"Maxwell Grant - The Shadow - 332 - Go Mad" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grant Maxwell)

The London Police kept back the small crowd that had come to see the Soviet diplomats
arrive. Beyond the first knot of curious a ragged group of marchers circled in the rain, their anti-
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Communist placards raised high. The circling marchers chanted as they marched and watched
the great jet taxi slowly toward the small group of British officials out on the landing area.
The reporters lounged behind the first barricade, making jokes among each other, half-awake
and idly watching as the jet came to a stop. They had been through it all so many times before,
Even the Soviet diplomats were the same old men--Valery Bukharin, First Deputy Premier; Ivan
Bunarov, Deputy Foreign Minister; and Georgi Kutusov, Military Attaché at the Embassy in
London.
Bukharin, as befitted his rank, was the first to emerge from the interior of the giant jet,
Behind Bukharin, Kutusov and Bunarov stood side by side. (The reporters began to write--it
looked as if Kutusov was moving up, or Bunarov was moving down in rank, or the Deputy
Foreign Minister would have preceded the Military Attaché.)
The British officials, looking at each other because they, too, had noted the probable shift in
rank, stepped forward wreathed in smiles intended to be friendly. The police stood alert. The
chanting marchers raised their voices and placards so that the Russians would see and hear. The
police firmly held them back.
Bukharin, a tall man, began to descend the landing stairs, followed by both Bunarov and
Kutusov. The Deputy Premier reached the bottom, smiled broadly, and extended his hand toward
the chief British official who hurried to meet him.
Georgi Kutusov, standing one step above the Deputy Premier, reached inside his coat, drew
out a small pistol, and shot the Deputy Premier in the back of the head.
Bukharin pitched forward into the wet landing area.
Kutusov turned and shot Bunarov.
When the police overpowered the Military Attaché he was smiling broadly and his eyes were
vacant, trancelike.

It was a clear night in the city of San Francisco when a young man named Walter Stock
stopped on his way home from a visit with friends to look out over the magnificent Bay and the
lights of the city spread out below where he stood high on one of the many hills. Walter admired
his city. He enjoyed the clear air and the hills.
He stood there about a half an hour, looking at the city, then he boarded a cable car to ride
down the hill toward another cable car that would take him up another hill to a spot near his
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home. He had been on the car about ten minutes, it was halfway down the hill, when the car had
to slow as it crossed one of the flat cross streets.
Just before the car started its steep plunge down the next slope, Walter Stock pushed a
woman down, grabbed her purse, leaped from the car, and ran away along the cross street.
The police caught him twenty minutes later hiding in a dark doorway. He had the purse in his
hand. The purse was of no value. There was $12.65 inside the purse, there was nothing else of
any value at all. Walter Stock earned $150 a week, and had no family or dependents.
Walter Stock did not drink much, there was no record of his ever gambling, he was not a drug
addict, he was keeping no women. He had no criminal record, had never been in trouble, and
had $9,725 in his savings account.
He had never seen or known the woman he attacked before.
She did not know him.
Walter was smiling when he was caught. He stumbled as he was led away by the police, as if
sleepwalking.
On a country road in Southern France an armored truck stopped when it found a large tree