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

a purse. He took the copies with him to lunch, gnawing an order of barbecued ribs while
parked in the Zoological Gardens with the Genie's top retracted.

He knew most of the Kalvin bio already from the Martin letter, though he was both
excited and frightened to find Martin's details confirmed. Foreign-born but naturalized,
degree from NYU. Enlisted in the Air Force, served in Germany, fluent in German. Later
a master's from Cornell in electronic engineering, a totally different discipline from his
NYU bachelor's, but military training sometimes broadened a young man's horizons and
educated him in the process. Postgrad work at Stanford, experimental psychology and
psychoacoustics, but no doctorate. Several years in Southern California in the recording
industry. Then a staff member in the political machine that had elected a dark horse
latino as mayor of Los Angeles. The mayor had later been recalled.

Kalvin seemed to have had no work for the next two years but surfaced next in Kansas
City? in the retinue of a crusading preacher who ran, successfully, for the Senate, then
captured the Republican nomination and the White House itself. Walter Franz Kalvin,
White House Chief of Staff, was now enjoying the perks of an indispensable man.
Pundits had joked for nearly two centuries about the informal Presidential advisory
groups that functioned parallel with official cabinets, but in Kalvin's case some wag had
dubbed him Rand's entire pantry.

Ramsay rechecked his notes; yes, Kalvin had switched from Demo to GOP? but so what?
He'd also switched from rhetoric to Air Force intelligence to electronics to experimental
psychology to recording studios, and finally to politics. It seemed to make no sensible
pattern. Unless you plugged in the wildest tale imaginable, a man who somehow
recovered an electronic device a half-century old with the potential to persuade people?
a hell of a lot of people.

A man with a master's in electronics could have miniaturized a breadbox-sized rig of the
thirties, especially with the facilities of a recording studio at his disposal. He could also
have tried his stuff out with the speeches of a mayoral candidate; evidently with success.
And after that, what? Took your time, didn't you, looking for a likeable cuss who had the
right background, the right voice, and a willingness to be led.

Ramsay drove back to the studios with more care than usual, viewing himself objectively
as a man who must not come to harm before passing on what he had. Then he
managed somehow to channel his mind toward the High-jump piece, taking one
telephoned interview and making two appointments.

But midafternoon found him nosing the yellow Genie off Reservoir Road toward the Med
School library. As promised, Wintoon was waiting. The very image of an erect, tweedy
old lecturer, Broeck Wintoon kept his white hair cut short, almost military, and Ramsay
envied his tan. Wintoon's long legs easily outpaced Ramsay up a long stair to an
enclosed carrel, both men chatting about family ties as they went. Once inside the
air-conditioned room they moved on to a brief interchange about uses to which the
Pentagon might put the Highjump program, and the reactions of other nations to the
system. Ramsay unlimbered his little videotaper, got Wintoon to expand on a few points
before a wide-angle lens, the Georgetown U. hospital building a sturdy background prop
through the carrel window.