"Destroyer - 008 - Summit Chase" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"The Lord will protect you," he said. If you don't take that pill, you're going to need the Lord. He waved the crucifix in front of Devlin, who looked at him, doubt on his finely-featured face, and then shrugged imperceptibly and reached out both hands, taking the crucifix, carrying it to his mouth, and kissing the feet of the statue.

"Eternal life will be yours," Remo said, and winked at Devlin, who did not know that for him, eternity would end in fifteen minutes.

"Can you find your way out, Father?" O'Brien asked.

"Yes," Remo answered.

"Then I'll take the prisoner back," O'Brien said. "Good day, Father."

"Good day. Good day, Mr. Devlin." Remo turned to the door, glancing down at the crucifix, noting with relief that the black pill had gone. Devlin was a dead man. Good.

He could not resist the challenge. At the top of the stairs, he waited until the guard downstairs had looked up into the reflecting mirror to check the staircase. Then, hitching up his robe, Remo moved into the narrow stairwell, his body skittering from side to side, his feet moving noiselessly down the steps. The guard looked, unconcerned, into the staircase mirror again, and Remo broke his rhythm, melting into a vague shadow-shape on the wall. The guard looked down again at his papers.

Remo coughed. The guard looked up, startled to see someone there.

"Oh, Father? I didn't see you come down."

"No," Remo agreed pleasantly. It took three more minutes for him to get through the penitentiary's infallible security system.

He was soaked with perspiration by the time he reentered the bright sunshine of the day, and he was in such a hurry to get distance between himself and the prison that he did not bother to notice the two men across the street, who matched their pace to his and followed him at a leisurely gait.


CHAPTER THREE

Remo pushed through the revolving door of the Palazzo Hotel, then stepped quickly across the marble lobby, toward a bank of elevators in the corner.

A bellhop leaned against a small counter, watching him. As Remo stood by the elevators, he came up alongside.

"Sorry, Father," he said briskly, "no panhandling."

Remo smiled gently. "I've come, my son, to perform last rites."

"Oh," the pimply-faced bellhop said, disappointed that his show of power had failed. "Who's dead?"

"You will be if you don't get your ugly, bugging face out of my way," Remo said. The bellhop looked at him, this time carefully, and the monk was no longer smiling gently. The face was hard and angular; the expression would have shattered crystal. The bellhop got his face out of there.

Remo rode the elevator to the eleventh floor, giving a blessing to an old woman who entered on the seventh floor and got out on the eighth. Then he was in the hallway on the eleventh floor, heading for one of the expensive suites on the left side of the corridor.

He paused outside the door, heard the usual melange of voices from inside, and with a small sigh unlocked the door and stepped in.

At the end of a small hallway was a living room. From the doorway, Remo could see the back of an aged Oriental, seated in a lotus position on the floor, his eyes riveted to a television set whose picture was pale and washed out in the bright noontime sun.

The man did not move as Remo entered the room. He did not speak.

Remo walked up behind him until he was only a foot away. He leaned over, close to the man's head, and then shouted at the top of his voice:

"Hello, Chiun."