"E. E. Doc Smith - D' Alembert 4 - Getaway world" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

"No need to worry about that. Every room in her apartment will be thoroughly searched
and monitored around the clock by my best security people. Beepers will be placed in all
her clothing. Wherever she goes, there will be two people on her tail. We'll keep lists of
everyone she contacts, under what circumstances the contacts were made, and we'll
have tails put on all those contacts who look even the faintest bit suspicious. I'll
personally review the progress of the investigation at least once a day, to make sure
there are no slip-ups. Gospozha von Wilmenhorst will be given more surveillance than the
entire Imperial family. Nothing will slip by us, I'll stake my life on that."

"Yes," said Lady A, "you very well may."

After his visitor had gone and he had ordered the implementation of his surveillance
tactics, Garst sat alone in his office, deep in thought. What have I gotten myself into? he
wondered. Exactly whom have I allied myself with?

He reached across his desk and fiddled with the controls of his recorder. As a matter of
routine he taped every meeting held in this office, so that they could be played back to
refresh his memory. Now, as he sat behind the desk with the lights dimmed, be watched
the ghostly images come to life and repeat the performance of earlier that afternoon.

Certain phrases haunted him. "That particular plum has been within my reach before,"
referring to the Throne. And again, "we already have our own access to most of the
information she could tell us about SOTE's operations in general."

After his faked death and hasty departure from the gambling moon Vesa, Garst had
desperately utilized all the contacts he knew in the Galaxy's underworld until, through the
friend of a friend of a friend, he had gotten in touch with this Lady A and asked for a job.
He had expected to be integrated into a criminal organization and allowed to use his
talents there; but Lady A's conversation left him little doubt that he was actually con-

nected to an Empire-wide conspiracy of infinitely vaster proportions. The thought of what
this could mean filled him with both terror and eager anticipation.

Garst was a particularly ambitious man. Until recently, his ambitions had been thwarted
by being confined to a single small satellite; but now, the prospect of true power was
blossoming before him. He found its aroma intoxicating.


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He got up and walked around to the front of his desk, fingering gently the small medallion
he had been given when he joined the organization. It was a membership badge, he had
been told then, a form of identification. In form, it was quite simple: a tiny integrated
circuit chip on a thin golden chain, almost invisible unless someone looked closely. But it
made him part of something that obviously spanned the Galaxy and had as its goal
supreme control of the human race.