"Энди Макнаб. Последний свет (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

to the show's china expert about her collection of Pekinese dog teacups.
I couldn't hear the kids any more over the TV as I waited for the Merc
to return. On the screen, the woman tried not to show how pissed off she was
when the expert told her the china was only worth fifty quid.
Whoever had christened Frampton the Yes Man was a genius: it was the
only word he said to any of his superiors. In the past this had never
worried me because I had nothing to do with him directly, but all that
changed when he was promoted to run the UK Ks Desk in SIS (Secret
Intelligence Service). The Firm used some ex-SAS people like me, in fact
anyone, probably even my new friends here, as deniable operators. The Ks
Desk had traditionally been run by an IB (member of Intelligence Branch),
the senior branch of the service. In fact the whole service is run by IBs
for IBs; these are the boys and girls we read about in the papers, recruited
from university, working from embassies and using mundane Foreign Office
appointments as cover. Their real work, however, starts at six in the
evening when the conventional diplomats begin their round of cocktail
parties, and the IBs start gathering intelligence, spreading disinformation
and recruiting sources.
That's when the low-life like me come into the picture, carrying out,
or in some cases cleaning up, the dirty work that they create while throwing
the odd crab paste sandwich and After Eight down their necks. I envied them
that, at times like this.
The Yes Man did, too. He had been to university, but not one of the
right two.
He had never been one of the elite, an IB, yet had probably always
wanted to be.
But he just wasn't made of the right stuff. His background was the
Directorate of Special Support, a branch of wild-haired technicians and
scientists working on electronics, signals, electronic surveillance and
explosive devices. He'd run the signals department of the UK Ks, but had
never been in the field.
I didn't know why the Firm had suddenly changed the system and let a
non-IB take command. Maybe with the change of government they thought they
should look a bit more meritocratic, give a tweak or two to the system to
make them look good and keep the politicians happy as they skipped back to
Whitehall, instead of interfering too much with what really goes on. So, who
better to run the Desk than someone who wasn't an IB, arse licked his way
from breakfast to dinnertime, and would do whatever he was told?
Whatever, I didn't like him and never would. He certainly wasn't on my
speed dial, that was for sure. On the one occasion that I'd had direct
contact with him, the job had fouled up because he'd supplied insufficient
com ms kit.
He'd only been in the job since Colonel Lynn had 'taken early
retirement' about seven months ago, but he'd already proved his incompetence
more than once. The only thing he was good at was issuing threats; he had
neither the personality nor the management skills to do it any other way.
Lynn might have been just as much of an arse hole but at least you knew
where you stood with him.
I was adjusting my position some more when the shutter rattled and I
heard an engine rev outside.