"000062-parryspr" - читать интересную книгу автора (Yngve A R - Parry's Protocol)_______________________ A.R.Yngve PARRY'S PROTOCOL _______________________ Epilogue MAYWOOD EAST CENTRAL LOS ANGELES NOVEMBER 3 Giordano Bruno's apartment had been reduced a blackened, burnt-out brick shell; most of the two-story block of flats was relatively unharmed. The staircase leading up to the apartment was blocked by police line tape. Abram walked from the taxicab to the parking-lot next to the ruin. It was a clear, sunny day; he was dressed in his hat, bermuda shorts and a pastel-yellow shirt. He put his briefcase down by his feet and checked his new wristwatch: 12:54 PM. He sat down on the stiff briefcase, relaxing his body and hairy, pale legs. He watched people, traffic, and airplanes passing by. Eventually, another taxicab stopped nearby. A fat old man wearing hat, shirt, and slacks stepped out and waved at Abram. It was Kip O'Neill. Abram stood up, watching him with wary, emotionless eyes as he half-ran down the sloping sidewalk; Kip was red-faced and sweating heavily. They met; Kip shook Abram's hand with both his hands. "Thank you for warning me that day, Abram!" he said, his gritty voice full of emotion. "I let a security firm check our house in Washington, and it turned out our phones were bugged! Me and Rhoda managed to hide out in a motel -- just before someone fire-bombed our house. When they bombed Westmoreham, I thought you were dead!" He laughed so that his cheek-pouches shook -- but Abram showed no reaction. Kip's eyes seemed worried behind thick eyeglasses. "Abram... you're not thinking that I knew anything? I know I left you in a conspicuous manner when we first met, but I can explain that. The day we were about to meet, I got an anonymous call from some CIA guy; and he warned me to keep my ears and mouth shut, or they'd see that I was put on trial. Somehow they'd found out that we used to talk about secret things, and I got scared... When you warned me later, I saw the danger and took action." Suddenly, Abram smiled. He patted Kip's shoulder. "It's okay," he said in a warm voice, "I believe you." Kip laughed again, relieved, and gave Abram a friendly hug. "Now tell me, Abe. Why were we supposed to meet here?" "Come." Abram looked cautiously about him while they crossed the parking space, and came to Giordano Bruno's ruined apartment. Abram moved into the shadow under the concrete staircase -- which was intact -- and opened his briefcase. While Kip acted as lookout, he pulled out a flashlight and surveyed the flat underside of the stairs. He found nothing further up, and kneeled carefully down on the sooty asphalt. He searched the crack between the ground and the stairs. Soon, he found a brighter spot where concrete had been poured on and carefully smoothed out. He picked up a shiny new hammer and chisel from the case, and started picking around the edges of the spot. The surface of the filling cracked open after a few hits: behind it lay a package the size of a palm, wrapped in several layers of plastic bags and sellotape. Abram freed the package from the niche, brushed off concrete remains -- then he hastily shoved it and the tools into his briefcase, and went back to the sidewalk. Kip followed, confused. They waited another few minutes, until a four-door Volvo sedan stopped on the street next to them. Annie was behind the wheel, dressed in a T-shirt and a skirt that showed her powerful legs. Abram opened the back door and jumped inside before Kip. As Kip shut the door behind them, Annie stepped on the gas and dived in between two cars ahead on the road. The lunch rush was in progress, and the traffic was dense. Annie gave Abram and Kip a brief glance over her shoulder. "Annie Collett," she said briefly. "You must be O'Neill." "I don't think we've met before, Miss Collett," Kip said in a friendly voice -- and threw a knowing smile in Abram's direction. "No. Abram and I met in Westmoreham, just five days before --" Her voice faltered. She picked up a newspaper from and tossed it at them: the newsstand edition of USA TODAY. "Look," she said, her face tight with concealed emotion. "Look what they did to my home town, to my friends!" The page spread showed an aerial photograph of a dark crater, marking the site of the small town's center. The large headline read: "THE VIEW FROM GROUND ZERO". Abram and Kip held up a close-up spread of the crater: a tiny lake of rainwater had been formed and frozen there. There were more pictures of the site. Not a single house was standing. A few telephone poles and power-line pylons stuck up from flattened ruins -- interspersed by a few asphalt roads which had melted and then frozen into cracked sheets of black glass. The WRBC radio mast still stood up, defiantly, but the adjacent building was crushed. Further out from the town were piles of