"Destroyer 036 - Power Play.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

He had been the first of three bodyguards hired by Theodosia.
Behind the door the colonel guarded and patrolling the ten feet of distance from the hall door to Pruiss's room was a man who had been the world's middleweight karate champion. He could drive his foot through a plaster wall. His hands were gnarled and hard enough to drive nails. He was the second bodyguard.
The third was a former Olympic champion in small arms fire, a consultant in weaponry to the Los Angeles and New York police departments.
All the windows of Wesley Pruiss's room had been blocked off with steel plates, except for one that caught the morning sun. The window opened onto a fire escape and through it Pruiss was able to see the country club building that had been his home and the Furlong County golf course. On the fire escape of Pruiss's room, the small arms expert watched the roof above, the ground below and the metal steps leading up the fire escape. He carried a .357 Magnum and a .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol.
As an extra precaution, the window behind him had been wired to administer a killing shock to anyone who tried to open it without the power being turned off from inside the room.
Each man was being paid two thousand dollars a week. Theodosia felt secure. No one was just going to walk into Wesley Pruiss's room and harm him. Not with these security precautions.
She stopped outside the clubhouse that was now the Pruiss mansion and picked some pink and red flowers. Her chauffeur let her off at the one working door to the hospital's east wing.
The policeman at the door recognized her, but according to instructions, he stayed behind the locked door until she repeated the password: "Gross is beautiful."
Only then did he let her into the downstairs hallway, quickly closing the door behind her. He checked her purse for weapons and then inspected the bunch of flowers. Only when he was satisfied that everything was in order, did he say, "Morning, Miss Theodosia."
"Morning. Everything quiet?"
"Yes, Ma'am."
She walked up the three double flights of stairs to the fourth floor. As she turned the corner of the steps near the top, she saw the mercenary colonel, wearing khaki battle gear, pointing a submachine gun at her.
"Morning, mum," he said in a crisp British accent.
He too checked her purse and flowers, then turned and knocked four times on the door leading to the corridor.
Theodosia smiled as she watched her professionals go through their professional extra-safe procedures.
She heard the door unlock from the inside. The colonel counted to six before opening it.
"If it opens right away," he explained to her, "the man inside will attack."
He pulled the door open and Theodosia went inside. The karate expert, wearing a loose-fitting gi and barefooted, was in an attack stance that relaxed only when he recognized Theodosia.
He too checked purse and flowers.
She smiled again. She pushed through the swinging door into Wesley Pruiss's room. The small arms expert was on the fire escape, looking down and up and around in a never-ending cycle of vigilance.
Wesley Pruiss was still asleep when she entered the room and Theodosia smiled when she saw the gentle, almost boyish look on his placid face. And then her eyes widened in shock.
There was a yellow tag on the front of Pruiss's pajamas. It had writing on it. She moved quickly to the side of his bed and looked down at the tag. It was the inside of a matchbook from which the striker had been torn. The note had been written with a black felt-tipped marker that lay alongside Pruiss's bed with his notepad.
The note read: "Your bodyguards stink." And there was a telephone number after it.
The note had been clipped to the lapel of Pruiss's pajamas with a safety pin and when she removed it, Pruiss woke up and saw her.
She pushed the yellow cardboard into her purse.
"Morning, love," Pruiss said.
She bent over to kiss him, then handed him the flowers. Without even a glance, he dropped them on the table next to his bed.
"I'm sorry I woke you up," she said.
"All right," he said. His voice was deep with despondency. "What else have I got to do but sleep?"
"Don't say that, Wesley. You're going to be as good as new."
"Yeah. As good as a new cripple can be," he said bitterly.
He turned away. When he looked back, he saw her still smiling at him, very bravely. As a reward, he smiled himself.
"Did you sleep well?" she asked.
"Why not? With all those guards you've got around here, who could wake me up?"
"No one came in to bother you?"
"No," Pruiss said. "I just wish somebody had. I wish that guy with the knife had come back and finished the job."
"I won't hear that, Wesley," said Theodosia, her face flushed with anger. "You're an important man. You're going to be even more important. The world can't afford the loss of a man like you."
"It's lost half of me already. The leg half. Don't kid me, Theodosia. I know hopeless when I see hopeless. So do the doctors. Spinal injury. Cripple."
"What do those doctors know?" she asked. "We'll get more doctors. Better doctors."
He thought about that for a moment, looking out the window at the bright sky.
"Maybe, you're right," he said. "You know, there are times when I feel that there's some life in my legs... like I could almost move them. Not much and not often. But once in a while."
He looked at Theodosia for some expression. He caught a brief flash of sorrow on her face that she turned into a smile as she said, "See. You never can tell." But her face told him a different story. It was hopeless and she knew it. He was a cripple, doomed to be a cripple for the rest of his life.
He closed his eyes and said nothing more. He opened his mouth to take the pain pills she gave him and he had nothing to say when she began arranging for an ambulance to take him from the hospital back to the country club where his master bedroom had been converted into a hospital room. But it felt good, even if he wouldn't admit it to her, to be out of the hospital and back to his home, even if it was a new home and one he had not yet had a chance to get used to.
When she went out in the early afternoon, Theodosia left the three bodyguards in his bedroom with orders to leave under no circumstances.
Before leaving the building, she fished the piece of yellow cardboard from her purse and telephoned the number on it.
Remo was lying on the bed in Room 15 of the Furlong Budget Value Dollar Motel when Theodosia rapped firmly on the door.
When he opened it he looked her up and down and asked, "Who are you? Not that it really matters all that much."
"You're the one who left the note?" Theodosia asked.
"Right. That's right," Remo said. "I saw you on television. Ambrosia or something."
"Theodosia."