"Deighton, Len - Harry Palmer 06 - Catch A Falling Spy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deighton Len)

'Yes, about every five minutes,' I agreed,. Major Mickey Mann, U.S. Army Signal Corps, Retired, a C.I.A. expert on Russian electronics and temporarily my boss, had showed no sign of discomfort during the heat of day in spite of his tightly knotted tie and long trousers. He watched me carefully, as he always did when offering criticism of my fellow countrymen. "That particular Limey bastard,' I said quietly, 'is sixty-one years old, has a metal plate in his skull and a leg filled with German shrapnel.'

'Stash the gypsy violin, feller - you want to make me weep?'

'You treat old Dempsey as if he's simple-minded. I'm just reminding you that he did four years with the Long Range Desert Group. He's lived in Algeria for the best part of thirty years, he speaks Arabic with all the local dialects and if it comes to real trouble in the desert we'll need him to use that sextant.'

Mann sat down at the table and began toying with the Swiss army penknife that he'd bought in the souvenir shop at Geneva airport. 'If the wind starts up again tonight. . .' he balanced the knife on its end, 'sand will make that road south impassable. And I don't need your pal Percy to tell me that.'

'Even in the Landrover?'

'Did you see that three-tonner down to the axles?' He let go of the knife and it stayed perfectly balanced. 'Sand that bogs down a three-ton six by six will bury a Land-rover.'

'They were gunning the motor,' I said. 'You bury yourself that way.'

'You've been reading the camping-in-the-desert section of the boy scout handbook,' said Mann. Again he banged the folding knife down on to the table, and again it balanced on its end. 'And in any case,' he added, 'how do we know the Russkie will be able to steal a four-wheel drive? He might be trying to get here in a Moskvich sedan for all we know.'

'Is he stupid?'

'Professor Bekuy's intellect is not universally admired,' said Mann. 'During the time he was with the Russian scientific mission at the U.N. he wrote two papers about little men in flying saucers, and earned his reputation as a crank.'

'Defecting cranks don't get the department's O.K.,' I said.

'Looking for messages from little men hi flying saucers probably motivated his work on masers,' said Mann. 'And Bekuv is one of the world's experts on masers.'

'I'm not even sure I know what a maser is,' I said.

'You read the Technical Brief.'

'Twice,' I said. 'But not so as to understand it.'

'Maser,' said Mann. 'It's an acronym - "m" for microwave, "a" for amplication, "s" for stimulated, "e" for emission, "r" for radiation.'

'Do you mind if I take notes?'

'Listen, dummy. It converts electromagnetic radiation -from a whole range of different frequencies - to a highly amplified, coherent microwave radiation.'

'Is it anything to do with a laser?'

'Well, a maser is a laser but a laser is not necessarily a maser.'

'Is it anything to do with that guy looking in a mirror who says "Brothers and sisters have I none"?'

'Now you're beginning to get the idea,' said Mann.

'Well, somebody must be very interested in masers,' I said, 'or they wouldn't have sent us two down here to provide Bekuv with a red-carpet reception.'

'Or interested in flying saucers,' said Mann.

'If this Russian is such an idiot, what makes anyone believe that he's capable of escaping from that Russian compound, stealing a roadworthy vehicle and getting all the way up here to meet us?'