Текст книги "Don't kill"

Автор книги: Boris Gorowoi

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

If there isn’t grey thick coat on Brenner’s cheeks he would have become crimson. He has been drinking the second wine glass for a long time. His eyes revolving like mad behind thick glasses. But when the third glass was drank with some mumbling, Kevin quickly gave Gerhard a napkin with the written number, nodded as an esquire or a sea officer and took his leave.

For eternity, Mr. Brenner has been drinking the second bottle of his favourite Heuriger and eating up the salad of the sea delicacy of the Yellow sea. He was keeping the napkin in his hand and paying for the supper without unclasping his hand. Just at the exit he stared at the scribbled number. With pale face, Gerhard bit off the piece of the napkin with the number, chewed it and ate.

*

– Wow! – cried Colonel. A mountain black night was tearing rare white columns of the crazy road it was creaking by its potholes and by the brakes squeal. In usual life, Dux, tight by dozens fetters was seized by excitement of the chase, taste of danger and speed. A couple of headlight sparkled in the rear mirror. Colonel made a steep turn with a slope and the road went up twisting as a snake. He understood that new jeeps to the old military UAZ of the reconnaissance party were following him. But that night he seemed to be lucky. The warrant officer has been explaining for a long time that all foreign jeeps are unadapted and our UAZ not only adapted but also strengthen. However, ten minutes later two jeeps started overtaking him. One can see cars contours in raising fog.

– Stop, – Dux swore.

At the first turn he made a favourite somersault with the turn. The first car started turning left when the oncoming Colonel’s vehicle zipped along it at a high speed. The old jeep’s fate was at stake for a couple of seconds. It instinctively started turning right trying to avoid a head-on collision but the tangent stroke cut his left back trimming. The driver tried to turn left but it was Dux’s trap. If the driver had been more experienced and skillfully the jeep would have turned a couple of times and would have stayed on the road. But the driver kept the jeep and it rushed to the left turn where by the measurement accuracy collapsed into the abyss.

UAZ also got it. Reinforced frame praised by the warrant officer became a parallelepiped and he quickly like an injured animal twisted along down the road to the second jeep. The distance between them was shortening quickly.

– A-a! – shouted Colonel and started shooting and it concurred with the explosion of the first perished jeep. A heavy fighting has been lasting for several seconds. Sometimes, those moments last more than all the life. The whole aim was thoroughly riddled and it’s known that bullets are faster than sound.

*

–They are still alive, – grumbled a man-death. There was Olivia in the semidarkness.

– Oh, my gudgeon, – she murmured. There was a touch of reason spark in his eyes. He looked at her with widen pupils, staggered with unnaturally raised hand and plunged into darkness.

Helmut didn’t like the light. That’s why he was hiding his headquarters underground which could stand not only an explosion of the atomic bomb but also an explosion of the modern pointed one. Fifty men wearing black were standing silently and passionlessly.

*

UAZ was stuck at the steep. It was finishing off but the fire was rare and, obviously, the main team of the second jeep was dislodged. Colonel was creeping like an injured animal trying to hide from the death’s howling whistling behind the stones. In a blood shroud, he saw two silhouettes approaching to him and even could shot and he seemed to hit but suddenly a terrible fiery pain broke his body.

Aiming Dux at, bootblacks came to him.

– A jerk, – swore the last, the smaller one, – ok, do the control shot.

His partner pointed AK-47 at Colonel’s neck but instead of shooting he covered Colonel by his body. The smaller one began jumping near the stones and collapsed next to his partner.

It was Aida. She was running to Colonel over the stones like a goat and tears filled her eyes. It was amazing that she could get attached to Dux very much and she was crying running to him. She hardly pulled away a stout man who was bigger and cuddled up to Colonel. She has been lying with a sinking heart for several seconds and felt that his heart answered her. He was alive. With a superhuman effort she pulled him to the slope and tried to hide in the cleft.

Aida took off his service jacket with about tens of dark brown spots and torn pin holes and something that had been a shirt some time. He was saved by the newest Israeli bullet-proof vest created on the basis of elastic nano-tubes. She saw that the vest wasn’t punched out anywhere. There wasn’t time to count his bruises she just washed his wound on the hip. It was in proper time because other two jeeps were coming to the battlefield.

