"Cook, Glen - Heirs of Babylon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cook Glen)

the hundred meters of ruin. The couple shivered again. He
studied them a moment, then walked on.

"That man ..." Karen sighed with relief. "He makes
me freeze up inside, like a snake. Be careful, Kurt. He's
not old Karl."

Karl Wiedermann was Kiel's resident Political Officer.
He projected the same coldness, had the haunted eyes at
times, but did have a spark of humanness in him. He wore
black and silver only on military holidays, and seldom
invoked his power. Kurt had happy childhood memories
of his little shop on Siegestrasse where he crafted fine
furniture of imported Swedish oak. Old Karl was not a
bad manЧfor a Political Officer.

BeckЧBeck was no Kiel-born man. He had no ties with
the Littoral. He was from High Command at Gibraltar, sent
to Kiel to summon Jager to the War. He appeared a
fanatic, cold as the devil's heart. Perhaps, as Karen had
once opined, there was an association. Kurt, however,
suspected he was as human as anyone, with loves, hates,
hopes, and fears. He could not credit pure evil, as many
believed Beck to be. He had seen strange men and
stranger behavior while with the Danish fishing fleets, and
always, no matter how unusual, a man's actions had been
explicable in terms of human needs.

Kurt's mind, unhampered because Karen was unusually
silent, drifted off to his years with the fishing fleets. A
great adventure they had been, until he came home and
found Karen grown into a lovely woman. He had aban-
doned the sea to court her, had won her, and had let her
talk him out of returningЧuntil Commander Haber
offered him the post of Leading Quartermaster aboard
Jager because of his experience.

More sailors passed in time. Many were accompanied
by tearful wives and lovers and mothers. There were few
men. Kurt watched his sister, Frieda, as she and her
fiance. Otto Kapp, passed, she clinging to his arm so
tightly her knuckles were white. "We give so much to the
War," Kurt murmured. Karen nodded. Their families had
given for generations.

Their fathers had gone to the last Meeting, aboard
U-793, a salvaged submarine, and had not come backЧ
those who went to Meetings seldom returned. Three of
their grandfathers had sailed on the cruiser Grossdeutsch-