Read Online The Care of Time by Eric Ambler - Free Book Online

would know all about that of course.’ He peered forward. ‘Ah, nearly there.’ He pressed the button to roll down the partition between us and the driver. ‘Please let me know personally, won’t you, if you are not absolutely comfortable here?’
    I don’t believe he really thought that I could be so easily brushed off. He just disliked talking about the work I was there to do. Anyway, I persisted.
    ‘About the Nechayev manuscript, Mr Pacioli. There must surely be some preliminary findings by now, and it’s really quite important from my point of view.’
    ‘Because of the clause in your contract that entitles you to leave at once if it’s a fake?’ He said it without reproach but a little wearily.
    ‘I should have thought you’d be fairly interested too.’
    ‘You’re forgetting, Mr Halliday. Fake or not, we have had our orders. In any case, I am going to have to disappoint you. We have had two opinions about the material so far. Eachcompletely contradicts the other in almost every respect. And, as I can already see another unanswerable question trembling on your lips and certain to be asked before your baggage is out of the car, I will save you the trouble of asking it. No, I am afraid that I
don’t
know, any more than you do, why they were so insistent on having you in particular to work on this book. You would be the first to agree, I think, that there are other qualified persons in the field.’
    ‘Sure there are. But in that case …’
    ‘I can only say,’ he said firmly, ‘that when I put the question to Miss Chihani she replied that Dr Luccio had seen you on television.’
    ‘I beg your pardon.’
    ‘Yes, it surprised me too. She must have misunderstood him. You have my office number? Good. Then we must keep in touch.’
    It was not among the more auspicious first meetings that I have had with a publisher.
    A few minutes later, when I had been installed in the suite and was waiting for my bags to be brought up, an unpleasant train of thought arrived to spoil the moment of discovery that I had a marble bathroom. It was the word ‘television’ that had started it running.
    My brief career in television is among those misfortunes of my working life that I try hardest to forget. It began, deceptively, with a petty triumph. In the course of promoting a book in which I had a half share, I appeared on a number of local late-night talk shows of the ‘open-ended’ kind then in vogue. Produced in imitation of their big-city, big-name counterparts, they went out live, were easily interrupted for commercials and cost less than the batch of old movies then on offer. The moderators were usually local news anchor-men eager to demonstrate that they possessed wit and wisdom as well as good looks and the ability to read from a teleprompter. With one of them I lost my temper and for nearly a minute, until a hastily inserted station-break cut me off, said exactly what I thought of him. What I said in thatminute, however, was trenchant enough to be reported, and a current-affairs programmer for the network to which the local station was affiliated became sufficiently interested to call for a tape of the incident. He liked my display of bad manners and I was offered a deal.
    It was an election year and he needed a current-affairs show to fill a late-evening slot during the campaign doldrums of the summer months. It would go out on Mondays and be called
First of the Week
. The official idea was that I would interview party leaders in certain key states where the pollsters were predicting upsets. But that was only the official idea. The unofficial one was that I would be as offensive and unpleasant to these respected party leaders as I had been to the moderator of the talk show. That way, it was thought, I would cause my victims to lose their cool, answer back and commit indiscretions. Thus, the network would appear to be serving the public by educating and informing while, at the same time, be doing its higher