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

She dialled the direct number, waited a few seconds, then said, 'It's Modesty. Do you think you could call here very soon, Sir Gerald? Something urgent has come up.' A pause. 'Thank you. In about twenty minutes, then.'
She put down the phone. Willie had moved and stood looking down at Fraser with a wicked grin. He said, 'Tarrant
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swore he'd never get the Princess tangled up in another caper. He's going to 'ave your guts for this, Fraser, my old mate.'
When Tarrant arrived, Willie Garvin was absent. The sight of Fraser, and his simple statement, 'I've told her,' left no need for further explanation. Even Tarrant's immense control was barely sufficient to contain his fury.
Fraser went into his humble and pathetic act, was blasted out of it, and sat in dour silence, his face a little pale, as Tarrant lashed him with a cold but blistering tongue.
Modesty allowed time for the first shock to be absorbed, then broke in briskly. 'He came to me because he's concerned about your sleeper network, Sir Gerald. Let's talk about that now.'
'No, my dear.' He turned to her. 'I wouldn't send one of my salaried agents into East Berlin for this job, much less you. Don't think me ungrateful. I even recognize Eraser's good intentions. But I won't allow you to attempt an impossible mission.'
'A few people who trust you are going to die if we don't do something.'
'I know.' There was a grey tinge to Tarrant's face. 'If I thought you stood a chance of getting Okubo out...' He shrugged. 'Perhaps I'd forget the promise I've made to myself, and ask your help. But there isn't a chance. The Berlin Wall is virtually impenetrable now. Oh, I know there have been plenty of escapes, but not recently. People used to escape over it, under it, and through it. But not any more.'
Absently he took the glass she handed him and muttered his thanks. 'It's different now,' he said. 'And it was never easy. You'd need three figures to count the tunnels dug during the years since the Wall was built, but only a dozen succeeded. Now there are detection devices to locate tunnels. People have crossed the Wall in every possible way. By breeches-buoy on a high cable. By battering through it with a steamroller. They've used locomotives on the railway and steamers on the canal. They've swum and they've run and they've climbed. Over two hundred have died. With each new idea, the East Germans have taken measures to prevent it being used again. And the
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West Berlin people have stopped being cooperative now. They don't like messy incidents at the Wall.'
He gave her a tired smile. 'I can't send you into that. There's not only the Wall itself. There are guards by the hundred, highly-trained guard-dogs, and anti-personnel mines. There's a wired-off thirty-yard death strip even before you can reach the Wall from the east. That's where most people die. There are infra-red cameras and trip wires and waterway patrols. And nobody gets smuggled through a checkpoint any more, certainly not Okubo.'
He emptied his glass and put it down. 'I know your ability and resources. Perhaps you could find a way out, given time. But you can't even get inside safely at short notice. You could never enter East Berlin as yourself, and a sound cover-identity would take months to establish.'
Modesty smiled at him. 'Don't be such an old misery. I have a friend with special facilities for entering East Berlin.'
Before Tarrant could answer there came the faint hum of the ascending lift. The doors in the foyer opened and a man stepped out. He was tall and wore a well-cut dark suit. His hair had once been fair but was now almost entirely grey, prematurely grey to judge by his face, which was rather round and bore a healthy tan. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles, and was beginning to thicken around the waist.
'Ah, there you are,' Modesty said as he moved forward and down the three steps which pierced the wrought-iron balustrade separating the foyer from the sitting-room. 'It's good of you to drop everything and come so quickly. Sir Gerald, I'd like you to meet Sven Jorgensen.'
The man shook hands and said in good English with a slight accent, 'A pleasure to meet you, Sir Gerald.'
Tarrant said, 'How do you do.' He was puzzled and a little distressed. Why the hell had Modesty brought in a foreign stranger, right in the middle of a top-secret discussion? He trusted her judgement completely, butЧ
Why on earth was Jorgensen prolonging the handshake, gazing at him in that odd way?
Jorgensen said in Wilh'e Garvin's voice, 'You're not concentrating. Sir G.'
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Tarrant heard Fraser rip off a delighted oath, and struggled hard not to show his own surprise. Yes, he could see it now, as if suddenly seeing the hidden face in a child's puzzle-picture. The disguise was not heavy. There was the superb and undetectable wig, and the pads which altered the shape of the face, but the rest of the transformation lay mainly in manner, posture and movement.
Tarrant said, 'Hallo, Willie. You're right. I wasn't concentrating.'
'We go in from Sweden by air,' Modesty said. 'Willie is Herr Jorgensen, who runs a small antique and rare-book business in Gothenberg. I'm his secretary. I can't show you what I'll look like just now because I have to dye my hair, but I'll be equally convincing.'
