"Philip E. High - The Prodigal Sun" - читать интересную книгу автора (High Phillip E)

Dowd was insatiable, having grown drunk on power, he had developed an
everlasting thirst for more. He would have liked to possess the world but
Kaft wouldn't let him.

Kaft represented the secret police. Kaft kept secret files but neither
could bring the other down without his own collapse. Dowd had
insinuated himself so deeply into the financial sinews of the race that he
could not be removed without the collapse of the economy.

Kaft, on the other hand, held those revealing files and his untimely
death would bring them to light. Both took great care that the other
stayed alive but they hated each other venomously.

It was difficult to understand, even in war, how a police state had arisen
from a loosely democratic government. People don't turn round and say:
"Let's have a secret police," or do they?

In an all-out war manufacturing plants are switched from luxury goods
to war production and, inevitably, there are shortages and out of
shortages grows the black market.

In war the best food goes to the fighting men and there is rationing for
the civilian population. A thousand and one petty criminals rush forward
to bleed off this flow of supplies and the black market grows. Beside it
spring up subsidiary rackets, grafting on government contracts, phony
committees preying on the patriotic, forged papers for the draft-dodger.

The government has to counter these activities under emergency
powers and specially trained forces have to be created to deal with civil
corruption. Maybe, after all, people do turn round and say: "Let's have a
secret police."

Kaft was it. He had borrowed the techniques of all the police systems
which had preceded him and added a few of his own.

After a twenty-five year war it had got so bad that people were afraid to
be silent in case their lack of words be interpreted as sullen resentment
against existing order. They were also afraid to speak.

Kaft with his pinched pink senile face and scraggy neck. A man with a
mouth like a coin slot in a public vending machine, listening and biding
his time.

"I don't like it." Rickman rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to
the other. "It's all very well for Dowd to rub his hands and dream of
extending his empire but this could be dangerous. In my opinion we could
do without our visitor. In my opinion this man is a louse but he could also
be a menace."

He took the cigar from his mouth and pointed it at them. "I'll concede