"Дон Пендлтон. Renegade Agent ("Палач" #47) " - читать интересную книгу автора

"We'll get on it right away, Mack," Aaron declared. "But I can't
predict time frame.
Aaron "the Bear" Kurtzman ruled over the Virginia headquarters'
electronic library.
In addition to the Farm's own extensive data banks, Aaron could
interface instantly with those of the National Security Council, the Justice
Department, the CIA, DIA, the intelligence agencies of every major friendly
nation. Kurtzman was not simply the operator of this expansive communication
and information system; he seemed himself a grizzled, portly extension of
it.
Gadgets and Kurtzman began to toss around ideas on how to decode
Charon's computer domain.
April Rose joined them. Her advanced degrees in electronics and
solid-state physics made her no stranger to the arcane mysteries of
electronic computation.
In front of Mack on the polished surface of the War Room conference
table, in an unmarked file folder, was a digest of the dossier of Frederick
Charon. It occupied no more than three pages of sprocket-hole-edged computer
paper. Bolan had no need to consult it. He knew the details on those pages
well enough. And they told an old and familiar tale.
The salient points were simple: it was the American success story. To a
point. Charon was the only son of Italian immigrant parents, his father a
self-educated salesman and opera buff, his mother an elementary school
teacher. They were dedicated, ambitious people, and they instilled ambition
in their son. From Boston Latin High School, Charon went to MIT for his
undergraduate work, then Stanford for graduate and post-doctoral programs.
His first and only job as an employee was with the prestigious Rand
Corporation think tank; when he was twenty-five he left that firm to form
his own company, DonCo. In ten years he had built it into one of the most
respected theoretical hi-tech firms in the country, and a repository for the
country's most profound trust.
And then he chose to betray that trust.
Somewhere along the line, the ambition inculcated in Charon by his
hard-working parents had been perverted-impulsion. A brilliant man, Charon
was also brilliantly flawed. No matter whatever had achieved-intellectually,
socially, financially - he had to have more of everything that fed his will.
Perhaps, Bolan mused, his downfall was preordained, as is the defeat of
any man whose appetites forever exceed his reach.
Just a few hours before, as he and Gadgets had withdrawn from the DonCo
headquarters along the predetermined route that evaded the unblinking TV
surveillance cameras, Bolan had stopped to look back at Charon's building.
Sleek, low-slung, all tinted glass and polished steel glinting in the
starlight, set majestic amid manicured lawns edged with stately woods, it
was a monument to the man and a symbol of his failure all in one. As a
scientist, businessman, theoretician, Charon was an extraordinary success,
and here were housed the fruits he had nurtured and picked. As a would-be
jet-setter, playboy, gambler, profligate, Charon was a failure. His failure
was forever compounded by a decision to turn to treachery, perhaps in a vain
attempt to salvage the hell-bent part of the life he had made for himself.
There was an irony there in which Bolan saw no humor. Charon had