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

you."
"Oh?" Luciano didn't bother to look at me, but I could tell he was
interested now. What great man does not enjoy hearing his own legend repeated
and embellished?
"Signor Cataldo says that by the time you were eighteen, you were
already a man of respect. He has told us stories of the Night of the Sicilian
Vespers and other great victories. And once, your enemies attempted to kill
you, but by a miracle of God, you survived; the knife left a scar on your
face, and you bear a new name in honor of it. It's... an American word."
"Lucky. Charlie Lucky Luciano."
"Yes. Signor Cataldo says that while still a young man, you organized
all the... the friends in America, and you became the most powerful man in the
whole country."
He grinned. "Not quite, kid. Just the most powerful man among my
friends."
"Oh." I frowned. "But why did the Americans drop you out of the sky?
Don't they want you anymore?"
He actually laughed, and the expression on his face made me remember
the tales Signor Cataldo had told of Luciano's legendary charm. Finally, still
looking amused, he said, "They sent me to do a job for them, a job nobody else
can do."
"You're going to kill the Nazi _capo_!"
"Hell, no. That kind of thing is for soldiers -- jerks who run around
happily killing each other for a dollar a day."
"But if anyone could kill him, _you_ could," I insisted, forgetting my
manners, relishing the thought. How I hated the Germans!
He shook his head. "We don't need to kill no Germans, kid. The Allied
soldiers are coming here to do it for us. Soon, too."
I sat down on a rock, not sure what to think. The old men in my village
had argued ferociously about this for months. Some longed for the invasion we
all believed the Allies were planning, for Sicilians had suffered under the
Fascists and Nazis for so very long. But, officially, we were Italians, part
of the Axis, so the Allies were our enemies. Moreover, the Nazis and Fascists
would not give up Sicily without a fight, and many of us might well be killed
in the battle the great powers would wage for control of our country. Given a
choice between the invaders who ruled us and the invaders we awaited, who
could say which was the greater evil? We all knew that Roosevelt and
Churchill, like Mussolini and Hitler, made their plans without concern for us,
our families, or our empty bellies.
I asked the only important question. "Will this end the war?"
"The invasion?" Luciano shrugged. "They expect it to, but not right
away. This is still a long way from Rome, kid. Not to mention Berlin."
"My mother says that Rome is on the other side of the moon."
He squinted against the harsh sunlight and looked around. "She's
right." His voice was bleak.
"So if you're not a soldier, why are you here?" I had by now asked him
more questions in a few minutes than I had asked anyone else in a year.
"The Allies want to save their strength for the mainland battles
they'll have to fight. They want a warm welcome here, so they won't lose too
many soldiers at such an early stage. The Americans sent me because they want