scree of inflexible granite. That’s where Dan was deflected a few degrees, sending him spinning and cartwheeling down the almost vertical slope just behind his bike. In moments, after careening down the mountainside like a broken windmill, the buckled Suzuki smashed into a massive boulder, the size of a house, and came to an abrupt halt. Its broken rider followed seconds later spinning and crashing into the side of the boulder, his lifeless body continuing on down the mountain. The sound of the impact was not dramatic, muffled as it was by the heavy stones and boulders of the granite mountain.
Many hundreds of feet above, in his out-of-place charcoal business suit, white shirt, and blue tie, Harold Ralston took the binoculars away from his eyes and said, “We can get back in the car now, Wivell.”
