DESMOND BAGLEY
The Tightrope Men
AND
The Enemy
COPYRIGHT
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1973
Copyright © Brockhurst Publications 1973, 1977
Desmond Bagley asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007304752
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780007347698
Version: 2018-10-12
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
The Tightrope Men
Praise
Dedication
Epigraph
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
The Enemy
Praise
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Desmond Bagley
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
THE TIGHTROPE MENPRAISE
Ive read all Bagleys books and hes marvellous, the best.
ALISTAIR MACLEAN
Sizzling adventure.
Evening Standard
Bagley has become a master of the genre a thriller writer of intelligence and originality.
Sunday Times
Compulsively readable.
Guardian
From word one, youre off. Bagleys one of the best.
The Times
The best adventure stories I have read for years.
Daily Mirror
Bagley has no equal at this sort of thing.
Sunday Mirror
Tense, heroic, chastening a thumping good story.
Sunday Express
The detail is immaculately researched the action has the skill to grab your heart or your bowels.
Daily Mirror
Bagley in top form.
Evening Standard
Bagley is a master story-teller.
Daily Mirror
DEDICATION
To Ray Poynton and all his team.
Fons et Origo,
He the one and I the other.
EPIGRAPH
You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.
Bertrand Russell
ONE
Giles Denison lay asleep. He lay on his back with his right arm held crooked across his forehead with the hand lightly clenched into a fist, giving him a curiously defensive appearance as of one who wards off a blow. His breathing was even and shallow but it deepened a little as he came into consciousness in that everyday miracle of the reintegration of the psyche after the little death of sleep.
There was a movement of eyes behind closed lids and he sighed, bringing his arm down and turning over on to his side to snuggle deeper into the bedclothes. After a few moments the eyelids flickered and drew back and he stared uncomprehendingly at the blank wall next to the bed. He sighed again, filling his lungs with air, and then leisurely drew forth his arm and looked at his wristwatch.
It was exactly twelve oclock.
He frowned and shook the watch, then held it to his ear. A steady tick told him it was working and another glance at the dial showed the sweep second hand jerking smoothly on its circular course.
Suddenly convulsively he sat up in bed and stared at the watch. It was not the time midday or midnight that now perturbed him, but the realization that this was not his watch. He normally wore a fifteen-year-old Omega, a present from his father on his twenty-first birthday, but this was a sleek Patek Philippe, gleaming gold, with a plain leather strap instead of the flexible metal band he was accustomed to.
A furrow creased his forehead as he stroked the dial of the watch with his forefinger and then, as he raised his eyes to look about the room, he received another shock. He had never been in the room before.
He became aware that his heart thumped in his chest and he raised his hand to feel the coolness of silk against his fingers. He looked down and saw the pyjamas. Habitually he slept peeled to the skin; pyjamas constricted him and he had once said that he never saw the sense in getting dressed to go to bed.
Denison was still half asleep and his first impulse was to lie down and wait for the dream to be over so that he could wake up again in his own bed, but a pressing necessity of nature was suddenly upon him and he had to go to the bathroom. He shook his head irritably and threw aside the bedclothes not the sheets and blankets to which he was accustomed but one of those new-fangled quilt objects which fashion had recently imported from the Continent.
He swung his legs out of the bed and sat up, looking down at the pyjamas again. Im in hospital, he thought suddenly; I must have had an accident. Recollection told him otherwise. He had gone to bed in his own flat in Hampstead in the normal way, after perhaps a couple of drinks too many the previous evening. Those extra couple of drinks had become a habit after Beth died.