"O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 02 - Sabre-Tooth" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Peter)

SABRE-TOOTH
Peter O'Donnell

For Jill and Janet

ONE
'UNFORTUNATE that it should be this one,' said Liebmann. 'His report-sheet shows that he was a good man.'
Sarrat shrugged and ran a hand over his heavy chin. 'He is still a good man. The Twins will not have an easy kill.'
'For entertainment, so much the better,' said Liebmann. He was fair, with a thin ascetic face and the voice of a fallen angel, perfectly shaped words dropping from his thin lips like pieces of ice.
English was not his mother-tongue, neither was it Sarrat's, nor that of more than one in five of the men who lived here in the four mile long valley which lay imprisoned amid the soaring ridges and peaks of the greatest mountain range in the world. But by rigid rule, English was the language which must at all times be spoken, and the American accent was favoured though not mandatory.
Behind the two men, set between towering spurs of rock which thrust out from the valley wall, rose the dull yellow faчade of a palace built with sun-dried brick by men who had died when Islam was young.
It stood three storeys high and covered a full acre of ground. The walls and the plastered timbers of its rambling interior had held out well against the destroying hand of the centuries. Only the roof had crumbled, the flat areas between the four domes, and here the damage had been made good with light wooden frames and heavy plastic sheeting.
A man came out of a small arched doorway and walked towards Liebmann and Sarrat. Like them, he wore a coarsely-woven tunic of plain grey, buttoned to the neck, and dark denim trousers. An M-16 automatic rifle was slung on one shoulder and there were ammunition pouches on his chest.
'Hamid,' said Liebmann, and looked at the watch on his wrist. 'We were just going down.'
Hamid nodded. He had the lean pale face of a Berber Arab and cold black eyes.
Sarrat grinned, looking at the rifle. 'You will not need that, my friend. Leave it behind this one time. I will look after you.'
'It's part of him,' Liebmann said absently, staring down the valley. 'Don't make trouble, Sarrat.'
'One day,' said Hamid, looking at the big Frenchman, 'one day, Sarrat, when this matter is finished, we should go into the mountains. You with your big loud machine-guns, I with this alone.' His long fingers tapped the rakish seven-pound rifle. 'I would kill every team in your section and they would not see me.'
Sarrat grinned again. He was a bulky man but the bulk was all muscle. 'If ever I kill you, Hamid, my little cabbage, I will see that you fall facing Mecca.'
Hamid's eyes narrowed dangerously but it was Liebmann who spoke, lifting one hand in a signal towards the row of a dozen sand-coloured jeeps standing fifty yards away. 'You will stop this,' he said without emotion. 'Karz will not be pleased if I report stupid provocation between his commanders.'
'It is nothingЧa joke,' Sarrat said quickly, and Hamid nodded. Both men stood in silence. A jeep pulled out from the line of transport and drew up beside them. The driver was a thin, wiry man with a long scar on one sunburned cheek. He wore the tropical uniform of the United States Army, or a fair replica of it. The shirt and trousers were rumpled and faded but scrubbed clean.
He waited, relaxed, while the three passengers climbed aboard, then let in the clutch.
'Down to the ring for the punch-up?' he said as the jeep moved on to the dusty track which led from the big square in front of the palace. His English was natural and held the adenoidal accent of Liverpool.
'Yes.' Liebmann looked at the driver. 'You're Carter, in one of the drop-sections, aren't you?'
'That's right.' The reply was casual. Here in the valley there was no saluting or springing to attention, no orthodox discipline. To the extent that Liebmann recognised any personal feelings of his own he would have preferred the normal trappings of discipline, but he acknowledged that there was no need for them. No need at all. Karz used more direct and lasting methods to get the results he wanted.
'How long have you been with us, Carter?' Liebmann asked in his chill, passionless voice.
'Eight weeks.' Carter changed gear. 'I was one of the first.'
The jeep moved steadily along the track, following the deep curve of the narrow river which hugged the mountain wall in a cutting along one side of the valley and vanished underground somewhere to the south, beneath the snowcapped peaks and ridges towering twenty thousand feet above. To the left lay rows of grey barrack huts, built of lightweight metal framework and sheet asbestos. Beyond them, across the half-mile width of the valley, was the small-arms range.