overturned, burnt-out car wrecks -- those who had not reached far away enough. One car was full of black, shrivelled corpses in various sizes: a former family. The caption below the picture explained: "All birds in the vicinity are dead or escaped -- many remaining bodies were left to freeze stiff after the rain that followed upon the blast." Kip made a choked noise. Annie said: "I waited in the assembly camp for anyone I knew to show up... nobody came but Abram." Kip looked questioningly at Abram, who nodded: "It took me some time to find her, the police wouldn't help me. I can't tell you what really happened, Kip -- now I'm a free man, but a pariah. You may have heard some rumors about the five men who were somehow connected to the incident --" "Yes," Kip interrupted eagerly, "there have been rumors in my circles that General Wade was part of some secret, very old cabal. You don't have to say more." "Look here," Abram told him. He indicate a full-page article in the newspaper, bearing the headline "ALL THE GENERAL'S MEN". Half a page was occupied by a photo of Joshua Wade: a vital but very wrinkled, long-faced man in uniform. The caption below it read: "COMMITTED SUICIDE: GENERAL WADE, SAC. The same day, four other top men in federal branches died under mysterious circumstances. Pentagon denies a connection, but speculations continue." Inset next to the larger photograph were four small photos of old men, some taken many years ago. The text pieces next to them were brief: "NEVILLE ANDERSON (89): His car found in Potomac River same night; body not yet found. "COLMER RAYMOND (93): Hit by car on his way to the White House; assailant unknown. "PETER STANTON (88): Found shot in Langley, with body of Ned Wilson (63); a high-ranking CIA man, also shot. "HAROLD ULMGARD (90): Heart failure in his Pentagon office after an overdose of heart medicine." "Did you ever meet any of these people during your time in Congress, Kip?" Kip scrutinized the pictures with concern, then shook his head: "No... but I've come across some of the names long ago. They were not politicians like me, but civil servants. You can see it on their faces, that they sat in secure places for many years." He grunted contemptuously. Abram tugged at his beard, muttering to himself: "Ever since that October day, I've been asking myself if anything makes sense anymore. A bunch of old men I've never seen murder several thousand people, in order to keep a secret revealed by an unknown madman. And all these other victims who didn't know anything either... Giordano... a man whose name I can't mention, to protect his family, he got nothing but a short paragraph in the local newspaper... the personnel at the Institute and those other patients... even Ned Wilson might not have known why he was killed... Annie slowed down the car, turned it into a littered backalley, and stopped the car. She faced Abram, holding a revolver in her hands, and took aim at his head. "Don't you think I've been thinking about it too?" Her voice choked with anger and despair. "Perhaps I've slept with the man who killed my friends! Should I shoot you for that?" Annie screwed up her eyes, little wrinkles of laughter appeared around them though she wasn't laughing. Her thin lips were clenched; her hands were trembling visibly. Abram was not shocked like Kip was. He looked gravely into her eyes and said with no trace of irony: "If you're going to shoot me, you'd better cock the trigger first." Her gaze dropped to the uncocked trigger. She shut her eyes, her mouth twisting, cramp-like, into a soundless laughter. There came no sound from her lips; she began to cry, and dropped the gun. "Damn you!" Annie sobbed. Her mouth opened in a quiet scream; Abram leaned across the seat and held her. She hugged his head and clenched her lips together. "Don't leave me." "I won't." They sat cheek to cheek for a minute -- until Kip cleared his throat and asked in a muffled tone: "Abram, that package you picked out of the ruin... what is it?" Abram gently freed himself from Annie's arms, and took up the package from the case. With his Swiss Army knife, he cut away the plastic wrapping and extracted a cassette tape. Annie wiped her face on her arm, looking curiously at the tape in Abram's hands. On it was a hand-written label: P. RYMOWICZ' FINAL LECTURE (30 MIN.) "Is that him on the tape?" she asked. "The madman on the radio?" "Yes," Abram said. "It's also supposed to feature the sound of when he shoots a student dead in front of an entire class. The act that finally got him put into the asylum." He handed the tape to Annie, who put it in the tape deck and pressed PLAY. Parry's voice reverberated through the car stereo: "Today, you will only have to write down one sentence. I'll take it right now, so those of you who are too tired to follow my entire argument can relax. Write down the following sentence: We -- are -- property. 