"O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 12 - Cobra Trap" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Peter)

Bellman did not put himself out to turn and look at the man as he said, "I own you, Burrera. You and your miserable ship. Go away and don't bother me."
"Of course, senor. Thank you." Burrera made a placating gesture and moved unhappily away.
Gazing towards the island, Bellman said, "Soon be over now, my darling. Do you think I'm a wicked man to take revenge like this?"
"No!" She took his hand and spoke fiercely. "You've been good to me since the day I came to you all those years ago, and they did this to you. They destroyed you. They're evil, and I hate them." She hesitated, then went on with fading vehemence. "I want them to know how it feels. I want them hunted and destroyed."
There was a silence, and Bellman reached out to pat her hand. After a moment she said, "It wasn't true, was it? I mean, what they said about you. About drugs."
He turned his head to look at her, smiling a little. "Can you even begin to believe it of me?"
She leaned over to rest her cheek against his. "Oh, I'm sorry, please forgive me. It was just... he seemed not the way I'd always imagined. Willie Garvin, I mean. Well, both of them."
He nodded and squeezed her hand. "Yes. They're very clever, you know."
She straightened up and sighed. "Of course. I was being stupid."

* * *

Only by courtesy could the hideaway be called a cave. It was a broad, tapering slot running through a low spur of rock that projected into a valley bottom. The entrance was perhaps three feet high and twice as wide. Within, the roof rose briefly to five feet, then sloped down, and the width gradually narrowed to a smaller opening into the valley some twenty feet away on the far side of the spur.
Willie Garvin lay asleep, head pillowed on his folded dinner jacket. Modesty sat crosslegged near the mouth of the cave, holding the Colt in her lap, the haversack and bottle of water beside her. Willie stirred, opened his eyes and was immediately awake. He sat up and straightened his bowtie. "I feel a bit overdressed for this caper," he remarked. "You fancy another little catnap for 'alfanhour, Princess?"
"No, I'm well rested now, thanks. Have you got a comb, Willie?"
He produced one from his jacket and crawled forward to sit beside her. She took the comb, pulled pins from her chignon and began to comb out her hair. "Where had you been in that rig?"
"The dinner jacket? Oh, I bought a couple of tickets for us. That charity film premiere you fancied, with the dinner and dance after."
She looked puzzled. "You didn't tell me."
"No, I rang Weng and he said you'd got a gentleman in the offing so I left it. Then when Sandra cropped up, I asked 'er along." He grinned suddenly. "Did Weng mean Crichton?"
Modesty frowned, tugging hard at her hair. "I suppose so. Yes."
Willie chuckled, and she said, "Ha! Big joke! You got conned by Sandra, anyway."
"Don't remind me. And I'd seen 'er before. Well, back view."
Modesty sighed and began to plait her hair in two short pigtails behind her ears. "I met Crichton three nights ago at a party and he made himself pleasant. He came to the cottage for some shooting yesterday morning, and by the time we left for town I was off him."
Willie moved to kneel behind her. "I'll do it, Princess. You 'ang on to the gun."
She felt him take over the combing and plaiting, and remembered the first time he had done this for her, years ago in The Network days when she had been wounded and he had sicknursed her. She said, "Bellman's destroyed himself with hating us. It would have been better to put him down."
"Much. Better for 'is customers and for us, too. But he wouldn't fight."
"That was the trouble." She was silent for a few moments, then, "We never did find out who that girl is. It's just a feeling, but I don't think she was for sleeping with."
"I 'ad the same notion." He completed a plait and tied it with a thin strip from the offcut of her skirt. "D'you mind if I cut your jerkin up?"
She looked surprised for a moment, then understanding dawned. "No, it's a good idea."
A quarter of a mile away Crichton moved along the foot of a low ridge, rifle under his arm. Binoculars hung from his belt, and an object like a small radio was suspended from his neck so that it rested on his chest. From the top of it a twelveinch loop aerial projected. Crichton halted and turned the aerial slowly, watching a dial set in the chassis beside it. A needle moved up the dial to a midpoint on it, began to fall, then rose again as he finetuned the direction of the loop. He looked up, sighted along the loop, then moved on.
In the cave, her plaits completed, Modesty sat watching from just within the entrance. Willie had cut a triangle and several thin thongs from the soft leather of her jerkin and was fashioning a sling. She said, "I think we can have a mouthful of water each now," and reached for the waterbottle. She uncorked it, moistened two fingers and tasted, then corked the bottle again. "Willie, he's given us strong salt water."
