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Destination Unknown
Agatha Christie
A young woman with nothing to live for is persuaded to embark on a suicide mission to find a missing scientist…When a number of leading scientists disappear without trace, concern grows within the international intelligence community. Are they being kidnapped? Blackmailed? Brainwashed?One woman appears to have the key to the mystery. Unfortunately, Olive Betteron now lies in a hospital bed, dying from injuries sustained in a Moroccan plane crash.Meanwhile, in a Casablanca hotel room, Hilary Craven prepares to take her own life. But her suicide attempt is about to be interrupted by a man who will offer her an altogether more thrilling way to die…
Copyright (#ulink_2123d719-f26e-57e3-a7a2-87355129c90d)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Collins, The Crime Club 1954
Destination Unknown™ is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited and Agatha Christie
and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. Copyright © 1954 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.
www.agathachristie.com (http://www.agathachristie.com)
Cover by designedbydavid.co.uk (http://designedbydavid.co.uk) © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2017
Agatha Christie 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.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008196363
Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780007422296
Version: 2017-04-11
Dedication (#ulink_c4de351c-e36b-5632-85b0-579d02a8cc2c)
To ANTHONY
who likes foreign travel as much as I do
Contents
Cover (#udf855751-e491-5ffa-a056-9309d4cdb507)
Title Page (#u42a7739f-216b-569c-ad7c-1fa66f40cae2)
Copyright (#ua46faa01-48cc-5cbc-8ab0-77177d203e54)
Dedication (#u429af49a-7a98-5d49-a041-3a4b45e4fec2)
Chapter 1 (#ub85e1f9b-6189-5dde-9c03-3c81e0f39211)
Chapter 2 (#u15dc25c0-fc93-50dc-8ee7-09d1a4eb914f)
Chapter 3 (#ub09c71e4-adae-5a47-8084-2def0dfbf886)
Chapter 4 (#ue766371b-c40c-5c5f-8df2-d4c7a959c82d)
Chapter 5 (#u616393ee-dd90-5d1a-8bf6-5c3daa9a280d)
Chapter 6 (#u623ccf78-d8ea-592e-b295-cafda65ff374)
Chapter 7 (#u029ef3da-fc9f-5916-b5cc-739c2d119437)
Chapter 8 (#u6b026a6a-bbe1-50a5-bc9e-af95f9d85f2b)
Chapter 9 (#u66998a03-1866-5c76-9c44-4949f8af91c6)
Chapter 10 (#u8a92cd61-0faa-5595-a470-ff07b3741843)
Chapter 11 (#u154903b6-0e1f-5f67-ab5b-dcfb28824a6d)
Chapter 12 (#ud5bd6ece-2e79-5f2c-a7b8-4aad7d3ec198)
Chapter 13 (#ud8591f37-aa61-5b45-b8d6-a3a2741f4a6c)
Chapter 14 (#u034e8dbe-38e7-511f-8c54-505bcb7bb337)
Chapter 15 (#uec98affe-dad6-5ffe-9e43-766a3c48b41a)
Chapter 16 (#u8b98e686-fbe5-52d8-b462-71a6aa4b9811)
Chapter 17 (#uec59f3d7-f46a-55cb-8f44-7d022b06088b)
Chapter 18 (#uf6e8eb45-9c96-5d68-9417-f8e68730c465)
Chapter 19 (#u9f7e279a-3a14-5ecc-8e26-d5b952e7ff1c)
Chapter 20 (#u2f25fdcd-f6f6-5f90-9e10-31781f4f742e)
Chapter 21 (#ud72c7240-eb64-5b9b-8811-1b30897b9525)
Chapter 22 (#u1826b58e-7d95-5b6f-99f0-1cd9d8777733)
Also by Agatha Christie (#u2ee0e370-613f-5efd-b71f-93cafd37376f)
About the Publisher (#u7c4216f0-a37e-593d-a1a1-5ef4a96783a3)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_a72181a1-b20a-5f55-a15b-108390c891f2)
The man behind the desk moved a heavy glass paperweight four inches to the right. His face was not so much thoughtful or abstracted as expressionless. He had the pale complexion that comes from living most of the day in artificial light. This man, you felt, was an indoor man. A man of desks and files. The fact that to reach his office you had to walk through long twisting underground corridors was somehow strangely appropriate. It would have been difficult to guess his age. He looked neither old nor young. His face was smooth and unwrinkled, and in his eyes was a great tiredness.
The other man in the room was older. He was dark with a small military moustache. There was about him an alert nervous energy. Even now, unable to sit still, he was pacing up and down, from time to time throwing off a remark in a jerky manner.
‘Reports!’ he said explosively. ‘Reports, reports and more reports, and none of them any damn’ good!’
The man at the desk looked down at the papers in front of him. On top was an official card headed, ‘Betterton, Thomas Charles.’ After the name was an interrogation mark. The man at the desk nodded thoughtfully. He said:
‘You’ve followed up these reports and none of them any good?’
The other shrugged his shoulders.
‘How can one tell?’ he asked.
The man behind the desk sighed.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is that. One can’t tell, really.’ The older man went on with a kind of machine-gun volley abruptness:
‘Reports from Rome; reports from Touraine; seen on the Riviera; noticed in Antwerp; definitely identified in Oslo; positively seen in Biarritz; observed behaving suspiciously in Strasbourg; seen on the beach at Ostend with a glamorous blonde; noticed walking in the streets in Brussels with a greyhound! Hasn’t been seen yet in the Zoo with his arm round a zebra, but I dare say that will come!’
