- Let's go - quietly said Colonel.
A funny couple holding each other by the hand, like pioneers, passed a few quarters of the Malcolm boulevard and hid in the VIP sector of the small cafe Edmonds, in the hundred and twenty-fourth Street.
*
For five minutes they have been recovering breath. Colonel, and the brunette, felt a terrible famine.
- I hope we will not be a couple of freaks further.
The brunette laughed.
- I felt the arrival of that string.
They both became laughing merrily. Yes, really, to suffer that horror was above the average. Dux asked the waitress, a red hood, to bring them a menu. He pulled out a thread from both hands. They observed in fascination as both ends of the silver horsehair were moving. Cautiously, Colonel twisted thread, as one twists a guitar string, and he got a circle. He impudently tore a file out of the menu, wrapped that mysterious strangeness and taped everything with a sticky tape which was in the pocket of his service jacket.
Dux chose a stewed chicken with yellow rice and Turkish bread and from the drinks he ordered a double scotch "Grouse" with Italian soda. And Gavin, a brunette, ordered a beef short ribs, then thought and added a bull tail with black eye peas and having risked added a bottle of wine with two exotic silkworm larvae. Colonel was observing the menu and Gavin with interest.
- We have a harmful job.
A few minutes later they were brought drinks.
Colonel’s heart felt a stream of warm air. Gavin also drank a glass of yellow drink.
- Give me to taste?
- Come on.
- It is sour! - started Colonel.
Gavin was sucking yellow cheap liquor, with ice cubes and fat silkworm larvae, and said testing:
- Maybe you give me this?
- What do you mean?
- That, string.
- For what?
- I'll give it to the boss.
Colonel took out of his service jacket pocket a package and, having made sure that the thread was in place, put it back. He kept silent.
*
- Gavin - he could hardly say - you are far from reality. Me too.
- Who are they?
Colonel remembered with a shudder, as this thread crept into the back of the lieutenant of the Boeing.
- Don’t beat about the bush.
- I hate pathos. But their potential can make a lightning military coup in the USA. If you want, help me.
It was Gavin who had to continue. He thought for a while and delayed the activation of his cell phone for calling the authorities.
- And who are you? - Gavin stared at Colonel, studying him struggling. – Is it KGB’s task?
- No, - Dux looked up. – I'm an ordinary man now!
Gavin drank up the liqueur of the silkworm larvae with melted ice and muttered:
- Well?
- What is your rank?
- A major.
- Not high. Is the police subordinated the FBI major?
- Yes.
- Now listen, Gavin. The only way out is to destroy their control center. If they consolidate in the US military warehouses, it will be too late. Now come on.
*
Colonel dialed Mari's number. She answered immediately and sent him a message with the address.
"Thank you." Then he thought for a moment. "Smiley. How are you?
"Well? Smiley. And how are you? "
"Everything is perfect."
"I will answer later. Smiley".
- Let's go!
A taxi passed by the dark red brick buildings of Harlem alone the empty Marcus Garvey Park, crossed the Harlem East River and moved on along the great Robert Kennedy freeway across the expressionless Triborough bridges. Dux suddenly remembered the words of the New York resident, Emma Lazarus, who wrote the words hidden in the Statue of Liberty.
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
It was incomprehensible, but Colonel clearly imagined himself in another aspect. As if two hundred years ago, he was already in the hold of a huge ship with many people lying on the straw, and full of rats. Finally, after weeks of painful transition, they got out on the deck and looked at the wooden pier of the New World. And they cried with happiness, breathing into pure raw sea air and the smell of freedom.
- What is it? - thought Colonel. - deja vu, a non-deleted memory film? Or an omen?
Gavin, who was quite relaxed, suddenly stirred up and screamed.
- What is the plan?
Colonel returned to the ground.
- I'll be on the ship. I have a question to you. You have to arrange everything for these ... not to leave the ship in Manhattan.
- What? Did you got it !?
- If I do not come in three hours or don’t send a message, blow up this ship in trash. Completely!
- And what about you?
- Yes, with me. Because I have already an asphalt disease!
Gavin looked at sempai with respect. Having passed the Wards Island and the iron Triborough Bridge, the taxi drove at Queens.
- We will come soon, - said coldly Colonel. He looked at Gavin. - I'll tell you a secret - he smiled - you wanted to give it to the authorities? You don’t have to look far for examples.
Colonel again took out the string. Another end he prudently tied in a strong double knot. Gavin looked at it like at a performance.
- If it climbs inside, weld on the bliss, guy.
- What? - Gavin's stared at him.
- Don’t you understand? To the bolts!
- That is a nonsense! - Gavin entered the intense-derformed state.
Gavin did not want to start the deed with such senior fellow. He wanted simply to disappear. But he drove off a sense of cowardice and weak spot. He realized that Colonel was just trying to laugh before the mortal combat.
The taxi driver, a middle-aged silent Puerto Rican, asked the way. Having left the Triborough, the taxi drove at the thirty-second Queens and having drove a little, slowly moved along the northern neighborhoods of Astoria.
*
Colonel suddenly saw that the taxi was driving along the Steinway Street.
From the depths of his memory he got the name William Steinway. Through all associations, Dux suddenly remembered his Siberian childhood where in a deep storage, in dust, there was a piano "Steinway & Sons" with a gilded inscription and with the harp sign. It was the most mysterious thing at Aunt’s Rose place, as well as a huge Gospel of the genealogy from Adam and Eve.
Twenty years have passed. Colonel had to cross the border to the north of Magdeburg, where he, for half a year, has been naturalizing in BRD with the forged passport of the Hanover university student majoring on "development". Then he accidentally found a town Seesen with beautiful sad fields of Lower Saxony. And local grateful residents touchingly told him, as in 1822, there was created the first piano of Heinrich Steinweg, in the kitchen of his modest house.
And as in 1853 at the age of fifty three years, the future multimillionaire with five sons has emigrated to the USA, where he made a piano Steinway number four hundred eighty three, having changed in the word.
*
The driver touched Dux, who had dozed off.
- Here we are! – Colonel paid the taxi driver.
- Well?
- Come on.
Probably, there had never been such ill-assorted super spies in the world. Gavin, a young-looking boy, very tall, with a slim antique profile and intelligence, shuddered from that awful monster. Colonel, plain, short, wide-shouldered with cold piercing blue eyes, scars, with a sailor walk, was walking along the night porter, looked at Gavin, as at a dancer. Gavin till today hadn’t to kill a man. In the evenings, he, at least twice a week, went to Broadway to listen classical music of the Juilliard School graduate students, the ballet at the Metropolitan Opera or corporative parties. Colonel, who always had to do his troublesome gloomy hard work, during his spare time, went to the park, to the forest or to the mountains where he thought and cognized the truth. Gavin enjoyed pleasant conversation, and when he was alone, he listened to music in big headphones, watched TV or played Stalker. At job, he always worked with someone, all the more, in the USA is not accepted to walk alone. Colonel liked movement, the sound of wind, sun changing images of the world, the taste of ice-clear water, woman warm and smells of the city. And worked alone, having clenched his teeth at his hated job.