"Brian Lumley - E-Branch 1 - Defilers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

I were ten years younger I might even try to kiss you!"
"What's age got to do with it?" she said. "You're as young as you feel, or as someone can make you
feel."
Trask knew a different version of that, which went: "You're as young as the one you're feeling,"
but he didn't say so. Suddenly he was very aware of Millie's perfume where she was standing close
beside him.
But as if she'd read his mind-and perhaps she had-she went back around to the front of his desk
and stood there looking at him in that way of hers. One of her ways, anyway.
"Er, you said stumbling blocks," Trask said, bringing his thoughts to order. "More than the ones
you've mentioned, presumably. Okay, I can see one such: we don't know where the money went, which
is where Malinari is. But we're talking about three quarters of a million dollars here. Surely we
can trace it?"
"We tried," Millie told him. "That international convention I mentioned?

Jslo problem,- any major signatory can gain entry to the database. With our security rating Jimmy
simply accessed it, went in, and took a look."
"And?"
"Would you believe that on that date about that time there were more than twenty movements of that
precise number of dollars left, right, and centre around the world? Well, there were, but not one
was destined for charities real or contrived."
Trask understood what she was saying. "Manchester's money went to a nonsignatory country, which is
to say Italy, Greece, China, Russia, or one of those South American places."
"Or Switzerland itself," she reminded him again.
By now Trask's mind had sorted itself out. He was thinking again, and doing an excellent job of
it. "That makes for a hell of a lot of places where Malinari could be," he said. "The way 1 see
it, this so-called charity can only be one of his friends from Starside. When they came into this
world they split up. He ended up in Australia, but where did the others go? Well wherever, he now
needs a safe haven and has fled to one of them. And why not, since he's been subsidizing that one-
let's continue to call it a 'charity'-for the last two years. Okay, we know where he hasn't gone:


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to one of the signatory countries. So now let's see if we can eliminate some of the places where
he might have gone."
"I'm with you," she answered.
Trask waved her to a chair and told her: "Millie, sit down for God's sake ... or mine, at least!
It's nine-thirty at night and you're still mobile. You're tiring me out, little sister."
"Funny," she said, seating herself and crossing her pretty legs, "but I thought I'd woken you up!
Anyway, let's do some of this eliminating."
"You're way ahead of me, right?" he said. "Okay, go on."
"Well," she began, "for five years now-ever since Hong Kong's third big financial collapse-China
has hidden herself away behind a bamboo curtain, convinced that the decadent, capitalist West is
deliberately trying to destabilize her. And now they have this plague to contend with, a new
bubonic strain running rampant through China and spreading west, which they haven't the resources
to combat. Also, what with their current disinclination toward foreign types in their country,
especially rich foreigners, but including diplomats and aid agencies, well they're not the most
friendly of people. In short, there aren't too many Westerners retiring to Beijing these days! And
I don't think Malinari would go there either."