"Takeshi Kovacs - 02 - Broken Angels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morgan Richard)

"Thank you. I'm, ah, Jan Schneider." He offered a hand that I nodded at, then helped himself to my cigarettes from the table. "I really appreciate you not ah, not Ч"

"Forget it. I had."

"Injury, ah, injury can do things to your mind, to your memory." Ч I stirred impatiently Ч"Made me mix up the ranks and all, ah Ч"

"Look, Schneider, I don't really care." I drew an ill-advisedly deep lungful of smoke and coughed. "All I care about is surviving this war long enough to find a way out of it. Now if you repeat that, I'll have you shot, but otherwise you can do what the fuck you like. Got it?"

He nodded, but his poise had undergone a subtle change. His nervousness had damped down to a subdued gnawing at his thumbnail and he was watching me, vulture-like. When I stopped speaking, he took his thumb out of his mouth, grinned, then replaced it with the cigarette. Almost airily, he blew smoke at the viewport and the planet it showed.

"Exactly," he said.

"Exactly what?"

Schneider glanced around conspiratorially, but the few other occupants of the ward were all congregated at the other end of the chamber, watching Latimer holoporn. He grinned again and leaned closer.

"Exactly what I've been looking for. Someone with some common sense. Lieutenant Kovacs, I'd like to make you a proposition. Something that will involve you getting out of this war, not only alive but rich, richer than you can possibly imagine."

"I can imagine quite a lot, Schneider."

He shrugged. "Whatever. A lot of money, then. Are you interested?"

I thought about it, trying to see the angle behind. "Not if it involves changing sides, no. I have nothing against Joshua Kemp personally, but I think he's going to lose and Ч"

"Politics." Schneider waved a hand dismissively. "This has nothing to do with politics. Nothing to do with the war, either, except as a circumstance. I'm talking about something solid. A product. Something any of the corporates would pay a single figure percentage of their annual profits to own."

I doubted very much whether there was any such thing on a backwater world like Sanction IV, and I doubted even more that someone like Schneider would have ready access to it. But then, he'd scammed his way aboard what was in effect a Protectorate warship and got medical attention that Ч at a pro-government estimate Ч half a million men on the surface were screaming for in vain. He might have something, and right now anything that might get me off this mudball before it ripped itself apart was worth listening to.

I nodded and stubbed out my cigarette.

"Alright."

"You're in?"

"I'm listening," I said mildly. "Whether or not I'm in depends on what I hear."

Schneider sucked in his cheeks. "I'm not sure we can proceed on that basis, lieutenant. I need Ч"

"You need me. That's obvious, or we wouldn't be having this conversation. Now shall we proceed on that basis, or shall I call Wedge security and let them kick it out of you?"

There was a taut silence, into which Schneider's grin leaked like blood.

"Well," he said at last. "I see I've misjudged you. The records don't cover this, ah, aspect of your character."

"Any records you've been able to access about me won't give you the half of it. For your information, Schneider, my last official military posting was the Envoy Corps."

I watched it sink in, wondering if he'd scare. The Envoys have almost mythological status throughout the Protectorate, and they're not famous for their charitable natures. What I'd been wasn't a secret on Sanction IV, but I tended not to mention it unless pressed. It was the sort of reputation that led to at best a nervous silence every time I walked into a mess room and at worst to insane challenges from young first-sleevers with more neurachem and muscle grafting than sense. Carrera had carpeted me after the third (stack retrievable) death. Commanding officers generally take a dim view of murder within the ranks. You're supposed to reserve that kind of enthusiasm for the enemy. It was agreed that all references to my Envoy past would be buried deep in the Wedge datacore, and superficial records would label me a career mercenary via the Protectorate marines. It was a common enough pattern.

But if my Envoy past was scaring Schneider, it didn't show. He hunched forward again, shrewd face intense with thought.