Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Gardener: A Thriller
    The Gardener: A Thriller
    The Gardener: A Thriller
    Ebook183 pages3 hours

    The Gardener: A Thriller

    By Tony Masero

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    John Chayne is a hard man.
    Trained by the best in the military, he has lost the woman he loves and is due for some solitude in his life. The ad offers just such employment. It reads, gardener-stroke-gamekeeper on a lonely estate in the wild Scottish Highlands. What could be more tranquil?
    But his boss is an arms dealer with a beautiful wife and marital problems. An arms sale to a tyrannical African warlord is in the offing with a massive shipment of weapons. Flies gather around the honey pot, led by a terrorist group calling themselves The Besiff, who, like their name believe in doing things By The Sword.
    But the CIA is watching in the guise of a man called Peak.
    Chayne and Peak are soon caught in the crossfire between raging terrorists and crazed despot. To save the arms dealer’s son Chayne must step outside the law and fall back on the shadow skills he hoped to leave behind forever.
    From the war torn wastes of Africa to the desolation of the Saharan Desert deception and sex leave a bloody trail as a dangerous deadline draws nearer and a cargo worth its weight in gold is pursued.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTony Masero
    Release dateOct 28, 2014
    ISBN9781311061546
    The Gardener: A Thriller
    Author

    Tony Masero

    It’s not such a big step from pictures to writing.And that’s how it started out for me. I’ve illustrated more Western book covers than I care to mention and been doing it for a long time. No hardship, I hasten to add, I love the genre and have since a kid, although originally I made my name painting the cover art for other people, now at least, I manage to create covers for my own books.A long-term closet writer, only comparatively recently, with a family grown and the availability of self-publishing have I managed to be able to write and get my stories out there.As I did when illustrating, research counts a lot and has inspired many of my Westerns and Thrillers to have a basis in historical fact or at least weave their tale around the seeds of factual content.Having such a visual background, mostly it’s a matter of describing the pictures I see in my head and translating them to the written page. I guess that’s why one of my early four-star reviewers described the book like a ‘Western movie, fast paced and full of action.’I enjoy writing them; I hope folks enjoy reading the results.

    Read more from Tony Masero

    Related to The Gardener

    Related ebooks

    Suspense For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Laura Kelly Is A Demon

      Jul 17, 2023

      It’s a damp November night, and in the bowels of an abandoned industrial building somewhere outside Shotts something strange is happening. The gates of hell have opened and demons are stalking Scotland. Clad mostly in black, they’re a ragtag bunch of

      2 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      May 18, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry

      Dec 18, 2020

      Rattling around the house in the County Sligo hills, swinging from bouts of paranoia to moments of strange, demented hilarity, a 900-page doorstopper was just what I needed to stay grounded. The post A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry appeared first on T

      2 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Sep 8, 2022

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      9 min read

    • Article

      FAST, FAMOUS & FURIOUS!

      Mar 10, 2022

      IT WON’T surprise anyone who has ventured out on the highways and byways of Britain recently to learn that Road Rage statistics are on the UP. Pressures of a global pandemic, the economic downturn and massive hikes in the cost of living have transfor

      9 min read

    • Article

      Letter Boks

      Feb 4, 2021

      I READ that Christopher Columbus was 41 years old when he went to America, and as a consequence everyone celebrates him to this day. I was 25 when I first landed on the East Coast of the USA, and yet not one book has been written about me despite the

      18 min read

    • Article

      Garth Marenghi: ‘Many Writers Cite Me As An Influence ... And I Will Be Suing Them All’

      Oct 29, 2022

      Horror writers don’t come much more elusive than Garth Marenghi, AKA “the dream weaver”, AKA the “titan of terror”. The author (who bears an uncanny resemblance to comedian Matthew Holness) is best known for his 1980s hospital horror “dramamentary” G

      6 min read

    • Article

      Going Underground

      Aug 23, 2019

      Going Underground
      3 min read

    • Article

      Readers’ Letters

      Jan 12, 2022

      The Oldie, 23-31 Great Titchfield Street, London, W1W 7PA letters@theoldie.co.uk To sign up for our e-newsletter, go to www.theoldie.co.uk SIR: I read with interest about Sister Teresa’s love of the Taddei Tondo (January issue) and remembered that I

