The Smuggled Atom Bomb

Начало книги

A languorous ocean breeze set sail from the Bahama Islands for the coast of Florida.

It crossed the Gulf Stream and came ashore where autumn tourists sprawled on the allegedly golden but actually pale brown sands of Miami Beach. A breath of it, after crossing Miami, following a road lined with fluffy evergreens, swung finally into a stand of much larger trees: mahoganies, tamarinds, poincianas, gumbo limbos and live oaks. These it stirred audibly before it moved over a sun-brilliant lawn, entered the screened window of a dilapidated, two-story frame house and touched bright blond hair on the brow of a pretty, middle-aged woman who sat in a bed. She glanced up with the pleasant thought that the still heat of day was ended. She saw the clock. Three-twenty. She faced the screen, then, and called in a contralto that was penetrating without being harsh, “Charlee-ee!”

Her mind pictured her dark-haired, merry-eyed son, age twelve. The picture did not materialize and she remembered he was going to try to get a newspaper route after school.

Читать дальше →