The Game Quotes

“The partition window opened. Panic flooded through him and he twisted in his seat to see Kooi’s wife. She had a gun, pointed through the little window and at his head. ‘We can talk about this,’ Leeson said, swallowing. ‘I can make you a very wealthy woman.’ She said, ‘Put your hands over your ears, Peter, and close your eyes.”
― Tom Wood, The Game

“but far preferred books to films. The special effects were more realistic.”
― Tom Wood, The Game

“ietrich didn’t know he’d been hit at first, but he sucked in a breath and felt warm liquid in his throat. He squeezed the AK’s trigger and nothing happened. His fingers didn’t move. The spots cleared from before his eyes and he realised he was staring up at the night through the mill’s skylights. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t feel anything. He breathed again and liquid entered his lungs. Then Dietrich understood. He’d been shot in the neck. The bullet had ruptured his spinal cord and severed his jugular. He lay paralysed from the neck down and drowned in his own blood”
― Tom Wood, The Game

“Dietrich grinned in the darkness. You’re going to have to do better than that, he thought as he edged forwards. Less than three metres to go before he was in position to strike. Just before he reached the corner, before he exposed himself to Kooi’s position, Dietrich would angle the AK and spray rounds through the pallets of bottles. Maybe he would aim low and try to incapacitate Kooi with bullets in the legs. Then he could have some fun with him. Two metres to go. Something clattered behind him and Dietrich spun around in the direction of the sound. His gaze swept from darkness into light focused and magnified by one of the convex mirrors. He grimaced, the light stinging his eyes with their dilated pupils and ruining his night vision. Purple spots blinded him. He pivoted back around, knowing he’d been tricked. There was an explosion of light and sound.”
― Tom Wood, The Game

“No exterior sounds were audible to dilute the glorious music that emanated from the Rolls-Royce’s top of the range sound system. The London Philharmonic Orchestra Choir were performing a stirring rendition of Thomas Tallis’s Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater. Leeson sipped twenty-four-year-old single malt and sang along in Latin. As the anthem finished he dabbed his watery eyes with an Egyptian cotton handkerchief and thumbed a button on the console to mute the speakers before he was enraptured by more beauteous sound. Tallis made Mozart and Beethoven seem like amateurs.”
― Tom Wood, The Game

“He had one leg crossed over the other and sat with both hands resting casually in his lap. He wore a three-piece suit, silvery grey in colour, with the jacket open to reveal the waistcoat and a striped red and white dress shirt underneath. His tie was ruby red and affixed to the shirt by a gold tie bar shaped like a pirate’s cutlass. His shoes were brown tasselled loafers with the toes polished to a mirror sheen. Light brown hair was swept back from a face that was far more youthful than Victor had expected. He looked no older than twenty-eight or nine.”
― Tom Wood, The Game

“Victor examined it while the driver wheezed and choked. It was a small Cold War era Soviet pistol. A Makarov. Outdated, inaccurate, but still deadly in the right hands. The gun bore none of the marks or scratches of a long life of use. He released the magazine and checked the load. It was filled with eight 9x18 mm copper-cased rounds. The chamber was empty and the safety was on. It was a backup weapon — for protection, not aggressive use. The woman made a continuous coughing, spluttering noise as she struggled and suffocated.”
― Tom Wood, The Game