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Автор Дэвид Бениофф
When the Nines Roll Over
City of Thieves
David Benioff is an author and screenwriter. His first novel,
THE 25TH HOUR
David Benioff
First published in the United States of America in 2000 by Carroll & Graf
First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette UK company
Copyright © David Benioff 2000
The right of David Benioff to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Epub ISBN: 978 1 444 73130 9
Book ISBN: 978 0 340 82229 6
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
For Mom and Dad – thank you.
Lyrics from ‘Up Against the Wall Redneck’ © 1974 by Ray Wylie Hubbard reprinted by permission of Tennessee Swamp Fox Music Company. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Inc. International copyright secured.
Prologue
They found the black dog sleeping on the shoulder of the West Side Highway, dreaming dog dreams. A crippled castoff, left ear chewed to mince, hide scored with dozens of cigarette burns – a fighting dog abandoned to the mercy of river rats. Traffic rumbled past: vans with padlocked rear doors, white limousines with tinted glass and New Jersey plates, yellow cabs, blue police cruisers.
Monty parked his Corvette on the shoulder and shut off the engine. He stepped from the car and walked over to the dog, followed by Kostya Novotny, who shook his head impatiently. Kostya was a big man.
His thick white hands hung from the sleeves of his overcoat. His face had begun to blur with fat; his broad cheeks were red from the cold. He was thirty-five and looked older; Monty was twenty-three and looked younger.‘See?’ said Monty. ‘He’s alive. ’
‘This dog, how do you call it?’
‘Pit bull. Must have lost somebody some money. ’
‘Ah,
‘No. ’
Flies crawled across the dog’s fur, drawn by the scent of blood and shit. ‘What do we do, Monty, we watch him rot?’
‘I was thinking of shooting him. ’
Awake now, the dog stared impassively into the distance, his face lit by passing headlights. The pavement by his paws was littered with broken glass, scraps of twisted metal, black rubber from blown tires. A concrete barricade behind the dog, separating north-and southbound traffic, bore the tag SANE SMITH in spray-painted letters three feet high.
