4º Derrick Storm "STORM FRONT" [Traducido al Español COMPLETO]

After reviving Derrick Storm earlier this year with a series of short stories, Richard Castle has been working away on a 320 page novel featuring Derrick Storm to be called “Storm Front”.  The novel will be released May 21, 2013 and you can Pre-Order Now!

Abro tema para este nuevo libro. Para noticias, capítulos y lo que encontremos de él. He visto que con descuento lo venden por unos 15 dólares, así que será parecido a los de Nikki Heat.

Después de revivir a Derrick Storm a principios de año con una serie de historias cortas, Richard Castle ha seguido trabajando en una novela de 320 páginas de Derrick Storm que se llamará "Storm Front". La novela saldrá a la luz el 21 de Mayo de 2013 y ya puedes reservarla

EDIT:
Enlace de descarga del libro en PDF, epub y mobi
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8ziMkPRUDBHQUxKWkNwalB0TVE/edit?usp=sharing

Lo he subido al G-Drive, para descargar hay que darle a la flechita que sale arriba a la izquierda o en el centro (según versión del Drive)

[/quote]

portada del libro
Me habría encantado que apareciera Showers de nuevo. La chica me caía bien. Este Storm parece más enamoradizo que un quiceañero.

Este libro SI saldrá en papel. La trilogía anterior sólo en e-pub.
En el enlace que he encontrado ésto pone que saldrá a la luz el 17 de Mayo. No sé que fecha será la definitiva. Al menos es cierto que será a mediados-finales de Mayo




Four years after he was presumed dead, Derrick Storm--the man who made Richard Castle a perennial bestseller--is back in this rip-roaring, full-length thriller.

From Tokyo, to London, to Johannesburg, high-level bankers are being gruesomely tortured and murdered. The killer, caught in a fleeting glimpse on a surveillance camera, has been described as a psychopath with an eye patch. And that means Gregor Volkov, Derrick Storm's old nemesis, has returned. Desperate to figure out who Volkov is working for and why, the CIA calls on the one man who can match Volkov's strength and cunning--Derrick Storm.

With the help of a beautiful and mysterious foreign agent--with whom Storm is becoming romantically and professionally entangled--he discovers that Volkov's treachery has embroiled a wealthy hedge-fund manager and a U.S. senator. In a heated race against time, Storm chases Volkov's shadow from Paris, to the lair of a computer genius in Iowa, to the streets of Manhattan, then through a bullet-riddled car chase on the New Jersey Turnpike. In the process, Storm uncovers a plot that could destroy the global economy--unleashing untold chaos--which only he can stop.

Cuatro años después de que fuera presuntamente asesinado, Derrick Storm - el hombre que hizo Richard Castle un best seller continuo - está de vuelta en este animadísimo thriller (novela larga).

Desde Tokio, a Londres, a Johannesburgo, los banqueros de alto rango están siendo horriblemente torturados y asesinados. El asesino, captado en una instantánea en una cámara de vigilancia, ha sido descrito como un psicópata con un parche en el ojo. Y eso significa que Gregor Volkov, antiguo enemigo Derrick Storm, ha vuelto. Desesperado por saber quién está trabajando para Volkov y por qué, la CIA pide al único hombre que puede igualar en fuerza y astucia a Volkov - Storm Derrick.

Con la ayuda de una agente extranjera bella y misteriosa - con la que Storm se está empezando a enredar romántica profesionalmente - descubre que la traición de Volkov ha implicado un rico gestor de fondos de cobertura y a un senador de los EE.UU. En una carrera contra el tiempo, Storm persigue la sombra de Volkov desde París, a la guarida de un genio de la informática en Iowa, y a las calles de Manhattan, para acabar en una persecución en un coche acribillado en la autopista de Nueva Jersey. En el proceso, Storm descubre un complot que podría destruir la economía global - desatando un caos indescriptible - que sólo él puede parar.

La portada es bastante chula.

Menuda sobresaturación, 4 libros de Heat (más Deadly Heat 5), 3 cortos de Storm más este. Los cómics (espero que el tercero salga en tomo recopilatorio. EDITO, sale el 9 de julio). ¡No tengo tiempo para tanto!

A ver si cuando acabe de traducir Frozen Heat me leo los tres Storm que tradujiste para al menos poder leerme este.

Como viene siendo habitual han subido el primer capítulo de la nueva novela de Derrick Storm.
http://a.abc.com/m/pdf/shows/castle/storm-front/chapter-1.pdf

FOR MY FATHER


CHAPTER 1

Venice, Italy

The gondolier could only be described as ruggedly handsome, with dark hair and eyes, a square jaw, and muscles toned from his daily exertions at the oar. He wore the costume the tourists expected of his profession: a tightfi tting shirt with red- and- white jail house striping, blousy black pants, and a festive red scarf tied off at a jaunty angle. He finished the outfi t with a broad- rimmed sunhat, an accessory he kept fixed to his head even though it was nearly midnight. Appearances needed to be maintained.

With powerful, practiced movements, he propelled the boat under the Calle delle Ostreghe footbridge. When he felt they were sufficiently under way, he opened his mouth and let a booming, mournful baritone pour from his lungs.

“Arrivederci Roma,” he warbled. “Good- bye, au revoir, mentre . . .”

“No singing, please,” said the passenger, a pale, doughy man in a tweed jacket, with a voice that was vintage British Empire boarding school.

“But it’s-a part- a the ser vice,” the gondolier replied, in heavily accented En glish. “It’s-a, how you say, romantic- a. Maybe we- a find- a you a nice- a girl, huh? Put you in a better mood- a?”

“No singing,” the Brit said.

“But I could lose- a my license,” the gondolier protested.

He rowed in silence for a moment, cocked his head directly toward the Brit, then resumed his crooning.

“Assshoooooole- omio,” he crooned. “Ooooo- sodomia . . .”

“I said no singing,” the Brit snapped. “My God, man, it’s like someone is squeezing a goat. Look, I’ll pay you double to stop.”

The gondolier mumbled a curse in Italian under his breath, but the singing ceased. The moon had been blotted by clouds, giving him little light by which to navigate. He focused on his task, pointing the boat’s high, gracefully curved prow toward the middle of the Grand Canal, then out into the open waters of the Laguna Veneta, a strange place for a gondola in the dark of night.

The currents were stronger here, and the fl at- bottomed vessel was not well suited to the chop created by a stiffening breeze blowing in from the west. The gondolier frowned as the Campanile di San Marco’s tower grew faint in the distance behind them.

“Where are we- a going again?” he asked.

“Just keep rowing,” the Brit answered, his eyes surveying the darkness.

A few minutes later, three quick fl oodlight fl ashes split the night from several hundred yards away. They came from the bow of a small fi shing boat that was approaching the gondola’s starboard side.

“There,” the Brit said, pointing to the right. “Go there.”
“Sì, signore,” the gondolier said, aiming the boat in the direction of the light.

Soon, they were alongside the fi shing boat, a white fi berglass trawler. The gondolier took quick stock of its occupants. There were three, and they weren’t fi shermen. One was stationed on the bow with an AK- 47 anchored against his shoulder, the muzzle arching in a semicircle as he scanned the horizon. One manned the wheel house, with both hands fi rmly planted on the helm and a handgun holstered on his right hip. The third, an egg- bald albino, was in the stern, apparently unarmed, and focused entirely on the Brit.

This would be easy.

The fi shing boat’s engine shifted into neutral and it slowly glided to a stop. Once the boats were stern to stern, a brief conversation between the Brit and the albino ensued. The gondolier waited patiently for the exchange, then it happened: a small, velvet bag passed from the albino to the Brit.

The gondolier made his move. The man with the AK- 47 never saw the long oar leave the water and certainly didn’t realize it was tracking at high speed in his direction— at least not until the blade was three inches from his ear, at which point it was too late. He
dropped to the bottom of the boat with a heavy thud.

One down.

The man at the helm reacted, but slowly. His fi rst move was to leave the wheel house and inspect the noise. That was his mistake. He should have gone for his gun. By the time his error began to occur to him, the gondolier had already dropped his oar and leaped onto the fi shing boat, and was approaching with hands raised. The gondolier had a full range of Far Eastern martial arts moves at his disposal but opted, instead, for a more Western tactic, delivering a left jab to the side of the man’s nose that stunned him, then a right uppercut to his jaw that severed any connection the helmsman had to reality.

Two down.

The albino was already reaching down to his ankle, toward a knife that was sheathed there. But he was also far too late and far too slow. The gondolier took one long stride, pivoted, and delivered a devastating back kick to the albino’s skull. His body immediately went slack.

The gondolier quickly secured all three men with plastic ties he had produced from his pants pocket. The Brit watched in dumbfounded terror. The gondolier didn’t even seem to be breathing heavily.

“All right, your turn,” he said to the Brit, pulling another restraint from his pocket, all traces of his Italian accent suddenly gone. He was . . . American?


“Who . . . who are you?” the Brit asked.

“That’s hardly your biggest problem at the moment,” the gondolier replied, preparing to reboard the gondola. “Being found guilty of treason is a much greater—”

“Stay back,” the Brit shouted, pulling a snub- nosed Derringer pistol from out of his tweed jacket.

The gondolier eyed the pistol, more annoyed than frightened. Intelligence had told him the Brit wouldn’t be armed— proving, once again, just how smart Intelligence really was.

Without hesitation, the gondolier performed an expert back dive, vaulting himself off the fi shing trawler and into the choppy waters below. The Brit yanked the Derringer’s trigger, fi ring off a wild shot. The gondolier had moved too quickly. The Brit would have had a better chance hitting one of the innumerable seagulls in the faraway Piazza San Marco.

The Brit swiveled his head left, right, then left. He turned around, then back to the front. He kept expecting to see a head surface, and he fully intended to shoot a hole in it when it did. The Derringer was not the most accurate weapon, but the Brit was a deadly shot. Spies often are.

He waited. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two minutes. The gondolier had disappeared, but how was that possible? Had the Brit’s bullet, in fact, struck its target? That must have been it. The man, whoever he was, was now at the bottom of the lagoon.

“Well, that’s that,” the Brit said, returning the Derringer to his jacket and gripping the sides of the boat so he could stand and survey his situation.

Then he felt the hand. It came out of nowhere, wet and cold, and clamped on his wrist. Then came the agony of that hand twisting his arm until it snapped at the elbow. He bellowed in pain, but his excruciation was short- lived: The gondolier vaulted himself onto the boat and delivered a descending blow to the side of the man’s head. The Brit’s body immediately lost what ever starch it once had, slumping, jelly- like, into the gondola’s seat.

“You should have let me sing,” the gondolier said to the Brit’s unconscious form. “I thought it sounded lovely.”

The gondolier snapped restraints on the Brit, found the velvet bag, and inspected its contents. A handful of diamonds, at least two million dollars’ worth, sparkled back at him.

“Daddy really ought to do a better job protecting the family jewels,” he said to the still- inert Brit.

The gondolier stood. He lifted his watch close to his face, pressed a button on the side, and spoke into it.

“Waste Management, this is Vito,” he said. “It’s time to pick up the trash.”

“Copy that, Vito,” said a voice that sprouted from the watch’s small speakers. “We have a garbage truck inbound. Are you sure you’ve fi nished your entire route?”

“Affirmative.” The gondolier surveyed the four incapacitated men before him. “Only found four cans. They’ve all been emptied.”

A new voice, one that sounded like it was mixed with several shovels of gravel, fi lled the watch’s speakers. “We knew we could count on you,” it said. “Good work, Derrick Storm.”

gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias, gracias.

¿Te he dado ya las gracias qwerty?

ps: rajoy!! dame ya un p*** trabajo que me quiero comprar los libros! xD
Ps2: soy amante de colección, que le voy a hacer

No me digáis que posteo 2 veces seguidas que ya me he dado cuenta. El anterior era para poner el capítulo y éste para comentar.

La dedicatoria que ha puesto Castle: "Para mi padre" es bonito después de tener ese encuentro en París, Castle necesitaba conocer esa pieza que forma el puzzle de su vida. Perooooo ¿eso no es una impruedencia? Castle que escribe y describe tanto secretismo de la CIA y espías porque sabe cómo son las cosas, como para ir ahora dedicándole el libro.

La CIA ya sabe de su parentesco, pero que no lo declare tan abiertamente!!!
¡¡¡Que en el libro también va a nombrar al "malo" del capítulo doble!!! dando pistas sobre su vida y personajes concretos.

Esta vez ha(n) andado con pocas sutilezas.


PD: Claro!! que a lo mejor ya lo sabía todo el mundo menos el susodicho Castle

Me encanta. Aunque yo me los vajo por internet en forma de pdf

http://a.abc.com/m/pdf/shows/castle/storm-front/chapter-2.pdf

CHAPTER 2

ZURICH, Switzerland

The robber was in the kitchen. Wilhelm Sorenson was sure of it. With his heart racing, he closed in on the swinging door that led to the room and paused, listening for the smallest sound.

Yes, he heard it. There was a faint rattling from one of the copper pots that hung from the ceiling. It was the robber, for sure. The chase would be over soon. The robber would be captured and brought to justice. His version of justice.

Sorenson moved like an Arctic fox crossing tundra until his hand rested against the door. Another noise. This time, it was a giggle.

He did so love their version of cops and robbers.

“Oh Vögelein!” he called. Little Bird. His pet name for the robber.

She giggled again. He burst through the door, jowls flopping, breathing heavily from the exertion. This was the most exercise he ever got.

She was already gone. He felt moisture pooling on his brow, watched as the droplets rolled off his face and splattered on the floor. He had taken a triple dose of his erectile dysfunction medicine a half hour earlier, and the pills had dilated just about every blood vessel in his body. Now the blood was roaring through him, flushing his otherwise pale face to near purple and cranking his internal thermostat so the sweat was pouring from him as if he were an abattoir- bound hog.

It was a good thing none of the board members could see him right now, to say nothing of the press: Wilhelm Sorenson, one of the richest men in Switzerland and one of the most powerful bankers in the world, dressed only in socks, boxers, and suspenders, with a costume shop gendarme’s hat perched atop his head.

He had dispatched his wife to their chalet in the Loire Valley for a weekend of wine tasting with a group of lady friends, just what the old booze hound wanted. He had their mansion on the shores of Lake Greifen to himself.

Or, rather, to himself and Brigitte, the nineteen- year- old Swedish ingenue who had become the latest in a long line of Wilhelm’s barely legal obsessions.

