4_Spy Hook by Len Deighton

Author:Len Deighton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780586068960
Publisher: Harpercollins Pub Ltd
Published: 1997-09-09T23:00:00+00:00

“Everything’s clean. Your shirts are on hangers in the wardrobe, so don’t start shouting when you find the chest of drawers empty.”

“I won’t shout about shirts,’ I promised, and kissed her. “And if I do, rip more buttons off.”

“I do love you, Bernard.” She put both arms round me and hugged me tight. “I want to have you for ever and ever.” “Then that’s the way it will be,” I promised with the sort of unthinking impetuosity that I am prey to when rudely awakened in such early hours of the morning. For a moment she just held me, crushing me so that I could hardly breathe, then into my ear she said, “And I love the children, Bernard. Don’t worry about them.” The children missed their real mother, of course, and I knew how hard Gloria worked to replace her. It wasn’t easy for her. Cambridge, just unremitting hard work, must have been an attractive prospect at times.

Almost every seat was taken in First Class. Wide-awake young men, with well cut suits and large gold wristwatches, were shuffling papers that came from pigskin document cases, or tapping at tiny portable computers with hinged screens. Many of them declined the champagne and worked right through the meal service: reading reports, ticking at accounts and underlining bits of “projections” with coloured markers. The man in the next seat to mine was from the same mould but considerably less dedicated. Edwin Woosnam - “a Welsh name although I’ve never been there: can you believe it?” - an overweight fellow with thick eyebrows, thin lips and the sort of nose they create from putty for amateur productions of Julius Caesar. My desire to catch up on lost sleep was frustrated by his friendliness.

He was, he told me, the senior partner of a “development company” in Glasgow. His firm was building eight 600-room hotels in towns around the world and he told me all about it.

“Outdoor pool, that’s important. The hotel owners need a picture on the brochure that makes it look like the weather is good enough for swimming all year round.” Throaty chuckle and a quick sip of champagne. “Penthouses at the top, leisure centres in the basement and en-suite bathrooms throughout. Find a big cheap site - I mean really big - and after the hotel is up, shops and apartment blocks will follow. The neighbourhood is upgraded. You can’t go wrong on an investment like that. It’s like money in the bank. As long as the local labour is cheap, it doesn’t matter where you site the hotel, half these idiot tourists don’t even know which country they’re in.” But otherwise Mr. Woosnam. proved a congenial companion, with an endless supply of stories. “ . . . You can’t tell the Greeks anything. I showed this foreman - Popopopolis, or something, you know what those names are like - I showed him the schedule, and told him the eighth floor should be all complete by now. And he got angry. It was complete, he shouted.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.