Ghost War by Michael A. Stackpole

Author:Michael A. Stackpole [Stackpole, Michael A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-04-12T23:04:25+00:00

Coiffed and accoutered, I returned to the Grand Germayne and my room. A lot of the spycraft I’d been taught focused on noticing the little things, as they might give one an edge in any situation. I had, in fact, seen two people in the lobby I thought might be house detectives, or local police, but both were plainclothed and didn’t pay any attention to me. I’d also been trained to do something like close my door on a thread, which would invariably fall out when someone opened my door, thereby warning me someone had been through the room.

This is good in theory, save for three things. In general, household staff will be in and out of hotel rooms on a nearly random basis, whether delivering things or lifting things. They won’t look for, notice or replace an errant thread. Spies, on the other hand, will look for those things and will make sure they’re back in place so there will be no warning at all.

The third thing was what confronted me. My door was standing wide open. There wasn’t a housekeeping cart in sight, which did send up little alarm signals for me. It seemed pretty obvious that whoever had opened my room had no desire to hide this fact, which meant this visit was benign or the individual was beyond being disciplined.

In this case, it was both.

As I came through the door and the narrow hallway with the bathroom to the left, the first I saw of him was his legs. They were long and thick, which was in keeping with the rest of him. I’d seen hams smaller than his upper arms. He rose from the chair and it groaned in relief. He towered over me by a good eighteen centimeters and likely was carrying twice my weight. Looking at him I wondered if he weren’t a Clan Elemental, bred for size and strength, shucked out of his powered armor.

His voice came deep and powerful, despite the long trip the words had to make to escape his chest. “Drop the packages, turn around, hands against the wall. You’ve done this before.”

I tossed the bags onto the bed and, apparently, this was not exactly in keeping with his instructions, or I wasn’t complying with the rest of them fast enough. He reached me very quickly, grabbed me up under the armpits, spun me around like a child, then gave me a little toss against the wall. I’d have rebounded from it and landed on the bed, but a big hand in the middle of my back jammed me against the wallpaper which, this close up, appeared to have weathered long years of service rather well.

He patted me down very professionally, checking all those places where a holdout blaster or a titanium throwing dart might be hidden. Once he’d finished, his left hand snaked up and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and pitched me backward onto the bed. My landing scattered bags.

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