"Дон Пендлтон. Renegade Agent ("Палач" #47) " - читать интересную книгу автораmen were called into action.
He thought gratefully of Gadgets. The guy made Bolan smile, even though Schwarz was tougher than nails. He was such a mystery half the time. Believed, from an earlier confession, to have had parents who died in the sixties, Gadgets did in fact have a mother living still, a true eccentric, domiciled with her cats in Pasadena in a distance from reality no less great than the rumor of her death was, which, in her strange and lonely grief, had been her idea to begin with. Thanks so far, Gadgets. And good luck, great good luck with Able's next one. The corridor ended at a windowless heavy steel door devoid of insignia. Next to it was a panel containing a one-foot-square glass panel at eye level, a smaller panel at waist level, and a speakers microphone grill. April looked into the larger panel, placed the pad of her thumb against the smaller, and pronounced her name. The steel door slid noiselessly open, admitting her and her only into a featureless antechamber backed by a similar door. The corridor door slid shut and a red light blinked on above it, shining for ten seconds or so before going out, indicating April was through the interlock. Bolan repeated her process, pronounced the word "Phoenix" into the mike. A few moments later he was with her in the War Room. The Bear was at his computer terminal. On the end of the conference table next to him was an ashtray containing his pipe and a scattered pile of computer printouts, most of them dusted with the ash from Virginia's best cut. not turning. He inputted something and watched as characters raced across his video display, then leaned back and grunted with satisfaction. "Gadgets and I were able to figure out the format of Charon's signature." Kurtzman turned to Bolan for the first time. "That is, the number of letters and characters and so forth of his user code and access protocol." "Aaron," April prompted gently. "Beg your pardon? Oh, right, sorry." Kurtzman stuffed dark tobacco into his pipe. "I tend to forget that computer detective work might not be as interesting to you as it is to me." He touched a match to the pipe, puffed out great clouds of blue smoke. "Okay, the bottom line," Kurtzman said. "Two bottom lines. One - we're not ready to address the DonCo mainframe yet, but we do know that Frederick Charon has juggled the computer books to disguise the fact that a prototype of the new missile guidance system that his company was developing is now missing, along with the specifications manual that he himself developed." "How big a prototype?" Bolan asked. "Physically? It would be fairly substantial it would have to include a control board and a display of some sort. I'm guessing to a degree, but I'd say two standard twenty-two inch bays, each about as tall as a refrigerator. The manual would be no size at all. Reduced to microfiche which it probably already is it would fit in a small envelope." "Okay," Bolan nodded. "What else?" "Two - something that looks very much like that missing prototype was shipped to Transworld Import/export, an outfit that has a warehouse in the |
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