He Fell Among Thieves

Начало книги

NICK SKINNER buried his parachute just outside the city of Pinsk, which lies well within the Pripet Marshes, deep in Russian-occupied Poland and not a hundred miles from the Soviet border.

His mouth was very dry and his palms clammy, and for a moment he listened as the plane droned away overhead. From the direction of Pinsk, a big anti-aircraft searchlight stabbed up half-heartedly through the dense fog. When the drone of the engine faded away, so did the light.

And Skinner was alone.

The Pripet Marshes sprawl like a rotting carcass over the Russo-Polish frontier, dank and noisome, alive with the eerie night sounds of swampland. Soviet country…

Half a thousand miles to the West was the other side of the Iron Curtain, and safety. But Skinner knew it might be a long time before he could hightail it in that direction. Maybe never…

Me, Nick Skinner, he thought. Captain in the C.I.A. And because my mother was once a dark-eyed Russian beauty, because we had spoken the language of the Tsars as much as English in my Weehauken childhood, I was the man for the job.

Читать дальше →