"Clancy, Tom - Jack Ryan 02 - Patriot Games" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

"Excuse me, sir." Ryan turned to see a police officer -- they call
them constables over here, he reminded himself -- in uniform complete to
the Mack Sennett hat. "Please do be careful and cross at the corners. You
might also mind the painted signs on the pavement to look right or left.
We try not to lose too many tourists to the traffic."
"How do you know I'm a tourist?" He would now, from Ryan's accent.
The cop smiled patiently. "Because you looked the wrong way, sir, and
you dress like an American. Please be careful, sir. Good day." The bobby
moved off with a friendly nod, leaving Ryan to wonder what there was about
his brand-new three-piece suit that marked him as an American.
Chastened, he walked to the corner. Painted lettering on the blacktop
warned him to LOOK RIGHT, along with an arrow for the dyslexic. He waited
for the light to change, and was careful to stay within the painted lines.
Jack remembered that he'd have to pay close attention to the traffic,
especially when he rented the car Friday. England was one of the last
places in the world where the people drove on the wrong side of the road.
He was sure it would take some getting used to.
But they did everything else well enough, he thought comfortably,
already drawing universal observations one day into his first trip to
Britain. Ryan was a practiced observer, and one can draw many conclusions
from a few glances. He was walking in a business and professional
district. The other people on the sidewalk were better dressed than their
American counterparts would be -- aside from the punkers with their spiked
orange and purple hair, he thought. The architecture here was a hodgepodge
ranging from Octavian Augustus to Mies van der Rohe, but most of the
buildings had an old, comfortable look that in Washington or Baltimore
would long since have been replaced with an unbroken row of new and
soulless glass boxes. Both aspects of the town dovetailed nicely with the
good manners he'd encountered so far. It was a working vacation for Ryan,
but first impressions told him that it would be a very pleasant one
nonetheless.
There were a few jarring notes. Many people seemed to be carrying
umbrellas. Ryan had been careful to check the day's weather forecast
before setting out on his research trip. A fair day had been accurately
predicted -- in fact it had been called a hot day, though temperatures
were only in the upper sixties. A warm day for this time of year, to be
sure, but "hot"? Jack wondered if they called it Indian summer here.
Probably not. Why the umbrellas, though? Didn't people trust the local
weather service? Was that how the cop knew I was an American?
Another thing he ought to have anticipated was the plethora of
Rolls-Royces on the streets. He hadn't seen more than a handful in his
entire life, and while the streets were not exactly crowded with them,
there were quite a few. He himself usually drove around in a five-year-old
VW Rabbit. Ryan stopped at a newsstand to purchase a copy of The
Economist, and had to fumble with the change from his cab fare for several
seconds in order to pay the patient dealer, who doubtless also had him
pegged for a Yank. He paged through the magazine instead of watching where
he was going as he went down the street, and presently found himself
halfway down the wrong block. Ryan stopped dead and thought back to the
city map he'd inspected before leaving the hotel. One thing Jack could not