"McCammon, Robert R. - The Wolf's Hour" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCammon Robert R)

The flames crackled and spat sparks. Michael Gallatin waited for the rest of it.
“You’d be flown over France and go in by parachute, near the village of Bazancourt about sixty miles northwest of Paris,” Humes-Talbot said. “One of our people will be at the drop point to meet you. From there, you’ll be taken to Paris and given all the help you need to reach Adam. This is a high-priority assignment, Major Gallatin, and if the invasion’s going to have any chance at all, we’ve got to know what we’re up against.”
Michael watched the fire burn. He said, “I’m sorry. Find someone else.”
“But, sir… please don’t make a hasty—”
“I said I’ve retired. That ends it.”
“Well, that’s just peachy!” Shackleton burst out. “We broke our butts gettin’ here, because we were told by some jackass that you were the best in your business, and you say you’re ‘retired.’ ” He slurred the word. “Where I come from that’s just another way of sayin’ a man’s lost his nerve.”
Michael smiled thinly, which served to infuriate Shackle-ton even more, but didn’t respond.
“Major, sir?” Humes-Talbot tried again. “Please don’t give us your final word now. Won’t you at least think about the assignment? Perhaps we might stay overnight, and we can discuss it again in the morning?”
Michael listened to the noise of sleet against the windows. Shackleton thought of the long road home, and his tailbone throbbed. “You can stay the night,” Michael agreed, “but I won’t go to Paris.”
Humes-Talbot started to speak again, but he decided to let it rest. Shackleton muttered, “Hellfire and damnation!” but Michael only pondered the fires of his own making.
“We brought along a driver,” Humes-Talbot said. “Is there a possibility you might find some room for him?”
“I’ll put a cot in front of the fire.” He got up and went to get the cot from his storage room, and Humes-Talbot left the house to call Mallory in.
While the two men were gone, Shackleton nosed around the den. He found an antique rosewood Victrola, a record on the turntable. Its title was The Rite of Spring, by somebody named Stravinsky. Well, count on a Russian to like Russian music. Probably a bunch of Slavic jabberwocky. He could use a bright Bing Crosby tune on a night like this. Gallatin liked books, that was for sure. Volumes like Man from Beast, Carnivores, A History of Gregorian Chants, Shakespeare’s World, and other books with Russian, German, and French titles filled the bookcases.
“Do you like my house?”
Shackleton jumped. Michael had come up behind him, silent as mist. He was carrying a folding cot, which he unfolded and placed before the hearth. “The house was a Lutheran church in the eighteen-forties. Survivors of a shipwreck built it; the sea cliffs are only a hundred yards from here. They built a village on this site, too, but bubonic plague wiped them out eight years later.”
“Oh,” Shackleton said, and wiped his hands on his trouser legs.
“The ruins were still sturdy. I decided to try to put it back together again. It took me all of four years, and I still have a lot to do. In case you’re wondering, I’ve got a generator that runs on petrol out back.”
“I figured you didn’t have power lines way out here.”
“No. Not way out here. You’ll be sleeping in the tower room where the pastor died. It’s not a very large room, but the bed’s big enough for two.” The door opened and closed, and Michael glanced back at Humes-Talbot and the chauffeur. Michael stared for a few seconds, unblinking, as the old man took off his hat and topcoat. “You can sleep here,” Michael said, with a gesture toward the cot. “The kitchen’s through that door, if you want coffee or anything to eat,” he told all three of them. “I keep hours you might find odd. If you hear me up in the middle of the night… stay in your room,” he said, with a glance that made the back of Shackleton’s neck crawl.
“I’m going up to rest.” Michael started up the stairs. He paused and selected a book. “Oh… the bathroom and shower are behind the house. I hope you don’t mind cold water. Good night, gentlemen.” He ascended the steps, and in another moment they heard a door softly close.
“Damn weird,” Shackleton muttered, and he trudged into the kitchen for something to chew on.