– Five minutes maximum, I have five minutes left.

Every her movement was matter of life and death. Aida quickly and carefully took that was his clothes and destroyed the traces. With a superhuman force she lifted a heavy body onto her back and pulled it into the thicket of sharp thorns having torn her clothes and his naked trunk. She found a hollow like a wolf’s hole. Aida added bullets into the half-empty carbine. Then put the gun, lied on Colonel and calmed down.

*

The whole body was distorted in curved female’s lines. Morning sun flooded that beautiful world. The assembly of different sounds created cacophony, one can guess a singing solo of birds, rustles of different creeping, jumping, squeaking animals like an organ cicada’s chirrs was buzzing. Sky colors were turning into colorful green with gammas of blooming trees and flowers. His lassitude turned into folly. She felt that his body started answering hers. She was greedily creeping along the whole body, her lips and tongue were licking off new tart feelings, smell of wounds, death, sweat and wish and at least waves of blooming nature joined the noise of love’s shore.

*

Evgeniy Leontievich Grinev a former militant officer, a Colonel, a graduated student of the Omsk infantry college, a former Afghan who crossed a frontier river being a young officer in far 1984, was calling nervously his boss, a former brother-officer Drozdov Alexander Petrovich. Long ago they both found an easy job at the Khirgizia NSS, basically at clean-up operations.

– I have problems.

–?

– The second one has four dead bodies, the first jeep caught into the abyss, Vasiatka ran there. There were five of our people.

– Scums!

– The jerk isn’t here, there is a blood trace, he won’t go far, UAZ is broken-down.

– You have slipped up. Look for him! Twenty militants in two jeeps there are five and seven ones, go, you understand. So, I’ll say the guys were the best ones. Grinev took breath. Only Vasiatka said that all the five are in the canyon with the first half– burnt down jeep.

– Two years of contract and such mistake, – thought Grinev.

Four fellows from the third jeep were bad. Their boss was Vasiatka, he was born in the village, once being a soldier he was at Chechen war and soon became a senior sergeant, when Grinev hired him.

– Find and wait. He is somewhere here. Maybe he has a partner. In twenty minutes guys will come. Your task is not to diddle for him not to run away. Three people will go to the left and two ones to the right. Don’t spare bullets. Come on!

Vasiatka, Vasiliy Grigorievich Malcev, called on mopping-ups or he said on “showdowns” twenty times: where there is a death, where every moment is brighter than dull years in dozens times, where the fear and adrenalin is stronger than drugs. Yes, there was a war but to tell the truth he liked it. Silent. The fighters slowly entered the sharp bushes, looked big stones, grooves and gullies over. They felt that the animal was near, it was injured and was very dangerous. Both groups met at the stream. They are about to nervous breakdown. When suddenly…

*

The first conference entitled “Eternal Health 2015”, on the 21-23 of May 2015, started at ten o’clock sharply, by the address: Tsim Sha Tsui, in the Club De Hong Kong. At this experimental conference were listed companies with their reports from thirty five different countries. The basis of that conference-exhibition was the idea to collect everything that was related to human’s life duration. Of course, a traditional modern medicine took a great part in the conference. Like in real life all those ways were in demand. It depicted in many reports which were divided into sections. The main intrigue of the exhibition was hot discussions between big pharmaceutical companies and a hungry group of implacable representatives of the alternative medicine, such as acupuncture, homeopathy, iridiology etc., who were holding the line.

Since Thursday morning there was a noisy bickering in the foyer of the conference hall.

A well dressed gentleman with gloss manners, Mr. Arnold Langbo a representative of the committee of directors of the most famous company Johnson & Johnson, he tried to put them down.

– You know, we respect you! You’re idealists! Your problem is lack of money. Don’t you understand that everything is more difficult?

– And you!!! – shouted loudly a young-looking man famous in the area of the alternative medicine, Dr. Elshtein from Australia. – You’re just typical black sheep! You can’t be fair and free. You’re just negotiators between your bosses who got their fill of money and power!

– Of course, I understand you. But we are realists. And don’t magnify tension. We are practitioners. And, please, don’t raise your voice!

– You know, the most awful is that you don’t even blush when you lie in this way. You’re a liar!

