Skull springy and easily jumped up in some zigzags and came to Colonel at an uneven speed. His black like fiery coals eyes stared straight into the soul of the soldier. They have been looking at each other for a long time.

- What are you looking for? – the last finally said in almost inaudible, distant voice, like a growl.

- For the truth.

- You're already a deadman.

Dux grinned and nodded indefinitely, as the Indians do.

Skull seemed to read all the secret thoughts of Colonel with the power of the thought, like Solaris do.

- A hired professional soldier who had a nose in the air, meat, mentally ill, poor, with the complexes who grudged dieing - thought Maher.

For a moment Colonel saw a vivid picture of how nations transform into food for such Skull, holding perfectly the power of people manipulation.

- Where do you know it from?

- From Tibet.

- It’s late. It's high time.

Skull began leaving in a winding way. Then he added faintly:

- You will get her. There.

- Whose music is this?

Having turned, Skull stopped:

- It’s mine.

*

.. “I can announce that this year German cities, harbors and the centers of the military industry went through such a big continuous and severe test, which hadn’t been experienced by any country. The most powerful was the bombing of Hamburg. The last week of July, in nineteen forty three there were committed six raids at the city at night and two in the afternoon. There were dropped seven million kilograms of bombs on the city. As it said in the report of the Management of the analysis of the strategic bombing results, the city was destroyed for sixty percent, and eighty percent of the damage were caused by fires. The area of the in twelve square miles city was completely burned down; on the area of thirty square miles there were damaged buildings, eighty thousand people died; there were destroyed three hundred thousand apartments. Seven hundred and fifty thousand people left without home. When the flames burst through the roofs of many buildings there was a column of hot air. It rose up to more than two and a half miles and was half miles diameter, as was assessed in the plane which flew over Hamburg. This air column was crazy; it was fed by the rapid tributary of the cooler air at the bottom.

Half-mile away from the fire the air draught forced the wind power to twenty miles per hour. Near the border of the square covered with the fire, probably, the air speed was even more because there were uprooted trees of three feet diameter. The temperature quickly reached the point of any combustibles ignition and the whole area was burning. Everything completely burned down. There weren’t any trace left of anything that could burn. Only two days later it was possible to approach the fire area. Then Churchill appointed Arthur Harris the head of the bombers. The chief Churchill's advisor was Professor Frederick Lindemann (Lord Cherwell), a physicist from Baden-Baden. On the thirtieth of May in nineteen forty-two Lindemann presented Churchill the plan "to deprive of homes" the residents of fifty-eight German cities with the population of more than one hundred thousand people. According to that plan, about twenty-two million people must be deprived of their home and nine hundred thousand of people must die.

As always, the question was about that the destruction of German cities responded the economic principles of the balanced costs and benefits. An English mathematician Freeman Dyson has been working as an analyst under the British bombers troop during the Second World War. He announces that he has been carefully calculating "till the very end, how one can kill other hundreds of thousand people using fewer costs". Comparing himself to the SS, who planned the extermination of Jews. As he said, they were also sitting in their offices and doing calculations how to kill people more efficiently- "as I did. A significant difference was in that they were imprisoned or hung, while I stayed at large. "

An effective method of destruction, found in the end, was like this: firstly, the reset air mines (high-explosive bombs), the blast wave of which tears away the roofs, knocks out the windows and brings firewalls down; then they drop into the open on the top houses incendiary and phosphorous bombs, the flame covers wooden overhead covers, doors, furniture, curtains, carpets, handrail and air draught turns each hotbed of fire into an enormous fire; and finally, with the help of fougasse and fragmentation bombs, partly of a delayed action, there appear shell holes in the streets on places of their dropping, water pipes are broken, to prevent the action of the fire brigade and to allow some countless fires freely merge into a single firestorm, in which all people die, having stayed in the bombarded area burning out in the fire or suffocate with the smoke, independently of whether they are in basements or trying to escape under the open sky.

Charles Portal explained: "I think it is clear that the aims should be residential areas, but not shipyards or aircraft factories.””

*

Pain again began covering his brain. Unbearable suffering passed along his crippled in his childhood skin. His right hand powerlessly and convulsively began moving searching for endorphins, scattered in his trousers pocket. He saw again that terrible ghost in the old hotel not far from the Hyde Park, which has been walking along wooden stairs, for the whole night, when he was a student. The show was coming to an end, von Neumann continued smiling to the last clients, but in the last moment his face was warped from a terrible pain. His hat rocked, he was walking without seeing anything. Fifty silent men closed the black square, and he plunged into absolute darkness. Panting, he cried out:

- Olivia!

- I'm with you!

Having cuddled up to him, she took his hat off.

- You are still alive !?

- Yes, both of them!

A street lamp was slowly going on with the dimmed yellow color.

*

- Frankly speaking, Skull impressed very much- thought Colonel – that one who was reading thoughts. There is something serious to be started. I seemed to manage to get on the trail! How can I break away? Probably, they just shoot me down or torture me before it.

Both Dux’ hands were firmly chained to two guards there were other two behind him who were pushing him painfully and constantly in his back with carbines. The smiling one was going ahead, constantly turning back and humming rhythmic Chinese song. The square moved slowly along the winding paths to the big massive building with a hovering weightless roof, in a Chinese style with the Spring and Autumn Annals. The cavalcade barged funny into a vast gym. The security was training themselves on the sports apparatus, doing different martial arts, and in the middle of the gym on the boxing ring two men were working each other in boxing over without any regulations. Some sullen spectators were stacking on. A smiling one with the mustache removed the handcuffs.

Forty pairs of guards’ eyes stared at Colonel. The smiling one exchanged glances with some man in a jacket and gave him a sign. Probably, his was so high and the last pushed Colonel out to the center of the gym. The gorillas formed a large circle in the middle. They were happily rubbing their hands and stacking on. Dux massaged swelled wrists.

- How long I haven’t been training, - thought Colonel.

Adrenaline added the pungency. Frankly speaking, the fight to the death was always for him the brightest sensation, comparable only with passionate lovemaking.

He was absolutely calm, observing with removal the final preparations of this eternal game.

*

"War is the father of all and king of all, who manifested some as gods and some as men, who made some slaves and some freemen. The hostile thing is in agreement with oneself. This space, the one for everyone, which wasn’t created by none of the gods, no man, but it has always existed, exists and will exist as the forever live fire, even igniting and even fading ".