"Дон Пендлтон. Renegade Agent ("Палач" #47) " - читать интересную книгу автора

Because of Lemon's crouch and Bolan's roll, the slug that had hit The
Executioner had entered at an upward angle. The exit wound was almost at the
shoulder. There was not too much blood. Bolan transferred the Detonics to
his left hand, pressed a scrap of the ragged turtleneck over the rear bullet
hole with his right.
Even if a guy planned every number down the line, one glitch could
throw those numbers straight to hell. Maybe Lemon was a Russian double too.
Maybe someone just screwed up, never informed him. But those answers would
have to wait.
Sir Philip regarded Bolan dispassionately. Moving slowly and
deliberately, he got out his cigarette case and lit up.
Bolan knew the guy had spent a lifetime walking the edge of the knife.
The aristocratic polish was simply a superficial shell over a hard and
dangerous man.
With the play now on a blood-soaked heartbeat, Bolan had to show him
what hard and dangerous really meant.
"When do the Russians pick up the prototype?" Bolan asked, his voice
flat, icy. His left arm refused to cooperate in the simplest action. He
applied all his will to ignoring what already felt like it was no longer
there. The Britisher was good all right. The traitor did not bother with any
"I-don't-know-what-you-are-talking-about" routine.
He just shook his head and gave Bolan the merest smile.
Bolan leaned across the desk and leveled the Detonics into Drummond's
face, six inches away. "You broke the rules, Drummond," the Man from Ice
said. "But I'll go you one better." Bolan laid the muzzle of the Detonics on
the bridge of the British traitor's nose. "I'm not playing by any rules at
all," he said.
The smile washed out of Drummond's expression, and what took its place
said the guy had become a believer. Every word Bolan had said was truth and
Drummond knew it.
"You're turned up, Drummond," Bolan went on relentlessly. "You are
blown. I know, and MI5 knows. Pretty soon your pals in the Kremlin will
know. Think they'll like that?" Bolan knew that Drummond had been around
long enough to understand what this meant. Now he was worthless as a Russian
agent. If his KGB masters got their hands on him, they would begin by
interrogating him, and their methods would be the methods of the Beast. In
short order Drummond would have told them everything of any conceivable
value he had learned during his career with British Intelligence.
But that would not stop the torture. The agony would continue, and so
would Drummond, babbling out anything that came to mind, making up stories
from whole cloth, beyond response or understanding, wanting only that the
torment be over.
It would be over only when Drummond was dead.
But before that event, a hellish forever would pass.
Bolan could see the knowledge of Drummond's fate pass across the
treasonous bastard's features.
"You are going to answer my questions," Bolan told him, "and after that
your friends-the friends you tried to betray, they take over. They promise
not to turn you over. You get to spend the rest of your life in some cozy
military prison, which is a hell of a lot more than you deserve."