George Washington's Ghost

Начало книги

Eyebrows had been raised among his colleagues back at the University of Cuernavaca at El Departamento de Geología de la Academia Nacional de Ciencias Naturales – the Geological Department of the National Academy for the Natural Sciences – when Professor Rodrigo de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano, despite being six years past the customary ‘active service’ cut-off point of fifty-five years of age, had volunteered for active military service last year.

He was still the tall, broad-shouldered, rangy man he had been in his prime except, inevitably, not so fleet of foot and he ached in the mornings, and was sometimes, stooped with weariness. His formerly dark head of hair was ever-more streaked with grey, and his face, darkened by the Aztec ancestry that had long been ingrained in all but the most recent generations of migrants from Old Spain, was lined and weathered, set around grey brown eyes which had retained their capacity to unexpectedly twinkle with rueful mischief.

Читать дальше →