Top Hook. Gordon Kent

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ you’ve got nothing but some bullshit in the Washington Post, and Rose will get creamed!”

      Then he thought she was going to lose it, but she surprised him by looking at her watch and then at the CIA people at the far end of the room, who were looking at their watches because it was past the end of their workday, and she said, “I haven’t got time to dick around with a Navy cop.”

      Then there was a lot of talking all at once, and several handshakes, and the Agency people scurried away, and only Dukas and Emma Pasternak were left. She was still trying to jam papers and a binder of vetted documents that Menzes had given her into her attaché. Dukas lingered by the door. Now that it was over, the optimism he had felt after meeting with Menzes left him; never an easy man with other people, he felt awkward. “Nice to have met you, Ms Pasternak,” he said.

      “Nice to have met you,” she said. She didn’t mean that it had been nice to meet him, at all. She meant Get out of here. Then she swore because she couldn’t get the document binder into the attaché.

      “Uh—yeah.” He took the binder from her, took the pages out of the cover, and handed the pages back. “You ever, uh, eat Italian food?”

      “What the hell does that mean? Of course I’ve eaten Italian food.”

      “I’m a, uh, pretty good Italian cook. I’m Greek, but I cook Italian a lot.”

      She found that the unbound pages would now fit. They looked at each other. “What kind of Italian?”

      “Gnocchi.” To his ears, it sounded like nooky, and he reddened. “Made with butternut squash. A very delicate flavor.” He cleared his throat. With Menzes, he had been on a roll, in charge, and now he was a stumbling jerk. The story of his life. “I, uh, thought you might, uh—like some.”

      She stared at him. “You’re asking me to dinner?”

      “Uh, yeah, I guess—if you put it like that—and we could call Lieutenant-Commander Siciliano and give her the news—”

      “At your place?”

      “Uh, no, belongs to a friend of mine—out of town—”

      “It’s the same thing! Let me get this straight—are you asking me to dinner, when we’ve just met and haven’t exactly blended, and at your place?”

      “Okay, okay, bad idea—I just thought—” He shrugged.

      “What?”

      “You sort of—interest me.” He tried to smile, and the effort made him feel like a dog who’s trying to make up for eating somebody’s sandwich. He grabbed the door and held it for her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean anything.”

      “Everything means something, Mister Dukas.” She swept past him into the corridor. “Well, okay.”

      “What’s okay?”

      “Okay, I’ll come to dinner. I’d like to see somebody make gnocchi, because when I tried all I got was dough all over the fork.”

      “You pushed too hard. On the fork.” He didn’t say, Probably you always push too hard. “You’re really gonna come to my place for dinner?”

      “Why not? We can call Siciliano. But please don’t try to make any moves, okay? The best I ever hope for from other people is that we don’t sue each other.”

      She turned away. He saw her buttocks move in the tailored skirt. Life is full of surprises.

      E-mail, Rose to Alan.

      Subject: ITS OVER!

      I cant believe it but it’s over/mike called me just now, just hung up and it’s over!!!! they cut a deal with the agency and i’m to go back to astro soonest, waiting to cut orders, i want to go right back and see the kids and head for houston but mike says no, stay until orders/hes so cautious! i still have to fight whatever allegation was made but this will be a couple of years he thinks sorting it out but i’ll be in orbit by then and fuck em/ i love you, thinking of you kept me sane, a hell of an ordeal but i felt better thinking of you and the kids but helpless, helpless, my god how do people stand it being caught up in suspicion and all that? Kisses, love, moans/ Rose

      Alan sat back and smiled, his whole face transformed. Safe. Rose was safe. Yeah, they’d have to listen to snide remarks for a while. Some semi-friends might drop off. Alan knew that a deal at the Agency wouldn’t help him here on the ship, but if it put Rose back on the space shuttle, they were a long way toward home. He laughed aloud, startling a chaplain’s clerk near him, leaped up, and headed toward his ready room with a new feeling of purpose.

      Everything looked better to him. Even the tanker flight with Stevens, which had been a torment of bad performance by the MARI system—dropped links, bad plane-to-plane communication—and stubborn hostility from Stevens, faded.

      In the ready room, he munched a second doughnut and drank his coffee while he fanned through the detachment’s bulging message board. There was a NATO Air Tasking Order for Bosnia that didn’t include them; that had to be addressed. There were messages for the technical representatives; he skimmed them. Intelligence messages about the frequencies of Serbian radars; Alan made a note that all flight personnel were required to read and initial. A message on decline in manpower retention that he was required to read and initial. He did so, finishing the doughnut in two bites and dusting the powdered sugar off the front of his flight suit.

      Some change in the noise level at the back of the ready room alerted him, and he turned in his seat to see Senior Chief Craw coming up the center aisle with a figure in pressed shipboard khakis, a sea bag over his shoulder and his hands full of luggage. Craw had an anticipatory smile on his face.

      “Look what I found on the flight deck, skipper.” He pushed the slim figure in khakis forward. A Tomcat went to full power overhead.

      “How do you guys hear yourselves think?” asked the figure with what appeared to be genuine concern. A face came into focus—incredibly young, rather pink, eyes as blue and innocent as a newborn’s. Alan got to his feet.

      “Is this by any chance the missing Mister Soleck?”

      Alan looked past the new man to Craw. Craw merely shook his head a little, as if to disclaim any responsibility.

      A hand appeared out of the pile of luggage.

      “Sorry, sir. I’m LTjg Evan Soleck, reporting aboard.” He was a little bowed by his load, giving him a slightly gnome-like appearance below the wonderfully fresh face.

      “Glad to see you brought a tennis racket, Mister Soleck.”

      “Oh, that’s not a tennis racket, sir. That’s a squash racket.” Now Craw was laughing openly. Behind him in the back, a small crowd had gathered. Alan smiled inwardly and reminded himself that this young man had been first in his class at Pensacola.

      “Did you get in any squash in the last few days?”

      “Yes, sir! They had a court at the hotel. It was great! And they had really fast Internet connections, too. Europe isn’t as primitive as people СКАЧАТЬ