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

assignment. It would be two years in coming.
CHAPTER TWO-NICK
I ARRIVED IN Cambridge more than twenty years ago, glad to
be escaping the Iowa winters, looking forward to the intellectual
stimulation and challenge I knew the MIT and Harvard communities
would provide-and also looking forward to my first meeting with an
actual American Office KGB agent. Though technically I was one
myself, of course.
I'd studied and taught at Iowa for almost six years without so
much as a cryptic postcard. Then one night I was working late at the
office grading finals, and a woman walked in, smiled, handed me an
envelope, and left without a word. In the envelope was a clipping from
the Journal of Educational Psychology advertising an opening for an
assistant professor at MIT. I applied and got the job right away.
(That's one problem with this kind of life. When things go well, you
can never be sure whether it's good luck and reward for ability, or
strings being pulled on your behalf. Another problem, obviously, is
paranoia, and I would soon have advice about that.)
A small stack of mail was waiting for me at MIT, mostly journals
and advertising circulars. There was also a note in an envelope with no
return address:
"We must talk. Let us have a picnic at Walden
Pond on Thursday, September 9th. Meet me at
noon by the ruins of the cabin. Bring a bottle of
red wine.-VL"

Over the past twenty years, most of my contacts with Vladimir Lub
enov-or anybody else from the KGB-have been outdoors, even when
it meant standing in ten-degree weather with the snow falling
horizontally. This first meeting, though, was pleasant: a place of quiet
beauty, leaves changing color, surprisingly few people. There was only
one person at the rectangle of stones that marked the place where Thor
eau had lived so economically, and he was holding a picnic basket. We
shook hands American style and he introduced himself. I started to say
something in Russian, but he cut me off with a sharp jerk of his head
and then a self-effacing laugh. "Paranoia, Nicholas. Paranoia is its own
reward." He had a rather thick Russian accent, Moscow.
We took basket and bottle up to the top of a small rise, where we
could see for quite a distance in every direction-something we certainly
wouldn't do today. They could shine a laser on a nearby leaf and pick
up our conversation from its vibrations. Or something.
Over a weird lunch of Chinese-restaurant takeout food and
French table wine, Vladimir gave me a broad outline of what I was to
do and be for the next few years.
"Of course you are aware," he said, not looking at me, setting out
white boxes on a small checkered cloth, "you are aware that our ...
Committee is very changed from the time when you and I went through
our training." We were about the same age. "Less use of force. Very
little use of force."
"I know. But I didn't miss the Stasninski trial. Nor Khokhlov."