"Joe Haldeman - Blood Sisters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

I had a funny twinge when I closed the door on that console. There couldn't be more than
a half-dozen people in the world who were my equals at using that instrument to fish
information out of the System. But I had to either give it up or send Belle off on her own.
We flew to the West Indies and looked around. Decided to settle on the island of St.
Thomas. I'd been sailing all my life, so we bought a fifty-foot boat and set up a charter
service for tourists. Some days we took parties out to skindive or fish. Other days we
anchored in a quiet cove and made love like happy animals.
After about a year, we read in the little St. Thomas paper that Werner Kraus had died.
They mentioned Maxine but didn't print a picture of her. Neither did the San Juan paper. We
watched all the news programs for a couple of days (had to check into a hotel to get access
to a video cube) and collected magazines for a month. No pictures, to our relief, and the
news stories remarked that Fraulein Kraus went to great pains to stay out of the public eye.
Sooner or later, we figured, some paparazzo would find her, and there would be pictures.
But by then it shouldn't make any difference. Belle had let her hair grow out to its natural
chestnut, but we kept it cropped boyishly short. The sun and wind had darkened her skin and
roughened it, and a year of fighting the big boat's rigging had put visible muscle under her
sleekness.
The marina office was about two broom closets wide. It was a beautiful spring morning,
and I'd come in to put my name on the list of boats available for charter. I was reading the
weather printout when Belle sidled through the door and squeezed in next to me at the
counter. I patted her on the fanny. "With you in a second, honey."
A vise grabbed my shoulder and spun me around.
He was over two meters tall and so wide at the shoulders that he literally couldn't get
through the door without turning sideways. Long white hair and pale blue eyes. White sport
coat with a familiar cut: tailored to deemphasize the bulge of a shoulder holster.
"You don't do that, friend," he said with a German accent.
I looked at the woman, who was regarding me with aristocratic amusement. I felt the
blood drain from my face and damned near said her name out loud.
She frowned. "Helmuth," she said to the guard, "Sie sired ihm erschrocken. I'm sorry," she
said to me, "but my friend has quite a temper." She had a perfect North Atlantic accent, and
her voice sent a shiver of recognition down my back.
"I am sorry," he said heavily. Sorry he hadn't had a chance to throw me into the water, he
was.
"I must look like someone you know," she said. "Someone you know rather well."
"My wife. The similarity is ... quite remarkable."
"Really? I should like to meet her." She turned to the woman behind the counter. "We'd
like to charter a sailing boat for the day."
The clerk pointed at me. "He has a nice fifty-foot one." "That's fine! Will your wife be
aboard?"
"Yes . . . yes, she helps me. But you'll have to pay the full rate," I said rapidly. "The boat
normally takes six passengers." "No matter. Besides, we have two others."
"And you'll have to help me with the rigging."
"I should hope so. We love to sail." That was pretty obvious. We had been wrong about
the wind and sun, thinking that Maxine would have led a sheltered life; she was almost as
weathered as Belle. Her hair was probably long, but she had it rolled up in a bun and tied
back with a handkerchief.
We exchanged false names: Jack Jackson and Lisa von Hollerin. The bodyguard's name
was Helmuth Zwei Kastor. She paid the clerk and called her friends at the marina hotel,
telling them to meet her at the Abora, slip 39.
I didn't have any chance to warn Belle. She came up from the galley as we were swinging