"Maclean, Alistair - 1970 - Caravan to Vaccares" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

'You've just said you can't kill me yet.' He took a step forward.
Bowman said nothing. He altered the pistol fractionally until it was lined up on a spot between Ferenc's eyes. Czerda made no move to take a second step. Bowman looked at him and pointed to a stool close to the small table.
'Sit down,' he said, 'and face your son.'
Czerda did as he was told. Bowman took one step forward and it was apparent that Ferenc's reactions weren't yet back in working order for his suddenly horrified ex-pession in what little was left of his face that was still capable of registering expressions and his mouth opening to shout a warning came far too late to be of any aid to
Czerda who crashed heavily to the floor as the barrel of Bowman's gun caught him behind the ear.
Ferenc bared his teeth and swore viciously at him. At least that was what Bowman assumed he was doing for Ferenc had reverted to his native Romany but he hadn't even started in on his descriptions when Bowman stepped forward wordlessly, his gun swinging again. Ferenc's reactions were even slower than Bowman had imagined: he toppled head-long across his father and lay still.
'What on earth—' The voice came from behind Bowman. He threw himself to one side, dropping to the floor, whirled round and brought the gun up: then, more slowly, he rose. Cecile stood in the doorway, her green eyes wide, her face stilled in shock.
'You fool,' Bowman said savagely. 'You almost died there. Don't you know that?' She nodded, the shock still in her face. 'Come inside. Shut the door. You are a fool. Why the hell didn't you do what I asked and stayed where you were?'
Almost as if in a trance she stepped inside and closed the door. She stared down at the two fallen men, then back at Bowman again.
'For God's sake, why did you knock those two men senseless? Two injured men?'
'Because it was inconvenient to kill them at present,' Bowman said coldly. He turned his back on her and began to search the place methodically and exhaustively. When one searches any place, be it gypsy caravan or baronial mansion, methodically and exhaustively, one has to wreck it completely in the process. So, in an orderly and systematic fashion, Bowman set about reducing Czerda's caravan to a total ruin. He ripped the beds to pieces, sliced open the mattresses with the aid of a knife he'd borrowed from the recumbent Czerda, scattering the flock stuffing far and wide to ensure that there was nothing hidden inside, and wrenched open cupboards, all locked, again with the aid of Czerda's knife. He moved into the kitchen recess, smashed all the items of crockery that were capable of holding anything, emptied the contents of a dozen food tins into the sink, smashed open preserving jars and a variety of wine bottles by the simple expedient of knocking thenr together two at a time and ended up by spilling the
contents of the cutlery drawers on the floor to ensure that there was nothing hidden beneath the lining paper. There wasn't.
Cecile, who had been watching this performance still in the same kind of hypnotic trance, said: 'Who's Gaiuse Strome?'
'How long were you listening?'
'All the time. Who's Gaiuse Strome?'
'I don't know,' Bowman said frankly. 'Never heard of him until tonight.'
He turned his attention to the larger clothing drawers. He emptied the contents of each in turn on the floor and kicked them apart. There was nothing there for him, just clothes.
'Other people's property doesn't mean all that much to you, does it?' By this time Cecile's state of trance had altered to the dazed incomprehension of one trying to come to grips with reality.
'He'll have it insured,' Bowman said comfortingly. He began an assault on the last piece of furniture still intact, a beautifully carved mahogany bureau worth a small fortune in anybody's money, splintering open the locked drawers with the now invaluable aid of the point of Czerda's knife. He dumped the contents of the first two drawers on the floor and was about to open a third when something caught his eye. He stooped and retrieved a pair of heavy rolled-up woollen socks. Inside them was an elastic-bound package of brand-new crackling banknotes with consecutive serial numbers. It took him over half a minute to count them.
'Eighty thousand Swiss francs in one-thousand-franc notes,' Bowman observed. 'I wonder where friend Czerda got eighty thousand Swiss francs in one-thousand-franc notes? Ah, well.' He stuffed the notes into a hip pocket and resumed the search.
'But—but that's stealing!' It would be too much, perhaps, to say that Cecile looked horrified but there wasn't much in the way of admiration in those big green eyes: but Bowman was in no mood for moral disapprobation. 'Oh, shut up!' he said. 'But you've got money.' 'Maybe, this is how I get it.'
He broke open another drawer, sifted through the contents with the toe of his shoe, then turned as he heard a sound to his left. Ferenc was struggling shakily to his feet, so Bowman took his arm, helped him to stand upright, hit him very hard indeed on the side of the jaw and lowered him to the floor again. The shock was back in Cecile's f ace, a shock mingled with the beginnings of revulsion, she was probably a gently nurtured girl who had been brought up to believe that the opera or the ballet or the theatre constituted the ideal of an evening's entertainment. Bowman started in on the next drawer.