'We are property.' Got that? Good. Today's subject is: 'Our Place In The Universe.' As you know, astronomers have not yet discovered -- read my lips, they have not discovered -- living life on other planets. Yet they argue that life must have existed in the universe for several billion years. What should we conclude from these contradictory facts? Are our telescopes not powerful enough? Are we the only ones who are looking? Have other civilizations in space been annihilated -- by themselves or by nature -- before they got a chance to contact us? Or... or are they already among us? While human beings have lived on our planet for at most a hundred thousand years, extraterrestrial civilizations must have existed millions, even billions of years before our time. The all-too-obvious absence of signs from these super-civilizations confirm the suspicion that we are under --" "Shut it off!" Abram ordered. Annie stopped the tape player. He made a silent gesture; she took out the tape and gave it to him. Abram pulled out the scissors of his army knife and snipped off the thin tape, then pulled it out into a long tangle. He ceased this action, mumbled a curse and broke the cassette open with a twist of his hands. He wound open the side-window and tossed out the cracked remains.Kip and Annie stared at him. He crossed his arms and met their eyes. "I'm sick and tired of listening to maniacs," he said shortly. "But it's your job to do that," Annie replied, smiling a little. He shook his head decisively: "Not anymore. Let's get to the airport. Kip has got to get home to his family, and I've got to catch a plane to Canada." "To visit your relatives?" Annie rested her arm and chin on her seat. "I used to spend Christmas in Quebec with my eccentric clan, before my wife died many years ago. I'll stay in touch with you." "You know what," she said in a teasing tone, jutting out her chin, "I've just quit my job to take a long vacation. Up north." Abram drew his hand across his thick, pointy moustaches, then over his short, graying beard. He gave her an insecure look, and wrinkled his forehead. She made a giggle, touched his forehead with her fingertips and asked: "Have you noticed that you're always fingering your beard when you're thinking about what to say?" He took his hand from his chin and grasped her fingers. "For a hundred years," Abram said, and began to smile. . _______________________ A.R.Yngve PARRY'S PROTOCOL _______________________ Epilogue MAYWOOD EAST CENTRAL LOS ANGELES NOVEMBER 3 Giordano Bruno's apartment had been reduced a blackened, burnt-out brick shell; most of the two-story block of flats was relatively unharmed. The staircase leading up to the apartment was blocked by police line tape. Abram walked from the taxicab to the parking-lot next to the ruin. It was a clear, sunny day; he was dressed in his hat, bermuda shorts and a pastel-yellow shirt. He put his briefcase down by his feet and checked his new wristwatch: 12:54 PM. He sat down on the stiff briefcase, relaxing his body and hairy, pale legs. He watched people, traffic, and airplanes passing by. Eventually, another taxicab stopped nearby. A fat old man wearing hat, shirt, and slacks stepped out and waved at Abram. It was Kip O'Neill. Abram stood up, watching him with wary, emotionless eyes as he half-ran down the sloping sidewalk; Kip was red-faced and sweating heavily. They met; Kip shook Abram's hand with both his hands. "Thank you for warning me that day, Abram!" he said, his gritty voice full of emotion. "I let a security firm check our house in Washington, and it turned out our phones were bugged! Me and Rhoda managed to hide out in a motel -- just before someone fire-bombed our house. When they bombed Westmoreham, I thought you were dead!" He laughed so that his cheek-pouches shook -- but Abram showed no reaction. Kip's eyes seemed worried behind thick eyeglasses. "Abram... you're not thinking that I knew anything? I know I left you in a conspicuous manner when we first met, but I can explain that. The day we were about to meet, I got an anonymous call from some CIA guy; and he warned me to keep my ears and mouth shut, or they'd see that I was put on trial. Somehow they'd found out that we used to talk about secret things, and I got scared... When you warned me later, I saw the danger and took action." Suddenly, Abram smiled. He patted Kip's shoulder. "It's okay," he said in a warm voice, "I believe you." Kip laughed again, relieved, and gave Abram a friendly hug. "Now tell me, Abe. Why were we supposed to meet here?" "Come." Abram looked cautiously about him while they crossed the parking space, and came to Giordano Bruno's ruined apartment. Abram moved into the shadow under the concrete staircase -- which was intact -- and opened his briefcase. While Kip acted as lookout, he pulled out a