"Destroyer 028 - Ship of Death.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"The CIA went berserk in an assassination plot in a bathroom here. Blew up a bathroom."
"How do you know?"
"An informed source," said the reporter. "And I will refuse to reveal his identity, no matter what pressure you bring to bear."
Whistling, Remo left the State Department Building and strolled through the lovely spring afternoon of the nation's capital. Just before sunset, he made a phone call and spoke into a tape recorder. He knew it would be heard shortly after by upstairs. The message Remo left was this:
"Attended the meeting. Found it and, therefore, you a waste of time. I hereby resign. Effective the day before immediately."
For the first time in more than a decade, he was free.
Enough was enough. For ten years, he had worked for CURE, the secret agency that had been formed to protect America against crime. He had seen his function changed from enforcement arm to detective, and he hadn't liked it. He had seen CURE driven even further underground by a Congress intent on destroying the nation's intelligence function, and he hadn't liked it. He found himself getting overseas assignments that the CIA would have handled if it hadn't been crippled by the Congress, and he didn't like it.
Enough was enough, and ten years was too much.
Darkness came upon the nation's capital and Remo felt good walking. He did not want to return to the hotel where Chiun, the Master of Sinanju who was his trainer, would he waiting. He wanted to think first before he approached his teacher who had been right about so many things when he wasn't being incredibly wrong.
Kemo prepared his speech to Chiun. He would be direct. He had been wrong about working for CURE and Chiun had been right. It was time to take their talents somewhere else, where they would be appreciated.
Yet something very deep inside Remo was sad. He did not know if he was leaving America, or if America had left him a long, long time ago, in so many little ways.

CHAPTER THREE
The last British sea captain to suffer beheading died at a little-known sea battle off Jamaica in the early 1700s when Her Majesty's admiral suddenly discovered he was outgunned by Spanish galleons that he was attempting to pirate, and so attempted to negotiate a gentleman's cease-fire.
The Spanish captain swore on a sacred relic that his word was his blood and his «oul. The British captain gave the word of an officer and a gentleman. Therefore, both agreed that the British ship would surrender flag and gun and that the Spanish would not seek reprisals under any circumstances.
The British ship, seeing the Spanish admiral so very exposed on the bridge, lobbed a shell there during intense manifestations of religious oaths, and the Spanish proceeded to decapitate every Englishman on the privateer, leaving the captain for last.
A similar ceremony was recreated in New York Harbor aboard the massive, remodeled Ship of States while it stuck out into the bay like a gleaming white peninsula. Exactly twelve hours to the minute after some unidentified American security officer had proved at a secret United Nations security meeting that the vessel, considering its size and population, was no more dangerous than most cities in the world, Adm. Dorsey Plough Hunt was forced to his knees on the bridge of the moored goliath and, staring intently at the base of the computer director wheel, felt a sharp sting at the base of his neck and then felt nothing else. The head rolled.
The neck spurted blood like a red car wash on a sunny Saturday.
A black gloved hand wrote on the picture of the current secretary general of the United Nations, framed in honor on the bridge, the words: FREE SCYTHIA!
The chief translator, organizing the very complicated working shifts for the first United Nations cruise, turned around when he heard footsteps in his supposedly locked room. He saw eight men all dressed in black with faces darkened with night paint.
In English, he asked them what they were doing there. Then in French, then in Russian, then in Arabic, and then, in an international gesture, he threw up his hands and shrugged.
They forced him to his knees while he tried to explain in Swedish that he had no money and was not political and certainly was not anyone who was important enough to give them anything.
He didn't even feel the sting at the back of his neck as a blade made his eyes and brain useless. The head nestled under a chair and the body convulsed and again they used blood to write, this time on the charts of work schedules: SCYTHIAN LIBERATION FRONT.
In the mammoth vessel there wete eighteen chapels: mosques serving different Islamic sects, cathedrals for Christians, synagogues for Jewish groups and temples for Buddhists and Hindus. In every area of worship, a head was placed, and on every altar, the word Scythia was written.
The black-clad men worked and cut until the darkest part of early morning, until the blood made some giddy and made some talk to themselves and made others feel light with triumph, reactions common to men who had killed for the first time and had suddenly discovered it was what they had wanted to do all their lives and they had simply never known it until they tried it.
Then the leader called "Mr. Scyth" made his first mistake. He entered the Middle East corridor on one of the ship's passenger decks. Despite pledges made formally at the old United Nations building in New York, the corridor was heavily armed.
The men with machine guns and pistols and small pocket grenades were not called guards but "cultural attachйs." The Jordanian cultural attachйs had British Webleys and Brens while the Syrian agricultural experts carried Kalishnikovs, the Russian automatic rifle made famous on wall posters where they are held aloft in a fist while the poster proclaims some sort of social improvement to be gained by firing one of the things. Actually, they worked very much like the British and American weapons, hurling pieces of lead into human bodies so voices that might say that cultures had not been improved but merely relabeled could be stilled. If one had enough Kalishnikovs, he could force thousands into the streets to proclaim in marching ranks how happy and free they were.
An Egyptian cultural attachй spotted three men in black with bloody swords and let loose a burst from his M-16. A Libyan choreographer, hearing the shot, threw a hand grenade into the passageway. The Iraqi singers poked Kalishnikovs from their outer doorway and fired at everything, especially the Syrian doorway. The Saudis stuffed American hundred-dollar bills and large Swedish kroner into wastebaskets and threw that out into the blazing fury of the Middle East corridor.
Accidentally, the cross fire proved immensely effective against the band of night raiders. It forced them to huddle in a large cleaning closet, their hands over their ears and their heads tucked into their chests in some small attempt to escape injury. Only Mr. Scyth remained calm.
"We've got to run for it," one said, but Mr. Scyth touched his cheek and said calmly that there was nothing to fear.
"We'll be trapped here," said the man. "They'll close us in. We're in a closet. There is no escape." And those who had just minutes before taken delight in rolling heads suddenly did not like killing anymore.
The Lebanese delegation, just arrived from Beirut, slept through the exploding din for it was much like their homeland. It was also the Lebanese delegation that picked up the phone in the morning to get in touch with other Arab delegations in the Middle East corridor.
"Look, old boy," said Pierre Haloub, deputy consul of the Lebanese mission, "I'm hearing Kalishnikovs down the hallway and heavy Bren action about twenty yards past that and back aways, maybe sixty or sixty-one yards, is M-16 activity, and one of them has a small defect in its recoil that should cause the Egyptian some trouble in about eleven minutes if he continues his firing pace."
"Holy Allah," said the Syrian at the other end of the telephone. "How can you tell?"
"The sounds, old boy. Now, are you firing at anything in particular?"
"We are being attacked and we are firing to defend ourselves."
"It doesn't sound like it," said the Lebanese. "Too random. Now what you've got to do is phone around, find out who fired the first shot and what he fired at, and give me a buzz back in a few minutes. All right, old boy?"
Haloub finished his juice and unpacked his shaving kit.
"Anything?" asked another delegate coming out of the lavish main bathroom.
Haloub shook his head. When he finished shaving, he telephoned the Syrian again.
"Well?" he asked.
"No one started it," said the Syrian.
"That's ridiculous."
"Zionists," said the Syrian.
"This isn't a UN debate so stop the nonsense. We've got to get the shooting stopped so we can all go out this morning. Now who defended himself first?"
In two minutes an Egyptian was on the phone. He said he had seen men clothed in black with bloody blades and shot at them.
"What sort of weapons did they have?"
"Bloody knives for murder."
"What sort of guns?"
"I didn't see any."