Читать книгу Horse Under Water - Len Deighton - Страница 24

London: Tuesday

In the West London air terminal they have electric coin-in-the-slot razors. There was time to shave before Jean came to meet me in Dawlish’s old Riley. It was 9.39 a.m.

‘Whatever could you have done for Dawlish that he loans you England’s answer to the space race?’

Jean said, ‘He ripped the bumper off my Mini-Minor yesterday morning. Don’t mention it – he’s still very touchy.’

It’s a wonder he didn’t make you use the car pool.’

‘We’ve been having a little argument with the car pool since you headed into the sunshine.’

‘Don’t say it,’ I said. ‘What was it that Bernard’s file on the C.I.A. estimated they spent per year? And we are having difficulty with the car pool.’

‘Never mind,’ she said, overtaking a post van, squeezing past an oncoming bus, tuning the radio and lighting a cigarette. ‘How are things in Portugal?’ She glanced at me. ‘You don’t seem any more relaxed.’

‘I was all right until I entered this car; anyway I’ve been up since three a.m.,’ I said. The rain beat heavily against the windows. Outside Woolworth’s a woman in a plastic raincoat was smacking a child in a Yogi Bear bib. Soon we stopped at Admiralty Arch.

‘Admiralty Library,’ said Jean. ‘You must leave here by three forty-five at the very latest if you are going to get that BE 072 back to Lisbon this afternoon.’

Inside the library it was jumping with books. A girl read a Daily Express headed ‘A Commonwealth Tour for Tony?’

‘You remember all that stuff I sorted through for the Weapons Co-ordination Committee last year?’ I asked.

‘Yes sir,’ she said. She folded up Woman’s Realm and the Daily Express and tucked them under a pink cardigan and a bottle of hand-lotion in a little secret shelf under the desk.

‘I’ll want some of it again,’ I said. The whole place smelt of damp melton overcoats. ‘I’m trying to trace details of a scientific discovery made by a high-ranking officer, or perhaps a scientist who sailed from Germany during March or April 1945. Also I’ll want to see the Assessment Board Reports^fn1 during that period.’ There was a lot to be done before I caught the plane back to Lisbon.