"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 15 - Quiller Bamboo 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

Holmes turned his head. 'How much sleep have you had?'

'Few hours.'

'Look in on me later if you want to. I've got to put a fire out in here.'

He went into Signals and I kept on going. Not strictly a fire: someone had come unstuck in the field, Beirut, Sri Lanka, Bogota, you name it, and he was lighting up his mission board for help.

Tilson was alone in Hyde's office, talking on one of the phones; by the look of him they'd dragged him out of bed too. I felt the adrenaline flushing the skin because I hadn't seen this kind of panic at the Bureau for months, but I was not going out again after only ten days, and they couldn't insist. Tilson nodded for me to have a chair but I stayed on my feet and went across to the window and looked at the street three stories below, deserted in the lamplight.

'I don't know,' Tilson said on the phone, 'it's only just come up. Quiller's here now, you should know; better tell Mr Shepley.'

I looked up at the reflection of Tilson's bland lopsided face in the window. In this place Shepley was another name for God.

'Do you want him briefed and cleared first, or is he to go along to the FO right away?'

I didn't really mind what the answer was, since I was going back to bed in any case. I was technically at rest, which meant I'd got another twenty-one days before they could sign me up again and send me out, and I was going to spend at least a week at Norfolk wallowing in the luxury of sauna baths and Swedish massage and meditation to bring the nerves down to their normal pitch, plus a bit of refresher training with Kimura-sensei in the dojo and some close combat work to get the reflexes back in tune.

They're holding a board open,' Tilson said on the phone, 'and they've brought Dawson in from Paris - he knows the kind of signals we're liable to get from Hong Kong.'

No way. Not Hong Kong. Norfolk. There was a drunk down there in the street, tottering with tremendous care along the pavement, holding on to the railings for a bit and then shoving off again.

Tilson cupped the phone and said, 'Are you still under any kind of treatment?'

'Yes.'

'What for?'

'Shark bite.'

'What's your condition?'

'Look,' I said, 'we've got to talk.'

Tilson took his hand away from the mouthpiece. 'Yes, but I'll tell him the situation, or leave it to Mr Hyde.'

The drunk was on a course forty-five degrees in error, and when his foot slipped off the curb he went down like a felled tree and lay with his head in the gutter.

'No,' Tilson said, 'it began as a simple request for asylum.'

I went across to the desk and picked up one of the other phones and pressed 9 and got the dial tone and pressed 999 and told them. Someone looked in at the door and Tilson shook his head and they went out again.

'I don't frankly know. We got it from MI6. They said they don't want to touch it.'

'It's too far away,' I said into the phone, 'to see if he's bleeding, but he's going to get his head run over if he stays where he is.'

Another phone started ringing and Tilson picked it up. 'He's not here.'

'Fifty yards north of the Cenotaph,' I said.