"James Rollins - Black Order" - читать интересную книгу автора (Romeyn Henry)

The search became daunting. Nazi research and weapons labs numbered in the hundreds, many
underground, spread across Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. One of the most mysterious
was a converted mine outside the small mountain town of Breslau. The research at this facility was
code-named die Giocke or "the Bell." People in the surrounding countryside reported strange lights and
mysterious illnesses and deaths.
The Russian forces were the first to reach the mine. It was deserted. All sixty-two scientists involved in
the project had been shot. As for the device itself...it had vanished to God knows where.
All that is known for sure: the Bell was real.

NOTE FROM THE SCIENTIFIC RECORD
Life is stranger than any fiction. All the discussions raised in this novel about quantum mechanics,
intelligent design, and evolution are based on facts.

The fact that evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a
science founded on an improved theoryтАФis it then a science or faith?
тАФCHARLES DARWIN
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
тАФALBERT EINSTEIN
Who says I am not under the special protection of God?
тАФADOLF HITLER



1945
MAY 4
6:22 A.M.
FORTRESS CITY OF BRESLAU, POLAND
The body floated in the sludge that sluiced through the dank sewers. The corpse of a boy, bloated and
rat gnawed, had been stripped of boots, pants, and shirt. Nothing went to waste in the besieged city.

SS Obergruppenfuhrer Jakob Sporrenberg nudged past the corpse, stirring the filth. Offal and
excrement. Blood and bile. The wet scarf tied around his nose and mouth did little to ward off the stench.
This was what the great war had come to. The mighty reduced to crawling through sewers to escape. But
he had his orders.

Overhead the double crump-wump of Russian artillery pummeled the city. Each explosion bruised his gut
with its concussive shock. The Russians had broken down the gates, bombed the airport, and even now,
tanks ground down the cobbled streets while transport carriers landed on Kaiserstrasse. The main
thoroughfare had been converted into a landing strip by parallelrows of flaming oil barrels, adding their
smoke to the already choked early morning skies, keeping dawn at bay. Fighting waged in every street,
in every home, from attic to basement.

Every house a fortress.

That had been Gaufefter Hanke's final command to the populace. The city had to hold out as long as
possible. The future of the Third Reich depended on it.
And on Jakob Sporrenberg.
"Mach schneff,'he urged the others behind him.
His unit of the SicherheitsdienstтАФ designation Special Evacuation KommandoтАФtrailed him, knee-deep
in filthy water. Fourteen men. All armed. All dressed in black. All burdened with heavy packs. In the