"Doc Savage Adventure 1945-01 The Hate Genius" - читать интересную книгу автора (Doc Savage Collection)

THE HATE GENIUS

A Doc Savage Adventure by Kenneth Robeson

(Originally published as "Violent Night" in "Doc Savage Magazine" January 1945. Reprinted as "The Hate Genius" by Bantam Books, June 1979.)

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To the world at large, Doc Savage is a strange, mysterious figure of glistening bronze skin and golden eyes. To his amazing co-adventurers -- the five greatest brains ever assembled in one group -- he is a man of superhuman strength and protean genius, whose life is dedicated to the destruction of evil-doers. To his fans he is the greatest adventure hero of all time, whose fantastic exploits are unequaled for hair-raising thrills, breathtaking escapes and bloodcurdling excitement.

WANTED -- ADOLF HITLER!

World War II is drawing to a close. Hitler rigs an assassination of a look-alike double in a daring plot to save his ruined Reich -- then disappears. America call on its greatest hero -- Doc Savage -- to track down this most evil of adversaries and stop the phony martyrdom. Joining him in this last-ditch crusade area a wide assortment of Allied agents -- one of whom may be the fleeing Fuehrer himself!
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I


IT came as soon as he saw Lisbon. The feeling of being afraid. There had been fog, a slate-colored depressing fog around the Clipper during the last five hundred miles of flying; and the plane popped out of it suddenly into bright sunlight. And there directly below was their destination, Lisbon, the westernmost of Europe's capitals. With its white houses and colored tile roofs and parks and gardens, fronting on the Rada de Lisboa. With its eleven-by-seven mile lake made by the widening of the Tagus river.

He had expected to be afraid as soon as he saw Lisbon, and what he felt wasn't too bad, so he was relieved. Not much relieved, though.

The plane began circling. He suspected something was wrong.

Looking down, he could see the Castello de San Jorge on its rocky hill in the Alfama district And suddenly he realized that he could recall with an unnatural clarity the exact appearance of the ancient Castello de San Jorge. There was no reason for such an abrupt and striking memory, except nerves. He frowned down at the old citadel, which dominated the Alfama section, containing one of the nastiest slums in Europe. There was no use kidding himself. Nerves. He was having the jitters. As badly as he had expected to have them.

The Clipper continued to circle. Then the control compartment door finally opened and the Captain -- on a land plane he would have been called the Pilot -- came out with a worried expression.

"Mr. Savage," the Captain said. "They won't let us land at the lower end."

"What would happen if you went ahead and landed there anyway?"

"Their anti-aircraft batteries would fire on us."

He held back his irritation with difficulty -- he had a biting impulse to shout his anger. He had directed the pilot to land on the remote end of the big, lake-like Rada de Lisboa, because he had hoped to get ashore unobserved at that point. He was disappointed because the Portuguese officials wouldn't let the plane land there. It was a small disruption of his plans, but it filled him with hot anger. Another sign of how much he was on edge.

"Go ahead and make a normal landing," he said.

"Yes, sir," the Captain said. "I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about. It's not your fault," he said, and the words had a harshness he didn't intend them to have. The Captain looked worried as he made his way back to the compartment. The Portuguese officials were being cranky. They must have had enough tricks pulled on them in the course of the war to make them impatient with everyone.

The Clipper shortly went into its procedure landing approach.


HIS ill luck continued when he stepped ashore. He turned up his coat collar and tried to hurry through the bright modern new American trans-Atlantic terminal building. He was recognized, however.

He could hear the word going around while they examined his credentials: "Es la Senor Savaget!" That was in Spanish, but he heard it in Portuguese, also.

More attention, he thought sourly, than the leading bullfighter used to get before the war. But he was flattered, and embarrassed, too.