The Night Manager полностью

"It doesn't mean we can't go for Roper," Burr insisted, realising that by breathing hope into Goodhew he was trying to keep up his own courage.

"I agree. You mustn't let go. Grip, that's the thing. You've plenty of it, I know."

It always used to be we, thought Burr.

"Apo had it coming to him, Rex. He was a snitch. He was living on borrowed time. That's the name of the game. If the Feds don't eat you, the crooks will. He knew that all along. Our job is to pull out our man. We can do that. It's not a problem. You'll see. It's just a lot happening at once. Rex?"

"Yes, I'm still here."

Wrestling with his own turmoil, Burr was filled with a feverish pity for Goodhew. Rex shouldn't be subjected to this stuff! He's got no armour, he takes it too much to heart! Burr remembered that in London it was afternoon. Goodhew had been lunching with his master.

"How did it go, then? What was this important news?" Burr asked, still trying to beg an optimistic word out of him. "Is the Cabinet Secretary coming over to our side at last?"

"Oh, yes. thank you, yes, very pleasant," said Goodhew, terribly politely. "Club food, but that's what one joins clubs for." He's under anaesthetic, thought Burr. He's wandering. "There's a new department being set up, you'll be glad to hear. A Whitehall Watch Committee, the first of its kind, I'm told. It stands for everything we've been fighting for, and I shall be its head. It will report directly to the Cabinet Secretary, which is rather grand. Everyone's given it their blessing; even the River House has pledged full support. I'm to make an in-depth study of all aspects of the secret overworld: recruitment, streamlining, cost effectiveness, load sharing, accountability. Pretty well everything I thought I'd done already, but I'm to do it again and better. I'm to start at once. Not a moment to be lost. It will mean giving up my present work, naturally. But he did rather imply there was a knighthood at the end of the rainbow, which will be nice for Hester."

Air surveillance was back on the other line. The Roper jet had dropped below radar level as it approached Panama. The best guess was it had turned northwest, heading toward the Mosquito Coast.

"So where the hell is it?" Burr shouted in his despair.

"Mr. Burr, sir," said a boy called Hank. "It disappeared."

* * *

Burr stood alone in the monitoring room in Miami. He had been standing there so long the monitors had ceased to notice him. They had their backs to him, and their control panels to play with, and their hundred other things to worry about. And Burr had the earphones on. And the thing about earphones is, there is no compromise, no sharing, no talking the material down. It's you and the sound. Or the lack of it.

"This one's for you, Mr. Burr," a woman monitor had told him briskly, showing him the switches on the machine. "Looks like you got yourself a problem there."

That was the extent of her sympathy. Not that she was an unsympathetic woman; far from it. But she was a professional, and other matters needed her attention.

He played the tape once, but he was so stressed and fuddled that he decided not to understand it at all. Even the label confused him. Marshall in Nassau to Thomas in Curaçao. Who the devil was Marshall when he was at home? And what on earth was he doing calling my joe in Curaçao in the middle of the night, just when the operation was beginning to spread its wings?

For who would ever have supposed, at first glance, with so much else to think of, that a Marshall was a girl? And not only a girl, but a Jemima alias Jed alias Jeds, calling from the Roper's Nassau residence?

Fourteen times.

Between midnight and four a. m.

Ten to eighteen minutes between each call.

The first thirteen times politely asking the hotel switchboard for Mr. Thomas, please, and being told, after due attempts to connect her, that Mr. Thomas was not answering his telephone.

But on the fourteenth shot, her industry is rewarded. At three minutes to four in the morning, to be precise, Marshall in Nassau is connected with Thomas in Curaçao. For twenty-seven minutes of Roper telephone time. Jonathan at first furious. Rightly. But then less furious. And finally, if Burr read the music right, not furious at all. So that by the end of their twenty-seven minutes, it's nothing but Jonathan... Jonathan... Jonathan... and a lot of huffing and puffing while they get off listening to each other's breathing.

Twenty-seven minutes of lovers' bloody vacuum. Between Roper's woman, Jed, and Jonathan, my joe.

"Faberge," Roper said, when Jonathan asked him where they were going.

"Faberge," Langbourne replied out of the corner of his mouth.

"Faberge, Thomas," Frisky said, with not a very nice smile, as they buckled themselves into their seats. "You've heard of Faberge the famous jeweller, haven't you? Weil, then, that's where we're going, isn't it, for a nice bit of R and R."