"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 07 - The Kobra Manifesto 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

But this time I didn't think he could do it because there was nothing about it I liked, nothing at all.

'Can't you put me on call?'

'I could,' he said. 'But I'm not going to.'

Fair enough. It could be for a week or two and I'd have to report in every day and hang around and hope the mission was going to break at any hour and within twenty-one days I'd be a nervous wreck and he knew it.

'Zarkovic,' I said. 'Didn't he have any contact in Zagbreb?'

'None that we know about.'

'What about "Cobra" then?'

He looked into the middle distance. 'We've got some people working on that. The only thing we know about it at the moment is that it's spelt with a "K".'

'Big deal.' But I watched him because if he knew that much then he must know more. 'What about this man in Tokyo?'

'We are working on him, too.' He leaned across the desk suddenly, looking up at me. 'We have four people out there, you see, all working very hard. Tonight we are sending a fifth, dropping him into the countryside near Beirut. You must admit, at least, that the opening phase is simple enough? There are five men apparently converging upon a given focal point, and we already have four of them under remote surveillance, and by tomorrow the fifth will be located. With any ruck, our five targets will converge very soon, and we shall be able to send in a penetration agent with the access and objective known and integrated. I don't see why you are so -' he moved a long thin hand despairingly - 'uninterested.'

I went and sat down again.

The situation he'd given me wasn't uninteresting as such: one of our people had picked up an isolated bit of info in Alexandria quite by chance and checked it with Shin Bet, the Israeli Intelligence Service, and drawn blank. Then he'd checked it with our top contact inside Sovinformburo and got an instant lead. Then there were a couple more blanks: the SDECE in Paris knew nothing, nor did KYP, Athens; but two separate sources in Berlin began putting odd bits of raw intelligence through the monitors and finally Egerton was told to send a man out there to try analysing it It took him six days.

The picture was now reasonably clear. Five international terrorists had started making their way to a predetermined rendezvous from Taipei, Beirut, Cairo, Naples and Tangier, and they were taking a lot of trouble to cover their tracks, doubling back and feinting and leaping gaps. Egerton had now put four men into the field and was sending a fifth, and any number of them-from one to five-would show up at the rendezvous and keep very strict tabs.

'My conjecture,' Egerton had told me, 'is that once the group has come together, it will then move directly to whatever may be the objective.' He'd given one of his quiet sighs. 'I had very much hoped you would want to join them there.'

I saw the point but didn't like it. I want to know what the objective is before I start because I'm a fast-burn operator and I can keep up a lot of heat for a short period but then I'm done. You can't expect it both ways: some people are sprinters and some are long-distance; and I'm a sprinter. Egerton knew that, and he was trying to push me into a crosscountry marathon and I wasn't having any, 'It's not on,' I told him.

He stood up rather wearily and watched the rain trickling down the window above him. It wasn't shifting any of the grime and it occurred to me that if the thing ever got cleaned he wouldn't have to use his glasses any more. He didn't say anything for two minutes but I didn't fidget because that was what he was waiting for.

He turned round and sat down again, piling himself behind the desk like a heap of dead sticks.

'What you might care to consider,' he said in hushed parson's tones, 'is being placed on a five- or six-day call, and-'

A phone buzzed and it was the one on the end and he picked it up without even finishing. It was the yellow one, direct from Signals.

'Yes?'

He listened while I shifted my haunches around on the seat of the Louis Quinze chair: there's a spring that catches you, and one fine day I hope he'll have the bloody thing re-stuffed.

'I see.' He sagged a little, gazing without any expression at all at the dented bugle hanging from the shelf of Coronation mugs. 'Yes, very well.' He put the phone down and picked up the one nearest him.

I heard Macklin's voice come on. Macklin is in Briefing, crack at his job. Egerton said in a still voice: 'Harrison won't be returning. Naples, yes - he got as far as Milan.'

A chill came into the room and I looked away from him. He'd told me that Harrison was one of the four people he'd put into the field on the Kobra thing. Now there were three, Harrison had got too close.

'I want you to send Moresby.'