      5 min read

    • Article

      Cross My Heart

      Sep 1, 2022

      Cross My Heart
      6 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 19, 2021

      At a local newspaper in South East London in 1957, journalist Jean Swinney receives a curious letter written to the editor. Gretchen Tilbury – abeautiful, well-to-do woman – claims her 10-year-old daughter is the product of a virgin birth. Gretchen h

      5 min read

    • Article

      Eyes Wide Open

      Jul 12, 2021

      Eyes Wide Open
      5 min read

    • Article

      Knives Out

      Nov 12, 2019

      Knives Out
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Trouble Gene

      Jul 1, 2020

      One clear thing about trouble—it can set you back to zero, a personal cone of silence. And reading, writing, listening allow entry into that troubled solitude; you disappear into it regardless t of the time or place you really are in, be it bed, kitc

      12 min read

    • Article

      Books

      May 1, 2023

      Books
      6 min read

    • Article

      Cut And Run

      Oct 9, 2023

      The earth shook violently as the enormous metal monster closed in. It was 100m away, 50, 20 … then it was on me. As I watched its giant steel tentacle, with its whirling, screaming blade, stretch down towards me, I was conscious less of the fear of a

      2 min read

    • Article

      Eyes Wide Open

      Jul 12, 2021

      Eyes Wide Open
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Gardener

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Gardener - Tony Masero

      Prologue

      Hot, dusty and hellish.

      Three-day-old sweat, stale and crusty, lay under his body armor. John Chayne squats, looking wearily down at the toes of his scuffed combat boots. They make an artistic collage amongst the sheaves of scattered papers on the floor. Everything frozen in a coating of pale yellow dust. Newspapers, magazines, printouts and obscure memos covered in Pashtu hieroglyphics. It all looked like a photographer’s winning background shot to the war in Afghanistan.

      Alongside his secure corner of respite, a hole the size of a moon crater had blasted away the side of the building. Its ragged edges soot-splashed around exposed breezeblocks and nests of twisted re-bar. A taste of high explosive still hangs. Heat trapping the air, holding the scents of both death and destruction in a leaden bond. He sighs, rubs his unshaven face. He is waiting. Idly, he sifts the papers through his fingers.

      There, surprisingly, he finds an English copy of The Lady magazine. Imported, no doubt, to sustain the pretensions of some Oxbridge-trained official lately occupying this devastated ministry building. Dusting it off, he studies the cover picture of a lush, green garden set amongst rolling downland. It all seems as distantly removed from his present situation as the far side of the sun that beats down so relentlessly outside. He fans through the pages.

      Lady-This and Lord-That at the coming out party of their double-barreled daughter who wears a way-too-short black number and holds a loaded champagne flute between her smiling buckteeth. Aged gray-haired ladies in smiling ads for stair lifts and elasticized hosiery, vie with delicate articles about Monet and Alfred Lord Tennyson. A million miles away.

      Situations Vacant Domestic

      Isolated Country House in Scotland. Self-sufficient, fit male gardener/gamekeeper needed during occupancy and vacancy of main house. Excellent live-in cottage available on the grounds. The successful applicant will quite often be left to his own devices and must be capable. Apply in writing with CV and references to C. McBraith, Langroith, Scotland. Ref: JCHE

      The PPR communicator squawks in his ear, but he misses the garbled words under the choppy patter of approaching automatic fire. He stuffs the magazine quickly inside the neck of his body armor. He sees them. Four of them. Only four? Dirty brown jackets and collarless white shirts, heads swathed in black scarves and that ever-present and necessary fashion accessory, an AK47. They are running across heaps of rubble, ducking and diving, stopping only to fire at their unseen pursuers.

      Chayne knows who has brought them to light. It is his own team who are their hunters. It is working like a dream, just as he had planned it. Bring them into the open, then I’ll tap them one by one.

      Dear Mr. McBraith,

      I am nearing the end of my service with Her Majesty’s Forces and am now looking for employment in civilian life...

      One of them has a rocket launcher and is raising it to his shoulder. One shot. Chayne raises his L85 rifle. Pop! The 5.56mm shell drops the fellow where he kneels. Traverse left. Pop! Pop! The leader falls in a tangle, flopping and bumping on the broken bricks. Right a degree. Pop! Miss. Pop, pop, pop! Burst of explosive blood and the man is as still as a stone.

