"Brown, Dale - Warrior Class" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

out with both hands to gently touch the casket in silent greeting, as if wishing to not to disturb its occupant but to welcome him home.
Then, suddenly, her grief turned to anger. She cried aloud in anguish, piercing the frigid, snowy evening like a gunshot. She pushed the attendants aside, then grasped the Russian Federation flag in her gloved hands, pulled it off the casket, flung it to the ground, and rested her right cheek on the smooth gray surface of the casket's lid, sobbing loudly. A young man, tall and clothed in black as well, held her shaking shoulders, eventually pulling her away from the casket as it was escorted to the waiting hearse. The young man tried to comfort and support the woman as he led her to her own waiting limousine, where other family members were waiting, but she pushed him away. The limousine drove off, leaving the young man behind. The commander of the escort detail picked the flag up off the snowcovered ramp, quickly folded it, and gave it to one of the limousine attendants, as if unsure of what to do with it now.
The young man remained behind. He watched silently as the remaining sixteen caskets were escorted out of the big transport plane and placed into their hearses, and he remained, ignoring the snow falling heavier and heavier, after all the limousines, the escort detail, and the color guard had departed. None of the other family members spoke to the officials, and they did not attempt to speak with the family members. The officials returned to their limousines as soon as the last hearse drove away.
The young man saw he was not alone. A tall, distinguishedlooking older gentleman, also in a black fur beaver-pelt hat and rich-looking sealskin coat, stood nearby, tears running unabashedly down his cheeks. They looked at each other across the snow-obscured ramp. The older man approached the younger and nodded politely. "Spakoyniy nochyee, bratam, he said in greeting. " K sazhalyeneeyoo. Kak deela ? "
"I've been better," the younger man replied. He did not offer his hand in greeting.
"I'm sorry for your loss," the older man said. "I am Dr. Pyotr Viktorievich Fursenko. I lost my son, Gennadi Piotrievich, in Kosovo."
"I am sorry," the young man murmured. There was a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.
"Thank you. He was a lieutenant, one of the security officers. He had been
in the army only eight months, and in Kosovo only two weeks." No other comment from the young man, so Fursenkoment on: "I assume the unit commander, Colonel Kazakov, was your father?" The young man nodded. Dr. Fursenko paused, looked at the younger man, waiting for an introduction, but none was forthcoming. "And that was your mother, I assume?" Again, nothing. "I am sorry for her as well. I must tell you, I can't help but agree wiih her sentiments." "Her sentiments?"
"Her anger at Russia, at the Central Military Committee, at the general state of our country in general," Fursenko said. "We can't seem to do anything right, even help our comrades hold on to a tiny republic, in the backwaters of the Balkans."
The younger man glanced over at Fursenko. "How do you know I'm not an internal security officer or MVD, Doctor?" he asked. The MVD, or Ministry of Internal Affairs, conducted most government intelligence, counterintelligence, and national police activities inside the Russian Federation. "You could be investigated for what you just said."
"I don't care-let them investigate me, imprison me, kill me," Fursenko said, his voice filled with despair. "They are undoubtedly better at killing their own people than protecting their soldiers in Kosovo or Chechnya." The young man smiled at that comment. "My research center was torn down, my industry that I have worked in for twenty-five years has all but closed down, my parents are gone, my wife died a few years ago, and my two daughters are somewhere in North America. My son was all I had left." He paused, looking the younger man up and down. "I would say that you could be MVD or SVR as well." The SVR was the new name for the KGB, which conducted most foreign intelligence activities for Russia but was free to act inside the country as well. "Except I think you are dressed a little too well.9'
"You are a very observant man," the young man said. He regarded Fursenko for a moment, then extended a hand, and Fursenko accepted it. "Pavel Gregorievich Kazakov."








"Pleased to meet-" Fursenko stopped suddenly, then squinted his eyes. "Pavel Kazakov? The Pavel Kazakov?"
"I am very impressed by what you are doing at Metyor, Doctor Fursenko," Kazakov remarked, his voice deep and insistent, as if silently urging Fursenko not to dwell on what he had just figured out.
"I ... I. . ." Fursenko took a moment to regain his composure, then went on, "Thank you, sir. It is all due to you, of course."
"Not at all, Doctor," Kazakov said. "Metyor is a fine group." Most large privatized companies in the Commonwealth of Independent States belonged to organizations called HGs, or Industrial Investment Groups, similar to corporations in the United States. IIG members were usually banks, other IlGs, some foreign investors, and a few wealthy individuals, but the primary member of any IIG was the Russian government, which controlled at least twenty percent but sometimes as much as ninety percent of any venture, and therefore had ultimate control. Metyor was one of the lucky ones: only thirty percent of the HG was owned by the government. "And I am familiar with your old venture, the Soviet aircraft design bureau in Lithuania called Fisikous."
It was Fursenko's turn to look uncomfortable, which pleased and intrigued Kazakov. In conducting his due-diligence before investing in any new company, especially a troubled but high-tech concern like Metyor, Kazakov always put his extensive private intelligence operatives, most of them former KGB, to work learning all there was to learn about the previous holdings of the 11G, which in this case was a research and development institute called Fisikous. What he had found out was nothing short of astounding.
The Fisikous Institute of Technology had been an advanced aircraft and technology research facility in Vilnius, in what was then the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, now the independent Republic of Lithuania on the eastern end of the Baltic Sea. Fisikous had been on the cutting edge of Soviet aircraft design, attracting the brightest engineers from all over the Soviet Union and the non-aligned nations. The big name at Fisikous had been a young scientist named Ivan Ozerov, who'd
been the resident low observable technology-stealth--expert. No one knew anything about Ozerov, except that in a short time at Fisikous, under the direct supervision of the chief of the facility, Pyotr Fursenko, and another man who most suspected was KGB, he'd become the number-one design expert
in all of the Soviet Union. Ozerov was brilliant, but weird and unpredictable, occasionally launching into wild tirades in English at the slightest provocation or agitation. Scientists there had long suspected Ozerov of being either on LSD or simply psychotic-he was far more than just eccentric. But there was no question that his work, especially on the incredible Fi- 170 stealth bomber, had been nothing short of genius.
But there had been problems at Fisikous. The Baltic republic of Lithuania was driving toward independence from the Soviet Union, and Fisikous represented all that was bad about life under Soviet rule. Ivan Ozerov had disappeared during some kind of military action. Some said the American CIA or Special Forces had kidnapped Ozerov. Others said Ozerov had not been Russian but a captured American scientist, codenamed "Redtail Hawk," brainwashed right there at Fisikous by the KGB, and that the military action had really been a rescue mission. Even the Fisikous- 170 stealth bomber, a onehundred-and-twenty-thousand kilo warplane, had been stolen.
"When the Union collapsed, I went back to Russia to head up some other aerospace design bureaus," Fursenko went on. "I was going to retire or emigrate to the West, because the industry had all but disappeared in the Commonwealth. But when my wife died, I ... I stayed on ... well, mostly just to have something to do."
"I understand," Kazakov said sincerely. "I think that's important."
"They had better kofte and romavaya babas in the labs than I could afford as a pensioner anyway," Fursenko admitted with a faint smile. "There's not much money in Metyor, but we're doing important work, incredible things. I didn't mind not getting paid as long as I could keep on working and get real coffee. No offense, sir. It is rewarding work, but the pay is terrible."
"No offense taken. My mother made the best romavaya








babas when I was a kid," Kazakov said. He sighed. "Now I think she would use a handful of them to choke me if she had the chance."