Spy Hook Read Online Free PDF Page A

Billingsly, perhaps because he was the youngest and least arthritic of us, or because he wanted to impress the Deputy, distributed the cups and saucers and passed the milk and teapot along the polished table top.
    'Chocolate oatmeal!' said Harry Strang. I looked up at him and he winked. Harry knew what it was all about. Harry had spent enough time at the sharp end to know what I was thinking.
    Harry poured tea for me. I took it and drank some. It turned to acid in my stomach. The Deputy was leaning towards Billingsly to ask him something about the excessive 'down time' the computers in the Yellow Submarine were suffering lately. Billingsly said that you had to expect some trouble with these 'electronic toys'. The Deputy said not when you paid two million pounds for them you didn't.
    'Biscuit?' said Harry Strang.
    'No thanks.'
    'You used to like chocolate oatmeal as I remember,' he said sardonically.
    I leaned over to see what the Deputy had written on his notepad but it was just a pattern: a hundred wobbly concentric circles with a big dot in the middle. No escape; no solution; no nothing. It was the answer he wanted to his question, I suppose, and I had given it to him. Ten marks out of ten, Samson. Advance to Go and collect two hundred pounds.
    It was only when the Deputy had finished his tea that protocol permitted even the busiest of us to take our leave. Just when the Deputy was moving towards the door, Morgan – the D-G's most obsequious acolyte – came in waxen-faced and complete with Melton overcoat carrying, like an altar candle, one of those short unfolding umbrellas. He said, in his singsong Welsh accent, 'Sorry I'm late, sir. I had the most awful and unexpected trouble with the motorcar.' He bit his lip. Exertion and anxiety had made his face even paler than usual.
    The Deputy was annoyed but allowed no more than a trace of it to show. 'We managed without you, Morgan,' he said.
    As the Deputy marched out Morgan looked at me with a deep hatred that he made no attempt to hide. Perhaps he thought his humiliation was all my fault or perhaps he blamed me for being there when it happened. Either way, if the Department ever needed someone to bury me Morgan would be an enthusiastic volunteer. Perhaps he was already working on it.
     
    I went downstairs, relieved to get out of that meeting even if it meant sitting in my cramped little office and trying to see over the top of the uncompleted paper-work. I stared at the cluttered table near the window, and more specifically at two boxes in beautiful Christmas wrappings, one marked 'Billy' and the other 'Sally'. They'd been delivered by the Harrods van together with the cards that said 'With dearest love from Mummy' but not in Fiona's handwriting. I should have given them to the children before Christmas but I'd left them there and tried not to look at them. She'd sent presents on previous Christmases and I'd put them under the tree. The children had read the cards without comment. But this year we'd spent Christmas in our new little home and somehow I didn't want Fiona to intrude into it. The move had given me a chance to get rid of Fiona's clothes and personal things. I wanted to start again, but that didn't make it any easier to confront those two bright boxes waiting for me every time I went into my office.
    My desk was a mess. My secretary, Brenda, had been covering for two filing clerks who were sick or pregnant or some damned thing, so I tried to sort out a week of muddle that had accumulated on my desk in my absence.
    The first things I came across were the red-labelled 'urgent' messages about Prettyman. My God, last Thursday there must have been new messages, requests, assignments and words of advice landing on my desk every hah 0 hour. Thank heavens Brenda had enough sense not to forward it all to Washington. Well, now I was back in London, and they could get someone else to go and bully Jim Prettyman into coming back-here to be roasted by a committee of