"Smith, Martin Cruz - Wolves Eat Dogs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)WOLVES EAT DOGS
BY Martin Cruz Smith for Em Acknowledgments Many people generously offered knowledge and insight during the writing of this book. In the United States, Jerry English, Victoria Bonnell and Grisha Freiden. In Moscow, Boris Rudenko; Detective Colonel Alexander Yakovlev and Anton; Colonel Vladimir Stoupin, commander of Butyrka Prison; Barsukova Mitrofanovna of the "Otradnoya" children's shelter; Alexei Klyashtorin, radioecologist; Andre Gertsev; Lena Godina; the journalists Masha Lipman, Andrew Jack and Yulia Latynina; Galina Vinogradova and, virtually every step of the way, Luba Vinogradova. In Chernobyl, Tania D'Avignon; Nastia and Nicolai; Alexander Teplov and Kyril Otradnov; militia station commander Colonel L. P. Korolchuk; and Rabbi Yakov Bleich, High Rabbi of the Ukraine. From Israel, Aharon Grundman. Knox Burger and Kitty Sprague, Luisa Cruz Smith and Ellen Branco read draft after draft. Nevertheless, there will be errors and for them I claim sole credit. Chapter One Moscow swam in color. Hazy floodlights of Red Square mixed with the neon of casinos in Revolution Square. Light wormed its way from the underground mall in the Manezh. Spotlights crowned new towers of glass and polished stone, each tower capped by a spire. Gilded domes still floated around the Garden Ring, but all night earth-movers tore at the old city and dug widening pools of light to raise a modern, vertical Moscow more like Houston or Dubai. It was a Moscow that Pasha Ivanov had helped to create, a shifting landscape of tectonic plates and lava flows and fatal missteps. Ivanov had arrived at 9:28 p.m., gone directly up to the safest apartment in Moscow and at 9:48 p.m. plunged to the sidewalk. Arkady had measured Ivanov's distance from the building. Homicides generally hit close, having expended their energy in trying not to fall. Suicides were single-minded and landed farther out. Ivanov had almost reached the street. Behind Arkady, Prosecutor Zurin had brought drinks from the wet bar to a NoviRus senior vice president named Timofeyev and a young blonde in the living room. Zurin was as fussy as a maюtre d'; he had survived six Kremlin regimes by recognizing his best customers and smoothing out their problems. Timofeyev had the shakes and the girl was drunk. Arkady thought the gathering was a little like a party where the host had suddenly and inexplicably dived through the window. After the shock the guests carried on. The odd man out was Bobby Hoffman, Ivanov's American assistant. Although he was worth millions of dollars, his loafers were split, his fingers were smudged with ink and his suede jacket was worn to a shine. Arkady wondered how much more time Hoffman had at NoviRus. An assistant to a dead man? That didn't sound promising. Hoffman joined Arkady at the window. "Why are there plastic bags around Pasha's hands?" "I was looking for signs of resistance, maybe cuts on the fingers." "Resistance? Like a fight?" Prosecutor Zurin rocked forward on the sofa. "There is no investigation. We do not investigate suicides. There are no signs of violence in the apartment. Ivanov came up alone. He left alone. That, my friends, is a suicide in spades." The girl lifted a dazed expression. Arkady had learned from the file he had on Pasha Ivanov that Rina Shevchenko was his personal interior designer, a twenty-year-old in a red leather pantsuit and high-heeled boots. Timofeyev was known as a robust sportsman, but he could have been his father, he had shrunk so much within his suit. "Suicides are a personal tragedy. It's enough to suffer the death of a friend. Colonel Ozhogin Ц the head of NoviRus Security Ц is already flying back." He added to Arkady, "Ozhogin wants nothing done until he arrives." Arkady said, "We don't leave a body on the sidewalk like a rug, even for the colonel." "Pay no attention to Investigator Renko," Zurin said. "He's the office fanatic. He's like a narcotics dog; he sniffs every bag." There won't be much left to sniff here, Arkady thought. Just out of curiosity, he wondered if he could protect the bloody prints on the windowsill. |
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