2022-07-15 05:25:56
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UNDERGROUND 153
Pustovalov went to him and soon saw a fat man urinating at the wall. Hiding behind a galvanized pipe, he waited for the fat man to finish and followed him. Despite his drunkenness, the fat man was clearly in a hurry. Staggering, he almost ran through the corridors, reminiscent of a labyrinth, each time turning confidently.Finally, they came to a landing with a spiral staircase, very dimly lit. The staircase, like in an old Stalinist house, went down in square turns around a non-existent elevator channel. On each floor, one antediluvian light bulb burned, under which numbers were drawn in red paint. On the topmost platform, on the wall, the number 728 was displayed. On the floor below, respectively, 727. Pustovalov looked down, the fat man's hand slid along the railing, but what was below - surprised him - the abyss of floors seemed endless.The floors themselves were of no interest, and rather resembled some kind of unfinished building. Each of them had a doorway, behind which an unc
UNDERGROUND 154
The day after training, Pustovalov repeated his maneuver, dressed in a jaguar costume. At seven in the evening he stood in a large empty hall in front of a door with peeling paint, with a sign. There were two words on the plate, the first word was "Operational", and the second was painted over with a marker.Victor was gone again, and Pustovalov thought that if their meeting here had taken place yesterday, he would have been dead already. Just in case, he pulled the door and it opened. A flashlight flickered in the darkness.- Come in. Victor's voice was heard.Pustovalov entered and closed the door behind him.What the hell, Victor!- I came early, I decided not to waste time. - Viktor groaned somewhere in the distance. - And what are you, now you do not care.Pustovalov, looking closely, saw endless rows of long tables filled with antediluvian tube monitors.In the light of the lantern, the thin figure of Victor scurried about.Pustovalov walked into the light, noting the impressive
UNDERGROUND 155
What is "and"?- And you're here.- Where is "here?! Viktor was surprised.- In the fifth block.- Well, this is the sixth block.- Yeah, - Malek smiled and Victor realized that he did not believe him for a penny. - Well well.Malek gazed at Victor intently, and his smile grew wider and wider. She literally destroyed Victor.- Well well! he repeated. - Well, nah..y!Three burly guards came around the corner. The widest of them, without stopping, threw:- Get out of here, the mole is here.- Comrade Major! Malek shouted without taking his eyes off Victor. - The mole is here!- What? The big man called back. At that moment, a radio crackled on his shoulder.“Comrade Major, here he is.The major stopped, answered something on the radio and asked again:- What you said?“Here’s a mole,” Malek nodded at Victor.Further, to Victor's surprise, the major walked up to Malko with a quick step, easily grabbed him by the collar of his jacket with both hands and slammed him into the wall.“You fuc
UNDERGROUND 157
Pustovalov carried Dasha to the wall by the elevator and returned to search the Frenchman. On the floor next to a pool of blood, he saw a red card with keys.“I knew these weren’t dreams…” A faint voice came from behind.Pustovalov turned around. The ice-cold eyes looked at him in disbelief.“Dasha, you better not talk now.Pustovalov picked up the map, took the Frenchman's submachine gun, and searched his side pockets. One contained a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, the other contained a white laminated card. If not for the word "Perimeter", he would have left it in place.Voices were heard outside the door and on the stairs. Dasha and Pustovalov looked at each other.- To the elevator! They both said.Dasha's card worked. Pustovalov randomly pressed the button "44" and before the elevator doors closed, they heard the cry of the first one who broke in.Dasha shuddered.- They saw us. she whispered.Pustovalov, meanwhile, was doing a strange thing - he pressed different buttons on the panel,
UNDERGROUND 158
Pustovalov knocked on it. The sound is muffled, metallic.“If this is a door, then it’s not for people,” Pustovalov concluded, and at that moment the sections instantly parted, revealing an abyss of darkness in front of them.- What did you do?- I just touched it.Dasha was the first to decide to explore the new space, but Pustovalov grabbed her sharply, as soon as her foot lifted over the darkness.- Stop! He shouted a little louder than his calm nature required.Dasha looked at him.- There is no gender.The girl stepped back in fear. Then she sat down and held out her hand.- You're right. She stood up, plunging her hand deeper and deeper, holding on to the edge of the wall. - Some strange feeling.Pustovalov also stuck out his hand.- Yes, it looks like the wind or something ...“It's not the wind,” she said, “the absence of gravity.- How is this possible?“That's the only thing that's possible in this place.Pustovalov looked at her and saw that a shadow of horror had fallen on
UNDERGROUND 159
After a few hours, they finally came to the foot of steep cliffs, and went along them, moving away from the cliff. When fatigue became almost insurmountable, Pustovalov found a rise among the rocks. It was quite steep - sixty degrees, and he would not have paid attention to it if this climb had not turned into another, even steeper one, and that one did not merge with another and so on to the saddle top.“This is a passageway,” he said confidently.Dasha looked up in disbelief.“Anyway, you can climb up there and see what's behind the rocks. Sit here.But Dasha did not agree to sit, and they climbed to the saddle top together, giving up the rest of their strength. A sad picture appeared before their eyes - a slightly smaller plateau, bounded by even higher cliffs.However, the vaguely recognizable "ladder" of descents continued on this side, and, following its winding path, which went strongly towards the cliff, Pustovalov saw a semicircular platform in the rock. It looked too even ge
