"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 11 - Northlight (Quiller) 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

There was a short silence. He was the little shit at the operations switchboard, with enough experience to know that I'd broken the rules but not enough rank to tell me.

'Hold on,' he said.

I waited again.

'Quiller?'

'Yes.'

'We want you to make an immediate rendezvous.'

It sounded like Trench this time: cool, impersonal, the tone a shade touchy because I'd been difficult to contact.

'I can't do that.'

He said carefully: 'This is fully urgent.'

'I'm not on standby, you know that. I've got to meet someone at the airport and I'm already running late.'

'This is from Main Control,' Trench said, and left it at that.

Slight skin reaction: gooseflesh. When you've got your phone switched off and they still tell the police to pick you up and then tell you the instructions are coming direct from Main Control it's not because they can't find where you put the fruit gums.

'Why do they want me,' I asked him, 'particularly?'

'It was Mr Croder who told me to find you.'

Cold air was coming through the window, and I closed it. I don't like the cold. Through the windscreen the lights of the police car were sending an intermittent rainbow of reflections across the surface of the road, blue and white .. .flash-flash-flash...blue, and bone white .. .flash-flash-flash...while my skin reacted again to the nerves. I took a slow breath to steady them.

'Is this the submarine thing?'

'I don't know,' Trench said. There'd been nothing else in the headlines for the last four days. Of course he knew. He was high in the Control echelon, with powers to brief.

'Trench,' I told him, 'I've got to meet this man at the airport. He's a sixth dan coming in from Tokyo and it's my personal responsibility to escort him to the dojo. When I've done that, I'll phone you.'

'You'll have to get someone else to meet him.'

'There's no time. The dojo's south of the Thames, and they'd never reach the airport by nine-fifteen.'

'He must take a taxi, then.'

'We don't leave this man to get his own transport. This is Yamada.'

In a moment Trench said thinly, 'I'd rather not have to ask Mr Croder to come on the line. It shouldn't be necessary.'

The sound of the engine suddenly seemed louder and the lights in the wet street brighter. 'Listen, Trench, I'm not officially on standby and I'm not due to report back for operations until next week and you know that, so you've got a bloody nerve to put out a tracer on me and expect me to drop everything and give up the rest of the evening just because Croder's panicking all over the ops room. Tell him from me that as soon as I've met Yamada at the airport I'll-'

'Wait a minute.'