      The idea of being left to my own devices particularly appeals as, after twenty years in the Services, I am sure some adjustment time will be needed...

      Last one has gone to earth. Where is he? That’s it... keep the crossfire coming. Don’t let him wriggle away.

      Hammerheads hit the wall above him, a tattoo of dust and chipped cement bursting in a rain that drops all around him. Damn! I’m in the slot.

      He drops back, stuffing himself into a dark corner.

      I have taken, and hold an Open University Degree in land maintenance and animal husbandry, as it was always my intention to take up some kind of farming lifestyle on leaving the Army...

      Poom! The shockwave deafens him and he is rocked across the room by the battering of the stun-grenade explosion. Dust fills the air like a mist. It is difficult to see. Two, he thinks. They’re inside, with him. Deafened, he cannot hear a thing, but sees the muzzle flashes in the fog as he rolls to cower behind a jagged lump of cement and twisted steel that sits like an iceberg in the center of the room. The wall behind is shattered in a pounding cascade of blasted cement as the wild automatic fire traverses the room.

      Chayne grimaces. Enough! A snarl distorts his lips as he rises through the dust cloud, firing from the hip on automatic. They fall away, ripped, spinning in a collapse of ragged clothing. He continues firing long after they are still. Only when he realizes he is biting down on a bleeding lip does he stop.

      Therefore, I should be most pleased to hear from you at your earliest convenience.

      John Chayne. Cpt. Retd.

      Chapter One

      Charles McBraith sweats.

      He grips the brass bars of the bedstead in both hands and works hard. He should never have taken that little blue pill. The bloody meeting! He was due in an hour and a half. But, by God! She is so beautiful.

      The rocking creature beneath him groans softly, her lidded, half closed eyes fixed on some distant point of pleasure.

      Anne Longridge. A tall, athletically limbed secretary. Shining black hair, down and rumpled now, splayed out over the crisp white pillows. Arms spread carelessly wide. Shaking silicone firmed breasts rising to meet him.

      McBraith savors her excellent body, staring down the length of himself as he pumps. Still, he isn’t in such bad shape himself, he decides. Least not for the downside of forty.

      Dear Captain Chayne,

      Thank you for your letter and all the enclosed personal information. I think it would be worthwhile for us to meet and discuss matters in more detail...

      The twice weekly squash game helps. That exercise bike Clem had bought him for his birthday had been a good idea too. Safely ensconced in the office, he can work out while holding conference calls on the network. Excellent!

      If we were able to meet at the house in Scotland, it would be helpful. My wife and I are usually there most weekends. Failing that, I am available in the London office only on dates to be confirmed through my secretary...

      Would he never finish? But it was certainly doing the business for Anne that was for sure. McBraith smirks secretly with satisfaction at his macho stamina, even if it is drug induced. But the damned meeting... the Africans won’t be happy if he is late. Freedom fighters! Those bastards act like royal potentates and expect to be waited on hand and foot, thanks to all the cash they’ve raped from their country’s reserves. But they were buying a lot of hardware. Millions! It represents millions.

      I find myself most happily impressed by your details, and if we can agree on a suitable fee, then I should like you to start as soon as possible...

      He was losing pounds here, but all in a good cause. He would have to tell Clem to expect this army laddie. See how they get along, and young Robert too. Who were they having up this weekend? Have to ask Anne in a minute. Sounds like she’s rising to finality at last. It would be great to get away again. Seal the deal and escape to some peace up there. Who would have thought that a boy from the back streets of Glasgow could make such a pile? Enough to buy a country house and acres of land, even a herd of deer; McBraith of Clydeside Docks, Laird of the Manor. It made you laugh.

      My wife Clementine, our son Robert, and I look forward to seeing you at Langroith if at all possible. Please find a map and travel directions enclosed herewith.

      Yours sincerely,

      Charles McBraith. CEO Centurion Armaments International plc.

      Yes, at last. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, fucking yes!

