CHAPTER TWO

His name was Remo and he was taking the elevator up from beneath. He smelled the heavy buildup of engine fumes embedded in the caked grease, and felt long cables tremble ever so slightly when the elevator came to a floor and that fifteen-story ripple started with a halt of the elevator and shimmied down to the basement and then back up past the fifteenth floor to the penthouse, five stories overhead.

He had a good forearm hold on a bolt that he kept just above his lean frame. People who held onto things for their lives usually tired quickly, precisely because they held on for their lives. Fear gave speed and power to the muscles, not endurance.

If one wanted to hold onto something, one became a solid part of it, extended himself out through the extruding bolt, so that the grip did not strangle but extended from what it was joined to. As he had been taught, he let the hand do the attaching lightly and forgot about it. So that when the elevator started again, his body swayed easily from the hand that was the pivot joint and up he went.

It was his right hand and he could hear people walking just above his right ear.

He had been there since early morning and when the elevator stopped at the penthouse floor, he knew he would not be there much longer. At the penthouse floor, different things happened. Remo heard locks snap, twenty stories down, twenty locks, each for an elevator door. He had been told about this. He heard the grunt of muscled men who forced themselves up through strain. They checked the top of the elevator. He had been told about that also. The bodyguards always checked the roof of the elevator because it was known men could hide there.

The roof was sealed with reinforced steel plating and so was the floor. This prevented anyone from burrowing down or up into the elevator.