"Brian Lumley - Psychomech 01 - Psychomech" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

‘Oh, we will,’ said Koenig. ‘But be sure that if we don’t, you will not be .here to enjoy our predicament.’ He pocketed
the thin man’s gun, tossed the other across the room. Schroeder, carrying the spittoon, caught it in his free right hand.
And now the Irishmen were aware of the metamorphosis taken place in the Germans.
Where they had been timid in their actions, now they were sure. Where they had seemed nervous, they were now
cool as cubes of ice. Koenig’s sweat had dried on him in a matter of moments. His eyes were small, cold and
penetrating as he brushed back his short-cropped hair with a blunt fland. He had seemed to grow by at least four or
five inches. ‘Be very quiet,’ he said, ’and I may let you live. If you are noisy or try to attract attention, then—’ and he
gave an indifferent shrug. ‘One missile from the case would kill an elephant outright. Two for each of you and your
own mothers - if you had mothers - would not know you.’
Schroeder, smiling through his thick lenses, his lips drawn back in the wide grin of a wolf, came up behind the two
and said, ‘Put your hands on the table.’ Then, when they had obeyed: ‘Now put your heads on your hands - and stay
quite still.’ He swirled the contents of the spittoon until they made a slopping sound.
‘Gentlemen,’ he finally continued, ’—and may the good God, who to my eternal damnation surely exists, at least
forgive me for calling you that, if not for my greater crimes - you have made a big mistake. Did you think I would come
into this country, and having come here deliver myself into hands such as yours, without taking the greatest
precaution? Herr Koenig here is that precaution, or a large part of it. His talent lies in thinking bad thoughts. Never
good ones. In this way he has protected me personally for many years, since 1944. He is successful because he thinks
his bad thoughts before others think them.’ He poured the contents of the deep spittoon over their bowed heads.

The small fat man moaned but remained motionless. The thin one cursed and straightened up. Koenig had taken the
man’s weapon back out of his pocket. Now he reached over and jammed its barrel hard against his upper lip below his
scarred nose. He pressed his hand forward and up until the muzzle of the gun rested squarely in the orbit of an
expanded left nostril. The Irishman, because of the bench which pressed against the back of his tegs, could not move.
He put up his hands before him and they were shaking.
Koenig told him, ‘Herr Schroeder ordered you not to move - Paddy.’ His accent was thicker now and full of a sort of
lust. The terrorist believed he knew the sort, and his hands fluttered like trapped birds. He wished he had not called the
Germans names. But then Koenig drew back the gun from his face a little and allowed him to relax. He put down his
hands and started to sit, attempting a tight smile through the slop and stale spittle dripping down his face. Koenig had
expected some sort of bravado, had planned and prepared for it, had thought his bad thoughts. He had decided to kill
this Irishman, if only as a lesson to the other one - and it might as well be now.
He drove the gun forward again, his forearm rigid as a piston. The barrel sheared through lips, teeth and tongue, its
foresight slicing along the roof of the Irishman’s mouth. He gagged, jerked, reared up again, coughed blood, the barrel
still in his mouth. If it had been possible, he would have screamed with the pain.
Koenig withdrew the barrel with a rapid, tearing motion, ripping the man’s mouth. At the same time he released his
briefcase and grabbed his victim’s jacket, then struck him with the gun. Again and again and again. The blows were so
fast and deadly that they seemed physically to slice the air; their whistle and chop could clearly be heard. The "final
blow, delivered while the man was still straining up and away, smashed his Adam’s apple out of position and killed
him. Down he went on to the bench, toppling, his nose torn, his right eye hanging by a thread.
The fat man had seen it all. He had dared to lift his head an inch or two from the table. Now, fainting, he fell back
again into the slops. And all of this occurring so rapidly -and in a sort of vacuum, a well of near-silence - that only the
blows had made noise.
Something of it had been heard, however - heard and misunderstood - and a harsh snigger sounded from the
corridor. Then the low murmurings continued.
Koenig moved from between bench and table, stooped and ripped the dead man’s jacket open. He tore off his shirt
and turned to the fat man, roughly towelling his head and face dry and clean before slapping him awake. When the
man’s eyes opened and his eyeballs rolled back into place Schroeder grabbed his beard and showed him his own gun.
‘You are coming with us,’ the industrialist told him. ‘Oh, and incidentally - you may call me Colonel. Herr Koenig
here was the youngest Feldwebel in my rather special corps. You have seen why he was promoted so very young. If
you should foolishly attempt to raise an alarm, he will kill you -or I will. I’m sure you understand that, don’t you?’
The fat man nodded. He might have been about to smile but at the last moment thought better of it. Instead his lips