"Brian Lumley - Psychomech 02 - Psychosphere" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

Chapter
i
TWO FAIRS OF EYES WATCHED RlCHARD GARRISON and Vicki Maler leave their holiday
residence and disappear into the maze of steep narrow streets leading down
into the heart of the Greek island village; two pairs, neither one aware of
the other. One pair belonged to a thief, the other to an assassin.
The latter, Joe Black by name, was seated at a table on the raised patio of
the taverna where the pair he watched normally breakfastedтАФa taverna they were
obliged to pass on any excursion away from their accommodationтАФwhose open-air
eating area presented Black with a distant but unobstructed view of the door
to their courtyard, seen above rising tiers of flat white rooftops. The
village, dropping down into a valley or bay, seemed to have been built on much
the same lines as an auditorium or amphithea-
1
Brian Lumley
tre; for which kindness Black gave the ancient architects a generous ten. It
made his task as observer that much easier.
Black wore Lederhosen and braces, a wide-brimmed straw hat and an open-neck
shirt loud with red and yellow flowers. He was not GermanтАФdespite his dress,
his fat face and cigarтАФ but Cockney: the hired hand of a middling Mafia boss,
Carlo Vicenti, who once owned a quarter-share of one of London's less
reputable and far more profitable casinos. Richard Garrison now owned that
quarter-share, a fact which irked Vicenti more than a trifle. Hence Joe
Black's presence here in Lindos, Rhodes, the Aegean.
Black was not alone on Rhodes: a second hitman, his brother Bert ("Bomber Bert
Black," to his dubious circle of friends), waited in Rhodes town itself. Bert
was the "hard" part of the team on this occasion. That is to say, his was the
hand which would directly terminate Garrison's life. Brother Joe's role was
simply to tell him when to do it.
Just a minute or so after 11:00, the subjects of Black's covert surveillance
emerged from an alley into the narrow "main" street, crossing it to climb
wooden stairs to the breakfast patio. He waited for them to seat themselves
close by, waited again until they engaged the waiter's attention and started
to give him their orders, then folded his shielding newspaper and left.
He glanced only once at the pair as he went, his eyes lingering momentarily on
the black-as-night lenses and frames which Garrison wore. A blind man, this
Garrison, allegedly. Black
PSYCHOSPHERE
snorted as he descended the stairs to the street and made his way towards the
open village square and coach-and-taxi booking office. "Huh!" The damnedest
blind man he had ever seen! And his mind went back to the first time he ever
came into contact with Garrison . . .
That had been at the Ace of Clubs, where on occasion Black had used to do
bouncer (or "floor attendant" as the dealers and their minders preferred it).
The "blind" man had come in one night with his woman, also blind, the first
time they had ever visited the place. The last, too, if Black's memory served
him correctly. As patrons, anyway. He snorted again: "Huh!" Well, and hadn't
once been enough?
That had been, oh, six or seven months ago, but Black remembered it like
yesterday . . .