"O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 07 - silver mistress" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Peter)
Peter O'Donnell
one
Quinn wondered vaguely if he was going tothefor the miserable reason that he had no particular wish to continue living. The thought produced a spurt of angry contempt in him which cleared his muzzy brain a little, and he muttered, 'Gutless bastard.'
Slowly he eased his thin wiry body to a sitting position on the broad ledge of rock, and lifted his good hand to push back a lump of hair which had fallen over his eyes.
His head throbbed, and he knew that he was concussed. The period of lucidity would not last long. Soon his mind would drift away from reality, as it had done half a dozen times in the hours since he had fallen, and he would again lie in a stupor, troubled by dreams and memories which made the sweat start from his body.
Six hundred feet below him, the waters of the Tarn whispered in the great gorge as the river wound its way west to join the Garonne. Not far above him was the top of the gorge. It was here that he had stood when the pale March sun was at its height, looking across at the scrub-dotted face of the canyon wall on the far side, looking down at the dark waters which had spent a million years cutting this valley through the French limestone, and trying to feel something, anything other than bleak despair. But the ancient majesty of all that lay before his eyes brought no touch of healing.
He remembered turning away, easing the small pack on his back. It was then that his foot must have skidded on a mossy piece of rock. He did not remember falling, only coming slowly to consciousness, with nausea tugging at his stomach and a hammer pounding ponderously in his head. That was three hours ago now. He had been able to measure the time by looking at his watch during moments when his head was clear. He had hurt his left wrist in the fall. It was swollen and shiny from the fingertips almost to the elbow. Broken perhaps. He had taken off his wristwatch because of the swelling.
Carefully he studied the hands of the watch, and absorbed the fact that it was now three-thirty. With an effort he got to his knees and made his eyes focus on the almost sheer stretch of rock which rose above him. Only eighteen feet, and there were a few niches and crevices. Absurd that he could not climb it. But his left hand was useless, and on the two occasions when he had made a fumbling attempt to climb he had been forced by dizziness to abandon it quickly and sit down to avoid another fall.
Quinn looked about him. The ledge was moon-shaped, twenty paces long and six feet wide at the point where he knelt, tapering away to nothing on each side of him. The only way out was up. Apart from the concussion, which made his coordination clumsy, he doubted that he could have made the climb without two good hands.
Once more he wondered if he was deceiving himself, if subconsciously he lacked the will to try because he did not really care what happened to him.
His mind clouded again, and there was a time of dream-like confusion, shot through with flashes of the old nightmare. For the hundredth time he saw the grenade rolling along the aisle of the aircraft, bobbling from side to side like a grisly roulette ball choosing its slot. He heard the cries of fear as the passengers shrank away from its passing, huddling in their seats. He saw the white-faced man, sitting with his wife and the little girl, dive forward in what could only have been an attempt to smother the thing under his own body. But the black pineapple lurched under the seat, and was still rolling when it roared its frightful death-cry.
Quinn jerked to wakefulness, shuddering, his hands pressed over his ears. Sweat was dripping from his chin, but he ached with cold. He studied his watch. Four o'clock. Dusk would fall soon, and so would the temperature, close to zero. In his pack was a light showerproof top-coat, a bar of chocolate, and a flask which had held coffee but which had been punctured when he fell. Not much of a survival kit, he thought dully. One night of exposure might not kill him, but a second would do the trick.
It came to him that there would have been little point in climbing to the top, even if he had been able to do it, for he was on the wrong side of the gorge. Here there was no road above him, only a narrow path which dipped and soared as it wound its tortuous way past the ravines slicing the canyon wall, a route to test a fit man. On the far side of this path lay a stretch of broken rock and then the belt of firs he had come through earlier. Beyond the trees stretched the arid region of the Causse de Mщjean, a depopulated area so waterless that the few sheep which grazed there had evolved a camel-like ability to go for long periods without drinking. There you could travel a dozen miles and find only an ancient shepherd and his wife living in a crumbling village which had once boasted a population of twenty.
