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

Macklin said something I couldn't catch, but it sounded like an objection.

'Very well,' Egerton told him. 'What about Perkins?'

Something about 'okay'.

'Perkins, then. Brief him as soon as you can.'

He put the phone down.

They must be sensitive,' I said.

'Yes,' He studied his knuckles, whose skin was calloused with the scars of winter chilblains. 'The entire situation is sensitive.'

I didn't say anything else. He was a dismal man, a case of chronic melancholia, perhaps because his wife had taken an overdose during a seaside holiday, or perhaps because he was last born dismal, with some kind of acid in his soul. And he was ruthless, because his career demanded it: or possibly it was the reverse - he'd been attracted to this kind of work as la outlet for his ruthlessness. But he wasn't totally without feeling, and I knew from experience that he didn't like losing in executive. Even when it was their fault, through clumsiness or lack of judgement, Egerton saw it as his own failure, and was sobered.

Harrison hadn't been terribly good. He'd been short on nerve when it came to the crunch, and some of his security work was unimaginative (he seldom checked for bugs, and would open a parcel without getting it checked by Firearms first, that sort of thing). Without damning the man out of hand, I'd say it had probably been his fault, in Milan. But Egerton felt diminished, I had some thoughts of my own: he wasn't exaggerating when he said this entire situation was sensitive. These days the major intelligence services were as impenetrable as anyone could make them, and we didn't often try to get inside someone else's preserves. If we had to, and if we succeeded, nobody took it too hard, because there's a certain camaraderie among spooks and it keeps a lot of us alive, except of course when there's a mainline operation in full swing and someone gets in the way.

No one would normally despatch a surveillance man. They'd flush him, bring him in, rough him up a little, try to get something out of him, then let him go. They wouldn't kill him, as these people had killed Harrison. So the Kobra group must be operating wildcat, without any kind of intelligence support or directive. They must be precisely what Egerton had called them: terrorists. They're not usually our game.

'So be it,' he said at last, and got out of his chair and looked at a moustache cup and blew the dust off it and put it back on the shelf.

I didn't know whether he was talking about Harrison or my refusal to take on the mission, and I wasn't interested.

'Do we have a man in Milan?' I asked him, He turned a blank look on me.

'I mean,' I said, 'in place.'

'Oh. No.'

'Christ, you mean you've got directors in the field looking after those people?'

It was the only way Signals could have known about Harrison.

'Of course.'

He went on looking at me.

I got up again, feeling restless. I knew he was trying to trap me, get me into this bloody thing, and I wasn't having any. He was trying to sell it to me on its size alone: it had to be something pretty massive for the Bureau to put local directors out there with the executives before they'd even found out the objective. But it was the size of the thing that was turning me off: I've told you, I'm a ferret and I want them to put me down the hole and leave me alone.

'What the hell are you trying to sell me, a world war?'

He tilted his head, regretfully.

'In any case, I appreciate your having considered the mission.'

'Hope it goes off all right'

'Thank you, yes.'