Their little tête-à- têtes were not, under the strictest interpretation of law, illegal; just immoral, adulterous, and intrinsically revolting. Truly, there were few things more abhorrent to nature than the sight of Wilhelm, a married man pushing seventy, with a mass of lumpy, flaccid flesh overhanging his underwear, chasing after this sleek, blond, gorgeous young thing.

Nevertheless, this was their little game. She donned what ever absurdly priced lingerie he had bought for her most recently— this time, a four- hundred- dollar shred of feather- trimmed pink silk acquired on a trip to New York— and raced around the house. She drank directly from a 450- euro bottle of Bollinger Vieilles Vignes Françaises the whole time. Five long pulls was enough to get her pretending to be drunk; ten would actually do the job, making her sure she could tolerate the feeling of him, grunting and sweating on top of her. Then she allowed herself to be caught, mostly so she could get it over with. It usually didn’t take him more than about five minutes.

“Oh, Schnucki!” she sang out. Her pet name for him. It roughly translated to “Cutey”— making it perhaps the least accurate nickname in the history of spoken language.

She was nowhere in the kitchen. He followed the mellifluous sound of her voice into the living room, the one with the soaring cathedral ceiling and the commanding view of the lake. Not that its placid waters had his attention at the moment.

“I’m coming to get you, Vögelein!” he said.

He stubbed his toe on the couch, swearing softly. He had not been drinking. He could barely perform sober. Drunk he would never be able to rise to the occasion, even with all those little blue pills he had consumed.

The giggling now seemed to be coming from the hallway that led to the foyer, so he followed the sound. Yes, this would be over soon. The foyer had a sitting room off it, but otherwise it was a dead end. She would soon be his.

Then he heard her scream.

Sorenson frowned. She wasn’t supposed to make it this easy. That wasn’t part of the game.

No matter. He would get what he wanted, then send her down into the city with his credit card for a night in the clubs. That way he could get some sleep.

“I’ve got you now, Vögelein,” he called out.

He rounded the corner into the darkened foyer and stopped. There were six heavily armed men dressed in black tactical gear. Their facial features were shrouded by night- vision goggles.

One of the men, the biggest of the bunch, had grabbed Brigitte by one of her blond pigtails and was pressing a knife against her throat. Her eyes had gone wide.

“What is this?” Sorenson demanded, in German.

The shortest man, a ball of muscle no more than five- footfour, peeled off his goggles, revealing an eye patch and a face halfcovered in the waxy, scarred skin left behind by severe burns. He brought a Ruger .45- caliber semiautomatic handgun level with Sorenson’s gut.

“Shut up,” said the man— Sorenson was already thinking of him as “Patch” in his mind— then pointed to the sitting room. “Go in there.”

Wilhelm Sorenson was the top currency trader at Nationale Banc Suisse, the largest bank in Switzerland, with assets of just over two trillion in Swiss francs. He moved untold fortunes in euro, dollars, yuan, and rand every day with the push of a button. His bonus alone last year was forty- five million francs, to say nothing of what he made on his private investments. No one ordered him around.

“This is . . . this is outrageous,” Sorenson said, switching to English himself. “Who are you?”

Patch turned to the guy holding Brigitte and nodded. The man jerked his knife hand, cutting a wide gash in the girl’s throat.
Her scream sounded like it came from underwater. She fell to her knees. Blood poured from her severed carotid artery. Her hand went to her neck, but it was like trying to stop fl ood waters with a spaghetti strainer. The blood burst through her fingers.

“I’m no one to be disobeyed,” Patch said.

Sorenson watched in horror as the life bled from his plaything. He felt no concern for her, only for himself. The panic spread over him. He had given his security services the weekend off so he and Brigitte could have their tryst in private. He had a
gun, an old Walther P38 his Nazi- sympathizer father had willed him, but that was locked upstairs in a safe. His phone was clearly not on his person, and in any event these guys did not look like they were going to let him make phone calls.

He was at their mercy.

“Please, let’s be reasonable here,” Sorenson said, trying to sound calm. “I’m a very wealthy man, I can . . .”

“Shut up,” Patch ordered, raising the .45 so it was in Sorenson’s face. “Move. In there.”

Sorenson felt a gun barrel in his back. One of the other men had circled around him and was using his weapon to shove him toward the sitting room. He slowly allowed himself to be herded there. He assured himself these men were not here to kill him. He needed to keep his wits about him. You don’t just kill a man like Wilhelm Sorenson. The repercussions would be too great. But this was clearly going to cost him a lot of money, to say nothing of a lot of embarrassment.

Sorenson took one last glance back at Brigitte, now facedown in a spreading pool of blood. How was he going to explain that to his wife? He had always been discreet with his little hobby, or at least discreet enough that he and the cow could pretend they had a normal marriage. Worse, Brigitte’s blood had seeped onto the antique Hereke they had found in Turkey. It was his wife’s favorite rug. Damn it. He was going to be in real trouble now.

When they reached the sitting room, Patch said, “There,” pointing to a high- backed Windsor chair that had been a gift from the Windsors themselves. Working without wasted movement, two men duct- taped Wilhelm to the chair, unspooling great lengths on his ankles, knees, hips, chest, and back. Only his arms were being left free.

“Whoever is paying you to do this, I can pay you more,” Sorenson said. “I promise you.”

“Shut up,” Patch said, backhanding him with casual viciousness.

“You don’t understand, I—”

“Do you want me to cut off your lips?” Patch asked. “I’ll happily do it if you keep talking.”

Sorenson clamped his mouth closed. They wanted to establish dominance over him fi rst? Fine. He would let them do it. When the two men finished securing Sorenson to the chair, Patch unzipped a black duffel bag and pulled out an unusual- looking wooden block. It was the base for manacles of some sort, with oval slots for both wrists and adjustable clamps that allowed it to attach to a fl at surface.

Patch looked around for a suitable table and found what he needed in the corner: a hand- carved ebony table from Senegal that had been inlaid with Moroccan tile. The thing weighed several hundred pounds. It had taken two men and a dolly to get it in place when it had been delivered three years earlier, and it had not been moved since then. Patch lifted it alone, barely straining himself in the process. He positioned it in front of Sorenson, then affixed the manacles.

Patch nodded, and the men who had been working the duct tape each grabbed one of Sorenson’s arms. Sorenson got the feeling they had done this before. Their every movement seemed practiced. They guided his arms into the manacles. Patch snapped the device down, then tightened it until Sorenson’s wrists were immobilized.

Patch pulled a pair of needle- nose pliers out of the bag and studied them for a moment. Then, without further comment, he systematically yanked every fi ngernail out of Sorenson’s right hand.

Sorenson screamed, cursed, pleaded, cajoled, threatened, whimpered, cried, and cursed some more. Patch was unmoved. He was focused on his task, no different than if he were yanking old nails out of a board. He paused just slightly between each digit to inspect the bloodied fingernail, then dropped it into a pouch on his belt. He loved fingernails. His collection numbered in the hundreds.

Sorenson’s thumb had been a little bit stubborn. Patch had to take it in three pieces. He frowned at the sloppiness of his workmanship. He would not save this one.

He nodded. His men removed Sorenson’s bloodied mess of a right hand from the manacle. Then Patch turned to the left.

“Now,” Patch said. “Tell me your pass code.”

Sorenson was on the brink of cardiac arrest. His heart was thundering at close to two hundred beats per minute. The pain had sent him into shock, so while he was sweating from every single pore, his body was ice cold.

“What . . . what pass code?” he panted.

Patch’s answer was to yank out the pinky nail on Sorenson’s left hand. The banker howled again. Patch calmly placed the nail in his pouch.

“Jesus, man, tell me which pass code,” he implored. “I’ll give it to you, I just need to know which one.”

“To the MonEx Four Thousand,” Patch said.

The MonEx 4000? What did they want with . . . It didn’t matter anymore. Only the pain did. And making it stop. Sorenson rattled off his pass code without hesitation. Patch looked over at a man whose long, flaming red hair protruded out from under his night goggles. The man pulled out a small handheld device and punched in the combination of letters and numbers Sorenson had provided. The man’s head bobbed down and up, just once.

Satisfied, Patch pulled the .45 out its holster and put two bullets in Sorenson’s forehead.

WHEN SORENSON’S BODY WAS DISCOVERED BY HIS GARDENER
that next morning and reported to the local authorities, it was approximately 3 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

It was around four- thirty when the computers at Interpol, the international policing agency, flagged the crime, noting its similarities to murders that had been committed in Japan and Germany in the five days preceding this one.

Within the half hour, Interpol agents confirmed the computer’s analysis and decided to implement their notification protocol. They began alerting their contacts across the globe, including American law enforcement.

The Americans dithered for an hour before deciding how to best handle it.

An hour later, at exactly 6:03 a.m., Jedediah Jones’s phone rang.

Officially, Jones worked for the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. His job title was head of internal division enforcement. Unofficially, his title’s acronym was suggestive of his true purpose. His missions, personnel, and bud get did not, in any formal account of the CIA, exist.

The man calling said he was sorry for phoning him so early on a Saturday, but the truth was that he need not have bothered apologizing. Jones had been jogging at four, at work by fi ve- thirty. He considered that his lazy Saturday schedule.

Jones took his briefing, thanked the man, and went to work, yanking the levers that only he knew how to pull.

It took about an hour for Jones to get his people on the ground in Switzerland, Japan, and Germany.

Within about two hours, he began receiving their preliminary reports.

It was when he learned that the killer in Switzerland had worn an eye patch that Jones realized that his next course was now decided. There was one man in his contact list whose training, intellect, and tenaciousness were a match for this particular killer.

He reached for his phone and called Derrick Storm.

Es curioso como parece ser que este libro tiene más o menos la misma extensión que Frozen Heat, pero en cambio los capítulos son bastante más cortos.

Me he leído los cómics y me cae bien Derrick, a ver si me pongo de una vez a leer los libros.

¡Gracias por la traducción del capítulo.

(Ese Sorenson muerto en mayúsculas... sé que no salen personajes directos de la serie en los libros, pero joder, como sea nuestro Sorenson... T_T)

Ja ja ja. Yo también pensé que era un personaje inspirado del Sorenson que conocemos, espero que sólo sea una coincidencia. En caso de ser él, Castle se ha ensañado con él. De 70, fofo, viejoverde, cometiendo ilegalidades (o casi)... que necesita de 3 viagras y no beber alcohol...
No quiero pensar cómo pondría al doctor moto.

Teóricamente y hablando dentro de lo que es la realidad de Richard Castle, sí puede haber tomado el nombre de Sorenson ya que este libro lo ha escrito ahora y ya conoce al susodicho Sorenson.

Ah!, estoy traduciendo el segundo capítulo. No le estoy dedicando demasiado tiempo por lo que me está costando un poco más de la cuenta, pero espero subirlo el fin de semana.

A mí también me cae bien Derrick, en actitud me recuerda al Castle de la 1ª temporada o lo que sería Castle antes de conocer a Beckett.

Gracias qwerty!

Tremendo descuido la dedicatoria y la trama...Marlowe derrapó
Y lo de Sorenson (A Demming le había cambiado el nombre pero coincidia la personalidad )...tengo que empezar a leer esto

Jop, ni siquiera nombran a Showers

http://a.abc.com/m/pdf/shows/castle/storm-front/chapter-3.pdf

CHAPTER 3

BACAU, Romania



It’s the eyes that get you. Derrick Storm knew this from experience.

You can tell yourself they’re just normal kids. You can tell yourself everything is going to work out fi ne for them. You can tell yourself that maybe they haven’t had it too bad.

But the eyes. Oh, the eyes. Big, dark, shiny. Full of hope and hurt. What stories they tell. What entreaties they make: Please, help me; please, take me home; please, please, give me a hug, just one little hug, and I’ll be yours forever.

Yeah, they get you. Every time. The eyes were why Storm kept returning to the Orphanage of the Holy Name, this small place of love and unexpected beauty in an otherwise drab, industrial city in northeast Romania. Once you looked into eyes like that, you had to keep coming back.

And so, having finished the job in Venice, Storm was making another one of his visits there. The Orphanage of the Holy Name was housed in an ancient abbey that had been spared bombing in World War II and was converted to its current purpose shortly thereafter. Storm had slipped inside its main wall, grabbed a rake, and was quietly gathering leaves from the courtyard when he saw a set of big, brown eyes staring curiously at him.

He turned to see a little girl, no more than five, clutching a tattered rag that may once have been a teddy bear, many years and many children ago. She was wearing clothing that was just this side of threadbare. She had brown hair and a serious face that was just a little too sad for any child that age.

“Hello, my name is Derrick,” he said in easy, flowing Romanian. “What’s your name?”

“Katya,” she replied. “Katya Beckescu.”

“I’m pleased to meet you.”

“I’m here because my mommy is dead,” Katya said, in the matter-of-fact manner in which children share all news, good or bad.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Storm replied. “Do you like it here?”

“It’s nice,” Katya said. “But sometimes I wish I had a real home.”

“We’ll have to see if we can do something about that,” Storm said, but he was interrupted.

A woman dressed in a nun’s habit, no more than four-foot eleven and mostly gristle, approached with a stern face. “Off with you now, Katya,” she said in Romanian. “You still haven’t finished your chores, child.”

She directed her next set of orders at Storm.

“I’m sorry, little boy, but we’re not taking any more residents at the moment,” she said, switching to English that she spoke in a rich, Dublin brogue. “You’ll just have to run along now.”

“Hello, Sister Rose,” Storm said, dropping his rake and enveloping the nun in an embrace.

Sister Rose McAvoy smiled as she allowed herself to be semicrushed against Storm’s brick wall of a chest. She was pushing eighty, looked like she was sixty, moved like she was forty, and maintained the irrepressible spirit of the teenage girl she had been when she was first assigned to the orphanage many de cades before, as a young novitiate. She always said she was Irish by birth, Romanian by necessity, and Catholic by the grace of God.

During her time at Holy Name, she had intrepidly guided the orphanage through the Soviet occupation and Ceausescu, through the eighties’ austerity and the 1989 revolution, through the National Salvation Front and every government that followed, and lately, through the International Monetary Fund.

Improbably, she had kept the authorities appeased and the orphanage alive at every stage. If ever asked how she had done it, she would wink and say, “God listens to our prayers, you know.”

Storm wasn’t sure what to think about the force of His almighty hand, but he suspected the orphanage’s success had a lot more to do with Sister Rose’s abilities as an administrator, fundraiser, taskmaster, and loving mother fi gure to generations.

