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

Sergeant Walter Kalvin began to feel as if he was floundering in a nightmare, one
dreamed many times before but only partly remembered. This old German was rattling
off the names of men who had produced and directed the most savage war in human
history. It was true, Speer and Schirach had recently been freed from Spandau to great
hubbub in the German press. Now, jailers of four nations continued to operate the
castle-like Spandau Prison for a solitary inmate: Rudolf Hess. Three of those nations
claimed that they would be happy to release Hess, a man they did not regard as a war
criminal. Only the Soviet Union insisted that Hess remain imprisoned in that vast pile of
stone on the outskirts of Berlin without possibility of parole. To Kalvin, the issue had
never seemed very important until now.

Was it imagination, or was the hulking stranger walking more slowly? Gazing at the face
of Dieter Mainz, Kalvin asked his question softly: Can Donnersprache be that important
today?

For the first time, Mainz turned to scan Kalvin's face at close range, and in the lined old
face Kalvin thought he could read utter despair. You would not ask, he said slowly, if you
had seen its effect on an audience. Perhaps you are immune; some are. Some more,
some less.

Kalvin's chill had become internal by now. I'd like to see this gadget, he said. Does it still
work?

No. Only a vacuum tube, I suspect, but the case is? you would say, boob-trap? To open
it conventionally is to blow it, and yourself, to pieces. Now, headlights swept across
them, high beams flicking twice, the moan of the BMW a familiar voice to Kalvin, who
took the old man's arm and stepped toward the street.

But someone did not want them in that car. The big stranger was no longer strolling, but
running forward now, holding a small device to his mouth with one hand as he fumbled
in his coat with the other.
As the major sizzled past the running man, he must have seen Kalvin draw his pistol. He
made the right move, swerving onto the walkway as he braked heavily so that the
running man caromed off the right front fender. The man fell hard, cursing in a
language Kalvin did not recognize, and came up sitting ten feet from Kalvin, a silenced
handgun in his right hand.

The major was shouting, leaning over to fling the front passenger door wide, and Kalvin
took two steps as if adjusting his paces for a field goal before he kicked the man's
weapon in an arc that sent it spinning far into the darkness.

Kalvin heard a sound like a fist striking a melon, and old Dieter Mainz collided with him
from behind. Get in, get in, he snapped to Mainz, aiming his pistol at the prostrate
stranger. At the instant Mainz fell into the front seat, the BMW windshield resounded with
an impact that left a hole in its center. Kalvin fought to open the locked rear door, and he
saw the yellow wink from a distant line of shrubs a split second before a portion of the
windshield imploded, the major's torso slamming back into the seat. The BMW engine
began to roar, impotent.