A few men, all dressed in the same style of uniform as Carter, were moving away from the huts in loose order, heading for a point where the valley narrowed to a two-hundred yard bottleneck before opening out again.
'Stragglers,' said Hamid, watching them. 'Most of the men will be there already.' He leaned forward to speak to Carter. 'This thing, the entertainment, it is popular with the men?'
'Most of 'em like it. With them Twins it's a kick, like. Dead kinky. I can take it or leave it meself.'
A hint of curiosity touched Liebmann's thin, austere face. 'You don't find it interesting, Carter?'
'I'm just not bothered.' Carter's mouth stretched briefly in a reptilian grin. 'If I want kicks I save it up for the knock-shop.' He jerked his head back slightly, towards the palace they had left over a mile behind now. 'I'm on a short-time tonight, and I get an all-night with a free choice from the long list next Monday.' He spat over the side of the jeep. 'I've booked that little Malayan bit. They reckon she can just about turn you inside out.'
Sarrat gave a grunting laugh. Liebmann's nostrils twitched with distaste. He gestured ahead towards the bottle-neck and said to Carter : 'But this is not your kick?'
'Ahh, it's awright. Better at first though, when you could 'ave a gamble. But you can't get a bet on The Twins now, not even at odds-on.'
'It does not perturb you that one of your...' for once Liebmann hesitated, feeling for the word, 'that one of your mates will be killed?'
Carter was slowing the jeep. He turned his rodent's face to stare at Liebmann. 'There's no mates 'ere,' he said contemptuously. 'Wouldn't do, would it? You know that as well as I do.'
'Yes,' Liebmann said briefly, and got out as the jeep halted. With Sarrat and Hamid following, he climbed a rocky incline which led to a flat, roughly circular area of ground. On one side there were stepped ridges rising in tiers to meet the mountain wall, like the tiers which surround a bull-ring. On the other side the arena ended in an abrupt drop to a cluster of crags and boulders twenty feet below.
The stage of this natural amphitheatre was clear, but the slopes were thick with men, several hundred of them, standing or squatting wherever they could find a good viewpoint. Late-comers were clambering higher up the rocky slopes to find a perch.
The blend of many voices echoed curiously from the curving mountain wall. Liebmann led the way towards a space left clear at the end of the lower tiers. His ears were alert for the sound of any language other than English, but he detected noneЧthough some of the English was so accented that it was hard to recognise.
The other commanders were already here, close to the arena and a little apart from the mass of men. Sarrat, sweating under the hot sun, mopped the back of his neck with a khaki handkerchief and jerked his head towards the men on the slopes.
'They look pretty good,' he said.
Liebmann surveyed the blur of faces. More than sixty percent of the men were of Asiatic or Arab stock. The faces ranged from the dark brown of Indian hillmen to the tanned but fresh complexions of Northern Europe. There were Guhayna Arabs from the Sudan, thickset Caucasian Mongols, and a heavy sprinkling of Sinkiang Chinese.
With clinical satisfaction Liebmann noted that there were no racial groupings. The French Algerians were scattered. The half-dozen Spaniards and the Latins were intermingled with the rest. So were the Germans, the British and the Americans. Even the two big rangy men from Australia, the country with the great cobber-complex, had not gravitated together.
With all the variety of race and background, this group of some four hundred men had a common denominator. Each man was a proven expert in his tradeЧthe trade of killing. They were hard, cold, self-confident men, void of the faintest scruple.
This was not an army in which any man was ready to die for a flag or a cause. But every man was ready to take his chance for a solid fortune of twenty thousand pounds sterling. For this, each one had sold himself, body and soul, on a six-month lease.
The hint of a smile touched Liebmann's gaunt face as he wondered how many men existed in the world who could have assembled such an army. There might be several, he acknowledged to himself, but only one man could have dominated and controlled it.
He looked across the valley and saw the moving jeep, the heavy grey-clad figure with the massive head, seated beside the driver.
Karz.
Liebmann enjoyed the frisson of fear that touched his nerves. No other stimulus raised a flicker in his burnt-out emotions now. Nothing that man or woman could do, beast, god or devil, stirred the strings of Liebmann's gutted soulЧ only the presence of Karz. And for this reason he savoured it.