flashlight and surveyed the flat underside of the stairs. He found nothing further up, and kneeled carefully down on the sooty asphalt. He searched the crack between the ground and the stairs. Soon, he found a brighter spot where concrete had been poured on and carefully smoothed out. He picked up a shiny new hammer and chisel from the case, and started picking around the edges of the spot. The surface of the filling cracked open after a few hits: behind it lay a package the size of a palm, wrapped in several layers of plastic bags and sellotape. Abram freed the package from the niche, brushed off concrete remains -- then he hastily shoved it and the tools into his briefcase, and went back to the sidewalk. Kip followed, confused. They waited another few minutes, until a four-door Volvo sedan stopped on the street next to them. Annie was behind the wheel, dressed in a T-shirt and a skirt that showed her powerful legs. Abram opened the back door and jumped inside before Kip. As Kip shut the door behind them, Annie stepped on the gas and dived in between two cars ahead on the road. The lunch rush was in progress, and the traffic was dense. Annie gave Abram and Kip a brief glance over her shoulder. "Annie Collett," she said briefly. "You must be O'Neill." "I don't think we've met before, Miss Collett," Kip said in a friendly voice -- and threw a knowing smile in Abram's direction. "No. Abram and I met in Westmoreham, just five days before --" Her voice faltered. She picked up a newspaper from and tossed it at them: the newsstand edition of USA TODAY. "Look," she said, her face tight with concealed emotion. "Look what they did to my home town, to my friends!" The page spread showed an aerial photograph of a dark crater, marking the site of the small town's center. The large headline read: "THE VIEW FROM GROUND ZERO". Abram and Kip held up a close-up spread of the crater: a tiny lake of rainwater had been formed and frozen there. There were more pictures of the site. Not a single house was standing. A few telephone poles and power-line pylons stuck up from flattened ruins -- interspersed by a few asphalt roads which had melted and then frozen into cracked sheets of black glass. The WRBC radio mast still stood up, defiantly, but the adjacent building was crushed. Further out from the town were piles of overturned, burnt-out car wrecks -- those who had not reached far away enough. One car was full of black, shrivelled corpses in various sizes: a former family. The caption below the picture explained: "All birds in the vicinity are dead or escaped -- many remaining bodies were left to freeze stiff after the rain that followed upon the blast." Kip made a choked noise. Annie said: "I waited in the assembly camp for anyone I knew to show up... nobody came but Abram." Kip looked questioningly at Abram, who nodded: "It took me some time to find her, the police wouldn't help me. I can't tell you what really happened, Kip -- now I'm a free man, but a pariah. You may have heard some rumors about the five men who were somehow connected to the incident --" "Yes," Kip interrupted eagerly, "there have been rumors in my circles that General Wade was part of some secret, very old cabal. You don't have to say more." "Look here," Abram told him. He indicate a full-page article in the newspaper, bearing the headline "ALL THE GENERAL'S MEN". Half a page was occupied by a photo of Joshua Wade: a vital but very wrinkled, long-faced man in uniform. The caption below it read: "COMMITTED SUICIDE: GENERAL WADE, SAC. The same day, four other top men in federal branches died under mysterious circumstances. Pentagon denies a connection, but speculations continue." Inset next to the larger photograph were four small photos of old men, some taken many years ago. The text pieces next to them were brief: "NEVILLE ANDERSON (89): His car found in Potomac River same night; body not yet found. "COLMER RAYMOND (93): Hit by car on his way to the White House; assailant unknown. "PETER STANTON (88): Found shot in Langley, with body of Ned Wilson (63); a high-ranking CIA man, also shot. "HAROLD ULMGARD (90): Heart failure in his Pentagon office after an overdose of heart medicine." "Did you ever meet any of these people during your time in Congress, Kip?" Kip scrutinized the pictures with concern, then shook his head: "No... but I've come across some of the names long ago. They were not politicians like me, but civil servants. You can see it on their faces, that they sat in secure places for many years." He grunted contemptuously. Abram tugged at his beard, muttering to himself: "Ever since that October day, I've been asking myself if anything makes sense anymore. A bunch of old men I've never seen murder several thousand people, in order to keep a secret revealed by an unknown madman. And all these other victims who didn't know anything