The road which followed the gorge lay a thousand yards away, on the north side of the great gash which contained the Tarn. He could see a short stretch of it from where he sat, a hundred yards of sharply curving bend. He remembered now that during earlier periods of consciousness he had twice waved his handkerchief on seeing a car and a truck pass along that stretch, but they had been in view for no more than ten seconds, and the chances that anyone might spot him in so brief a time were scarcely worth reckoning.
'Up the creek, you are, Quinn,' he told himself, and grinned foolishly. 'Up a big, big creek without a paddle. Have some chocolate, son. Maybe you can keep it down this time. Full of energy, chocolate. Nearly as good as spinach...' It was as he fumbled in his pack that he saw, across the valley, a toy-like van, a Dormobile perhaps, creep slowly into the bend and come to a halt. After a moment, two penguins climbed out of the cab.
Quinn thought about this laboriously, then gave a nod of satisfaction, wincing as his head throbbed. 'Nuns,' he mumbled. 'Can't fool Quinn. No, sir. Sisters of mercy, God bless 'em. The hand of the Lord works a miracle for good old Quinn. Come on now, little sisters, look this way and see me waving.'
He could make out the white blobs of their faces surrounded by the black wimples as he began to wave his handkerchief, three short waves, three long. The penguins began to walk slowly round the curve of the bend. They stopped, seemed to speak together, and one of them pointed down the road. They moved on, halted for a few moments, then turned and walked back to the van. There they stood waiting, doing nothing, neither of them so much as glancing across the gorge.
Quinn's arm ached with the effort of waving, and his head was swimming again. He allowed his arm to fall. 'Today's miracle will not take place,' he thought. Raising his eyes to the sky, he shrugged and said without rancour, 'Please yourself, you bloody old tease.'
He ate some chocolate and sat watching the distant figures. His throat was parched and there was a taste of bile in his mouth. When his vision blurred and his mind began to slip stealthily away again he was unaware of it.
The younger of the two nuns, the one with the round pretty face, stood by the line of once-white stones which rimmed the outer side of the bend and which had once been a low wall. Beyond them there was nothing, for here the side of the gorge was more than sheer, leaning out over the river a long six-second drop below.
Her companion stood by the Dormobile, a woman in her middle thirties with a fresh complexion and a face in which the strong bones were dominated by a large, proudly bridged nose. The younger nun looked up the slope of the road, then at the seamed wall of rock which bordered its inner side.
The second nun looked at her sharply. 'I'll not tell you again, Angel dear.' Her voice rose and fell with the sing-song lilt of the Scottish Highlands. 'When we're wearing the habit it's as nuns we speak, even with each other. And besides, it's not becoming for a young lady to speak so coarsely.'
The girl laughed, her muddy eyes malicious. 'I s'pose it's becoming for a lady to run a cat-'ouse in New Orleans?'
'Och, you've a nasty tongue in your head today, Angel. If I once provided a particular service for gentlemen there, it was no more than a professional necessity. It wasn't I who made the world the way it is, and we all just have to do the best we can.'
'All right for Madam Clare. You should've tried some of them services they wanted.'
'We'll not discuss that, dear,' the older nun said stiffly. 'You were glad enough to take the job at the time, and it's long finished now anyway. You're very lucky that I chose you to bring along with me when I was offered such an excellent new position.'
'I was the only one with the guts for it. Can you see Maisie or Jacquie or any of 'em doing a good job with a razor or a bit of piano wire? Besides, sometimes I think you're a bloody old dike, and fancy little Angel a bit.' She grinned like a vicious child.
The lips beneath the handsomely hooked nose tightened. 'You're a very dirty-minded girl, Angelica. I think a word to Mr Sexton is called for.'
The younger nun's face grew wary. She knew she had gone too far. You could never make Clare lose her temper, she thought, but when the old bitch started calling you Angelica it meant she was angry. And Clare angry was Clare dangerous. The muddy eyes lost their sparkle of malice and became contrite, wheedling.
