"143 (B094) - Violent Night (The Hate Genius) (1945-01) - Lester Dent" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robeson Kenneth)

The Clipper continued to circle. Then the control compartment door finally opened and the Captain -- on a land plane he would have been called the Pilot -- came out with a worried expression.



"Mr. Savage," the Captain said. "They won't let us land at the lower end."



"What would happen if you went ahead and landed there anyway?"



"Their anti-aircraft batteries would fire on us."



He held back his irritation with difficulty -- he had a biting impulse to shout his anger. He had directed the pilot to land on the remote end of the big, lake-like Rada de Lisboa, because he had hoped to get ashore unobserved at that point. He was disappointed because the Portuguese officials wouldn't let the plane land there. It was a small disruption of his plans, but it filled him with hot anger. Another sign of how much he was on edge.



"Go ahead and make a normal landing," he said.



"Yes, sir," the Captain said. "I'm sorry."



"Nothing to be sorry about. It's not your fault," he said, and the words had a harshness he didn't intend them to have. The Captain looked worried as he made his way back to the compartment. The Portuguese officials were being cranky. They must have had enough tricks pulled on them in the course of the war to make them impatient with everyone.



The Clipper shortly went into its procedure landing approach.





HIS ill luck continued when he stepped ashore. He turned up his coat collar and tried to hurry through the bright modern new American trans-Atlantic terminal building. He was recognized, however.



He could hear the word going around while they examined his credentials: "Es la Senor Savaget!" That was in Spanish, but he heard it in Portuguese, also.



More attention, he thought sourly, than the leading bullfighter used to get before the war. But he was flattered, and embarrassed, too.