"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 15 - Quiller Bamboo 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

Summoned late at night to the Bureau, Quiller attends a secret conference with the Foreign Secretary and a surprise defector - the Chinese ambassador to Britain. Minutes later the ambassador is dead. So begins Bamboo, a mission that takes Quiller from London to Calcutta to Hong Kong and finally to the roof of the world, to Tibet, where he must take on the Chinese secret police and the People's Army in an effort to save the notorious dissident Dr Xingyu.

For the first time in his career, Quiller feels himself personally engaged in a mission, for the aim of Bamboo is to avenge the tragic bloodshed of Tiananmen Square and help the people of China to achieve the freedom and democracy they crave.




Adam Hall


Quiller Bamboo




1 Hyde.

It was 1:59 a.m., when the telephone woke me and I rolled over and answered it and Tilson said they wanted me there right away and I told him no, it was too soon.

The line went silent and then Tilson came back on again - I suppose he'd turned away to talk to someone.

'Fully urgent,' he said.

The raw chill of a November fog came drifting through the open window, and I could hear a taxi throttling up along Knightsbridge in the distance.

'I've only been back ten days,' I said.

Tilson's not often starchy but he said, 'I think you know what fully urgent means,' and rang off, so I got up and spent five minutes in the bathroom and went down to the car with my teeth clean but the stubble still there and brought the Aston up to a steady fifty along Piccadilly and went through the red when there was nothing coming and picked up a panda near the Ritz: he closed in and got his lights flashing but I didn't take any notice and he dropped back as he got the call from the dispatcher - Tilson had covered me as I knew he would, because 'fully urgent' means that everyone's got to move.

The panda took up escort station behind me as far as Whitehall and then peeled off when I got to the building and saw Holmes manning the door.

'Mr Hyde's office,' he said and got me into the lift.

'What's it about?'

'Not absolutely sure. He wants you at the Foreign Office.'

'So what am I doing here?'

'Briefing, clearance.'

'I've only just got back. I told Tilson.'

'Now you can tell Mr Hyde.'

We got out of the lift and went along the corridor with Holmes looking quiet and nervy, so I didn't ask him anything else. There were a lot of phones ringing behind the closed doors and Diane came out of Signals and darted into Codes and Cyphers with some papers in her hand, dropping a sheet and picking it up and not even seeing us as she went in there.

Someone else came out of the signals room and I heard a lot of beeping going on, more than usual at this time of night.