"Caribbean Crisis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

Blake allowed himself a faint smile. "You'll appreciate that I don't accept every case that is brought to me..."
"You'll accept this one!" Sellingham said firmly. "I've studied your reputation; I can promise you this has all the ingredients to interest you!"
Blake smiled again. "Tell me about it."
"I want to to undertake a highly confidential investigation, Mr. Blake," said Sellingham. "It concerns large sums of money, the life of a man... and a new troublespot in the cold war."
"Maliba?" suggested Blake.
Sellingham looked momentarily deflated. "Yes, Maliba," he grunted.
"That's a promising start," Blake admitted. "Perhaps you'd like to fill in some details."
"Well," Sellingham said seriously, "this all hinges on the current political set-up in the Caribbean. You know, I suppose, that I own a great deal of the Maliban sugar industry?"
"I've read as much."
"Well the situation in Maliba is this: Doctor Nonales, the President, is the head of a corrupt administration, mainly made up of ex-army officers. The police are more or less synonymous with the army. Crooked as cork-screws, the lot of 'em!"
"They sound as though they deserve to be deposed," Blake said larconically.
Sellingham shook his head. "You'd think so -- but it's just where you're wrong. If the rebels got into power with their high-flown ideologies the country will be paralysed. Everything will grind to a standstill. That country runs on corruption. You can't take away a hundred-year tradition of corruption without bringing the machinery to a halt -- any more than you can take away the ball-bearings of a centrifuge in a sugar refinery."
"Is this your personal opinion?" Blake asked.
"Personal opinion? Great heaven's, no! It's common knowledge. Ask anyone out there -- corruption is the only way you can get anything done! Industry thrives on it!"
Blake sighed. "Go on."
"I'm not a man to mince words, Mr. Blake. The position as it stands is favourable to me. I don't want to see it changed. If Juan Callas -- the rebel leader -- gets into power, there'll be a repitition of the Castro business in Cuba."
"You're worried about the rumours of communist infiltration?" Blake asked.
Sellingham shrugged. "Nonales says the rebels are getting finance from the communists -- and if it's true my refineries are as good as gone!"
Blake frowned. "This is all very well, Sir Gordon, but so far there's been no real evidence that the communists are behind this particular revolution."
"Maybe not," Sellingham said grudgingly. "But I don't intend to take any risks. I want to know what's going on out there!"
Blake was silent for a moment. Sellingham's "case" appeared to amount to nothing more than a nebulous request for information.
The detective frowned. "I believe you mentioned that a man's life is in danger?"
Sellingham pursed his lips, and something like embarressment turned his face a shade pinker.
"It's my son. My son Peter. That young idiot will be the ruin of me. I'm already a laughing stock in the City over this! I should have never sent him to Oxford. He's been living in cloud-cuckoo land ever since he graduated."
Blake's brow puckered. "I don't quite understand..."
Sellingham said tiredly, "My son Peter has got a headful of liberal ideas. But what's worse, he's got a bankful of money. And at this moment he's somewhere in Maliba spending it on guns for the rebels!"
"Your son isn't a communist, surely?" Blake's eyebrows arched.
"The young idiot doesn't know what he is!" snapped Sir Gordon Sellingham. "But the Communist movement has had the reason to be grateful for his cheque book before now! This is just one hobby horse in a long line of silly frivolities. A year ago he financed a movement for banning H-bombs. Before that it was a movement that ran about denouncing all my life-long friends as Fascists. Before that..."
Sellingham's voice tailed off in exasperation: "I want him brought back to England before he ruins me! I may not be able to do anything about the rebels -- but I'm certainly not going to stand idle while my own flesh and blood helps them steal my fortune. I'm going to stop that young fool giving them money!"
Blake said quietly: "Can't you simply cut off your son's allowance?"
"I did that year's ago!" said Sellingham. "But he still has half a million that he inherited from his mother."
"I see..." Blake was thoughtful. The position was becoming clear at last. Sellingham wanted him to go to Maliba and virtually kidnap his wayward son. The job really wasn't to Blake's taste.
With another frown he said: "What makes you think your son's life is in danger? Merely that he's playing with political dynamite?"
"No," Sellingham grunted sourly. "It's gone beyond that. He's disappeared. No-one's seem him or heard of him for days. My people out there have been keeping a close eye on him but he's vanished into the blue!"
The millionaire pulled sharply on his cigarette. "I can't make too much noise about it -- otherwise the rebels will be on to me like a ton of bricks -- 'CAPITALIST INTERFERES IN MALIBAN DOMESTIC AFFAIRS!' -- they'd have it on every front page in Latin America."
"So what you really want me to do is go to Maliba and make some discreet inquiries to find your son?"
"And bring him back!" Sellingham added firmly. "By force if needs be."
Blake smiled thinly. "I'm an investigator, Sir Gordon -- but I'm not a strong-arm man. Your son is presumably over twenty-one. I can hardly kidnap him..."
"Look--" Sellingham interrupted, "--all I want you to do is save his life! Even if he isn't already dead, he's caught between two fires. Either Nonales will rumble what he's up to and have him quietly rubbed out as a spy -- or the rebels will bump him off as soon as he's served their purpose. They'll hardly want to be associated with the son of a capitalist when the time comes for handing out medals!"
"I see what you mean," Blake said noncommittally. He was thinking hard.
"Will you take the case, then?"
"I shall have to give it some thought. Can I phone you back later and let you know?"
Sellingham rose to his feet. "I'm confident you'll make the right decision, Blake. You've been spoken very highly of, and I know you're the man for this job. Good day!"
He shook hands firmly, turned and marched from the office.
Blake sat back in his chair, smoking.
Young Peter Sellingham's life was certainly in danger if he was meddling in subversive activities, there was no denying that.
A trip to Maliba was a temptation, too, for it promised to be interesting.
A revolution was brewing, and in addition there was the stranger item -- the mystery of the bathysphere.
He was thinking hard as he turned once more to study the file on Maliba...