Apocalypses [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONEHighways are often a detraction from a landscape. They are scars upon it. They are cuts, sometimes bleeding cuts, in it. They are an unnaturalness intruded into a countryside.There aren't a hundred highways in the world of which this isn't the case. There aren't more than a dozen that actually add a new and striking beauty to a beautiful countryside. The Grande Corniche is one of the few that, running through really beautiful country, adds a new and extraordinary touch to that beauty.Constantine Quiche drove a new Sassari Twelve, tooling along just east of Nice. He was on an assignment, and he might stop with friends if it seemed likely that it could further the carrying out of the assignment, or he might veer away if that visit seemed to call out "Danger!"He had fair directions and a permanent invitation to a villa that the Marqabs had rented some months before. With a gala sundown at his back, Quiche believed that he could locate the Marqabs by dark. He could find anything that it was necessary for him to find. He was the best detective in the world.He had a very recent memory of an encounter so vio-3