"3 Star Brothers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

By the time de Sagres mixed the drinks and returned to his desk he had pulled himself together somewhat. His hands barely trembled, the ice in the glasses clinked hardly at all.

"You somehow talked your way into my private office, past

all my staff and security. Why? Merely to show me a conjuring trick?"

Stoner sipped at his brandy and dry. "Not entirely."

"Then what it is that you want?"

"I want you to become one of those 'Great Souls.'"

De Sagres's dark eyes flashed. Then he threw his head back and laughed. "You want me to live naked in the jungle with those savages? No thank you!"

But Stoner was deadly serious. "I want you to prevent your military from intervening in the civil war in Venezuela."

The president's mouth dropped open.

"Your general staff thinks they are clever enough to move their troops across the border without having the Peace Enforcers intervene. Perhaps they are right. I can't predict how the Peace Enforcers will react. The political situation is murky, after all."

"We have no intention . . ."

"Don't lie to me. Your army has been supplying the Venezuelan insurgents for more than a year. It was your army's agents who fomented the civil war in the first place."

"That's not true!"

Stoner said nothing. He merely stared at de Sagres.

The president felt like a little boy under the awesome presence of a sternly uncompromising priest. "We merely . . . the Venezuelan insurrection was a genuine movement, we did not create it."

"You armed those farmers. Trained them. Led them to believe they could accomplish more with guns than they could with negotiations."

"The government of Venezuela has ignored their farmers for generations!"

"And to rectify that injustice you are helping those farmers to slaughter one another."

De Sagres ran out of arguments. He felt strangely empty, hollow. He tried to turn away from Stoner's infinite gray eyes and found that he could not.

"You must exert your authority over your own military,"

Stoner said. His voice was soft, almost a whisper, yet there was implacable iron in it.

"You don't understand how difficult that would be."

Stoner smiled slightly. "Yes I do. Would I be here otherwise? Would I have taken you to that jungle if a simple request would have been sufficient?"

"The military ..."

"The military will take over your government unless you stop them now. Their plans include not merely annexing Venezuela. They want their chief of staff to sit in your chair."