"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 16 - Quiller Solitaire 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

Quiller, shadow executive for London's ultra-secret bureau, is pitched into his new mission with a motive most urgent - he owes a man a death. Through contact with an ethereal Englishwoman in the shadows of a Berlin nightclub, Quiller is drawn deep into the vortex of Nemesis, the most feared terrorist faction in Europe.

Feeling his way alone across the trembling web of the opposition network, Quiller infiltrates the nerve-centre of Nemesis but still can find no means of defeating 'Midnight One', an operation designed to establish one man as the arch-terrorist of all time.

Adam Hall

Quiller Solitaire (1992)

1 HIT

I dropped the bundle onto the desk and pulled the string and opened up the crumpled newspaper and Tilney stood looking down at the stuff I'd brought in, the two blackened number plates, wrist watch, bunch of keys, ring, metal cigarette-lighter, the upper jawbone, the lower one, while the reek of burnt flesh began filling the little room, sickening me, sickening him too, I would imagine, Tilney, looking down at the stuff and then bringing his head up.

'That's all?'

That's all.'

'What does he look like?'

'Cinder.'

It was cold in here, or it felt like it. I shrugged a bit deeper into my coat.

'Nothing recognisable?' Tilney asked.

I gave him a dead stare. The object of the exercise,' I said, 'was to remove all traces of his identity. I did that.'

I suppose I would have put it differently if the rage hadn't been in me, burning in me like that bloody car, burning half the night out there among the trees.

In a moment: 'Have you had any sleep?' He'd caught my tone, the far faint echo of the rage. Others wouldn't have noticed.

'No. I had to watch over things.' A vigil over the dead, you could call it, but let's not be too dramatic.

'You could have phoned for someone.'

'I didn't want anyone out there.' It would have meant headlights arriving and everything, attracting attention. Things had been bad enough with the fire, though nobody had come running: last night was the Fifth of November, with bonfires all over the countryside. Trust McCane to get himself blown into Christendom on Guy Fawkes Night.

Tilney wrapped the things up in the newspaper again and jotted a note on a pad and said, 'Let's go along to my room, shall we? We need to debrief, then you'd better get some sleep.'

The clock on the wall said 6:21. There was still dark in the windows.

In the corridor I asked Tilney, 'Who was running him?

'Shatner. But there's no actual mission on the board.'

'Is he in yet?'

'Yes.' Tilney was giving me quick sidelong glances, still catching things in my tone. I couldn't do anything about that. They got him on the phone when your signal came in, and he -'

'I want to see him.'