"O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 12 - Dead man's handle" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Peter)

Willie Garvin put down the glasses, scratched the stubble of beard on his chin, then slowly ate some chocolate and a handful of raisins before sipping from the second of his water bottles, still almost full.
Last night, after dark, he had risen from his cramped hiding place and exercised steadily for two hours, then slept soundly for four. Throughout the day he had again patiently studied every inch of the barrack layout, and every movement that took place.
Now, resting his head on his arms, he closed his eyes and pondered. Would it be foolish to make the attempt tonight? Whenever he thought of Modesty Blaise a lump of apprehension came into his throat, but he knew he must not allow that to push him into acting too soon. Was there any more of value to be learned from another day's study of the situation? Struggling to be objective, he thought not.
Last night he had spent an hour moving silently down to the perimeter of the camp, and another two assessing the situation there. A sentry was posted at the point where the road from the town entered the barracks, another by the fuel store, another by the prison. They were relieved every two hours, on the even hour. If he took action after the midnight relief, he would have, say, an hour and a half to get clear before the alarm was raised. Not enough to get a man in his sixties across five miles of rough country to the coast. A diversion would be needed and he had plans for that.
Sudden bitterness flared within him, a searing resentment towards whatever powers of heaven or earth or malignant fate had decreed that Wei Lu should have made an enemy long years ago and that the enemy had sought revenge on him now . . . just at the time when Willie Garvin had a commission to perform which required Wei Lu's presence. The commission was simple enough, but to Willie Garvin it was the most important thing he had ever tried to do in his whole life.
A thousand miles away but not many days ago, he had seen a dark-haired girl in a white linen dress watching from a ringside seat when he was fighting Thai-style against the local champion, Chit Leng, trying to earn enough baht to get out of the country. Moments after he had won, the police had come for him as he was pulling on his shirt, to arrest him for the brawl he had been involved in the night before. He had caught her eye as they took him away, had seen the speculative curiosity in her gaze, and had roused from his sullen bitterness long enough to acknowledge her with a shrug and a grin.
When they released him after an hour, informing him that Modesty Blaise had paid sufficient money to cover his estimated fine, he knew this must be the girl he had seen at the stadium, and he was stunned. The name Modesty Blaise was being spoken increasingly throughout the underworld of late. She was head of an organisation called The Network, based in Tangier, and of fairly recent origin, but growing fast, and pulling off some astonishingly clever coups in various fields.
Willie Garvin had never dreamt that she would prove to be a girl barely out of her teens. When he found she had left the gaol after buying his freedom he chased down the street after her, then stood thanking her with stumbling words while she looked at him with that level gaze of midnight blue eyes. It was in those eyes, he realised vaguely, that you could see the will, the intelligence, and above all the depths of experience more suited to one twice her age, which now caused her name to be spoken with awe in circles where men were not easily impressed.
When he fell awkwardly silent at last she said, "They tell me you're a dangerous rat, Willie Garvin. I've no use for rats, but I've got a hunch there's some sort of man inside you trying to get out. If you work for me, he might get a chance." She took a wad of notes from her bag and gave them to him. "Set yourself up decently, and come to see me at the Amarin Hotel in Ploenchit Road at ten tomorrow morning."
Willie Garvin watched her walk away, feeling that his whole world had suddenly been unmade, dazed by emotions utterly strange to him. He had known many women and many kinds of women, but never one like this, who despite her youth made him feel adolescent, and for whom he would have done anything simply to win a smile of approval. As he gazed after her a deep and almost painful hunger was born in him, yet it was a hunger that contained no element of sexual desire, and this was truly strange, for she was of striking good looks with a superb body and that particular beauty of movement which speaks of rare physical potential.
He was in the lobby of the Amarin Hotel half an hour early, freshly bathed and shaved, wearing a dark ready-made suit that fitted his big frame reasonably well. The meeting in her hotel room was short. She gave him a valise containing a small case holding gold coins worth ten thousand American dollars, to be delivered to a man in Hong Kong called Fenton. She also gave him an ivory plaque with Chinese characters engraved on it. This was her chop, and would give him authority while in Hong Kong to collect bearer documents from a man called Wei Lu. Neither man was to know about the other transaction. There was nothing sinister in this, it was simply her way of doing business. Both transactions were legal, and should involve no danger other than the natural risk that went with carrying valuables. There was an envelope with a thousand American dollars in twenties, an airline ticket for Hong Kong, and an open ticket to bring him from Hong Kong to Tangier via Rome when his task was completed.
