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

Her boredom was turning to irritation. She said, 'The times it's happened, my reason wasn't affronted. I just took the only alternative to being killed myself.'
Jimson looked at her. 'It were better that you had died,' he said with grave sincerity. 'I see. Thank you.'
'I do not speak personally. Better that 7 should die than that 1 should kill.' 'Better for who?'
'For the world. For humanity. Humanity is far greater than the individual, Miss Blaise. Death comes to each one of us in time. You saved your life with violenceЧ' 'By reacting to violence.'
'It is the same thing I Surely you see that? Reaction against violence is the food by which it grows. Had you submitted, had you not reacted, a root of violence would have withered unfed, a root from which untold acts of violence have since spread like suckers from some evil weed.'
Modesty said patiently, 'But I'd have withered too. And I'd rather stay alive. It may even be that by reacting I've withered a few nasty roots myself.'
Jimson closed his eyes for a moment as if in pain. 'You live by false and dangerous principles, Miss Blaise,' he said heavily. 'There is a day of reckoning for us all, and I think you will pay a terrible price for your principles when that day comes.' 'Then I'd better go on postponing it as long as I can.' She smiled to take the edge off her words, but he did not respond. 'There will be no laughter on that day,' he said. She sat forward a little and plucked at the button-through
shirt she wore outside her skirt, drawing cooler air to her body. She did not object to Jimson's obsession or his opinions, she had no quarrel with him, or with Flat-Earthers or with people who wanted to open Joanna Southcott's Box to solve the world's problems. But she was tired of Jimson's voice.
'You've talked a lot about evil, Mr Jimson,' she said reflectively. 'I wonder if you've ever seen the real thing. In close-up.'
'What do you imagine is the real thing?'
She hesitated fractionally, seeking fresh words to dress up a hackneyed thought, then was annoyed with herself for doing so. All realities were hackneyed, simply because they had been around for a long time.
'It's cruelty,' she said. 'It's the man who can only feel good when he's got his foot on somebody's neck. The man who feels like God when he's holding a gun. Who can only confirm his own existence by squeezing the marrow out of others. Cruelty comes in all sizes, and you find it in little packages all over. But when you see the real thing, in the jumbo king-size packet...' She shrugged and looked at him, eyeing his limp clerical collar. 'Well, then maybe you begin to think there's a Commandment missing. One that might even be more important than stealing or killing or coveting your neighbour's ox.'
She stopped speaking, annoyed with herself again. It was not her habit to open her mind to strangers, particularly in this vein.
Jimson was staring at her wonderingly. He gave a helpless shake of his head, sighed, and then quite suddenly the intensity in his face vanished as he smiled at her with an engaging charm that astonished her. 'Oh dear,' he said. 'I'm afraid we fail completely to communicate.'
Her answering smile was friendly, inviting a truce. 'You're the one who's been trying to, Mr Jimson. We'd better stop wasting our time.'
'Perhaps so.' He sat back and relaxed. After a moment he said, 'I suppose you haven't heard any news of the test?'
'Test?'
'I'm sorry. I mean the Test Match against Australia. The last of the series started at the Oval on Thursday.'
'Oh, cricket!' Again he had surprised her. She searched her memory. 'England were 297 for six wickets at close of play yesterday.'
'You're a fan?' he said with pleasure.
'Only for village-green cricket, I'm afraid. But Willie Gar-vin likes the more sophisticated stuff. He managed to pick up an English news broadcast on the car radio last night. I take it you're a fan yourself?'
'I must confess it's my great passion,' Jimson said ruefully. 'I'm rather ashamed of it really. Fanatics can be terrible bores, whatever their obsession, don't you think?'
'I've suffered occasionally,' Modesty said gravely. 'Do you play cricket yourself, Mr Jimson?'
'I used to play regularly when I was up at Cambridge.' His voice was wistful.
'Were you chosen for your batting or bowling?'
'Oh, a little of each. I'd bat about number six and I wasn't too expensive as a change bowler. But I got in mainly on fielding, I think. I was really very useful in the covers.' He smiled shyly. Then, as if afraid of boring her, took out a worn pocket gospel, settled back in his seat and began to read.
She looked out of the window. They were passing along a broad valley. On each side the scrub-covered rock sloped up and away to a ridge, to vanish and appear again as a higher ridge beyond. The ground was seamed with thin twisting gulleys cut by a thousand rivulets in the wet season.
The road began to rise, turning sharply ahead. The driver changed down, slowed, then down again to take the bend.
