"Энди Макнаб. Удаленный контроль (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

The woman said, "There you are, gentlemen, you're in room
four-oh-three. If you turn left just past the pillars, you'll see the
elevator. Have a nice day!"
All I had to do now was listen to their conversations while they were
in their room, and to make that happen I went to the bank of pay phones in
the lobby and dialed the Firm.
A woman's voice asked me for my PIN number.
"Two-four two-two."
"Go ahead."
"I'd like a room, please. The Westin on M Street, Washington,
D.C.-four-oh-one or four-oh-five, or three-oh-three or five-oh-three."
"Have you a contact number?" "No, I'll call back in half an hour."
They would now telephone the hotel using the name of a front company
and request one of the rooms I'd specified. It didn't really matter whether
the room was above, beside, or below the targets', as long as we could get
in and plant surveillance devices.
I went back to the raised lounge area and read a few of the leaflets
and postcards I'd picked up, all the time watching the exit onto M Street.
I ran through a mental checklist of surveillance equipment to ask for.
I'd fit the first wave of gear myself: wall-mounted listening devices,
phone-line devices, both voice and modem, and cables that fed into the TV in
my room to relay pictures.
They'd take me only about three hours to rig up once the Firm had
dropped them off.
The second wave, once McGear and Kerr had vacated their room for the
day, would be fitted by technicians from the Firm. In their expert hands, a
hotel-room TV could become a camera, and the telephone a microphone.
Half an hour later I called the contact number and again gave my PIN
number. There was a bit of clicking, then the strains of a string quartet.
About five seconds later the woman came back again.
"You are to lift off and return today. Please acknowledge."
I thought I'd misheard her. There was a conference at the hotel given
by the Norwegian board of trade, and all the dele gates were exiting for
coffee.
"Can you repeat, please?"
"You are to lift off. Please acknowledge."
"Yes, I understand, I am to lift off and return today."
The phone went dead.
I put the phone down. Strange. There had even been a memo in green ink
from the head of the service about this the fastball job that had now come
to a sudden halt. It wasn't unusual to get lifted off, but not so quickly.
Maybe Simmonds had decided these people weren't that important after all.
Then I thought, So what, who gives a fuck? They wanted me to do the
job; I've done it. I called the travel agency and tried to get a flight out
of Dulles The only one I could get on was the British Airways at
nine-thirty-five, which was hours away. Kev and Marsha were only an hour
down the road toward the airport, so why not?
I dialed another number, and Kev answered. His voice was wary, until he
recognized mine.
"Nick! How's it going?" He sounded really happy to hear me.