Puppet on a Chain. Alistair MacLean

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СКАЧАТЬ decision. When they pick what’s left of you from the pavement there they’ll think you’re just another cannabis smoker who got too high and took a trip into the wild blue yonder.’

      ‘That’s murder!’ He was still sobbing, but his voice was only a husky whisper now, maybe the view was making him dizzy. ‘You wouldn’t—’

      ‘Wouldn’t I? Your people killed a friend of mine this afternoon. Exterminating vermin can be a pleasure. Seventy feet’s a long drop and not a mark of violence. Except that every bone in your body will be broken. Seventy feet. Look!’

      I heaved him a bit further over the balustrade so that he could have a better look and had to use both hands to haul him back again.

      ‘Talk?’

      He made a hoarse sound in his throat, so I hauled him off the balustrade and pushed him inside to the centre of the room. I said, ‘Who sent you?’

      I’ve said he was tough, but he was a great deal tougher than I had ever imagined. He should have been fear-stricken and in agony, and I have no doubt that he was both, but that didn’t stop him from whirling round convulsively to his right in a full circle and breaking free from my grip. The sheer unexpectedness of it had caught me off guard. He came at me again, a knife that had suddenly appeared in his left hand curving upwards in a wicked arc and aimed for a point just below the breastbone. Normally, he would probably have done a nice job of carving but the circumstances were abnormal: his timing and reactions were gone. I caught and clamped his knife wrist in both my hands, threw myself backwards, straightened a leg under him as I jerked his arm down and sent him catapulting over me. The thud of his landing shook the room and probably quite a few adjacent rooms at that.

      I twisted and got to my feet in one motion but the need for haste was gone. He was on the floor on the far side of the room, his head resting on the balcony sill. I lifted him by his lapels and his head lolled back till it almost touched his shoulder blades. I lowered him to the floor again. I was sorry he was dead, because he'd probably had information that could have been invaluable to me, but that was the only reason I was sorry.

      I went through his pockets, which held a good number of interesting articles but only two that were of interest to me: a case half full of handmade reefers and a couple of scraps of paper. One paper bore the typed letters and figures MOO 144, the other two numbers – 910020 and 2789. Neither meant a thing to me but on the reasonable assumption that the floor-waiter wouldn't have been carrying them on his person unless they had some significance for him I put them away in a safe place that had been provided for me by my accommodating tailor, a small pocket that had been let into the inside of the right trouser-leg about six inches above the ankle.

      I tidied up what few signs of struggle there had been, took the dead man’s gun, went out on the balcony, leaned out over the balustrade and spun the gun upwards and to the left. It cleared the coaming and landed soundlessly on the roof about twenty feet away. I went back inside, flushed the reefer end down the toilet, washed the ashtray and opened every door and window to let the sickly smell evaporate as soon as possible. Then I dragged the waiter across to the tiny hall and opened the door on to the passage.

      The hallway was deserted. I listened intently, but could hear nothing, no sound of approaching footfalls. I crossed to the lift, pressed the button, waited for the lift to appear, opened the door a crack, inserted a matchbox between jamb and door so that the latter couldn’t close and complete the electrical circuit then hurried back to my suite. I dragged the waiter across to the lift, opened the door, dumped him without ceremony on the lift floor, withdrew the matchbox and let the door swing to. The lift remained where it was: obviously, no one was pressing the button of that particular lift at that particular moment.

      I locked the outside door to my suite with the skeleton and made my way back to the fire-escape, by now an old and trusted friend. I reached street level unobserved and made my way round to the main entrance. The ancient at the barrel-organ was playing Verdi now and Verdi was losing by a mile. The operator had his back to me as I dropped a guilder into his tin can. He turned to thank me, his lips parted in a toothless smile, then he saw who it was and his jaw momentarily dropped open. He was at the very bottom of the heap and no one had bothered to inform him that Sherman was abroad. I gave him a kindly smile and passed into the foyer.

      There were a couple of uniformed staff behind the desk, together with the manager, whose back was at the moment towards me. I said loudly: ‘Six-one-six, please.’

      The manager turned round sharply, his eyebrows raised high but not high enough. Then he gave me his warmhearted crocodile smile.

      ‘Mr Sherman. I didn’t know you were out.’

      ‘Oh yes, indeed. Pre-dinner constitutional. Old English custom, you know.’

      ‘Of course, of course.’ He smiled at me archly as if there was something vaguely reprehensible about this old English custom, then allowed a slightly puzzled look to replace the smile. He was as phoney as they come. ‘I don’t remember seeing you go out.’

      ‘Well, now,’ I said reasonably, ‘you can’t be expected to attend to all of your guests all of the time, can you?’ I gave him his own phoney smile back again, took the key and walked towards the bank of lifts. I was less than half-way there when I was brought up short, as a piercing scream cut through the foyer and brought instant silence, which lasted only long enough for the woman who had screamed to draw a deep breath and start in again. The source of this racket was a middle-aged, flamboyantly dressed female, a caricature of the American tourist abroad, who was standing in front of a lift, her mouth opened in a rounded ‘O’, her eyes like saucers. Beside her a portly character in a seer-sucker suit was trying to calm her, but he didn’t look any too happy himself and gave the impression that he wouldn’t have minded doing a little screaming himself.

      The assistant manager rushed past me and I followed more leisurely. By the time I reached the lift the assistant manager was on his knees, bent over the sprawled-out form of the dead waiter.

      ‘My goodness,’ I said. ‘Is he ill, do you think?’

      ‘Ill? Ill?’ The assistant manager glared at me. ‘Look at the way his neck is. The man’s dead.’

      ‘Good God, I do believe you’re right.’ I stooped and peered more closely at the waiter. ‘Haven’t I seen this man somewhere before?’

      ‘He was your floor-waiter,’ the assistant manager said, which is not an easy remark to make with your teeth clamped together.

      ‘I thought he looked familiar. In the midst of life—’ I shook my head sadly. ‘Where’s the restaurant?’

      ‘Where’s the – where’s the—’

      ‘Never mind,’ I said soothingly, ‘I can see you’re upset. I’ll find it myself.’

      The restaurant of the Hotel Rembrandt may not be, as the owners claim, the best in Holland, but I wouldn’t care to take them to court on a charge of misrepresentation. From the caviare to the fresh out-of-season strawberries – I wondered idly whether to charge this in the expense account as entertainment or bribes – the food was superb. I thought briefly, but not guiltily, about Maggie and Belinda, but such things had to be. The red plush sofa on which I was sitting was the ultimate in dining comfort, so I leaned back in it, lifted my brandy glass and said, ‘Amsterdam!’

      ‘Amsterdam!’ said Colonel Van de Graaf. The Colonel, deputy head of the city’s police, had joined me, without invitation, only five minutes previously. He was sitting in a large chair which seemed too СКАЧАТЬ