4


Michael sat up in bed and lit an oil lamp. He hadn’t been sleeping, only waiting. He picked up his wristwatch from the small table beside his bed, though his sense of time told him it was after three. It was three-oh-seven.
He sniffed the air, and his eyes narrowed. A smell of tobacco smoke. Burley and latakia, a potent blend. He knew that aroma, and it called him.
He was still dressed, in his khakis and black sweater. He slipped on his loafers, picked up the lamp, and followed its yellow glow down the circular staircase.
A couple of fresh logs had been added to the hearth, and a polite fire burned. Michael saw a haze of pipe smoke drifting above the high-backed leather chair that faced the flames. The cot was empty.
“Let’s talk, Michael,” the man who called himself Mallory said.
“Yes sir.” He drew up a chair and sat down with the lamp on a table between them.
Mallory—not his real name, but one of many—laughed quietly, the pipe’s bit clenched between his teeth. Firelight glinted in his eyes, and now he didn’t appear nearly as old and unsteady as he’d been when he first entered the house. “ ‘Stay in your room,’ ” he said, and laughed again. His real voice, unmasked, had a gravelly edge. “That was good, Michael. You scared the balls off that poor Yank.”
“Does he have any?”
“Oh, he’s quite a capable officer. Don’t let the bluff and bluster fool you; Major Shackleton knows his job.” Mallory’s penetrating gaze slid toward the other man. “And you do, too.” Michael didn’t answer. Mallory smoked his pipe in silence for a moment, then said, “What happened to Margritta Phillipe in Egypt wasn’t your fault, Michael. She knew the risks, and she did her job bravely and well. You killed her assassin and exposed Harry Sandler as an agent for the Nazis. You also did your job bravely and well.”
“Not well enough.” This still made the sick sensation of grief gnaw at his insides. “If I’d been alert that night, I might have saved Margritta’s life.”
“It was her time,” Mallory said flatly, a statement from a professional in the arena of life and death. “And your time of brooding over Margritta should end now.”
“When I find Sandler.” Michael’s face was tight, and heat rose in his cheeks. “I knew he was a German agent as soon as Margritta showed me the wolf he said he’d sent her from Canada. To me it was perfectly clear it was a Balkan wolf, not Canadian. And the only way Sandler could’ve killed a Balkan wolf was to go on a hunting trip with his Nazi friends.” Harry Sandler, the big-game hunter from America who’d been written about in Life magazine, had vanished after Margritta’s murder, and left no tracks. “I should have made Margritta leave the house that night. Immediately. Instead I…” He clenched his hands on the chair’s armrests. “She trusted me,” he said, in a hushed voice.
“Michael,” Mallory said, “I want you to go to Paris.”
“Is it that vital that you be involved with this?”
“Yes. That vital.” He puffed smoke and removed the pipe from his mouth. “We’ll have one chance, and one chance only, for the invasion to be successful. The time frame, as of now, is the first week of June. That’s subject to change, according to the weather and the tides. We have to make sure ail potential disasters are dealt with, and I can tell you that watching these commanders hash things out leaves a lot of room for the damnedest mistakes you could imagine.” He grunted, and smiled thinly. “We have to do our part to give them a clean house when they move in. If the Gestapo’s watching Adam so closely, you can be certain he has information they don’t want getting out. We have to learn what it is. With your… uh… special talents, there’s a possibility you can get in and out under the nose of the Gestapo.”
Michael watched the fire. The man sitting in the chair next to him was one of three people in the world who knew he was a lycanthrope.
“There’s another facet to this you should consider,” Mallory said. “Four days ago we received a coded message from our agent Echo, in Berlin. She’s seen Harry Sandler.”
Michael looked into the other man’s face. “Sandler was in the company of a Nazi colonel named Jerek Blok, an SS officer, who used to be commandant of Falkenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. So Sandler’s moving in some high circles.”
“Is Sandler still in Berlin?”
“We haven’t had word from Echo to indicate otherwise. She’s keeping watch on him for us.”
Michael grunted softly. He had no idea who Echo was, but he remembered Sandler’s ruddy-cheeked face from a Life magazine photograph, grinning as he rested one booted foot on a dead lion on the Kenya grassland.
“We can get you dossiers on Sandler and Blok, of course,” Mallory ventured on. “We don’t know what their connection might be. Echo would contact you in Berlin. What you might decide to do from there is up to your own discretion.”
My discretion, Michael thought. That was a polite way of saying that if he chose to kill Harry Sandler, he would be on his own.
“Your first mission, however, is to find out what Adam knows.” Mallory let a trail of smoke trickle from his mouth. “That’s imperative. You can relay the information through your French contact.”