Ward Larsen > Quotes

“Thinking they’d found their man, a Mossad team was dispatched to the village of Lillehammer, Norway, to assassinate Salameh, but mistakenly murdered an innocent Moroccan waiter as he walked home from a theater with his pregnant wife.”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Game

“sovereign moshpit of corrupt bureaucrats and tribal strongmen and baseline incompetence. When”
― Ward Larsen, Fly by Night

“But then, this probably wasn’t your first near-death experience.” Ridgeway collected himself. “No … no, of course not. It’s just that in the Army you don’t usually have video to prove how close you came to dying.”
― Ward Larsen, Deep Fake

“The position of CIA station chief is filled using an altogether different approach. Langley maintains its usual embedded subsidiary in the U.S. house of Lebanon, and for the employees of the CIA, Beirut is ground zero. It is the place where careers are made and lost, a tinderbox in which young and indestructible case officers put their tradecraft on the line to engage razor-sharp bomb-makers and witless suicidal jihadists. Iran and Pakistan might be as combustive, Iraq a few years earlier. But with the Jews to the south, the Persians to the north, and nearly twenty state-recognized religious sects, there is no more unsettled country on earth than Lebanon.
And Larry Donnelly wouldn’t have been anywhere else”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Silence

“dust. His head hit something. Everything went deathly still. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE The prisons of Egypt are notoriously famous.”
― Ward Larsen, Fly by Night

“The driver set a brisk, professional pace, and the city fell behind them. In the front seat, Ben-Meir studied a map of the area on a tablet computer. “This is useless—he could have gone anywhere.” He addressed Radko’s partner, Stanev, who’d been their primary shooter. “You are certain you hit him?”
“No doubt,” the man said. “I saw him react. He was limping afterward.”
Ben-Meir stared at the empty map display. He removed his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and took out his phone. He placed a call that was picked up immediately.”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Silence

“the next”
― Ward Larsen, The Perfect Assassin

“His missions for Mossad had been many, an almost formulaic process. The planning invariably opened with incriminating photos, which meant his first impression of every target began the process of demonization. A shadowed figure planting explosives or running from the scene of a shooting. A fingerprint lifted and matched from a tiny piece of shrapnel. If Slaton’s involvement became necessary, it meant a trial of sorts had already been run, albeit without a table for the defense. Intelligence analysts acted as prosecutors, their evidence documented and presented in vivid color—red predominating. Spymaster judges delivered verdicts and passed sentences. Slaton? His part was simplest of all, that of an executioner who didn’t need a black mask because he existed in a black world”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Silence

“That’s fly by wire. It’s all buried deep in three independent flight control computers. They run in parallel and crosscheck each other continuously. If one fails, the others rule.”
― Ward Larsen, Fly By Wire

“For thirty-five years Sanderson had watched policemen near the end of their careers, and he knew there were two distinct leanings. Most pulled back and coasted onto the off-ramp of retirement. They put checkmarks in boxes and answered phones when it suited them, showed up at the station a few minutes later each morning. When the halfhearted party finally came, with its backslapping and cake and embarrassing gifts, it was no more than a ripple, quickly lost in the ongoing storm of day-to-day operations. But there was a second path. Men and women who went out on less subdued terms, the results either noble or ruinous, but always spectacular.”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Game

“Do you have a key to this chalet?” She let loose a long sigh. “No. But”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Silence

“side of his head, over the bald spot, to the other.”
― Ward Larsen, The Perfect Assassin

“plumbing as toilets were”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Game

“Ambassadors to Lebanon are invariably career State Department employees, this a glaring exception to the custom wherein lead diplomatic posts are reserved as political appointments, presidents finding places for their deep-pocketed campaign donors, close friends, and Ivy League fraternity brothers. France, England, Sweden, and Brazil—these are the verdant gardens, the well-bought consular A-list. An ambassadorship to Lebanon, on the other hand, lies considerably further down the alphabet. With its magnetism for bombings, kidnappings, and religious-inspired mayhem, Beirut postings are invariably filled—on a strictly volunteer basis—by brave and long-tenured employees from Foggy Bottom.”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Silence

“and bathroom before”
― Ward Larsen, The Perfect Assassin

“That was one of the things about flying—every time you opened the door you got a new smell, a new temperature, a new sky and horizon. It made you realize how diverse the world was. And how small.”
― Ward Larsen, Fly by Night

“He remembered tracking an Israeli assassin across Sweden to the village of Oxelösund, followed by a harrowing passage in Janna Magnussen’s crate of an airplane. Stepping onto the dock in Sassnitz, Germany, and then … and then nothing. Sanderson couldn’t recall anything more, not even how he’d ended up in this room.”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Game

“of hazardous substances. The smallest breach can”
― Ward Larsen, Fly By Wire

“embarrassment as quickly”
― Ward Larsen, The Perfect Assassin

“bed, the Glock near his right hand, safety off.”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Game

“having set broad parameters, she was faced with prioritizing nearly six hundred files EPIC had unearthed overnight. Fortunately, this, in microcosm, was the feat for which the system had been designed—to parse oceans of data into something manageable. Or as Atticus carelessly termed it, to cut through the “byte noise.”
― Ward Larsen, Deep Fake

“Davis turned his head”
― Ward Larsen, Fly By Wire

“where”
― Ward Larsen, The Perfect Assassin

“From his naval training he recalled someone giving him a rule of thumb about estimating the speed of a vessel based on its bow wake. The”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Revenge

“We have both risen to great achievements, the pinnacle of our respective disciplines.”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Game

“Slaton moved closer and reached a hand under the waist of her unzipped jacket. To anyone watching, they would appear as lovers engaged in a parting embrace. Astrid tensed visibly as his hand curled around her beltline and found the gun. He’d made her take it when they left the chalet—that X-ray image he could never have explained. He discreetly pulled the Glock clear and slid it under his own jacket. “I might need this.”
She pulled back and smiled nervously.
“One hour,” he repeated.
She nodded and turned away, crunching over a sidewalk paved in clouded ice. Astrid turned a corner and disappeared”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Silence

“Slaton heard nothing more than a pair of muffled thumps, sounds he recognized all too well—the lethal signature of high-velocity rounds striking center of mass in a human body. Her tall figure snapped forward and she crumpled to the ground.
Slaton instantly knew three things.
Astrid was dead.
There were two shooters.
And he was next.”
― Ward Larsen, Assassin's Silence

“As ever, fate traveled as a quiet companion.”
― Ward Larsen, Passenger 19