"Ludlum, Robert - The Parcifal Mosaic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ludlum Robert)

zippers whose manufacturers believed in planned obsolescence.
There was no question about it, he was spoiled. His previous life bad had
its difficulties and its risks. but they had not included the perils that
confronted the iWeier at every turn.
10
 THE PAMMAL MOSAIC11

In his past life, on the other band, whenever be got to where be was going,
there was the movable Prison- No, not exactly. There were appointments to
keep, sources to contact, informers to pay. Too often at night, in shadows,
far away from geeing or being seen.
Now there was none of that. There ha(Wt been for nearly eight weeks. He
walked in daylight, as he was walking now down the Damrak in Amsterdam
toward the American Express office. He wondered if the cable would be
there. If it was, it would signify the beginning of something. A concrete
beginning. A job.
Employment. Strange how the unexpected was so often connected to the
routine. It bad been three months since that night on the Costa Brava, two
months and five days since the end of big debriefing and formal separation
from the government. He had come up to Washington from the clinic in Vir-
ginia where he had spent twelve days in therapy- (Whatever they had
expected to find wasn't there; he could have told them that. He didn't care
anymore; couldn't they understand?) He had emerged from the doors of the
State Department at four o'clock in the afternoon a free man-also an
unemployed, unpensioned citizen with certain resources hardly of the
magnitude to be considered an annuity. It bad occurred to him as he stood
there on the pavement that afternoon that sometime in the future a job had
to be found, a job where he could illuminate the lessons of-The lessons.
But not for a while; for a while he would do the minimum required of a
functioning human being.
He would travel, revisit all those places be bad never really visited-in
the sunlight. He would read-reread, actually~ not codes and schedules and
dossiers but all those books he had not read since graduate school. If he
was going to illuminate anything for anybody, he had to relearn so much
that he had forgotten.
But if there was one thing on his mind at four o'clock that afternoon, it
was a fine dinner. After twelve days in therapy, with various chemicals and
a restricted diet, be had ached at the thought of a good meal. He had been
about to head back to his hotel for a shower and a change of clothes when
an accommodating taxi drove clown C Street, the sun bouncing off its
windows and obscuring any occupants. It stopped at the curb in front of
him-at the behest of big signal, Michael
 12RoBEIRT LuoLum

had assumed. higtead, a passenger carrying an attach16 case stepped out
quickly, a harried man late for an appointment, fumbling for his billfold.
At first neither Havelock nor the passenger recognized each other; Michaels
thoughts were on a restaurant, the othees on paying the driver.
"Havelock?" the passenger inquired suddenly, adjusting his glasses. "It is
you, iset it, Michael?"