One can see as a crazy crowd of doctors, firstly, pushed each other with elbows but then a grey head of the professor jerked a little bit, obviously, that kinetic energy from alternatives passed to him. It was unheard-of!

Mr. Langbo remembered that in 1967 he was a captain of the university baseball team. He hasn’t been using this technique for the last forty-eight years. But it was in his mind. He could hit several times the chin of professor Elshtein then he quickly struck his class enemy, doctor Lui Brower, a famous as a specialist in molecular biology and homeopathy who defend the thesis at the Rene university entitled: “Relationships between doctors and community” where he told many stinging remarks to pharmaceutical companies.

At last, Mr. Langbo left proudly the fighting crowd and he could notice two policemen slowly passing by but suddenly Dr. Elshtein’s wife seized his hand and started painfully kicking his legs. Mr. Langbo howled.

She wasn’t a woman she was a medusa-gorgon and a fury. A slender woman named Maria-Theresa, half-French woman and half-Lithuanian played well women's soccer and she was a master of fencing and liked Dr. Elshtein. That’s why Mr. Langbo didn’t have any chances.

Many of doctors were in perplexity some of them were clasping and some were smiling.

*

Of course, there was a big scandal. Intelligentsia, at such forum and in such way it’s rarity. There bite more painful and more people suck in this scum than during the open fight where there is fight’s clarity.

Organizers were lucky that there weren’t journalists and it was better to calm down, otherwise, one can provide some sanctions. A man in a hat with wide brims was observing this situation attentively. Then, he followed the big hall and sat at the eighteenth row.

The first day was rich and of course representative. Sixteen reports should maximum show the problem. If in the middle of the last century investors in the world were ready to give one hundred and thirty milliard dollars for the topic of expansion of life’s duration so nowadays this sum is bigger. Two third of investments were as budget money of developed countries including public health and military developments. The third part was deposited by private investors in different countries. One couldn’t revalue the main role of the USA in this topic. By different assessments this country deposited into the topic of expansion of life’s duration about sixty five percent of all money.

No wonder that the first report was read by the representative of the USA Department of Health, by the famous Dr. Harry Posman who quickly and confidently covered audience by colorful graphs and histograms, by which one could see that in coming years, the life duration of the USA citizens should cross the centenarians with confidence.

*

A black felt Helmut von Neumann’s hat slightly staggered and shuddered to the soothing voice of Dr. Posman. The pain started since Posman’s pince-nez then went along both side rows of the conference hall. Helmut knew that he could not have time. His right hand found a saving pocket of his trousers, where there was a package of endorphins, including an exotic type of Rock-mole or tablets Zaldiar. He was clutching up this saving bag, knowing that it wouldn’t help. Severe pain began slowly turning from both flanks.

A day later, Helmi would have had a birthday. The boy would have turned six years old. He saw a couple of father’s gifts. Although father came rarely, he didn’t forget about his birthday. Yes, it was a dream: a compass and binoculars! That day, an aunt teacher Hanna organized an excursion. "An excursion" – it was the noise and hubbub, flags, crossing the street, the whole world.

When the sirens started sounding, Helmi was clutching his palms, depicting binoculars. While Aunt Hanna was quickly making children entering the refuge, Helmi was counting planes, and remembered that they were a lot. He played and forgot about time. Then every boy had a "weapon": a stick, a wooden gun, and some lucky boys had Schmeisser. Helmi dreamed that someday he would be written up for an award for his feat and he would stand in front of the formation next to his father.

As a result, he fell into a reverie, and lingered. It saved him. Aunt Hanna grabbed the boy badly and ran to the deep entrance into the shelter. In the corridor at the entrance the teacher started calling loudly and looking for a group when the earth began trembling and the light went out. It was like an earthquake. It seemed that the moderate explosions tremors were near. The stucco began falling down, bricks and stones were falling out of arches. Aunt Hanna, painfully holding the boy was rushing in the shelter, holing with difficulty through the people and finally she heard a baby’s crying and children’s screaming.

The thing Helmut saw then human’s soul can’t either understand or forget. It would come in black nightmares for all his life, and if heaven exists, it will be an eternal imperative.

