"Dean Ing - Silent Thunder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

called it. Kathleen had called it macho; claimed it was typical of the million little acts that
abraded a marriage to shreds. Alan Ramsay called it second-rate because he would never
beat Flory's record.

The truth was that Ramsay had always been driven by self-doubt, the kind of pitiless
internal criticism that can drive a man to perform beyond all reason? and then to
conclude that he should have done better. If Kathleen left him, then it had to be his fault.
If his three-times-a-week calisthenics made him capable of seventy pushups, why, then
he had to work up to eighty-five and inflamed tendons. If his craggy good looks and
humming vitality made him a popular NBN face on the Washington beat, he promptly
began to worry that his value was only cosmetic. And to dig a little harder for a story;
keep asking the next question; keep wondering if the answers made sense. NBN had
discovered that when Alan Ramsay wondered out loud, from scripts he wrote unaided,
thoughtful viewers loved it. Those commentaries were not news, but not quite editorials
either. NBN identified them as pages from 'The Ramsay File' and did not worry too much
about precisely what category they fitted. They were popular, and that was enough. So
long as Ramsay retained his appeal as a thoughtful gadfly, network nabobs could bask in
reflected ethics and take Ramsay's cachet to the bank. They paid Ramsay well, though
not exorbitantly, and wisely avoided reining him in too much.

He laid the mail out on his kitchen table as if dealing a hand of solitaire, then shoved the
bills aside. One evening a week, he devoted an hour to such stuff; and thank God, his
influx of forwarded fan mail had nearly ceased two weeks after that 'True Believers'
commentary of his on NBN affiliate stations. The downside of feeling your commitment,
he had learned, was the impulse to read fan mail and, sometimes, to spend time
responding. At age forty-one, Ramsay was starting to count the ticks of life's clock.

While stuffing his refrigerator with groceries? including sticks of string cheese for Laurie
and soy Cheddar for himself? he made quick guesses about the personal mail. One
piece, in a manila, had been forwarded from the Overseas Press Club. That happened
perhaps three times a year and usually came from someone with savvy who wanted to
avoid the vagaries of a network's internal mail system. Ramsay opened the manila with
the short, dull blade of the mail-slitter in his money clip. Kathleen had been leery of
weapon-like gadgets, and he'd let this one stay dull, as if he expected Kathleen to return.
Wheels within wheels. The letter inside bore a Baltimore postmark and contained a note
on the elegant buff stationery of one Matthew Alden, attorney, and still another envelope
with 'Alan Ramsay, NBN' scrawled across it by someone in a terrible hurry.

Alden's cover note was brief. Dear Mr. Ramsay: I am forwarding the enclosure by
request of an acquaintance of long standing whom I shall call Cody Martin. Evidently his
letter is his response to your recent video commentary on the influx of so-called 'True
Believers' in the new Rand Administration (congratulations, by the way; I saw it). Beyond
this, I know nothing of the contents. Mr. Martin made it harrowingly clear that I must not
read his letter.

He also hinted that you might doubt his bona fides. I can attest to his steadiness, his
courage as a witness in a string of federal prosecutions some years ago, and his sense of
commitment to his country. 'Cody Martin'? his most recent name? was long active in the
intelligence community, and his titles changed irregularly. Make what you will of that. I
doubt that I ever knew, or ever will know, his real name. In the present matter his