The Night Manager полностью

Denham played the fop. He was lank and shadowy, with a schoolboy shock of hair turned grey. He wore broad-striped suits and outrageous waistcoats over two-toned shirts. Yet deep down, like Goodhew, he was some sort of an abstainer. His room should have been splendid, for he had the rank. It was high, with pretty mouldings and decent furniture. But the atmosphere was of a classroom, and the carved fireplace was stuffed with red cellophane coated in a film of dust. A Christmas card eleven months old showed Norwich cathedral in the snow.

"We've met. Guy Eccles," said a chunky man with a prominent jaw who sat reading telegrams at the centre table.

We’ve met, Burr agreed, returning his nod. You're Signals Eccles, and I never liked you. You play golf and drive a Jaguar. What the hell are you doing, muscling in on my appointment? He sat down. Nobody had quite asked him to. Denham was trying to turn up the Crimean War radiator, but either the knob had stuck or else he was turning it the wrong way.

"I've a bit of a load to get off my chest, Nicky, if it's all the same to you," said Burr, deliberately ignoring Eccles. "Time's running against me."

"If it's about the Limpet thing," said Denham, giving the knob a last wrench, "Guy might be rather good to have around." He perched himself on a chair arm. He seemed reluctant to sit at his own desk. "Guy's been hopping back and forth to Panama for months," he explained. "Haven't you Guy?"

"What for?" said Burr.

"Just visiting," said Eccles.

"I want interdiction, Nicky. I want you to move heaven and earth. This is what we were in business for, remember? We sat up nights, talking about just this moment."

"Yes. Yes, we did," Denham agreed, as if Burr had made a valid point.

Eccles was smiling at something he was reading in a telegram. He had three trays. He took the telegrams from one tray and, when he had read them, chucked them into one of the others. That seemed to be his job today.

"It is about feasibility, however, isn't it?" Denham said. He was on the arm of the chair still, his long legs stretched straight before him, his long hands thrust into his pockets.

"So's my paper. So's Goodhew's submission to Cabinet, if it ever gets there. Where there's a will ― remember, Nicky? We won't hide behind the arguments ― remember? We'll get every country involved round a table. Face them off. Challenge them to say no. International hardball, that's what you used to call it. We both did."

Denham loped to the wall behind his desk and plucked a cord from the folds of a heavy muslin curtain. A large-scale, map of Central America appeared, covered by a transparent skin.

"We have been thinking about you, Leonard," he said archly.

"It's action I'm after, Nicky. I've been doing a lot of thinking of my own."

A red boat was pinned off the port of Colón abreast of a dozen grey ones. At the southern end of the Canal, projected routes to east and west of the Gulf of Panama were overlaid in different colours.

"We haven't been idle while you've been so industrious, I assure you. So ship ahoy. The Lombardy, her gunwales awash with arms. We hope. Because if they're not, we're in the most frightful shit, but that's another story."

"Is this the latest position anyone's got for her?" said Burr.

"Oh, I think so," said Denham.

"It's the latest we've got, that's for sure," said Eccles, dropping a green telegram into the centre tray. He had a lowland Scottish accent. Burr had forgotten about it. Now he remembered. If there was one regional accent that grated on his ear like fingernails on a blackboard, it was lowland Scots.

"The Cousins' wheels grind exceeding slow these days," Eccles remarked, after a small suck of the front teeth. "It's that Vendon woman, Bar-ba-ra. Everything has to be in triplicate for her." He gave his teeth a second suck of disapproval.

But Burr kept talking only to Denham, because he was anxious not to lose his temper. "There's two speeds, Nicky. Limpet speed and the other one. American Enforcement's being given the runaround by the Cousins."

Eccles did not look up from his reading as he spoke. "Central is the Cousins' bailiwick," he said, in his borderer's accent."The Cousins watch and listen; we get the take. No use in setting two dogs after one hare. Not cost-effective. Not. Not these days." He tossed a telegram into a tray. "Bloody waste of money, in fact."

Denham was talking before Eccles had quite finished. He seemed concerned to hurry things along:

"So let's assume she's where she is when last reported," he proposed enthusiastically, poking at the Lombardy's stern with his twig-like forefinger. "She's got her Colombian crew ― not confirmed, but we'll assume it ― she's headed for the Canal Buenaventura. All exactly as your marvellous source recites. Bravo him, her or it. If things happen in the ordinary way ― and one assumes that she'll want to look as ordinary as she'll hit the Canal sometime today. Right?"

Nobody said "Right" back.