As if the sun with its perturbations burst into the earth's stronghold to incinerate all live. Those seconds Helmi could see as immediately, his little friends and adults were burning down like torches. He saw the unprecedented flame raging, people were writhing, human skin was bubbling and bursting and their bodies were becoming smaller. And then the fire came to him from both sides and Helmi cried hysterically when his hair and eyelashes flashed, and severe pain began to overshadow his mind when he fell with aunt Hanna into the floor gap, and that she saved the boy’s life, covering him with his body.

*

Maria-Theresa or just Mari, a thirty-eight years old blond rogue, glanced and smiled fleetingly doctor Elshtein. His report was the fourth and the doctor wanted very much to make a furore. She glanced triumphantly at the second row, where a bitten Mr. Langbo was sitting, she listened carefully to the long report, written by Yankees copy and therefore it was dull for her, and she was watching curiously at a strange man in a dark suit and felt hat, she couldn’t see his face.

– Hey, maybe this man feels bad?

Mari silently whispered Thomas, but he was too absorbed in his report.

In Mari’s life there were a lot: big balls, preference till five AM, high marks in various universities, noisy parties and the ability to make friends. Due to her fast and lively intellect she was greedily absorbing knowledge. Half a year she has been studying at the Munich Technical University, about three years at the University of Paris-Sud, half a year at Imperial College London, and then began to go in different states of America and as a result when she was thirty-four she became a professor. She was a different one.

When she first came to Paris from Vilnius, there was such a joke. She asked in French an old professor to give her an envelope. There were other students. The old man’s eyes popped out of his head. He said,

– Mademoiselle, I agree, but why green?

People were knocked over. The fact is that “vert” translates as "green", and con, is a kind of French slang, which one can translate as the female sexual organ.

*

In the next report they announce the news about the hormonal adult’s condition and hormone deficit during aging. Dear doctor Mark Gordon from Chicago told brightly about the latest hormonal achievements of anti-aging. Despite of his inspirational report, she was able to separate the lambs from the goats. Since the twenties, many scientists began to use hormones for many purposes, and also for aging delay. The real blooming of this science took place in seventies, when it became possible to transform hormones. Theoretically, it could constantly prevent the destruction of the hormonal centers and human life could grow for decades. But experimenters could only restore partial hormonal centers.

*

By the side look Mari saw some movement at the entrance of the auditorium, where the typical policemen in civvies were carefully examining the public. Her guess was confirmed when for a moment a police cap flashed in the doorway.

During the coffee break the Elhsteins were the center of attraction. This couple was younger, fresher and lovely and looked more democratic than the heavyweights pharmacists, physicians, endocrinologists and other traditionalists. And if the doctor Elshtein could smile dazzlingly, her smile would carry a secret of previous ancient aristocratic incarnations.

*

The lobby was divided into two poles. Mr. Langbo looked grimly at a group of the upstarts and felt that his soul demanded satisfaction. His colleague from the company Roche, Daniel O’Day, a specialist in molecular diagnostics actively supported him.

– Firstly, it is outrageous, and secondly, you must draw the appropriate conclusions, and thirdly, we would actively lobby for the closing of such directions at a high level, if everyone defends their rights this way. Tolerance in the science will be disappearing and the science will collapse, so we need to tell the police about the incident or require a response from the organizing committee.

– We can shut down completely this direction.

– Dass!

In fact, it was not accepted talking about it. The company Johnson & Johnson was one of the powerful transcontinental companies. In some countries, it was a part of the oligarchic groups of the modern world. This company played a role of first violin in some small countries and was almost the power. In some way, the Elshteins risked their well-being.

*

About one hundred and fifty laboratories in the world have been investigated by many thousands of patients who had the talent of foresight. It turned out that every average person had the ability to see the future with a rate of about five-tenths percent. When Maria-Theresa appeared in a black and white Thomas’ life, her image was unexpectedly lit up by millions of colors and shades. While he was reading, writing scientific papers, sitting in the university laboratories or visiting various conferences, he didn’t realize that there appeared a half in his fate.

He was quite ambitious. At school, where he was studying in a small village near Munich, he could walking in the Ebersberg forest for hours, to invent different strange theories and talking about them with inspiration to their friends. Thomas understood that under such circumstances, he could create something great.

