"Evan Innes - America 2040 01 - America 2040" - читать интересную книгу автора (Innes Evan)

Hamilton felt a quick stir of interest.Talk, woman, he thought.Give me a clue. But the woman was
silent.

“You have a Polish name,” he said after a while.

“I carry it proudly,” she replied, but again fell into silence.

Under a lowering, slate sky, the Kremlin loomed redly beyond the frozen Moskva River, a cylindrical
tower in the foreground, wedding-cake top thrusting a red star upward toward the gray sky. To
Hamilton, and to millions, the triangularly shaped fortress housed most that was evil in the world. From
there came the orders, flowing out over the ever-expanding Red world, the orders that precipitated battle
and mutilation, fear and hopelessness. Within those stone walls gathered the aging, stern-faced men who
had, for almost one hundred and twenty years, wanted total domination over all people everywhere. In
those decades the cast of characters had changed often, the purpose never. No matter who was chosen
Premier for that was now the title of the supreme Soviet leader, a title not used since the days of
Khrushchev—the relationship between Russia and the United States remained tense, hostile, suspicious,
dangerous.When Hamilton had first been notified that the presidential party would be housed in the
Kremlin itself, he had been surprised and wondered if the Russians were having security problems and
wanted to keep the Americans close at hand. But the people on the streets seemed reduced to
unquestioning docility. He shrugged mentally as the limousine hummed through guarded gates, past
heavily armed and stalwart men handpicked for Kremlin duty from the huge Red Army.

“We have allowed some time for you to rest,” General Theresita Pulaski said as she guided them from
the vehicle.Why? Hamilton wondered. The entire trip via ballistic rocket, helicopter, and motorcade had
taken only three hours.

He walked with long, quick strides, eager to get inside, eager to begin the summit meeting with Yuri
Kolchak.

Dexter Hamilton, who had assumed his office just two short months earlier, was young to be serving in
the presidency, only forty-six, having been born in 1987. He always went hatless, and his silvering
hair—a tight, curled mass that clung to his well-formed head— seemed to be a tacit signal that, although
young, here was a wise, experienced man. Behind the smile-crinkled blue eyes, the classic nose, the
upturned mouth, there was the strength that had given him, first, governorship of North Carolina, next a
seat in the Senate, then the Oval Office.

Now he was in Moscow to meet with the Soviet Premier, to attempt to control somehow the
ever-increasing buildup of weapons of war.

Never had an American President faced such a difficult challenge, for nowadays the world was mostly
Red. In Europe, only Germany and France maintained any freedom, with Great Britain clinging to the
protection of the Final Four—the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Starving Africa—with the
sole exception of the beleaguered Republic of South Africa, which had survived a quick and limited
exchange of nuclear weapons with Soviet-supported Black Africa— was a vassal state. The two Asian
giants, China and India, having absorbed all of mainland and southeast Asia, were Communist, but
impotently mired in famine and overpopulation. Meanwhile, South America was dominated by the
emerging imperialistic giant Brazil, whose armed forces had overwhelmed Cuba, ending Communist rule
there. However, Communist insurgents continued to rebel against Brazilian authorities in the Caribbean
and South America. An American fleet was stationed in the Pacific, but as of yet there had been no direct
confrontation with the Russians. Almost everywhere, people were overcrowded and underfed, yet Russia