The Prisoner (45 page)

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 the pager on the counter, Ritter rubbed his hands under the faucet and splashed tepid water on his face and head.

Two blocks away, on a side street, Nikola flicked his pager closed and handed it over to Dennis. “Hold on to it, just in case.” He peered once more at the crisp satellite images on the plasma screens flanking Dennis’s workstation in the van.

Dennis accepted the device, an eyebrow raised.

“I logged your statistics in the pager. You have access.” Then Nikola nodded once and made up his mind. “Retain the satellite link and drive over to the Paige Building’s underground parking lot.”

As Dennis busied himself to move onto the driver’s seat, Nikola reached to a side. Lodged against the van’s bodywork was an old Malacca cane, a walking stick he used at times when strolling through the park. He had too much work to do to waste any more time playing babysitter and worrying about Wilson’s repeat performances.

Ritter knew the layout and security measures of the building intimately. The alarm wouldn’t have gone off. Perhaps bits of glass had rained down below, but it would take time
before someone noticed and pinpointed his window. The shooter would be gone, but not the contract. It would mean endless hours or days spent inside a flak jacket, cringing each time he was in the open, until the shooter was caught or his aim improved. He knew who was after his guts, and the building’s security detail was formed entirely of DHS personnel. The men were professionals, and probably clean, but they obeyed orders from the top. And that might include driving him to a point where the killer couldn’t miss his car. He had to get out of the building. Alone.

The fire stairs were out of the question. As soon as he pushed the panic bar, alarms would trigger and pandemonium would follow; security personnel would flock to the exit on the ground floor and shut down the building. He would be trapped. That left the elevator—not much better. There were four security men in the garages and two staffing the room with the recording equipment on the ground floor. He paused to picture the small door opening from the recording room to the rear of the building.

On the ground floor, there would be four armed men: two by the door, one at the desk, and another by the elevator. Regardless of how much weight he tried to pull, they wouldn’t allow him out of the building without a phalanx of bodyguards. He needed to draw all available personnel away from the entrance hall and get into the recording room.

Ritter shut off the tap, reached for a thick roll of paper towels, and dried his hands and face. Then he opened the oven door, shoved the roll inside, and turned the broiler on full before marching toward the door. At the pent house lobby, he reached under a wall shelf with drawers, ripped off the weapon he had taped underneath, and slipped it inside his trouser band. Then Ritter opened the door and sprinted along the corridor for the benefit of the video cameras. His beret must be somewhere in his bedroom with his other weapon, but he wasn’t about to go looking for it.

The landing was predictably deserted, as his apartment was the only one on that level. The four floors below housed as many agency directors and their families, all ensconced in their own private fiefdoms.

The iris scan by the elevator doors took an unreasonable time to lock on, its red beam flickering on and off until Ritter’s eyes were awash in tears. Once inside the car, he swept a glossy black card in a slot to override the machine’s instructions. Instead of the parking lot programmed into the machine, he keyed in the main lobby. He doubted the sniper would have backup but, if he did, the most likely point to watch would be the underground garage and his car.

As the elevator plummeted, Ritter stole a glance at a smoked mirror covering half of the wall facing the sliding door. He choked back a curse. His face and head glistened with innumerable cuts, giving him the vague appearance of raw hamburger. He patted his trouser pocket for a handkerchief and froze when his fingers caught his now-silent pager. He pushed back an overwhelming sensation of foreboding as he returned the device to his belt holster and turned around to the slowly opening elevator doors and a sea of wide-eyed faces. To try wiping his face now would only make things worse. Ritter straightened, tried a painful smile, and stepped forward, the men parting as if to present honors or make him run a gauntlet.

Lionel Beckerman, the security chief, frowned. “What the—”

“A sniper shot out my bedroom window,” Ritter muttered, wringing his hands to bolster his performance. “I saw ropes, and at least two men, perhaps more.” The security man exchanged a quick glance with his colleagues when Ritter stepped over to him. “You have to do something.”

Something flashed across the dark irises of the security man: contempt or understanding, Ritter couldn’t be sure, but his powerful shoulders relaxed. Then the fire alarm tripped.

Beckerman drew his weapon as the security detail sprang alive. “You two, grab an elevator to the top floor.” He turned to a giant by his side. “We’ll take the stairs.” Then he reached to his belt for a flat pad and tapped in a sequence. Light spilling from the outdoor floodlights dimmed when a series of sharp snaps sounded by the entrance doors and steel shutters dropped, effectively sealing the building. “You still carry your locator?”

