"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 06 - The Mandarin Cypher 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

It's not only dogs that have a sense of smell, the ability to sense alien presence...

Then I stopped thinking about the room because when I squeezed the toothpaste on to the brush an air bubble popped and I saw the stuff was too runny and I went suddenly cold and thought I don't mind them issuing cyanide capsules when they brief me in London but I don't like people putting the bloody stuff in my toothpaste...



Adam Hall

The Mandarin Cypher (1975)

Quiller in Hong Kong







Chapter One

MANDARIN


It was three in the morning when she phoned me and I went straight round there through the pelting rain and found North slumped in a chair looking like death.

'What happened?'

He didn't answer. I don't think he heard.

Connie said: 'Thank God you're here,' and got some brandy and put it into tumblers, shivering, only a thin dressing-gown round her shoulders, hair all over the place and her big eyes frightened. The rain hit the window-sills in sharp taps, like someone typing.

'It's okay now,' I told North, but he sat staring up at me with his face appalled, as if I'd told him Big Ben had just fallen over; but his pupils looked normal, he didn't look doped and he certainly wasn't drunk. Connie brought one of the tumblers for me, chipped round the rim, and I held it for him - 'Come on, slosh this lot down, you're ten drinks short.' But he wouldn't take it, didn't seem to catch on to anything 1 was saying.

I didn't know him very well: he was one of the new ones, said to be brilliant, specialized in the documentation snatch, knew his Kremlin, had a lot of Slav languages. The one obvious thing about him at the moment was that he was recently back from a mission.

'When did he get here?'

'About an hour ago.'

He was still fully dressed, his wet mack thrown over a chair Bear the door. People came to this place to have a drink and go to bed with Connie and he hadn't done either. He just sat there looking totally blank, his tie pulled loose and blood on his knuckles.

'What happened?'I asked her again.

'Nothing, really.'

'Well how did he get like this? Was anyone else here?'

'No. He was hitting things,' she said irrelevantly, 'punching the wall and -'