"Archer, Geoffrey - Sam Packer 02 - The Lucifer Network" - читать интересную книгу автора (Archer Geoffrey)

African retreated to prepare a tray.

Packer felt intensely uneasy. His tactics were bad. He aimed to
wrong-foot the wily old gun-runner, yet their meeting was at a time and
place Jackman himself had set. His home ground. There'd been no other
way, of course. The Service wanted a solution fast and Jackman held
all the cards. Short of silencing him with a bullet, there had to be a
negotiation. A gentle probing to see what he wanted. So it had been
the phone call from an untraceable number at the headquarters at
Vauxhall Cross.

"We're upset, Harry. Just don't get it. Why are you doing this? We
need to talk." And now this dinner date where, if the man was truly
bent on discrediting his own country's Intelligence Service, he might
well have invited the press along to join them.

There was movement beyond the Chinese screen. Sam half covered his
face. Instinct. Pure self-preservation. But it was only more dinner
guests arriving.

Jackman could well arrive with a snapper, he realised. Some hack who'd
flown out maybe even on the same plane as Sam to get the proof their
story needed. Proof that the British government, through its
intelligence arm, had involved itself in a coup in the small
independent African state of Bodanga a year ago. A coup which had
failed, leaving thousands dead, including the European staff of a
refugee camp whose raped and machine-gunned bodies had been shown on a
billion TV screens across the globe.

And it was Sam who'd paid Jackman to provide the guns for that coup.
Paid him with a briefcase full of British taxpayers' sweat, handed over
twelve months ago. The cash had bought a lot of guns. Hundreds of
them. Hundreds of thousands of bullets.

After the debacle he'd asked himself if it would have felt less dirty
had the coup succeeded. A quick clean kill, a tyrant overthrown,
victims in the dozens, not thousands. No violation of those sweet
girls from Surrey and County Clare. Probably. The politicians would
have crowed, assured of a place in history when the cabinet papers came
out in thirty years. Consciences clear, instead of being burdened by
guilt and now by panic.

Two more elderly white couples entered the bar, greeting one of those
already there. There was air kissing and many gentle embraces.

"My dears, it's been an age .. ." The flat accents of Europeans bred
south of the equator.

No Jackman yet. No cameramen, thank God. Just these people. What
were they? Tobacco farmers? Traders who killed with cancer instead of