"Paul Levinson - A Medal For Harry (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levinson Paul)

you and I do. That's what they do." She ran her lips and then
her tongue across his breast. "The hell with the politicians,"
she murmured. "Forget about them."

Harry closed his eyes, felt Suzie's warm breath.
Politicians had all but completely left the premises of his mind
when the phone rang.

"Mmm ... don't answer," Suzie said.

But Harry had to answer, because for him, ever since he
could remember, the phone ring aroused that part of his brain
which was expecting the most important call of his life.

This time, at last, his brain might have been right.

"It's the Embassy," Harry said, moving Suzie's head from his
body to the bed as gently as he could and hustling into his
clothes. "The Prime Minister wants to see me there in an hour."

***

An invitation to meet with the Prime Minister.

This _wasn't_ the classic Japanese way, nor was it an
invitation. It was an order. But it was also an honor, a high
and rare honor, and Harry was proud.

He looked around the Embassy office. A single blood-red
daffodil, forced to blush in a bowl of bone-white stones in
March, was the only concession to decoration. This _was_ the Japanese
way -- don't crowd your aesthetic palette like a Western
omelette, take the time to derive the full amount of pleasure
obtainable from the contemplation of a single form. Time enough
to replace it when it had exhausted your capacity to see
something wondrous in it.

Harry's capacity for such enjoyment had been strained long
before he'd entered the office, had been so for months now...

"The Prime Minister will see you now," the smartly dressed
silken haired woman told him. She was beautiful, in a
traditional way, but he was too nervous to more than abstractly
note it.

"Dr. Harihoto," the PM rose and shook his hand. "Please,
sit down."

He was even taller than he looked on full-wall screen -- or
at the Rockefeller auditorium yesterday. Some American ancestry