either... Giordano... a man whose name I can't mention, to protect his family, he got nothing but a short paragraph in the local newspaper... the personnel at the Institute and those other patients... even Ned Wilson might not have known why he was killed... "Could I have saved them by not taking some fatal decision? Am I the one... ultimately responsible?" Annie slowed down the car, turned it into a littered backalley, and stopped the car. She faced Abram, holding a revolver in her hands, and took aim at his head. "Don't you think I've been thinking about it too?" Her voice choked with anger and despair. "Perhaps I've slept with the man who killed my friends! Should I shoot you for that?" Annie screwed up her eyes, little wrinkles of laughter appeared around them though she wasn't laughing. Her thin lips were clenched; her hands were trembling visibly. Abram was not shocked like Kip was. He looked gravely into her eyes and said with no trace of irony: "If you're going to shoot me, you'd better cock the trigger first." Her gaze dropped to the uncocked trigger. She shut her eyes, her mouth twisting, cramp-like, into a soundless laughter. There came no sound from her lips; she began to cry, and dropped the gun. "Damn you!" Annie sobbed. Her mouth opened in a quiet scream; Abram leaned across the seat and held her. She hugged his head and clenched her lips together. "Don't leave me." "I won't." They sat cheek to cheek for a minute -- until Kip cleared his throat and asked in a muffled tone: "Abram, that package you picked out of the ruin... what is it?" Abram gently freed himself from Annie's arms, and took up the package from the case. With his Swiss Army knife, he cut away the plastic wrapping and extracted a cassette tape. Annie wiped her face on her arm, looking curiously at the tape in Abram's hands. On it was a hand-written label: P. RYMOWICZ' FINAL LECTURE (30 MIN.) "Is that him on the tape?" she asked. "The madman on the radio?" "Yes," Abram said. "It's also supposed to feature the sound of when he shoots a student dead in front of an entire class. The act that finally got him put into the asylum." He handed the tape to Annie, who put it in the tape deck and pressed PLAY. Parry's voice reverberated through the car stereo: "Today, you will only have to write down one sentence. I'll take it right now, so those of you who are too tired to follow my entire argument can relax. Write down the following sentence: We -- are -- property. 'We are property.' Got that? Good. Today's subject is: 'Our Place In The Universe.' As you know, astronomers have not yet discovered -- read my lips, they have not discovered -- living life on other planets. Yet they argue that life must have existed in the universe for several billion years. What should we conclude from these contradictory facts? Are our telescopes not powerful enough? Are we the only ones who are looking? Have other civilizations in space been annihilated -- by themselves or by nature -- before they got a chance to contact us? Or... or are they already among us? While human beings have lived on our planet for at most a hundred thousand years, extraterrestrial civilizations must have existed millions, even billions of years before our time. The all-too-obvious absence of signs from these super-civilizations confirm the suspicion that we are under --" "Shut it off!" Abram ordered. Annie stopped the tape player. He made a silent gesture; she took out the tape and gave it to him. Abram pulled out the scissors of his army knife and snipped off the thin tape, then pulled it out into a long tangle. He ceased this action, mumbled a curse and broke the cassette open with a twist of his hands. He wound open the side-window and tossed out the cracked remains.Kip and Annie stared at him. He crossed his arms and met their eyes. "I'm sick and tired of listening to maniacs," he said shortly. "But it's your job to do that," Annie replied, smiling a little. He shook his head decisively: "Not anymore. Let's get to the airport. Kip has got to get home to his family, and I've got to catch a plane to Canada." "To visit your relatives?" Annie rested her arm and chin on her seat. "I used to spend Christmas in Quebec with my eccentric clan, before my wife died many years ago. I'll stay in touch with you." "You know what," she said in a teasing tone, jutting out her chin, "I've just quit my job to take a long vacation. Up north." Abram drew his hand across his thick, pointy moustaches, then over his short, graying beard. He gave her an insecure look, and wrinkled his forehead. She made a giggle, touched his forehead with her fingertips and asked: "Have you noticed that you're always fingering your beard when you're thinking about what to say?" He took his hand from his chin and grasped her fingers. "For a hundred years," Abram said, and began to smile. . |
|
|