"Daniel Da Cruz - Texas Trilogy 03 - Texas Triumphant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)

chief. And, when Luchenko proved that Texas was indeed the author of the Moscow holocaust,
Milstein would cease to be a contender for power.
Marshal Luchenko built a pyramid of fingers. "The facts are these: Analysis of radio traffic
between Odessa and Moscow, monitored by RU Kiev MD on that fatal day of 22 July, indicates
one cargo did pass KGB scru-tiny and entered Moscow uninspected. Apparently au-thorized
personally by General Grigoriy Aleksandrevich Piatakov, late chief of Room 101-which I think
every-one here is aware was a KGB operation. The cargo con-sisted of a sealed steel shipping
container delivered to Odessa by submarine. The submarine was acting on the orders of that
same General Piatakov.
"And where did that container come from? According to radio traffic, from the Turkish steamer
Kara Deniz- which a Soviet submarine intercepted. The container was listed on the ship's
manifest as a Computerized Mill-ing Machine. Its point of origin: SD-1 in Houston, the
underground research center of Ripley Forte. Where and how Forte laid hands on a hydrogen
bomb is still a mys-tery, but it is known that shortly after the container's scheduled arrival in
Moscow, the city went up in a mush-room cloud." Luchenko smiled seraphically.
The other fifteen men around the table were silent. In the battle of wills, there was no doubt that
Luchenko had emerged the winner over Milstein.
Pirogov presented the laurel to Luchenko by saying, "What do you recommend we do, Comrade
Marshal?"
"Attack Texas, of course. We cannot allow the capi-talist dogs to destroy our capital with impunity,
to play at David and Goliath. We shall crush it underfoot as if it were a cockroach."
"Nuclear missiles?" came the question.
"Yes. Swift, sure, conclusive. Texas will never bother us again."
"On the other hand," said Geli Sergeevich Bryntsev, a soft-spoken theoretician whose views
everyone re-spected, "perhaps the United States will. Once we begin dropping nuclear bombs on
the American continent, we cannot be sure that the Americans won't retaliate, claim-ing that we
are trying to kill them with radioactive fall-out, using our defensive strike on Texas only as a
pre-text."
"Nevertheless," Luchenko insisted, "Texas must be punished with the fullest rigor at our
command."
"Unquestionably," Bryntsev agreed, "but why barbe-cue the cow when we can capture it, milk it,
and enjoy its butter and cheese forever after?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well," said Bryntsev, "Texas is on its way to becom-ing the richest small country in the world. By
next year, in the form of icebergs, every fortnight it will be bringing a billion tons of fresh water to
Matagorda Bay. Within a year or two, the harvest of fresh water will be reaped every five days.
That water, sold to the parched United States, will pour gold into Texas' coffers. More will come
from the electricity sold to the U.S. as a result of ocean thermal energy conservation, with
icebergs sup-plying power for Forte's OTEC units. And, according to our sources, down the road
Forte plans to drill geother-mal wells, thus exploiting the enormous heat far under the earth's
surface to drive generators with superheated steam."
"You're suggesting we do not destroy Texas but rather capture it and load its riches on the Soviet
war chariot?"
Bryntsev shook his head. "No, I do not recommend that course of action. We've tried it, and it
failed. After World War II, we stripped conquered Europe bare-we even got the Americans to help,
using the good offices of our agent White in the Treasury Department-and it took a generation for
Europe to recover, but at no ad-vantage to ourselves. Rather, I suggest we conquer Texas, in the
process visiting a necessary and precau-tionary punishment on Houston, Ripley Forte's home
town. It should be severe enough to quell forevermore the Texans' natural delight in rebellion."
"And then?"