I’m not afraid of sounding cruel. I’m afraid of being honest in a country where honesty is no longer seen as a virtue.
My former student and I sat among the cadets pretending to listen to the instructor, while catching every slip of the tongue. Work exists everywhere: the cafeteria, the smoking area, even the bathhouse. I knew about the mutual restraint between US and Israeli intelligence, but instinct outran protocol. I invited the red-haired girl for a drink after lights out. She answered: “I’ll come. But with the blacksmith.”
While the rector spoke to the girl, I got talking with a heavyset entrepreneur. He complained of paying a salary to an employee who doesn’t work on a religious holiday. I saw a disillusioned Atlas, ready to shrug the world economy off his shoulders. By the end of the course he should be offered a change of career.
Two hundred cadets instead of three hundred Spartans: convenient for me, not for the rector. I’d even bake pies with surprise fillings, but they order something else.
She agreed to come to the bar, but not alone, and the rector understood that the game had only begun. He dreams of winning her over, gaining access to the cadet network, and confirming the Pentagon’s suspicions about the “Cube.” But at a patriarch’s funeral, an unknown girl in a black cloak is already reading words that will darken her sight.
Read the complete story in “Why Putin’s Double Attacked Kiev?.” This page contains only a short excerpt; the book has the rest.
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