Ritter lowered the neck of his pullover and showed Beckerman the capsule.

He nodded. “Stay here.”

Here we go
. “Could I go into the security room?” Ritter wrung his hands some more for effect.

Beckerman made a feeble attempt to hide a sneer, but it proved too much for him. He nodded and dashed toward the stairs, speaking into the tiny microphone of his earpiece.

Ritter waited until the emergency doors leading to the fire stairs had closed before marching to a wooden door behind the reception desk and standing before it as the overhead camera moved and panned.

The agent who opened the door was in his early twenties and looked sheepish, but Ritter knew it had nothing to do with respect. Instead, it was embarrassment at seeing the mighty security director of the FBH running scared. As Ritter entered a room crammed with screens and recording equipment, his nose twitched at the biting smell; the men had been smoking a joint. In a secure building, that could mean dismissal or, at least, a stiff disciplinary warning.

“Take a seat, sir. You’ll be safe here.”

Ritter eyed the speaker over the youngster’s shoulder—a saturnine man in shirtsleeves toggling a stick to follow two shapes sprinting up the stairs—and, beyond him on the far wall, a steel emergency door. “Thank you.” Then he turned to the agent who had ushered him in. “What’s your name?”

“Sean, sir. Sean Clancy.”

The other agent’s eyes didn’t shift from the screen. Ritter drew his gun, rammed it in the young agent’s belly, reached over, and yanked the weapon from his shoulder holster. In a swift movement he released the clip, threw the pistol into a corner, and shoved the startled man aside. Then he turned to the seated agent. “Don’t do anything silly. We’re on the same side, remember?”

The security officer’s hand hovered in midair as Ritter’s weapon dug into his beefy neck. “Your name?”

“Bob—Robert Fowler.”

After slapping his hand aside, Ritter removed Bob’s
weapon, repeated the clip-releasing routine, and sent the gun clacking over the linoleum floor to join the other. Then he nodded to the door on the far wall. “The card.”

Bob didn’t move.

“You’re doing your duty, and I’m proud. But you’re in a bind. I can make your pension vanish in an instant, just by asking.” He lessened the gun’s pressure and leaned over, his lips almost touching Bob’s ear. “On the other hand, I never forget a favor. Someone is gunning for me and I’m not about to stay here or drive around like a sitting duck. Open the fucking door and forget about Beckerman.” He nodded to the screen. “He’ll be mad, but I’ll look after you.”

Bob took a deep breath. “Florida?”

Ritter nodded.

“The boy too?”

“Deal.”

“In my top pocket.”

Ritter fished the plastic between two fingers and flicked it at the young man on the other side of the room. “Open it.”

When he could see a patch of synthetic grass out the open doorway, Ritter straightened and turned to Bob. “Now walk over to the other side and stay there.”

“Take care, boss.”

Ritter pocketed his weapon and gave Bob’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before bolting for the door and sprinting toward New York Avenue, a smile tugging at the edges of his lips. Bob wasn’t overly concerned for his safety, but a posting to sunny places was riding on Ritter’s capacity to stay away from a sniper’s sights.

20:54

Instead of waiting for the lights to change, Ritter descended the steps to the underpass, crossed over, and exited at Montana Avenue, taking the steps two at a time rather than the escalator. He glanced around, reached to his neck, and removed the locator. Once on the other side of the six-lane thoroughfare, by now almost empty of traffic, he walked at a brisk pace past Mt. Olivet Cemetery, careful to mingle with a group of young people moving in the same direction toward a theater. At a narrow alley cutting toward Bladensburg Road, he squeezed past people already maneuvering supermarket carts brimming with the detritus of their lives and vying for the best spots to spend the night.

He dropped his locator into one of the carts. Then he spotted a small puddle of water on the upturned lid of a garbage bin. He dipped his handkerchief and ran it several times over his face and head. He was more afraid of alerting a policeman with his bleeding face than of whatever infection he might contract from the water.

He could have gone in the opposite direction, to the Rhode Island Avenue–Brentwood Metro station, and boarded an underground train to get out of the area as quickly as possible, but the system was rife with surveillance cameras, on both the trains and the platforms. If whoever was after him accessed the right feeds, he could be hemmed inside the underground network—not a pleasant proposition. When he was almost at the other end of the alley—the sporadic traffic of Bladensburg Road visible between garbage bins lining the passage—his pager warbled. Ritter stopped and
squeezed between two large steel containers brimming with fast-food remains. His lungs filled with the stench of congealed fat.