“French Twist”
Unraveling French Twist
FRENCH TWIST (105,000 words) is the spy-adventure-romance mashup you didn’t know you needed. It’s a swashbuckling adventure, a harrowing thriller, and an exploration of the power of love, wit, and imagination to push back against darkness.
Following the theft in France of powerful U.S. cyberweapon Corpse Flower, ASTRID agent Chet Fletcher and French colleague Sylvie Allaire travel from Saint-Tropez to Bordeaux to Paris as they struggle to prevent deranged ophthalmologist Dr. Hervé Gosse (and anti-democratic cabal LEOPARD) from unleashing Gosse’s devastating optical weapon Helios on the unsuspecting residents of the City of Light.
Here are some excerpts:
From Chapter 1:
Alan Lomax rode the elevator up from his basement office then padded to the building’s bronze and glass side door to see if his taxi had come. Neon signs glowed in the windows of the shops across the street and the traffic whirling past was briefly slashed by a reflected red light. Waiting at the curb was a black Citroën taxi with its roof light dimmed. Pressing a hand to his waist, he felt the outline of the flash drive through the layers of fabric, just below the teddy-bear swell of his belly. The drive was a slim, unassuming rectangle but it seemed to him to be throbbing with life and power. Assured that Corpse Flower was safe and sound in the money belt, he pushed the door open and went outside.
As he started down the walkway toward the taxi, he found that the warm air of the Mediterranean night carried the usual edge of resinous volatility. The yucca trees growing in the beds of white gravel on either side pierced the night like bayonets.
Alan was doughy and pale with sandy hair and a moon-shaped face, and he was wearing baggy khaki pants and a short-sleeve button-up shirt in brown plaid. Over his shoulder, he carried a red and purple Eddie Bauer daypack.
As he approached the taxi, the front window slid down, revealing the driver to be large and bearish with dark smudges under his eyes and seedy-looking black stubble covering his cheeks and neck.
“Monsieur Lomax?” he said.
“Oui, c’est moi,” said Alan, in an accent as American as his attire.
For a few seconds after getting in, he was pleasantly impressed by the car’s subdued ambiance and plush black interior, then he was assailed by the reek of cigarettes and saw that in many places the upholstery was shiny and worn.
As they drove away, Alan looked out the rear window at the building he had just left, the administration building of the University of Nice at Sophia Antipolis. Artfully floodlit, it resembled a Greek temple and he was proud of his association with it, much preferring it to the black glass cubes of NSA headquarters outside Washington, where he used to work and where he had a meeting scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. He was sorry to be leaving but consoled himself with the thought he would only be away for a few days.
From Chapter 2:
“Amara!” Chet called over his shoulder.
Chet gave one last pull and went gliding up to the dock, then he dipped the oars and swirled the boat around.
“Good afternoon, Chet,” she replied in the lilting accent of her native India.
Amara was stocky with medium-brown skin, and she had a round, businesslike face, a direct gaze, and long, straight black hair. She was dressed in a black pantsuit, magenta blouse, and pair of high-heeled black pumps that might be just the thing in the office but would make for tricky walking on a dock. Over the two years they had worked together, her unfailing good sense and deep logistical prowess had gotten him out gotten him out of many a scrape in foreign lands.
“Did you come up so I can row you around while you lounge under a parasol?” he asked as he eased up to where she was standing.
“Sorry, no.”
“You have a standing invitation.”
“Yes, but I don’t have a parasol.”
“Hop in anyway,” he said as he pulled alongside the dock.
“Yes, all right,” she said. “But you know I hate these things.”
She removed her shoes then took his hand and stepped down into the boat. When she was settled in the stern, he pushed off and took a few easy strokes, drawing up in a spot that was close to shore but had attractive views of both Shorecote and the reach.
Shorecote was the nineteenth-century estate and mansion owned by his landlords, the Spebbingtons.
He asked if she was comfortable with the place he had picked.
“Of course,” she said. “Barely.”
“We can go back.”
“It’s fine.”
“How can you hate boats?” he asked. “You live in the Sailing Capital of the World.”
“Because I like being in control and boats are never under the control of anyone.”
Knowing that she hadn’t come up from Newport to chat, he gave the conversation a slight nudge in the direction of business.
“How’s Barbara doing?”
“She’s fine,” said Amara. “She’s playing tennis with the Secretary of State this afternoon.”