Modesty saw the windscreen shatter and the shards of glass fly outwards before the sound of the shots registered. She was lunging down the aisle of the little bus even as her mind analysed the happening. A very short burst, four shots from an automatic rifle, had been fired from the side and just behind the bus as it passed. One shot at least had hit the driver. He was slumping sideways.
The engine stalled. The bus was halfway round the bend. For a moment it stood still, then began to creep slowly back, the engine compression not quite holding it. Two of the girls were in the aisle, screaming, obstructing her. She shouldered
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them aside and reached for the handbrake, but even as she grasped it there came a slow crunching of metal as the rear of the bus ran off the road and hit the rising ground on the outer side of the bend. The bus stopped with hardly a jolt.
Above the screaming babble of the girls she could hear Jim-son shouting in his far from perfect Spanish, trying to calm them. The driver lay huddled at her feet. Blood had welled from a hole in the back of his shirt, mingling with the dark sweat-stain. Ominously little blood. She eased him over gently, saw the exit hole in his chest, and knew that he was dead.
Lifting her head she looked out of the bus. Seven men, well spread out, were moving down the seamed slope towards the road. They wore trousers flared at the ankle and leather jerkins. Some were bare-headed, some wore shapeless felt or straw hats, two wore sombreros. The small-arms they carried were varied. Two of the men wore old-fashioned bandoliers, the rest ammunition pouches. A few carried stick-grenades hanging from their belts.
There came a shout, and a short burst of bullets flew high over the bus. Through the rear window Modesty saw five more men coming up the road from behind. She looked along the aisle. The girls had stopped screaming. They were either silent or whimpering now. Jimson was on his knees, hands clasped, eyes closed, his lips moving. She pushed her way towards him and shook him fiercely by the shoulder. He opened his eyes. There was anxiety in them, but no fear.
She said, 'Get the girls out. You go first with your hands up and waving a handkerchief. That last burst was a warning.'
He nodded, got quickly to his feet and moved towards the door, speaking calmly to the girls, telling them not to be afraid. Modesty collected her handbag and followed. These would be El Mico's men, she thought. A small group which had penetrated deep into the hills. Dangerous men. Guerrillas, rebels, bandoleros - what you called them depended on which side you favoured. She did not know why they had shot up the bus. There did not have to be a reason, except that the bus was there.
The raw mid-morning sun beat down on her as she de-
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scended the step. Jimson was waving a handkerchief, standing in front of the girls as they huddled together outside the door. Modesty stayed behind the girls, using them as a screen. She opened her handbag and took out the little MAB .25 automatic, angry with herself for having left her suitcase for Willie to bring on. There were things in that case and in the car which she would have been glad to have now. Her handbag held only make-up, bare toilet necessities, the automatic and a miniature first-aid kit.
She opened the little first-aid tin and took out a roll of one-inch plaster. Putting her foot on the step of the bus, she pulled up her skirt and pressed one end of the plaster to her thigh. The MAB automatic was no more use than a pea-shooter at this moment, under the muzzles of a dozen guns. But if she could keep it hidden, strapped high up on the inside of her thigh, there might well be a chance to make good use of it later. How long her thigh would remain a safe hiding-place from El Mico's men was not an encouraging speculation.
No more than ten seconds had passed since she climbed from the bus. A voice was shouting again. The men were closer now. With the end of the plaster stuck firmly to her flesh, she reached for the gun which lay on the step beside her foot. A hand reached past her and snatched it up by the barrel. Her head snapped round. Jimson stepped back a pace, holding the gun out to one side as if it might contaminate him.
'No!' he said, staring fixedly at her face so that he should not glimpse her bare thigh. 'No, Miss Blaise!'
'Give it to me, you fool!' she said in a fierce whisper. 'It's the best chance we have."
'No,' he repeated stubbornly, and shook his head. His arm swung. The automatic curved over the bonnet of the bus and disappeared in a patch of scrub twenty paces away.
Salt, black, blinding rage swept her. With an enormous effort she gathered control of herself, clearing her mind to adjust to the new situation, but her hand still shook slightly as she jerked the plaster from her leg and flung it aside.
That was useful, the shaking hand. She let fury rise up within her again, and pressed her fingers into the corners of her eyes. Tears began to run down her face. It was not hard to
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keep them coming as long as she focused on Jimson's lunacy. She dragged her fingers through her hair, wiped a hand through the dust on the side of the bus and smeared her face. There came the clink of metal on metal, harsh male voices, the smell of leather and oil, sweat and guns. She let her shoulders droop, pressed her hands to her cheeks and began to sob. Like a chorus her wailing was taken up by the frightened girls as the guerrillas pushed brusquely among them.
The sun was high in the sky and they had trudged for two miles now along one of the winding tracks which cut into the hills.