It certainly wasn’t because she had it easy. Sister Rose made it a point to take in the worst of the worst, the kids other orphanages wouldn’t touch, the ones who had almost no hope of being adopted. Many had been damaged by neglect in other orphanages. Many were handicapped, either mentally or physically. Some ended up staying well beyond the time at which they were supposed to age out, their eigh teenth birthday, simply because they had nowhere else to go and Sister Rose never turned anyone out in the cold. They were all God’s children, so they all had a place at her table.

Storm had come across the orphanage years earlier, doing a job the gruesome details of which he made every effort to forget. Whenever he visited, he came with a suitcase or two full of largedenomination bills for Sister Rose.

Now they strolled, arm in arm, through the garden that Sister Rose had tended to as lovingly as she did her many children. Storm felt incredible peace here. The world made sense here. There was no ambiguity, no deceit, no need to parse motives and question whys and wherefores. There was just Sister Rose and her incredible goodness. And all those children with their eyes.

“Sister Rose,” Storm said with a wistful sigh, “when are you going to marry me?”

She patted his arm. “I keep telling you, laddy, I’m already hitched to Jesus Christ,” she said, then added with a wink: “But if he ever breaks it off with me, you’ll be my first call.”

“I eagerly await the day,” he said. Storm had proposed to her no less than twenty times through the years.

“Thank you for your donation,” she said, quietly. “You’re a gift from God, Derrick Storm. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“It’s the least I can do, especially for children like that,” he said, gesturing toward the little girl, who was now chasing a butterfly across the yard.

“Oh, that one,” Sister Rose said, sighing. “She’s a pistol, that one. Smart as a whip, but full of trouble. Just like you.”

Sister Rose patted his arm again, then the smile dropped from her face.

“What is it?” Storm asked.

“I just . . . I worry, Derrick. I’m not the spring chicken I used to be. I worry about what will happen when I’m no longer here.”

“Why? Where you going?” Storm asked, his eyebrow arched. “Don’t tell me: You’re finally taking me up on my offer to run away to Saint-Tropez with me. Don’t worry. You’ll love it there. Great topless beaches.”

“Derrick Storm!” she said, playfully slapping his shoulder. “You look like this big, strong man, but underneath it all you’re just a wee knave.”

Storm grinned. Sister Rose turned serious again: “The Lord has given me many blessed years on this mortal coil, but you know it won’t last forever. When he calls me, I have to go. He’s my boss, you know.”

“Yeah. Speaking of which, you ought to talk to him about his 401(k) plan. I was looking at your—”

Storm was interrupted by a ring from his satellite phone. He glared at it, considered ignoring it. It rang again. It was coming in from “RESTRICTED,” which meant he could guess its origin.

“Now, answer your phone, Derrick,” Sister Rose scolded. “I’ll not have you shirking your work on my watch.”

Storm let two more rings go by, and then when Sister Rose scowled at him, he tapped the answer button.


“Storm Investigations,” he said. “This is Derrick Storm, proprietor.”

“Yeah, I think my lover is cheating on me. Can you dive into the bushes outside a seedy motel, take some pictures?” came that familiar, gravelly voice he had last heard in Venice two days earlier.

Jedediah Jones was one of the few people left in Storm’s life who knew he had once been a down-on-his-luck private investigator, a decorated Marine Corps veteran turned ham-and-egg dick who actually did spend his share of time in just such bushes— if he was lucky enough to even have work. That was before a woman named Clara Strike had discovered Storm. They became partners. And lovers. And even though it ended badly, the lasting legacy of their relationship was that she had introduced him to the CIA and turned him over to Jones.

It was Jones who’d trained Storm, established him as a CIA contractor, and eventually turned him into what he was today: one of the CIA’s go- to fixers, an outsider who could do what needed to be done without some of the legal encumbrances that sometimes weighed down the agency’s agents. Jones’s career had thrived with many of Storm’s successes.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Storm said, playing along. “I know you’re hurt by what your lover is doing. But I don’t take pictures of goats.”

“Very funny, Storm,” Jones said. “But joke time is over. I’ve got something with your name on it.”

“Forget it. I told you after Venice that I was taking a long vacation. And I mean to take it. Sister Rose and I are going to Saint-Tropez.”

Storm winked at the nun.

“Save it. This is bigger than your vacation.”

“My life was so much better when I was dead,” Storm said wistfully. He was only half-kidding. For four years, Storm had been considered killed in action. There were even witnesses who swore they saw him die. They never knew that the big, messy exit wound that had appeared in the back of his head was really just high-tech CIA fakery, or that the entire legend of Storm’s death had been orchestrated— then perpetuated— by Jones, who had his own devious reasons for needing the world to think Storm was gone. Storm had spent those four years fishing in Montana, snorkeling in the Caymans, hiking in the Appalachians, donning disguises so he could join his father at Orioles games, and generally having a grand time of things.

“Yeah, well, you had your fun,” Jones said. “Your country needs you, Storm.”

“And why is that?”

“Because a high-profile Swiss banker was killed in Zurich yesterday,” Jones said, then hit Storm with the hammer: “There are pictures of the killer on their way to us. He’s been described as having an eye patch. And the banker was missing six fingernails.”

Storm reflexively stiffened. That killer— with that M.O.— could only mean one thing: Gregor Volkov was back.

“But he’s dead,” Storm growled.

“Yeah, well, so were you.”

“Who is he working for this time?”

“We’re not a hundred percent sure,” Jones said. “But my people have picked up some talk on the street that a Chinese agent may be involved.”

“Okay. I’ll take my briefing now if you’re ready.”

“No, not over the phone,” Jones said. “We need you to come back to the cubby for that.”

The cubby was Jones’s tongue-in-cheek name for the small fiefdom he had carved out of the National Clandestine Service.

“I’ll be on the next plane,” Storm said.

“Great. I’ll have a car meet you at the airport. Just let me know what flight you’ll be on.”

“No way,” Storm said. “You know that’s not the way I operate.”

Storm could practically hear Jones rubbing his buzz- cut head. “I wish you could be a little more transparent with me, Storm.”

“Forget it,” Storm said, then repeated the mantra he had delivered many times before: “Transparency gets you killed.”

Me gusta

CAPÍTULO 3

BĂCAU, Rumania


Son los ojos los que te atrapan. Derrick Storm sabía esto por experiencia.

Puedes decirte a ti mismo que sólo son niños normales. Puedes decirte a ti mismo que todo les va a salir bien. Puedes decirte a ti mismo que quizás ellos no lo han tenido demasiado mal.

Pero los ojos. Oh, los ojos. Grandes, oscuros y brillantes. Llenos de esperanzas y sufrimiento. Qué historias cuentan. Qué súplicas hacen: Por favor, ayúdame; por favor, llévame a casa; por favor, por favor, dame un abrazo, sólo un pequeño abrazo, y yo seré tuyo para siempre.

Sí, ellos te atrapan. Todo el tiempo. Los ojos eran el porqué Storm volvía una y otra vez al Orfanato del Santo Nombre, este pequeño lugar de amor y belleza inesperada en una ciudad de otra manera industrial y gris, en el noreste de Rumanía. Una vez mirabas a unos ojos como aquellos, tienes que seguir viniendo.

Y así, teniendo acabado el trabajo en Venecia, Storm estaba allí haciendo otra de sus visitas. El Orfanato del Santo Nombre se albergaba en una antigua abadía que había sido librada de los bombardeos en la Segunda Guerra Mundial y poco después fue convertida a su actual uso. Storm se había escabullido dentro de su muro principal, agarrado un rastrillo y estaba tranquilamente amontonando hojas del patio interior cuando vio una pareja de grandes ojos marrones mirándole con curiosidad.

Se volvió para mirar a una niña, no más de cinco años, sosteniendo un trapo hecho jirones que alguna vez pudo haber sido un osito de peluche, muchos años y muchos niños atrás. Ella llevaba ropa un poco deshilachada por el costado. Tenía el pelo castaño y un rostro serio el cual era un poco triste para cualquier niño de esa edad.

"Hola, mi nombre es Derrick", se presentó en un rumano fluido y natural. "¿Cómo te llamas?"

"Katya", respondió ella. "Katya Beckescu."

"Encantado de conocerte."

"Estoy aquí porque mi mamá está muerta", dijo Katya, con el modo habitual con que los niños comparten todas las noticias, buenas o malas.

"Lamento escuchar eso," contestó Storm. "¿Te gusta esto?"

"Es bonito", explicó Katya. "Pero a veces me gustaría tener una casa de verdad."

"Tendremos que ver si podemos hacer algo al respecto", dijo Storm, pero fue interrumpido.

Una mujer vestida con un hábito de monja, de no más de metro y medio de altura y que era toda huesos y pellejo, se acercó con un rostro severo. "Fuera de aquí ahora, Katya," ordenó en rumano. "Aún no has terminado tus tareas, niña."

Dirigió su siguiente serie de órdenes a Storm.

"Lo lamento, muchacho, pero no aceptamos más residentes en este momento" dijo, cambiando a un inglés que hablaba en un rico acento dublinés. "Tienes que marcharte."

"Hola, hermana Rose," saludó Storm, dejando caer su rastrillo y envolviendo a la monja en un abrazo.

La hermana Rose McAvoy sonrió mientras dejó ser medio despachurrada contra el muro de ladrillos del pecho de Storm. Estaba cerca de los ochenta, y parecía que tenía sesenta, se movía como si tuviera cuarenta y mantenía el espíritu indomable de la chica adolescente de cuando ella fue la primera asignación al orfanato hacía muchas décadas atrás, como una joven novicia. Ella siempre decía que era irlandesa de nacimiento, rumana por necesidad y católica por la gracia de Dios.

Durante su estancia en el Santo Nombre, había guiado intrépidamente el orfanato durante la ocupación soviética y Ceausescu, a través de la austeridad de los ochenta y la revolución de 1989, a través del Frente de Salvación Nacional y de todos los gobiernos que siguieron, y últimamente, a través del Fondo Monetario Internacional.

Extrañamente, había mantenido las autoridades apaciguadas y el orfanato vivo en cada etapa. Si alguna vez preguntabas cómo lo había hecho, ella guiñaría y diría: "Dios escucha nuestras oraciones, ya sabes."

Storm no estaba seguro qué pensar sobre la fuerza de Su todopoderosa mano, pero sospechaba que el éxito del orfanato tenía mucho más que ver con las capacidades de la hermana Rose como administradora, recaudadora, capataz, e imagen de madre cariñosa por generaciones.

Desde luego, no era porque lo tuvo fácil. La hermana Rose se empeñó a acoger en el peor de los peores, a niños de otros orfanatos que ni habrían tocado, los que no tenían casi ninguna esperanza de ser adoptados. Muchos habían sido desahuciados por negligencias en otros orfanatos. Muchos estaban discapacitados, ya sea mental o físicamente. Algunos acaban quedándose mucho más allá del tiempo en que se suponía que debían, su decimoctavo cumpleaños, simplemente porque no tenían otro lugar a donde ir y la hermana Rose nunca dejó a nadie en la estacada. Todos eran niños de Dios, por lo que todos ellos tenían un lugar en su mesa.

Storm se había topado con el orfanato unos años antes, haciendo un trabajo de detalles espantosos del cual hizo todos los esfuerzos para olvidar. Cada vez que él hacía una visita, llegaba con una o dos maletas llenas de billetes grandes para la hermana Rose.

Ahora ellos caminaban tomados del brazo, por todo el jardín que la hermana Rose tendía tanto amor como dedicaba a sus muchos hijos. Storm sentía aquí una paz increíble. El mundo tenía sentido aquí. No había ninguna ambigüedad, sin engaños, sin necesidad de analizar los motivos y cuestionarse el porqué y el para qué. Estaba sólo la hermana Rose y su increíble bondad. Y todos esos niños con sus ojos.

"Hermana Rose," dijo Storm con un suspiro melancólico, "¿Cuándo vas a casarte conmigo?"

Ella le dio una palmadita en el brazo. "Ya te tengo dicho, muchachito, que ya estoy desposada a Jesucristo", y añadió con un guiño: "Pero si alguna vez rompe conmigo, serás mi primera llamada."

"Espero con impaciencia el día". Storm se lo había propuesto no menos de veinte veces a lo largo de los años.

"Gracias por tu donación", dijo ella en voz baja. "Eres un regalo de Dios, Derrick Storm. No sé qué haríamos sin ti ".

"Es lo menos que puedo hacer, especialmente para niños como éstos", explicó gesticulando a la pequeña niña, que ahora estaba persiguiendo una mariposa por todo el patio.

"Oh, ella", suspiró la hermana Rose. "Ella es una pistola. Avispada como un látigo, pero repleta de problemas. Al igual que tú."

La hermana Rose le palmeó el brazo de nuevo, entonces la sonrisa desapareció de su rostro.

"¿Qué pasa?" Preguntó Storm.

"Yo sólo. . . Me preocupa, Derrick. Yo no soy la rapaza que solía ser. Me preocupa lo que va a pasar cuando yo ya no esté aquí".

"¿Por qué? ¿A dónde te vas? "Preguntó Storm con su ceja arqueada. "No me digas: Al final aceptas mi oferta de huir a Saint-Tropez conmigo. No te preocupes. Te va a encantar. Fantásticas playas de topless".

"¡Derrick Storm!" exclamó ella palmeando alegremente su hombro. "Aparentas ser este hombre grande y fuerte, pero en el fondo no eres más que un chiquito bribón".

Storm sonrió. La hermana Rose volvió a ponerse seria: "El Señor me ha dado muchos años bendecidos en este cuerpo mortal, pero sabes que no durará para siempre. Cuando Él me llame, me tendré que ir. Él es mi jefe, ya lo sabes."

"Sí. Hablando de eso, deberías hablar con él acerca de su plan de jubilación 401 (k). Estaba considerando tu…"

Storm fue interrumpido por un timbre de su teléfono satélite. Le lanzó una mirada de odio, considerando ignorarlo. El teléfono sonó de nuevo. La llamada entraba desde "RESTRINGIDO", lo que significaba que podía adivinar su origen.

"Ahora, contesta tu teléfono, Derrick," Regañó la hermana Rose. "No permitiré que eludas tu trabajo por mi vigilancia."

Storm dejó sonar dos tonos más, y luego, cuando la hermana Rose le frunció el ceño, pulsó el botón de respuesta.


"Investigaciones Storm", dijo. "Habla con Derrick Storm, propietario."

