"Laura Resnick - Under a Sky More Fiercely Blue" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

now deciding her future.
"I'll have to get to the coast," Luciano told Vizzini.
"Will you need a guide?" Vizzini asked.
Luciano smiled at me. "No, I don't think so. I have a feeling this kid
can get me just about anywhere, and he's a lot less conspicuous than any of
your men. You think we could pass for father and son?"
Only that morning I would have been honored to pose as Luciano's son,
but now I found the idea distasteful. "No," I said rudely. "Anyone can see
you're an outsider."
He looked at me in surprise for a moment, then turned his attention
back to Vizzini. My father and brothers would have been ashamed of me for
speaking to Luciano like that. But then, they were dead, and I couldn't afford
to worry about what they would have wanted me to do.
Luciano and Vizzini continued to make plans, deciding whom they should
contact, which men should be placed in which positions, and which commodities




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they most wanted to control.
"It'll be like the old days," Vizzini said with relish.
"It can be better, if you plan ahead. Think big. You don't have to just
milk the _latifondisti_ and squash the peasants," Luciano said contemptuously.
"Think like a businessman, like a politician. Once the Allies hand a little
over to you, you can _take_ the rest. Who's going to stop you? Not the
Italians; they'll be busy losing the war. Not the Americans; they won't give a
damn what happens here once they've begun their invasion of the mainland." He
leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and said, "Listen to me. You
can own this whole damn island if you use your heads."
And when would we own it, I wondered angrily. If the Americans kept
their promises to the friends of the friends -- and, as Luciano had pointed
out, they had no reason not to -- nothing would change for people like my
family. When the war ended, there would be a little more food, but no more
than there had been before the war had started. As much as I hated the
Fascists and the Germans, I suddenly hated the Americans more. The old men who
said that none of the great powers cared what might happen to us during the
battle for Sicily didn't know the half of it. We were worth less than dust to
them.
I wished hotly that the Americans would never invade, even if it meant
living under German occupation forever. But then, a thought occurred to me.
What if the Americans arrived and found that Luciano had failed? What if they
couldn't find Vizzini, the _capo di tutti capi_, and didn't know who else to
contact? Without organized cooperation from the _amici_, the battle for Sicily
would be longer and bloodier, but perhaps the Americans would drive out the
Fascists and Germans and leave Sicily to the Sicilians -- for the first time
ever.
I felt the hand of God on my shoulder, the whisper of His breath in my
ear. This was my destiny. This was why Luciano had fallen out of the sky to
land at my feet, why he hadn't killed me when he'd had the chance, why he had