“I hope he’s prepared to be beaten to a pulp,” he said, fondly.
Barbara Sheridan was the founder and director of ASTRID, the agency that employed Chet and Amara. The name stood for Alliance in the Struggle for Radiant Development, though the organization was really named after Barbara’s idealistic daughter Astrid, who had drowned in a sailing accident many years before. The fortune with which Barbara funded the foundation came from her family’s generations of success in the manufacture of weapons, a heritage for which she felt a need to make amends.
From Chapter 4:
The road to Saint-Tropez wound southwest between the glittering blue sea and a range of rugged brown hills. With the windows up and the air conditioner on, the Audi was a cool, quiet retreat from the heat and glare. His hunch about the car counting as basic transportation in this neck of the woods was proven correct as he encountered one Bentley, Range Rover, and Ferrari after another. Still, he was delighted by the car, which threw his Subaru wagon into the shade. Working the stick like he was racing at Monaco, he sped through the curves and sailed over the rises, slinging his body from side to side and occasionally floating it clear off the seat.
The road unfolded one glimpse of heaven-on-earth after another. There were pocket beaches, red-tile villages, rock-bound coves, and cliff-top villas that looked out over the sea. The sight of a group of golden children hurling themselves off a yacht’s swim platform gave him a pang of retrospective envy when he remembered what his life had been like at that age. A glimpse of a topless young woman reaching up to close the back gate of her car made him feel like he had turned hollow inside.
At one point he found himself thinking about various writers and artists he liked who had spent time on the Riviera. There were Hemingway and Fitzgerald, of course. Also Matisse, Maugham, and the Rolling Stones, who had famously recorded one of their best records in the basement of a Côte d’Azur villa. Alas, the days when the Riviera offered any kind of Bohemian refuge for artists were long gone. Having been discovered and bought up by the international ultra-rich, it now possessed all the soul of a twenty-four-karat conflict diamond.
From Chapter 5:
The jet ski was a Kawasaki Ultra, he saw as he drew near. By a miracle, the key was in the ignition, attached to a curly purple shut-off lanyard. Mentally begging the owners’ pardon, he pushed the machine into the water, guided it over the mild surf, and hopped aboard. When he held down the start button, the machine rumbled to life like a rocket on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Finally, with a prayer to Poseidon for fair winds and following seas, he gripped the seat with his thighs and pulled on the throttle lever.
Soon he was streaking across the bay at fifty miles an hour. The wind was blowing his hair back and the jet ski jouncing beneath him like a bucking bronco. As soon as the boat driver saw him coming, he bore away toward the open sea. He had no problem ambushing an unsuspecting beachcomber but apparently lacked the stomach for a scrap. Unfortunately for him, the parasail functioned like a drag chute, slowing him down and giving the jet ski the edge in speed. It took some doing, but eventually, after they were well outside the line of yachts, Chet managed to reel them in. As he did so, the parasailer directed a few desultory bursts his way; however he soon laid off, either because he was out of ammo or because he was worried about sinking the boat. Finally, taking the key of the Ultra with him so it would stop running and stay out of trouble, Chet leapt from the jet ski onto the boat’s starboard quarter like a rodeo cowboy tackling a calf.
The driver did not welcome him aboard. Rather, he took the anchor out of its bucket and threw it at him. He was standing at the steering console at the front left corner of the cockpit, which was open, white, and lined in plastic. Lean, smooth, and tanned, he was wearing a sport shirt unbuttoned over a washboard stomach and had hard eyes and a long vulpine jaw. He looked as if his day job might be mugging tourists behind the Marseille train station.
The anchor came flying in like a battle axe, but Chet get out of its way by leaning back as a batter might to avoid getting hit by a pitch coming through high and inside. The anchor’s long, sharp flukes embedded themselves in the cockpit lining like sabretooth tiger fangs. Chet then dropped into his pradal serey stance and began moving cautiously up the deck.
From Chapter 9:
They spent the night in separate rooms in a motel in an outlying area that had all the charm of a U.S. state highway lined with strip malls. In the morning, they checked out, drove back to Saint-Tropez, and parked in the lot by the new harbor, which was just around the corner from the old one. Lined in concrete and riprap rather than stone, the new harbor was full of long, branching docks and packed with speedboats, sailboats, and motor yachts.