"Sí, creo que mi amante me está engañando. ¿Podrías agazaparte en los arbustos de afuera de un motel de mala muerte, y tomar algunas fotos? "Llegó esa voz conocida y grave, la última vez que la había oído era en Venecia dos días antes.

Jedediah Jones era una de las pocas personas que quedan en la vida de Storm que sabían que había sido una vez un detective privado en una racha de mala suerte, un condecorado veterano del Cuerpo de Marines regresado con una mano delante y otra detrás que en realidad pasaba buena parte de su tiempo precisamente en esos arbustos - si era lo suficientemente afortunado de tener trabajo. Eso fue antes de que una mujer llamada Clara Srike descubriera Storm. Se convirtieron en compañeros. Y amantes. A pesar que terminó mal, el legado permanente de su relación fue que ella le había presentado a la CIA y lo entregó a Jones.

Fue Jones quien entrenó a Storm, lo consolidó como contratista de la CIA, y con el tiempo lo convirtió en lo que era hoy: uno de los factótum de referencia de la CIA, un independiente que podía hacer lo que había que hacer sin algunos de los gravámenes legales que a veces lastraban a los agentes de la agencia. La carrera de Jones había prosperado con muchos de los éxitos de Storm.

"Lo lamento, caballero," se disculpó Storm, jugando un poco más. "Sé que estará herido por lo que su amante está haciendo. Pero yo no saco fotografías de cabras".

"Muy divertido, Storm", dijo Jones. "Pero el tiempo de bromas ha terminado. Tengo algo con tu nombre sobre él."

"Olvídalo. Te lo dije después de Venecia, iba a cogerme unas largas vacaciones. Y me refiero a cogerlas. La hermana Rose y yo nos vamos a Saint-Tropez".

Storm guiñó a la monja.

"Guárdalas. Esto es más grande que tus vacaciones".

"Mi vida era mucho mejor cuando estaba muerto", dijo Storm melancólicamente. Estaba medio bromeando. Durante cuatro años, Storm había sido considerado fallecido en acción. Incluso hubo testigos que juraron que lo vieron morir. Ellos nunca supieron que la gran y desagradable herida de salida aparecida en la parte posterior de su cabeza era realmente un artificio de alta tecnología CIA o que toda la leyenda de la muerte de Storm había sido orquestada - además perpetuada – por Jones, que tenía sus propias enrevesadas razones para necesitar que el mundo pensase que Storm había muerto. Storm había pasado esos cuatro años pescando en Montana, buceando en las Islas Caimán, de senderismo en los Apalaches, ataviándose disfraces para que pudiera reunirse con su padre en los partidos de los Orioles, y en general teniendo un rato magnífico de cosas.

"Sí, bueno, ya te has divertido", dijo Jones. "Tu país te necesita, Storm."

"¿Y a qué se debe?"

"Porque un alto ejecutivo de un banco suizo murió ayer en Zúrich", informó Jones, entonces dio a Storm el mazazo: "Hay fotografías en camino hacia nosotros del asesino. Ha sido descrito con un parche en un ojo. Y al banquero le habían desaparecido seis uñas".

Storm se tensó reflexivamente. Este asesino - con este Modus Operandi - sólo podía significar una cosa: Gregor Volkov había regresado.

"Pero él está muerto," gruñó Storm.

"Sí, bueno, al igual que tú".

"¿Para quién está trabajando en este momento?"

"No estamos al cien por cien seguros", dijo Jones. "Pero mi gente ha recogido algunas conversaciones en la calle que un agente Chino puede estar involucrado."

"Está bien. Si estás preparado, tomaré mis instrucciones ahora ".

"No, no por teléfono", indicó Jones. "Necesitamos que vuelvas al cubículo para esto."

El cubículo era el nombre irónico de Jones para el pequeño feudo que había forjado en el Servicio Nacional Clandestino.

"Estaré en el próximo vuelo", dijo Storm.

"Fantástico. Tendré un coche esperándote en el aeropuerto. Sólo déjame saber en qué vuelo estarás".

"De ninguna manera", reprobó Storm. "Sabes que esa no es la forma en que trabajo."

Storm prácticamente podía oír a Jones frotándose su cabeza rapada. "Me gustaría que pudieras ser un poco más transparente conmigo, Storm."

"Olvídalo," dijo Storm, entonces repitió el mantra que había pronunciado antes tantas veces: "La transparencia consigue matarte."



N.T: Plan 401(k) Se trata de un tipo de plan de jubilación, a la hora de hacer la declaración de la renta la casilla o papeles relacionados con el 401(k) permite tener una deducción en los impuestos y tener así una renta para cuando se jubile una persona.

N.T: Orioles, hace referencia a los Baltimore Orioles, equipo de béisbol.

N.T: “La transparencia consigue matarte- Transpaency gets you killed” – Me sonaba esto de algo y al final he caído de qué. En el capítulo de la serie 2x04, el capítulo que se ve a Beckett leyendo el primer libro de Heat dentro de la bañera con sus velitas. Aparece el contacto de la C.I.A de Castle en comisaría, el agente Gray dice esa frase, esa frase es del agente. A lo que Beckett le responde que Castle la usó en Storm Warning.

http://a.abc.com/m/pdf/shows/castle/storm-front/chapter-4.pdf

CHAPTER 4

NEW YORK, New York

Soaring high above lower Manhattan, Marlowe Tower was a ninety-two-story monument to American economic might, a glistening glass menagerie that housed some of the country’s fiercest financial animals. In New York’s hypercompetitive commercial real estate market, merely the name— Marlowe Tower— had come to represent status, to the point where neighboring properties bolstered their reputations by describing themselves as “Near Marlowe.”

Marlowe Tower was a place where wealthy capitalists went to grow their already large stake in the world. After parking their expensive imported cars at nearby garages, they entered at street level through the air lock created by the polished brass revolving doors, wearing their hand-crafted leather shoes and customtailored silk suits, each determined to make his fortune, whether it was his first, his second, or some subsequent iteration thereof.

G. Whitely Cracker V joined them in their battle each day. But to say he was merely one of them did not do him justice. The fact was, he was the best of them. His Maserati (or Lexus, or Jaguar, or what ever he chose to drive that day) was just a little faster. His shoes were just a little fi ner. His suits fi t just a little better.

And his executive suite on the eighty- seventh floor made him the envy of all who entered. It was six thousand square feet— an absurd bounty in a building where office space went for $125 a square foot— and it included such necessities as a coffee bar, a workout area, and a multimedia center, along with luxuries like a full-time massage therapist, a vintage video game arcade, and a feng shui– themed “decompression center” with a floor-to-ceiling waterfall.

As the CEO and chief proprietor of Prime Resource Investment Group LLC, Whitely Cracker had won this palace of prestige the new old-fashioned way. He’d earned it— by taking an already huge pile of family money, then leveraging it to make even more.

Whitely Cracker was the scion of one of New York’s wealthiest families— the Westchester Crackers, not the Suffolk Crackers— and could trace the origin of his name to 1857, with the birth of his great-great-grandfather.

The first in the line had actually gone by his given name, Graham. This, naturally, was before the National Biscuit Company came on the scene and popularized the slightly sweetened rectangular whole wheat food product. Graham W. Cracker had been a visionary who had made a fortune by luring Chinese workers across the Pacific to build railroads for substandard wages. That Graham Cracker gave his son, Graham W. Cracker Jr., seed money that he used to create a textiles conglomerate.

This set the pattern honored by all the Graham Crackers who followed: Each made his riches in his own area, then helped set up his son to make money in an industry befitting his generation.

Graham W. Cracker III struck it rich with oil refineries. G. W. Cracker IV— the popularity of the aforementioned Nabisco product had necessitated the use of initials— had been in plastics. And in keeping with the modern times, G. Whitely Cracker V, who used his middle name so no one confused him with his father, had become a hedge fund manager.

Yet while all this wealth and success might make them seem detestable, the fact was people couldn’t help but like a guy named Graham Cracker. And G. Whitely Cracker was no exception. At forty, he was still trim and boyishly handsome, with but a few wisps of gray hair beginning to blend in with his ash-blond coiffure. He smiled easily, laughed appropriately at every joke, and shook hands like he meant it.

He coupled this effortless charm with a gift for remembering names and a warmth in his relations, whether personal or professional. He was self-deprecating, openly admitting that his wife, Melissa— who was adored in social circles— was much smarter than him. And in a world full of philanderers, he was unerringly faithful to her.

He was also endlessly generous to his employees, whom he treated like family. He was a friend to nearly every major charity in New York, lavishing each with a six-figure check annually and seven-figure gifts when any of them found themselves in a pinch. And if ever he was panhandled by an indigent, he kept a ready supply of sandwich shop coupons— nonrefundable and nontransferrable, so they couldn’t swap the handout for booze.

It was this last trait that led to one glossy magazine deeming him the “Nicest Guy in New York.”

Everyone, it seemed, liked Whitely Cracker.

Which made it all the more confounding that he was being stalked by a trained killer.

WHITELY CRACKER WAS, NATURALLY, UNAWARE OF THIS AS HE drove in from Chappaqua. He had kissed Melissa at 5:25 a.m. that Monday, put on his favorite driving cap and driving gloves, the ones that made him feel like a badass, climbed into his vintage V12 Jaguar XJS, because he was in a Jaguar kind of mood that day, and made the drive to Marlowe Tower, tailed several carlengths back by an unassuming white panel van.

That Whitely was a creature of habit made him surpassingly easy to stalk. He liked to be at his office by 6:30 a.m. at the latest, to get a good head start on his day. This was not unusual among the kind of people who populated Marlowe Tower, some of whom passive- aggressively competed with one another to see who could be the first to push through the brass doors each day. The current winner clocked in shortly after four each morning. Whitely Cracker had no patience for such foolishness. What was the point of being absurdly wealthy if you couldn’t set your own schedule?

By 7 a.m., he had dispatched a few small items that had built up overnight from markets in Asia and Europe, beaten back his accountant, the always-nervous Theodore Sniff, and retreated to his in-office arcade. Every super-rich guy needed some eccentricities, and classic video games were Whitely’s. They soothed him, he said, but also focused his brain. He claimed to have invented one of his most lucrative derivatives while battering Don Flamenco in Mike Tyson’s Punch- Out.

On this morning, he made sure Ms. Pac-Man was well fed. He burnished Zelda’s legend for a little while. Then he switched to Pitfall!, where he amassed a small pretend fortune by swinging on ropes and avoiding ravenous alligators— oblivious that he had a real predator’s eyes on him, albeit electronically, the whole time.

When he had finally satisfied his pixel-based urges, it was ninefifteen, which meant it was time to turn his attention to his actual fortune. He left the arcade, smiling and waving at the employees he passed on the way, and returned to his offi ce, where he settled in front of his MonEx 4000 terminal. He entered his password, the one that only he knew, and it came to life.

The MonEx 4000 had, in the last few years, become the preferred platform of the serious international trader, replacing a variety of lesser competitors. Faster and more versatile than its rivals, it provided access to all major markets, currencies, and commodities, seamlessly integrating them into one interface. Its operations were baffling to anyone unfamiliar with the bizarre language of the marketplace— its screen would appear to be something like hieroglyphics to a layman— but a seasoned trader could work it like a maestro.

Whitely Cracker made it sing better than most. He was legendary among fellow traders for his ability to keep up with a myriad of complex deals simultaneously. In the worldwide community of MonEx 4000 users, many of whom only knew each other virtually, Whitely’s virtuosity had earned him the nickname “the great white shark”— because he was always moving and always hungry.

This day was no different. Within a half hour of the opening of North American markets, he had already made twelve million dollars’ worth of transactions, and he was just getting warmed up. He had just pulled the trigger on a 1.1-million- dollar purchase of cattle futures— he would sell them long before they matured four months from now, because Lord knows there wasn’t space in the decompression center for that many cows— when the MonEx 4000’s instant messaging function fl ashed on the top of his screen.

It was from a trader in Berlin to whom Whitely had just made an offer.

Selling short again, White?

Whitely’s handsome face assumed a slight grin. His fi ngers flew.

Just hedging some bets elsewhere. Looking to shore up some significant gains. You know how it is.

The top of the screen stayed static for a moment, then a new message appeared.

Ah, the great white strikes again.

Whitely studied this for a moment, weighed the benefi ts of prodding the guy a little bit, and decided there could be no harm. He was offering the Berliner what would appear to be a solid deal. The guy would be a fool not to take it.

Don’t worry. You’re not my tuna today. Just a small mackerel. Maybe even a minnow.

Whitely enjoyed this, the jocularity of bantering traders. He liked the money, too. But the real benefit was, simply, the deal itself. He was an unabashed deal junkie. Buy low, sell high. Unearth an undervalued asset, snap it up. Discover an overvalued asset, sell it short. Big margins. Small margins. Didn’t matter. The deal was his drug. Whether he made millions, thousands, or mere hundreds was immaterial. As long as it was a win. The high was incomparable. When he was trading, he was even more engrossed than he was when he played his video games. The hours just slipped by. The outside world barely mattered when he was trading.

He certainly didn’t notice that his every move— and every trade— was being captured by three tiny cameras that had been hidden behind his desk: one in the bookcase, one in a picture frame, one in the liquor cabinet.

Each had a perfect view of every trade he offered and accepted. Each relayed its crisp, high-definition video feed to an office on the eighty- third floor.

On the other side of his desk, and littered in numerous spots throughout those six thousand square feet, there were more cameras and bugs. It helped that Whitely preferred such lavish furnishings: It made for more hiding places. His home in Chappaqua, his various cars, anywhere he regularly went— even his health club— were festooned with them. There was nothing he did, no conversation he had, that wasn’t being monitored by a person well trained in the ways of killing.

Whitely was oblivious to it all, just as he was oblivious for the first three minutes Theodore Sniff spent lurking in his doorway midway through the morning. Sniff had been Prime Resource Investment Group’s accountant since its inception. He did not have his boss’s charm, and certainly lacked his good looks: Sniff was short, fat, and balding, the Holy Trinity of datelessness. His clothes, which seemed to wrinkle faster than ought to have been scientifically possible, never fit right. By the end of his long days at the office, his body odor tended to overpower what ever deodorant he chose. Even with a salary that should have made him plenty attractive to the opposite sex— or at least a certain opportunistic subset of it— Sniff hadn’t been laid in years.

His lone gift was for accounting. And there, he was genius, capable of keeping a veritable Domesday Book’s worth of accounts and ledgers at his command. Whitely leaned heavily on this ability because, in truth, he couldn’t really be bothered to oversee these things himself. Whitely took pride in his instincts as a trader, instincts that had built an empire. He could feel changes in the marketplace coming the way the Native Americans of yore could feel the ground trembling from buffalo. But keeping up with the books? Boring. Melissa told him he should make more of an effort. He told her that’s what Sniff was for.

