"Joe Haldeman - Tool of the Trade" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

this?"
"Generally not. There are more secure ways. You'll be instructed."
He got up suddenly and dusted off his trousers. "It was good meeting
you." We shook hands. He turned abruptly, took a couple of steps and
turned back. "Oh. Do you still have the pistols from Iowa?" I had
coached the ROTC pistol team.
"Yes... I don't know whether to-"
"No, don't register them. Better to take the small chance of
exposure. We can't afford to have any of our people on that particular
list."
"I should keep them, then?"
"In a safe place. One never knows." He checked his watch and
then hurried down the leaf-strewn path. I wouldn't see him again for
several years.
I sat on the hill for a while thinking and, not having shed my
starving-student ways, finished all the chow mein and sweet-and-sour
pork, and washed it down with red wine. I still have the basket. It gives
me heartburn to look at it.
My instruction as a spotter began the next morning. There was a
large MIT Interoffice Memo envelope on my desk; inside it was a pad
of pale-blue notepaper, matching envelopes, and a long note,
handwritten in Russian.
The notepaper was "safe," the note said, purchased in a New
York dime store and devoid of fingerprints. Most of my spotting
reports would be written on it and men dead-dropped-left in a public
place for another agent to pick up, unless a curious child or str
eetcleaner got there first.
I was to write each report with a different safe typewriter, a cheap
one bought in a pawnshop and then disposed of. The respondent
suggested that I wipe it clean of fingerprints and leave it inconspicuously
in a public place, letting an American thief be my accomplice.
At the time, I was extremely annoyed by the cloak-and-dagger
caution of the arrangements. It probably wouldn't be smart to write the
reports on MIT letterheads and sign my name to them, but this seemed
to be laughably excessive. Now, I'm not so sure. Both sides in this
game can be thorough.
So every few months for the next couple of years, I would write a
list of a few people who might be useful, along with a paragraph or so
of explanation for each. I would seal it in an envelope addressed to a
nonexistent place and affix a stamp (many people who would open a
plain envelope out of curiosity will virtuously drop a stamped one in the
mailbox unopened), and then set it down at the place and time
instructed. Usually the drop was in a quiet comer of a fairly busy public
place-the back booth of a greasy spoon or an uninteresting exhibit in a
museum. I never waited to watch the pickup, though of course I was
always on the lookout for Lubinov.
In American-spy parlance I was a "sleeper"- someone who leads
a fairly normal life until the KGB orders him activated-as well as a
spotter. Technically, I suppose I was also an agent vlyiyania, or agent
of influence; someone who attempts through friendly discussion to alter