"David Drake - Birds Of Prey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

"We agree," said Julia in her dreamy, half-human voice.

"Then," said the figure, "we need only to determine the details." A rippling of its cloak offered them seats
on the broad, low couch. "I will have food and drink brought if you require it while we plan. . . ."




CHAPTER FOUR

The peristyle court in the center of Headquarters had been converted into a clerical pool like most of the
areas which had been open when the building was a residence. As Perennius returned to the ground floor
by a rear staircase, he was amused to see that the back garden was just that again. Flowers and several
fruit trees including a cherry were now growing where more ranks of file clerks had squatted two years
ago, the last time Perennius had been at Headquarters. Navigatus had been complaining then that he
missed the sight and smells of the garden he had had when he was a District Superintendent in Trier.
Apparently he had done something about the lack, though Perennius could not imagine where the
displaced clerks had gone. The agent had for years believed that the Bureau could accomplish its tasks
better with only half the Headquarters personnel; but he knew the system too well to doubt that if half of
the clerks were eliminated, it would be the incompetent ones who somehow were retained.

The Director's office was what had been the large drawing room between the peristyle court and the
back garden. Eight men of the Palatine Foot lounged in the side passage where the door was placed.
Several of them were dicing without enthusiasm. Clerks and a pair of bored-looking ushers in civilian
dress mingled with the guards in the passage and spilled back into the court. There they jostled the seated
copyists. The large windows in either end of the drawing room were pivoted open to encourage a cross
draft from the garden to the court. Through the window from the latter, Perennius could see Navigatus on
his couch. Standing with him in the room were a dozen other men: functionaries, personal attendants, and
suppliants for the attention of the Director. Navigatus looked very much like a private magnate holding his
levee.

Marcus Optatius Navigatus was a plump man of sixty whose primary affectation was the black, curly
 Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html




wig he wore even to the baths. Perennius had known him for almost twenty years, from the days when
Navigatus had commanded the battalion of the Rhine Army to which Perennius had been assigned. They
were both Illyrians. The younger man had an intelligence and drive which brought him early to Navigatus'
attention. Far more rare in a man of his caliber, Perennius had none of the personal ambition that would
have made him as potentially dangerous to his superior as he was immediately useful.

Perennius had followed Navigatus to three more line commands, jumping in rank each time. When the
older man had transferred to the Bureau of Imperial Affairs, itself a part of the military rather than the civil
establishment, Perennius had accompanied him again. Oddly enough, it was then that their paths had
begun to diverge again. Perennius' trustworthiness, his intelligence, and his ruthless determination to
accomplish a task at whatever cost, would have made him even more valuable to his superior than he had
been while in uniform. Four months of staff duty in Trier had driven Perennius to insist on either a field
assignment or a return to uniform.