"Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 04 - Tactics of Mistake" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

talk. After all, it's really the Coalition we're fightingтАФNeuland couldn't last six weeks without them. So
I'm giving an unofficial little party at my home this eveningтАФwith a buffet supper and general
conversation. Eachan and Melissa will be there. I'd appreciate having you, too."
"Be happy to come," said Cletus. "May I bring my aide?"
"Aide?"
"A first lieutenant named Arvid Johnson, if I'm lucky enough to find him still unassigned," Cletus said.
"One of my former students at the Academy. He came to visit me when he was home from here on leave
a couple of months ago. It was what he told me that got me interested in Bakhalla."
"Was it? Well, bring him by all means." The autocab slid to a halt before the walkway leading up to
the entrance of the large white building. Mondar pressed a button and the autocab door next to Cletus
swung open. "Bring anyone you think might enjoy it. About eight o'clock."
"We'll be there," said Cletus. He turned and let the walkway carry him up into the Headquarters
building.
"Colonel Cletus Grahame?" echoed the narrow-faced, young second lieutenant at the cluttered desk
behind the glass door of the billeting and assignments office, when Cletus confronted him. "You're to
report to General Traynor immediatelyтАФimmediately when you arrive."
He had a high tenor voice and he grinned unpleasantly as he spoke. Cletus smiled agreeably, asked
directions to the general's office and left.
The glass door he finally found marked Brigadier General John Houston Traynor led him first into
an outer office where a square-set, half-bald colonel in his early fifties stood, evidently just completing the
giving of some directions to an overweight, thirtyish captain behind the room's single desk. Finishing, the
colonel turned around and eyed Cletus.
 "You're Grahame?" he asked abruptly.
"That's right, Colonel," said Cletus pleasantly, "and you тАж ?"
"Dupleine," said the other, ungraciously. "I'm chief of staff to General Traynor. You're not going into
the officers pool, then?"
"I'm on special assignment from Geneva, Colonel," said Cletus.
Dupleine grunted, whirled around and went out the door Cletus had just entered. Cletus looked back
at the fat captain behind the desk.
"Sir," said the captain. His voice held the hint of a note of sympathy. His face was not unkind, and
even intelligent, in spite of the heavy dewlap of the double chin supporting it from beneath. "If you'll just
sit down a moment, I'll tell General Traynor you're here."
Cletus sat down and the captain leaned forward to speak into the intercom grille of his desk. The
reply he received was inaudible to Cletus, but the captain looked up and nodded.
"You can go right in, Colonel," he said, nodding to another door behind his desk.
Cletus rose and obeyed тАж As he stepped through the door into the further office, he found himself
directly facing a much larger desk, behind which sat a bull-like man in his mid-forties with a heavy-boned
face decorated by a startling pair of thick, black eyebrows. "Bat" Traynor, the general had been
nicknamed, Cletus recalled, because of those brows. Bat Traynor stared now, the brows pulled
ominously together as Cletus walked forward toward his desk.
"Colonel Cletus Grahame reporting, sir," Cletus said, laying his travel orders on the desk. Bat shoved
them aside with one big-knuckled hand.
"All right, Colonel," he said. His voice was a rough-edged bass. He pointed to a chair facing him at
the left side of his desk. "Sit down."
Cletus limped gratefully around to the chair and dropped into it. He was beginning to feel the fact that
he had strained one or more of the few remaining ligaments in his bad knee during the episode in the ditch
outside of town. He looked up to see Bat still staring point-blank at him.
"I've got your dossier here, Colonel," Bat said after a moment. He flipped open the gray plastic folder
that lay on the desk before him and looked down at it. "You come from an Academy family, it says here.
Your uncle was General Chief of Staff at Geneva Alliance HQ just before he retired eight years ago. That