Loo Sanction by Trevanian

Author:Trevanian
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery & Detective, General, thriller, Thrillers, Fiction, Espionage
ISBN: 9781400098286
Published: 2011-06-20T01:04:56+00:00

Chelsea

As Jonathan stepped from the Underground train at Sloane Square, he was still being followed by the fool in the blue raincoat who had been with him since Vanessa's. Presumably, Yank had not been able to get through to MI-5 and give them the word to discontinue surveillance. Jonathan decided to let him hover out there on his flank. At least he could keep an eye on him until the time came to shake him off, should the shadowing seem to endanger his cover.

Halfway up the tiled exit tunnel he passed an American girl sitting on a parka. Flotsam of the flower tide. She abused a cheap guitar and whined a Guthrie lament, having chosen a spot where the echo would enrich her thin voice with bathroom resonances and allow her to slide off miscalculated notes under the cover of reverberation. She was barefoot, and there was a large rip in the stomach of her tugged and shapeless khaki sweater. The surface of the parka was salted with small coins to invite passersby to contribute to maintenance.

Jonathan dropped no coin, nor did the man following in the blue raincoat.

Once away from the square, he closed into himself as he walked along seeking the address Vanessa had given him. He had no desire to come into contact with the jostling crowds of street people. It had been fifteen years since last he had been in Chelsea. In those days, a few of the young people who chatted in pubs or made single cups of cappuccino last two hours eventually went home to paint or write. But not these youngsters. They neither produced nor supported. Chelsea had always been self-consciously artsy, but now it had become younger, less attractive, more American. Head shops crowded up against the Safeway, and jeans were to be had in a thousand varieties. Discotheques. Whiskey a go-gos. Boutiques with scented candles and merchandise of green stamp quality. Shops vied for obscure names. Tall girls with hunched shoulders clopped along the pavement, and peacock boys swaggered in flared suits of plum velvet, cuffs flapping with dysfunctional bells. Rancorous music bled from doorways. People in satchel-assed jeans stared sullenly at him, an obvious representative of "the establishment," that despised class that oppressed them and paid their doles.

He had hoped the young would spare Chelsea the humiliation they had inflicted on San Francisco, Greenwich Village, the Left Bank. And he was angry that they had not.

But after all, he mused, one had to be fair-minded. These youngsters had their virtues. They were doubtless more content than his generation, hooked as it was on the compulsion to achieve. And these young people were more at peace with life; more alert to ecological dangers; more disgusted by war; more socially conscious.

Useless snots.

He turned off into a side street, past a couple of antique shops, and continued along a row of private houses behind black iron fences. Each had a steep stone stairway leading down to a basement. And one of these descending caves was illuminated by a dim red light.

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