"Adams, Robert - Castaways in Time 04 - Of Chiefs and Champions 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adams Robert)

"Yeah, John," said Al Ademian, "and where the hell're the rest of us? Uncle Rupen and Arsen and the girls?"

John shook his head. "Rupen I haven't seen here. The girls, well, Arsen and I heard them shrieking somewhere in the woods a few minutes ago. Arsen went over to see what's in that stone hut there." He waved over his shoulder at the tomb squatting in the random patches of sunlight and shade. "That was just after this fucker here on the ground tried to brain us with thishere shillelagh or whatever it is. But Arsen put him down for the count. Christ, I never thought I'd ever see him and his beer gut move that fast."

Sikeena shrugged. "Shit, he useta be a Marine, man. What you expect? The Corps teaches you how to take care of yourself, you know."

"What's taking Arsen so long, John?" queried Al. "When did he go over to that hootch, anyway? Maybe we should oughta go help him, you know."

"Christ on a crutch!" snapped John, after a brief glance at his expensive gold wristwatch. "He hasn't been gone five minutes. He can look out for himself if any of us can, and besides, he had a great big knife he took off this fucker here, too." He pointed a shoetoe at the sizable now-empty sheath still fastened to the belt securing the man's ankles.

Haigh was beginning to come out of his funk, hearing the familiar, crude exchanges of his fellow band members, most of whom had always taken great, childish delight in picking at and needling each other, sometimes to the point of actual fisticuffs.

"Hey," he put in, "where're Greg Sinclair and Mikey? Reckon somebody oughta go back in the woods and look for them? The girls, too?"

"Thank you, Haigh, but that won't be necessary." John recognized the voice emanating from out of the nearer woods as that of Rose Yacubian, but it sounded tight, strained, almost on the point of hysteria. "And why the hell not?" he thought. "This kinda fucking shit's enough to put anyfucking-body over the edge. Damn, I've been hanging around with these Armenian jarheads too long. I'm even beginning to think in dirty words, just like they talk all the fucking-there I go again, dammit-time."

Arsen just lay in the casket for long minutes after the metal cap had left his head and been drawn back into its recess. He now knew exactly what the casket was, how to use it, and how to use most of the items it had contained. He knew, now, that he could be back in his own time and world at any time he wished. "How 'bout right now?" he thought gleefully, then stopped with a finger poised at the control mounted in the lid above him. "But what about the rest of them? This carrier will only work for one person, the instructor said; for more than the operator, you need a Class Seven projector, and I don't recall having seen one around here, though I will look again, in a minute.

"Sweet Christ, I'm lying here thinking to myself pure science fiction crap. But it's real, I know it is, it's got to be, 'cause there's just no other fucking explanation that fits as good as this does. Unless . . . unless I've flipped my fucking gourd and imagined everything. Well, there's one surefire way to prove whether it's true or I'm nuts."

Kogh Ademian, Sr., President and Chairman of the Board of the far-flung conglomerate that Ademian Enterprises had become since the immigrant blacksmith Vasil Ademian had founded it in the depths of the Great Depression, had taken to working late-very late, sometimes all night-at his office since the mysterious and still-unexplained disappearance of his eldest son, his elder brother, and assorted other relatives some seven months before. Working himself into a stupor, keeping going on copious quantities of ouzo and one Havana puro after another, was just better than trying to have any peace and quiet at home anymore, where his wife could suddenly go into a screaming tizzy at the drop of a hat and start throwing things, clawing at his face and demanding that he find out what had happened to their son or else she would kill him and/or herself.

He had had to regretfully cold-cock the woman he still loved after all these years more than once in pure self-protection, and that pained him; his brother-in-law, Dr. Boghos Panoshian, was of the opinion that she should be placed in a private psychiatric facility and had recommended a few, and such thoughts pained Kogh even more, though as her fits became more frequent and more violent, he was beginning to seriously consider the well-meant suggestions.

He, too, wanted to know what had happened to Arsen and the rest, particularly Brother Rupen Ademian, but he had pulled every string he could- and that was quite a number, some of them reaching up into the very highest echelons of the United States Government and not a few other governments, worldwide, as well as governments in exile, intelligence groups, terrorist organizations, underground political parties, and even organized crime- and, seemingly, no one had any knowledge of how or why or where the missing men and women had been snatched or by whom. Not a one of their bodies or any of their effects had ever shown up anywhere; moreover, there had been not one demand for money or any other kind of ransom.

