"Destroyer 025 - Sweet Dreams.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

Remo had watched himself shave. No wasted motion, easy smooth strokes.
Perfect.
Disgusting.
Why didn't he ever nick himself? Why didn't he get dragon mouth in the morning like everyone else?
Once upon a time he had. He remembered the cold stinging touch of the styptic pencil when he nicked his face shaving. But that had been years before, back in another life, when Remo Williams was just another patrolman in the Newark Police Department.
That was before he had been framed for a murder he didn't commit, and revived after a fake electrocution to work for a secret agency as its
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enforcer arm-code name Destroyer-in a war against crime.
That had been a long time ago and suddenly he did not want to look anymore at the plastic hotel room he had been staying in for three days. He did not want to speak to Chiun, the aged Korean assassin who was now motionless, asleep on a mat in the middle of the suite's living room floor.
It had been Chiun, the latest Master in centuries of masters from the small Korean village of Sinanju, who had changed Remo.
There had been ten years of prodding and probing, discipline, guidance, and technique and while Remo had long since stopped hating it all, he had never taken the time to determine if it was good.
He had climbed the mountain of his soul but forgotten to check whether he liked the view.
Remo stared at himself in the mirror. If he wanted right now, he could dilate or constrict the pupils of his eyes. He could raise the temperature of any part of his body six degrees. He could slow his heart beat to four a minute or speed it to 108 a minute, all without moving from this spot.
He wasn't even human anymore. He was just perfect.
Remo kicked open the bathroom door and walked quickly to the front door of the suite, past the frail-looking pile on the floor that was Chiun. Remo kicked open the front door too and since it was built to open inwards, most of the wood and plastic flew across the hall. The knob was later discovered by the manager, lodged in the soda machine three doors down.
A high squeaky voice stopped Remo halfway into the hall.
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"You are troubled," Chiun said. "What is it?"
"I've just decided. I don't like being perfect."
Chiun laughed. "Perfect? Perfect? You? Heh, heh, heh. Do not waken me for any more jokes."
Remo gave Chiun's back a silent Bronx cheer, then went downstairs, through the red and brown tiled lobby of the hotel into the crisp April Boston morning.
Remo leaned against the outside front door of the hotel and started searching himself.
"Pardon me, sir," said a bellboy.
"Don't bother me," Remo said. "Can't you see I'm perfect?"
"But, sir..."
"One more word and you'll be blowing your nose from the back."
The bellboy left. Remo thought of the first time he had met Chiun. The old Oriental was shuffling toward him in a gymnasium at Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York, the secret headquarters of the secret organization CURE. Chiun had at first looked like a skinny skeleton covered with yellow parchment...
"Pardon me, sir," said the bell captain, who didn't particularly want anyone's pardon. He had been laying his bet on No Preservatives Added in the fifth at Suffolk Downs when the bellboy had made him aware of the man standing outside.
"Pardon me, sir," the bell captain repeated, "but what are you doing?"
"What does it look like I'm doing?" Remo asked.
The bell captain thought carefully. You never knew what might show up when you had a hotel
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this close to Huntington Avenue, Boston's answer to Dante's Eighth Circle.
"It looks, sir, like you're leaning against a building with just a towel on."
Remo looked down. The bell captain was right.
"So?"said Remo.
"Well." The bell captain paused. "It's our towel."
"I'm a paying customer," Remo said.
"Do you have a key, sir?"
"I left it in my other towel," Remo said.
"How are you going to get back into your room then?"
"Don't worry, I'll manage," Remo said.
"Aren't you a little bit cold?"
"I'm too perfect to be cold," Remo said and turned away from the man who was making it difficult for him to think.
The bell captain shrugged and went back to his station. He would give the wierdo five minutes before calling the hotel detective. In the meantime, he called his bookie to put in his bet on No Preservatives Added who later broke her foreleg coming around the first turn. The bell captain's bet at the Wonderland dog races in Revere leaped at the automatic rabbit and got electrocuted. The Red Sox lost 17 to 1. The bell captain's oldest son was booked for possession, his wife got another day deeper into the change of life, and his dog got hit by a car. Looking back on it the next day, he would bet that his run of bad luck began with the warm-blooded guy leaning against the hotel wall with just a towel on.
Remo was still thinking, trying to remember just when it was that he had become perfect.
He had met Chiun in the gymnasium, and he
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had had a gun in his hand and was ordered to kill the old Oriental for a night off from training. For a night off, he would have done anything, and he had fired six shots point blank at Chiun and all of them had missed. He certainly hadn't been perfect that night.
"Pardon me, sir," said a greasy young girl.