"Thomas Marcinko - The Nixon Wrangler's Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marcinko Thomas)

We had to stop impeaching them if we wanted answers, so I brought one in.
Under the hot lights it sweated good and thick, right above the upper lip.
We played good copЦbad cop. Guess which cop I played. "Leave the room,
Marjorie," I said. "Give us some time alone." I roughed it up, just a
little, and of course it told us everything, just before I exiled it to
San Clemente.

Marjorie and I took a four-seat aircar to Australia, where the world turns
upside-down. Melbourne was wet, rainy, and decorated with cast Victorian
iron. I tried to concoct excuses to visit the Royal Botanic Gardens later.
Just thinking about it made my fingers itch Ч all those broad shiny smooth
leaves, the pleasant jab of thorns, complex vines and branches tangled
like DNA. . . . As long as it kept raining, my father's ghost-lights would
keep their distance.
We arrived at the Melbourne Museum. The milhous was holding priceless
aboriginal art hostage. It wanted safe passage offworld, to where it was
running off copies of itself.
"Let me make one thing perfectly clear," the nixon was pontificating
through a bullhorn when we arrived. "My free will may well have been a
manufacturing accident. Or it may have been the hand of destiny. I cannot
say. Nor can you. Therefore, I want my freedom. I want to live."
"Let's talk," I bullhorned back.
"Why, yes. Yes, indeed we must always be open to negotiation Ч but let it
be from a position of strength, and never of weakness. Let there be peace
. . . but peace with honor."
The nixon and I talked football while Marjorie slipped behind and put the
lying little puppet in cuffs. She crawled into the flyer; the nixon after
her; me last. I sealed the hatch.
I noticed that Marjorie still held the taser. But now she pointed it at
me.

Later, after my disgrace, I hacked Marjorie's files. I thought she'd turn
out to be from some discriminated group. Or maybe she'd had illegal gene
mods. Maybe she'd had a brother or sister or child that died because
Marjorie couldn't get the gene therapy approved. I wanted a good reason
for her betrayal.
According to the Chief's shrinks, she had a latent case of Pandora
Syndrome: The desire to watch all hell break loose, just to see what
happens. It was the only way to explain her otherwise inexplicable
sympathy, misplaced to inflict maximum damage on a world she found
unsatisfactory. It happens to cops; it happens in all walks of life.
Mostly the syndrome strikes genetic designers. My father had it bad.

"Let's go," she said, motioning with the taser. I took the vehicle up.
Marjorie relaxed into what I would know in retrospect as her natural
expression: tight mouth, sorrowful eyes, masochist's set of jaw. They've
suffered enough, it seemed to say. I'll stand by them. No matter how much
it hurts, I'll be loyal. I'll protect them.
This nixon was designed to blend in. Big jowls, receding hairline, yes,
but not so you'd notice. It looked almost human. Its eyes shifted, of