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

the water like thumbs, and longer, natter islands of finely ground coral
where night fishermen had bamboo huts under the coconut palms for
sleeping in during the day.
"Tell me," Sam probed, "the name Midge - is that on your birth
certificate?"
"No way. And I never let on what is."
"So how come you're called that?"
"Because when I was little, I was small for my age. And nasty with it.
Anybody got in my way, I bit them."
"Charming . . . " He pursed his lips. "Grown out of the habit I hope."
"Don't bank on it."
She leaned over the chart. There was a warm, oily smell to her, which
Packer found irritatingly arousing.
"Where are we?"
He touched a finger to the paper.
"This the fastest we can go?"
"Yep."
"How fast's Jimmy's boat?"
"No idea."
They'd picked up the chartered craft from the same marina Squires had
motored from the day before. Midge had confessed that although she spent
a lot of time in water back home, being on top of it was alien to her. Sam
had given her some basic instruction in crewing.
She leaned back in the white leather seat beside him, placing her feet on
the rail. Nice feet, Sam noticed. Slender and straight-toed.
"Your boss wasn't lying when he said you liked boats," she commented.
"I've been watching you."
"Wanting to be sure you were in safe hands?" He glanced sideways at her
and raised an eyebrow.
"Something like that."
"Sailing's my thing, not power."
"You own a yacht?"
"Used to have a fifty per cent share. But I had to sell it. Work. You
know . . ."
"Never leaves you time for the things you want to do. Would you do
more of it, if you could? Big time cruising, that sort of thing."
"Like a shot."
"What has to happen to make it more than a dream?"
"Enough money, enough time and the right woman to crew for me."
"Julie . . .?"
Sam shrugged, not wanting to get into that again. "Tell me about Jimmy
Squires. Everything you haven't already told me."
She looked away, staring at the horizon. "Oh, he's straight out of a
casebook. A boy who never knew his father. Brought up in an orphanage,
then by foster parents. A right tearaway when he was a teenager. The file
said he created a one-man juvenile crime wave in his home town."
"Where was that?" The background file Packer's own employer had
provided had been woefully sparse.
"Somewhere called Ripley? Yorkshire, I think. He did car theft,
vandalism. The usual. Then some kindly probation officer steered him into