'Don't tell me,' he said. 'Just an idle layabout laying about. Not funny?'
'No.' She had her lips compressed in a very school-mannish way. 'I'M pressed for time. Ah!'
'What is it?' In even the most puritanical of females repugnance doesn't stand a chance against curiosity.
'This.' He showed her a delicately fashioned rosewood lacquered box inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl. It was locked and so exquisitely made that it was quite impossible to insert the point of even Czerda's razor-sharp knife into the microscopic line between lid and box. Cecile seemed to derive a certain malicious satisfaction from this momentary problem for she waved a hand to indicate the indescribable wreckage that now littered almost every square inch of the caravan floor. 'Shall I look for the key?' she asked sweetly. 'No need.' He laid the rosewood box on the floor and jumped on it with both heels, reducing it at once to splintered matchwood. He removed a sealed envelope from the ruins, opened it and extracted a sheet of paper.
On it was a typewritten—in capitals—jumble of apparently meaningless letters and figures. There were a few words in plain language but their meaning in the context was completely obscure. Cecile peered over his shoulder. Her eyes were screwed up and he knew she was having difficulty in seeing. 'What is it?' she asked.
'Code, looks like. One or two words straight. There's "Monday", a date—May 24th—and a place-name—Grau du Roi.'
'Grau du Roi?'
'A fishing port and holiday resort down on the coast. Now, why should a gypsy be carrying a message in code?' He thought about this for a bit but it didn't do him any good: he was still awake and on his feet but his mind had turned in for the night. 'Stupid question. Up, up and away.'
'What? Still two lovely drawers left unsmashed?'
'Leave those for the vandals.' He took her arm so that she wouldn't trip too often on the way to the door and she peered questioningly at him.
'Meaning you can break codes?'
Bowman looked around him. 'Furniture, yes. Crockery, yes. Codes, no. Come, to our hotel.'
They left. Before closing the door Bowman had a last look at the two still unconscious and injured men lying amidst the irretrievably ruined shambles of what had once been a beautifully appointed caravan interior. He felt almost sorry for the caravan.
CHAPTER' FOUR
When Bowman woke up the birds were singing, the sky was a cloudless translucent blue and the rays of the morning sun were streaming through the window. Not the window of an hotel but the window of the blue Peugeot which he'd pulled off the road in the early hours of the morning into the shelter of a thick clump of trees that had seemed, in the darkness, to offer almost total concealment from the road. Now, in daylight, he could see that it offered nothing of the kind and that they were quite visible to any passer-by who cared to cast a casual sideways glance in their direction and, as there were those not all that far distant whose casual sideways glances he'd much rather not be the object of, he deemed it time to move on.
He was reluctant to wake Cecile. She appeared to have passed a relatively comfortable night—or what had been left of the night—with her dark head on his shoulder, a fact that he dimly resented because he had passed a most uncomfortable night, partly because he'd been loath to move for fear of disturbing her but chiefly because his unaccus-tomedly violent exercise of the previous night had left him with numerous aches in a wide variety of muscles that hadn't been subjected to such inconsiderate treatment for a long time. He wound down the driver's window, sniffed the fresh cool morning air and lit a cigarette. The rasp of the cigarette lighter was enough to make her stir, straighten and peer rather Wearily about her. until she realized where she was.
She looked at him and said: 'Well, as hotels go, it was cheap enough.'
'That's what I like,' Bowman said. "The pioneering spirit.'
'Do I look like a pioneer?'
'Frankly, no.' 'I want a bath.'
'And that you shall have and very soon. In the best hotel in Aries. Cross my heart.'
'You are an optimist. Every hotel room will,- have been taken weeks ago for the gypsy festival.'
'Indeed. Including the one / took. I booked my room two months ago.'
'I see.' She moved pointedly across to her own side of the seat which Bowman privately considered pretty ungrateful of her considering that she hadn't disdained the use of his shoulder as a pillow for the most of the night. 'You booked your room two months ago, Mr Bowman—' 'Neil.'
'I have been very patient, haven't I, Mr Bowman? I haven't asked questions?'
"That you haven't.' He looked at her admiringly. 'What a wife you're going to make. When I come home late from the office—' 'Please. What is it all about? Who are you?' 'A layabout on the run.' 'On the run? Following the gypsies that-—' 'I'm a vengeful layabout.' 'I've helped you—' 'Yes, you have.'
'I've let you have my car. You've put me in danger—' 'I know. I'm sorry about that and I'd no right to do it. I'll put you in a taxi for Martignane airport and the first plane for England. You'll be safe there. Or take this car. I'll get a lift to Aries.' 'Blackmail!'
'Blackmail? I don't understand. I'm offering you a place of safety. Do you mean that you're prepared to come with me?' She nodded. He looked at her consideringly. 'Such implicit trust in a man with so much and so very recently spilled blood on his hands?' She nodded again.