"David Weber - Honor 03 - Short Victorious War" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

mask, but accepting it gave the Quorum's managers an often useful pipeline
into the CRUs underground
membership.
"We don't know exactly what they've been talking about," Palmer-Levy went on,
"and his position as
Speaker of the Quorum means he could have any number of legit imate reasons
for meeting with them.
But he seems to be getting awful chummy with some of their delegates."
"In that case, I think we have to look very seriously at the possibility that
he knew the assassination
was coming," Harris said slowly. "I'm not saying he had anything to do with
planning it, but if there was
official CRU involvement, he could have knownтАФor suspectedтАФwhat they were up
to. And if he did know and didn't tell us, it could have been because he saw a
need to cement his own relationship with
them, even at our expense."
"You really think things are that bad, Sid?" Bergren asked, and the President
shrugged.
"No, not really. But we can live with being overly pessimistic, whereas if the
CRU did okay itтАФand
if Pierre knew something about it but chose not to tell usтАФand we assume they
didn't, we could talk
ourselves into a serious domestic policy error."
"Are you suggesting that we abandon Walters BLS proposals?" George De La
Sangliere asked. The
portly, white-haired De La Sangliere had succeeded Frankel as secretary of the
economy . . . not without
 4

strenuous efforts to decline the "honor." No one in his right mind wanted to
take responsibility for the
Republic's decrepit fiscal structure, and De La Sangliere's expression was
unhappy as he asked the
question.
"I don't know, George." Harris sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"I hate to say it, but I don't really think we can," De La Sangliere replied.
"Not unless we can cut
military spending by at least ten percent."
"Impossible," Dumarest snapped instantly. "Mr. President, you know that's out
of the question! We
have to maintain our fleet strength at current levelsтАФat leastтАФuntil we deal
with the Manticoran Alliance
once and for all."
De La Sangliere frowned without looking at her while he kept his eyes almost
pleadingly upon his
president, but the hope faded from them at Harris' expression.
"We should have hit them four years ago," Duncan Jessup grunted. The secretary
of public
information was a stocky, perpetually disheveled man who cultivated the public
image of a grumpy but