'No. I'm sorry, Clare, honest. I just get a bit excited when there's a job on, and say daft things. You know. Don't say anything to Mr Sexton. He put me through it something 'orrible last timeЧ'
She broke off, and together they swung round at a faint sound. A man had dropped to the road from the twenty-foot high cliff which bordered it. He wore dark slacks and blazer, with a pale yellow shirt and a black cravat. Field glasses hung at his chest. Six feet tall, he was broad-shouldered and walked with a quick step of extraordinary lightness, as if his feet scarcely touched the ground. His square face was framed in a neat golden halo by thick curly hair and a beard. The eyes were pale blue. About him there was an air of bounding vitality and the impression of a man from another age, a throwback. Dressed in armour and with a broadsword in his hand, he would have been the traditional image of Richard the Lion-heart.
Clare said, 'Ah, there you are, Mr Sexton.' Nobody called him anything other than Mr Sexton, not even his employer. The man smiled and nodded. He had just covered a mile, moving fast over scrubby broken rock, but his rate of respiration was normal.
'And there you are, dear ladies. The car is on its way and should be here in less than five minutes. Are you ready?'
'Quite ready, Mr Sexton. There's no change in the arrangements?'
'None, Mrs McTurk. You and Angel will manage the initial stage. I shall remain out of sight and watch for approaching traffic until it's time for the kill.'
'Very well, Mr Sexton. But I'm sure Angel and I could handle the whole matter without difficulty. The lassie has her wire handy.'
'I've every faith in you both, Mrs McTurk.' The eyes glinted with laughter. 'But if you allow Angel to use her wire, I'll be very cross with you, and I'm sure you'd have little taste for my corrective treatment.'
Angel giggled. Clare's fresh cheeks lost some of their colour. 'Och now, there's no need to talk like that, Mr Sexton. I've never failed in my duty yet. It was a suggestion, just.'
'Then forget it, Mrs McTurk. This is a very important operation and we have precise instructions for it.' He moved to the side of the road where the rock wall of the cutting dipped to little more than eight feet, jumped and caught the edge, drew himself up so easily that he appeared to flow over the top, and vanished from their view.
Angel moved to the Dormobile, took out the jack and rested it against a wheel. 'I 'ate that bastard,' she said idly. 'He can make you wish you was dead with no damage to show for it.'
A thousand yards away, beyond a dozen of the bends which contorted the serpentine road, the Peugeot 504 kept a steady pace. In the back, Sir Gerald Tarrant yawned. He was tired but happy. Tired because he had spent a wearisome week in Brussels chairing the Coordinating Committee for Nato Intelligence, and had now been travelling across France for the past eight hours. Happy because in another twenty minutes or so he would arrive at L'Auberge du Tarn, a small inn perched above the river below La Malшne, and there Modesty Blaise would be waiting for him.
He would spend four days in her company, doing nothing except walking, fishing, and probably losing a few pounds to her at Bezique of an evening. He could not remember looking forward to anything so much in years. She was the most restful of companions. He half-smiled at the thought, for it was a paradox. Those who knew only what she had done rather than what she was like would never have dreamt of applying the word restful to Modesty Blaise. He wondered if, with sufficient low cunning, he could coax her to talk about one or two of her exploits, but was not optimistic about his chances of success.
Both she and her remarkable friend and retainer, Willie Garvэn, seemed to have a fixed aversion to giving any detailed account of their activities, either during the years when she had run the criminal organization known as The Network, with Willie as her right arm, or since their retirement, when Tarrant had been able to make use of them simply because they found that the spice of occasional danger had become an addiction.
A touch of melancholy pressed down on Tarrant. Sooner or later they would go on a job and not come back. It was inevitable, and even in the past year they had come within a whisker of it twice. There was a little comfort, though not much, in reflecting that the last and fatal job would not be one that he had instigated. For some time now he had refused to use them for any further operations. It would not even be a job of their own seeking, he admitted. They seemed born to trouble. It simply came to them.
Tarrant fingered his greying moustache and sighed. With an effort he pushed back the shadow of melancholy and watched the constant movement of the driver's shoulders with the turn of the wheel on the winding road.
| © 2025 Библиотека RealLib.org (support [a t] reallib.org) |