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

"Look. I want to live," said Lippincott, straining to keep his backside just off his raised heels. "I'm humbling myself. Now what can I give you for my life?"

"Nothing. And I don't care about your humbling yourself. I'm not some Harlem shine who calls himself Abdulla Bulbul Amir. Humbling doesn't do anybody any good."

"You're white? I can't see."

"I'm black, Lippy. African. Does that surprise you?"

"No. Some of the most brilliant men in the world are black."

"If you had any chance at all, you just blew it with that lie," the voice said. "I know better. I know every one of you Lippincotts and Forsythes. There isn't one of you who isn't a racist."

"What do you want?" asked Lippincott. "What do you want?" The man was obviously keeping him alive for something. There was silence. Far off, a hyena howled. There would be no lions near here, not with vehicles and men having been around the area.

"I can get you recognition from America," said Lippincott. "My family can do that."

"Who is America to recognize or not to recognize?"

"What do you want?"

"Some information."

"If you kill me, you won't get it."

"First I'll get it and then I'll kill you. There are many ways to die and some aren't so bad."

Lippincott believed the man and like many people who find death too strong to face, he told himself a little lie. He told himself he would be spared if he told the man the truth.

"The Minister of Public Safety didn't tell you about the house, did he?"

"No, he didn't," Lippincott said, remembering again the gruesome corpse hanging from the tree near his head. "My boy Walla did."

"Never mind, the Minister had to die anyway," the voice said. "Unlike most members of this government, he would not see things my way. Now, you've done research on slave ships and the original slave trade into the States. There was a Butler plantation on which you still have the records, isn't that so?"

"Yes. I can show them to you. They're at my Chesapeake Bay estate."

"In the basement storage or the library?"

"I forget. But I can show you."

"No matter. We'll get them, now that we know which of your homes they're in. That's all I needed. Anything I can give you besides your life?"

"Nothing," said Lippincott on the hope that if only his life would do for a favor, his life he might get.

"Don't you want to know the answer to your research about the breakup of the great Loni Empire?"

"I want my life."

The voice ignored him. "The Loni Empire," it said, "broke up because it put its faith in outsiders. It hired people to do what it should have done itself. And theyg rew soft and weak, and finally the Hausa just pushed them over, as if they were soft, fat children."