The Secret Servant - Lyall Gavin (мир книг txt) 📗

The conference room was bright and cheerful. The back wall was a long blow-up of a mediaeval engraving of the old city, there were about fifteen Scandinavian swivel chairs around an oval table under modern chandeliers, wall-to-wall carpeting and curtains. The sort of place where chemical companies met to announce marketing strategies and pin merit badges on themselves for sales performance.

"A modern chancellery of Europe," Tyler said in a heavy whisper. "I sometimes wish I had been in the business before 1914, when they were arguing about the two-power standard and the 15-inch gun was the ultimate weapon." He sat down and Mrs West slid a thin file of papers in front of him. "But I dare say that even then, somebody was complaining that this newfangled electric lighting made it look like a meeting of tradesmen"

Quinton gave a little grunt of relief. Tyler seemed to be perking up.

Their Luxembourg host said a few words in each of the three languages, then went tactfully away, so that there was nobody in the room who wasn't British, French or German. Maxim, like the other bit-part players, sat behind their leaders on armless non-swivelling chairs against the walls. He could spot two others carrying guns.

There was a quick murmur of discussion before they agreed on what they had planned to agree on: that Tyler should speak first.

He moved his papers carefully, waiting until the last noise had drained from the room. "/c Ahoffe, dass wir ьbereinstimmen und diese Konferenz auffranzцsisch halten."

The German delegation made a friendly noise and Tyler began again.

"On ne peut plus кtre sыr d'une contre-attaque massive Amйricaine…"Maxim tried to follow, but his French was too slow to get all the detail and nuance, although he suspected Tyler was deliberately spinning it out so that the Germans could keep up. He could still pick out the main points.

"If Western Europe cannot any longer threaten the Soviet Union with damage of a quantity sufficient to deter an attack, then it must find a way of inflicting damage of quality… a short-range policy… as the Russian airspace became more and more closed to air strikes, even to missiles, so the Soviet Bloc countries become more and more tempting targets… Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria… all these are needed as jumping-off bases or lines of communication… and the ranges are short… from the Iron Curtain itself, less than 500 miles to Warsaw, 350 to Gdansk, 300 to Posnan, 150 to Budapest, around a hundred miles to Prague, Leipzig, Chemnitz – 1 apologise, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Dresden…"

Maxim saw the German delegate wince, then become impassive and attentive again.

"Moscow might well not believe we could destroy Russia, but Warsaw would certainly believe we could destroy Poland… Above all things, we are looking for a targetting policy that will be believed… then we have deterrence…"

Tyler stopped as the captain from the Sыretй tiptoed into the room, pointing at Maxim and making telephone gestures at his own ear.

"You'd better go, Major," Tyler grunted. He was 'Major' once more.

Maxim had expected George; he got a slightly accented voice.

"Major Maxim?"

"Yes?"

"I wonder if you would take a beer with me. When we last met, we did not seem to have the time."

"Is that Mr Komoscsin?"

"Of course." The voice sounded pleased. "There is a cafй at the bottom of the hill, the one on the right. A beer, yes?"

"Yes."

Maxim put down the phone and stepped back from the transparent space-helmet fixed to the wall.

The captain, who had politely turned his back, swung around.

"It is all right? I'm going down to the village," Maxim said, "to meet a Russian spy."

The captain just looked at him.

The beer was waiting for him. The cafй was a single dark room with a floor of tiny mosaic tiles, and its shelves and bar jammed with fancy beer-steins, green-stemmed glasses, calendars, a model of a Luxair Boeing 737 and fleshy rubber plants. At the back of the room a large lady was ironing blouses on one of the tables. At a closer one, a square grainy face with a widow's peak smiled up at Maxim. He sat down and took a sip.

"There was no Guinness," Komocsin/Azarov said.

"It isn't my favourite."

"You looked me up, then."

"The least I could do." Komocsin waited, perhaps to see if Maxim said anything about Azarov, but he didn't.

"How is the meeting going?"

"It marches. And how is your leg?"

"Much better, thank you."

Maxim almost said that he was glad or something just as daft.

"This time," Komocsin/Azarov said, "you do not need a knife."

He was looking at Maxim's left armpit – why did they call it a shoulder holster? – perhaps because of the way Maxim held his arm, or maybe the leather creaked, or most likely because Komocsin was part of the one per cent.

"But you may need something. There are terrorists from Germany, your Germany, in Luxembourg."

Maxim sipped and nodded. A big refrigerator in the corner began to hum loudly, and the woman left her ironing and slapped it a blow that would have left Maxim spinning. It went on humming, and she went back to her ironing.

The blouses hung over the chair backs.

"Do you have any idea who they are after?"

"No. Your professor is the most famous. Him or the German."

"Is that all?"

"That, and the beer, yes, it was all."

"Thank you. I'll buy it next time."

"I hope so." The voice seemed suddenly tired.

Maxim left his beer half finished and walked out, trying not to hurry.

At the chвteau gate half a dozen demonstrators had gathered, holding placards with anti-nuclear symbols and mushroom clouds on them. They booed Maxim as he showed his pass at the gate and strode out along the curving drive.

The session had broken up. The French delegation was already climbing into its black Citroens as he reached the little crowd in front of the building.

He found the Sыretй captain at the edge of the crowd. "I've been told there are terrorists from Germany here-"

"Is that what your Russian spy said?"

"You said yourself that was the real risk."

"How can you be sure he really is a Russian spy?"

"Our intelligence people have got him on file…" He saw the captain wasn't believing anything he said. The French had gone, the Germans were gliding away, their own hired Mercedes were backing up to the little pavement.

"It went like a dream," Quinton enthused. "You missed the best of it, of course. What was that all about? I really do think we may get an agreement. Our man was outstanding, quite first-class."

Maxim was listening, but only to the distance. Nobody had done anything to the French, nobody anything to the Germans. And probably nobody would do anything to Professor Tyler.

"Is there any other route we can take?" he asked the captain.

"We have to go up to the big road. The village is a no-end." He looked at Maxim with bland eyes.

"Harry-" Tyler called, and he slid into the back seat beside him, and the car purred away.

"There's a terrorist threat," he said.

"What can we do about it?" Tyler asked cheerfully. He was basking in the morning's glory.

"I don't know, but…" From his seat beside the driver, the captain looked at him sourly. The car leant over as they swung out of the gateway and the crowd of demonstrators waved their placards and shouted something Maxim didn't understand.

The lane led up through steep hairpin bends to the autoroute above, going through clumps of pines where a Boy Scout could have set an ambush. But if it came to that, a Boy Scout could have cut a hole anywhere in Senningen's mesh fence and thrown a grenade through the conference window. He might not have got out alive, but a terrorist who doesn't care about that – and there were plenty – is virtually unstoppable.