"Dan Simmons - Children of the Night" - читать интересную книгу автора (Simmons Dan)

fog that rose toward the roof of the bus like an escaping soul. "I know you are famous Western billionaire, Mr.
Vernor Deacon Trent, who pay for this visit," he said, nodding at me, "but I am afraid I forget some other
names."
Donna Wexler did the introductions. "Doctor Aimslea is with the World Health Organization . . . Father
Michael O'Rourke is here representing both the Chicago Archdiocese and the Save the Children Foundation."
"Ali, good to have priest here," said Fortuna, and I heard something that may have been irony in his voice.
"Doctor Leonard Paxley, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Princeton University," continued Wexler.
"Winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics."
Fortuna bowed toward the old academic. Paxley had not spoken at all during the flight from Frankfurt, and now
he seemed lost in his oversized coat and folds of muffler: an old man in search of a park bench.
"We welcome you," said Fortuna, "even though our country have no economy at present. moment."
"Goddamn, is it always this cold here?" came the voice from deep in the folds of wool. The Nobel
Prize-winning Professor Emeritus stamped his small feet. "This is cold enough to freeze the nuts off a bronze
bulldog."
"And Mr. Carl Berry, representing American Telegraph and Telephone," continued Wexler quickly.
The pudgy businessman next to me puffed his pipe, removed it, nodded in Fortuna's direction, and went back to
smoking the thing as if it were a necessary source of heat. I had a moment's mad vision of the seven of us in the
bus huddled around the glowing embers in Berry's pipe.
"And you say you remember our sponsor, Mr. Trent," finished Wexler.
"Yesss," said Radu Fortuna. His eyes glittered as he looked at me through Berry's pipe smoke and the fog of his
own breath. I could almost see my image in those glistening eyes-one very old man, deep-set eyes sunken even
deeper from the fatigue of the trip, body shriveled and shrunken in my expensive suit and overcoat. I am sure
that I looked older than Paxley, older than Methuselah . . . older than God.
"You have been in Romania before, I believe?" continued Fortuna. I could see the guide's eyes glowing brighter
as we reached the lighted part of the city. I spent time in Germany shortly after the war. The scene out the
window behind Fortuna was like that. There were more tanks in Palace Square, black hulks which one would
have thought deserted heaps of cold metal if the turret of one had not tracked us as our van passed by. There
were the sooty corpses of burned-out autos and at least one armored personnel carrier that was now only a piece
of scorched steel. We turned left and went past the Central University Library; its gold dome and ornate roof
had collapsed between soot-streaked, pockmarked walls.
"Yes," I said. "I have been here before."
Fortuna leaned toward me. "And perhaps this time one of your corporations will open a plant here, yes?"
"Perhaps. "
Fortuna's gaze did not leave me. "We work very cheap here," he whispered so softly that I doubt if anyone else
except Carl Berry could hear him. "Very cheap. Labor is very cheap here. Life is very cheap here."
We had turned left off of the empty Calea Victoriei, right again on Bulevardul Nicolae Balcescu, and now the
van screeched to a halt in front of the tallest building in the city, the twenty-two-story Intercontinental Hotel.
"In the morning, gentlemens," said Fortuna, rising, gesturing the way toward the lighted foyer, "we will see the
new Romania. I wish you dreamless sleeps."

Chapter Two
Our group spent the next day meeting with "officials" in the interim government, mostly members of the
recently cobbled-together National Salvation Front. The day was so dark that the automatic streetlights came on
along the broad Bulevardul N. Balcescu and Bulevardul Republicii. The buildings were not heated . . . or at
least not perceptibly . . . and the men and women we spoke with looked all but identical in their oversized, drab
wool coats. By the end of the day we had spoken to a Giurescu, two Tismaneanus, one Borosoiu, who turned
out not to be a spokesman for the new government after all . . . he was arrested moments after we left him . . .
several generals including Popascu, Lupoi, and Diurgiu, and finally the real leaders, which included Petre
Roman, prime minister in the transitional government, and Ion Iliescu and Dumitru Mazilu, who had been
President and Vice President in the Ceausescu regime.