"Newman, Kim - The McCarthy Witch Hunt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

Deviltry was on the prowl, and the armies of the godly were rallying.
Under pressure, Prime Minister Attlee had just appointed Field-Marshal
Montgomery to the long-vacant post of Witchfinder General. The Pope was
issuing weekly bulls against heretical doctrines and deploying
battle-hardened Jesuits in trouble spots. Even Stalin was purging the Red
Army for mad Russian sorcerers.
People yelled and screamed. A surge of the crowd pressed forwards, and
Finlay pulled Hiss back, allowing a line of cops to form.
The crowd would have burned Hiss on the spot.
Finlay felt that at last the rest of the country was waking up to the
truth he saw every time he shut his eye and let darkness into his head.
In Alabama, the Ku Klux Klan had burned out a voodoo hounfort just after
New Year's Day, averting a conspiracy to raise the dead against white
virtue. In New Hampshire, a spiritualist medium had been weighted with
stones and thrown into the sea. Hedge preachers and hobo priests travelled
the backwoods with crosses and kerosene cans, rooting out and destroying
the Devil's disciples where they found them. Christian America was awake.
With all the din, Finlay couldn't be sure, but he thought Hiss was
laughing, a high, insane, feeble giggle. He had a bad feeling and looked
around. He was nervy in crowds, unsure which individuals would be
dangerous, confused by the noise and jostling.
She was on the steps, with a fur-collared coat and a high fashion hat,
looking sadly at Hiss and him, face and hair completely white. She looked
much older.
He turned his head, burying Lilith Ritter in the dark half of his field of
vision.
'Deacon Finlay,' he heard her shout.
He forced Hiss forwards, pushing past her, away from her. He had left
enough behind in Berlin.
They all got Hiss into the automobile, and it drove off, edging away from
the kerb. Crowds parted, but jeers poured in. A bottle broke on the hood
and the Brother in the front passenger seat slipped a hand into his coat.
'Be calm,' Finlay told him.
If Lilith was still shouting for him, he couldn't hear her. All he could
hear was the chant of 'burn the witch, burn the witch, burn the witch ...'


1953
Finlay hadn't been out to Connecticut for three weeks. Dwight could handle
the detail and the Bureau had dug up a brother who was the image of Dick
Tracy to sit in the Olds with him. In Morning Glory Circle, the car itself
was a killer shark in a kidney-shaped swimming pool, unmissable. He had
showed up at the Manhattan brownstone the evening Mrs Stevens's coven was
scheduled to meet, but only five of the thirteen - not including Mrs
Stevens - turned up. He expected they spent the evening wondering which of
the others had fingered them. Then cut off a chicken's head and took their
clothes off and had sex with each other. Or whatever. Most witchcraft in
the United States was just an excuse for screwing around. He didn't even
care that much about it. You had to plough through the fortune-tellers,
fruitcakes, conjurers and bilko artists to get to the real damage-doers.