"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 01 - The 9th Directive 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

He looked perplexed. 'I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "professionals." '

'I mean Vincent, Sorbi, Kuo--'

'Ah, yes

'Quicky the Greek, Hideo, the Mafia boy, what's his name?'

'Zotta.'

'That's it - Zotta.'

I relaxed again. He hadn't denied knowing Zotta. The Mafia channelled most of their stuff from Bangkok through Naples to Recife now that the Buenos Aires route was blocked following the death of Primero, and it was Zotta who did the bump. Pangsapa would know about that. It was his business.

'Zotta is in Recife,' he said. 'You can forget him.' He stood up suddenly and without effort, without even taking his hands from the folds of his robe.

'Vincent?'

'He's in prison in Athens. They're getting him out, of course, but that will take longer than three weeks because his people are disorganized.'

'Sorbi?'

His hands appeared, pale against the black robe. Who ever knows where Sorbi is?'

'Kuo? Hideo? The Greek?'

'When I have had a little time,' he said, 'I will get in touch with you. I know that the information would be valuable to you.'

'It depends.' London is precise on this. When you go shopping you have to do a bargain when you can.

'We can arrange it later.' He shrugged. 'Where can I find you?'

Takchong Hotel.'

As we went toward the door, I noticed the water in the tank was clear again, changed by the filter-flow system. The fish swam alone, a six-inch compact rainbow-colored killer. A professional.

In two days I was ready to tell Loman the mission was refused. It was a security job and that wasn't in my field. The place was slopping over with security people anyway and any one of them could handle this thing better than I could: they knew the formula and they were trained to work with it.

I had gone to see Pangsapa because I might need him one day if a real mission ever brought me back to Bangkok. There'd been no point in not sounding him on the travel patterns of the professionals: I always like to know where people are. But if his sources were as good as Loman believed, he would have contacted me by now even if only to report on their whereabouts. He would know that London would cough up a little even for negative information. But he obviously couldn't get any.

It was no go. The thing had no shape. I was drifting about the city without even a decent cover or a cover story, and every time I checked for tags there weren't any because no one wanted to know where I went or what I was doing.

I knew why Loman had called me in. It was typical of him. He hadn't given any real answer when I'd asked him who roped the Bureau in. He'd done it himself: sold this abortive scheme to Parkis and the others and chosen me for the field. He must have talked well. His whole project was based on the spurious premise of a threat. Anyone planning an assassination would never put out a threat before the attempt; all it would do would be to alert the security forces, and that was precisely what it had done. Security was geared to combat any action by a psychopath, reasonably enough: there were always psychopaths in the crowd whenever a VIP did the rounds. The Pope's visit to New York in 1965 put eighteen thousand city police on special duty, with bomb squads combing the route and riflemen manning the rooftops simply because of a few letters from anonymous religious eccentrics.

This was routine work. The Bureau never took that kind of thing on: it was set up to promote specific operations. Why the hell had they listened to Loman?

I tried contacting him through Soi Suek 3 but he hadn't shown up since the day I flew in so I went to the Embassy and asked for Room 6. He had said it was all right for me to do that.

The young man looked nervous.