Cracker was so loath to pay attention to the bottom line, he even tended to overlook when Sniff was in the room. For Whitely, a man ordinarily so attuned to his staff, ignoring Sniff was like a congenital condition. There was seemingly nothing he could do to stop it. The accountant was entering his fourth minute of standing in the doorway before he fi nally coughed softly into his hand. Whitely did not look up from his screen. Sniff rattled the change in his pocket. Nothing. Sniff cleared his throat, this time louder. Still nothing. Finally, he spoke.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Sniff said. “But it’s important.”

“Not now, Teddy,” Whitely said. Whitely always called him Teddy. Whitely used the name affectionately; he thought it brought the men closer. Sniff never had the courage to tell his boss he abhorred it.

“Sir, I . . .”

“Teddy,” Whitely said sharply, without taking his eyes off his screen. “I’m trading.”

Sniff turned his back and slinked off.

The camera in the far corner caught his dejected look as he departed.

Hola a todos/as.

Quiero comentaros una cosa y me gustaría que me respondierais los que leéis en este tema. Tanto si es que SI, como si la respuesta es NO.

Como veis además de subir los capítulos de los libros también los voy traduciendo de la mejor manera que puedo. Sé que habrán fallos o que no será una traducción perfecta o incluso que no guste la manera de hacerlo, pero es lo que hay, no doy para más.

No me importa traducir cosas porque sé que no todas las personas que visitan el foro tienen el nivel de inglés para entender parte de lo que se publica y el no entender del todo el inglés también es algo que no debería influir para disfrutar de la serie o de los libros en este caso. También está la opción que si alguien traduce algo yo suelo leer lo traducido y no complicarme demasiado con el inglés, una miradita por encima al texto original y listo. En ese aspecto soy perezosa.

Por otra parte también voy viendo que las visitas a este tema suben pero realmente no sé si es por curiosidad, para leer los capítulos en inglés o si realmente lo que estoy haciendo es seguido y se leen las traducciones. La verdad es que no habéis puesto demasiadas contestaciones para darme pistas.

Como he dicho, no tengo problema en traducir (a mi modo) si sé que lo que estoy haciendo sirve para algo más que para repasarme mi vocabulario y gramática de inglés.

Mi pregunta a si os sirve de algo que haga esto: ¿sigo traduciendo los capítulos?

http://a.abc.com/m/pdf/shows/castle/storm-front/chapter-5.pdf

CHAPTER 5

LANGLEY, Virginia

Derrick Storm was a Ford man.

Maybe that didn’t seem like a very sexy choice for a secret operative. Maybe, in a nod to the great James Bond, he should have gone with an Aston Martin, or a Lamborghini, or, heck, even just a Beemer.

But, no. Derrick Storm liked his Fords. He was an American spy, after all. And an American spy ought to have an American ride. Besides, he liked how they handled. He liked the familiarity of the instrument panel. He liked knowing that he had good old Michigan- made muscle at his command. When he was a teenager, his first car had been a non- operating ’87 Thunderbird he bought off a buddy for fi ve hundred dollars of lawn- mowing money and nursed back to glorious health. He drove the car all through high school and college. That had been enough to hook him. He had driven Fords ever since.

And, in truth, they were a much more practical choice for a man of his profession. Tool around in a Bentley just once and everyone notices you. Drive the exact same route every day in a Ford Focus and you might as well be invisible.

He kept Fords stashed near airports in many of his favorite cities. In New York, for example, he had recently purchased a new Mustang, a Shelby GT500 with a supercharged aluminum- block V8 — a spirited revival of an American classic. In Miami, he kicked it old school, going with a ’66 T-Bird convertible, with the 390- cubic- inch, 315- horsepower V8. In Denver, he had an Explorer Sport, good for climbing mountain passes on the way to ski slopes.

In Washington, he kept a blue Ford Taurus. It was a staid choice for a town where ostentatious displays of wealth had been historically frowned on. But this wasn’t just any Ford Taurus: It was the SHO model, the one with the 3.5- liter, 365- horsepower twin- turbo EcoBoost engine, the one capable of throwing 350 pounds of torque down on the pavement. Much like Storm himself, it was a car that looked ordinary on the outside but had a lot going on under the hood.

It also handled bends well, which made it nicely suited to the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which was where Storm found himself just after noontime on Monday. It was a route Storm traveled often, not only because its tight curves made it one of the more enjoyable roads to drive in the D.C. area, but because it led to CIA headquarters.

He slowed as he passed the oft- mocked sign that read “George Bush Center for Intelligence Next Right” and took the winding exit ramp. He passed through Security, parked, then stopped at Kryptos, the famed copperplate sculpture containing 1,735 seemingly random letters, representing a code that has never fully been broken.

“Some other time,” Storm said, moving on to the CIA’s main entryway, an airy, arched, glass structure.

There, he was met by Agent Kevin Bryan, one of Jedediah Jones’s two trusted lieutenants.

“The hood?” Storm said by way of greeting.

“The hood,” Bryan replied, handing him a piece of black cloth.

“Jones better have some seriously cool toys waiting for me.”

“Toys?”

“Gadgets. Devices. Exploding toothpaste. Pens that are actually tiny rockets. Something. I know you guys have been holdingout on me.”

“We’ll see what we can do. Meantime, the hood.”

The hood. Always, they made him wear the hood. Even with all his security clearances, even with background check after background check, even with all the times he had proven his loyalty, he still had to wear the hood when he was being escorted to Jedediah Jones’s lair, aka the cubby.

He understood. At the CIA, there’s classified, there’s highly classified, there’s double- secret we’d-tell- you- but- we’d-have-to- kill- you classified.

Then there’s the unit Jedediah Jones created.

It was so classified, it didn’t even have a name. It was a kind of agency within the agency, one whose primary mission was to remain as invisible as possible. Its existence was not explicitly stated in any CIA materials. The allocations that funded it could not be found in any CIA bud get. Its employees did not have files in the personnel office, nor could they be found on the office phone tree, nor did they appear one-mail listservs, nor were their paychecks drawn from normal CIA accounts. Its organization chart was a running gag— Jones handed his people a takeoff of a famous Escher print, one where there was no beginning and no end. The names on the chart were all cartoon characters.

The architect of this domain— and the master of it— was Jones. He had created this shadowy cadre many years before and, with a seemingly innate understanding of how to manipulate the sometimes- stubborn controls of a federal bureaucracy, had since built it into the elite unit it was today. He did it with a mix of obeisance and threats. Everyone in the high reaches of the CIA seemed to fall into two groups: either they owed Jones a favor, or he had dirt on them.

With the hood on, the trip to the cubby always felt a little disorienting. Storm was led down a hallway to an elevator, which felt like it first went up, then down, then over, then up again, then down some more. It was like being on an elevator in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, only it didn’t smell as good.

By the time the ride was over, Storm was left with the feeling he was underground somewhere, but it was impossible to know for sure. The cubby had no windows, just an array of computers, wall- mounted monitors, and communications devices. They were run by a group of men and women known collectively as “the nerds,” a term that was spoken with fondness and great respect for their abilities. The nerds had been pulled from a broad spectrum of public and private industry to form a cyber- spying unit that was second to none.

From the comfort of their high- backed chairs, the nerds could read a newspaper over the shoulder of a terrorist in Kandahar, monitor an insurgent’s attempts to make a bomb in Jakarta, or follow a suspected double agent through the streets of Berlin. They also had access to virtually every database, public or private, government or civilian, that anyone had ever thought to compile. If it was on a computer that ever connected to the Internet, the nerds could eventually put it at Jones’s fingertips. They just had to be asked.

As usual, Bryan removed Storm’s hood when the elevator doors opened. Storm was greeted by a man who appeared to be about sixty. He wore an off- the- rack blue suit that draped nicely over his fit body. He was average height, with a shaved head, pale blue eyes and, at least for the moment, a wry smile

“Hello, Storm,” he said in his trademark sandpaper voice.

“Jones.”

“It’s good to see you, son.”

“Wish the circumstances were better.”

“You look great.”

“You look like you need a tan.”

“Sunlight’s not in my bud get,” Jones said.

“You bring me here to small- talk?”

“Not really.”

“Well, come on then,” Storm said. “Let’s get to it.”

STORM FOLLOWED JONES INTO A DARK CONFERENCE ROOM. IN ADdition to Agent Bryan, they were joined by Agent Javier Rodriguez, Jones’s other top lieutenant. Jones clapped twice and the room was instantly illuminated.

“Really, Jones?” Storm said, raising an eyebrow. “The Clapper?”

Jones offered no reply.

“The most futuristic technology the world has never seen, spy satellites that alert you when a world leader farts, databases that could produce Genghis Khan’s fi rst grade report card . . . And you turn the lights on with the Clapper?”

“The damn automatic sensor kept failing, and there’s only one electrician in the whole CIA with a high enough security clearance to come here and fi x it,” Jones explained. “Plus, we like the kitsch value. Sit down.”

Storm took a spot midway down the length of a cherry- top table with enough shine to be used as a shaving mirror. A motor whirred, and a small projector emerged from the middle of the table. Jones waited until the motor ceased, then clicked a button on a remote control, and a 3- D holographic image of an unremarkable middle- aged white man appeared, almost as if floating on the table. Without preamble, Storm’s briefing had begun.

“Dieter Kornblum,” Jones said. “Se nior executive vice president for BonnBank, the largest bank in Germany. Forty- six. Married. Two kids. Net worth approximately eighty million, but he doesn’t flaunt it. His investment portfolio is about as daring as a wardrobe full of turtlenecks. Autopsy noted among other things that he double- knotted his shoes.”

“And what misfortune befell him that he required an autopsy?” Storm asked.

Jones slid the remote control to Agent Rodriguez, who resumed the narrative: “Five days ago, Kornblum didn’t show up for work, didn’t answer his cell phone, didn’t answer his e-mail, nothing. This is a man who hadn’t missed a day of work in thirteen years and never went more than two waking hours without checking in with someone. He was Mr. Responsible, so his people were concerned right away. When it was discovered his kids didn’t show up at school and his wife had missed a hair appointment, the Nordrhein- Westfalen Landespolizei were dispatched to his home in Bad Godesberg. They found this.”

Another projector emerged from the ceiling. Crime scene photographs started flashing up on a screen on the far wall. It was all Storm could do not to avert his eyes. The children, both in their early teens, had been killed in their beds, apparently in their sleep. Powder burns around their entry wounds suggested point- blank shots. Their pillows were blood- soaked.

The wife’s body was found in the master bedroom. She had made it out of bed, but not very far, as if she had gotten up to investigate a noise and met her end quickly thereafter. Her body was faceup perhaps five feet away from the bed. Her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling. There were two crisp bullet holes in her forehead. What ever bloodstains she’d left behind were hidden by the dark carpet on which she had fallen.

Kornblum was in a different room, one that appeared to be an office. He had been tied to a chair. His head was tilted back at an unnatural angle. Blood and brain matter were splattered on the wall behind him. There was no visible entry wound, but Storm figured it out: The killer had stuck the gun in the banker’s mouth.

“Awful,” Storm said. “And I assume Kornblum was tortured?”

“Correct,” Rodriguez said. “All the fingernails on Kornblum’s right hand were missing. So was the back of his skull, for what ever that’s worth.”

“Do we know what he was being tortured for?”

“Negative,” Rodriguez said. “There was no sign of any robbery. None of his papers or fi les were disturbed. The local authorities were quite baffled. A home invasion crew usually at least goes for jewelry, if nothing else. They assumed Kornblum had screwed someone over in a business deal and this was some kind of revenge hit.”

“What do we know about the assailants?”

“Crime scene techs found six distinct footprints in and around the house that they believe belonged to the intruders,” Rodriguez said as pictures of boot treads flashed up on the screen. “There were no fingerprints, naturally. No hairs. No fibers. At least not anything useful that’s come back so far. No surveillance cameras. No witnesses. The Kornblums lived in a large house that couldn’t be seen from the road and was separated by some distance from their neighbors.”

“Didn’t they have any security system?” Storm asked.

“Yeah, but Dieter didn’t put any money into it, so it was Romper Room stuff. The driveway was gated, but a two- year- old with tweezers could have hot- wired it. There were alarms on the doors and windows, but they were pretty easily defeated, too. The central monitoring was never tripped. It was a clean job.”

“So nothing from the scene?”

“Nope.”

“What about at work?”

“Kornblum’s bosses weren’t terribly forthcoming with the German authorities. Either that or German authorities weren’t terribly forthcoming with our agents. Our guys were able to sniff out that Dieter did a lot of work in securities of varying sorts, but he also worked in currency, bonds, a bit of everything. It sounded like he had a pretty big job. He was a jack of all trades, if you’ll excuse the pun. But as to something that could get him killed? We haven’t really come up with anything yet.”

“Is that all we know about Dieter Kornblum?”

“All that’s worth saying right now, yeah.”

More like it was all that Jones was willing to say. There was always a hold- back with Jones. Storm had come to accept this as part of working with the man. It was like being the frog who ferried the scorpion across the river. No matter how many times the scorpion promised otherwise, the sting was always coming. It was in his nature. That Storm was still alive was simply because he had grown adept at anticipating when it was going to happen.

Speaking of things he needed to anticipate . . .

“Do you have Clara Strike working this already?” Storm asked.

“No,” Jones said. “Your girlfriend is otherwise deployed.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Storm said, sounding a little too much like a petulant teenager.

“Fine. Have it your way,” Jones said.

“What ever,” Storm spat. “Next.”

Agent Rodriguez ceremoniously handed the remote control to Agent Bryan, who brought a new image up on the hologram. This one was an Asian man with rounded cheeks and a smooth, boyish face.

“Joji Motoshige,” Bryan said. “President of global trade at Nippon Financial, one of the Big Four of Japa nese banking. Thirty-seven. Unmarried. No kids. Notorious playboy. Pretty much every high- end strip club in Tokyo knew Mr. Motoshige. He’d show up with one girl on his arm and leave with two more. He didn’t seem to bother with Japa nese women, but he liked pretty much every other flavor. Argentinian. Ukrainian. Ethiopian. His girlfriends looked like a Benetton ad, but he never kept the same one for more than a few weeks.”

“Commitment issues,” Storm said, knowingly.

