Night Probe! - Cussler Clive - Страница 54
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Shaw tensed as the nails dug into him. He flattened his feet on the floor, planning to thrust his body backward out of the chair. But Gly anticipated his thoughts.
"No tricks, dad, or I'll snap your bone."
Shaw sagged. Not from fear. From anger at being caught at a disadvantage.
"You overrate yourself, Inspector Gly. Why should the British secret service bother itself about you?"
"A thousand apologies," Gly sneered, maintaining the pressure. "I'm the suspicious type. Liars make me edgy."
"A crude accusation from a crude mind," said Shaw, coming back on balance. "I'd expect little else, considering the source."
Gly's lips twisted. "Clever words, Superspy. Suppose you tell me you didn't contact your boss in London and receive an acknowledgment over two hours ago."
"And if I say you're mistaken?"
"No good. I had a little chat with Doc Coli in the galley. Is your memory so rotten you've forgotten he helped you compose your report on that little gizmo? Or that you added a postscript after Coli left. A request for a rundown on Foss Gly. You know it, I know it. The reply is there in your hand."
The trapdoor had sprung and Shaw had fallen through. He cursed his transparency. He had little doubt that the ugly man across the table would murder if given the slightest opportunity. His only hope was to stall and throw Gly off his stride. He tried a long shot.
"Mr. Villon mentioned in passing that you might prove unstable. I should have taken him at his word."
The angry wideniing of the eyes told Shaw he had struck a nerve. He continued to turn the screw. "I believe he even used the term 'psycho.' "
The reaction was not what he expected. Not what he expected at all.
Instead of cold wrath, Gly's expression was suddenly transformed to one of enlightenment. He released Shaw's wrist and sat back. "So the double-talking scum stabbed me in the back," Gly muttered. "I might have guessed he'd eventually wise up to my scheme." He paused and looked at Shaw curiously. "I get the story now. Why I was always sent to do the underwater dirty work. Somewhere along the line you were to see to it I was conveniently drowned by an unfortunate accident."
Shaw was at a loss. None of this was going in the direction he intended. He flat out didn't know what Gly was talking about. He had no option but to string along. Very carefully he removed the message from his finger with his free hand and flipped it on the table in front of Gly and studied his eyes. There was a fractional glance downward, no more than a second. But it was enough.
"What puzzles me is why you're risking your life for a government and a man who wants you dead."
"Maybe I like the company benefits."
"Wit doesn't become you, Mr. Bogus Inspector Gly."
"How much did Villon tell you about me?"
"He didn't elaborate," said Shaw, mashing out his cigarette in an ashtray and noting that Gly's eyes followed the movement. "He only suggested that I would be doing Canada a favor by removing you. Frankly, I wasn't keen to play the role of a hired assassin, especially without knowing why you deserved to die."
"What changed your mind?"
"You did." Shaw had Gly's interest at a peak, but he still had no idea where it was taking him. "I began to study you. Your French-Canadian tongue is letter perfect. But your English: now there hangs another tale. Not the accent, mind you, but the terminology. Words like 'booze' and 'gizmo,' expressions such as 'What's the scam?' Pure Americanese. Curiosity got the better of me and I asked London to run a check on you. The answer is there on the table. You do deserve to die, Mr. Gly. No man deserves it more."
Gly's face turned menacing and his grinning teeth glistened yellow under the cabin light. "Do you think you're man enough to take me, dad?"
Shaw clutched the edge of the table with his hands and wondered how Gly intended to kill him. Gly would have to use a gun with a silencer or perhaps a knife. A loud report would bring Coli and the crew of the tug rushing into the cabin. Gly sat with his arms crossed casually in front of him. He looked relaxed, too relaxed.
"I don't have to bother. Mr. Villon had a change of heart. He's decided to turn you over to the Mounties."
Shaw had taken a wrong turn. He could read the mistake on Gly's face.
"Nice try, dad, but you blew it. Villon can't afford to keep me alive. I could put him behind bars until the next ice age."
"Just testing the water," said Shaw with feigned indifference. "The report is on Villon, not you." He nodded at the tabletop. "Read it yourself." Gly's eyes flicked downward.
Shaw threw every ounce of his strength against the table in a twisting motion and rammed the corner edge into the sweater just above the beltline.
A sharp grunt was the only reaction. Gly absorbed the momentum and scarcely recoiled. It would have knocked any other man across the room in agony. He clamped a great ham of a fist around a table leg and effortlessly lifted the heavy oak fixture to the ceiling.
Shaw was stunned. The thing must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds.
Gly slowly lowered the table, and set it aside as easily as a child laying a doll in a baby carriage and, rose to his feet. Shaw picked up his chair and brought it down in a violent arc, but Gly simply grabbed it in midair, wrenched it away and placed it neatly under the table.
There was no anger, no savage glare in Gly's eyes as they stared unblinkingly into Shaw's only three feet away.
"I have a gun," said Shaw, fighting to keep his voice controlled.
"Yes, I know," replied Gly, grinning satanically. "A quaint, old-fashioned twenty-five-caliber Beretta. I found it stashed in a boot beside your bunk. In fact, it's still there. I made sure before I came in here."
Shaw realized he wasn't going to feel the hammer impact of a bullet or the cut of a knife. Gly was going to do the job with his bare hands.
Shaw fought off a wave of mental nausea and lashed out with a vicious judo kick. He might just as well have stubbed his toe on a tree. Gly spun sideways and neutralized the thrust to his groin, taking the blow on his hip. He moved forward, taking no precaution to cover himself. He had the blank look of a butcher approaching a side of beef.
Retreating until his back met a bulkhead, Shaw glanced wildly around for a weapon, a lamp, or a book he could hurl, anything to slow two hundred pounds of muscle. But tugboat cabins are conceived for austere living; except for a picture screwed into a panel, there was nothing in reach.
Shaw pressed the flats of his hands together and whipped them in a scything chop to the side of Gly's neck. It was, he knew with sickening certainty, his last act of defiance. The result was the same as striking concrete, and he gasped in shock and pain. It felt as if both his palm bones had cracked.
Gly, showing no ill effects, reached around the small of Shaw's back with one massive arm and pulled, while the other forearm pressed into Shaw's chest. Then Gly slowly increased the opposing pressures and Shaw's spine began to bend. "So long, you limey twit."
Shaw gnashed his teeth together as the agony suddenly mushroomed inside him. The air was squeezed from his lungs and he could feel his heartbeat pounding in his head as the cabin began to dim and waver before his eyes. A final scream tried to force its way through clenched teeth, but died. There was nothing left now but the gruesome snap of his back. Death was the only release.
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