Willie Garvin stood looking at all the items she had laid on the table and rubbed his mouth nervously. "You're trusting me with this lot?" he asked.
She looked at him steadily. "Is there any reason why I shouldn't?"
He gave an uneasy laugh. "Well, plenty. Nobody's ever done it before."
"Then let's give it a try." Her manner was neutral, with neither threat nor warmth.
He drew in a long breath and said softly, "You're a princess, lady. A real princess. I won't let you down."
She folded her arms and said, "How long have you trained in Thai-style combat?"
He looked vaguely puzzled. "I never trained. Just picked it up. It's . . . sort of an interesting combat form."
Surprise touched her eyes for a moment, then was gone. "Do you always use Thai-style?"
"Well, I've picked up a few other combat disciplines 'ere and there."
"Which is best?"
He shook his head slowly, "None of 'em. If you're in a fight for real, you use whatever mixture works best. I mean, according to the opposition." He hesitated, then went on uncertainly, "I asked the police about you, Princess. They said you'd been 'ere six months studying under Saragam."
She lifted an eyebrow. "So?"
"No offence," he said quickly. "It's just I worked at Saragam's dojo for a while a couple of years back till I mucked things up and got chucked out. Saragam's the best, I reckon, but he never goes beyond what's strictly manual, and the way I see it, a lady like you wants to keep 'er 'ands nice if she can, even if she gets in a rumble sometimes, so I made this for you last night."
He took something from his pocket and held it out to her, his eyes anxious as if from fear of giving offence. On his palm lay a short spindle of polished wood, its ends rounded out bulbously like mushrooms. She stared, then took it from him, her fingers closing round the stem so that the hardwood knobs protruded from each side of her fist.
"Called a kongo," he said. "I dunno why. It's fast, though. You can strike from standstill with it in any direction, and you go for the nerve-centresЧ" he broke off with a grimace. "Sorry. I don't 'ave to spell it out for you."
She stood gazing at the object in her fist with absorbed interest, moving her hand tentatively this way and that as if appraising the potential of the unlikely little weapon. "I like it," she said at last. "Thank you, Garvin." Still examining the kongo, she added, "You'd better go along now. I'll expect to see you at my office in Tangier about a week from today. Any questions?"
He picked up the valise. "No questions."
She looked up and said quietly, "It's a simple task, Garvin. I want it done quietly and without fuss. If you meet a snag, deal with it. I expect results, not excuses. Is that understood?"
He did not answer at once. He was studying her soberly and with great intensity, as if committing every nuance of her face and body to his memory. After a few seconds he gave a little start, made a gesture of apology, then smiled for the first time. It was a remarkably engaging smile.
"Understood," he agreed in his deep gravelly voice. "Like you say, Princess, it's simple."

But it was not simple after all.
Just his luck to cop a total mess like this. It was all so unfair, so bloody unfair! He lay in his hidey-hole on the hill overlooking Kui-tan, clenched fists pressed to his eyes, body rigid with the venomous resentment that surged through him as he mentally raved at god and devil, man and beast, all things in creation, seen and unseen, raved at them for hating him and inflicting this new persecution on him.
Then in his mind's eye he conjured up the image of the dark-haired girl with the quiet manner and serene eyes who had trusted him. The spasm passed, and he emerged from it sweating and shaking, filled with self contempt. "Oh, you whingeing, whining, miserable bastard, Garvin," he whispered softly. "You want to go back to the way it's always been ... ?"
He lay letting strange new thoughts drift gently through his mind, eyes on an insect a few inches from his nose, yet somehow seeing the whole of his life in a new way, perhaps in the way he felt it might be seen by two cool midnight-blue eyes. After a while he turned on his back, relaxed to a degree he had never before experienced. Life was as it was, and neither god nor man hated him ... he was not important enough for that (what a marvellously liberating piece of knowledge this was) . . . and the task before him was simple, after all. It called for the exercise of certain small skills, but so would any task worth doing. Of course, if something unforeseen went badly wrong, he might fail, and die. That would be a pity, but hardly a tragedy. Nobody would miss him. He grinned quite cheerfully at the thought.
On the other hand, the chance of success was good. He had got here safely, remained undetected, and had located Wei Lu. The rest was straightforward, and if he made it ... if he made it ... ah, then she might put her trust in him again, and yet again. There might even come a day when he would win her smile.
