"Evan Innes - America 2040 01 - America 2040" - читать интересную книгу автора (Innes Evan)

and the United States continued to fill outer space with deadly weapons, poised for the ultimate
confrontation.

Theresita Pulaski showed the American President and his secretary of State to their suites, where they
freshened up and rested. Then she reappeared and escorted them to a large conference room. There
Yuri Kolchak was already waiting, seated at a wide, gleaming walnut conference table. He was in
uniform, surrounded by other members of the politburo.

As General Pulaski took a seat at the table, a lesser Soviet diplomat greeted Hamilton and Maxwell and
led them to their own chairs, then made stiff, formal introductions. His voice droned on. From a half
sphere three feet above HamiltonтАЩs head the crisp voice of an interpreter overrode the drone of the
Russian language, the English words beamed down to an area confined to a few inches on either side of
HamiltonтАЩs head.

Kolchak was a darkly handsome man, sturdy and heavy-browed. His slightly Slavic face was smooth,
and his dark and bristly hair, which seemed to be a characteristic of all the Soviet leaders Hamilton had
ever seen in pictures, showed no hint of gray. At forty-seven, just one year older than Hamilton, Kolchak
was the youngest man ever to consolidate the various reins of power in the Soviet Union.

The agenda for the next three days was the subject under discussion, but there existed only Yuri
KolchakтАЩs almost black and yet burning eyes for Hamilton. There was something there that bothered
Hamilton, a quality that heтАЩd seen before. But where?

He put his mind into neutral, blanking out GeorgeтАЩs voice. He willed himself to go down into the dark,
black depths of KolchakтАЩs eyes, to penetrate into the mind behind those eyes. HeтАЩd always been a good
judge of men. And here, eyes locked on his, was a man whom he wanted to influence more than heтАЩd
ever wanted to influence any man. The stakes were high: Dexter Hamilton wanted to be the American
President who halted the eternal arms race and delivered the world, forever, from the threat of nuclear
incineration.

Then the memory came to him, identifying the look in KolchakтАЩs eyes. Dexter had been quite young,
living on a tiny farm in Piedmont, North Carolina. HeтАЩd owned a little brown dog, and one day the dog
wandered into a field and was swept up in a tomato picker. The dying, mutilated dog lay stunned and
shocked, beyond yelping. Dexter knew heтАЩd never forget the look in its large, luminous, brown
eyesтАФterrible pain, disbelief, distance, and something he had never been able to identify until, as
governor, he witnessed capital punishment. In KolchakтАЩs eyes was that same undefin-able quality that
heтАЩd seen in the eyes of a dying dog and in the eyes of men about to dieтАФa pain, a something that, it
seemed, approached a madness.

Aghast, Hamilton put his attention on George, who was in fine fettle, his balding head gleaming with
perspiration. All around the large table the men and the one woman were watching the secretary, some
nodding their heads as the polite haggling over the agenda for the summit meeting droned on. Hamilton
sneaked a look at his button-watch, having only to turn his left arm slightly to reveal the tiny triumph of
American-Japanese technology. He was beginning to feel the growing length of this day.

He closed his eyes for a moment and squeezed the bridge of his nose to dispel drowsiness. When
George Maxwell stopped midsentence, Hamilton quickly opened his eyes. George was standing with his
mouth open, then went on talking, but with an uncharacteristic brittleness in his voice.
There was movement across the table from Hamilton. Yuri Kolchak was trying to rise, and something
was wrong. He looked strained, pale. Two Red Army generals leaped to his side, helped him from the