Willie knotted a final thong to a corner of the leather triangle. "Well, if he's playing it that way..."
"Yes." She broke open the Colt, shook out the cartridges and passed one to him. As he examined it she lifted the gun to look down the barrel. "Don't bother, Willie, they'll be live all right. The barrel's blocked solid halfway down. He was hoping I'd blow a few fingers off."
Willie started to speak, but she stopped him with a quick hand on his knee, then edged back and lay on her stomach. He eased down beside her, looking out into the sunshine. A hundred yards away at the top of a slight incline Crichton stood fiddling with a small black object that hung from his neck. After a few moments he took binoculars from his belt and looked directly towards the cave entrance.
They lay still, using material cut from her skirt as cowls to mask their faces, confident that they could not be detected in the deep shadows. Modesty whispered, "He's using some sort of gadget and he's found us much too damn quickly."
"Could be a little directionfinder. But we'd 'ave to be carrying something for it to home in on."
She said, "The water was salt, the gun was boobytrapped. That leaves the knife."
He looked at the bowie knife, in his hand now. "A homer, fixed inside the 'ilt."
"And big white bloody Crichton didn't fancy clay pigeons because they can't hit back," she said, tightlipped. "Don't throw that knife, you might break the homer and it's too useful to waste."
"That's what I was thinking." He laid the knife on the ground. At the top of the slope Crichton had put down the mini d.f. He checked his rifle carefully, then began to move towards the cave, crouching, taking cover behind a boulder or in a shallow gully of the seamed ground as he moved.
Modesty said, "He's putting on a nice act. Wants me to take a shot when he's close."
"Then you get your 'and blown apart and he comes in quick over the last bit and blasts us while we're wondering what 'appened."
She said softly, "I really hate that bastard. All right, I'll play bait. You slip out the back way and take him from the flank."
Crichton lay behind a low outcrop of rock, enjoying himself as he visualised what would be happening in the cave. They would have seen him, of course, but she was far too smart to use the Colt at long range. They would be watching his approach, confident that she could drop him before he could sight her, and then they would have his rifle to use against Brightstar and Van Rutte. He peered round one end of the outcrop, the binoculars to his eyes. Adrenalin was pumped into his bloodstream as he saw her hand and forearm resting on the ground fifty yards away, just clear of the cave's shadows. The Colt was in her hand, aimed in his general direction, but she would not fire yet.
He prepared for a quick dash forward to the next piece of cover, a low hump in the ground, then set off at a crouching run. This would bring him to within a dozen paces of the cave, and when he made the next dash she would surely fire. This would leave her hand shattered and Garvin briefly frozen by shock. Then it would be easy-
Crichton's thought ceased abruptly, for his senses were splintered and he was sent sprawling to the ground, stupefied by a savage blow from nowhere. Watching from the cave, Modesty caught her breath in surprise as she saw the missile that fell with him - not a pebble from a sling, but the full and heavy waterbottle, which had hit him squarely on the side of the head. Willie Garvin's accuracy in throwing was not confined to knife or club. He was equally capable with anything from a coin to a fellingaxe.
The waterbottle was less damaging, less potentially lethal than a pebble slingshot, and as Willie came into her field of vision, running hard, she knew he had chosen it simply to disarm Crichton for long enough to reach him. Yes, she thought, touching fingers to her bruised and swollen mouth, that figures.
Crichton had got to his knees and was peering about for his fallen rifle when a hand of frightening strength took him by the back of the neck. He was hauled to his feet and spun round to face a man in a stained and crumpled dress shirt, looking at him with blistering blue eyes.
Willie Garvin said, "The name's Crichton, I believe?" Then his arm swung in a shattering backhand blow across Crichton's mouth and the man was flung sideways as if by a silent bomb blast, unconscious before he hit the ground. Willie heard Modesty's approach and turned to face her, palms raised in placatory protest. "Don't go on at me, Princess. The bastard 'it you while you were 'cuffed. I 'ad to get that off me chest."
"You could always have had counselling," she said solemnly, then smiled. "I know, Willie love, and I'd smile more if it didn't hurt. You're so oldfashioned." She looked at Crichton. "D'you think his neck's broken?"