"Destroyer 017 - Last War Dance.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

Hearing that was more shocking than the sudden pain in the ribs had been. Years of training for such a moment had barely prevented Van Riker from gasping in disbelief.
It was impossible for this man to know about the bomb. Impossible. The whole thing had been designed so that no one would know about it except Van Riker, the president, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And all the chairman knew was that there was a weapon. Not what kind and not where. That was the strength of the Cassandra. That no one but Van Riker knew where it was. For if the other side ever found out, it could detonate it without all that much difficulty. A ground-level explosion with the Dresden effect climbing instead of descending.
As Van Riker followed the young man into a hangar, he thought he heard something. He was deeply shaken. "Are you whistling?" he asked incredulously.
"Yeah."
"Merrily whistling?"
"Yeah."
"Do you know that at any moment you might be a cinder?"
"So?"
"So why are you so damned happy with yourself?"
"I did my job. You're here. With no broken instruments."
"Doesn't it bother you that you could be burned alive in a nuclear holocaust?"
"As opposed to a bullet in the brain or what? Nuclear holocaust doesn't grab me. You know I could kill myself by incorrect balance during some of my thrusts? Did you know that? How would you like to die just because your technique is wrong? That's awful. That's frightening. Incorrect technique gives me nightmares."
At the far end of the hangar was a man in dark suit and tie. He sat behind a small desk, reading. To the right was a frail wisp of an Oriental with a thin, straggly white beard. He wore a red and gold robe, and sat in lotus position atop a large, brightly lacquered steamer trunk. There were thirteen others nearby.
"Down at the far end is Smitty," said Remo, pointing to the man at the desk.
Walking toward the figure at the far end of the hangar, Van Riker heard his captor say to the old Oriental, "You know, Little Father, that guy doesn't give a second thought to technique. Invents a bomb that can wipe out a continent and poison the world, and he doesn't give a faded fart about technique."
"When a person cannot do one thing well, he seeks to do many to compensate. Then, in the confusion, he hopes no one will notice his unworthiness. If this one could have made a bomb to kill one person correctly, then he would have done something worthwhile. But he could not. So he made a bomb to kill a lot of persons badly. He is a menace to himself and to those around him," said the Oriental.
"He's an American air force general, Little Father."
"Oh," said the Oriental, as if that statement explained everything. "The supreme example of quantity triumphant over quality."
Van Riker heard the last remark, but it did not bother him. The disaster he had dreamed of at night and wrestled with beneath consciousness during waking hours was happening now. And he, the only man who might avert the holocaust, was the captive of lunatics. It was almost a blessed relief to see the very conservative suit and the dry lemony face of the man who introduced himself as Dr. Harold W. Smith.
"Please sit down," said Smith. "I know you must be in great torment. We are here to help you do what you must do. And there is no one else as capable as we are of helping you. Ordinarily, we would not be involved in a mission of this sort. But we know about Cassandra. We know it's at Wounded Elk."
"What is this about?" asked Van Riker. 'I'm on my way to a vacation in Washington. I am kidnapped and then told of some wounded animal and a character from Greek poetry and some horrible missile... I just don't understand."
"Precisely," said Smith. "Precisely. Why should you trust us? And that's my job now. I propose, General Van Riker, creator of the Cassandra missile, that you let us help you do what you must do."
"My God, this is a nightmare! Who are you? I never had anything to do with missiles. I was a logistics officer."
"And so your cover says," Smith said. "And so too do many things. What I propose now is to use your mind to prove to you that we are both on the same side and that we are the only people who can help you do what you must do about the Cassandra. One: we are not foreign. If we were foreign, just knowing for certain the whereabouts of Cassandra would be all we need. It's a vulnerable, unstable weapon whose main protection is its camouflage. Because it could be triggered in its silo, once known to a foreign power, it's more a danger to the United States than to anyone else. Correct?"
Van Riker denied nothing. His face was stone, but he was listening.
"Two: are we some sort of criminal organization that could effectively blackmail the United States by threatening to trigger the Cassandra? A very effective blackmail, I might add. To answer this, I am going to have to disclose to you something so critical to the functioning of America that I have ordered people killed who knew about it. When you know who we are, you will realize that we are probably the only people who could know about Cassandra, outside of yourself. And when I tell you who we are, you will know I have given you a greater weapon against us than any we have against you."
"Do you have a cigarette?" asked Van Riker. He felt hot, and his body ached for air or nicotine or something.
"No. I'm sorry. I don't smoke."
"I gave it up a few years ago," said Van Riker. "Go on."
Van Riker felt weak, even sitting down. Smith offered him water, and he took it, then listened as Smith explained.
More than a decade before, it had become obvious to the president in power that America was headed toward becoming a police state. The cause was chaos-not just mobs taking over the streets but corporations acting like self-governments with no respect for law, transportation virtually owned by racketeers, corruption emerging in every facet of American life.
"It is a law of history that chaos brings dictatorship," Smith said. "But the president thought that America was too good to give up, that maybe there was another way, and he decided that all the Constitution needed was a little assist. Unbribe a judge here, protect a witness there, that sort of thing."
"What you're saying is that the Constitution couldn't work without its being violated," said Van Riker. "To get away with that, you'd have to keep your system entirely clean of informers. Exposure is the one thing you couldn't stand."
"Exactly," said Smith. "You're really quite brilliant. To guard against exposure, we had to have a killer arm."
Van Riker took a notebook from his pocket and began doodling, "I'd figure eight hundred men."
"That would be impossible, and you know it," said Smith. "You're an expert on security. You know five people cannot keep a secret. So we have only three who know. Myself, Remo, whom you met, and each president..."
"Is there a control on the president?" asked Van Riker.
"Of course. He can only disband us. He cannot order us," Smith said.
"I imagine you've done extensive work in job-separation function."
"Of course," Smith said. "It's basically an isolation function worked off a simple computer program. Only way you can employ people without letting them know the nature of the operation. Large numbers, of course. In addition..."
At the entrance to the hangar, extrasensitive ears picked up the mounting excitement tinged with joy in the voices of Van Riker and Smith.
"I told you, Little Father," Remo said, "that those two whackos would get along fine. Sounds like two kids with their model boats. 'Job-separation function.' What the hell are they talking about?"
"It has been a thought in the House of Sinanju for hundreds of years," said Chiun, the master of Sinanju, "that royalty marries royalty not so much because it is a powerful alliance but because only royalty can comprehend royalty. Or tolerate it, for that matter."
"I don't understand, Little Father," said Remo. Since his training had begun, more than a decade before, he had come to understand occasionally, without explanation, some of the wisdom of the House of Sinanju, an ages-old house of Korean assassins, of which Chiun was the master.
"Whom do you like to talk to most of all?" asked Chiun.
"Why, I guess, you, because we do the same work."
Chiun nodded.
"And I guess that you like, most of all, talking to me," said Remo, smiling.
Chiun shook his head. "What I like most of all is me. See? I am royalty... the master."
"I know that. I meant after that," said Remo, kicking a piece of the wood flooring out the hangar entrance. "Ding dong dink," he muttered.