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

'As you say,' Stein acknowledged, among other things
Dunkels flipped through the remaining pages of the Jagger file, and granted in
amusement. Stein regarded him questioningly. Dunkels snapped the file shut and
remarked, 'Not exactly a model citizen, our Cody, is he?'
Stein replied, 'You didn't tell me you wanted a circuit preacher.' Dunkels
grinned. 'It makes no difference what he is,' he conceded, 'as long as he is the
man he claims to be. If he checks out, he'll do.'
'He will.'
'He'll have to,' Dunkels said, leaving the implicit warning unstated.
Stein unlaced his fingers and spread them wide in apparent consternation. 'I've
never let Smith down before, have I?' he demanded.
'Mister Smith,' Dunkels corrected icily.
'Mister Smith, I'm sorry,' Stein apologised. 'But all the same, I've always
delivered. Even when it was Mister Smith's own face. I made him Javanese, if you
recall. And Swedish and Peruvian. No complaints? No.' Stein's fingertips
agitated like the hands of a blue-rinse matron drying a full house of painted
nails.
'I gave him his present face,' he protested,'the aristocratic look, that's what
he wanted - top-drawer English. And that's what he got. He could pass for a Duke
at Buckingham Palace.'
'He did,' Dunkels interposed drily.
'There you are, then,' Stein exclaimed,'though of course Mister Smith's face is
marvellously - eh - malleable. And unmemorable, too. He tells me he's quite
forgotten what he originally looked like.'
That, Dunkels admitted, rising from the hide chair, was true. 'OK, Stein,' he
said brusquely, 'I'll put Jagger through the mincer, and if he comes out kosher,
he's it.' Dunkels prided himself on his idiomatic English.
They lunched expansively in Stein's penthouse which afforded an even more
staggering panorama of Switzerland's greatest natural asset. When they had
finished eating, Stein inquired tentatively whether Dunkels really thought they
could get away with the impersonation.
'What do you think?' Dunkels replied. 'You're doing the important part.'
Stein explained that the assumption of the subject's physical identity was not
difficult. He had made people into other people before. 'Naturally,' he went on,
'I'll be able to offer a more qualified opinion on Jagger's chances when you
tell me a little more about our subject. At present, all you've given me is his
face in six different poses, for which I'm grateful, plus the information that
he's connected with the American forces, though which branch I don't know.'
Dunkels cracked his knuckles and drew a baleful glance from Stein. 'His name is
Joe McCafferty,' Dunkels said slowly, as if grudging every word. 'He's on
secondment from the United Nations Anti-Crime Organisation - UNACO to the elite
Secret Service Corps forming the American President's bodyguard. Currently,
McCafferty has been re-seconded to head the security force aboard Air Force One,
which is, as you know
'Yes,' Stein interrupted, 'I know what Air Force One is. The Boeing - 707, isn't
it? Ч used by the President as a sort of aerial White House. SoЕ' he dragged the
conjunction out admiringly, and whistled,'so McCafferty's an important man.'
'He is'
Then you'd better come along and see him,' Stein twinkled. 'I mean, of course,
his potential doppelganger, his look-alike, his - other self.' Stein paused and