He was finally convinced, however, that the group of Iranians for whom the amateur Middle Eastern band and dancers had been performing at the time they had disappeared really were innocent. He was now convinced because certain men in his employ had spirited off some of those foreign professionals and subjected them to some highly illegal methods of interrogation, giving them the impression during their confinements and travails that their captors and interrogators were members of the dreaded Iranian secret police, SAVAK, and convincing them that they and their families would be killed in most unpleasant ways did they report their kidnappings, imprisonments, interrogations, or tortures.

Most recently, he had hired a guy from down in Richmond that had done some odd jobs for the Ademians in the past to try his hand at finding them. When Kogh first had met the man, years back, he had called himself Seraphino "the snake" Mineo; later, when the man had worked for Boghos as a chauffeur-cum-mechanic-cum-bodyguard-cum whoknowswhatelse, he'd had a long Guinea name, Anonimo Betcha-somethingorother, that Brother Rupen had said once meant Nameless Sniper. Now he ran a private investigations and security compan\ and called himself Sam Vanga. Knowing full well that Kogh had the bread, he had demanded and gotten a hefty retainer, but it and double or triple it would be worth it if he could turn up anything relating to Arsen and Rupen and the rest.

When Kogh had relit his puro, he picked up the lead-crystal old-fashioned glass and sipped at the pale-bluish liquid. Making a face, he leaned over and spat the watery stuff into his trashcan, shoved back his chair, and crossed to the bar for more ice and ouzo, thinking as he built another ouzo on the rocks.

"Christ, I'm getting as bad as Papa with my cigars and ouzo. He smoked those godawful-stinking Egyptian cigarettes, yeah, but it's just the same thing, really. That damn Boghos kept riding Papa's ass too, swore the old man was going to die of alcoholism or lung cancer or something godawful long before his time if he didn't stop smoking at all and switch from ouzo to water or milk, for chrissakes. Papa, he'd thank him for his concern, sound just as sincere as hell, and go right back to what he did all along, remarking if any of us said anything to back Boghos up that what he said might well apply to English people-which was what he always called white Americans-or Negros or maybe even Greeks, but that Armenians were of a far tougher stock than that.

"Well," Kogh chuckled to himself, "Papa sure as hell showed that damned Boghos a thing or two. That seventy-fifth-birthday blast we had for him at the old farm ran for four days and he ate and drank and danced and smoked for close to twenty hours a day every damn one of those days, too. It wasn't until a week later, when he was helping a traveling farrier shoe the Connemara pony, that he remarked that he thought he'd pulled something in his left arm and walked back up to the house and when I paid the farrier and walked up there myself, Papa was sitting in his easy chair, dead, with a glass of ouzo beside him. Hell, it's just like I told Rupen and Bagrat at the funeral: If you can't check out in the saddle, that's the way to go, just like Papa went.

"Now, Boghos is picking on me, just like he did on Papa. He keeps saying I gotta stop drinking ouzo or anything else, throw away the cigars and the roast lamb, and steaks, and pilaf and kibbe and any damned thing that tastes good, gotta live on nothing but plain.salads and broiled fish and dry chicken meat and skim milk-ecchh\-the way he and Mariya do. Fucking fuckheaded fucker!"

He turned from the bar, and the just-filled glass slipped from his hand unnoticed, to land on the thick carpet and splash its contents all over the leg of his trousers and his shiny shoes. All that he could look at was the shiny box with rounded corners and emitting a pale-greenish glow that had, within the few seconds he had been busy at the bar, appeared between him and his desk.

Greg Sinclair came out of the forest slowly, half leading, half carrying chubby Mike Vranian, the side of whose head was crusted over with dried blood, the freckles all showing up prominently on his wan face.

"What the hell . . .?" began John.

Greg explained as best he could. "All I know is, we was both asleep in two different rooms up in that castle we were in and then, bang, some bastard dropped me down on the hard ground in a whole pile of wet, smelly, half-rotted leaves and acorns and all. But I guess I come off better than poor Mike here-he landed right at the foot of a goddam big tree and busted the side of his head on a fucking root thicker than my thigh. What the hell you reckon that old white-headed fucker of a archbishop did us like this for, huh?"

John headed for the pair, but Lisa Peters got there first. "Lay him down . . . carefully, you idiot!" she ordered Greg in a no-nonsense tone that he could not recall having ever before heard from the tall, blond, lovely belly dancer. Heedless of the new and older blood, she examined the side of his head with light fingertips, nodded, then peeled back his eyelids and looked as fully as she could into his nostrils and ear canals.

Her examination completed, she rocked back onto her heels and said, "His skull isn't fractured, anyway, thank God. I don't doubt he's got a concussion, but how bad, how it will affect him, only time can tell . . . here. I don't know what we can do for him except to try to keep him still and warm and reasonably comfortable. We don't even have any analgesics, or water, for that matter."