Running Blind. Desmond Bagley

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to a decision, and the decision was that I could do with a drink, so I went to find one.

      As I walked through the hotel foyer I saw Buchner-Graham hard at work in a telephone-box. Although it wasn’t particularly warm he was sweating.

      V

      I came out of a dreamless sleep because someone was shaking me and hissing, ‘Stewart, wake up!’ I Opened my eyes and found Graham leaning over me.

      I blinked at him. ‘Funny! I was under the impression I locked my door.’

      He grinned humourlessly. ‘You did. Wake up – you’re going to be interviewed. You’d better have your wits sharpened.’

      ‘What time is it?’

      ‘Five a.m.’

      I smiled. ‘Gestapo technique, eh! Oh, well: I suppose I’ll feel better when I’ve shaved.’

      Graham seemed nervous. ‘You’d better hurry. He’ll be here in five minutes.’

      ‘Who will?’

      ‘You’ll see.’

      I ran hot water into the basin and began to lather my face. ‘What was your function on this particular exercise, Graham? As a bodyguard you’re a dead loss, so it can’t have been that.’

      ‘You’d better stop thinking about me and start to think about yourself,’ he said. ‘You have a lot of explaining to do.’

      ‘True,’ I said, and put down the brush and picked up the razor. The act of scraping one’s face with a sliver of sharp metal always seems futile and a little depressing; I would have been happier in one of the hairier ages – counterespionage agent by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Victoria would have been the ideal ticket.

      I must have been more nervous than I thought because I shaved myself down to the blood on the first pass. Then someone knocked perfunctorily on the door and Slade came into the room. He kicked the door shut with his foot and glowered at me with a scowl on his jowly face, his hands thrust deep into his overcoat pockets. Without an overture he said briefly, ‘What’s the story, Stewart?’

      There’s nothing more calculated to put a man off his stroke than having to embark on complicated explanations with a face full of drying lather. I turned back to the mirror and continued to shave – in silence.

      Slade made one of those unspellable noises – an explosive outrush of air expelled through mouth and nose. He sat on the bed and the springs creaked in protest at the excessive weight. ‘It had better be good,’ he said. ‘I dislike being hauled out of bed and flown to the frozen north.’

      I continued to shave, thinking that whatever could bring Slade from London to Akureyri must be important. After the last tricky bit around the Adam’s apple, I said, ‘The package must have been more important than you told me.’ I turned on the cold tap and rinsed the soap from my face.

      ‘… that bloody package,’ he said.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ I apologized. ‘I didn’t hear that. I had water in my ears.’

      He contained himself with difficulty. ‘Where’s the package?’ he asked with synthetic patience.

      ‘As of this moment I couldn’t tell you.’ I dried my face vigorously. ‘It was taken from me at midday yesterday by four unknown males – but you know that already from Graham.’

      His voice rose. ‘And you let them take it – just like that!’

      ‘There wasn’t much I could do about it at the time,’ I said equably. ‘I had a gun in my kidneys.’ I nodded towards Graham. ‘What was he supposed to be doing about it – if it isn’t a rude answer?’

      Slade folded his hands together across his stomach. ‘We thought they’d tagged Graham – that’s why we brought you in. We thought they’d tackle Graham and give you a free run to the goal line.’

      I didn’t think much of that one. If they – whoever they were – had tagged Graham, then it wasn’t at all standard procedure for him to draw attention to me by lurking outside my flat. But I let it go because Slade always had been a slippery customer and I wanted to keep something in reserve.

      Instead, I said, ‘They didn’t tackle Graham – they tackled me. But perhaps they don’t know the rules of rugby football; it’s not a game they go for in Sweden.’ I gave myself a last dab behind the ears and dropped the towel. ‘Or in Russia,’ I added as an afterthought.

      Slade looked up. ‘And what makes you think of Russians?’

      I grinned at him. ‘I always think of Russians,’ I said drily. ‘Like the Frenchman who always thought of sex.’ I leaned over him and picked up my cigarettes. ‘Besides, they called me Stewartsen.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘So they knew who I was – not who I am now, but what I was once. There’s a distinction.’

      Slade shifted his eyes to Graham and said curtly, ‘Wait outside.’

      Graham looked hurt but obediently went to the door. When he’d closed it I said, ‘Oh, goody; now the children are out of the room we can have a grown-up conversation. And where, for Christ’s sake, did you get that one? I told you I wouldn’t stand for trainees on the operation.’

      ‘What makes you think he’s a trainee?’

      ‘Come, now; he’s still wet behind the ears.’

      ‘He’s a good man,’ said Slade, and shifted restlessly on the bed. He was silent for a while, then he said, ‘Well, you’ve really cocked this one up, haven’t you? Just a simple matter of carrying a small parcel from A to B and you fall down on it. I knew you were past it but, by God, I didn’t think you were so bloody decrepit.’ He wagged his finger. ‘And they called you Stewartsen! You know what that means?’

      ‘Kennikin,’ I said, not relishing the thought. ‘Is he here – in Iceland?’

      Slade hunched his shoulders. ‘Not that I know of.’ He looked at me sideways. ‘When you were contacted in Reykjavik what were you told?’

      I shrugged. ‘Not much. There was a car provided which I had to drive to Reykjavik by way of Krysuvik and leave parked outside the Saga. I did all that.’

      Slade grunted in his throat. ‘Run into any trouble?’

      ‘Was I supposed to?’ I asked blandly.

      He shook his head irritably. ‘We had word that something might happen. It seemed best to re-route you.’ He stood up with a dissatisfied look on his face and went to the door. ‘Graham!’

      I said, ‘I’m sorry about all this, Slade; I really am.’

      ‘Being sorry butters no bloody parsnips. We’ll just have to see what we can salvage from this mess. Hell, I brought you in because the Department is short-handed – and now we have a whole country to seal off because СКАЧАТЬ