"Destroyer 022 - Brain Drain.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)
"Thank you," said Smith, looking at the trunks. He had long ago given up trying to tell Chiun that he was not an emperor and not only didn't wish to
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be feared throughout the land but didn't even want to be known. To this, Chiun had responded that it was an emperor's right to be known or not known as he wished.
"Well, I see you're packed," said Smith. "I wish you and Remo bon voyage, and I will see you again in two months, correct?"
"You will see us with more love for your awesome wisdom, oh, Emperor," said Chiun.
"Where are we going?" said Remo.
"You should know. It's your illness that's sending you there," said Smith.
"Where? What illness?" said Remo.
"You do not remember how badly you felt this morning?" asked Chiun. "You have so quickly forgotten your ill feelings ?"
"Oh, that. Well, that was because of the gun thing," said Remo.
"Do not mask pain, lest you deceive your body of proper warnings," Chiun said.
"That was this morning. Those trunks have been packed for a week," Remo said.
"You ought to see Iran if you want to go so badly," Smith said.
"I don't want to go to fucking Iran," Remo said. "It's Chiun who's always talking about Persia."
"You see how his memory is beginning to fail," Chiun said. "He even forgot the other day how he loved Sinanju."
"Hey, wait a minute," Remo said.
"Bon voyage," said Smith. "I see Chiun's show is resuming."
"It is nothing compared to your beauty, Emperor Smith."
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"Well, thank you," said Smith, succumbing briefly to the flattery that Sinanju assassins had been applying for centuries to many emperors around the globe.
"What's going on here?" Remo asked.
Chiun returned to watching television and Smith left, the Tucson program, the dangerous link to the secrets of CURE, safely in his jacket pocket. Smith drove into the quaint heart of the seashore resort town and stopped by a large aluminum statue that was somehow appealing to him. Everyone else seemed to think it lacked life ... lacked, there was no other phrase for it, a sense of creativity. Smith thought it was just fine. He went closer to look. He saw only the flash of light. He did not see the shards of exploding metal which tore into his insides and made everything very yellow before the world became black.
The explosion was heard in the little white cottage Smith had just left.
The commercials were on again, so Chiun commented: "Is this your Fourth of July? If so, why did I not see many fat women with children?"
"Complain to an emperor?" said Chiun, shocked. "It was your job to see that he left before my meager pleasures were intruded upon. I was left without your help when I needed it most."
"You didn't miss anything. You could come back to one of those shows five years from now, and you wouldn't miss anything. Rad Rex will still be wearing that silly doctor's smock, still trying to discover a serum that can teach him how to act."
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But Chiun was rock silent. The commercials fed into the soap opera and he folded his long fingernails and like a gently settling petal lowered himself to the floor.
The two stars of this soap opera, Val Valerie and Raught Regan were talking in bed. They were not married.
"Disgusting," said Chiun, and he did not talk again until late afternoon when all his shows were over. By then, Remo had heard that a man was seriously injured in town. A little boy on a bicycle shared the gossip.
"Yeah. He was a doctor, too. From New York. The police said he ran a sanitarium there in someplace that's named after bread."
"Whole wheat sanitarium?" Remo said.
The boy shook his head.
"Rye?" said Remo.
"That's right. He ran a sanitarium in Rye."
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3
The hospital smelled of ether traces and constant scrubbing. The woman at the information desk said yes, a gentleman had been admitted in serious condition. Yes, the explosion victim. His wife had been notified. The name was Dr. Harold Smith, and no, Remo could not be allowed to see him because he was in the intensive care unit.
Remo smiled boyishly, told the plump middle-aged information woman that she had beautiful eyes, caught her left hand like a fluttering bird and then, as if he were absentminded, moved the pads of his fingertips sensuously along the underside of her wrist. They looked into each other's eyes and discussed the weather and the hospital, and Remo saw a red flush creep up her neck.
In the middle of her halting dissertation on the coming Cape Cod summer, she allowed that while
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the young man couldn't get permission to enter the intensive care unit, no one ever stopped anyone from entering if he just walked in wearing a white coat. There were white coats in the laundry in the basement and no one ever stopped anyone from taking laundry. Where was the young man going? Would he be back? She was getting off work at eight o'clock. They could meet in a motel. If not a motel, then a car in the parking lot. What about a stairwell? An elevator?
For some reason, the laundry room was locked. Remo pressured the handle straight back, and the door popped open. The pressure looked as though he merely pushed open an unlocked door. He stepped into hospital whites and was out in the hallway looking for ICU. He rode an elevator up with two nurses and an X-ray technician. One of the nurses gave him one of those smiles. Why was it, thought Remo, that now that he had this sort of attraction, he didn't have that strong desire to make any use of it? What he could have done with his Sinanju training when he was eighteen.
Smith was under a tent, tubes going into his nostrils, the left side of his head in gauze and sanitary white tape. He breathed heavily but not without the solid life throb of a body waging a successful struggle for its existence. He wouldbe all right.
"Smitty," said Remo softly. "Smitty."
Smith opened his right eye.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello yourself, dummy. What happened?"
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