"Ludlum, Robert - The Matarese Countdown" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ludlum Robert)

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For Karen-"Suzie" She came with laughter when there was none. And
brought joy to life once more.

THE MATARESE COUNTDOWN

In the forests of Chelyabinsk, roughly nine hundred air miles from
Moscow, there is a hunting lodge once considered a favorite retreat by
the elite rulers of the Soviet Union. It was a dacha for all seasons,
in spring and summer a festival of gardens and wildflowers on the edge
of a mountain lake, in autumn and winter a paradise for hunters. In
the years since the collapse of the old Presidium, it was held
inviolate by the new rulers, an apolitical resting place of Russia's
most venerated scientist, a nuclear physicist named Dimitri Yuri
Yurievich, a man for all seasons. For he had been assassinated,
brutally led into a monstrous trap by killers who held no respect, only
fury, for his genius, which he wanted to share with all nations. No
matter where the assassins came from, and no one really knew, they were
the evil ones, certainly not their target, regardless of the lethal
implications of his scholarship.

The white-haired, balding old woman lay on the bed, the huge bay window
in front of her revealing the early northern snow. Like her hair and
her wrinkled flesh, everything beyond the glass was white, frozen new
purity from the skies, bending branches with its weight, a paradise of
blinding light. With effort, she reached for the brass bell on the
bedside table and shook it.

In moments, a buxom woman in her thirties with brown hair and eyes that
were alive and questioning rushed through the door.

"Yes, Grandmother, what can I do for you?" she asked.

"You've already done more than you should, my child."

"I'm hardly a child, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for you, you
know that. May I get you some tea?"

"No, you can get me a priest-doesn't matter which variety. We weren't
permitted them for so long."

"You don't need a priest, you need some solid food, Grandmother."

"My God, you sound like your grandfather. Always arguing, forever
analyzing-" "I wasn't analyzing at all," interrupted Anastasia
Yuriskaya Solatov.

"You eat like a sparrow!"