"Archer, Geoffrey - The Burma Legacy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Archer Geoffrey)

"Not for a zizz, then?"
His brain was alert enough to realise that although joking with him she
wasn't saying no.
"Historic moment," he mumbled, hopes rising along with his relevant
body part. "Be able to tell your gran'children how you cebre . . . celebrated
the great 2K. Did it with a bang . . ." He grinned at the silliness of his joke.
"Unique opportunity. Always regret it if we don't . . ."
He began trying to get her tee-shirt off, but his hands seemed to have
lost their dexterity. She stopped him, her face twisting into a sloppy smile.
"I don't even know how old you are," she said, as if it mattered.
"Gonna be forty this year," he told her sombrely.
"Guessed as much." She wobbled to her feet, keeping her eyes playfully
on his, then groped her way to the door. "Don" go away." She stepped out
into the corridor.
In his hormone-pickled mind he imagined she was returning to her own
room for condoms, but she didn't return. After a few minutes he looked
into the passageway. Her room was opposite and the door was closed. A
Do Not Disturb tag hung from the handle.
The next morning when he eventually came round from a head-rumbling
sleep, he discovered she'd checked out at dawn and taken a cab to the
airport.
Not feeling up to a phone conversation with Julie, he sent her an email
apologising for failing to ring her the night before. Then in the evening he
flew back to Singapore. On the plane he reread the backgrounder on
Jimmy Squires. It wasn't enough. Service record stuff. He wanted more.
The inside track on the man. Everything, down to the size of his shoes. He
knew a man in London who might help, an SAS officer currently running a
desk in the MoD. He resolved to contact him.
His controller's cavalier attitude to the Squires case had annoyed him.
The ex-special forces man was their concern. UK government had given
the sergeant precious skills and now he was misusing them.
When he returned to his flat overlooking Singapore's Botanical Gardens,
Packer plugged in his laptop and composed an email to Duncan Waddell,
setting out reasons why he should stay on the case.
Then he remembered a message he'd left in his outbox waiting to be
sent. A resignation letter he'd penned a couple of days ago in response to
Julie's threat to pull the plug on him.
Things had changed. He opened the file and deleted it.

4
Singapore Airlines flight SQ 322 to London
The night of Wednesday 5 to Thursday 6 January 2000
HE HATED LONG flights, particularly at night. Seated on the aisle, he'd
decided to ignore the movies and try to sleep, but with little success.
He'd twisted his body into endless new positions, but each time he nodded
off one of the two beer-swilling Scots sitting to his right would scramble
over his legs to take a leak.
He was being summoned back to London, not because they'd responded
positively to his email on Jimmy Squires, but to be briefed on a totally new
operation. He'd protested strongly, but had been told once again that the