- Condolences!

- What has happened? – Thomas and Mari breathed out simultaneously.

- Don’t you know?

Some people came up to them.

- This break news is on all channels. Yesterday's journalist died in the road accident.

Pause.

- Stop. And what about the cameraman? – Mari said in changed voice.

- I think they both died.

They were shocked. As if being threw cold water they returned from the warm fairy to the cold cruel reality. They went to the foyer. Mari unreasonably began seeking in the crowd for a figure of the black felt hat. But he wasn’t anywhere.

*

The whole day, Colonel was walking around the closet to the Victoria Peak hill. It was encircled with a narrow road with hoopers, rare branches, bars, and the security cabins of the prestigious residences. In the evening he had studied all accessible references and maps in the Internet but the public data were quite scant. Dux depicted a runner, dropping into all dead-ends noticing the approaches to the object. It should happen in this way. The guard of billioners isn’t often inferior to the president’s one and sometimes is more refined. A considerable territory of about twenty five acres and with the perimeter of about three hundred yards was enclosed with a modern openworked fence and twisted like a snake along virgin burs covered with mini cameras. The residence wasn’t practically seen anywhere. Colonel hardly found the only short road which was hiding in the Shade of trees. He carefully, quickly and secretly fixed along the road several mini cameras which one could hardly find and which were turned on just when someone moved. He ran out of the bushes on the circle road to that the potential observers calm down and hid behind the hill.

- Shade, Shade, - he remembered painfully about his kind magician. The worst flashed by the momentary weak but he got rid those thoughts.

- He will appear without fail. As always! - Colonel got ready for the optimistic mood.

As his teacher said the weak spot of any object has always been subterranean passages and back doors. One can appoint the whole army defending the façade but several subversives can easily enter the back door. Dux took out of the hiding place, like a den, a bag he had put before run around the residence. He put on an orange anorak of an electrician and stuck Chinese eyebrows like two arcs. Dux looked into the mirror.

- A real super Chinese! – he cheered up.

He ran around the hill trying to depict a local runner. Dux was sure that he was taking him for their own forces.

- Probably, great grandmother’s heredity from Tibet affected, - he thought.

Having come closer to the object, he saw a sewer pipe. Colonel chose the most comfortable place for the reconnaissance and started his occupational boring work. A black mat suitcase he was proud of and which cost a couple of millions dollars looked like a laptop but was thicker and more solid. The Shade affirmed that there were only four such devices in the world. He made of the padding a long handle with the head like a palm and on the sides came out long elastic stems, as a result, he got something like an ominous scorpion and a phalanx. Fascinating crawling on the ground, Colonel was like a pediatrician listening to the sick but a very big one. The main function of the equipment was scanning by the powerful impulse the 3D underground communications with a depth from ten to thirty metres in real time. Other passive and active sensors were shooting thermal, radiation data and also combined the linkage from the satellites by the GPS navigation with the rapid dynamic laser raster. Feeling like Sherlock Holmes he was crawling to the interstices, cable and electric laying, water supply systems and the sewage. Having found an unknown interesting object like a missile warhead, he stopped for a couple of minutes. As a result he was hampered by the fence of the object and a security with a gun in his hands and wide-opened eyes hung over him. The guard had to push quite perceptibly Colonel with the gun to the last come to himself.

*

Dux madly looked at him, closed the suitcase, quickly and disgracefully went away under the guard’s vigilant furious look. Having cried something no distinct, the security chased after him wanting to take the unknown object of this strange man. But that type with a smile was running quickly and quickly adroitly avoiding and foolishly waving that scolopendra and said with an awful accent:

- Jo ncho dioniuon, Jo ncho dioniuon,- as one could translate “checking of the power supply” and didn’t allow the guard to get that he wanted.

Then, the security, having breathed out with the third breath ball dzen threw his hand out like a flying arrow of the furious snow leopard and caught the handle of the equipment having quickly punched him with the “tcaili-fo” punch and hurt the opponent’s nose. The equipment dropped out of Colonel’s hand, having made an arc and flopped down on the grass. That was too much! Observing with one eye the opened guard’s holster he continued depicting without consciousness, Dux estimated the situation. Having noticed not far an approaching car, he caught the opponent by the sleeve and pretended to gasp. Having calculated the car’s trajectory, he slightly pushed the guard and in an incredible jump he caught the scanner and ran to intercept the car. An awful squeal of brakes and a long signal regained the guard’s consciousness. Helplessly the fighter was catching the holster , depicted fury and walked away. A driver in the car was swinging his arms, swearing and Colonel said quietly:

- “Paopao” is it just a name? I feel instinctively that no!

Unfortunately, his favourite way malfunctioned. No, no, he tried to climb somewhere but it wasn’t so easy as he thought. Of course, he could enter the object for two days. But he had lack of time.

*

Dux ran around the forest along the winding roads and returned to his hole. The sun already caught the furry green hills shining through the trees and lighting up with bright white light. Colonel rummaged in his bag and as a magician took out a heavy tin with the inscription “Grimm” and at the bottom there was written “Made in the USSR” and lower the number of the State Standard. That box Dux found at the factory in Khlebnikovo when he was a student. Having fixed a mirror near the stone, he began changing his appearance. He used invisible sticky braces, sticky eyelashes and eyebrows, gumming, coating and painted whitish age bristle. When he had time he could make real masterpieces. About the twilights, a stooped old man full of dignity with a wallet on his back and a long black staff passed across the hill. It was quickly got dark as it is on the south.

Colonel waited passionately. The cameras which he put in the morning automatically fixed an exit and an entrance of the residence. He paid attention at a big charter car. Probably, that worker was driving there and back in household affairs. At the turn with a high slope the car had to stop.

An old man blended with a tree. Suddenly, the evening breeze roared and thick trees echoed with the crunch, a mandarin duck quacked golden monkeys cried out something and an unknown to a man night life, lit up with the multi colored sky of the big city, started.

During rare moments of silence he felt weak but thinking reed, as said Descartes. His strange terrible job completely shielded his own ego. And during the rare moments of freedom he enjoyed staying alone. Under the load of remembers he saw rivers which had the beginning and the end but he also saw another river which didn’t have the beginning. He saw a blue sky with an endless horizon and an amazing princess leaving the night from behind the mountains. And a remembering of the numerous Syberian hard labours and exiles, some of them could be his parents, a brother or a sister. And he has to live to this remembering not to be suppressed and not to sink into oblivion. And let the personality with inherent knowledge of the truth, who can face the lie, humiliation in tortures to crush a man even if there are few such people, return like a chaste baby.