"Allison Sinclair - Assassin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sinclair Allison)

towards the disc, "I thought you'd seen what is on that disc."
"What's on that disc?"
"Letters. Messages. Games--we played."
I wanted to believe him. I stood, knowing that if I were wrong, if he were lying
to me, I was taking a risk in getting near him. I don't overestimate my physical
prowess against a man. I considered taking the gun, but if he were not lying, if
it were only an affair and his being used as a dupe, what we had might be
salvageable--without the gun. I left it behind, between the sofa cushions, and
walked over to give him the disc.
But I wasn't going to back off on the rest of it.
"Load it," I said quietly, "I want to show you something."
He loaded it; the lips came up, tilted, puckered, and he blushed to the roots of
his hair. I took note of the six digit code he typed in, and then commented, in
as near to a normal voice as I could muster, "At least it was only outline red.
Solid red would have been too tacky."
I wasn't sure I would find what I had been looking for. If I'd written those
viruses at leisure I'd have been certain that once sent off, the code would be
overwritten. But then I'd have been sure than nothing survived at the other end.
Once we were in I initiated a search for a fragment homologous to the one Glad
had identified from the suicide. Errel said only, "What are you doing?"
"I'm looking for a bit of code."
Otherwise we did not talk. After three point two four one of the longest minutes
of my life, a match flashed up.
"Amateurs," I said.
"What is it?"
"A killer virus," I said. "You've been used by your beautiful, careless,
exciting lady as a carrier of a virus that's killed at least one person and
possibly more. Have you got any more of these discs?"
"No," he said, numbly. "I--she liked us to pass that one back and forth."
"Figures," I said. "We'll go down to the station. We'll need names, etc. Then
once you're cleared," I couldn't bring myself to say 'if you're cleared',
"probably you should take a holiday somewhere. Quiet. Until we've got them.
You're about to become an informer."
He did not say anything, made no protest, merely got up and took his coat from
the back of the chair where he'd put it. I kicked out the disc and handed it to
him, and we went down to the station.
While we were at the station, with Glad, the call came through from the
Hospital. D'Inde had just died: a malfunction of his pacemaker, coupled to a
temporary breakdown in monitoring equipment. I took care not to be the first to
say it was for the best.



I put Errel on a train West a week later, three days after The Old Man's
funeral, and walked back from North Station above ground, hands deep in pockets,
breath like a cold scarf wrapping itself around my neck. The snow creaked
underneath my boots; it was the coldest February on record. I wondered what
would happen now. We had Errel's exciting lady, but she wasn't cooperating; we
were in for a spring of long, hard slog. We had three confirmed, five possible
victims, and the inklings of something like a motive, from what we'd gleaned