"Kyle, Duncan - Terror's Cradle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kyle Duncan)

The quaver disappeared. Nobody's afraid of the British, I suppose. She said, 'I'm going to Vegas.'

I managed a grin of thanks. 'Perfect!'

Only two miles along the road we came to a building labelled Visitor Center and she stopped. 'There'll be water in there.'

There was. I drank about six pints of it and walked back to the car feeling it switching round inside me. I'd also washed and I felt better.

We talked a bit on the fifty miles or so into Las Vegas. However had I got lost? I told her a little lie about setting off for a walk from Echo Bay. Walk! She was horrified and gave me a long, solicitous lecture on the manifold dangers of walking in the United States. It wasn't she said, like England. She was right there.

She was a nice woman, her ancestors came from Noocastle, and she insisted on driving me right to the Dime Palace, where she warned me again with some severity about walking, and drove away with a wave.

I walked into the foyer, and a large man in a uniform that would have stifled him five yards away from the air conditioning, looked at my dishevelled state as though he was contemplating throwing me back on to the street, 'Four-one-oh-five, please.'

'Here it is, sir.' The smiling girl handed me an envelope along with my room key. I looked at it for a moment then ripped it open with my thumb. A single sheet of paper, folded once, no signature, type-written. It read: 'Take three o'clock United Airlines flight Chicago. Connect direct to London. You will be watched. If you do not go, you will be killed.'

I swallowed. The message was clear enough, the morning's horror recent enough. I still didn't understand why, couldn't see how I could be a danger to anyone, or why it should be necessary to somebody to get me out of the US. But evidently it was, and Susannah Rhodes certainly wasn't worth staying for. Not at the price I'd pay. Alex Scown would be annoyed or worse, but Scown at least wasn't a killer. Not in the short term, anyway.

I said, 'My account please.'

'Cashier's counter is right over there, sir.'

I waited for my bill and paid it, went and had a cup of coffee and a hot pastrami sandwich at the casino snack counter, and then went up to my room. I hesitated before going in but when I finally summoned up the courage it was empty. There weren't any message lights on the phone either. Presumably they thought I'd have got the message now, loud and clear. And so I had.

When I'd showered and put on some clean clothes, I sat on the bed and tried to phone Alsa, but there was an hour and a half's delay on calls to Gothenburg. I then tried to telephone Spinetti but he was out. His girl didn't know when he'd be back. She knew nothing about me, nothing about the arrangements and sure wasn't interested. Nor, by that time, was I. I used my. cable card to send a message to London. There was no point in phoning because I was telling not asking, and not even Scown would change my mind for me. After that I slung my goods in a bag, and winced as I remembered the tape recorder I'd left in the boat. Not that Scown would mind; it wasn't his machine. But my possessions were certainly getting scattered.

I waited out front until a" cab arrived, my suitcase ostentatiously at my feet to proclaim to the world at large and watching eyes in particular that I was in fact departing, then rode out to the airport.

At the United Airlines desk, I inquired whether any seats remained on the three o'clock flight for Chicago.

'I'll see, sir. What name?'

'Sellers.'

'One moment, please.' The clerk looked at his list. 'Sellers is the name?'

'Yes.'

'Already a reservation for you, sir.' He wore that patient look given to idiots by people paid to be polite.

'Thanks.' I handed him my ticket and my credit card and waited while the new ticket was made out. Then I handed over my suitcase, went along to the departure gate waiting room, and sat watching the other intending passengers in a furtive kind of way to see if I could discover which of them was doing the same to me.

I suppose somebody must have been there, but I didn't spot him. I didn't spot him in Chicago, either, which was hardly surprising because O'Hare International Airport's a big place and by that time three restorative Scotches were cutting down my powers of concentration a little. I added a fourth in the soothing coolth of the Four Seasons bar while I waited for the British Airways Chicago-Montreal-London flight to be called. There was still an hour's delay for Gothenburg and I hadn't an hour.

I've taken that flight before. At Montreal it fills up with parcel-laden, misty-eyed grandmothers heading back to Bristol or Bury St Edmunds, but die Chicago-Montreal leg isn't exactly jammed. This time there were six of us scattered thinly around the cabin of the VC10. The captain, as captains will with an almost empty aircraft, gave a performance demonstration, taking it up like an express lift then levelling off to hot-rod through the airways, while the cabin staff kept the passengers amused. There were three stewardesses and a steward between the six of us, so the service was excellent and less starchy than usual. While I sipped my Bell's and water, a pretty blonde girl with shiny, much-brushed hair, chatted me up a bit, went away and came back.

'There's another journalist aboard,' she announced, all helpful.

I responded politely. 'Oh?' He could be one of the drunks from El Vino's and I'd be back in El Vino's soon enough, thank you. It's a bar in Fleet Street. In El Vino's nil veritas. Not much, anyway, and not often.