“Let’s make this quick, Floyd. Those things seem to be getting closer.”
Auger stepped further into the building and spun around to cover the entrance, but there was no sign of anyone or anything following them. Once inside, she pressed a sleeve against her mouth and nose to screen the dust from entering her lungs. It took half a minute for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Along two main walls, and forming an aisle down the middle, were three rows of heavy equipment clearly too bulky or too damaged to be worth removing. There were lathes and drills and several dozen objects Auger didn’t recognise, but which appeared to be related to the same business of metal finishing.
“At least this looks like the right place,” she said.
“Watch the flooring here,” Floyd said. “I can see right through to the basement.”
Auger followed him, placing her feet exactly where Floyd had placed his. With each step, the floor creaked, dislodging dust and debris. A crow flew away from a window sill in a silent flurry of black. She watched it flap away into the sky, until it looked like a piece of burnt paper blowing in the wind.
“There’s nothing here,” Auger said. “No papers, no documentation. We’re wasting our time.”
“We’ve still got ten minutes. You never know what we might find.” Floyd had reached the far end of the workshop, where the rectangle of a door was just visible against the blackened plaster of the walls. “Let’s see what’s through here.”
“Careful, Floyd.” Her hand tightened on the war baby’s weapon, its child-sized grip chafing against her palm.
Floyd had already pushed open the door and stepped through. She heard him cough. “There are stairs here,” he said, “going up and down. Want to toss a coin?”
She heard the muffled collapse of another building; the howl of racing diesel engines. The demolition equipment sounded even closer.
“Let’s stay on this floor.”
“I don’t think we’ll find much above us,” Floyd speculated. “The fire damage will probably be worse the higher up we go. But something might have survived downstairs.”
“We’re not going downstairs.”
“You got that torch?” Floyd asked.
She followed him into the adjoining room. One set of concrete stairs rose up, leading to another dark, enclosed space, while a second set descended down into even more profound darkness.
Floyd took the torch from her and shone it down into the gloom.
“This is a very bad idea,” Auger said.
“That’s great coming from a woman who likes to spend her time dodging trains in tunnels.”
“That was an act of necessity. This isn’t.”
“Let’s see what we find. Just a couple of minutes, all right? I didn’t come all this way to turn around now.”
“I did.”
Floyd started descending, Auger close behind him. He played the torchlight ahead of him, the beam glancing off cracking walls. The stairs twisted through ninety degrees, then another ninety.
“There’s another door here,” Floyd said, trying the handle. “It feels as if it’s locked.”
“That’s it, then.” She sighed, disappointed and relieved in equal measure. “We have to turn around.”
“Let me see if I can force it first. Hold the torch for a moment.”
She took it from him, wondering—for a fleeting instant—if she ought to use the gun to persuade Floyd to return to ground level.
“Make it quick,” Auger said. “I’m really getting worried about those machines.”
The door budged with an iron scrape that made her wince. Floyd could not get it open fully, but soon there was a gap wide enough for them to squeeze through. The torchlight fell on his face. “You want to stay here while I check it out? I’ll be as quick as I can.”
“No,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll regret saying this, but I want to see whatever’s in there for myself.”
Fans and spears of blue-grey light rammed through gaps in the ceiling above them. It was still difficult to see anything outside the torch beam, but the room seemed to be empty.
“See anything?” Auger asked. “No? Good. Let’s go.”
“There’s a railing here,” Floyd said. “It looks as if it runs right around the room.” He directed the torch beam towards the floor beyond the railing, revealing it to be much lower than Auger had been expecting. They had emerged on to a balcony that ran around the upper level of a two-storey chamber. Picked out in random splashes of light entering through the ceiling, something huge and black and roughly spherical squatted in the middle of the floor.
“Voilà,” Floyd said. “One metal sphere, for the use of.”
“Let me see.”
She took the torch and shone it on to the sphere. Behind her, she was vaguely aware of Floyd shoving the door closed again, but ignored the distraction. The sphere was surrounded by many other pieces of metal and machinery, including a kind of frame or harness from which it appeared to be suspended.
“Is that what your dear departed sister was interested in?” Floyd asked, with heavy sarcasm, stepping up behind her again.
“Yes,” Auger said, ignoring his tone. “What I don’t understand is what it’s doing here. The three spheres were supposed to be shipped out to three different addresses.”
“I thought one of them was in Berlin.”
“It was,” Auger said. “But it still had to be moved from the factory to somewhere else in the city.”
Gently, Floyd took the torch back. “Now at least you know the things exist.”
“Hey—where are you going?”
“There’s a ladder down to the floor. I want to take a closer look at that thing.”
“We should be getting back to the taxi.” But even as she spoke, she found herself drawn to follow him down to the floor of the underground room.
Close up, the sphere—which was indeed nearly three metres wide, she judged—conveyed a sense of massive solidity even though it could just as easily have been hollow. The surface was smooth in places, irregular in others, and there was a visible crack running from one pole to the other. It hung from the cradle on a single cable, attached to a metal eye welded at the top of the sphere. Coating the upper surface of the sphere was a talcum of grey dust, like icing sugar on a pudding. In another corner of the room—hidden until they descended from the balcony—was a large upright cylinder of the kind used to hold pressurised gases, while in another was a high-sided drum-shaped enclosure about three metres across, like an armoured paddling pool. Like the sphere, both items were covered with ash and dust.
Auger touched the metal sphere. It was cold and rough beneath her fingers and, despite its apparent mass, the sphere moved slightly under the pressure from her hand.
“So what do you suppose this was?” Floyd asked.
“The letter said it was for an artistic installation,” Auger said. “Obviously, that was a cover story—the specification was too exact for that. My guess is that the company was being asked to manufacture very precise components for a bigger machine.”
“A secret weapon?”
“Something like that.”
“But what kind of secret weapon can you make out of a gigantic metal ball?”
“Three gigantic metal balls, remember,” Auger said, “separated by hundreds of kilometres. There has to be a reason for that, as well.”
“Three secret weapons, then.” He walked away from the sphere and started rummaging through the debris-covered heaps of equipment on the nearest set of workbenches, throwing things to the floor with the casual ease of a burglar. Metal crashed and glass shattered. After a moment, Auger swore under her breath and joined in the reckless process, looking for anything, no matter how insubstantial, that might offer a lead.