"Smith, Kristine - [Kilian 2] - Rules of Conflict" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Kristine)

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none proved forthcoming, he turned to find his attorney regarding him with impatient admiration.
"If the people of Chicago could see you at this moment, they'd storm Sheridan to free you." The man exhaled with a rumble. "You're my client. My responsibility is to you. Everyone's heard the rumors. Let me place one official story about the childrenЧ"
"No."
"Damn it, it's the prime example of how your late father manipulated everyone around him! He subjects Martin to an experimental personality augmentation at the age of threeЧ eleven years later, Martin dies during the boating mishap he'd arranged to kill Serena and Jerrold."
"Thank you for mentioning it. I needed that."
"The deaths of your children destroyed any chance you and Lyssa had to rebuild your marriage."
"Our marriage was a joke from the start." Evan thumped the lift bank keypad with his fist. "We've discussed this before. I haven't changed my mind. Use anything but the children. Let them rest in peace. End of subject." The lift door finally opened. He limped in, left knee clicking with every stride.
"Since you brought up colonial pride, Quino, here's a question. I heard on CapNet that Acadia and the other Channel Worlds have lodged some kind of protest concerning the arrests of political prisoners despite insufficient evidence. One of those prisoners wouldn't happen to be Jani, would it?"
"As soon as Kilian is found, the SIB is required to notify us. If Veda lets us down in that regard, not even your esteem will prevent me from tearing her apart." Joaquin boarded the lift and punched the pad for the ground floor. "Apropos of nothing, how is the Creme Caramel doing?" The mention of roses erased the discomfort from his bony face.
"Fine, Quino." Evan bit his lip to keep from grimacing. At his flower-loving attorney's insistence, he had planted a small rose garden in the rear yard of his prison-home and tended the blooms faithfully every day. Joaquin claimed that the image of a disgraced ex-Cabinet Minister tending his
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garden as he once tended his constituents would excite sympathy from the public, but Evan nursed the conviction that the man just needed a place to stash the overflow from his own extensive cultivations.
"I hope you didn't fertilize it yet. You need to wait at least another two weeks."
"Yes, Quino."
"Then you must use the special mix I gave you for the Jewellers' Loop hybrids, not the standard mix I gave you for the others."
"Yes, Quino."
"And you must wait until late afternoon. Spread no more than two hundred grams around the base of the plant, then follow with a liberal watering."
God help me. "Yes, Quino."
By the time the lift reached the ground floor, Evan had mentally dismembered the Creme Caramel with an ax and was about to start on his attorney. The door swept aside; he stepped out of the car and almost collided with a man dressed in summerweights. Short. Stocky. A round, tawny face cut by a perpetual scowl. Black eyes hidden by sloping cheekbones and drooping lids.
"Hello, Roshi." Evan stepped around the supreme commander of the Commonwealth Service, then dodged sideways to avoid his aide. "Inspecting your fences, are you?"
"Evan." Admiral-General Hiroshi Mako pulled up short, then looked in apparent disinterest from him to Joaquin. Only if you looked hard could you detect the mild working of his broad jaw that betrayed his unease. But then, what could he say? How are you? What brings you here? "Hellish weather we're having." When in doubt, there was always the weather.
Evan racked his brain for a suitably neutral reply. "Plays hell with the roses."
Mako's eyes clouded as he watched the lift doors close. He stepped aside as his aide grabbed for the closing door and thumped the keypadЧunfortunately for him, the man's efforts proved wasted. "You raise roses? Ah yes, I saw something about that on one of the news shows." Mako's guttural bass kicked upward a tone in grudging interest. "Tamiko
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raises them, too." His voice warmed as he spoke his wife's name. "The J-Loop varieties give her the hardest time, judging from her muttering. She refuses to accept mere climate as an excuse for failure to thrive."
"She should contact Dr. Banquo at the Botanical GardensЧthe woman was born on Phillipa and knows everything about Jewellers' Loop hybrids." Joaquin leaned forward in shared conspiracy. "The secret is in the fertilizer."
That's government in a nutshell. Evan caught the aide eyeing him and tugged at his somber, dark blue jacket. Do I look that bad? He had lost weight, and he hadn't been sleeping well, but what else would you expectЧ?
"Damn."
He turned to find Joaquin standing with his hand pressed to his stomach and a look of stricken concentration on his face. "Watch my bag." He dropped his briefbag at Evan's feet and hurried toward a discreetly marked door near the lobby entry.
Evan answered Mako's questioning look. "New cook. She tends toward a heavy hand with some of the more pharma-ceutically active colonial herbs."
Mako winced in sympathy, then turned to his aide. "See if you can find out which herbs she used, Colonel. The last thing we need at next month's off-site is an attack of the trots."
"Yes, sir." The man pulled a small handheld from the slip-case on his belt and muttered a notation.
Evan watched the man; whoever he was, he didn't look like the typical Base Command poop boy. Distinctive, in the close-clipped, wire-lean way that typified Roshi's New Service. The nasty scar that grooved his face from the edge of his nose to the corner of his mouth accentuated his sharp-featured homeliness, its dull white color a marked contrast to the sunburnt red-brown of his face.
But it was the way the man looked at Evan that drew his attention. Not the pointed monitoring of the bodyguard, but the more analytical assessment of one who searched through his mental ID file, matched, tagged, shrugged, and moved on.
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/ know a hatchet man when I see one. Evan had employed enough of his own. He snatched a glance at the man's name tag. "Colonel Pierce." He offered a nod, but didn't try to shake. One too many snubs when he had held out his hand had driven that lesson home.
"Sir." Pierce nodded back, but kept his hands at his sides.
"You're lucky to be lakeside in this weather." When in doubt... "At least you get some breeze."
Pierce made a point of not looking Evan in the face, instead concentrating on the floor indicator located above the lift doors. "Yes, sir. That we are, sir." His voice proved nasal and harsh. It could have been the lower-class version of Evan's own Michigan provincial, but odds were the muted remnants of a Victoria colony twang would prove the more accurate choice.
From Pearl Way, are we? Evan felt his long-dormant curiosity stretch out a paw. It was a hell of a long trip from that far-flung network of worlds to the Admiral-General's side. At one time or another, Pierce had proven himself extremely talented. Or extremely useful.
The lift returned to the first floor. "Good-bye, Evan." The relief in Mako's voice was gallingly evident as the door opened and he and Pierce stepped in. "Enjoy your roses."
Evan watched the door close. Mako took care to avoid his eye. But Pierce glanced at him just as the panels meshed, his scar twisting his. disgusted curl of lip into a caricature of a sneer.
"I'm back. What's left of me." Joaquin drew alongside, then bent slowly to pick up his bag. His complexion was waxen, his eyes, narrowed to slits. "Let's go."
Evan followed him out the door. After the coolness of the SIB, the late-afternoon heat made him gasp. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I've been punched in the stomach." Joaquin gestured to his driver, parked in the nearby visitor's oval. "I can't decide if it was the cherryvale leaves in the salad or the folsom in the gravy."
"Probably a combination of both." Evan watched his lawyer's sedate black double-length slide to the curbside and felt
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the envy twinge. He'd had an entire fleet of black double-lengths at his beck and call, in that other lifetime. Triple-lengths. Sedans. One cherry red Sportster he missed particularly. He had planned to take Jani for a ride in it, as soon as the weather and her stiff-necked mien had permitted.
The best-laid plans, all blown to hell.