The Crocus List - Lyall Gavin (книги онлайн бесплатно без регистрации полностью .txt) 📗

Ducking to put the van between them, Maxim ran crouching, his soft-soled shoes making the barest patter on the rough but, thank God, dry paving. As he slipped past the van, the man disappeared round the corner.

Maxim caught him three strides up the second alley.

The man heard or sensed him at the last moment and turned with his hands coming up to a fighting stance, but Maxim feinted through them and hit him low in the stomach. The man collapsed against the wall and slid down it, making gurgling noises. Up ahead, cars and people moved undisturbed on the bright street at the top of the alley; Maxim had time to search the man's pockets-and then suddenly he hadn't.

A clatter of steps and another man swung under the alley light, pistol in hand and coming to the aim. Maxim ducked behind the first man, who was hauling back his breath in short gasps. For a moment there was deadlock, then Maxim remembered his dark sunglasses case and took it out, aiming like a gun. The second man ducked back around the corner and Maxim backed off, crouching and aiming, until he was within a few metres of the cross-street.

He was twenty fast metres along it when a cockney voice said: " 'Ullo, sailor, watcher doin' ternight?"

It was the waddling blonde in the beret from the pharmacist's, and under that, Agnes. He grabbed her arm and started towards the lights of the corner. "Did you know there were two blokes behind us?"

"No, I…" She shut up and matched his pace. Nobody came out of the alley. They crossed MStreet and kept going, and in a doorway she snatched off the wig and beret and rammed them into the shoulder bag that had been expanded from the purse she had been carrying before. "Damn, and I was being so clever fooling you, I never looked behind. What happened?"

"I thumped one of them, then another turned up with a gun. I left."

"Did you kill him?"

"Of course not."

"Sorry, I never know with you."

"At least we know they've caught up with me."

"The Bravoes? It could be, doesn't have to be. Your chums in the Treasury, the Secret Service, they could be behind you. They were interested in whether you were going to start investigating anything over here… let's cross." She hustled him to the far side of the street.

"With a gun?"

"For God's sake, the Secret Service carries guns like credit cards, every enforcement agency does."

"Where are we going?" They were getting away from the busyness and bright lights.

"Just my car."

They drove slowly around the streets of old houses, now cramped by lines of parked cars. "But it could be Them," Agnes conceded. "If they're after you, all it needs is a telephone call to your parents: 'A question about your son's camera insurance, could you put me in touch?'

'Sorry, he'll be back from America in a few days' -bingo. Washington's the place to start, and the embassy only uses two hotels here. See how easy my job can be?"

"Frankly, no."

"Okay. I pulled a dirty trick on you in the pharmacy. Itook too many risks, putting on the wig and beret and changing my shoes. You did fine up until then. I screwed it up by not noticing somebody behindme. They probably thought you'd added me as a convoy."

("When it appears that the Suspect has somebody following them to detect any followers, ignore the Suspect and follow the follower instead.")

"But," Agnes decided, "even if it was the Secret Service, we don't want them knowing you're off to St Louis and points West any more than we want the Bravoes… Can you travel with what you've got?"

"Yees." Maxim trusted neither his passport-now two passports-nor any money to the hotel room or safe. "I'd need to buy a toothbrush and a shirt-"

"So buy 'em. I'll pack a bag at my place and we can make that motel alibi real."

28

Agnes made no pretence of escaping any following car by 'accident'. Being a skilled driver, particularly in towns, was part of her job, but the only skill she displayed that evening was in not actually hitting anything. After making unsignalled turns and abrupt lane changes through Chevy Chase and Bethesda, she blasted to a highly illegal speed south on the Beltway, ducked off it, rejoined a few miles along and finally came down to a leisurely cruise through the Virginia countryside.

Maxim knew her driving well enough to be relaxed about it, and spent his time folding and refolding a road map. Finally Agnes said: "Dostop it, Harry. / know where we are. Just trust me."

"It isn't that. I just hate not being able to put my finger on a map and say, 'I'm there.' "

"Oh Lord. I suppose that's the soldier in you."

"Be thankful I'm not a Gunner: I'd've brought my theodolite along and surveyed us down to the inch every five minutes."

"A small mercy, I suppose. Where we are, however, is south-west of Alexandria. From here it's a pretty direct route back to National Airport tomorrow. Happy now?"

"Yes." But she noticed he didn't put the map away until he'd located himself precisely.

They registered as Mr and Mrs Alan J. Winterbotham, although the motel clerk was more interested in the car's licence plate.

"That's America for you, " Agnes said, shaking out her hastily packed clothes. "If you aren't on wheels, you must be on the skids. Some states even issue a non-driver's licence: it actually says This Is Not A Driver's Licence, because you need something for identification. I thought you handled that well, Mr Winterbotham. Anybody would think you'd spent your life checking unmarried ladies into motels."

Maxim looked back expressionless, knowing she was babbling from nervousness, knowing his own stolid attitude was nervousness, too. The motel was made up of separate cabins, wide-spaced and private among trees-but more to the point, the cabin had its own phone extension and twin beds.

"I'm going to have a bath," Agnes announced. "You'd better ring your hotel and leave this number there. If Jerry Lomax or anybody tries to get hold of you… I'll ring my office in the morning. "

She spent a long time in the bathroom. When she came back in her long nightdress, Maxim was in the bed by the window, bare-shouldered and riffling through a handful of motel pamphlets.

She hopped into her own bed. "Are you reading?"

"This stuff?"

She snapped off the light between the beds and lay listening to the night. It was quiet except for the murmur of the highway a mile off. After a time, she said: "You did all right, back there… followed the rules."

"I didn't follow you very far."

"I told you: I took a risk. Sorry. I just wanted to make the point that the rules aren't everything… it's an attitude. If you're going to be Winterbotham out there, think about him. Not just job, address, past history-get into the habit of thinking Why am I Aere? Where have I come from? Where am I going next? Have a reasonable answer ready at every point, but don't be too quick to explain yourself. Sorry, I'm lecturing." She fumbled for her cigarettes and lit one. In the brief flare of the lighter she saw he was lying back, hands clasped under his head, staring at the ceiling.

"Go ahead."

"I may as well… Forget anything you've heard or read about 'living the part'. It can't be done, and if it could, it wouldn't be any use. If you play innocent and unnoticing too well, you won't attract suspicion, but you won'tnotice anything, either. Act the part and know you're acting it-and thatthey don't know.

"That's really the key. You've got to love that idea, really love it: they don't know. Relish it, wallow in it. Let it give an extra colour, spice, dimension, to everything you do. At the bad moments, don't look back and think, Well, at least I'm a major in the British Army. And don't look forward to a time when you can tell somebodyal! about it. You've got to live in the moment, and the way to do that is to thinkthey don't know and really enjoy it. The only way. Believe me."