"Dann,_Jack_-_The_Diamond_Pit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dann Jack)

"Oh, I'm so very sorry," I said sarcastically. She hurried ahead, but I kept close to her. Our voices and movements echoed through the crudely cut corridor. "This place certainly wasn't cut out of diamond."
"Of course not, silly," Phoebe said. "The whole mountain isn't one big diamond."
"Your father said it was."
"Well, he's like my grandfather. He exaggerates. About two-thirds of the mountain is one big diamond. The rest is this stuff, regular stone, I would suppose."
"And where does it lead?"
"Well, you're going to find out now, aren't you?" Phoebe said peevishly. Perhaps she was as frightened as I was, although I doubted that. She had obviously been here before. Probably many times. I shivered, swore, and slapped at something that had dropped onto my neck. Phoebe waved her lantern, which was smoking.
"Lots of spiders in this part. I hate them, don't you?" Phoebe said, quickening the pace.
I heard a screeing sound.
"And bats," she continued.
Which meant that there was another opening. But I was not relieved yet. We came to a terminus of sorts, and I heard water dripping and the distant rumbling of machinery. Phoebe led me through another corridor, which became narrower and narrower; her lantern threw cascading shadows across the rough-cut walls -- and the reinforced metal doorway ahead.
Turning a large combination lock, which would unbolt the heavy door, she said, "We'll be fine now." The door was three feet thick; I'd only seen its kind in bank vaults. I helped her pull it open, and we were bathed in the dim but steady light that emanated from the opalescent walls and ceiling. I felt like I was back in the pit. There were no shadows in this place. We had entered a two-dimensional realm.
Phoebe led me through a long corridor that opened into a large storeroom filled with rifles, machine guns, shotguns, pistols, flamethrowers, grenades and grenade launchers, all manner of knives and swords and bayonets, pull carts, sledge hammers, wire cutters, welding and carpenter's tools, cables, foodstuffs, canteens, medications, bandages, stretchers, gas masks, and canister weapons I didn't even recognize. "I think Poppa said this place is as secure as the bunker. Anyway, everything we need is right here."
"What are you looking for?" I asked warily, following her as she walked up one aisle and down another.
"You're the veteran of the Great War. You tell me." She walked on, then stopped and picked up what might have been a grenade. Behind her were shelves of gas masks and medicines: bleach ointments, clouded glass bottles of petrol, methylated spirits, kerosene, liquid paraffin, and carbon tetrachloride. There were swabs and eye drops and bandages and a metal mask with holes. I knew what _that_ was for -- what all that was for: mustard gas poisoning.
"No," I said, realizing that I had shouted. "No."
"We could gas them when they get out of their planes," Phoebe said excitedly, almost cheerfully. She walked a few paces down the aisle, stopped, and picked up what looked like an ordinary grenade launcher. Finding it unexpectedly heavy, she nearly dropped it. "Here, we can use these tubes to shoot them off with. I think these go with the gas grenades. Poppa showed me once, but I'm not so sure now."
"I won't have any part of cold-blooded murder."
Phoebe raised her eyebrow slightly, as if mystified. "I don't want to _kill_ them, just put them to sleep for a while." Then her face reddened and she said, "What do you think they did to Mother -- and our servants? Well -- ?"
I nodded -- there was nothing I could say to that -- and examined the canister she had been holding, and the others neatly laid out on the gunmetal shelves like condiments for a deadly banquet. "Well, you'll certainly put them to sleep for a good long while with this. It's phosgene, for Chrissakes. The Germans used it at Ypres in 1915." I _thought_ I could smell a faint odor of new mown hay, which is a dead giveaway for phosgene. "If I can smell it, something must be leaking. Let's get _out_ of here now."
"I like the smell, don't you?" Phoebe said, teasing me.
"Phoebe!"
"Phoebe what, you flat tire. How could you believe for even one second that I would actually consider killing those men?" She seemed to be about to break into tears. "Well, I don't need your help, after all. I can do it myself."
"What? Kill all those aviators? And how do you propose to do that all alone? You could get a few of them, I'll admit, but not all of them."
"I told you I'm not going to kill _any_ of them," Phoebe said, and she looked so angry that I thought she might actually stamp her foot. Or throw the canister at me. "Come over here."
"We need to get out of here," I said. "We've probably already poisoned ourselves."
"Well, I've been down here only about two hundred times, and it always smells like this, and I'm still alive, so stop being a stupid coward."
I felt my ears burn.
She walked over to me and asked in almost a whisper, "Are you going to trust me?"
After a time I said, "Yes," and put my arms around her.
"Then you'll help me?"
"Of course I will." I felt the last tuggings of my conscience and wondered if, indeed, I would be killing those aviators -- For those few seconds as I held Phoebe close, I could hear her shallow breathing and the ever so faint booming of bombs.
And somehow I _knew_ I was making a great mistake...
Then she kissed me, tenderly but without passion, and said, "Let's get ready. If you can pile up the little gas bombs and the tubes, I'll try to get us some more help."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I know the way to the servants' quarters," Phoebe said, "and I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that some of the servants are using the tunnels like bunkers. If they're there, I'll find them."
"I should be with you."
"No, we've got to make sure the enemy doesn't land before we can get out there. If you just keep following the tunnels to your right, you'll come to the outside. Don't worry, I'll find you somewhere between here and there." Phoebe nodded toward a corridor that curved to the right. The light made the far wall and the branching corridors look flat, as though the tunnels, as Phoebe called them, had been lightly sketched with a charcoal pencil. Phoebe turned and looked back toward where we had come. She seemed to be staring at something only she could see, and her eyes were bright with tears.
"Phoebe -- "
"They killed her," she said, meaning her mother, and then she disappeared into the flat light. I called after her, and her voice echoed back, "Make sure you take the right bombs."
And I wondered once again if the _right_ bombs would be lethal.
* * * *
I followed Phoebe's directions, kept turning to the right, and navigated the warren of corridors until I reached a camouflaged opening in the hill west of the chateau. Phoebe and I had spent many a perfect hour watching the zebras play and frolic through these gently inclined fields, and the sweet fragrances of spring flowers and Phoebe's perfume were cold memories as I looked out at the devastation before me. It was a clear morning with just a touch of chill -- and the smells of oil and metal. Through the copses of evergreens and oak, I could see the blackened chateau and the ruined grounds of what the Old Man had called his enchanted hill. A streamer of smoke rose from the castle's west wing, yet, miraculously, most of the castle was untouched. A bomb had obliterated the Neptune pool and the great Grecian marble steps.
Above, in the blue, ceramic sky, planes circled like buzzing insects waiting their turn to land.
We were probably too late. At least half the planes would already be on the ground and the aviators, probably armed to the teeth, would be making their way to the chateau. I had enough gas canisters in the pull cart to asphyxiate half the population of Chicago. I waited for Phoebe and had begun to worry when I heard footsteps. Phoebe had indeed found a squad of servants, including Robert, who, surely, was too old and decrepit for this kind of operation. Yet he stood in front of the other slaves.
"We're ready," Phoebe said, looking at me determinedly, as if waiting for me to respond with the proper etiquette. She stood away from me, waiting, testing me, and I knew if I didn't respond properly, I would lose her forever.
I nodded to Robert and asked him if he knew how to launch the gas grenades.
"Yes, Mr. Orsatti, I certainly do, and so do my men."
"Your men?" I asked, glancing at Phoebe, who did not seem disturbed, just anxious to get underway.
"Yes, I trained them. Under Mr. Jefferson's orders, of course."
"And who trained you?" I asked.