He set his mental alarm for two hours and slept. At half an hour before midnight he was at the camp perimeter. The pack on his back was lighter now. He wore webbing equipment adapted to his particular needs, with four pouches. Four grenades were carried in two of the pouches. Each of the other two carried three skittles. These were short wooden clubs shaped like miniature skittles, their large ends hollow and weighted with lead. He had spent two hours making them in Wei Lu's garage and they were quite crudely fashioned, but it was his particular gift that he could throw any missile with quite extraordinary accuracy, including the two handmade knives he carried.
At five minutes past twelve, when the sentries had been changed, he watched the man posted by the prison building prop his rifle against the wall and settle down with a cigarette on the low bunker outside. At ten minutes past twelve Willie Garvin felled the man with a thrown skittle to the side of the head from twenty paces. Wei Lu's doctor in Hong Kong, asked for means of ensuring unconsciousness for a few hours, had provided a hypodermic, a box of ampoules each containing three grains of phenobarbitone, and a demonstration of how an injection should be made.
Two minutes later, leaving his pack by the bunker, wearing the sentry's peaked cap, cigarette dangling from his lips, and slumping to reduce his height, Willie Garvin strolled across the compound towards the fuel store, pausing to hawk and spit noisily when he was close enough to make out the figure of the sentry there. No challenge came, only a few casual words in Chinese, perhaps asking a comrade soldier for a cigarette or a light. Willie Garvin grunted a wordless reply, moved on, and threw his second skittle underhand at short range, following up swiftly enough to catch the unconscious man's rifle before it hit the sandy ground.
The last of the guards was in the sentry box at the gate, sitting on a stool, awake but not alert. He knew one brief instant of shock when an arm darted round the edge of the box and took him by the throat, then he slept. Willie Garvin used his third ampoule, propped the man in the corner of the box, and made his way back to the fuel store. There he clamped a small incendiary device to one of the stacked jerricans, setting the detonator to operate at five minutes after two a.m.
The cell doors of the prison were furnished with mortice locks. Selecting a lockpick from a slim wallet of tools, he unlocked the door of Wei Lu's cell in thirty seconds without a sound. Inside, he closed the door before switching on a flashlamp masked with coarse black cloth to give a dim and diffused light. A man lay on the bunk against the wall. His eyes were open and full of fear. Willie Garvin put the light on his own face and whispered, "I'm an English friend. Are you Wei Lu?"
The man nodded warily, his pain-racked eyes still fearful and suspicious. The light was switched off and the whispering voice from the darkness said, "Modesty Blaise sent me to fetch you out. Come on, let's go."
Long seconds passed. The bunk creaked. Then came a stifled sob as Wei Lu breathed, "I ... cannot. My feet."
Willie Garvin put the flashlamp on again and knelt by the bunk. The elderly Chinese was sitting up now, shivering, gazing down at his feet on the floor. They were bare, horribly swollen, and encrusted with dried blood. Still on one knee, Willie Garvin switched off the flashlamp. He had seen Wei Lu walk with his escort to the interrogation hut and back at mid afternoon, and the man had not been crippled then. They must have subjected him to another session later, after dark, and had now begun to use the element of torture in their treatment. This was unexpected and not typical, but Willie Garvin told himself bleakly that he should have anticipated the possibility. Wei Lu's old enemy wanted revenge. It was hardly surprising that he had varied his brainwashing techniques with a touch of old-fashioned torture.
Wei Lu was slightly built, and it would be easy enough to provide him with socks and boots from one of the sentries; but there was no way, no way at all even with help and support, that he could make his way across five miles of rugged country to the coast in the next few hours. Not on those mangled feet. In the darkness of the cell, Willie Garvin stood up and braced himself for the surge of bitter hatred and fury that would now possess him at this cruel trick of fate.
It did not come. Somewhere in his head was the image of quiet eyes in a calm face appraising him, assessing, making a judgment, making a decision. He heard again the mellow timbre of her voice as she said, "If you meet a snag, deal with it ..."
As simple as that. You concentrated on the answers, not the problems. His pleasure at this revelation was so great it almost hurt. As if falling into step with some shadowy companion, Willie Garvin put himself to examining the situation without emotion, and to considering with a fully flexible mind the objective of escape in the light of whatever external facilities might be bent to his purpose.
Thirty seconds later he groped for Wei Lu's arm and whispered, "All right, gran'dad. Let's 'ave that blanket to pad your feet, then you get on my back and 'old tight. I'm taking you 'ome."