“Something like that,” Bryan said. “He certainly had the money to afford the best. He had recently cashed in a stock option that netted him a hundred and six million. That was on top of the millions he had already made in salary and bonuses. But it still wasn’t enough for him. His unoffi cial motto was ‘Work hard, play hard.’ He was legendary for being able to work a sixteen- hour day then hit the town until the early morning, sleep for maybe an hour or two, then go right back to his desk.”

“I assume he did drugs to keep him going?”

“Not that anyone is aware of. Unless you count pussy as a drug. Women were his only vice and he chased them relentlessly. All he ever seemed to do was get laid and make money. Colleagues described him as indefatigable in both pursuits.”

“I note you’re using the past tense,” Storm said.

“That’s right. He lived in the pent house of a sixty- story luxury condo, a real high- end place. Three days ago his house keeper entered his place to do her usual cleaning. She came three times a week, and she was used to finding some pretty weird stuff— naked girls passed out on the couch, French maid costumes tossed about, erotic asphyxiation rigs, you name it. Instead, she found this.”

An image of Motoshige’s lifeless body appeared on the screen. His throat had been slashed in a neat line. The blood had poured down from the line like a scarlet bib.

“No gunshot wound?” Storm asked.

“It can be hard to find firearms in Tokyo, even if you’re a criminal,” Bryan said. “The Japanese just don’t do guns like we do here in the Wild West. Plus, this was a high- density living situation. Someone might have heard a gunshot, even if it had a silencer.”

“Right. High- density living situation. A luxury condo with, presumably, at least one doorman. So how did the perps get in?”

“From above. They rappelled down from the roof and cut a circular hole in his living room window. That was pretty much the only trace they left behind— well, other than Motoshige’s body.”

“How did they get up on the roof?”

“The Tokyo police are still trying to fi gure that out. There’s a tower being constructed next door. It’s possible they could have attached a zip line from one building to the other.”

“Either that or we’re looking for a crew that includes Spider- Man,” Storm said. “I assume Mr. Motoshige was tortured as well?”

“Yep. He held out a little longer than Kornblum did. In addition to the fingernails on his right hand, he was also missing the fingernails on his left. There was also a slash mark on his face. That must have been what caused him to acquiesce to their demands: He didn’t want his pretty face to be ruined.”

“But I assume we have no clue as to what those demands may have been?”

“Nothing yet. We still don’t know whether it was information or something tangible, like a document or a safe deposit box key or what,” Bryan confirmed. “The Japanese authorities pretty much wrote off the whole thing as being an outcropping of Motoshige’s overactive penis. They assumed Motoshige pissed off some girl’s boyfriend or husband or brother and that he finally got what was coming to him. There were too many suspects to even begin to narrow it down.”

“A husband or brother is going to rappel from the roof to kill the guy?” Storm asked.

“Our thought exactly. But apparently no one at Nippon Financial was pushing real hard for an investigation. The higher- ups at the bank were deeply embarrassed by Motoshige’s lifestyle, and they didn’t want to risk bringing any attention to this. They’ve managed to keep it hushed up in the media so far. Japanese culture is all about saving face and not acting in a way that disgraces your company. High level bank executives just aren’t supposed to behave like Motoshige did. His bosses only tolerated him because he was brilliant at what he did. Like Kornblum, he had his fi ngers in a lot of pies. Anything that involved foreign transactions at Nippon was in Motoshige’s domain. The guy spoke five languages.”

“Ah, a real polyglot,” Storm said.

“Since when do you know a word like ‘polyglot’?” Jones teased.

“You’ve had me learn eight languages and you ask me how it is I know the word ‘polyglot’?”

“Point taken.”

“Anything else on Motoshige?”

“Nothing that struck us as relevant,” Jones interjected. And again, Storm thought about Jones’s wandering definition of what relevant actually was.

“Okay, so when do we get to the Swiss guy?” Storm asked.

“Right now,” Jones said, taking ownership of the remote control. He clicked, and a picture of a fat, jowly man with a hooked nose appeared in a 3- D hologram.

“Yikes,” Storm said. “Did someone make him take an ugly pill?”

“Wilhelm Sorenson,” Jones said, ignoring the commentary. “Chief currency trader for Nationale Banc Suisse, the third-largest bank in the world, asset- wise. Sixty- eight. Married. Two kids, both grown. Most of his assets were, naturally, in Swiss banks, and as you know they aren’t very good about sharing information. But we do know he was a multi- multi- millionaire, and we also know he also had a weakness for women. Young women. The other victim at the scene was a seventeen- year- old runaway with a fake I.D. that said she was nineteen. She was wearing a bitty little piece of lingerie that left scant doubt as to the nature of the relationship.”

Jones cata logued the details of the scene, ending with the missing fingernails.

“The Interpol computers didn’t pick up the similarity of the crimes until the third iteration, but Sorenson’s killing finally tripped their alarm bells,” Jones said. “The local authorities botched the scene a little. Believe me, they were asking some hard questions of the wife, who was, quote- unquote ‘out of town’ on some kind of girls’ weekend in France. But thankfully Interpol called our people, and they were able to move in. Sorenson had a fairly extensive external security system. So we were able to get these.”

Several high- definition still photos of a six- man crew popped up on the screen. Five of them were men Storm had never seen before. One was a man he could never forget.

“Volkov,” Storm said. “What happened to his face?”

“We assumed that was the remnants of your handiwork in Mogadishu,” Jones said.

“There’s no way he survived that explosion.”

“There are three dead bankers who would beg to differ if they could still talk.”

Storm shook his head slowly. It had been five years since he last tangled with Volkov. Not long enough. Five lifetimes wouldn’t be long enough.

“Get him off that screen. I’ve seen enough of that face,” Storm said. Jones complied as Storm went on: “So we have three dead bankers from three large banks in three different countries. At least two of them seem to have problems keeping their flies zipped. Are we sure the third wasn’t also into the hanky panky?”

“We looked into that, but Kornblum was a total Boy Scout,”
Jones said. “There’s not a single skeleton in his closet. And, believe me, we looked. He ought to run for the chancellorship with
a record this clean. Not that he’d like the pay cut.”

“Okay, what about links between the three men? Some kind
of deal Kornblum, Motoshige, and Sorenson were involved in together? A trade they did?”

“Nothing we’ve been able to fi nd so far,” Jones said. “Kornblum had traded with Sorenson. And Motoshige had once offered a trade to Kornblum that didn’t go through. But those deals were five and three years ago, respectively. It strains credulity to call that any more than a coincidence. These guys were all big players in what is a relatively small world of ultra- high finance. It stands to reason they might have had some incidental contact at some point. But that’s all.”

“What about a common associate between them?” Storm asked.

“Unfortunately, there are dozens,” Bryan answered. “Like Jones said, these bankers are pretty clubby. They go to the same conferences, pal around with the same groups. If you start playing degrees of separation, you can link anyone in this world with anyone else in two steps or less. They all worked with a guy who worked with one of these guys, or who went to school with one of these guys.”

“What about phone calls to the same numbers? E-mails to the same accounts?”

“We’re working on that as we speak,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll let you know if anything pops.”

Storm drummed his fi ngers on the polished tabletop. The three agents let him have a moment. Storm wondered how much of the full picture he was actually getting. What wasn’t Jones parceling out? Who was he protecting? What other angle was he working?

“Of course, there’s one connection we know they have for sure: Volkov,” Storm said. “Volkov is smart, but he isn’t sophisticated enough to be killing bankers on his own. He’s acting as muscle for someone. We can always try to work backward from there. Do we have any idea who might have hired him?”

Rodriguez glanced at Bryan and said, “Told you our boy hadn’t lost a step during his time on the shelf. Twenty bucks.”

Bryan shook his head as he reached for his wallet.

“You really bet against me, Kev?” Storm said, crossing his arms and faking an indignant stare.

“I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll never doubt you again and . . . Oh, man, I’m out of cash. Javi, is it okay if . . .”

“No, no,” Storm said. “My old man always taught me a debt must be paid promptly. I’ll cover you, despite your lack of faith in me. Just remember you owe me. You owe me for this and Bahrain.”

“Really? You’re going to talk about Bahrain as if it’s even in the same league as twenty bucks?” Bryan said.

Storm handed Rodriguez a twenty- dollar bill. “Just adding it to your tab.”

Jones stared at them. “You ladies done?” he asked.

“Sorry. Continue.”

“Good. To answer your question: Yes, we have a theory on who hired Volkov,” Jones said. “We think it might be the Chinese.”

“Why the Chinese?”

“We’re still trying to piece that together,” Jones said. “But one theory is pretty straightforward. China has the world’s second largest economy, and they’re pretty open about their goal of being number one. It’s possible they’re trying to create some kind of disruption in the financial markets aimed at undermining our economic stability.”

“By killing foreign bankers? Why wouldn’t they just kill American bankers?”

“That’s the nature of global trade these days,” Jones said. “Everything has become so interconnected, the most vulnerable parts of our financial system are actually located overseas. Plus . . .”

“What?”

“It’s very possible Volkov isn’t done yet,” Jones said. “This might just be the beginning of something that’s going to get bigger.”

Storm nodded. He didn’t need to be convinced of the depth of Volkov’s evil. Even the man’s name spoke to his nature: Volkov is derived from volk, the Russian word for wolf.

“Now, bear in mind, this is a delicate thing with the Chinese,” Jones continued. “We’re not just talking about some backward banana republic that’s going to change dictators in three weeks anyway. We’re talking about our most important, most sensitive foreign relationship, with a country that happens to be the most populous on Earth. And, oh by the way, they also have the largest army. We need more information on what the Chinese are up to, but we absolutely can’t be caught snooping around. We need some . . . deniability.”

“In other words,” Storm said, “if I get caught, you’ll deny you ever knew me and I’ll spend the rest of my life in a prison shackled next to a bunch of Tibetan dissidents.”

“Affirmative.” Jones smiled.

“Charming,” Storm said. “So what’s my next move?”

“The Chinese finance minister is set to give an important speech to the Europe an Union in Paris,” Jones said.

“Yeah? So?”

“So one of our people tells us that the Chinese Ministry of State Security”— the Chinese equivalent of the CIA and the FBI, rolled into one—“has a joint covert operation of some kind going on with the Chinese Finance Ministry. A Ministry of State Security agent is now traveling undercover with the Finance Ministry. It makes sense that if this plot involving bankers has the kind of complexity we think it does, it would need to have Finance Ministry expertise— and State Security Ministry cunning. Our working theory— and, again, it’s just a theory at this point— is that this State Security Ministry agent is the one who hired Volkov.”

“What do we know about the guy?”

“Absolutely nothing. We’re getting this from one of our double agents, who is getting it from a source he is only starting to cultivate, so it’s all still a little shady at this point. The only thing we know for sure about this State Security agent is that she’s not a guy.”

“A female agent?” Storm said, his face involuntarily lifting.

“I knew you’d like that part,” Jones said, sharing conspiratorial glances with Bryan and Rodriguez. “Our person on the inside told us she made a trip to Switzerland a few days ago.”

“Switzerland. As in, where Wilhelm Sorenson was found murdered. Think that’s a coincidence?”

“That’s why you’re going to Paris,” Jones said. “Find her. Get close to her. Figure out what she’s up to.”

Como recordatorio.

El libro ya ha salido publicado en inglés por su editorial de siempre en formato papel y e-book. Así que ya podéis obtenerlo en inglés de la manera habitual que tengáis.



De éste último capítulo me ha alegrado que se acordara de nuevo de los "Roach" aunque aquí sean Kevin Bryan y Javi Rodriguez.

Hacía tiempo que no actualizaba aquí. He tenido 1 mes... casi ajeno al foro. Como mínimo quería dejar traducidos los capítulos de publicación libre del libro. Ya me diréis si sigo traduciendo el resto del libro.

CAPÍTULO 5 - 1ra parte

LANGLEY, Virginia

Derrick Storm era un hombre de Ford.

Tal vez no parecía una elección muy sexy para un agente secreto. Quizás, como guiño al gran James Bond, debería haber ido con un Aston Martin o un Lamborghini o, ¡qué demonios!, aunque sólo fuera un BMW.

Pero no. A Derrick Storm le gustaban sus Ford. Después de todo él era un espía estadounidense. Y un espía estadounidense debía tener una montura estadounidense. Además, le gustaba la forma de cómo eran manejados. Le gustaba la familiaridad del salpicadero. Le gustaba saber que tenía a su disposición buenos coches potentes y antiguos de Michigan. Cuando era adolescente, su primer auto fue un Thunderbird del 87 que no funcionaba, el cual compró a un compañero por quinientos dólares de cortar césped y lo revivió hasta una salud gloriosa. Condujo el coche durante toda la secundaria y la universidad. Eso había sido suficiente para engancharlo. Condujo Fords desde entonces.

Y a decir verdad, eran una opción mucho más práctica para un hombre de su profesión. Conducir sólo una vez en cualquier sitio en un Bentley y todos te notarían. Realizar la misma ruta todos los días en un Ford Focus, y bien podrías ser invisible.

Mantenía Fords guardados cerca de aeropuertos en muchas de sus ciudades favoritas. En Nueva York, por ejemplo, había comprado recientemente un nuevo Mustang, el Shelby GT500 con un bloque motor de aluminio sobrealimentado en V8 - un renacimiento potente de un clásico americano. En Miami, pateó la vieja escuela yendo con un T-Bird convertible V8 del 66, de 6400 cm3 y 315 caballos. En Denver, tenía un Explorer Sport, adecuado para escalar puertos de montaña de camino a las pistas de esquí.

En Washington, guardaba un Ford Taurus azul. Era una elección sobria para una ciudad donde la ostentación de riqueza había sido históricamente mal vista. Pero no era un Ford Taurus cualquiera: Era el modelo SHO, de 3,5 litros, 365 caballos, motor EcoBoost doble turbo, capaz de lanzar 160 kilos de par de arranque al pavimento. Al igual que Storm, era un coche que parecía normal por el exterior, pero tenía muchos tejemanejes bajo el capó.

También se conducía bien por las curvas, lo que lo hacía apropiado al George Washington Memorial Parkway, el cual era donde Storm se encontraba justo después del mediodía del lunes. Era una ruta que Storm recorría a menudo, no sólo porque sus curvas cerradas lo convertían en uno de los caminos más agradables de conducir en el área del DC, sino porque lo llevaba a la sede central de la CIA.

