"O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 01 - Modesty Blaise" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Peter)

MODESTY BLAISE
Peter O'Donnell

For Constance

1
Fraser adjusted his spectacles to the angle which he knew would produce the effect of prim stupidity he favored most. Running a finger down his nose, he stared obtusely at the open dossier in his hands.
"I would suppose, sir," he said cautiously, "that Modesty Blaise might be a person awfully difficult for usЧerЧactually to get." He blinked toward the big, gray-haired man who stood by the window, looking down at the night traffic hurrying along Whitehall.
"For a moment," Tarrant said, turning from the window, "I hoped you might split that infinitive, Fraser."
"I'm sorry, Sir Gerald." Fraser registered contrition. "Another time, perhaps."
Tarrant moved to the big desk across one corner of the room. Settling in his chair, he opened a polished wooden box, took out a cigar, and addressed himself to lighting it.
"A remarkable woman, Fraser," he said, watching the heavy smoke coiling up in the warm fluorescent light. "If you had been a child, on your own, in a Middle East DP camp in '45, do you think you could have managed to retire at twenty-six with well over half a million sterling? A small female child, of course."
Fraser quickly reviewed his selection of expressions, and chose the slightly offended one with pursed lips. Tarrant studied the look, then nodded his approval.
"The point is," he went on, "that we're hardly likely to get her for money. Not on the Civil Service scale of two thousand a year, anyway."
Fraser lifted a hand with middle finger delicately bent, and scratched minutely at the scalp beneath his thinning hair. "Some of our people have a vocation for the work," he said diffidently.
"Yes. She seems to have a feeling for this country." Tarrant frowned at his cigar. "After all, she chose to settle here. But I don't feel that a clarion call to service is the way to get her, either."
"Blackmail?" Fraser tried to combine furtiveness, daring, and distaste in one expression. He fell short, and received a sympathetic wag of the head from Tarrant.
"No ... not blackmail. I don't think we really have the levers for it, Fraser. And we need much more than reluctant co-operation."
"I wonder if ... ?" Fraser let the sentence hang while he carefully selected a buff half-sheet from the dossier and peered at it unnecessarily for several seconds. "I wonder if this might do?"
Tarrant took the slip and read the short message through twice. The hesitant but hopeful look, he thought, and looked up at Fraser to find that he was right.
Briefly he wondered why a man with Jack Fraser's field record should take such pains to project himself as an ineffectual dolt, now that he was safely behind a desk. Sheer habit, probably. The pose had served him handsomely in the past and might be hard to put aside now. Tarrant had no objection to the game. The two men were old friends and Fraser could speak with earthy bluntness on the brief occasions when he laid the pose aside. In any case it was a harmless game, sometimes useful and frequently amusing.
"The message only came up from Cipher an hour ago," Fraser said with a vague, apologetic gesture. "They wouldn't attach any importance to it, of course. Just part of a general routine report. But it did occur to me that perhaps ... ?"
"I think it might do very well indeed." Tarrant passed the half-sheet back and glanced at his watch. "Ten o'clock. Do you think she might see us tonight?"
"No time like the present." Fraser rolled out the phrase sententiously, not quite able to hide his delight at the opportunity. "Shall I try her number, sir?"

