"Ahern, Jerry - Survivalist 003 - The Quest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ahern Jerry)

"He, " Her voice faltered, and she turned toward him, her hands still holding her clothes against her breasts, her face against his chest. He knew what she was going to say, but couldn't. When he was young, a husband raping his wife was a logical absurdity. If a man wanted his wife and she did not want him, that was her misfortune. Things were different these days, he thought, and the thought didn't distress him.

"I know, Natalia. Why? It is none of my business, but why?"

"The man, Rourke, I cannot, "

"I am your uncle, not your commanding officer. I don't care. Tell me."

She looked up into his eyes. Her eyes were sad like they had been when her father, his brother, had died. "I fell in love with . . . with Rourke. But nothing happened between us. He saved my life, I had to save him, it was my honor to do this." Varakov loved his native language at times, and her soft contralto gave it the beauty it deserved.

"You should remember the first duty of a soldier, Natalia, child, duty is ranked before honor, and honor is often a luxury. But I respect honor. Tell me." And he looked into her eyes again.

"What, Uncle?"

"Would you go back to Vladmir?"

"He only punished me as I deserved to be punished."

"You are not only beautiful, but you are naive. Punishment is in the soul. The body is not punished; it is given pain. A man beats a woman, " he sighed heavily, "a man hits a woman perhaps in anger, once, perhaps twice, perhaps that is just. A man beats a woman not to punish her, but to expiate himself, child. He did not do this to you because of something in you, but because of something in him. And I was afraid you would say such foolishness that you would return to him."

He said nothing else, just sat down with her on the couch and listened to her cry, listened to her tell him very slowly what had happened, sat quietly and thought while she changed clothes, then stayed to the early hours of the morning with her, lingering over a dinner she made for him as she had many times when she was a child. They talked about her father, about trips to the Black Sea resort they had loved, about her marriage to Karamatsov.

He left after drinking too much; his chauffeur was almost visibly angry at the late hour. As Varakov sat back in his seat, his great coat huddled around him, he softly verbalized two thoughts. "She is a sincere cook, but not a gifted one; I will cause Karamatsov somehow to die."

Chapter 16.

"Comrade General!"

Varakov opened his eyes. He heard gunfire, the hum of the engine was louder than it should have been. He looked out the window, startled. The area he recognized from his initial tour of the city was the portion of the city that had been all but destroyed in racial riots many years back in the 1960s. And now there was gunfire all around him.

"What is it?" he asked, but he already knew: the freedom fighters, the people who had survived by being far enough away from the neutron bombs, the people who lived in basements and hidden bomb shelters, who carried guns, killed Russian soldiers, and threw crude gasoline bombs at Soviet vehicles; they called them, the nerve, Molotov cocktails.

No sooner had the thought left his mind than it returned, the shattering of a glass bottle in the street beside them and the roar of an explosion, a fireball, the car swerving to the side.

"Get out of here now, Leon, and you get two weeks leave in Moscow and a letter to a brothel a woman I know keeps." He smiled. Leon was the best driver to be had and would get him out of there anyway, if it could be done. Varakov drew the pistol from his greatcoat pocket where he'd left it, pushed the button for his window to roll down, then fired into the street. He saw figures running, their shadows made larger than life by the flickering of the flames, a Soviet truck overturned and burning.

He almost lost the gun outside the window as Leon, his driver, wheeled the Lincoln around a corner and onto a highway feeder ramp. "We are going in the wrong direction, Comrade General Varakov."

"It does not matter, Leon," he rasped across the seat back separating them.

"Get down!" the driver shouted and Varakov knew better than not to obey. Rocks and bricks pelted at them from a walking bridge over the expressway, the windshield shattering and the car careening toward a guard rail. Varakov dropped to the floor, felt the bounce and lurch, the jerkiness of the car's movements, then the shudder as the car stopped.

With the pistol in his hands, he rose from his knees and pried open the door on the driver's side. He could hear sirens in the distance. They were Russian, he knew. He saw a figure fleeing across the walking bridge, raised his pistol and lowered it without firing. Then Varakov looked down to Leon. The boy's face was halfway through the windshield and one of the eyes was bulged out. It seemed that the head had almost exploded.

He closed his eyes and asked himself out loud, "If all those fools so believe in you, God, why this?" He realized as he walked from the car toward the advancing military police vehicles the mere fact the clouds had not parted and no voice had rumbled like thunder and answered him proved nothing, at least he secretly hoped that.

Chapter 17.

Rourke revved the jet-black Harley-Davidson Low Rider and glided the machine onto the highway. Traveling on the road was dangerous, he knew, because the Russians might be patrolling it. The wind whipped at his face, cold wind because, again, the temperature had begun to change. He shivered slightly inside the waist-length leather jacket. He stopped the bike, easing over to the shoulder, years of driving habit still forcing him to automatically glance over his shoulder along the deserted road, to work his signal flasher.