a policeman!” Barkov announced as he took out his badge and showed it to the camera in the ceiling. “You have no right to request my weapon!”
A few seconds later, the doors opened. The female voice announced, “The armed passenger, you have thirty seconds to leave the elevator or to deposit the weapon. Otherwise, the doors will be blocked until guards and an attorney arrive.”
The text version of the same statement appeared on the wall. Then bright red digits started to flash there. 30, 29, 28… Each digit was accompanied by a loud beep.
“Damn!” Barkov mumbled.
He had neither the authority nor the desire to give his gun away for storage to other people, let alone to put it into a box in an elevator. But meeting Lorenzetti was absolutely essential. He was the only one Andrew had heard of who could get hold of top-secret information.
Pulling the gun out of the holster, Barkov put it into the box. The countdown stopped at once and the box slid into the wall.
“Thank you for cooperation,” the female voice became kindly. “Welcome, dear guests!”
The doors closed and the elevator started. Its movement was so smooth that it was not clear if they were going up or down.
Emily neared Andrew and whispered in his ear, “I’ve heard the signal supplied to the box for it to open and the signal to start the elevator!”
Boasting again. What a strange mania!
“Congratulations,” Barkov replied in low voice. “But I know about your abilities. I don’t need you to remind of them constantly.”
“You don’t understand. I can send the same signal to open the box. I can transmit signals as well as read them. You can take the gun, and I’ll re-start the elevator!”
It was an interesting idea. Andrew didn’t know who would meet their “dear guests’ at the top or what the reception might be. It could happen that the weapon might prove useful. However, if Andrew took the gun again, Lorenzetti might panic and escape. It was possible that the hacker had provided for some other safeguards for himself besides the elevator blockade.
“No. Don’t do anything.”
“Are you sure?”
Barkov nodded. His senses would alert him if danger awaited them. Then again, what had the concierge said about the elevator? “It is light, armored, safe.” Safe for who? Maybe it could block out his sense of danger too.
About ten seconds passed. The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Andrew saw a multi-colored flowerbed lit with the sun’s rays and surrounded with precision cut green bushes. Have they sent us down instead of up?
Leaving the elevator, he saw that they were in the penthouse. Sunshine filtered through the windows occupying all the space from the floor to the ceiling and through the glass roof. Around the bed on the marble floor there were some sofas and chairs made of light bamboo. The opposite wall was decorated with flowers in bamboo pots. Tightly closed compartment doors also trimmed with bamboo were located in the wall opposite the elevator. On each side there were two trolleys with trays filled with fruit and berries – apples, pears, peaches, strawberry and grapes.
“Let’s go back downstairs!” Emily exclaimed, her voice tight, forced.
Barkov looked back. She huddled in a corner of the elevator.
“Why?”
“I don’t feel well. This room is stuffed with electronics!”
Andrew grinned. “Electronics? It looks like a garden to me? It’s nice!”
The girl didn’t answer. She turned her gaze past Andrew.
Turning around, he saw a middle-aged woman. She was a short stout blonde with blue eyes and pink round cheeks, dressed in a multilayered green dress reaching down to her ankles, and wearing white moccasins. She had just entered through sliding bamboo doors, behind which Andrew could see what appeared to be an empty room; she went to the visitors quickly. There was radiant smile on her face. The doors closed automatically behind her.
“Welcome! I’m Rosalinda. You must be lieutenant Andrew Barkov. What’s your lady’s name?”
“Emi…,” Andrew almost blurted out the real girl’s name. “Her name’s Katherine.”
“Katherine, dear, why are you standing in the elevator? Come in, please, we don’t have savage dogs here!”
Saying that, Rosalinda gave a ringing laugh.
Barkov looked at Emily. She stayed in the elevator looking at the blonde cautiously.
“I’ve got it!” Rosalinda exclaimed. “Are you allergic to primroses? Or narcissuses? Poor girl! My cousin has the same problem. It’s okay, we’ll fix it.”
The woman took a mini remote control out of the folds of her dress and directed it at the flowerbed. The ground with flowers and bushes lowered and disappeared.
“What to replace them with?” the plump and ever smiling assistant continued. “We don’t want to see this hole in the floor, do we? A fountain will fit best, right?”
She pushed a button. It was strange that she used buttons instead of mind commands.
Soon instead of the flower bed there was a structure in the form of several bowls of successively decreasing sizes, fastened to a thin rod. The bowls resembled water lilies. A stream of water spurted from the top, the smallest one. Falling back, it soon overflowed and started filling the next bowl. Then the next.
Andrew turned toward Emily, speaking quietly. “Yes, there are electronics. But I don’t sense any danger.”
She sighed and got out of the elevator.
Rosalinda sat down on the left part of the nearest sofa. “Take a seat.”
Unlike Emily, Barkov felt no danger. Besides, Rosalinda seemed to be a nice, kind and absolutely harmless woman.
Emily sat down on the other part of the sofa and Andrew in the middle of it.
“I enjoy watching flowing water. And you?” Rosalinda said, then got down to business without waiting for an answer. “So, you want to see my boss. May I ask you why?”
“I… We would like to talk to him about it in person,” Barkov answered.
Rosalinda giggled. “You can’t. He’s chewing food now. He doesn’t talk when he chews. Besides, I’m his personal secretary and decide myself whether to admit strangers to him. If they seem to be dangerous, I show them the door.”
Barkov smiled. “Aren’t you afraid of dangerous people yourself?”
“A little bit. But I will always have time to shout ‘Danger!’.”
She really shouted the last word. At the same moment Andrew felt burning all over his head as if it burst into flame. He jumped up, grabbed his hands to his head trying to extinguish the invisible flame.
Emily