There was a pleasant warmth in the night air as Fraser drove his old Bentley down Constitution Hill and swung with bland belligerence through the traffic at Hyde Park Corner. Rightly drawing an outraged cry from a taxi driver, he responded with an apologetic simper, immediately followed by a bellowed oath of such horrific imagination that Tarrant was hard put to conceal his admiration.
"Your conversation with Modesty Blaise was very brief," Tarrant said as they drove through the park. "Did she ask no questions?"
"None, Sir Gerald." Fraser hunched over the wheel and blinked worriedly through the windshield. "When I asked if you might call she just said: 'Yes. Now if you wish.' She seemed to know your name."
"She does. On two occasions she sent Willie Garvin over from Tangier to sell me rather valuable items of information. Some Nasser stuff, and a very useful thing on the Russian organization in The Levant."
"What impression did you have of Garvin, sir?"
"A rough diamond, but remarkably well polished in parts. His speech is Bethnal GreenЧthough I believe his French and Arabic are very good. His manners are impeccable; I lunched him at Rand's Club to overawe him, but he might have been born to it. His bargaining was cheerful but ruthless. And he had the relaxed superiority of ... well, of a plenipotentiary sent by a reigning empress."
"Not of a consort?" Fraser asked diffidently.
"Definitely not that. As courtier to queen. No more."
"A pity, really." Fraser sighed, and shouldered an Austin Mini aside. "If that had been the relationship, it might have made your position stronger. I mean, now that Garvin's in trouble."
"Yes. But on the other hand ... ?" Tarrant made it a question inviting completion.
"That's true." Fraser nodded solemnly several times. "With a consort relationship, Garvin probably wouldn't be in trouble. And you'd have no position at all, sir."
The tall block looking out over the park had been designed by a disciple of Le Corbusier and completed little more than a year ago, a triumph of simple elegance. Below ground-level lay a private swimming pool, squash courts and a gymnasium for use of the residents and their guests. The facade was of rubbed stone, the roof-line broken by receding planes with balconies. At the summit, the penthouse faced south and was bounded on two sides by a covered terrace of concrete flags with grass-grown joints.
The penthouse had sold for seventy thousand pounds.
At the desk in the large foyer a uniformed attendant inclined his head politely in response to Tarrant's inquiry.
"Yes, sir. Miss Blaise rang down that she was expecting you."
Beyond a field of soft maroon carpeting stood the solid doors of a private lift. The attendant touched a button and they slid quietly open.
"Yes, here we are. She's sent the lift down for you. If you gentlemen would step in, please? It'll take you direct to the topЧdoesn't serve any other floors."
"Thank you." Tarrant pressed the button and the doors slid shut. The lift started with slow courtesy, then accelerated smoothly. At the top, the doors slid back and the two men stepped out.
They were in a broad open foyer floored with ceramic tiles in charcoal-gray. Beyond lay a large room extending some fifty feet to the far wall, where a floor-to-ceiling window looked out over the park. The room was contiguous with the foyer but on a lower level, three steps down from a slender wrought-iron balustrade which edged the foyer across the width of the room.
Throughout there was the imprint of a strong personality, and the immediate impression was of warmth and simplicity. But then the eye began to find strange enigmas in that simplicity, a curious mingling of styles which should have clashed but astonishingly blended.
The foyer was furnished with two chairs, Louis XVI bergшre, and a drum table. To one side was an alcove for coats, behind a maize velvet curtain. The floor of the room proper was set with plain octagonal tiles, dull ivory in color. On it were scattered seven or eight rugs of varying size, glowing with the rich colors of Isfahan.
The middle of one wall was broken by a run of masonry in natural stone, with a hole-in-the-wall fireplace. The remaining walls were of golden cedar strip. They bore half a dozen pictures and a Franчois Boucher tapestry. Of the pictures, Tarrant recognized a Miro, a Braque still life, and a Modigliani. The others were unknown to him.
All doors leading from the room, and the two leading off from the foyer, were of teak veneer. They extended from floor to ceiling, and were sliding doors.
In one corner of the room, broad curving shelves held a scattering of ornamentsЧa porcelain-mounted lion clock after Caffieri, backed by a pair of Sшvres plates; a jade dragon bowl of the Chia Ch'ing period, and a silver vinaigrette; three superb ivories, a Clodion statuette, and an antique mahogany knife-urn.
The lighting was superb, and the larger pieces of furniture were in plain colors against the rich patterns of the rugs. Tarrant noted the deep-buttoned chesterfield in black hide, the two Barcelona chairs in mellow tan, and a long, low table tiled in white and gold.