The Finger in the Sky Affair - Leslie Peter (читать хорошую книгу полностью .TXT) 📗

The warm air of the restaurant was redolent of cigars, roast meats and garlic. On the wide terrace outside, Illya found Sheridan Rogers, sitting over a tiny cup of coffee and a large cognac. She had wide, wide blue eyes and a smile that wrinkled her nose and creased the flesh at each side of her face. Above the white T.C.A. uniform with its navy piping, her gamine-cut hair looked exceptionally dark.

The Russian introduced himself as a Federal accident investigation officer. He drew a chair up to her table and gave her an edited account of the difficulties facing them in establishing what had caused the accidents. "And so you see, Miss Rogers," he concluded, "how very important it is for us to have at first hand the recollections of all survivors—however painful they may be, however unimportant the things they remember may seem."

The girl stared out across the apron, the runway and the strip of dusty turf beyond which the sea stretched sparkling from Cap Ferrat to Cap d'Antibes. A group of racing dinghies heeled white sails over to a breeze drifting in from the west.

"To be honest," she said at last, screwing up her eyes against the glare of the lunch-time sun, "I'd much prefer for her not to be troubled. She's still pretty ill. And of course profoundly shocked. To be the only survivor...If she hadn't gotten it into her head to check something in the baggage compartment...But I understand you have your duty to carry out."

"It's not only that," Illya said, pressing his advantage. "The crashes may be due to sabotage. If so, we have to stop the same thing happening to other people...don't we?"

"I guess so. I tell you what I'll do: I'll give you the phone number of my apartment and you can call Andrea. If she agrees to see you, I'll wheel her out onto the Promenade des Anglais early this evening—it's only a block from my place in the Rue Massena. Then you can talk to her for a moment, and afterwards we'll let you buy us a cocktail at one of the sidewalk cafes. Okay?"

"Splendid," the agent said warmly. "Let me buy you another cognac now, before you give me the number..."

"Air France announces the departure of their Flight A.F./951 for London," the voice of the girl announcer twanged from the P.A. speaker above their heads.

Together, they watched the slim, long-nosed Caravelle, with its twin tail-jets, trundle to the end of the runway, swing around, and then surge forward for the take-off with a scream of power. Once off the ground, the elegant machine roared into the sky in a steep climbing turn which left a double plume of black exhaust smoke hanging in the air over the beaches of Nice.

"My goodness," Illya said, "they take them up like an elevator, don't they?"

They watched the superb plane turn out at sea and fly back parallel to the coast—a silver dart winking in the bright sun. Almost before it had reached operational height, an aircraft precisely similar was sinking to the runway from the sky over Cagnes.

Before they had finished their drinks, Illya had learned that Sheridan Rogers was twenty-five years old, that she had been born in Seattle and brought up in Paris, where her father was a consular official, and that she had been working for T.C.A. in Nice for nearly two years. He had also written down on a piece of paper the telephone number of her apartment. Presently, he excused himself and went to make the call.

Andrea Bergen's voice was deep and husky, with a trace of an accent he couldn't place. At first she was most unwilling to see him at all. "I am much—how do you say?—bashed around," she said. "I do not wish to be seen in this state. Besides, I feel very ill. My nerves are poor. I have no confidence."

"I only want to talk to you for two minutes, Miss Bergen. There is no need for anyone to see you at all. We can talk in the open air, on the promenade, if you like."

"But what can I say that will be of any interest to you?"

"Anything you say about the crash will be of interest to me. Anything at all, I promise you."

"But I remember nothing. I am in the baggage compartment because I think I hear some loose things. I find I am wrong and—poof! Everything is darkness. How can this help?"

"It's not your actual recollection of the impact—perhaps I did not make myself clear—but rather of the few moments immediately before it. If you were in the compartment as the plane was landing, I assume you had to ask permission of the Captain—you should have been sitting down with a safety belt on, after all. Did you ask?"

"I—let me—Yes! Yes, I did."

"Good. Did you ask over the intercom or did you go up front?"

"I went myself."

"There you are, you see. You are being interesting already...Now while you were there, did you hear any of the crew say anything—even the tiniest, most insignificant remark—that you can remember, or that you feel might be useful?"

"I don't think I...Wait a minute...I—No, there was some little thing...Yes. The Flight Engineer. He made a remark I couldn't quite understand. Something about being surprised by a reading—I can't quite..."

"Look, Miss Bergen: never mind now. This is intensely interesting to me. It's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. Meet me with Sheridan tonight, as I asked...and think about it. Try to recall everything the Engineer said, every inflection, will you?"

"I suppose so." The voice was still dubious. "But you'll have to excuse me if I wear a scarf over my head and face. I'm...rather badly scarred, you see..."

Illya hung up and went back to make arrangements with Sherry Rogers. Outside the kiosk, he nearly stumbled over a small, dark man waiting to enter the booth. The Russian smiled pleasantly in apology, but the man—Illya thought he had seen him earlier, somewhere in the building—pushed past and slammed the door with a scowl.

Later, when the girl had gone back on duty, he left the terminal building to see about hiring a car. After the cool depths of the main hall, the blare of heat outside was stunning. Between the spiky palms, yucca, agave and oleander bushes bordered the huge parking area in greens and corals and scarlets. Two gendarmes in khaki shirts blotched with dark stains across the shoulders regulated the traffic past the glass entrance doors. Beyond, coachwork massed in martial rows glittered in the fierce light.

The plastic upholstery on the hired Peugeot 404 was blisteringly hot. Illya was glad to wind down the windows, steer the car around the cloverleaf connecting the airport complex with the dual highway coastal road, and accelerate away towards Nice in an attempt to stir some freshness into the tepid air.

Later, not long before his rendezvous with Sheridan Rogers on the Promenade des Anglais, occasional gusts of wind began to agitate the foliage of flowering shrubs planted along the central strip of the famous street.

The girl came into sight some way along the wide pavement between the roadway and the beach. She was wearing pearl gray slacks which clung to her long legs and a flowered silk shirt against which the points of her small breasts tilted provocatively. Illya watched her threading the wheelchair through the crowd of holidaymakers with unabashed pleasure. Andrea Bergen still had one arm in a cast. The lower half of her body was covered with a light blanket and her head, swathed in chiffon, was bent so that her face was invisible. She acknowledged Sheridan Roger's introduction in a low voice without looking up.

"I'll leave you two together for a few moments," Sherry said tactfully. "I have to change some magazines at the kiosk over there: the girl must have given me someone else's this morning..."