"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 17 - Quiller Meridian 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

Whistles had begun shrilling faintly from the front end of the train, and others sounded, getting nearer. Women with coats over their white aprons were still heaving crates and containers into the dining galleys, and gusts of steam came clouding from some of the windows.

'They've got the samovars up to scratch,' Jane said. 'It'd be a good idea if you went aboard now. You've got everything and you won't be lonely -- six hundred people, this one's full.' she stood looking up at me, her black fur gloves held together in front of her like a muff, her small face white and pinched in the cold.

'First class,' I said.

'What?'

'You did a first class job.'

'Oh. Thank you.' she looked down, then up again, her eyes going dark. 'Good luck and everything.'

She turned and walked as far as the end of the platform and didn't look back. I picked up my bags and went along to Car No. 7.

Six hundred people, and one of them Zymyanin.

He could have been told to stay out of contact with London and draw me into a trap.

That is also possible.

The provodnik clipped my ticket and I slung my bags aboard and climbed into the train.



4 NIGHT -- MUSIC


'Slavsky, Boris.'

He put out a pale bony hand.

'Shokin, Viktor,' I said.

He was tall, hungry -- looking, his dry hair thinning, the dark -- framed glasses too big for his face, his body curving in an academic stoop. 'Have you done this trip before?'

'No.'

He reached up to the shelf over the doorway and pulled down a paper bundle and slit it open and dumped it into my arms, bed linen, heavily woven, the real thing, none of your fancy nylon. He got his own bundle down and opened it and shook out the sheets.' I do this trip three times a year,' he said, and looked towards the open door of the compartment, lowering his voice. 'So let me tell you something. We have to be nice to our provodnik. A little tip here, a little tip there, you understand?' He had the tone of a lecturer, was waiting for me to say I understood. I said I did. 'I know most of them,' he went on, nodding his domed head, 'but not this one. She must be new. You've seen her, of course. Bit of a battle -- axe, wouldn't you say?'

She was the woman, I supposed, who'd checked my ticket when I'd come aboard -- large, heavy -- boned, lavishly lipsticked and with hair the colour of a copper samovar, the shoulders of her blue uniform unnecessarily padded, the brass winged -- wheel emblem glinting on her forage cap, her small bright eyes taking me in as I'd squeezed past her with my bags.

'she didn't look easy to tame,' I told Slavsky.

'Ha! Well put. But it has to be done. It has to be done.' He started making up his bunk, thumping the massive pillow.

Our berths were on each side of the narrow gangway, with a folding table under the window and ajar with some rather pretty blue -- flowered weeds in it, the most one could ask for, probably, in the depths of a Russian winter. There was more than enough space for our bags -- we could have brought a truck -- load -- and the compartment in general looked habitable, even for eight days at a stretch. The only critical problem was the lack of security: once anyone saw you going into the compartment or coming out of it they had your address, and there was no back door.

'Don't be upset,' Slavsky said as he peeled off his jacket, 'about the heat in here. The windows are sealed to keep the dirt out, and nothing can be done about it.'

People were moving along the corridor, heaving bags and packages, among them an English couple with their voices raised on the understanding that since the natives couldn't speak their language they couldn't be heard.