UNDERGROUND 160
- You got scared...Pustovalov shook his head, got up, and again went to the window. Dasha, excited by his story, also got up, she wanted to put her hand on his shoulder and somehow support him, but, of course, she did not dare.“But you were a child,” she said, “you did everything right, you… saved yourself.– Yes, I saved myself… But… I see… I see.“Why didn’t you tell about it at the meeting then?”- Why? Don't know. Maybe because of that strange man...- What kind of person?“Victor and I met him on the subway. He looks like a madman. Perhaps he was. But now I know that he's just been here before.- In this place?- Yes.And did you manage to get out?- Somehow. He said that the one to be wary of most here is those who ask the right questions.– How to understand it?Pustovalov shrugged.Do you want to take a walk?- Now?- Now.And they went out, went down, and went along the stone path to the cliff. A wind blew towards them, reminiscent of a sea breeze and even bringing the smel
UNDERGROUND 161
A military armada of elegant Moscow evacuators taxied out from behind the Atrium and, with the organization of Japanese robots, attacked the roadside crowded with cars. The continuity ensured by the bottomless budget quickly unloaded Zemlyanoy Val - the place of the departed with the prey was immediately taken by the next one, stretching out its metal paw to the victim. Excited drivers ran out of coffee shops and banks like cockroaches, pulling on their jackets, and surprisingly soon the full-flowing river of cars became shallow, leaving behind only a lonely shining Range Rover.At this time, an unusual trinity came out from around the corner, from the side of the Kursk railway station: Yakov with a Shants collar, Vindman with a bandaged neck and a tall old man, who at the same time looked like a textbook magician who had descended from the movie screen and an escaped mental hospital patient.The trio hurriedly headed for the Range Rover, from which a driver with the face of a predato
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Epilogue
From the panoramic window, Victor can see the San Francisco Bay, but the waters no longer impress him. He still can't get used to the Golden Gate, but the views are much duller in his research center. Somewhere out there, beyond the countryside, he discovered Sunnyvale Pond. This place reminded him of the Moscow region at all. However, this is rather a minus, Victor is too young to be nostalgic for his homeland.Out of habit, everything comes surprisingly easily to him. A psychologist friend said that there was nothing extraordinary in his phenomenon, he just pulled out a lucky lottery ticket called "beautiful parents." Victor won an international competition, and while still a student, he got a job at the Ames Research Center, and on Sunday he met the daughter of emigrants from Lithuania who work in Los Angeles. Dimon without exaggeration would put "ten". Victor never gave grades to girls. Dimon knows that Victor was born with a golden spoon in his mouth and tries to reach for him. Vi
209
An old photograph, hitting the slimy walls, slowly spinning like an autumn leaf, slowly falls into a deep well. The well is so deep and bottomless that the round hole at the top has long turned into a bright dot, and is about to completely disappear. And the photo keeps falling and falling. It depicts three boys, three of them are twenty-nine years old. One of them, dark-haired, with curly hair, stands in the middle, hugging his friends. It is slightly lower and seems to hang slightly on their shoulders. All three are smiling. The photo is old, you can see it not only in the crumpled corners, scratches and faded palette, but also in stretched sweaters and old-fashioned shirts with rolled up sleeves.The photo keeps spinning and spinning, and in one of the turns, the image on it changes. Now there are only two boys. They also hug each other and look into the camera with smiles, but the black-haired man standing between them is no longer there. It's like it never happened. Maybe it's a
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The old man, Makarov, rushed after him, and only after them did the special forces pour out.Still running up, Boris saw a square hole in the center of the site - not at all like what he saw on the day of his last visit to the plant. Perfectly smooth, carved into cubes that were stacked near the tractor. Next to them lay a completely black device, which he saw in the photographs sent by the Special Metals Research Institute.Boris was the first to run up to the edge of the hole.Below, he saw what he had seen before - the shaft of the mine, only at the bottom of the bowl there was now a well. There was absolute bedlam going on: corpses, blood, weapons, overturned chairs, pieces of collapsed stairs and galleries. He did not immediately notice living people, but when he saw a figure crawling away from the wall, he immediately recognized it, although he had never seen it alive.- Daria! he shouted. - Daria Afanasyeva!The girl raised her head.Makarov, running up, heard Vindman's scream,
207
