The Alchemist’s Code Read Online Free PDF Page A

knees, she began urging me to take her from behind. I obeyed, and her passion only increased until in the end I could no longer control myself.
    I exploded without being able to stop until, spent and exhausted, I fell heavily onto the divan. Naked, panting and wet, she stood up and stared at me. It was Àrtemis, yes, but as I looked at those eyes – the eyes of a hungry wolf – Anna’s words, which a few hours before had so offended me, took on a different meaning.
    But it only took a few hours for the thought to go completely from my head.

2
Operation Sunrise: The Wolf is Trapped
    From the testimony of Richard Douglas Morrison,
    CIA agent under the command of Allen Dulles
    Zurich, March 8, 1945 – Austin, Texas, 1976
    Austin, TX, 1976
    My name is Richard Douglas Morrison. Yes, I know, if they’d called me James instead of Richard I would have had the same name as Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors who died a few years ago. But my name’s Richard, and I’m no singer – I’m a spy. An official one, of course, in the sense that I work for the CIA. In fact, I can consider myself one of its founders. Yep – until forty–five I was in the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services in Europe, and then when Truman created the CIA in forty–seven, I was transferred to Langley.
    It was in forty–five that I met Dulles, who was then director of the OSS in Europe and one of those who pushed for my going to Langley. God, what a man Dulles was! Nicknamed the ‘Master of Spies’, he looked like nothing more than some easy-going golfer, but the guy had more skeletons in his closet than an undertaker. He was, in a word, powerful. A man capable of unleashing a war out of nowhere and making it seem like something sacrosanct, or of forcing one of the most feared armies that Europe has ever seen to turn tail. Yes, I’m talking about the Krauts – the Nazis.
    Being a member of the OSS, in forty–five I took part in Operation Sunrise, of which Dulles was one of the protagonists. You only ever get to hear the most striking facts about any given war, and you’ll never get the real truth out of any of the history books, so there’s no point you going poking about looking for confirmation of what you’re about to read. This stuff is top secret. A dark chapter of a war that was already a goddamn cesspool of unspeakable horrors. A chapter that was never put into writing in the files relating to the Operation Sunrise, the operation that marked the end of the Nazi occupation in Italy and that the US government exploited to gather information on something that had little or nothing to do with the war.
    Apparently.
    Believe it or not, I was in Zurich with Dulles that March of forty–five, while the bastard took down one of the big noises in Kraut espionage.
    I’ve enjoyed reconstructing what happened that eighth of March and turning it into a kind of story. That way, nobody can accuse me of anything. It’s just a story, right?
    *
    The two men stared at one another for a minute in total silence. The face of one was serious but relaxed, while the other was in visible torment. They were playing a terribly serious game which might prevent more bloodshed and destruction on Italian soil – a deadly game, which had now escaped the control of its main protagonists and been entrusted to the seemingly small pawns who, among other things, were trying to put an end to further suffering for millions of people.
    â€œGeneral, I see that my request makes you uneasy,” said the serene-looking man, re-arranging his round spectacles on his nose and taking a puff on his pipe.
    The other continued to stare at his interlocutor, unable to speak. The tension, which had faded after the initial embarrassment, had grown again when the American had made his last request.
    â€œI repeat that what you are asking is impossible, Mr Dulles,” answered the general finally in