The wedge of land that separated the two harbors was occupied by a row of upscale stores one of which was a dive shop. In its window a pair of his and hers mannikins in wet suits, flanked by a speargun and pink octopus plushie, were standing in front of a sun-faded backdrop photo of a coral formation.
Chet and Sylvie went in looking like a boyfriend and girlfriend intent on adventure. They came out twenty minutes later wearing black and blue wet suits pushed down to their waists and carrying swim fins, masks, and buoyancy control vests with strapped-in air tanks. On the upper body, Chet had on a red and white ringer tee and Sylvie a brown bikini top with white piping. Chet was also holding an implement resembling a ski pole with a metal stove ring on the end.
They made their way out to a blue sixteen-foot Cap Ferrat runabout with a large Mercury outboard, a white plastic interior, and central steering console, then Chet sat down on the high padded seat and started the engine and Sylvie cast off and settled down beside him. As the sun beat down and a caressing breeze found them, Chet steered the rumbling, gently bobbing boat slowly out of the maze of docks and vessels.
The entrance to the two harbors was protected by a long stone mole bearing a paved street and line of parked cars. Reaching it, they turned left, trundled along beside it for a time, then curled to the right around the toy lighthouse at its end, and ventured out into the Gulf of Saint-Tropez. Here the world opened up to display, ahead and to the left, a scrim of rugged brown hills and to the right a broad path of water leading to the sea. The sky was a ringing blue and the water painted in alternating strips of blue and gold.
They curved around to starboard and Chet rolled on the gas, and soon they were speeding along on plane with the wind streaming by over their heads and the boat dancing beneath them.
From Chapter 19:
In entering the grape row, which he did with his body on one side of the bike and his weight balanced on one pedal, Chet immediately found himself in a gorgeous new world. On either side were walls of large lush leaves, curling and deep green, that were intermittently fired with sun. The ambient whoosh of the outdoors had given way to the intimate sounds of leaves brushing his shoulder and the bike bumping over lumps in the dirt. He coasted fifteen yards up the aisle then stepped off and leaned the bike against a trellis. Thanks to the instruction of the redoubtable Genevieve, he was able, with reasonable confidence, to identify the clusters of small green balls among the leaves as cabernet sauvignon grapes four or five weeks out from turning blue and swelling with juice.
He was very grateful, after setting up the aisle on foot, for the cover provided by the vines. However, he was not long in registering that their protection was imperfect. They were higher than his head, thankfully. But from the knees down, thanks to the bareness of the stems, they left him as exposed as if he were wearing a barrel on a pair of shoulder straps.
Occasionally, the rows were crossed at right angles by slightly wider aisles. In angling toward the chateau, he alternately walked up the rows and cut across on one of these aisles. No one seemed to be around, so after a few minutes he began to lower his guard. Then he rounded a corner and saw something that scared the hell out of him. A large dog was blocking his way. He braced him to barked at or attacked. Then he realized, with a flood of relief that nearly knocked him off his feet, that it wasn’t a dog at all. It was an infinitely preferably creature: a sheep—specifically, a large, very handsome and solid-looking one with cream-colored wool and a black face and legs.
He wondered what it was doing here—then he remembered Genevieve saying that some vineyards had recently begun using sheep to cut the grass as part of a shift toward more sustainable agricultural practices. However, a moment’s consideration led to further puzzlement. Genevieve had said sheep were only used in the winter. If turned loose in the summer they would eat the leaves and expose the grapes to the sun. He also remembered her saying they were employed in flocks rather than singly. A moment later, his perplexity gave way to concern. Contrary to his first impression, the sheep was not in good condition. In fact, it was something of a wreck. Its posture was cringing and it seemed to be paralyzed with fear. Then he noticed that, in looking at him, its head was wearving from side to side, as if it couldn’t work out exactly where he was.
His heart went out to the beast.
“Hello there, Mr. Sheep,” he said, kneeling and patting its shoulder.
Initially as rigid as iron, it began after a few moments to trust him, at least to the point of leaning into his touch. He scrubbed its hard shoulder and dense, springy wool. Then he made the troubling discovery of a rusty smudge on the cream-colored wool of its breast, a smudge he soon traced to a pair of mysterious parallel cuts around the upper part of each foreleg. A glance at its hind legs found similar cuts on them. It looked as if each of its legs had been deliberately enclosed in something sharp.