Agatha Christie
A young woman with nothing to live for is persuaded to embark on a suicide mission to find a missing scientist…When a number of leading scientists disappear without trace, concern grows within the international intelligence community. Are they being kidnapped? Blackmailed? Brainwashed?One woman appears to have the key to the mystery. Unfortunately, Olive Betteron now lies in a hospital bed, dying from injuries sustained in a Moroccan plane crash.Meanwhile, in a Casablanca hotel room, Hilary Craven prepares to take her own life. But her suicide attempt is about to be interrupted by a man who will offer her an altogether more thrilling way to die…
Copyright (#ulink_2123d719-f26e-57e3-a7a2-87355129c90d)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Collins, The Crime Club 1954
Destination Unknown™ is a trade mark of Agatha Christie Limited and Agatha Christie
and the Agatha Christie Signature are registered trade marks of Agatha Christie Limited in the UK and elsewhere. Copyright © 1954 Agatha Christie Limited. All rights reserved.
www.agathachristie.com (http://www.agathachristie.com)
Cover by designedbydavid.co.uk (http://designedbydavid.co.uk) © HarperCollins/Agatha Christie Ltd 2017
Agatha Christie 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.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008196363
Ebook Edition © March 2017 ISBN: 9780007422296
Version: 2017-04-11
Dedication (#ulink_c4de351c-e36b-5632-85b0-579d02a8cc2c)
To ANTHONY
who likes foreign travel as much as I do
Contents
Cover (#udf855751-e491-5ffa-a056-9309d4cdb507)
Title Page (#u42a7739f-216b-569c-ad7c-1fa66f40cae2)
Copyright (#ua46faa01-48cc-5cbc-8ab0-77177d203e54)
Dedication (#u429af49a-7a98-5d49-a041-3a4b45e4fec2)
Chapter 1 (#ub85e1f9b-6189-5dde-9c03-3c81e0f39211)
Chapter 2 (#u15dc25c0-fc93-50dc-8ee7-09d1a4eb914f)
Chapter 3 (#ub09c71e4-adae-5a47-8084-2def0dfbf886)
Chapter 4 (#ue766371b-c40c-5c5f-8df2-d4c7a959c82d)
Chapter 5 (#u616393ee-dd90-5d1a-8bf6-5c3daa9a280d)
Chapter 6 (#u623ccf78-d8ea-592e-b295-cafda65ff374)
Chapter 7 (#u029ef3da-fc9f-5916-b5cc-739c2d119437)
Chapter 8 (#u6b026a6a-bbe1-50a5-bc9e-af95f9d85f2b)
Chapter 9 (#u66998a03-1866-5c76-9c44-4949f8af91c6)
Chapter 10 (#u8a92cd61-0faa-5595-a470-ff07b3741843)
Chapter 11 (#u154903b6-0e1f-5f67-ab5b-dcfb28824a6d)
Chapter 12 (#ud5bd6ece-2e79-5f2c-a7b8-4aad7d3ec198)
Chapter 13 (#ud8591f37-aa61-5b45-b8d6-a3a2741f4a6c)
Chapter 14 (#u034e8dbe-38e7-511f-8c54-505bcb7bb337)
Chapter 15 (#uec98affe-dad6-5ffe-9e43-766a3c48b41a)
Chapter 16 (#u8b98e686-fbe5-52d8-b462-71a6aa4b9811)
Chapter 17 (#uec59f3d7-f46a-55cb-8f44-7d022b06088b)
Chapter 18 (#uf6e8eb45-9c96-5d68-9417-f8e68730c465)
Chapter 19 (#u9f7e279a-3a14-5ecc-8e26-d5b952e7ff1c)
Chapter 20 (#u2f25fdcd-f6f6-5f90-9e10-31781f4f742e)
Chapter 21 (#ud72c7240-eb64-5b9b-8811-1b30897b9525)
Chapter 22 (#u1826b58e-7d95-5b6f-99f0-1cd9d8777733)
Also by Agatha Christie (#u2ee0e370-613f-5efd-b71f-93cafd37376f)
About the Publisher (#u7c4216f0-a37e-593d-a1a1-5ef4a96783a3)
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_a72181a1-b20a-5f55-a15b-108390c891f2)
The man behind the desk moved a heavy glass paperweight four inches to the right. His face was not so much thoughtful or abstracted as expressionless. He had the pale complexion that comes from living most of the day in artificial light. This man, you felt, was an indoor man. A man of desks and files. The fact that to reach his office you had to walk through long twisting underground corridors was somehow strangely appropriate. It would have been difficult to guess his age. He looked neither old nor young. His face was smooth and unwrinkled, and in his eyes was a great tiredness.
The other man in the room was older. He was dark with a small military moustache. There was about him an alert nervous energy. Even now, unable to sit still, he was pacing up and down, from time to time throwing off a remark in a jerky manner.
‘Reports!’ he said explosively. ‘Reports, reports and more reports, and none of them any damn’ good!’
The man at the desk looked down at the papers in front of him. On top was an official card headed, ‘Betterton, Thomas Charles.’ After the name was an interrogation mark. The man at the desk nodded thoughtfully. He said:
‘You’ve followed up these reports and none of them any good?’
The other shrugged his shoulders.
‘How can one tell?’ he asked.
The man behind the desk sighed.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘there is that. One can’t tell, really.’ The older man went on with a kind of machine-gun volley abruptness:
‘Reports from Rome; reports from Touraine; seen on the Riviera; noticed in Antwerp; definitely identified in Oslo; positively seen in Biarritz; observed behaving suspiciously in Strasbourg; seen on the beach at Ostend with a glamorous blonde; noticed walking in the streets in Brussels with a greyhound! Hasn’t been seen yet in the Zoo with his arm round a zebra, but I dare say that will come!’
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