Redujo la velocidad al pasar la tan burlada señal de tráfico "Centro George Bush para inteligencia – Próxima Derecha" y tomó la serpenteante vía de acceso. Atravesó Seguridad, aparcó, y se detuvo en Kryptos, la famosa escultura tipográfica conteniendo aparentemente 1.735 letras al azar, representando un código que nunca ha sido completamente descifrado.

"En otro momento", siseó Storm adentrándose hacia la entrada principal de la CIA, una espaciosa estructura de vidrio abovedada.

Allí fue recibido por el Agente Kevin Bryan, uno de los dos lugartenientes de confianza de Jedediah Jones.

"¿La capucha?" Storm dijo a modo de saludo.

"La capucha", respondió Bryan entregándole un trozo de tela negro.

"Espero que Jones tenga esperándome algunos juguetes verdaderamente geniales."

"¿Juguetes?"

"Chismes. Artilugios. Pasta de dientes explosiva. Bolígrafos que en realidad sean pequeños cohetes. Algo. Yo sé que vosotros chicos, os resistís a mis deseos.”

"Veremos qué podemos hacer. Mientras tanto, la capucha".

La capucha. Siempre le hicieron llevar la capucha. Incluso con todas sus autorizaciones de seguridad, incluso con comprobación de antecedentes tras comprobación de antecedentes, a pesar de todas las veces que había demostrado su lealtad, aún tenía que llevar la capucha mientras estaba siendo escoltado a la guarida de Jedediah Jones, también conocido como el cubículo.

Él lo entendía. En la CIA, estaba el confidencial, el altamente confidencial, el doble-secreto confidencial que tendríamos-que-decirte-pero-tendríamos-que-matarte.

Más lejos está la unidad que Jedediah Jones creó.

Era tan confidencial, que ni siquiera tenía un nombre. Era una especie de agencia dentro de la agencia, una cuya misión principal era permanecer lo más invisible posible. Su existencia no se declaraba explícitamente en los datos de la CIA. Las asignaciones que financiaba no se podían encontrar en ningún presupuesto de la CIA. Sus empleados no tenían archivos en la oficina de personal, ni podían ser encontrados en la cadena de comunicación de la oficina, ni tampoco aparecían en las listas de correo electrónico, ni había cheques provenientes de cuentas habituales de la CIA. Su organigrama era una broma recurrente - Jones guiaba a su gente como una parodia de una famosa imagen de Escher, donde no había principio ni fin. Los nombres en la organización eran personajes de dibujos animados.

El artífice de este dominio - y maestro de él - era Jones. Había creado este cuadro indeterminado muchos años antes y, con una comprensión aparentemente innata de cómo manipular los a-veces-testarudos burócratas federales, había construido la unidad de élite que era hoy. Lo hizo con una mezcla de cumplidos y amenazas. Todo el mundo en las altas esferas de la CIA parecía dividirse en dos grupos: o debían un favor a Jones, o tenía trapos sucios de ellos.

Con la capucha colocada, el camino al cubículo siempre sentía un poco de desorientación. Storm fue conducido por un pasillo hasta un ascensor, el cual sentía que primero subía, luego bajaba, luego otra vez arriba y luego otra vez abajo un poco más. Era como estar en un ascensor en fábrica de chocolate de Willy Wonka, sólo que no olía tan bien.

Al poco, el viaje había terminado. Storm se quedó con la sensación de que estaba en algún lugar bajo tierra, pero era imposible saberlo con certeza. El cubículo no tenía ventanas, sólo una hilera de ordenadores, monitores y dispositivos de comunicación montados en la pared. Estaban a cargo de un grupo de hombres y mujeres conocidos como "los cerebritos", un término que era dicho con cariño y un gran respeto por sus habilidades. Los nerds o cerebritos habían sido sacados de un amplio espectro de la industria pública y privada para formar una unidad de ciber-espionaje que era insuperable.

Desde la comodidad de sus asientos de respaldo alto, los cerebritos podían leer un periódico por encima del hombro de un terrorista en Kandahar, monitorear los intentos de la insurgencia para hacer una bomba en Yakarta, o seguir un agente doble sospechoso por las calles de Berlín. También tenían acceso a prácticamente todas las bases de datos, públicas o privadas, gubernamentales o civiles que nadie nunca habría pensado en recopilar. Si se trataba de un ordenador que estuviera siempre conectado a Internet, los cerebritos podrían ponerlo al alcance de la mano de Jones. Sólo tenían que pedírselo.

Como de costumbre, Bryan quitó la capucha de Storm cuando las puertas del ascensor se abrieron. Storm fue recibido por un hombre que parecía tener unos sesenta años. Vestía un traje azul confeccionado a medida que le sentaba como un guante sobre su cuerpo tonificado. Era de estatura media, con la cabeza rapada, ojos azul claro y, al menos por el momento, sonrisa irónica.

"Hola, Storm", saludó con su característica voz de papel de lija.

"Jones."

"Es bueno verte, hijo."

"Desearía que las circunstancias fueran mejores."

"Te ves muy bien."

"Tú pareces que necesitas un bronceado".

"La luz del sol no está en mi presupuesto", dijo Jones.

"¿Me trajiste para parlotear?"

"En realidad no."

"Bueno, vamos entonces", sugirió Storm. "Vamos al asunto."

STORM SIGUIÓ A JONES A UNA OSCURA SALA DE CONFERENCIAS. ADEmás del agente Bryan, se les unió el agente Javier Rodríguez, otro lugarteniente de Jones. Jones aplaudió dos veces y la habitación se iluminó al instante.

"¿En serio, Jones?" Dijo Storm levantando una ceja. "¿El Clapper?"

Jones no replicó.

"La tecnología más futurista que el mundo nunca ha visto, satélites espías que te avisan cuando un líder mundial se tira un pedo, bases de datos que podrían obtener el graduado escolar de Genghis Khan... ¿Y enciendes las luces con el Clapper?"

"El condenado sensor automático está fallando, y sólo hay un electricista en todo el complejo de la CIA con la autorización de seguridad lo suficientemente alta como para venir aquí y arreglarlo", explicó Jones. "Además, nos gustan las cursiladas. Siéntate."

Storm se sentó en un punto a mitad camino del largo de una mesa de cerezo de calidad superior con suficiente brillo para ser utilizada como un espejo de afeitar. Un motor zumbó, y un pequeño proyector surgió de la mitad de la mesa. Jones esperó hasta que el motor parase, entonces presionó un botón de un mando a distancia y apareció una imagen holográfica 3-D de un hombre blanco común y corriente de mediana edad, casi como si flotara sobre la mesa. Sin preámbulos, la sesión informativa de Storm había empezado.

"Dieter Kornblum," dijo Jones. "Vicepresidente ejecutivo sénior de BonnBank, el mayor banco de Alemania. Cuarenta y seis. Casado. Dos niños. El patrimonio neto era aproximadamente de ochenta millones, pero no ostentaba de ellos. Su cartera de inversiones es tan atrevida como un armario lleno de jersey de cuello de cisne. La autopsia reveló entre otras cosas que él hacía un doble nudo en sus zapatos".

"¿Y qué infortunio le sucedió que requirió una autopsia?", preguntó Storm.

Jones pasó el mando a distancia al agente Rodríguez, quien reanudó el relato: "Cinco días atrás, Kornblum no se presentó al trabajo, no respondió a su teléfono móvil, no respondió a su correo electrónico, nada. Este es un hombre que no había perdido un día de trabajo en trece años y nunca se ausentó más de dos horas sin consultarlo con alguien. Él era Míster Responsable, por lo que su gente se preocupó inmediatamente. Cuando se descubrió que sus hijos no se presentaron en la escuela y su esposa había perdido la cita de la peluquería, la policía germana Nordrhein-Westfalen Landespolizei fue enviada a su casa en Bad Godesberg. Ellos encontraron esto."

Otro proyector apareció del techo. Fotografías de la escena del crimen comenzaron a parpadear en una pantalla en la pared del fondo. Aquello era todo lo que Storm podía hacer para no desviar la mirada. Los niños, ambos en sus primeros años de adolescencia, habían sido asesinados en sus camas, aparentemente durmiendo. Quemaduras de pólvora alrededor de las heridas de entrada sugirieron disparos a quemarropa. Sus almohadas estaban empapadas en sangre.

El cuerpo de la mujer fue encontrado en el dormitorio principal. Ella había salido de la cama, pero no llegó muy lejos, como si se hubiera levantado para investigar un ruido y después de eso encontró su fin rápidamente. Su cuerpo estaba boca arriba a metro y medio de la cama. Sus ojos miraban fijamente al techo sin expresión ninguna. Tenía dos agujeros de bala limpios en la frente. Todas las manchas de sangre que había dejado atrás estaban ocultas por la oscura alfombra sobre la que había caído.

Kornblum estaba en una habitación diferente, una que parecía ser una oficina. Le habían atado a una silla. Tenía la cabeza inclinada hacia atrás en un ángulo antinatural. La sangre y los sesos salpicaban la pared detrás de él. No había una entrada de herida visible, pero Storm se lo imaginó: El asesino había metido la pistola en la boca del banquero.

"Asqueroso", exteriorizó Storm. "¿He de asumir que Kornblum fue torturado?"

"Correcto", dijo Rodríguez. "Faltaban todas las uñas de la mano derecha de Kornblum. Por lo que fue la parte posterior de su cabeza, por si servía de algo".

"¿Sabemos por lo que estaba siendo torturado?"

"Negativo", dijo Rodríguez. "No había ninguna señal de robo. Ninguno de sus papeles o archivos fueron desordenados. Las autoridades locales estaban muy desconcertadas. Un equipo de allanamiento de morada por lo general, al menos va a las joyas, si no es alguna otra cosa. Asumieron que Kornblum había estafado a alguien en un negocio y esto era una especie de golpe la venganza".

"¿Qué sabemos acerca de los asaltantes?"

"Los técnicos de la escena del crimen encontraron seis huellas de pisadas diferentes dentro y fuera de la casa, las cuales creen que pertenecían a los intrusos", dijo Rodríguez mientras pasaban en la pantalla las imágenes de huellas de botas. "No había huellas dactilares, naturalmente. No cabellos. No fibras. Al menos, nada útil que haga llegar muy lejos. No cámaras de vigilancia. No testigos. Los Kornblums vivían en una casa grande que no permitía ser vistos desde el camino y estaba separada por una cierta distancia de sus vecinos".

"¿No tenían ningún sistema de seguridad?", preguntó Storm.

"Sí, pero Dieter no ponía nada de dinero en ella, por lo que el equipo era de la época de los Chiripitifláuticos. El camino de acceso fue cercado, pero un niño de dos años de edad con pinzas podría puentearlo. Había alarmas en las puertas y ventanas, pero también eran bastante fáciles de desarmar. La centralita nunca se disparó. Fue un trabajo limpio".

"¿Así que nada de la escena?"

"No".

"¿Qué me dices del trabajo?"

"Los jefes de Kornblum no fueron extremadamente cercanos con las autoridades alemanas. O eso, o las autoridades alemanas no fueron extremadamente cercanas con nuestros agentes. Nuestros muchachos fueron capaces de detectar que Dieter trabajó mucho en valores de diversos géneros, pero también trabajó en divisas y bonos, un poco de todo. Sonaba como si tuviera bastante trabajo. Era un aprendiz de todo, si me disculpas el juego de palabras. ¿Pero en lo que se refiere si algo podía hacer que lo matasen? En realidad, todavía no hemos llegado a nada."

"¿Eso es todo lo que sabemos de Dieter Kornblum?"

"Todo lo que vale la pena decir en este momento, sí."

Más bien era todo lo que Jones estaba dispuesto a decir. Había siempre una retención de información con Jones. Storm había llegado a aceptar esto como parte del trabajo con el hombre. Era como ser la rana que transportaba el escorpión a través del río. No importa cuántas veces el escorpión prometiera lo contrario, el aguijón siempre picaba. Estaba en su naturaleza. El que Storm todavía estuviera vivo era simplemente porque se había vuelto experto en prever cuándo iba a ocurrir.

Hablando de cosas que necesitaba prever…

"¿Ya tienes a Clara Strike trabajando en esto?", Tanteó Storm.

"No," dijo Jones. "Tu novia está desplegada en otra cosa."

"Ella no es mi novia", protestó Storm, sonando más bien como un adolescente quisquilloso.

"Está bien. Tú mismo", dijo Jones.

"Lo que sea", espetó Storm. "Siguiente".

El agente Rodríguez ceremoniosamente entregó el mando a distancia al agente Bryan, quien proyectó una nueva imagen sobre el holograma. Este era un hombre asiático con mejillas redondeadas y una cara lisa y juvenil.

"Joji Motoshige", dijo Bryan. "El presidente del comercio mundial en el Nippon Financial, uno de los Cuatro Grandes de la banca japonesa. Treinta y siete. Soltero. No niños. Conocido mujeriego. Casi todos los clubs lujosos de striptease de Tokio conocían al señor Motoshige. Aparecía con una chica del brazo y salía con dos más. Parecía que no se tomaba molestias con las mujeres japonesas, le gustaba principalmente los otros sabores. Argentinas. Ucranianas. Etíopes. Sus acompañantes parecían un anuncio de Benetton, él nunca mantenía la misma por más de un par de semanas".

"Cuestiones de compromiso", dijo Storm sabedor.

"Algo así", dijo Bryan. "Ciertamente tenía dinero para permitirse las mejores. Había cobrado recientemente en una opción de compra sobre acciones una ganancia de ciento seis millones. Esto fue la cumbre de los millones que ya había hecho en salarios y bonos. Pero todavía no era suficiente para él. Su lema extraoficial era "Trabajar duro, jugar duro." Era famoso por ser capaz de trabajar un día dieciséis horas al día y después irse de juerga por la ciudad hasta la madrugada, dormía quizás una hora o dos, y luego de vuelta a su escritorio."

"¿He de suponer que se drogaba para mantenerse en marcha?"

"No es algo de que alguien estuviera al tanto. A menos que cuentes el coño como una droga. Las mujeres eran su único vicio y las perseguía sin descanso. Todo lo que él parecía hacer era echar polvos y ganar dinero. Sus colegas lo describían como infatigable en ambas actividades".

"Me he dado cuenta que estás utilizando el tiempo pasado," dijo Storm.

Muchisimas Gracias
Por mi sigue solo los puedo leer de tus traducciones

Y con esto se acaba los 5 capítulos que nos dieron de regalo.

CAPÍTULO 5 - 2da parte

"Me he dado cuenta que estás utilizando el tiempo pasado," dijo Storm.