“What happened to you, fella?” he said. “Who did this to you?”
Then, with the intention of communicating his sympathy to the beast, and more fully connecting with it, he slid a hand under its chin, gently raised its face, and looked into its eyes.
He was greeted by a sight of shocking horror. Instead of displaying the clear hazel irises and rectangular pupils of a healthy sheep, this one offered the hideous sight of two sightless orbs completely filled with blood.
From Chapter 22
He felt bad for her. However, sympathy was a luxury he couldn’t afford right now. At any moment Gosse was going to come walking out and his time alone with her would be at an end.
“I think Hervé’s strapping sheep in front of banks of televisions and blinding them with bright flashes of light,” he said.
“What would the point of that be?”
“I wish I knew.”
“Well, I don’t know what he’s doing!”
“Doesn’t that bother you? A cute little sheep having its eyes burned out for Hervé’s amusement?”
“People kill millions of animals every day. I can’t be worrying about that.”
“He’s not far from here,” he said, turning in his seat and pretending to look for the sheep. “I saw him when I was walking up to the house. Maybe he’ll stagger up and fall into the swimming pool.”
She was sitting back in her seat with her arms folded.
“If you haven’t noticed, I live like a queen thanks to Hervé. You’re foolish if you think I’m going to betray him and help you.”
“We think Hervé stole that computer virus and that he’s planning to do something bad with it.”
She made no answer.
After a moment, he decided it was time to stop sparring and make her an offer.
“Tracy, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you land on your feet. Just confirm for me what you can, or tell me what you can about his plans. . . .”
“That flash drive is protected by a big password, isn’t it?” she replied. “Hervé couldn’t get into it if he wanted to. . . .”
“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Is that big password big enough?”
The silence with which she greeted this remark was not quite so stony as some of those the preceded it. Suddenly he grew hopeful that she might be on the verge of softening and speaking to him sincerely about her boyfriend’s illegal activities. Then he heard the horrible sound of the chateau door being thrust open by strong, lordly hands.
Tracy looked as relieved as if she had been delivered from execution.
“Why don’t you ask Hervé?” she said with a smile as Gosse emerged from the chateau and started walking their way. “Here he comes now.”
From Chapter 23:
“You might find this interesting, Mr. Fletcher. Did you know that, when the Germans occupied Bordeaux during the war, the German Navy made their headquarters for this region right here at Château d’Apollon?”
“It’s things like that that make a house a home,” said Chet.
“In fact, two of the captured British commandos from the Frankton Raid were executed in the garden just a short distance from here. Are you familiar with the Frankton Raid? Sometimes they’re referred to as the Cockleshell Raiders. They paddled kayaks up the Gironde and detonated limpet mines on a handful of German ships in Bordeaux Harbor. You can still see the pockmarks in the stone wall where the two prisoners were lined up and shot. Perhaps I can show you the spot after lunch.”
The expression in his eyes made Chet resolve to go nowhere near that particular spot, if he could possibly avoid it. They were gleaming with delight.
Tracy was the next person to speak.
“Just so long as you take your phone, you can show Chet anything you want,” she said. “I want to be able to find you when Bernard arrives.
The changes that now played out across Gosse’s face were wonderful to observe. First his expression became hard and angry, then it was suffused with the glow of satisfaction, then it assumed a patently insincere look of regret. When at last he spoke, his words were infused with an obviously counterfeit sorrow.
“That reminds me, Tracy,” he said. “Unfortunately, Bernard called this morning and said he won’t be able to make it today. Something urgent came up which he couldn’t possibly put off.”
For a moment she stared at him with an expression of angry disbelief. Then, in a sudden wild movement, she grabbed her fork and tried to stab him in the arm. Gosse’s response was equally shocking. With astonishing swiftness and accuracy, he jerked his hand up and intercepted her wrist in mid-attack.
“That is bullshit, Hervé!” she howled. “It’s bullshit and you know it! You told him not to come!”
Gosse made no reply. Instead, he began pinching her radius and ulna together with his thumb and forefinger. It was painful to look at. Chet couldn’t imagine how much it must hurt to have it done to you.
Tracy’s face had turned white, but she still refused to let go of the fork. Gosse’s eyes, fixed on her face, glowed red in a relentless intention to dominate. Meanwhile, a calm, satisfied smile curved his wide, thin lips.