'I'm sure you will.' Tarrant shook his head slowly. 'But it still won't do, Modesty. Foreign businessmen or visitors are automatically suspect in East Germany, you know that. You'll be watched. Your rooms may be bugged, your passports intensely checked. You simply won't get away with it.'
'We have got away with it for the last five years,' Willie said in his rather stilted Jorgensen voice, and took out a packet of Swedish cigarettes. Tarrant looked at Modesty. She said, 'We've made a ten- or twelve-day trip to East Berlin from Sweden every year for the last five. The antique business in Gothenberg is quite genuine and belongs to us.'
Fraser said, 'But for Christ's sake, why do you do it?'
She gave a little shrug. 'We began it a year or two before we retired from crime. It seemed a useful provision, to see what went on behind the Curtain and to establish credible identities there. We kept it up because it seemed a pity to let the thing lapse. The East Berlin police have Herr Jorgensen and Froken Osslund on record. We've been tailed and bugged and checked and politely questioned. They've given up tailing us now. We know that, because we always know if we're being tailed. They may still bug our rooms. We never bother to check, because even if the rooms were clean there might be three bugs in each when we got back from a trip. So when we talk in our rooms, we talk in character.'
'You make trips?' Tarrant said. 'Outside East Berlin?'
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'Yes. We advertise in a few newspapers, and people with likely stuff to sell telephone us at the hotel. We go and see what they've got, and buy any reasonable antiques or books. Not just in Berlin, but in Potsdam, Dresden, Frankfurt and any number of small towns. We've kept our noses clean, we've done straight business, and we make immediate payment in kroner or dollars, then ship the stuff to Gothenberg. Nobody can suspect that we're anything other than what we seem.'
Fraser said in an awed voice, 'You actually go there once a year? You go and spend ten days or so in that God-awful country, just to maintain these identities?'
'It's a chore,' Modesty said, 'but it always seemed potentially useful. And now it's going to be. The only thing the security people there might suspect is mat I'm Willie's bird and that he takes me on business trips so he can have a little fun at a safe distance from his own doorstep.' She grinned. 'They won't have heard any confirmation of that over the bugs.'
Willie lit a cigarette and moved to pour a drink. His walk and his mannerisms were still Jorgensen's. 'We can be there in thirty-six hours,' he said.
Tarrant rubbed his eyes with fingers and thumb, trying to collect his thoughts. 'You'd still have to find a way of getting Okubo out,' he said slowly.
A hand was laid on his arm and he heard Modesty's voice, warm and understanding. She would know that his part - the safe, waiting part - was always the most agonizing. 'Come on now,' she said. 'Don't worry so much. You know we've always come back before.'
'Just,' said Tarrant. 'Only just.' He opened his eyes to look at her. He was a widower and had lost his sons in the war. With sudden and painful perception he realized that this dark-haired girl, smiling at him now, had in some measure filled the long emptiness in him. For a moment he hated his job with weary passion, and hated himself for letting sentiment lay its soft fingers upon him. It was as if he were throwing his own flesh and blood to wolves when he said, 'Try to make coming back a little less marginal this time.'
She slipped her arm through his and moved towards the
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foyer. 'We'll be very careful. Come and see the tallboy I picked up at the Rothley Manor auction.'
It was a beautiful piece, with inlaid intarsia panels and in almost perfect condition. For a moment the sight and touch of it lifted Tarrant's depression by a degree. He saw that Modesty was completely absorbed and that her face was lit with pleasure.
She said, almost apologetically, 'Fifteen pounds.'
He could not believe it. 'My dear, you could get close to a thousand for it at Christie's any day. The dealers must have been blind.'
'There weren't any. If you go far enough out of London for a sale, you often find the dealers haven't bothered. But I didn't buy it to sell. I just want to enjoy it.'
The moment passed, and Tarrant felt aching anxiety descend on him again.
'For God's sake make sure you're able to,' he said.
The printing shop lay in a narrow street not far from Alex-anderplatz. Toller was a fair, thickset man in his late forties. He said, 'Ah, yes. I don't know if the books have any great value, Herr Jorgensen, but when I read your advertisement I thought it worthwhile to telephone you. Come this way, please.'
Willie Garvin and Modesty Blaise followed him through the printing shop, where half a dozen men were working. Her hair was dark chestnut now, and body padding made her look thirty pounds heavier. Contact lenses gave her eyes a different colour, and a moulded hoop of plastic round the gum-line of her lower jaw had altered the shape of her face.