"Harry Harrison - SSR 01 - The Stainless Steel Rat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

Gently, this was the one dangerous spot where speed didn't count. Carefully into the end of
the board, the suitcase held against my chest to keep my center of gravity over the board. One
step at a time. A thousand-foot drop to the ground. If you don't look down you can't fall . . .
Over. Time for speed. The board behind the parapet, if they didn't see it at first my trail
would be covered for a while at least. Ten fast steps and there was the door to the stairwell. It
opened easily - and it better have - I had put enough oil on the hinges. Once inside I threw the
bolt and took a long, deep breath. I wasn't out of it yet, but the worst part where I ran the most
risk was past. Two uninterrupted minutes here and they would never find James Bolivar, alias
"Slippery Jim", diGriz.

The stairwell at the roof was a musty, badly lit cubicle that was never visited. I had checked
it carefully a week before for phono and optic bugs and it had been clear. The dust looked
undisturbed, except for my own footprints. I had to take a chance that it hadn't been bugged since
then. The calculated risk must be accepted in this business.
Good-bye James diGriz, weight ninety-eight kilos, age about forty-five, thick in the middle
and heavy in the jowls, a typical business man whose picture graces the police files of a thousand
planets - also his fingerprints. They went first. When you wear them they feel like a second skin,
a touch of solvent though and they peel off like a pair of transparent gloves.
All my clothes next - and then the girdle in reverse - that lovely paunch that straps around
my belly and holds twenty kilos of lead mixed with thermite. A quick wipe from the bottle of
bleach and my hair was its natural shade of brown, the eyebrows, too. The nose plugs and cheek
pads hurt coming out, but that only lasts a second. Then the blue-eyed contact lenses. This
process leaves me mother-naked and I always feel as if I have been born again. In a sense it is
true, I had become a new man, twenty kilos lighter, ten years younger and with a completely
different description. The large suitcase held a complete change of clothes and a pair of dark-
rimmed glasses that replaced the contact lenses. All the loose money fitted neatly into a brief
case.
When I straightened up I really felt as if ten years had been stripped from me. I was so used
to wearing that weight that I never noticed it - until it was gone. Put a real spring in my step.
The thermite would take care of all the evidence. I kicked it all into a heap and triggered



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the fuse. It caught with a roar and bottles, clothes, bag, shoes, weights, et al, burned with a
cheerful glare. The police would find a charred spot on the cement and microanalysis might get
them a few molecules off the walls, but that was all they would get. The glare of the burning
thermite threw jumping shadows around me as I walked down three flights to the one hundred twelfth
floor.
Luck was still with me, there was no one on the floor when I opened the door. One minute later
the express elevator let me and a handful of other business types out into the lobby.
Only one door was open to the street and a portable TV camera was trained on it. No attempt
was being made to stop people from going in and out of the building, most of them didn't even
notice the camera and the little group of cops around it. I walked towards it at an even pace.
Strong nerves count for a lot in this business.
For one instant I was square in the field of that cold, glass eye, then I was past. Nothing
happened so I knew I was clear. That camera must have fed directly to the main computer at police
headquarters, if my description had been close enough to the one they had on file those robots