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

Baker glanced at me again. 'I don't know.'

Didn't want to know. All he wanted to do was get me to the freight yard and drop me off and go home and try and sleep. They're not all like this, the contacts; most of them are seasoned and they've learned to get used to things blowing up, but one or two hang on to a shred of sensitivity and this man was one of them, I could feel the vibrations.

'How long have you been out here?' I asked him.

'In Bucharest?'

'Yes.'

'Year, bit more.'

'Picking up the language?'

With a nervous laugh, 'Trying. It's a bitch.'

There was some black ice and we spun full circle across a waste of tarmac, perhaps a car park, and soon after that we picked up the coloured lights of signals on the skyline and Baker touched the wheel and hit gravel and sped up and we started bumping across some half -- buried railway sleepers, and I told him to slow down and cut his lights and the engine and take me as far as the line of trucks below the big black water tank that stood silhouetted against the sky.

I got out and told him to go home, then I stood there for ten minutes in the shadow of the end truck and waited for my eyes to adjust from the glare of the headlights to the half -- darkness here. I didn't know if the local supports had got the area protected, or whether they too lacked experience. Bucharest isn't a major field and you can't expect first class people wherever you go.

There was a film of cloud across the city, lit by the glow of the streets, but only a few lights in the freight yard, high up on swan -- neck poles. Smell of coal, steel, soot, sacking, some kind of produce, potatoes or grain. Very little sound, but I was picking up low voices over towards the main passenger station. The air was still, cold against the face. The outline of the trucks was sharper now and I began moving, keeping my feet on hard surfaces, tarmac, sleepers, rails, going slowly, feeling my way in.

A plane was sloping down to the airport, its strobes winking against the ochre smudge of the horizon, the high thin scream of the jets fading across the sky. There was some kind of bell ringing, up there towards the main station; perhaps there was a train due in. I went on moving.

There was something I didn't know. London had called me in either because I was the nearest shadow executive to this area or because this was something that needed a lot of experience to handle. Neither idea seemed to work: there must be shadows closer to Bucharest than Rome, and the Bureau couldn't have had a mission running in a minor East European state that would need a high -- echelon executive to handle the mess when it crashed. I would have to ask London what the score was, when I got into signals with them.

The air was colder still here, away from the line of trucks; something of a night breeze was getting up.

'It's all right,' I said softly.

I was behind him and my left hand was across his mouth: I didn't want any noise.

He struggled quite hard until I put a little more pressure on the throat; then he slackened, and I took it off again. 'Don't worry,' I said. 'I know Mr Turner.' I released most of the hold so that he could half -- turn and look into my face. I didn't offer him the parole I'd exchanged with Baker at the airport: this man could be anyone, not one of ours. I took the last degree of pressure off his throat and he asked me who I was, good English, recognizable red -- brick U accent. I didn't tell him, but I asked him for the parole and got it, the code -- name for the mission, Longshot.

'When you're protecting an area,' I said, 'try and find some really deep shadow, and try to stand where there are no hard surfaces around you -- look for gravel, or whatever loose surface there is. If you'd done that, I wouldn't have seen you so easily, and you'd have heard me coming.'

'Jesus,' he said. He'd already been upset by the Hornby thing.

'Amen.' It was routine, especially in minor fields where people hadn't been through full training. We're expected to help them along, and I'd shocked him first to drive the lesson home, because one day it could save his life. 'Where is everybody?' I asked him.

'Over there.' His breath clouded in the faint light.

'Was it a rendezvous?'

'Yes.'

'Hornby and who?'

'A Russian.'