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

Kalvin raced around the car, hearing another impact as he squatted to open the driver's
door, and with the help of Mainz he somehow managed to thrust the major's body aside
enough to huddle low at the controls.

They hurtled away in the damaged car, Kalvin obeying the curt instructions of Mainz as
he turned this way and that. Once over the Donau Canal, Kalvin turned onto the
Praterstrasse. No one is following us, he said, blinking in the breeze through the ruined
windshield. To his amazement, the BMW had not yet attracted the polizei.

The gentleman is dead, Mainz replied, and coughed. Soon, I shall be.

I got you this far, Kalvin seethed, trying to recall the telephone number he must call only
in a situation like this.

They shot me, you fool, Mainz said. Someone hidden in the park.

No, they wouldn't work alone, Kalvin thought aloud. I'll get you to a hosp?

Quiet, let me talk, said Dieter Mainz with soft urgency. The decision has been made for
me. Have you a recorder?

Try the major's pockets, Kalvin said. You must tell me where the nearest hospital is.

Mainz told him, coughing occasionally, fumbling with the little tape recorder until Kalvin
punched the right button for him. Mainz spoke for perhaps three minutes before he
began to labor for breath, describing a concrete storm drainage sump on the outskirts of
Innsbruck, and how a man assuredly would be crushed to death if he failed to observe
certain precautions as he climbed down below the grating. The old man began, then, to
talk about Donnersprache, and the ways it had been used to weld Germany into a
monolith of hatred. Past a certain point of unified public opinion, Mainz was saying, it
was no longer a necessary. . . . Mainz left that sentence forever unfinished. Kalvin did not
know Mainz was dead until he saw the staring eyes and felt for a pulse.

Accompanied by two dead men in a BMW that featured several obvious bullet holes,
Walter Kalvin parked in shadows and made the necessary telephone call. While waiting
for help, he hefted the old man's leather bag. It seemed very light, its contents soft, and
its brass hasp came loose while Kalvin was handling it. Since the thing had not blown up
then, Kalvin checked inside.

It held a change of clothes and a passport. No device with radio tubes, not even a
schematic drawing.

Kalvin thought about charisma while he replayed the last testament of Dieter Mainz. Then
he replayed it again, starting to hope that the damage assessment team would take its
time. Sergeant Walter Kalvin knew, now, where the last surviving Donnersprache device
lay hidden. Incredibly, the city of Innsbruck was near enough to his father's beloved
Tirol that Kalvin's own accent might go unremarked there. Using the gloves of Dieter
Mainz, Kalvin found spare tapes in the major's coat, exchanged the used tape, and wiped
the recorder down with great care before cupping the major's dead hand around it. With
one gloved hand, he inserted the recorder back into the major's coat. If anyone doubted