"Smith, Wilbur - Courtney 04 - Golden Fox" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

Ramsey Machado shrugged lightly. 'It was the only certain way of getting and holding her attention. You must realize that this woman is accustomed to male adulation. She has only to lift a finger and men come swarming about her. I think you must trust my judgement in this matter." "You allowed her to get away.' The older man knew he was repeating himself, but this fellow needled him.

He did not like him, and did not know him well enough yet to trust him. Not that he ever fully trusted any one of his operatives. However, this one was too self-assured, too disrespectful. He had turned aside the rebuke with a shrug, where another might have cringed. He had blatantly set his own judgement above that of a superior officer.

Joe Cicero hooded his eyes. They were as opaque as puddles of old engine oil, startlingly black against the pallor of his skin and the silver-white hair that hung limply over his ears and forehead.

"Your orders were to make contact and to maintain it." 'With respect, Comrade Director, my orders were to inveigle myself into the woman's confidence, not to rush at her barking like a mad dog." No, Joe Cicero did not like him. His attitude was offensive, but that was not the only reason. He was a foreigner.

Joe Cicero considered any fton-Russian a foreigner. No matter what the concept of international socialism dictated, East Germans, Yugoslavs, Hungarians, Cubans and Poles - they were all foreigners to him. It infuriated him to have to pass on responsibility for so much of the section that he had headed for almost thirty years to others. Especially people like this.

Not only was Machado a foreigner, but also his very roots and origins were corrupt. He was no scion of the proletariat, not even of the despised bourgeoisie, but was a full member of that hated and outdated system of class and privilege, an aristocrat.

True, Machado disparaged and despised his origins, and used his tide now only to achieve his goals, but to Joe Cicero his blood-lines were tainted and his aristocratic manners and affectations were an insult to all he, Cicero, believed in.

Furthermore he had been born in Spain, a fascist country historically ruled by a Catholic monarchy which was the enemy of the people, even more so now under the monstrous Franco who had put down the communist revolution. He might call himself a Cuban socialist, but to Joe Cicero he stank of Spanish fascism and aristocracy.

"You let her get away,' he persisted. 'After all this time and money wasted.' He realized that he was being ponderous and heavy-handed, and he knew that his powers were failing. The sickness was already slowing his wits.

Ramsey smiled, that condescending smile that Joe Cicero hated so well. "She is on the line, like a fish; she may swim and dive only until I am ready to reel her in." Again he had contradicted his superior, and Joe Cicero considered the last but the- most poignant reason for his dislike of the man. His youth and comeliness and health. It made him painfully aware of his own mortality, for Joe Cicero was dying.

Since childhood he had chain-smoked these rank Turkish cigarettes, and on his last visit to Moscow the doctors had at last diagnosed the cancer in his lungs and offered him treatment in one of the sanatoria reserved for officers of his seniority. Instead Joe Cicero had elected to continue in service, to see his department securely handed over to his successor. He had not then known that this Spaniard was to be that successor. If he had known, perhaps he might have chosen the sanatorium.

He felt tired now and discouraged. His store of energy and enthusiasm was all used up, just as only a few years ago his hair had been jet black and dense, and now was white, tinged only with yellow like sun-dried seaweed, and he could not walk a dozen paces without wheezing and coughing like an asthmatic.

Recently he had been waking in the night, drenched with those terrible night-sweats, and when he fought for his breath he lay awake in the darkness and was assailed with terrible doubts. Had it been worth it, a lifetime of dedicated painstaking work? What did he have to show for it?

What little solid success had he achieved?

For almost thirty years he had served in the African department of the fourth directorate of the KGB. For the last ten of those years, he had been head of station South, the division responsible for the African continent below the equator, and quite naturally most of his attention and that of his department had been devoted to the most developed and richest country in his region, the Republic of South Africa.

The other man at the table was a South African. Up until this time, he had remained silent, but now he said softly: 'I do not understand why We are spending so much time discussing this woman. Explain it to me.' Both the white men at the table diverted their attention to him. When Raleigh Tabaka spoke, other men usually listened. He had about him a peculiar intensity, a charged air of purpose that held the attention of others.

All his life, Joe Cicero had worked with black Africans, the nationalist leaders of the forces of liberation and the socialist struggle. He had known them all, Jomo Kenyatta and Kenneth Kaunda, Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere.

Some of them he had come to know intimately: men like Moses Gama, who had been sent to a martyr's death, and Nelson Mandela, who was still languishing in the prison of white racism.

Cicero placed Raleigh Tabaka in the forefront of that illustrious company.

In fact Raleigh had been Moses Gama's nephew, and Raleigh had been present the night the South African police murdered his uncle. He seemed to have inherited Moses Gama's tremendous personality and force of character, and he had stepped squarely into the wide gap left by Gama. He was thirty years old, but already he was deputy director of Umkhonto we Sizwe, 'The Spear of the Nation', the military wing of the South African National Congress, and Joe Cicero knew that he had proved himself time and again in the field and in the councils of the ANC. He had the talent, the guts and the verve to rise as high as any other man in Africa.

Joe Cicero preferred him to the white Spanish aristocrat, but he recognized that despite their difference in colour and lineage they were men cast in the same mould. Hard and dangerous men, well versed in death and violence, adepts in the subtle shifting world of political power and intrigue. These were the men to whom Joe Cicero must hand over the reins, and he resented them and hated them for it.

"The woman,' he said heavily, 'could be of extraordinary value, if she is controlled and developed to her full potential, but I will let the marquds explain that to you. It is his case, and he has studied the subject fully." Abruptly Ramsey Machado's smile thinned, and his eyes turned flat and hostile.

"I would prefer the Comrade Director not to use that title,' he said coldly. 'Even in jest." Joe Cicero had learnt that it was probably the only way he could penetrate the Spaniard's slick armour-plating.

"I beg your pardon, comrade.' Joe inclined his head in mock contrition.

"But please do not let my little lapse interrupt your recitation." Ramsey Machado opened the loose-leaf binder that lay on the table in front of him, but he did not even glance at it. He knew every word it contained by heart.