      Chapter Two

      Chayne sees Clem McBraith looking at him with an appraising eye. Sitting comfortably, knees together, with a dainty bone china teacup and saucer clasped carefully in his big hands, he can imagine what she sees: Solid. Face battered. Tanned. Short army regulation hair bleached by the sun.

      Perhaps you’d like something stronger? offers McBraith.

      Chayne looks up. Clem notices something else she likes, a momentary flash of openness. Innocence?

      No thanks. I don’t drink.

      Really? ponders McBraith. Think I will, though. He pours from a crystal decanter into a heavy glass goblet.

      Are you married, Mister.... I’m sorry, do you prefer Mister or Captain? Clem asks her first question.

      Just Chayne is fine. One gets used to surnames in the Army. And no, I’m not married. Not anymore. My wife died some years ago.

      Oh, I’m sorry.

      Justine... Justine. Chayne cannot share her end with anyone. Not even now. After all this time, her image moves across his mind and overlays for a moment the face of Clem McBraith. They are not alike. Clem McBraith is a tall blonde. Elegant, pleasant voiced. Middle-English accent, neither too high nor too low. An aura of honesty hangs about her. Something else too. A cool sadness?

      Justine was different. Small and vibrant. A tangled bush of dark curling hair that fell half way down the coffee-colored skin of her back. Tough. Passionate.

      So, how was it in the Army? asks McBraith. I noticed your CV didn’t say much about it. Hush-hush stuff?

      No, not at all. Pretty boring really if you’re not involved. My area of expertise was Stores and Supplies. Quartermasters Depot, logistics, transports; that sort of thing. How to get twenty tons of frozen chickens from Portsmouth to Bahrain in twenty-four hours. I spent most of the time punching computer keys. There was no way he could let them know his real command. The squad he had belonged to did not exist. Had never existed and never would. And besides, that ghost was behind him now. It felt good to step out from the darkness.

      Well, I suppose an Army must still march on its stomach, laughs McBraith.

      Indeed. In spite of his brashness, there is something charismatic, something likable about McBraith. Chayne cannot decide what it is as yet. But it is there. There is enough of the street still left in him to keep him amongst the land of the living. Maybe a few more years of the good life, of success and money and things would change, but right now...

      The boy, though, was another matter. Robert. Maybe nine or ten. Somber looking kiddie. Sitting beside his mother. Ever watchful, saying nothing.

      What sort of software did you use? It speaks. Oops! Pale skin, tiny hunched back. It’s an anorak. A computer geek. Chayne, in reality, is computer illiterate.

      Um... Mostly rather specialized software developed by the Ministry of Defense, he adlibs, totally in the dark here.

      Do the apps have a name?

      Chayne quirks an apologetic lip. 'Fraid I’m not at liberty to talk about any of that, sorry.

      That will all be rather secret, Robert, explains McBraith. His tone is kindly. Considerate. There is no sense of impatience or condescension. Chayne will have had to sign a pledge not to disclose anything about that sort of thing. So he has strong legal and moral commitments that binds him into saying nothing about it. He looks for a nod of confirmation from Chayne.

      I see. The boy is disappointed. Couldn’t he just lie, though? They always do in the movies.

      Today, Robert, McBraith speaks to the child, but is assessing Chayne across the table. Maybe yes, in today’s moral climate many people believe their promises means nothing. They feel they themselves signify nothing globally, and therefore have nothing to give. That’s the attitude you will see on the TV or movies, but I think Chayne is more a man of his word. When he makes a promise, he means to keep it. Isn’t that right, Chayne?

      When it matters.

      Chayne senses the atmosphere. The father loves the son. They are apart often. The son finds it hard to relate. Something is amiss between husband and wife. A tiny rift. The beginnings of a disaster, perhaps? None of his affair, though. But best to be aware. To be aware is to be prepared.

      Time to change tack. I wonder, he asks, might I see the accommodation?

      McBraith downs his whisky in a single gulp. Of course. If you’ve finished your tea, we’ll go now.

      You’ll stay for supper, I hope? Clem asks, slight smile playing on her lips. It’ll only be something simple, I’m afraid, but you’re more than welcome to join us.

      We could have live-in help, of course, McBraith explains. "But Clem insists she will do it all. This is our escape from the humdrum razzle of city life. And I have to say, she’s right. Every time we come up here it’s a tonic. I go

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1