*

Mari could furiously play women's soccer during the rain and wearing a faded T-shirt at her own lectures. It was spring, they were dirty and wet after a workout, just laughed and ate wet from rain hotdogs. Then, it seemed to pass fifteen minutes. Thomas walked along the main avenue and saw her. He began spastic wiping his glasses. She was different, he had never seen her in such suit, she was walking like a queen from the another planet, and all his previous life seemed to be a dark grey spot. She passed by stunned Thomas, hardly nodded him and went to the white six-meters limousine Bentley Arnage which cost about million dollars. Thomas stupidly looked at that tall boyfriend from Beverly Hills and went home.

That evening, after unsuccessful attempts to finish one more article about hyperpolarized krypton, he, for the first time, got drunk by the wine Romero. Maybe she felt something and called him at one AM from Beverly Hills after a party. It was the longest talk in his life, which has been lasting for five hours.

Of course, this guy was a hard nut, but she managed to drag the most important words from him. For the first time in his life, forty-six pairs of chromosomes in every cell completely untwined and curled again, becoming a united organism.

If, till his thirty-five he was by himself, so now, when she wasn’t near, or she felt bad or she was angry at him, he was sad. However, in love one is always kissing and another just offers a cheek.

*

At 4:08 AM on the 21 of May 2015 at the police station in the Queen Street was a call from the club De Hong Kong. The guard was calling under the instructions because he heard a strange noise in one of the room. A lying squad came to the club in 6 minutes. The guard briefly told that he heard a sudden strange noise, probably, flat strokes, then they stopped.. How long they were lasting? Maybe three to five minutes. The door was closed at 22 PM. The key was at the guard for all that time. Fire escape was always closed. A sergeant Lane Tat Keyng from the left slowly moved to the door with the police carbine M4, and a lieutenant Fung Siu from the right, professionally and quietly pressing to the wall, with the classic detective colt 38. It was quiet. The policemen listened to the silence. Siu carefully turned the door handle and it was opened. The lieutenant jumped into a dark doorway, trying to find a switch.

The danger of death seized Siu, who was looking at him from the darkness from the silence and fear ran through his spine. He felt that the enemy who decided if he stays alive was near. His heart was beating very much. It seemed to him by inner vision that black shadows were flying around. The Lieutenant tried to calm down, but suddenly he saw something that was looking at him. Siu shouted and started moving to him. At the same time sergeant Lane threw himself into the doorway having shouted "Police!" holding the carbine and a torch in his hand, he was trying to defend the officer with his body, as he was taught at courses.

There was an ominous silence. The police hesitated a little bit. The sergeant noticed lieutenant Siu dumbfounded, unnaturally staring and with a white face.

– What is there? – probably he was dreaming.

The lieutenant took a deep breath.

He also lit the torch up and the police started going round the stacks from both sides, attentively examining black boxes. They both met in the center of the hall, almost at the same time.

They both had to see death in different images: people with fatal gunshot wounds, sunk in a fuel oil, strangled by chains and crushed by heavy trucks. But the thing they saw was incredible.

In front of him there was a man without skin and his blood, in a terrible silence, was dripping into crimson foam. His eyes were wide opened. And we felt awkward that they were looking at the police almost intelligently. Stunned lieutenant Siu and sergeant Lane were observing that terrible picture when the dead body began slowly falling into the officer’s arms. For the second time Siu shouted. Obviously, the lieutenant was about to nervous prostration.

*

Lieutenant Siu was twenty-seven years old when he came to the police. He was graduating from the medical college the department of dentistry. While he was studying, he had to work on an ambulance and in emergency rooms. He was the fourth child in the family and for a long time, he has been looking for a business for himself.

Everybody knows how it difficult to get a good job in dentistry, especially if you don’t have connections and live in old houses of the New Territories and your parents are lack of money. Any attempts to organize a "black" dental office in an abandoned kitchen of neighbors who went for a job to Illinois, failed. A kitchen with peeled walls, uneven floor, trampled down linoleum and a big cast-iron sink of sixties of the last century couldn’t be link to the sterility of the current medicine. His rare clients were mostly from that quarter. They didn’t have money and tried to ask him to treat teeth on credit. Of course, it was a variant for Siu, the more he was thinking about marriage.

