"Clancy, Tom - Mirror Image" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

TOM CLANCY'S

Op-Centre


MIRROR IMAGE


PROLOGUE

Friday, 5:50 P.M., St. Petersburg

"Pavel," said Piotr Volodya, "I don't understand."

Pavel Odina squeezed the steering wheel tightly. He looked unpleasantly at the man sitting next to him in the passenger's seat of the van. "You don't understand what, Piotr?"

"You forgive the French," Piotr replied, scratching a woolly sideburn, "so why not the Germans? Both of them have invaded Mother Russia."

Pavel frowned. "If you can't see the difference, Piotr, you're a fool."

"That's not an answer," said Ivan, one of four men seated in the back.

"It happens to be true," grinned Eduard, who was seated beside him, "but Ivan is right. It isn't an answer. "

Pavel shifted gears. This was the part of the nightly, half-hour commute to the Nepokorennykh Prospekt apartments that he hated most. Just two minutes out from the Hermitage, they had to slow as they neared the bottleneck at the Neva River. They were mired in traffic while his political nemeses were proceeding at full speed.

Pavel pulled a neatly rolled cigarette from his shirt pocket and Piotr lit it for him.

"Thanks, Piotr."

"You still haven't answered me," Piotr said.

"I will," Pavel insisted, "when we've gotten onto the bridge. I can't think and curse at the same time."

Pavel swung the van suddenly from the center lane to the left lane, jolting the men to the other side. Having fallen asleep when they left the Hermitage, both Oleg and Konstantin awoke with a jolt.

"You're too impatient, Pavel," Ivan said. '.'What are you in such a rush to get home to, your wife? Since when?"

"Very funny," Pavel said. The truth was, he wasn't hurrying to get to anything. He was in a rush to get away from the pressure, away from the deadline that had consumed them for months on end. Now that it was nearly over, he couldn't wait to go back to designing computer animation software for Mosfilm.

Shifting gears again, Pavel zigzagged between the rows of small Zaporozhets-968s, with their sputtering forty-three-horsepower engines, and the larger, five-seat Volga M-124s. There was also a smattering of foreign cars, though only government officials and black marketeers drove them; no one else could afford to. He and his comrades wouldn't even be driving this van if the TV studio hadn't provided it. The powerful Swiss-made vehicle was the only thing he would miss.

No, that isn't true, he thought as he glanced west. He savored the sight of the Peter and Paul Fortress on the opposite banks of the Neva as the setting sun glinted off its tall, graceful spires.

He would also miss St. Petersburg. He would miss the beauty of these blazing orange sunsets on the Gulf of Finland, the calming flow of the blue waters of the Neva, the Fontanka, and the Yekateringofki rivers, and the simple splendor of the many canals. Though the waters were still somewhat dirty from years of Communist neglect, they were no longer thick with foul-smelling industrial waste as they wound through the heart of the ancient city, Russia's Venice. He would miss the majesty of thee ruby-red Belozersky Palace, the gilt interiors of the Alexander Nevsky Chapel, where he sometimes went to pray, the towering golden onion domes of Catherine the Great's palace, and the peaceful gardens and cascading fountains of Peter the Great's palace, Petrodvorets. He would miss the sleek, white hydrofoils that skimmed along the Neva looking like something from a science fiction novel by Stanislaw Lem-and he would miss the magnificent battleships that dwarfed them, coming and going to the Nakhimov Naval School on Aptekarsky Island in the Neva.

And, of course, he would miss the incomparable Hermitage. Though they weren't supposed to wander in the museum, he always took time to do just that when Colonel Rossky was occupied. Even if someone did see him day after day, he was supposed to be an employee there. No one would give it a thought. Besides, a religious man can't be put among the likes of Rembrandt's Descent from the Cross, or Carracci's Lamentation of Christ, or his favorite, the School of Ribalta's St. Vincent in a Dungeon, and not be expected to look. Especially when he felt such a kinship to the trapped but resolute St. Vincent.

But he would be happy to get away from the work itself, from the stress and the seven-day workweeks and especially the watchful eyes of Colonel Rossky. He had served under the bastard in Afghanistan, and cursed the fate that had brought them back together for the past eighteen months.