"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 12 - Quiller's Run 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

Loman flinched, though I hadn't shouted or anything.

He recovered fast, annoyed with his show of nerves. 'Oh, come now. You know perfectly well that every shadow executive has to be considered expendable, in justifiable circumstances. After all, you signed the clearance forms as usual before the mission.'

His face made me sick and I turned away and looked at a picture on the wall instead, a faded photograph behind cracked glass, the Queen at the Trooping of the Colour, sidesaddle, upright, plumed and in full scarlet. There was a dead moth lying on the top edge of the frame. When I was ready I turned back and looked at Loman again with a dead stare.

'Yes. I signed the forms.'

I said it quietly but he knew my ability to keep control, to contain even rage if I had to, with none of it reaching the eyes. It's what they expect of us, isn't it, the shadow executives? Total control. We're required to behave like deadly reptiles out there in the field and then turn up here at the Bureau and comport ourselves like civilised people. And we do.

'I signed the forms. I also defused the bomb. And if I'd known you'd had it planted for me I would have brought it all the way home at the end of the mission and blown this whole fucking building apart.'

Loman turned and took a pace or two with his bright polished shoes, his black onyx cufflinks glinting under the light, his short arms held behind him. 'The necessity,' he said thinly, 'was agreed upon, and at the highest level, as you may well imagine. The fate of nations was at stake. We -'

'It's always at stake. That's the type of operation you always give me.'

He shrugged. 'There was the risk of your breaking under interrogation if you were caught.'

'I had a capsule.'

'We can never be absolutely sure, of course -' he shrugged again.

'That we'll use it?'

'Quite so.'

'Do you know how many missions I've completed?'

'I acknowledge your experience, but -'

'You've directed me in the field yourself.'

'That's correct.'

I took a step towards him. 'And did you find me to be the type of spineless wimp who wouldn't even suck on a peck of cyanide to protect the mission? Did you?'

The cracked glass of the picture on the wall vibrated and the little bastard flinched again, and I felt sudden compassion for him, because he was locked into a system that sometimes demanded that Control deliberately condemned a first-class shadow executive to death, somewhere out there where the people in London couldn't see him, where they couldn't in fact make absolutely certain that his death was essential, with no choice but to order it done and cut off a career and leave a corpse somewhere in hostile territory where it'd be found and treated as trash and tossed onto a rubbish dump, a feast for rats.

But there was one thing worse, perhaps, even worse for the people in London, and that was to have the intended dead come back alive, and curse them to their face.

'We have to do,' Loman said in a moment, 'what we have to do.'

I didn't answer that.

Calthrop spoke, gently. 'On what terms, Quiller, would you perhaps consider staying on?'

'None.'

Loman said, 'We would offer you rather good ones, Quiller. Your sole discretion, for instance, as to back-ups, shields, signals, liaison, contacts and so on.'