Upset on Tracy’s behalf, Chet scrambled to think of an effective way to intervene. Before he could do so, Tracy cried out and dropped the fork and Gosse let her go, then she angrily pushed her chair back and jumped to her feet.
From Chapter 25:
Suddenly a plan for the future came to him. It was completely unrealistic. It was utterly bonkers. It was hugely disloyal. It was also as essential to him as air and water.
“Leave Hervé,” he told her. “Be with me.”
“What? No!”
“Why?”
“I still want my money.”
“What?”
“My little bag of gold.”
“You think he’s going to give you some money?”
“He said he was going to marry me and give me some.”
She was as deluded as her was. More.
“You should jump clear,” he said.
“I’m going to make him do it, too.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Mine,” she said.
You had to give her points for frankness, anyway.
“I’m also on your side,” he told her.
He just wanted her to know it. It was true enough. It was the truest thing he had ever said.
“If those two catch me with you, I’m in big trouble,” she said. “He’ll cut my eyes out.”
“I’ll protect you.”
It was a hell of a sweet idea but one as empty as a windsock. He couldn’t have protected her from a kitten.
Suddenly her body went rigid and the breeze came back. She had raised her head to look at something.
“They’re back!” she hissed. “Get up! Get up!”
She might as well have asked him to levitate.
“I can’t,” he said. “You better go.”
There was no way he could get up. He might as well have been painted to the floor.
“I’ll help you,” she said.
“Go on!” he whispered. “It’s you they’re looking for. They don’t even know who I am. I’ll be okay.”
Her next action amounted to an uncontrollable shudder of conflicted emotion. Suddenly grabbing a fistful of his hair, she pulled it at the roots with a combination of tender urgency and manic desperation—then she let him go, slapped his face, and whispered in his ear: “I hate people like you, do you understand? I hate them!”
But she still wasn’t done turning his world inside out. Next she caressed his cheek and kissed him on the mouth, kissed him with a sweet, searching gentleness that rocked him to his core.
Then, done at last with wreaking havoc on his soul, she jumped up and ran away, ran with a nearly noiseless padding of feet which told him that, somewhere in the course of covering him in roses, she had found the time to take her sandals off.
From Chapter 29:
Gosse stepped to the operating chair and snapped on the boom light, flooding Chet’s immobile face and closed eyelids with additional illumination. Then he manually raised one of Chet’s lids and shone the beam of a penlight into the eye. The pupil narrowed while the amount of blue iris dramatically increased.
“Pupillary response normal,” Gosse murmured, as if to himself. “I would venture to state that Mr. Fletcher is quite cognizant of his surroundings. Isn’t that right, Mr. Fletcher?”
Chet evidently decided there was no use pretending. His eyes fluttered open though he immediately squinted to screen out some of the light.
“Good evening, Mr. Fletcher!” said Gosse cheerfully. “Pretending to be unconscious, are we? That will do you no good in here. We physicians know all!”
Suddenly Chet threw himself against his bonds like a wild animal hurling itself against the bars of its cage.
“Let me up!” he yelled, straining upward and thrashing from side to side. “There’s nothing the matter with me! Nurse, this is wrong and you know it! There’s no reason to operate on me! I’m working with the U.S. government and the French police! You took an oath, both of you! Nurse, if you help him mutilate me, you’re just guilty as he is!”
“I’m afraid you are wrong on all counts, Mr. Fletcher,” said Gosse pleasantly. “When you collapsed in my office, I took the opportunity to examine your eyes. I had observed a swollen, reddened appearance in them when you first came in that caused me a great deal of concern.” He rubbed an alcohol-dipped cotton ball on Chet’s upper arm and accepted a syringe from the efficient nurse. “Unfortunately, I discovered that they have been colonized by tumors.” After pausing to administer the injection, he concluded, “To prevent the cancer’s reaching the brain, an emergency enucleation was indicated for both eyes.”
Chet’s body strained against its bonds one last time then he trembled, groaned, and collapsed. Only his eyes remained under his control, and these were rolling around in their sockets like those of a horse trapped in a burning barn.
From Chapter 31:
Chet and Terminator galloped halfway around the track and exited through a gate open to admit a truckload of hay. Then they cantered across the Bois de Boulogne, loped up the Avenue du Président Kennedy, and thundered past the red, white, and blue rooster tails of the Trocadero fountains.
