"MacLean, Alistair - Airforce One is down (John Denis)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

relief escaped from the bishop when the DC-9's wheels rode safely on to the
tarmac. The prelate crossed himself, and started to say something to Dunkels,
who pretended, with an exaggerated pantomime, to be deaf.
Later, Dunkels hefted his alligator-skin case from the baggage-carousel and
strolled past the deferential Swiss douaniers to the automatic exit doors. A
uniformed chauffeur standing by a black Mercedes signalled to him with a gloved
hand. The driver indicated the front passenger seat, but Dunkels pointedly
waited for the rear door to be opened. Just as pointedly, he insulated himself
from the possibility of small-talk on the journey by leaving the limousine's
plate-glass partition closed.
Dunkels did not look through the tinted window at the breath-taking scenery, but
into it at his own reflection. He saw, and admired, a square-jawed, firmly
fleshed face with a slightly kinked nose jutting aggressively under his
deceptively mild brown eyes. The chin was adequately cleft and the forehead
broad and bland. His eyebrows, like his hair, were ash-blond. The hair was kept
short and sculpted by an Italian barber who was an artist with a razor. Dunkels
drew a comb from his pocket and ran it across his scalp. In its wake, the
individual hair follicles snapped smartly back into place like Prussian
guardsmen.
A fleeting shadow intruded on his self-absorption. Dunkels frowned, and peered
more closely. Then he grinned. It was an aeroplane. A Boeing 707. The undulating
silhouette was not unlike the shape Smith had traced on his hand in the Fresnes
Prison.
The dignified italic script on the sign said "Edelweiss Clinic" in English, and
Dunkels mentally switched to English for the period he was to stay there; a
short time, he hoped. Like Smith, Dunkels was an accomplished linguist - though
without Smith's encyclopaedic command of esoteric tongues. Dunkels had known
Smith to range languidly through the alphabet from Albanian to Xhosa purely for
mental stimulus.
Gravel crackled beneath the wheels of the Mercedes when it left the main road
and turned into the clinic's long drive. Edelweiss, Dunkels assumed, would be an
unwelcome intruder into the probably regimented sterility of the clinic, which
at last came into view through the front window. It was a newish, chalet-style
complex nestling in a fold of the mountain, and built out from it to overlook
the vertiginous drop to a rock-strewn valley. Patients of Doctor Richard Stein
who were unable to afford his treatment, or failed to benefit from it, could
solve their problems simply by walking off his expensive terracing, Dunkels
thought. He spread his long, spare body over the rear seat of the Mercedes and
waited for the chauffeur to release him. A white-coated figure came out through
the swing-doors and descended the steps towards him.
Doctor Richard Stein looked old for his years. He was an acknowledged
front-runner in the treatment of rheumatoid-arthritic complaints among the
elderly and rich, as well as a gifted psychiatrist. He was also (but less
acknowledged) probably the most skilful plastic surgeon in Switzerland. It was a
fortunate aptitude to possess in a land where a secret access of fortune often
demanded a consequential change in appearance.
Richard Stein oiled rusting joints, cleared cobwebbed minds, and restructured
dangerous faces with the same impartial expertise. He was small, dark and
frail-seeming, with a prominent aquiline nose. His shoulders were bent, and
Dunkels, who towered over him, saw the permanently crooked upper half of his