"Bailey-SheepsClothing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bailey Dale)

DALE BAILEY

SHEEP'S CLOTHING

I have never much admired assassins. Their methods -- subterfuge and unexpected
violence -- possess little appeal for me; in those rare situations when action
is necessary, I have always favored direct confrontation. Anything less seems
unethical.

Certainly I never aspired to be one.

I saw some of that kind -- or so I have always imagined -- in the Brazilian
Conflict. The steambox, we called the place, and on a still night you could lie
wakeful in the equatorial heat of the Cuiaba barracks and listen to the
detonations of sniper fire bat away through the dark, humid air. And, of course,
there were more than a few of the type on our side, as well. Types, I should
say, for if you have devoted any thought to the matter at all -- and during
these last months I have thought of little else -- it is evident that no two
assassins are driven by precisely the same motives.

Not that there aren't broad categories.

I can think of three. There is the madman, most common I suppose, fired by the
blaze of his own obsessions. He hears the voice of God or he is anxious for the
warrior's paradise. He is the crazed fan, the car bomber.

There is the killer motivated by greed. He works for the highest bidder, and
takes pride in his skills. He is the mercenary, the hired gun, the hit man.

Finally, there is the man driven by the genuine belief that he is committing
violence for utilitarian purposes -- that his small evils are counterbalanced by
a greater good. Of the three, he is most rare, most dangerous.

And of course, he always runs the risk that he is one of the other type, and
simply hasn't the wisdom to see it.

"Senator Philip Hanson of North Carolina," Napolean Thrale said. He sat behind a
polished mahogany desk, impressively barren, refulgent in the luminous halo of
the floor-to-ceiling windows that formed the outer wall.

"What do you think of the man, Mr. Stem?"

The question took me by surprise. I'm not sure what I had expected when the
creamy invitation had been hand-delivered the previous afternoon to the door of
my Annapolis home, but certainly it wasn't this.

I say invitation, but it was a summons really, for what else can you call such a
request from one of the most powerful men in the country? Certainly I was in no