Quiller by Quiller

Author:Quiller [Quiller]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine : SIREN

A series of soft thuds.

I woke.

The airframe was settling, and plastic creaked, ‘Was that the undercarriage?’

‘Yes,’ Ferris said.

The sun was high in the windows opposite my berths Los Angeles?’

‘Yes.’

I checked my watch. 06:00 hours.

Nine hours’ sleep.

‘What’s the local time?’

‘Fourteen hundred.’

We bounced twice.

‘Do we change planes?’

‘Yes.’

I went along to the lav.

A roaring began outside and there was a lot of deceleration.

‘Have you altered your watch?’ Ferris asked when I went back.

‘Not yet’

There’d be extensive jet lag to take up when we reached the east coast and I wanted to know my own metabolic time for a while in case there was a chance to adjust.

‘They’re having a bad day,’ Ferris said.

‘What?’

I still had some buzzing in the ears, ‘Look at that lot.’

The smog was mud-brown, hazing out the tops of the buildings, and we caught the Euston Station smell of it as we left the aircraft.

‘How long have we got?’

‘Ninety minutes.’

‘Call or take-off?’

‘Take-off.’

We went along to the men’s room and had a wash and linen Ferris disappeared for a while and came back to our rdv in the coffee-shop and sat down on the next stool and ordered buttermilk.

‘They’ve still got the road up,’ he told me, I supposed he meant in Whitehall.

‘Taking their time.’

I didn’t see why he’d decided to get into signals with London from Los Angeles when he hadn’t done so in Taipei.

I certainly couldn’t ask him now.

‘How’s Charlie?’

Not his correct name. Correct name was Diego.

‘Trouble with his dentist. Suing him.’

He crouched over his buttermilk, using a straw.

Diego was our man in downtown Hollywood and that was the only way Ferris could have signalled London in the limited time he’d been away: by phoning Diego and getting him to crank up the short-wave radio. That was partly what he was for. I assumed Ferris had just been reporting our travel pattern but it seemed a bit superfluous.

‘How the hell,’ I asked him, ‘did our chum over there manage to screw the price of first-class berths out of those poxy old tarts in Accounts?’

‘He looks after people.’

His straw made a sudden sucking noise as he got to the bottom.

On our way back to the departure gate we had three or four minutes in an open space and he said:

‘Your interview in Washington is arranged to take place in the White House. The contact’s name is Robert W. Finberg and he’s an adviser to the US Secretary of Defence. You’ll be put through a routine screening by the EPS at the British Embassy some time before noon tomorrow, all going well Questions?’

‘EPS?’

‘Executive Protection Service. They provide security for the White House and the diplomatic missions in Washington The actual screening won’t take long because there’s only the question of identity to be taken care of: the purpose of your visit and the nature of the interview are both subject to very strict hush.’

He was watching the passengers coming across to the gate and so was I. So far, three of them had been on the Pacific flight with us, two of them in the coach class and one in the first.

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