Operation Omega by Hilary Green

Author:Hilary Green [Green, Hilary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sharpe Books
Published: 2019-03-27T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Nick suppressed a yawn, flexed tense muscles in his shoulders and rubbed a hand cautiously across the back of his neck. This was Tuesday. He had scarcely been to bed over the weekend and a snatched six hours the previous night had done little to make up the deficit. Added to that, his head still hurt where he had been hit. He got up from the desk where he had been checking through reports of sightings of men who might have answered to Zahran’s description and went to join Pascoe and Stone.

They were standing in the control room from which all Triple S operations were directed. Down the centre of the room was a bank of computer terminals, while ranged along the walls was a comprehensive selection of communications equipment—telephones, teleprinters, radios. Practically every position was occupied by a Triple S operative and almost all of them were working on locating Stratos Zahran. Pascoe looked up as Nick arrived. Nick shook his head.

‘There isn’t a single sighting there that looks really hopeful. I’ve marked the ones that might be worth following up, but I don’t think they’ll turn up anything.’

Pascoe allowed the computer print-out which he had been studying to drop gently from his hand onto the desk and wandered back towards his own room. The computer operator looked after him.

‘Sid’s not happy,’ she remarked.

It was a matter of argument among Triple S agents whether it was simply Pascoe’s position as head of what they referred to as ‘the Snake Pit’ which had earned him his nickname of Hissing Sid, or whether it was a direct reference to his own personality. Certainly there was something about the urbane manner and the silky inflections of the voice which was reminiscent of the original character, but most of his subordinates agreed that the chief reason for the name was the habit he had of listening to reports with his eyes half closed, his whole manner as somnolent as a snake basking in the sun, until some slight inaccuracy, some bit of woolly thinking, was seized upon with the deadly rapidity of a striking cobra.

‘Well, you know why, don’t you?’ Stone asked, picking up the computer print-out. ‘Because all this adds up to precisely nothing. We’re no further forward than we were this time yesterday.’

The door of Pascoe’s office reopened.

‘If I could interrupt you two gentlemen at your meditations for a moment…’ The voice was at its smoothest.

Stone and Marriot exchanged a quick glance and followed him into the other room. Pascoe seated himself behind his desk and leaned back in his chair, his hands folded in front of his chin, elbows on the chair arms, eyelids drooping.

‘So…’ he said after a moment, ‘Let us review the situation.’

He glanced up and made a brief gesture towards chairs on the other side of the desk. Stone and Marriot sat gratefully.

‘So far,’ Pascoe went on, ‘we have no reports of anyone answering Zahran’s description registering at any hotel or boarding-house. None of our Arab

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