"Timothy Zahn - The Blackcollar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zahn Timothy)

from him, Caine slipped silently through the door and into the cluttered stockroom beyond. He
squatted down in the middle of the old tile floor and gave a gentle push on one of the tiles. Clearly,
he was expected; the two-meter square of concrete floor pivoted open without resistance. He stepped
into the pit, his feet finding the wooden stairs there. Crouching down, he let the concrete block rotate
shut above him; and as he did so a metal bar slid silently across its underside, locking the trap door
in place. Turning, Caine headed down the dimly lit stairway.

A short hallway awaited him at the bottom of the stairs; and at the end of the hall was a door.
Opening it, Caine stepped through into a dark room. The door closed itself behind him.

And abruptly a blinding light flashed on. He threw an arm up to protect his eyes and took an
involuntary step backward. "Who are you?" a voice demanded.

Caine's response was immediate. "I'm Alain Rienzi, aide to Senator Auriol," he snapped. "Get that
damn light out of my face!"

The spotlight winked out and other, more muted lights came on. Through the purple blob floating
before his eyes Caine could dimly see three men and a woman seated around a low table.
"Excellent," one of the men said, fiddling with a shoebox-sized gadget. "No hesitation, no
recognizable 'liar's stress,' and just the right amount of arrogance. He's ready, Morris."

Another man nodded and gestured to Caine. "Sit down, Allen," he said in a gravelly voice.

Caine took the indicated chair and looked around at the others, and as his eyes recovered, his heart
began to beat faster. This was no routine meeting; the four people facing him were probably the top
Resistance leaders in all of Europe. The man with the box was Bruno Hurlimann, a former captain in
the Terran Star Force; the second man was Raul Marinos, who'd been planning and executing
sabotage operations against the government and even the Ryqril's own military bases for most of the
past twenty-nine years; the woman was Jayne Gibbs, a former member of the long-since dissolved
Parliament; and "Morris" was General Morris Kratochvil himself, the last commander of Earth's
final defense efforts. None of them looked their proper ages, of course; despite government controls,
enough bootlegged Idunine was getting to the Resistance via the black market to keep even the
ninety-two-year-old Kratochvil at the biological equivalent of forty. Caine had met all four of them
at one time or another, but he'd never seen them together in one place. Something important must be
happening.

General Kratochvil might have been reading Caine's mind. "I'm afraid your orientation has come to
an abrupt end, Allen," he said. "We're moving things up drastically. All the cards have unexpectedly
fallen into place, and you're going to be leaving for Plinry in just under twenty hours."


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The Blackcollar

Caine's mouth felt a little dry. "I thought I was going to have to replace Alain Rienzi first for a few
weeks."

"So did we," the general said, "but it turns out that's not going to be necessary. Rienzi left yesterday
on a private vacation and doesn't seem to have told anyone where he was going. It was the perfect
opportunity, and we decided to take it."