Jack Higgins - Chavasse 02 by Year of the Tiger

Author:Year of the Tiger [Tiger, Year of the]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, Espionage, Suspense Fiction, Tibet (China), Cold War, Space Race
ISBN: 9780425155172
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 1996-09-30T05:00:00+00:00

9

It was pleasantly warm in the bedroom and someone had obviously made up the fire quite recently. Chavasse placed the oil lamp on the table beside the bed, opened the shutters and stepped out onto a covered balcony which ran the length of the house and overlooked the garden at the rear.

There was no rain, but the wind was moist and he inhaled the freshness of wet earth, and then the tiredness hit him and he went back inside and closed the shutters.

As he started to undress, there was a soft knock at the door and Hoffner came in. He carried an old bathrobe over one arm and, smiling, dropped it across the end of the bed. “I thought you might need one.”

There was something in his voice, a slight element of strain, that brought a frown to Chavasse’s face. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

Hoffner sighed and sat down on the bed. “I’m afraid Katya knows everything.”

Chavasse lit a cigarette calmly. “You’d better tell me about it.”

“It’s very simple. She heard rather more of the tail end of our conversation than we thought. For one thing, she speaks very good English; for another, she’s no fool. She’s just been to my room. Wanted to know exactly what was going on and who you really were.”

“What did you say?”

Hoffner shrugged. “That I’m a tired old man who wants to go home to die and that friends of mine have sent you in to help me get out.”

“And nothing more than that?”

“There didn’t seem any point at the moment.”

“That was wise,” Chavasse told him. “After all, she is a Russian citizen. Helping you is one thing, but aiding and abetting in an affair, the success of which can only be to the ultimate harm of her country, presents her with a difficult psychological choice. In any case, as I said before, the less she knows, the less she can give out under pressure.”

“You know best,” Hoffner said, “but I don’t think you need to worry. As I said before, she isn’t interested in politics. She isn’t even a Party member.”

“If anything goes wrong and Chinese intelligence gets their hands on her, she’ll end up being anything they want her to be,” Chavasse told him grimly.

“I suppose you’re right.” Hoffner got to his feet. “You’d better have a word with her in the morning; at the moment she is quite convinced I’d be committing suicide. That my heart wouldn’t stand the trip.”

“I’ll handle it,” Chavasse told him. “You get some sleep and don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine, I promise you.”

The door closed softly behind the old man and Chavasse stood there for a moment, thinking about the whole affair, and then the tiredness hit him again, driving everything else from his mind.

He had barely sufficient strength to strip the clothes from his body and climb into bed. He blew out the lamp and, for a while, lay there, allowing each tired muscle to relax, staring up at the shadows on the ceiling, and then he was asleep.

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.