"Destroyer 012 - Slave Safari.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)"You will be rich too," said the cook. "I will have to be. I can no longer return to Busati." By nightfall, Walla was the richest man in the history of his village and J. Gordon Dalton was sending frantic codes to Washington. A top level officer unscrambled the message: JAMES FORSYTHE LIPPINCOTT, BALTIMORE, MISSING. BELIEVED DEAD IN BUSATI BUSH. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED. CYNTHIA FORSYTHE, BALTIMORE, HELD HOSTAGE. AWAIT INSTRUCTIONS. INVESTIGATING. Since Lippincott was part of the famous Lippincott family which numbered governors, diplomats, senators and most important, bankers, the message went to several department heads at 4:00 A.M. There was one problem with Dalton's message. Cynthia Forsythe could not be a hostage in Busati. She had been killed in an auto accident three months earlier. It had made the papers because she was related to the Lippincotts. It was decided quietly to check out the dead girl's body. By noon, from dental work and a thumb print, the body was identified as not, definitely not, the body of Cynthia Forsythe. "Who is it then?" asked the State Department man. "Who cares?" said the FBI man. "It's not the Forsythe girl. That means she probably is a hostage in Busati." "Well, we're going to have to tell the White House," said State. "God help anyone who runs afoul of the Lippincotts. Especially the bankers." '. Five reports on the case were made in the White House, four of which went to various Lippincotts. The fifth was hand-delivered to an office in the Agriculture Department in Washington, where it was coded and sent by scrambler to what the sender believed was an office in Kansas City. But the line went to a sanitarium in Rye, New York, and in that sanitarium a decision was made that unknowingly fulfilled an ancient prediction made soon after the Loni tribe had lost its empire: "Terror from the East shall join with terror from the West, and woe to the enslavers of the Loni when the destroyer of worlds walks along the Busati." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHAPTER THREE His name Was Remo and his life was being made miserable by a television programming decision. "Because of our coverage of the Senate1 investigation into Watergate, As the Planet Revolves and Dr. Lawrence Walters, Psychiatrist-at-Large will not be shown today," the announcer had said. When Remo heard that, he uttered his first prayer since childhood. "Lord, have mercy on us all." The wisp of an Oriental who had sat placid in his golden kimono before the color television set, let out a sound Remo had heard him use but once before, and then only in his sleep. "Yaaawk," said Chiun, the Master of Sinanju, his wisp of a white beard shaking in disbelief. It was if someone had hit the old man a body blow-that is, if there was a man who walked the earth who could do that, which Remo doubted very much. "Why is this? Why is this?" demanded Chiun. "Not me, Little Father. Not me. I didn't do it." "Your government did it." "No, no. The television people did it. They thought that more people would want to watch the Senate investigation than the soap operas." Chiun pointed a long bony finger at the set The long fingernail seemed to quiver. "Who would want to watch those ugly white men when they can see the beauty and the rhythm and the grace of true drama?" "Well, they have polls, Chiun. And they question people about what they like and don't like and I guess they figured more people would want to watch the investigations than your serials." |
|
|