"Hall, Adam - The Sinkiang Executive" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

'It was the end phase,' I said in a moment. 'I'd been in there and sent the stuff out and London was satisfied and my orders were to save myself if I could. Loman was still directing me in the field, with signals through Prague. But they had the girl, so I made a deal. I said they could take me for interrogation if they let the girl go.'

I was trying to remember the details but it's often hard to go back over the end phase of a mission: we're usually concerned with saving our skin and I suppose there's a certain amount of retrogressive amnesia that sets in to protect the psyche; otherwise we'd never go out again. Today, talking to Parkis in a different environment, I found that particular scene was still in sharp focus, fogging out most of the background: Katia standing there under the lamp, scared to death and still smiling for me because that was the way she wanted me to remember her; and those two bastards standing one on each side.

'They agreed to the deal,' I said absently. 'And I saw her walk away, free.'

He asked too casually: 'You submitted to interrogation?'

'What? Of course not. I knew I could get out: Loman had a plane lined up and I'd got papers for Austria. So that's what I did.'

I listened to the rain on the window. It had been raining then, in Bratislava; she'd been wet with it, her hair shining as she'd walked away, out of the lamplight, free.

'When I was back in London I heard what they'd done to her.'

That was all I wanted to tell him,

I watched the streaks running down the window, distorting the skyline across Whitehall; it looked as if the roofs were slowly melting out there in the January cold, and the buildings dissolving.

'You failed to keep this "deal" of yours,' Parkis said.

'So did they.'

'Did you ever imagine they'd keep to it?'

'I think they would have.'

'If you had.'

'Yes.'

'So the blame was yours.'

'Indirectly. But I didn't kill her. They did.'

He looked at the carpet, his feet together, his hands coming out of his pockets and clasping themselves in front of him. It looked as if the bastard was praying for something. Patience, probably.

'So I am to believe that for the sake of avenging this girl you speak of, you killed a man in a public place and put the Bureau in extreme hazard.'

'Believe what you like,' I told Him.

His head came up sharply. 'But she wasn't even working for us! The Bratislava operation was -'

'She was liaison. She'd been helping us to -'

'Not Bureau liaison. Loman would have -'

'Of course not. She was Czech, working through their -'

'But if you were on the point of getting out, her work must have been finished! You had no further use for her!'