"Ann Maxwell - Risk unlimited 02 - Shadow and Silk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maxwell Ann)

The spiritual center of Tibet was an occupied city, unwilling captive to the People’s Republic of China. What Dani
was doing – or would be as soon as she got to the marketplace – was against the law.
It was also against her best judgment and her own scruples. Personally and professionally, she condemned the
widespread and immensely profitable international trade in ancient Silk Road artifacts. She was a scholar, not a curator
or a merchant. Illegal trafficking in antiquities was something she fought whenever and wherever she encountered it.
Except for tonight. Tonight Dani was a player for the first time in her life.
And she was afraid.
Stop gnawing on it, Dani told herself fiercely. It’s not like I’m buying an irreplaceable piece of a native culture so I
can sell it overseas at a thousand percent profit. I’m preventing the destruction of a literally priceless, very fragile
artifact.
Grimly she wondered if the expressionless soldiers of the PRC would believe that if they caught her.
Her fingers ached from her fierce grip on the money in her pockets. With those greasy bills she would rescue one
of the most extraordinary textile artifacts it had ever been her privilege to see.
Such a simple thing… a piece of blue silk that was more than twenty centuries old.
An ancient bit of cloth that, unprotected, would be torn apart by the raw Tibetan wind.
A scrap of silk that was the heart and soul of Tibet.
Don’t think about it, Dani told herself. It won’t do any good. I’ve been over it all before a hundred times. I made my
decision. Now I have to live with it.
Or die with it.
Stop thinking about it!
Dani loosened her fierce grip on the wad of Chinese currency in her pocket. She carried the equivalent of two
thousand American dollars. Even in New York or Tokyo, that amount was big enough to draw a second glance. In a
remote, lawless city like Lhasa, two thousand American dollars could buy anything, even a human life.
Yet what really made Dani nervous were the two large, intimidating men who had followed her on and off all day.
Neither of them had bothered her directly. In fact, neither of them had even attempted to speak to her.
Dani would have felt better if they had. Like most women who traveled alone, she had become quite skillful at
turning aside unwanted male attention.
Unfortunately, these two males were different. They both had pretended to ignore her. They had even pretended to
ignore one another.
Yet both of them had been as faithful to Dani’s every move as her own shadow.
It wasn’t surveillance itself that bothered her. Plainclothes soldiers and agents of the Public Security Bureau were
everywhere in Lhasa. They watched Tibetans and foreigners alike. Tourists and trekkers were as common as the wind
in Lhasa.
 But both of these men were Westerners, not agents of the PRC. Worse, both were big men of precisely the sort
who put her on edge.
Once Dani had been attracted to big men, but no longer. Her ex-husband had taught her to fear a man’s strength.
Judging by the Vasque hiking boots and North Face Polartec jacket, Dani had decided that the first man she had
spotted, while she was changing a traveler’s check at the Holiday Inn, was an American.
The man was dark, with a short beard and thick, equally short hair. He had an easy way of moving that spoke of
strength and coordination.
Oddly, part of her found him attractive. She didn’t understand it. She refused even to acknowledge it. He was
entirely too masculine for her comfort.
His eyes were intense. The one time she caught him watching her directly, he seemed to look right down into her
nervous soul. She had done her best to look right through him in return.
He hadn’t taken the hint. When she stepped out of the American outpost of the Holiday Inn onto the street that
led to Potala, the dark stranger came outside right after her.
Dani had expected him to approach her then. Instead, without so much as a glance at her, he disappeared into the
teeming crowds of Buddhist pilgrims and worldly trekkers.
She caught another glimpse of him ten minutes later. She was walking into the People’s Bank to convert another
wad of Foreign Exchange coupons into local currency. This time the dark stranger was lounging in the shade outside