"Destroyer 002 - Death Check.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"So?"

"So the last time I tell you about abalone, I no see you for a month."

"You think abalone has something to do with my work here?"

"You think maybe Giuseppe is stupid, Mr. Time-Study man?"

"No. Many people are stupid. Especially back east. But not you, paisan. Not you."

"It's something maybe to do with the stock market, yes?"

"If I said yes, you wouldn't believe me."

"I believe anyting you say. Anyting."

"It's the stock market."

"Not for a minute does Giuseppe believe that."

"I thought you said you'd believe me?"

"Only if you makea sense. Stock market makea no sense."

"Abalone makes no sense? Time studies make no sense?"

"Nothing makes no sense," Bresicola insisted.

Very good, thought the time study man, because now was no time to be giving out signals. It would be a very nice way to get oneself killed. First, loss of your vibrations, then your awareness, then your balance, and before long, you were just a normal, cunning, strong human being. And that would not be enough. Not nearly enough.

He shared with Bresicola a glass of sharp red wine, made plans for dinner with no definite date, and when he left, had decided it was long past time to eliminate the time-study man.

He would exist until a plane ticket had been purchased with his American Express card and until $800 in travelers' checks were cashed. He would exist all the way from San Francisco to Kennedy Airport in New York City. He would walk into the men's room closest to the Pan American counter, look for a pair of blue suede shoes indicating that the wearer was reposing on the commode, wait till the room was clear, then mention that the urinals never worked and that he hoped some day the Americans could learn plumbing from the Swiss.

A wallet would come out from under the closed commode door and the time-study man's wallet would go in as exchange. The man inside would not open the door to see who got the wallet. He had been told that to open the door was to lose his job. There was even a better reason. If he should even glimpse the man who got the wallet, he would lose his life.

Remo Williams flipped the time-study man's wallet into the hand coming from beneath the door and snatched the other wallet in a motion so fast the person in the commode only knew there had been a switch by the change in the shade of the leather.

So much for the time-study man. Remo Williams left the men's room for a small cocktail lounge on the second level, from which he could look back down to make sure the blue suede shoes left the terminal without looking around.

The bar was dark, hiding the afternoon, a perpetual womb, a dispenser of nerve killers that Remo Williams was not allowed to have because he was on peak. He ordered ginger ale, then checked the wallet.

The seals were unbroken. He checked the credit cards and the wallet flap for the needle he had been assured would bring instant death. With the credit cards was a small card with phone numbers that were not phone numbers. By adding the numbers in the series, Remo learned that:

1) The Reach-Me-Urgent was the same. A Chicago dial-a-prayer. (That would have to be changed because of deteriorating phone service.)

2) The next training checkout with Chiun, his Korean teacher, was scheduled six weeks later at PlensikofPs Gym on Granby Street, Norfolk, Va. (Dammit, Chiun could stay alive long.)

3) The assignment meeting was at the Port Alexandria at 8 p.m., a face-to-face, with-oh no-Harold W. Smith himself.