"Gibson, William - New Rose Hotel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gibson William)

The rain began, sometime toward morning. Our room had a single
window, high and narrow, where I stood and watched the rain fur the river
with silver needles. Sound of your breathing. The river flowed beneath low,
stone arches. The street was empty. Europe was a dead museum.
I'd already booked your flight to Marrakech, out of Orly, under your
newest name. You'd be on your way when I pulled the final string and dropped
Hiroshi out of sight.
You'd left your purse on the dark old bureau. While you slept I went
through your things, removed anything that might clash with the new cover
I'd bought for you in Berlin. I took the Chinese .22, your microcomputer,
and your bank chip. I took a new passport, Dutch, from my bag, a Swiss bank
chip in the same name, and tucked them into your purse.
My hand brushed something flat, I drew it out, held the thing, a
diskette. No labels.
It lay there in the palm of my hand, all that death. Latent, coded,
waiting.
I stood there and watched you breathe, watched your breasts rise and
fall. Saw your lips slightly parted, and in the jut and fullness of your
lower lip, the faintest suggestion of bruising.
I put the diskette back into your purse. When I lay down beside you,
you rolled against me, waking, on your breath all the electric night of a
new Asia, the future rising in you like a bright fluid, washing me of
everything but the moment. That was your magic, that you lived outside of
history, all now.
And you knew how to take me there. For the last time, you took me.
While I was shaving, I heard you empty your makeup into my bag. I'm
Dutch now, you said, I'll want a new look.
Dr Hiroshi Yomiuri went missing in Vienna, in a quiet street off
Singerstrasse, two blocks from his wife's favorite hotel. On a clear
afternoon in October, in the presence of a dozen expert witnesses, Dr
Yomiuri vanished.
He stepped through a looking glass. Somewhere, offstage, the oiled
play of Victorian clockwork. I sat in a hotel room in Geneva and took the
Welshman's call. It was done, Hiroshi down my rabbit hole and headed for
Marrakech. I poured myself a drink and thought about your legs.
Fox and I met in Narita a day later, in a sushi bar in the. JAL
terminal.
He'd just stepped off an Air Maroc jet, exhausted and triumphant.
Loves it there, he said, meaning Hiroshi. Loves her, he said,
meaning you.
I smiled. You'd promised to meet me in Shinjuku in a month.
Your cheap little gun in the New Rose Hotel. Ale chrome is starting
to peel. The machining is clumsy, blurry Chinese stamped into rough steel.
The grips are red plastic, molded with a dragon on either side. Like a
child's toy.
Fox ate sushi in the JAL terminal, high on what we'd done. The
shoulder had been giving him trouble, but he said he didn't care. Money now
for better doctors. Money now for everything. Somehow it didn't seem very
important to me, the money we'd gotten from Hosaka. Not that I doubted our
new wealth, but that last night with you had left me convinced that it all