"Destroyer 012 - Slave Safari.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"I look around and I see that perhaps at one time it was the truth. I see elegance in decay. So if these things were said about this palace when they were true, then the advertisement is true."

"Are you telling me, Little Father, that to say this is a stinkhole is a lie?"

"I am telling you that truth is a matter of time. Even in this very land there are people who were once great and who now hide in the hills like frightened calves."

"Well, I don't need that drivel now, Chiun. I need advice. I'm supposed to see the top man in this country to find out about that white house, without letting him know that I know. But he won't see ma"

Chiun nodded. "Then my advice to you is to forget all your training and run head first like a crazed dog into what you, hi your lack of perception, think is the center of things. There, thrash about like a drunken white man, and then, at the moment of maximum danger, remember just a brief part of the magnificent training of Sinan-ju, and save your worthless life. At the end of this disgrace, you might by good fortune have killed the right man. This then is the advice of the Master of Sinanju."

Remo blinked. He stood up from the bed.

"That's utterly stupid, Chiun."

"I just wanted for once to give you advice I am sure you would follow. But since I have invested such wealth of knowledge with you, I shall increase this investment. You think because the emperor appears to be the center of things, he is the center of things."

"It's president, not emperor."

"Whatever name you wish to give to an emperor is your pleasure, my son, but emperors do not change in stare. And what I am saying to you is that you must know the center of this thing before you can attack it. 'You are not an army that goes blindly wandering through bush and hill and can by sheer weight of numbers accidentally accomplish what it wants. You are skill, a single skill that is designed to crush one point, not ten thousand. Therefore you must know that point."

"How can I find that point waiting around here in this crummy hotel?"

"A man sitting sees many sides very well. A man running sees only ahead."

"I see many sides when I run. You taught me that."

"When you run with your feet," said Chiun, and was silent. Remo left the room to see if he could find something to read, someone to talk to, or even a vagrant breeze to get into the middle of. He was unsuccessful. But at the stately doors of the hotel, he saw a busboy run desperately past him with fear hi his eyes. The manager of the hotel hid the books. The doorman snapped to attention.

And then Remo saw it. Coming up the main street of the capital city of Busati, an army convoy, machine guns bristling from jeeps. Leading it was the man who had extended the invitation that writer Remo Mueller see General Obode.

When the lead jeep of the convoy arrived at the doors of the Hotel Busati, it stopped hi a screech of dust off the unpaved street. Soldiers jumped off their jeeps all along the line before their vehicles braked.

"Ah, Remo, glad to see you," said now-General William Forsythe Butler, quickly climbing the once-white front steps of the hotel. "I've got a bit of bad news fory ou. The bit is you're returning to America this afternoon. But I've got some good news for you too."

Remo smiled perfunctorily,

"The good news is I'll be going with you and I'd be happy to answer every question you have. As a matter of fact, Busati feels it owes you a favor which it hopes to repay."

"By kicking me out of the country?"

"President Obode has had some very disappointing experiences with white journalists."

"Then why'd you say I could get to see him?"

"I thought I could prevail upon him but I couldn't." Butler shrugged, a big muscular shrug of his shoulders. "We'll talk about it some more on the way to the airport."

Frankly, Butler was relieved that this Remo Mueller would be leaving the country since the fewer Americans there were nosing around, the less chance of the white house being discovered. That relief only grew when he got his first look at Remo Mueller's traveling companion, an aged Oriental who padded silently out of the Busati Hotel behind Remo, acknowledged Butler's lukewarm greeting with a silent stare, and sat like stone in the back seat of the jeep.

What was it Obode had said? "When East and West are like father and son near the Busati River, then a force that no man can stop will come to shed blood in the river and on the mountains."