"Destroyer 052 - Fool's Gold.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

"Five million dollars? You talking about ten tanks.
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Or the education budget for the next five hundred years."
"How much do you want your gold?" Wissex asked.
"I give you two million."
"I'm awfully sorry, my friend, but you know we can't bargain. It's just not that sort of business."
"All right, but I got to get some blood too," said Generalissimo Moombasa Garcia y Benitez, President for Life and the Great Benefactor. "I ain't spending no five million dollars for no dry knife."
"All the blood you wish. You are, of course, the client," said Neville Lord Wissex.
Dr. Terri Pomfret was finally taking solid foods when the two walked into her hospital room and said they were her protection. At first she had thought they were patients.
The old Oriental could not have weighed a hundred pounds if his green kimono were sewn with lead. The white, obviously, was a manic hostile.
Rather handsome in a sinister way, of course, but hostile. Definitely.
He told her to stop eating the food because that would kill her faster than anything outside the hospital. Then he told her that he wasn't all that interested in her problems, her anxiety about height or depth, and as for anyone cutting anyone else's throat, she didn't have to worry, her throat was safe.
"I was assured I was going to get the finest protection in the country. Now who or what are you?" asked Terri Pomfret. She felt the tears com-
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ing up again behind her eyes. She wanted a tissue. She wanted another Valium. Maybe a dozen Valiums.
The old one said something in an Oriental language. She recognized it as Korean, but he spoke quickly and in an accent she had never heard so she could not translate.
What he had said and she didn't understand was: "What a disgrace! Once proud assassins and now nursemaids."
And the white answered in the same guttural accent. "Smitty says it's important. We've got to get a mountain of gold or something and this glutton can find it."
"We will be selling shirts on your street corners before that happens," said Chiun.
"What are you two talking about?" said Terri. She dabbed an eye with the tissue.
"We are discussing how lovely you are," said Chiun. "How your beauty radiates through your sorrowed eyes, how your travails bear down on not only a fine woman but a most beautiful one as well."
"Really?" asked Terri.
"What else would we say, gracious lady?" asked Chiun.
"Really?" said Terri to Remo. She was starting to like these two a bit.
"No," said Remo.
"What?" said Terri. "Did you say no?"
"Sure," said Remo.
"He cannot bear such loveliness," Chiun told her and then barked to Remo in Korean: "What is wrong the matter with you? You never understand
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women. First you go telling them things they don't want to hear and then you complain."
"I'm not at my best, you know. I've had such troubles" Terri started.
Remo interrupted. "Why don't you tell us all about it on the way to the cave? We've got to check that inscription one more time before we go track it down, right?"
"Cave?" said Terri.
"The Albemarle Caves. Where everybody keeps getting cut into pieces," Remo said.
Terri smiled, excused herself, and then went blissfully into darkness.
She came to, unfortunately, in the wrong place. She was dressed and in the cave itself. She recognized the high ceiling and the dangling rope. She went immediately into shock and when she came to, she was in the arms of the man who was called Remo.
The Hamidian writing was coming down to her. Then she realized that she was moving up.
This Remo was climbing with one hand, as easily as if they were both walking up a flight of steps. He pulled, raised a hand, grabbed, then pulled again. Very quickly and very securely, even as he held her in one arm. She smelled the moisture at the top of the cave. She started to faint and then she felt his other hand do something to her spine.
She wasn't afraid.
She hadn't had a Valium and she wasn't afraid.
"What did you do?"
"Your fear was in your spine," Remo said.

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"That can't be. It's emotional. My brain isn't in my spine."
"Don't bet on it," Remo said.
"It's working," said Terri. "I'm not afraid and I'm not taking Valium. But I'm here again." And suddenly, she did feel a pang of fear and the hand massaged her lower spine again.
"Stop doing it to yourself, okay?" said Remo.
"What? What?"
"Making yourself frightened. You're scaring yourself and pumping adrenalin into your body and that's stupid because you don't know how to use it anyway," he said.