*

The enemy hid somewhere nearby. The lieutenant’s brain worked feverishly searching for the right solution.

– Find the emergency exit, he is alone, lock it and be there, – he whispered sergeant Lane. And ran to the entrance, having pressed on the transmitter the call button.

– The murder at the Club De Hong Kong!

In a hurry he jumped out of the dark room, loudly cried to the guard with a strong Hong Kong slang.

– Daygua! Stop! Here is a murder! Shoot to kill!

Siu in a routine movement checked his colt and a torch and walked to the black obscurity.

"Sheep are looking for the smell of grass, but not the grass," says an old Chinese proverb, and after the fear there is only stupefaction. Methodically, the lieutenant began to go round the rows of stacks with dark black boxes. For the second time he glanced at the poor guy. He saw sergeant Lane at the same place.

– Any rustle?

– No, sir!

Both policemen began slowly and methodically going round the stacks.

– Who's there? Come out! – loudly and clearly said Siu.

In response there was silence.

The police cars seemed to squeak somewhere. The sergeant was going some steps forward.

And suddenly the lieutenant’s body stiffened. He hardly slowly turned back. And before the lieutenant saw the vision, he shot. Movements and sounds of life returned with the it.

The policemen, security guards were coming from all sides, sirens howling and there appeared the bright light. The lieutenant saw again an ominous silhouette and rushed to the pursuit.

The hood darted out of the emergency exit.

– He overreached me – thought the policeman.

*

They were running along the endless dusty corridors of the club, along the kitchen and shop the finished products, along the poolrooms, the apartment halls, then darted out the room of slot machines into the club garden, they began twisting along the Mody Road street, and then along the center of Tsim Sha Tsui Coulon.

Once Siu managed to take the third place at sprint during the annual competitions among police stations and he was given the deed and even a small bonus, that’s why he was sure in his forces.

In the early morning fog of the harbor, keeping a gun in readiness, he touched and crushed the tents street traders, cleaners and dockers. For the first time he felt like a real terminator with a license to kill. Guards– policemen were joining the chase. Traders-cyclists with Chinese trunks in terror scattered pomelo, Pitahaya and carom.

– A wonderful morning! – vaguely murmured aloud Siu and thought that maybe the killer had a partner.

Chasing turned to the Chinatown with a maze of stairs, back doors and gaps between buildings with the size of a Chinese man. The policeman was trying to see the face of the dark hood, but it was unsuccessfully, although the last often half-turned to him, and wonder that when the police officer hesitated the hood as if was waiting for him.

*

Suddenly Siu remembered, when he was a boy he has been working the whole summer producing packages, as a result he bought a short-old gun for seventeen yuan. He was carrying it under his jacket and once has been following an old smart fox for the whole day. It was going around, fouling the trail, and when the young hunter was exhausted, it waited for him with interest. When he tried to shoot, it started catching mice. As if the fox knew that he couldn’t hit from a rifle at such distance and was arrogant.

Chasing reached the old houses. The killer was running on the roofs, was tangling the policeman and Siu was shooting. For a moment, the criminal seemed to be caught. He was rushing about in a corner of the roof at the crossroads. The distance was becoming shorter.

– Hands up! Face down! – ordered the policeman.

The hood was staying motionlessly with his back and then the officer shot.

– A misfire!

The monster half-turned and his laughter was terrible. With high circles he performed an incredible dance of death including Kempo, and his tanto knife glittered everywhere.

– Is it all? – though Siu.

He desperately rushed to the enemy, but he completely owned the situation. The hood opened the ventilation hatch lid without being noticed and craftily drove the policeman in, where he fell, like a blind kitten. While the policeman was trying to get out of the hatch and changed the charger, time was already lost. He just saw as the hood jumped off the roof.

Swearing, the lieutenant jumped to the edge of the roof. Far below there was buzzing a wide avenue and Siu timidly came to the edge.

– How did he jump off? – thought the policeman, but then he saw a black solid shiny rope, which is often used by climbers.

He lay down on his stomach, with his shoe he caught hold of the roof fence and saw the open broken window, a confused red bearded face that immediately disappeared.

For a few moments the lieutenant has been trying to restore that picture.