Rimanoa - страница 2

"Hello."

"This is Faust (my call signs in the underworld)." "You're in Prague?"

"Yes."

"When by the way did you pri…" "Weren't you warned I was here?" "No, why?"

Robert Emerson was talking to me, you could understand it not even by his poor pronunciation (he could hardly speak Italian), but by his "smart" head (no one really had to know that I was in the Czech Republic), it's not clear how he got to Koza Nostra in the first place, perhaps because of an old friendship, though I doubt it – hell knows. "Yeah, nothing," I smiled into the phone.

"So. The Ambassador is sick…" "That's a real problem…"

"Yes. And we have a meeting…" "With who?"

"Some Morten…"

"Morten? The butcher who (with my dog job I managed to keep my sense of humor)?" "I don't know… Maybe…"

"So, what does he want?" "Meet…"

"That's it?"

"I don't know…"

"Ah…" the cell phone rang, "Okay, bye. "But…"

I hung up the phone, stepped out of the booth, and moved toward the car. "Hello."

"It's Richard."

Richard "Lionheart" (we all have weird nicknames) was sort of my personal dispatcher and his call was almost always a sign of a change of plans.

"What?"

"The ambassador is sick…" "That's news."

"He was supposed to meet with some goods carrier (felons talking on the phone sometimes resembles the chatter of toddlers in kindergarten)."

"Let me guess, he can't get out of bed and you want me to replace him…" "Yes."

"Where? In bed?" "No, at the meeting…"

Despite the fact that Richard had never killed anyone, he had no sense of humor at all. "Where do I have to go?"

"The ambassador will tell you himself. Everything." I turned my phone off.

"To the Ambassador, Jos."

"Whatever you say (he never argued, he just liked to ride)."

After getting a chance to sleep, I laid my head back on the seat and closed my eyes.

11:41 p.m. July 21.

"Faust, stop snoozing. We're here."

I opened my eyes and saw the driver in front of me and Nerudova Street outside the window: this was where LaScolza lived. When I got out of the car and crossed the road, I pressed the bell. The door was opened by Jarno Galanzio (he didn't need a nickname), one of the landlord's ten bodyguards (he hadn't changed at all in the six years I hadn't seen him).

He was still as tall, muscular, with fire in his eyes. His most terrible disadvantage in the physical sense was a slight lethargy at those moments when the situation at the