Before saying goodbye to life, Dasha managed to become a witness to strange events that replaced each other with kaleidoscopic speed. First, something flew from above right in the center and with a disgusting thud plopped behind the makeshift spectator box. Dasha could not see anything in such a short time, but for some reason she was sure that this was a human body. More terrible than the blow itself were the frightened cries.And here is how a deaf-mute worker jumped from the upper gallery, and with inhuman speed slipped somewhere into the darkness, she saw very well.Just then, a strange movement began. On the right, something overturned with a crash, and someone very frightened shouted something in an incomprehensible language. Apparently it was a command, because right there from the depths of the hall there was a coordinated stomp of feet.Dasha saw four of the six burner paws, above her, the other two were located on either side of her head. From above, the bright light of hang
206
Only one person directly looked at her - a stern, gloomy old man from the gallery on the second floor. She had seen him before, I think in the ninth block - an ordinary mute worker with the right of free movement. He seemed to her out of his mind, but in his current “hawkish” look there was some kind of repulsive meaningfulness, without a hint not only of compassion, but even of curbed hatred. He looked at her just like a log, dissatisfied with the fact that the log was too thin and would not give the required warmth. There was no life in that look, only cold. This is how a dead man who managed to challenge life itself would look.However, all this, even the dumb old man, she saw fragmentarily, as in a painful dream, and then completely disappeared, only the darkness above her head remained - real or in her imagination. She stopped hearing conversations, footsteps, and the creak of the wheels of the gurney; only dull pops were heard in her head, reminiscent of explosions of a gas-air
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- Stole?Boris nodded, pointing to the picture.- On the day of the visit to Novikov, Colonel Basurov, a well-connected former member of the procurement commission of the Ministry of Defense, was with Pustovalov. Most likely, he played the role of an intermediary. He went missing that day. Since Pustovalov himself is a ghost and it is impossible to track his movements, we tracked Basurov's movements before he disappeared in the warehouse. And through him they came across a certain Dementiev. We interrogated him. Dementiev is a professional safecracker, it was he who helped Pustovalov steal the installation. He also said that there were two installations. That is, one working sample, and a spare case without filling - in fact, a dummy. But it looks like the real one. He confirmed that Pustovalov was going to sell the unit to Yasin after learning that he was behind her order on the black market. In addition to Basurov, another person went missing that day, previously in contact with Pus
204
The car ran into a minibus lying on its side, Boris opened the door, leaned half out of the passenger compartment, exposing his haggard face to the frosty wind. There was a false peace here. Distant screams and shots were drowned out by unobtrusive music, but this tiny lane adjoining Frunzenskaya Embankment bore little resemblance to the island of former life. Rather, the coldness of the future blew from him - the very one that none of them would ever find. Desolation oozed from the planed poplars gathering darkness, from the mangled cars sprinkled with snow, forever left after yesterday's accident, from under the architraves of the shifted "stalinok", from the black windows of the buildings deprived of power supply.Boris looked at the piece of paper with the address and saw how it was distorted by a five-centimeter wall, carved from a dark space ice floe. With a crackling, cascading arc, the wall passed through Windman and, outlining the front facade of a two-story Chinese restauran
203
He appeared on the bridge in a couple of minutes. Maurice, who was sitting under the window of a high tower, calmly rose and aimed his rifle at him:- One, two, three, and well, freeze! - He said cheerfully.Pustovalov obeyed and, without raising his head, said:“Using your man as bait?” Clever.“You used yours to get out too, didn’t you?”Pustovalov raised his head. Maurice saw through the eyepieces of the night vision device that Pustovalov was without night vision devices and knew that he only saw the outline of a dark silhouette in the window.- Komsomolskaya, - Maurice nodded with a smile, - now I understand why Daniker began to be so lucky before his death.- You're confusing me with someone else. I happened to be there.“Just a subway passenger?”- Exactly.Maurice burst out laughing and at that moment Pustovalov disappeared. He quickly figured out that he just jumped through a hole in the bridge.Still laughing, Maurice jumped lightly onto the bridge and called out:"You're br
202
Coming up to him, Maurice found a crumpled fireman's heat-reflecting suit and smiled. We must pay tribute, although Maurice was not upset at all. He could have guessed right away that the trick with heat guns only made sense if you were already inside. It didn't matter now. Maurice knew that infrared sensors would not be a problem for him, like everything else that they had already prepared. He knew that the one they were waiting for would go very far, perhaps even manage to reach the very end. Of course, to the end, to which he is allowed to reach. That's why Maurice was here. And Maurice was rather upset if the one they were waiting for deceived his expectations.After walking a few more meters, Maurice saw a shining helmet with a visor-mirror in the bushes, and his smile grew wider. No, as long as he did not deceive his expectations.***Having reached the northern section of the bypass route, Kruchina quieted down and took a step. Moving along the trodden path, he soon came to two
