The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [139]
At the elevator bank, Ritter stepped out of the car and gave cursory nods to his assistant and the driver before entering the waiting elevator. As the doors closed, he noted the delighted looks passing between his retinue. Since he’d not given them any special instructions, they were free to go home for the night.
In the loneliness of the elevator, Genia’s words wouldn’t leave his mind. She was going all the way along a road with no possibility of turning back. He felt apprehension, elation, and no little curiosity. Who was backing her? Obviously, it was someone with clout. And clout meant someone high in the government.
After dropping his briefcase on a sofa, Ritter approached the kitchen counter, opened a bottle of scotch, and poured a finger of it into a tumbler. He downed it in one gulp and repeated the procedure before heading for the stairs, his skin tingling at the prospect of a long shower. The liquor sloshed in the glass as Ritter climbed the steps. He couldn’t recall when he’d taken to splitting his homecoming drink into two, but it wouldn’t feel natural anymore if he didn’t. Some habits grew ingrained, like woodworm, and once settled, they were almost impossible to excise without killing the host.
As he padded into his suite, the lights grew brighter and the strains of Grieg’s “Anitra’s Dance” rose, to complete the homecoming Ritter had programmed into the system years before. He shrugged off the holster with his regulation weapon and laid it at the foot of the bed. Then his pager buzzed.
Ritter stopped, exchanged the hand holding the tumbler, and reached to his belt, as the curtains on the curved panorama window overlooking the cityscape opened noiselessly, having detected his nearness.
He frowned at the string of zeros flashing on the device’s tiny screen, a number not included on his list and one he’d never seen before. Then a message scrolled in flashing bold capitals: MOVE AWAY FROM THE WINDOW. The air thickened.
Another second ticked before Ritter, as if trying to swim through molasses, released his grip on the tumbler and dove onto the bed just as the curved plate glass imploded with a deafening roar. Over the next two or three seconds, Ritter experienced the weird sensation of inhabiting an alien body with its own agenda. After blinking when tiny glass shards peppered his face, his body rolled away from the middle of the bed, with Ritter a simple observer being taken for a ride. Then he dropped over the far edge as the bedcovers swelled and burst into a shower of snowlike mattress fragments.
“Lights off,” he yelled. A stupid command, because the sniper would probably have infrared sights and, besides, the system wouldn’t understand. When Ritter programmed the house lights, he’d kept his prompts to single words, like Television or Sleep. In a rare display of wishful thinking, he’d also logged Fun, but he hadn’t used that one in a long time.
On all fours, covered by the bulk of the bed, he scuttled to the door and dove out of the line of fire headlong into the corridor as the door frame also exploded, scant inches over where his head had been a split second before. Then his body sagged, as if its hayride driver had abandoned the vehicle. One hand on the banister and the other still clutching his pager, Ritter barreled down the stairs. On the lower floor, Ritter caromed off the newel post and slammed to a stop against the sanctity of a side wall, his breath coming in ragged gasps; the contraption in his fist purred again. NICE. Ritter swore. His head felt wet. Eyeing the blood-smeared palm he’d just swiped over the top of his head and face, he swore again, breathed deep once, twice, and neared the kitchen sink. After dropping