As they crossed the Pont d’Iéna, Chet was thrilled to see the Eiffel Tower rising directly before him. It was brawny and massive below but delicate and ethereal at its distant top, where it touched the heavens. He briefly imagined it as a steampunk mooring tower for intergalactic spacecraft. Then he and the horse cantered beneath the wide, inverted U of the base on that side and commenced scattering the tourists like pigeons.
“For God’s sake, stay off the Internet!” he yelled, in every language he knew. “Stay off the Internet if you value your eyes!”
Then he and the horse, emanating purpose, loped smoothly away down the Champs de Mars.
From Chapter 33:
He slipped inside, eased the door to, and warily looked around. The chamber he had entered was like a red and gold grotto. It was spottily illuminated by a few stray floodlights and broken by slim stone pillars supporting a cross-vaulted ceiling. The room’s relatively low height and dearth of windows puzzled him till he remembered reading that Sainte-Chapelle actually included two chapels, a relatively modest one for the lower-ranking members of the royal household and a much grander one for the king and his court. This was obviously where the hoi polloi had worshipped.
The early signs suggested he had the place to himself. There was no one in sight and it was as quiet as a crypt. Then a splenetic rustling sound arose from the direction of the green canvas gift-shop stalls lining the left-hand wall, a rustling such as might be made by someone rummaging irritably through unappealing merchandise. A moment later the rustling came to an abrupt and suspicious halt.
The man who now stepped out of one of the stalls was a burly, tough-looking hombre dressed all in black. He stared at Chet a second then started raising the submachine gun in his arms. Chet jerked the Beretta up and pulled the trigger twice. A loud double bark caromed around the room then the man took two steps, grabbed a postcard carousel, and toppled over, taking the carousel down with him. The carousel hit the floor with a metallic shiver and some of the cards in it went sliding smoothly away across the polished terrazzo. The man lay beside it like a slain bear.
Chet hurried deeper into the chapel, took cover behind a pillar, and waited for more armed thugs to come pouring out of the stair towers on either side of the front doors. When none did, he tentatively concluded that the turns of the stairs must have kept the noise from reaching the upstairs. His emotions were a maelstrom of anxiety, relief, and fear that he might yet be too late. After a moment he steeled himself for more fighting then ran to the stairway on the right and began to climb.
From Chapter 37:
The Zodiac was streaking after the ladder like an arrow flying toward its mark. The bow was bouncing and the wind streaming over the occupants at close to gale force. André, crouched in the bow, could not quite believe that Chet intended to grab the ladder and start climbing up. He himself was afraid of heights. Chet, who was perhaps sixty percent recovered from the clout on his head and his ordeal in the water, was kneeling behind him, watching anxiously for signs the pilot had realized what they were up to and begun to take evasive action. Sylvie was in the stern keeping the throttle on as far as it would go, though in fact the last thing she wanted was to see Chet succeed in catching the ladder. He had just wriggled out of one situation that should have killed him. Did he really have to throw himself into another?
Suddenly, André called back over his shoulder, “They’ve seen us! The helicopter’s moving away!”
It was indeed, Chet saw. It had started flying slowly toward the north end of the Pont des Arts while gradually gaining altitude.
“Get after them, Sylvie!” he yelled. “Get on them like a barnacle!”
He watched in agony as the ladder’s silver rungs rose one after the other out of the water. He was afraid every rung might be the last.
“Do you want this?” André asked, shouting to be heard above the roar. He was holding out his service automatic.
Chet accepted it gratefully, thanked him, and tucked the gun in the back of his waistband.
But the Frenchman wasn’t done lending him vital assistance. He made a stirrup of his hands and told Chet, “Put your foot here!” Chet did so, while also resting his hand on André’s shoulder for support. Then he saw a sight that wrenched his heart. Twenty yards ahead, the ladder’s final rung rose dripping from the river and fluttered backward on the wind. Gosse and the chopper were getting away!
But Sylvie pursued it on a course as tight as a guy wire then Chet and André dipped as one and smoothly rose up, and André flung his hands after the ladder like his body was one big slingshot. Chet pushed off hard with his left leg, launching himself off André’s hands like a stone leaving a catapult.
He flew through the air as if he had been shot out of a cannon at the circus, then he grabbed the bottom rung, hung there a second to make sure of his grip, and began to climb.
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