- Look here, the situation is. I'll rummage in a little bit. Did you understand? Give me fifteen minutes for it without anybody. Don’t worry, I won’t touch the seal.

- I don’t worry.

It wasn’t difficult for him, due to experience, to open the side wall of the trunk for a few minutes. To tell the truth, he was nervous. What could it be? Over the wall, there was a black coffre of good quality, the musicians have. Colonel carefully examined the box. The lid easily opened. He turned on the light for a moment. He was ready for anything. But the thing he saw terrified him. His jaw dropped, he dumbfounded.

Soon, he closed the lid of the coffer. He gave the Kirghiz chief, who punctiliously didn’t let anybody enter, another couple of thousand soms.

- Remember: you didn’t see either me or anything else and you will live for a long, or I will strangle you. Did you understand?

The chief turned pale and began quickly nodding with the bleat "macula, maculae." Colonel disappeared in the black night, and merged with high clear Kyrgyz sky full of the milk nebulae and bright stars.

*

Dux had a painful dull feeling that he get into a long and dark story and he will have been in difficulties as ever. Why should he solve the problem out of his forces? He would have to clean a lot of other awful fates, forever go out of desperate situations. He has been turning for the whole night, went out on the porch several times, listened to the silent forest with rare bursts of noisy wind sighs. Dux was at the crossroads of his fate. He felt a very tired warrior from a senseless tough battle called life. - To leave the game? – thought Colonel. – To start over in a small unknown country. To buy a small cozy house with a front garden, four bedrooms, a spacious living room and a bar in the middle. To water bindermayer’s red roses. Enjoy the stylized crane well and a small whirling mill. To play bridge in the evening. If there is an audience, tell the neighbors tall tales. In the morning, writing detectives of an average class. Several of times a year to go to fashionable resorts, if I have money for it. To drag the young milkmaid from a neighboring district, giving her cheep gifts, sometimes, in the evenings, together with her going to the green fields and looking at the full moon.

But, alas, where he worked, there wasn’t retirement in accordance with desire. As a rule, employees of the office died under mysterious circumstances. Sometimes, for edification, they were burned alive in a crematorium, which was nearby. In any case, he will be sentenced to death, figurative or real. That’s why he had the only crazy way out. By some incredible way, to explode, to beat one of the most powerful totalitarian organizations specializing on enemy destruction during the war and in peace.

At the dawn, like a phantom, he again, returned mentally to Aida. He remembered a pile of old bright moments, remembered how she saved him from death and loved him. And somehow this love should destroy the evil.

*

The next day Colonel appeared in the Office. Most of them he just looked over, others he friendly welcomed and some colleagues he patted on the shoulder. He entered the department of the Second Division management and drank a cup of coffee with a staff officer named Kuzia. He was, as always, unbearable. He told Dux nonsense. One could smell from him stealing of others millions and his friendship with Rublevka.

- Kuzma, what are you doing in this out-of-the-way, go to the neighbors. Or do you work as a pen pusher here? - Colonel laughed crackling.

Kuzia’s face showed a whole range of masks, from an evil one and unpleasant to the thoughtful and sad one, and then he forced something like a smile.

- Listen, have you already seen Ivanovich?

- Yes! He has already scolded us.

Long ago, Colonel figured out this office, where Kuzia worked. There was seen a piece of the corridor Vasiliy Ivanovic went via the secretariat to the Chief, there and back. Having worn round black glasses with mirror rim for a secret survey, Colonel opened some thick folder with the dossiers. Inside the folder, he prudently put some pages of a bestselling book and waited patiently.

If the budget in neighbors SVR was higher, with the brand-new Land Rover garages, stuffed with special electronic, with spacious rooms and high salaries, there was much easier and more modest. However, the quality and quantity of the reconnaissance intelligence were quite comparable.

Qualified and those who had military intelligence in different countries and in this sense, stewing in their own juice, in a sense, they were more viable. It is wondering, that during the hard times of the nineties, they not only were able to survive, but they became more firm.

*

Give a man a bit of freedom and faith in himself and he will work miracles. Half of those guys ran around the whole world, entered the intelligence service, some of them started their own business or started work as security guards, where they were taken gladly in all countries. But some people left in the field. In general there were those who were burned with military conflicts and for whom military brotherhood was not empty words. As a rule, those people were financially secured, moreover, their horizons allowed earning money without much efforts. More than money, belonging to the big country effected them. And in some distant village parts of the big country, now and again was duplicated a fairytale dream about another kind, reasonable, non-aggressive and prosperous Russia.

*

For an hour Dux has read hundred pages of the horror "New Hunger" by Isaac Marion, enjoyed modern military posters like: "We give an open and honest fight," "traitors won’t be mercy" and "The most powerful tornado in the world" and saw as Ivanovich was heavily walking along the corridor paneled with wood. Colonel stood up in the middle of the long red corridor, hunched up like a man who does not know well where to go, and when Ivanovich’s heavy footsteps approached, he quickly turned, took off his glasses and looked into general’s eyes long and carefully. For a second Ivanovich tried to bypass the soldier, without looking at him. And even if he was confused for the first second, the next moment he was ready for a friendly smile of his favourite boss.

"These people don’t have soul" – thought Colonel - "tabula rasa, a clean plate!"

-What is the masquerade? - Ivanovich muttered. – Why are you silent?

They were slowly walking along the long, slightly bending corridor. Dux stopped and was hampered by a false wooden facing.

- I was dismissed.

- May I ask?

- Of course.

- Vasily Ivanovich, did you clean me up in the valley?

- Let's go to the smoking room.

The main smoking room was on the outside by the army parade ground. Fates of some people and sometimes countries often were solved there.

- It’s not a kindergarten here, - forced the general - I repeat, you and I are dismissed. Take a full holiday for three weeks, until everything settles down, do you understand? Then he said, more quietly:

- They are serious about it, forget it. I warn you, don’t interfere in this topic.

The conversation ended.

- Go to the cashier and be here in three weeks.

At the end of the general smiled.

- Whose school it is! And I'm really happy that you were able to get out.

"A swine" - thought Dux - "but, damn, he is so nice!”

*

Colonel talked to people remembered the past, went to the cashier. To make sure, he entered his little office, where he had a half of the table, a chair, and a safe. There was living a strange green youth. As Dux was a typical scout in the field and hated the staff work in all forms, he easily gave his table to anybody, without any jealousy. He barely passed through the piles of others things opened his safe, took all the contents and destroyed carefully unnecessary things. The night was falling. In twenty minutes, he had to cross the board of the aquarium, because the office was closing.