Borrowed Time. Hugh Miller

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      ‘Look at the writing on the back of the picture.’

      Philpott turned it over. In smudged, pencilled longhand it said: Malcolm Philpott, Director of the United Nations Anti-Crime Organization (UNACO).

      ‘So he knew who I am.’

      ‘Indeed.’

      ‘Who was he?’

      ‘A seventy-year-old porter at the Washington Square Hotel. An immigrant who came to New York in 1964. Nothing exceptional is known about him — then again, nothing much at all is known about him.’

      Philpott nodded patiently. ‘Do you think maybe he was engaged in espionage?’

      ‘Not at all. We’re pretty sure he never broke the law once in the thirty-three years he lived in New York.’

      ‘So what’s the problem?’

      Crane stared. ‘I should have thought that was obvious.’

      Philpott stared back. Crane was a man of middle years, roughly the same age as himself, but he possessed none of Philpott’s natural authority. Crane always had to reach for an effect. The reaching put him under strain, and it never failed to show.

      ‘Don’t you find it extraordinary, and a trifle alarming,’ he said, ‘that a porter in a Greenwich Village hotel had in his possession a photograph that identifies you as the Director of UNACO?’

      ‘Well, no …’

      Crane’s mouth twisted. It was meant to be scornful, but again it was mainly strain that showed.

      ‘UNACO is not a secret organization,’ Philpott said. ‘True, we don’t advertise our existence. Our offices are unmarked, our phone numbers are not listed, and our agents and employees never acknowledge their affiliation. Our profile is minimal, but secret we are not.’

      ‘Yet this man, this porter, found out who you are.’

      Philpott shrugged. ‘I have no theories about how he did that. But it wouldn’t have been too difficult, if he was determined.’

      ‘And why did he want to know about you?’

      ‘I have no theories about that, either.’

      ‘The department is very unhappy with this, Mr Philpott …’

      ‘The department?’

      ‘Policy Control. We can’t accept a situation where a senior officer of a sensitive department in the United Nations is so … so careless in his conduct of his affairs that any riffraff can find out what his job is and even take pictures of him on the street.’

      Philpott stood up and came around the desk. He was smiling one-sidedly, a clear sign of displeasure.

      ‘I don’t really care how Policy Control feels about the way I run my life. To be frank, in my day-to-day awareness of this vast environment we share, your department seems scarcely to exist.’

      Crane looked as if he had been punched. ‘I think it would be easy enough,’ he blustered, ‘to demonstrate Policy Control’s existence, and the way in which it enforces revisions of departmental procedure within the UN structure. That includes departments which grandly imagine themselves to be above any form of restraint or governance.’

      ‘Mr Crane, I am accountable only to two people. They are the Head of the Security Council, and the Secretary General of the United Nations. That’s it. I explain myself to no others. Now if you’ll excuse me …’ Philpott pointed to the door. ‘I’ve got real work to do.’

      Crane stumped to the door and jerked it open. ‘I’ll tell my director what you said, and that you show no willingness to co-operate.’

      Philpott nodded, going back behind the desk. ‘You can also tell your director that I made a suggestion.’

      ‘Which is?’ Crane demanded.

      ‘That you whistle Dixie through any orifice of your choice.’

      Crane jumped aside as C.W. Whitlock strode into the office.

      ‘Morning, gentlemen,’ he said breezily.

      Crane went out and slammed the door.

      Whitlock put a folder on Philpott’s desk. ‘What’s wrong with The Creeper?’

      ‘There’s a leak in his self-importance. What have you got?’

      ‘A heartfelt letter from a missionary in the Vale of Kashmir.’ Whitlock flipped open the folder.

      ‘Not another one of your cries for help?’

      ‘Smart of you to guess, sir.’

      Whitlock was an instantly likeable man, in nature and appearance. He was a native Kenyan whose white grandfather’s genes had bestowed a light umber skin, a strong jaw and a firm mouth, which Whitlock softened with a moustache.

      ‘The letter was sent to the Security Council, they passed it along to us. Do you want to read it?’

      ‘Later, perhaps,’ Philpott said. ‘Summarize for me.’

      Whitlock leafed down through the documents to find the letter and his notes. Philpott couldn’t help watching him. He was incredibly fastidious in his movements, a man who had been described by a former Secretary General as fitting his role so well that it might have been moulded around him. He breathed aptitude.

      ‘Here it is.’ Whitlock put the letter on the desk with the notes alongside. ‘It’s from the Reverend Alex Young, a Church of England priest. He runs a medical and teaching mission at Shahdara, a village near the town of Tangmarg in the Vale of Kashmir.’

      ‘What does he want?’

      ‘He’s asking the UN to do something to curb the growing violence of the Muslim separatists, and the increasing influence of drug peddlers in the region. In a recent flare-up a local doctor’s gardener was killed. The doctor in question is Simon Arberry, an American, who’s doing big things with his public medical centres.’

      ‘There was something in Scientific American …’

      ‘Currently the Arberry Foundation is setting up a free hospital for the people of the region,’ Whitlock said. ‘Anyway, among Reverend Young’s other concerns, he seems worried that the unrest and physical danger might drive the good Dr Arberry out of the area, which would set the public care programmes back a long way.’

      Philpott picked up the top page of the letter. ‘“This is one of the most serenely beautiful places in the world”,’ he read aloud. ‘“It is a perfect spot to live, but the increase in drug trafficking and the disruptive influence of the extremists, fomenting ill feeling between Indian and Pakistani elements, threaten to plunge the region into bloody war.”’

      He put the page back. ‘That’s hardly news to the UN,’ he said. ‘Most of our observers know the root of the trouble lies west of Kashmir.’

      ‘Afghanistan.’ СКАЧАТЬ