"Correcto. Vivía en el ático de un bloque de apartamentos de lujo de sesenta pisos, una vivienda verdaderamente lujosa. Tres días atrás, su ama de llaves entró en la casa para hacer las tareas de limpieza habituales. Ella iba tres veces a la semana, y estaba acostumbrada a encontrar algunas cosas bastante raras: chicas desnudas desmayadas sobre el sofá, prendas de criada francesa desperdigadas, juguetes para asfixia erótica, cualquier cosa. En lugar de eso, se encontró con ésto."

Una imagen del cuerpo sin vida de Motoshige apareció en la pantalla. Su garganta había sido rajada en una línea limpia. La sangre se había derramado por debajo de la línea como un babero escarlata.

"¿No hay herida de bala?" Preguntó Storm.

"Puede ser complicado encontrar armas de fuego en Tokio, incluso si eres un criminal", aclaró Bryan. "Los japoneses no se valen de armas de fuego como lo hacemos aquí en el Salvaje Oeste. Además, eso estaba situado en un complejo de alta densidad. Alguien podría haber oído un disparo, incluso si tenía un silenciador".

"Cierto. Ubicación de la vivienda en zona de alta densidad. Bloque de apartamentos de lujo con, presumiblemente, al menos un portero. Entonces, ¿cómo entraron los delincuentes?"

"Desde arriba. Bajaron mediante rappel desde el tejado y cortaron un agujero circular en la ventana de su sala de estar. Ese fue prácticamente el único rastro que dejaron atrás, bueno, aparte del cuerpo de Motoshige".

"¿Cómo llegaron a la azotea?"

"La policía de Tokio todavía está tratando de averiguarlo. Hay una torre que se está construyendo al lado. Es posible que pudieran haber conectado mediante una tirolina un edificio con el otro."

"O eso, o estamos buscando un equipo que incluye a Spiderman", puntualizó Storm. "¿He de suponer que el señor Motoshige también fue torturado?"

"Sep. Duró un poco más que Kornblum. Además de las uñas de su mano derecha, también arrancaron las uñas de su mano izquierda. Y un tajo en la cara. Eso debió de haber sido lo que le llevó a transigir a sus exigencias: No quería que su cara bonita fuera estropeada".

"¿Y debo suponer que no tenemos idea de lo que podían haber sido estas exigencias?"

"Nada por ahora. Todavía no sabemos si se trataba de información o de algo tangible, como un documento o una llave de caja de seguridad o qué", confirmó Bryan. "Las autoridades japonesas prácticamente descartaron todo el asunto como una ostentación del pene hiperactivo de Motoshige. Imaginaron que Motoshige cabreó algún novio o marido o hermano de una chica y finalmente obtuvo lo que se merecía. Habían demasiados sospechosos para empezar a reducirla".

"¿Un marido o un hermano se va de rappel desde la azotea para matar al tipo?", preguntó Storm.

"Pensamos lo mismo. Pero al parecer nadie en el Nippon Financial empuja muy fuerte para avanzar la investigación. Los altos mandos del banco estaban profundamente avergonzados por el estilo de vida Motoshige, y no querían correr el riesgo de poner atención a esto. Se las han arreglado para mantenerlo silenciado en los medios de comunicación hasta ahora. La cultura japonesa trata de salvar la cara y no actuar de una manera que deshonre a su empresa. Se supone que los altos ejecutivos bancarios no se comportan como Motoshige hizo. Sus jefes sólo lo toleraban porque era brillante en lo que hacía. Al igual que Kornblum, tenía sus dedos en un montón de pasteles. Cualquier cosa que involucraba transacciones extranjeras en el Nippon estaba en el dominio de Motoshige. El tipo hablaba cinco idiomas".

"Ah, un auténtico políglota", comentó Storm.

"¿Desde cuándo sabes una palabra como 'políglota'?" bromeó Jones.

"¿Me has hecho aprender ocho idiomas, y me preguntas cómo es que conozco la palabra 'políglota'?"

"Buen punto"

"¿Algo más sobre Motoshige?"

"Nada de lo que nos parezca relevante", interrumpió Jones. Y de nuevo, Storm pensó sobre la vaga definición de Jones sobre cuánto de relevante era en realidad.

"Está bien, así que ¿cuándo vamos a llegar al tipo suizo?", preguntó Storm.

"Ahora mismo", dijo Jones, tomando posesión del mando a distancia. Picó un botón, y una imagen de un hombre gordo, mofletudo, con una nariz aguileña apareció en el holograma 3-D.

"¡Ostias!", se sorprendió Storm. "¿Alguien le hace tomar una píldora de feo?"

"Wilhelm Sorenson," empezó Jones, ignorando el comentario. "Jefe de tratantes de divisas del Banc Nationale Suisse, el tercer banco más grande en el mundo, activos inteligentes. Sesenta y ocho. Casado. Dos hijos, ambos adultos. La mayoría de sus activos estaban, por supuesto, en bancos suizos, y como sabes no son muy buenos compartiendo información. Pero sí sabemos que era un multi-multi-millonario, y también sé que él compartía la debilidad por las mujeres. Mujeres jóvenes. La otra víctima en la escena era una muchacha escapada de casa de diecisiete años, con una identificación personal falsa en la que decía que tenía diecinueve. Llevaba una pequeñita pieza de lencería que dejó pocas dudas sobre la naturaleza de la relación".

Jones enumeró los detalles de la escena, terminando con las uñas arrancadas.

"Los ordenadores de la Interpol no recogen la similitud de los crímenes hasta la tercera repetición, con el asesinato de Sorenson finalmente hicieron saltar las campanas de alarma", explicó Jones. "Las autoridades locales estropearon la escena un poco. Créeme que estaban preguntando algunos asuntos difíciles de la esposa, la cual estaba, entre comillas ‘fuera de la ciudad’ en una especie de fin de semana de chicas en Francia. Pero, por suerte Interpol llamó a nuestra gente, y fueron capaces de entrometerse. Sorenson tenía un sistema de seguridad externo bastante amplio. Así que fuimos capaces de conseguir ésto".

Aparecieron en la pantalla varias fotos en alta definición de un equipo de seis hombres. Cinco de ellos eran hombres que Storm nunca había visto antes. El último era un hombre que nunca podría olvidar.

"Volkov," reconoció Storm. "¿Qué le pasó a su cara?"

"Sospechamos que son los remanentes de tu obra en Mogadiscio", dijo Jones.

"No había manera que sobreviviera a la explosión."

"Hay tres banqueros muertos que discreparían si todavía pudieran hablar."

Storm negó con la cabeza lentamente. Habían pasado cinco años desde la última vez que se había enzarzado con Volkov. No era suficiente tiempo. Cinco vidas enteras no serían suficientes.

"Quítalo de esa pantalla. He visto suficiente esa cara", espetó Storm. Jones cumplió en cuanto Storm continuó: "Así que tenemos tres banqueros muertos de tres grandes bancos en tres países diferentes. Al menos dos de ellos parecen tener problemas para mantener sus pájaros enjaulados. ¿Estamos seguros de que el tercero no estaba también en el mete-saca?"

"Investigamos eso, Kornblum era un auténtico Boy Scout", Dijo Jones. "No existe un esqueleto en su armario o algún oscuro secreto. Y, créeme, buscamos. Él debía andar por la cancillería con el expediente limpio. No que le hubiera gustado un recorte salarial".

"De acuerdo, ¿qué pasa con los vínculos entre los tres hombres? ¿Algún tipo de acuerdo entre Kornblum, Motoshige y Sorenson donde estuvieran todos involucrados? ¿Hicieron algún negocio?"

"Nada de lo que hayamos sido capaces de encontrar hasta ahora", dijo Jones. "Kornblum había comerciado con Sorenson. Y Motoshige una vez ofreció un trato a Kornblum que no se concretó. Pero esas ofertas fueron de hace cinco y tres años, respectivamente. Esto pone a prueba la credibilidad para llamar a eso algo más que una coincidencia. Estos tipos eran todos grandes jugadores en lo que es una parte relativamente pequeña del mundo de las finanzas ultra-grandes. Es lógico pensar que podrían haber tenido algún tipo de contacto casual en algún momento. Pero eso es todo."

"¿Algún socio común entre ellos?", preguntó Storm.

"Desafortunadamente, hay docenas," respondió Bryan. "Como Jones ha dicho, estos banqueros son bastante elitistas. Van a las mismas conferencias, forman amistades en los mismos grupos. Si comienzas a realizar grados de separación, puedes vincular cualquier persona en este mundillo con cualquier otra persona en dos pasos o menos. Todos ellos trabajaban con un tipo que trabajó con algún otro de estos tipos, o que fue a la escuela con uno de ellos".

"¿Y las llamadas telefónicas a los mismos números? ¿Correos electrónicos a las mismas cuentas?"

"Estamos trabajando en eso mientras hablamos", dijo Rodríguez. "Nosotros te haremos saber si aparece algo."

Storm tamborileó sus dedos sobre la pulida mesa. Los tres agentes le dejaron tener un momento. Storm se preguntaba qué parte de la imagen completa le estaban dando en realidad. ¿Qué era lo que Jones dejaba fuera? ¿A quién estaba protegiendo? ¿Desde qué otro ángulo estaba trabajando?

"Por supuesto, hay una conexión que sabemos que tienen seguro: Volkov," dijo Storm. "Volkov es inteligente, pero no es lo suficientemente sofisticado como para matar a los banqueros por su cuenta. Actúa como matón para alguien. Siempre podemos intentar trabajar desde ahí hacia atrás. ¿Tenemos alguna idea de quién pudo haberlo contratado?"

Rodríguez miró a Bryan y le dijo: "Te dije que nuestro chico no había perdido un paso durante su retiro para sí mismo. Veinte dólares”.

Bryan negó con la cabeza mientras buscaba su cartera.

"¿Realmente apostaste contra mí, Kev?" Preguntó Storm, cruzando los brazos y fingiendo indignación.

"He aprendido la lección. Nunca dudaré de nuevo de ti y… Oh, tío, me he quedado sin efectivo. Javi, ¿estaría bien si…?"

"No, no", dijo Storm. "Mi viejo siempre me enseñó que una deuda debe ser pagada sin demora. Te cubro, a pesar de tu falta de fe en mí. Sólo recuerda que me la debes. Me debes esto y Bahrein".

"¿En serio? ¿Vas a hablar de Bahrein como si estuviera en la misma liga que veinte de los verdes?", Dijo Bryan.

Storm entregó a Rodriguez un billete de veinte dólares. "Sólo añádilo a tu cuenta."

Jones los miró fijamente. "Ustedes, señoritas habéis acabado?", Preguntó.

"Perdón. Continúa".

"Bien. Para responder a tu pregunta: Sí, tenemos una teoría sobre quién contrató a Volkov," aclaró Jones. "Creemos que podrían ser los chinos."

"¿Por qué los chinos?"

"Todavía estamos tratando de encajar las piezas", dijo Jones. "Aunque una teoría es bastante simple. China tiene la segunda economía más grande del mundo, y son muy abiertos sobre su objetivo de ser el número uno. Es posible que estén tratando de crear algún tipo de alteración en los mercados financieros destinada a minar nuestra estabilidad económica".

"¿Matando a banqueros extranjeros? ¿Por qué no simplemente matar a banqueros norteamericanos?"

"Esa es la naturaleza del comercio mundial en estos días", dijo Jones. "Todo se ha vuelto tan interconectado, que las partes más vulnerables de nuestro sistema financiero se encuentran localizadas en el extranjero. Además…"

"¿Qué?"

"Es muy posible que Volkov aún no haya terminado", dijo Jones. "Esto podría ser el comienzo de algo más grande."

Storm asintió. Él no necesitaba ser convencido de la intensidad de la maldad de Volkov. Incluso el propio nombre del hombre hablaba de su naturaleza: Volkov derivaba de volk, la palabra rusa para lobo.

"Ahora, hay que tener algo presente, este asunto es algo delicado con los chinos", continuó Jones. "No sólo estamos hablando de una república bananera atrasada que va a cambiar de cualquier manera a los dictadores en tres semanas. Estamos hablando de nuestra relación exterior más importante y más sensible, con un país que pasa a ser el más poblado de la tierra. Y, oh, por cierto, también tienen el ejército más grande. Necesitamos más información sobre lo que los chinos están haciendo, y definitivamente no podemos ser capturados husmeando. Necesitamos algo de… denegabilidad".

"En otras palabras," aclaró Storm," si me pillan, negarás que me has conocido alguna vez y pasaré el resto de mi vida en una prisión encadenado junto a un grupo de disidentes tibetanos."

"Afirmativo". Sonrió Jones.

"Encantador", dijo Storm. "¿Así que cuál es mi próximo movimiento?"

"El ministro de finanzas chino tiene programado dar un importante discurso a la Unión Europea en París", apuntó Jones.

"¿Sí? ¿Y qué?"

"Así que uno de los nuestros nos informa que el Ministerio chino de Seguridad del Estado" - el equivalente chino de la CIA y el FBI, todo en uno - "tiene algún tipo de operación encubierta colectiva con el Ministerio de Finanzas chino. Un agente del Ministerio de Seguridad del Estado está viajando ahora encubierto con el Ministerio de Finanzas. Tiene sentido que si este complot involucrando banqueros tiene el tipo de complejidad que pensamos, tendría que contar con el conocimiento del Ministerio de Finanzas - y el ingenio del Ministerio de Seguridad. Nuestra hipótesis de trabajo - y, una vez más, es sólo una teoría en este punto - es que este agente de del Ministerio de Seguridad del Estado es el que contrató a Volkov".

"¿Qué sabemos del tipo?"

"Absolutamente nada. Estamos recibiendo esto de uno de nuestros agentes dobles, el cual está obteniendo esto de una fuente con la que está empezando a trabajar, por lo que todo esto es un poco dudoso en este punto. La única cosa que sabemos con certeza sobre este agente de Seguridad del Estado es que ella no es un hombre".

"¿Una agente femenina?" Dijo Storm, su cara se levantó involuntariamente.

"Sabía que te gustaría esta parte", dijo Jones, compartiendo miradas cómplices con Bryan y Rodríguez. "Nuestro infiltrado nos dijo que hizo un viaje a Suiza hace unos días."

"Suiza. Igual que, donde se encontró asesinado a Wilhelm Sorenson. ¿Crees que es coincidencia?"

"Es el porqué de que te vas a París", concluyó Jones. "Encuéntrala. Acércate a ella. Averigua que está tramando".

Gracias por traducir, es una historia interesante.