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in May, and been replaced by somebody called George C. Marshall. Anna shook
her head hopelessly. Proteus couldn't be responsible for something like that.
There was no rhyme or reason to any of it, no pattern that she could discern.
She entered the details and references into her notes and turned to another
page.
Immediately, an item in the "Crime" section caught her eye under the headline
TOO HOT FOR
ICEMAN. The article hadn't even existed in the same newspaper from the 1939
that Anna had known.
She spread the page out and read:
The New York Police Commissioner told reporters yesterday that gangland
feuding may have rid the city of one of its noted undesirables, Bruno "Iceman"
Verucin, long suspected of major involvement in gambling frauds and protection
racketeering. According to underworld informants, Verucin has been run out of
town by rivals, and his entire operation reduced to a shambles.
The news came after an amazing assault in true-to-form "Batman" style on
Verucin's heavily
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ration.txt guarded Pelham mansion by mysterious intruders in black, who defied
supposedly impenetrable defenses, walked up walls, and stormed the premises to
take Verucin captive and hospitalize four of his gun-toting henchmen.
Fifty-two-year-old Verucin, notorious for his alleged part in...
The report went on to give details of Verucin's previous criminal career and
suspected recent dealings before returning to the happenings at Pelham.
Something about the accompanying photograph drew Anna's eyes back again. The
face seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place it. She shook her head
and continued reading.
Miss Sally Jackson, another of the guests present at the time of the incident,
described them as "terrifying, like out of a comic book -- you know, the guys
who are always decked out in masks and capes and that kind of stuff. They were
all big -- seven feet, at least -- and dressed in black with all kinds of
things hanging everywhere like airplane pilots in movies. I guess they must
have had goggles and helmets...Yes, that's right -- they definitely had
goggles and helmets.
They must have parachuted onto the roof."
It brought to mind some of the training films that Anna had seen of the Army
Special
Operations units. She sat back in the chair; her eyes narrowed thoughtfully
all of a sudden, and she looked at the photograph again. Then she set the
paper down, got up, and left the office.
Downstairs, at the large table in the middle of the partitioned space that
served as the mess area and off-duty recreation room, Cassidy picked up the
cards that Ferracini had dealt and fanned them. "The trouble with Germans,
Harry, is that they're all robots," he said as he inspected his hand. "They're
only happy when they've got someone to tell 'em what to do. Otherwise they
don't know their asses from holes in the ground and they start worrying, know
what I mean?"
"I still say it's more an abdication of responsibility," Ferracini said. "Let
the leader make the decisions. And if it all screws up, well, you're just the
same as everyone else, so it's not your fault."
Cassidy frowned at the cards he was holding. "Say, what is this, Harry -- you
been taking lessons somewhere?...Anyhow, they'd have been a lot better off if
they'd shot the whole bunch of leaders as soon as they started getting outta
line. That's what the Russians did with theirs. It wasn't their fault if the
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bunch they ended up with turned out to be worse than the bunch they got rid
of. At least they tried to do something. You know, Harry, I kinda like
Russians."
Captain Edward Payne, the mission's doctor, industrial chemist, and officer in
charge of
Gatehouse security, was sitting in an easy chair in one corner. Propped on his
knee was a catalogue of the New York World's Fair, which had opened a month
previously at Flushing, on the north shore of Long Island, in celebration of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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