"Destroyer 026 - In Enemy Hands.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

And so Walter Forbier joined the Central Intelligence Agency, and, for $427.83 a month extra, a hazard mission called Sunflower.
"It's beautiful. You see the world. You travel singly or in groups. You get your extra pay and all you have to do is stay in shape."
"Sunflower won't be disbanded?" Forbier asked cautiously.
"Can't be," said the officer in charge.
"Why not?"
"Because it's not up to us to disband it."
"Who is it up to?" Forbier asked.
"The Russians."
It was the Russians, the officer had explained, who had started the whole thing. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union had had an excess of highly trained killer teams in Eastern Europe. They were not mass combat troops, but specialists
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in eliminating specific people. Most soldiers just fired away and advanced. These men could be given a name and could guarantee that the person, whoever he was or wherever he was, would be dead within a week. The Russian group was called Treskawhich meant cod.
The officer didn't know why the Russians had named their unit Treska any more than he knew why the CIA had named its counterunit Sunflower. The Treska had been crucial in the Russian takeover of Czechoslovakia, and even more crucial when the country had rebelled briefly. Their job was to make sure key leaders died just as the Russian tanks moved in.
"They're beautiful. Not one peep out of the Czechs. The tanks were only window dressing, sort of like a show of force. The Czechs lost because they had no leaders left living, nobody to tell the people to go to the hills."
"Why didn't we use Sunflower in Vietnam?" asked Walter Forbier.
"That's just it. We don't have to."
And the officer explained that the real purpose of Sunflower was to keep a counterkiller team floating in Western Europe, just so that the Russians knew that if they used Treska, America would use Sunflower. "Like an atomic arsenal neither side wants to use." America had it, so Russia wouldn't use it.
And it worked, he said. Except for an occasional body here and there, the two squads floated through Western Europe in relative luxury, each letting the other know it was around. But neither acted.
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The only thing that could terminate Sunflower would be the KGB's decision to terminate Treska.
Forbier said he was looking forward to joining Sunflower, and he planned privately on being with the team in Rome in time for Christmas. He was off by 41/2 yearsand that was reduced training time, allowing him six months credit for his Marine experience.
Five years of training.
He learned French and Russian so well he could dream in them. He learned energy control, to be able to function for a week with only a halfhour's sleep. Parachuting for Sunflower was jumping out of the plane with your chute in your hands and putting it on in midair.
He learned the feel system of firearms. You didn't use sights, you used feel. Sights were mechanical, and fine to teach thousands of people how to get a bullet flying in the general direction of their target. But the feel system required working with a weapon so that the flight path of the bullet was an extension of your arm. You imagined a yardlong rod behind the barrel of the gun and the curving drop of your bullet, and, after four hundred rounds a day for four years, you just knew what was in your flight path. This had to be done with one weapon only, and the weapon became part of you. For Walter Forbier, it was his .25 caliber Beretta.
Forbier arrived for his first day's duty with Sunflower after five years of training, and got the instruction that he had to surrender his Beretta at a bookshop. He didn't even have time to exchange his American dollars for francs. His contact stuffed
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crisp hundredfranc notes into Forbier's pocket. The ride to the bookstore cost fortytwo francs on the meter, roughly equivalent to ten American dollars. When Forbier entered the bookstore, he was a deadly instrument of foreign policy. When he left, without his gun and without even an explanation, he was a target waiting to be hit.
Once again, his timing had been awful.
But if he were going to die, at least he was going to have one good Parisian meal. Not a great one, but a good one. He somehow felt that if he headed himself toward a great meal, his luck would not allow it. But he might be able to sneak a good meal past his luck.
On Boulevard St. Germaine, he chose Le Vagabond, an adequate twostar restaurant. He began with Fruits de Merraw clams, raw shrimp, and raw oysters.
"Walter. Walter Forbier," said a man in an elegant Pierre Cardin suit. "I'm so glad I found you. You're really wasting a meal with Fruits de Mer. Please let me order."
The man deposited his black homburg on a chair next to Walter and sat down across from him. In perfect French, he ordered a different meal for Forbier. The man was in his early fifties, with an immaculate tan, the elegant smile of a Wall Street board room.
"Who are you? What's happening?" asked Walter.
"What's happening is Sunflower is surrendering its weapons. This is an order from the Security Council to the top of the CIA. The government is
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terrified of any more CIA incidents. They figure with no weapons, you can do no damage."
"I don't mean to be rude, sir," said Forbier, "but I don't know what you're talking about."
"That's right. The contact word. Let's see. This is the first day of spring. Subtract two letters from G, which gives us E and we haveEarly End, Ethel's Earrings. All right?"
"Fine Friends," said Walter using the following letter of the alphabet half the number of times the previous letter had been used to him.
"I know who you are. No one uses the contact words any more. Everyone knows everyone else. Don't eat the bread."
"Am I glad to see you," Forbier said. "When can I make contact with the rest of the team?"
"Let's see. Cassidy is in London and retiring, Navroki is out, Rothafel, Meyers, John, Sawyer, Bensen, and Kanter were out yesterday and Wilson this morning. So that leaves seven more, but they're in Italy and they should be out by tonight and tomorrow." "Out? Out where?"
"Out dead. I told you not to eat the bread here." The man snatched the crust from Walter's hands.
"Who are you?"
"I'm sorry," said the man. "I'm so used to everyone in Sunflower knowing me. Didn't they tell you who I was in the States? I guess they don't bother any more with photographs. I'm Vassily." "Who?"
"Vassily Vassilivich. Deputy commander of Treska. You would have gotten to know me better if
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your government hadn't gone bananas. I'm sorry things worked out this way. Here comes the food."
Forbier noticed the man was armed. He had a trim shoulder holster tailored to the lines of the impeccable suit. Almost invisible, but armed he was. So were the two men looking at Forbier from the back of the restaurant. One was a giant. He was laughing.
Vassilivich said to ignore the laughter.
"He's a stupid brute. A sadist. The problem with longterm operations like these is that you live like a family with your group. That laughing man is Mikhailov. If it weren't for the Treska, he would be hospitalized as criminally insane. Like your Gassidy."