Declare by Tim Powers

Author:Tim Powers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literature, Cold War, Intelligence officers, Fiction, Fantasy, General, Spy stories, Thrillers, Paris (France), Espionage
ISBN: 9780380798360
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2002-04-15T23:39:53+00:00

TWELVE

Beirut, 1963/Wabar, 1948

The child turned on the cushion of the huge corded arms and looked at Kim through heavy eyelids. “And was it all worthless?” Kim asked, with easy interest.

“All worthless—all worthless,” said the child, lips cracking with fever.

—Rudyard Kipling, Kim

Earlier in the evening, when the sky had still been gold beyond the blowing gauze curtains, Hale had reluctantly pulled up a chair at one side of his hotel room desk.

He stared without enthusiasm at the glasses of arak that Mammalian had poured before sitting down in the chair opposite him; and as Hale watched, Mammalian topped up each glass from the water pitcher on the desk, and the clear liquor was abruptly streaked with milky cloudiness. Hale had never been seasick or airsick, but he was sweating and nauseated right now with a profounder sort of deficiency in traction. The Mezon wire recorder at Mammalian’s elbow hissed faintly as its spools turned.

“You are ill at ease,” said Mammalian quietly, stroking his black beard as he looked out the window at the purple Mediterranean sea. “You are like a man nerving himself to climb a steep mountain, anticipating all sorts of chasms, hard challenges, muscles flexed to cramping. But it is not a mountain—it is a flat beach, and you are only going to walk into the surf.” He shrugged and rocked his head. “It will be cold, and the breath will perhaps seem to stop in your throat at times, but you will get through it by relaxing. All your adult life you have kept up a tense guard, a tight, clinging posture—your task tonight is simply to lower the guard, let your fists unclench.” He turned away from the window to look at Hale, and he laughed softly. “Drink, my friend.”

Hale nodded and lifted one of the glasses with a shaky hand. The liquor was sharp with the taste of anise, but when he had swal-lowed it he was glad of the expanding heat in his chest.

“What,” said Mammalian thoughtfully, “has the British secret service learned about our plans involving Mount Ararat?”

“We—got the first hints of it when—Volkov—tried to defect from the Soviet NKGB, in Istanbul in ’45,” said Hale. He clanked the glass down, and a few drops flew out and beaded like pearls on the polished dark wood. In spite of what Mammalian had said, he was so tense that it was a conscious effort to breathe. Somehow it didn’t help that he had gone over this same ground four days earlier with Ishmael. Ishmael’s subsequent death had been a reprieve, a negation of it.

“But the NKGB killed Konstantin Volkov,” said Mammalian, “before he could defect.”

“True,” said Hale. He forced his shoulders to relax, and he spread his hands on the desktop.

“Just wade slowly into the surf. It is cold, but still very shallow.”

Hale nodded. “Volkov was a walk-in,” he said. “He apparently just went to the British Consulate General building one day in August of ’45, and said he wanted to sell information; he had

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