"Steve Perry - Matador 6 - The Albino Knife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

As she drove, fear making her mouth dry, Dirisha added things up. A bomb in the aircar'sengine, set off
where seven attackers lay waiting. Probably a radio pulse rather than a timer. Somebody wanted the two
of them dead? Who? Why?

Later.First thing was to getGeneva somewhere they could take care of her. After that, Dirisha would
figure out the rest of it. And when that happened, somebody was going to be in a pile of shit a klick deep
and as big around asMountZiwi .

Tape it, deuce. Somebody was going to pay big for this. You could spit on that and make itshine .

Part One
TheAlbino Knife

Chapter One

THINGS WERE QUIET in the Red Sister, which was not unusual. Winter had laid its cold hands
across Muto Kato's single continent and a meter of fresh powder lay piled upon twice that much older
packed snow. Those families who usually favored the pub with their patronage were slow in coming on
this frigid evening. Half a dozen regulars sat drinking or smoking and the muted hum of conversation was
mostly about the weather. Somewhere in the distance a snowmachine whined as it carried its passengers
through the world made white.

Emile Antoon Khadaji, hero of the revolution,instigator of the war that brought low the repressive
Confed, wiped the already-clean bar top with a rag. He was medium tall, still in good shape under his
thermoskin coverall, though not muscular enough to draw stares. His dark hair had gray in it, mostly
along the sides, and his face bore smile wrinkles and character lines. A first look might make him about
forty T.S.,a more careful examination could up that closer to fifty. The blue eyes were still clear and alert.
Here, the patrons and workers he employed knew him under a pseudonym. It had been five years since
anybody had called him by his true name, and none of the locals knew who he had been before. He was
a man who had gone to ground, hiding who and what he had been.

The outer door slid open and then closed, the hard plastic squeaking a little as it moved along its track.
Have to get that fixed, Khadaji thought.

He turned to adjust the nozzle on the liquor dispenser as the inner door opened, so that he caught only a
peripheral flash as the single customer entered the pub. He noticed nothing unusual about the figure from
his quick glimpse. He—she?—wore a heavy, gloved and hooded parka over thermoskins and extrusion
boots. The whine of the snow-shoes as they retracted over the second dump grate just inside the door
was a sound he heard frequently. There was nothing to set the customer apart from any other, and yet—

Khadaji turned and looked at the woman. He was sure it was a woman, and something about her
movement as she reached up to untab her parka and face shield seemed familiar, even though he felt
certain he had never seen her before. What would bring a stranger here? The last person he hadn't
known personally who'd come to the Red Sister had been a miner from Delton City, and he'd stopped in
only because his flitter had broken down on the way home.

When the woman removed the parka, Khadaji thought his heart was going to stop.

Juete!