I reached the front entrance and saw one of the four blanked-out trucks I’d spotted earlier was now in front of the main doors, with at least a dozen fully armed soldiers in the back. The guards I’d seen earlier were watching them, but they looked nervous and didn’t seem as if they wanted to tell them to go park somewhere else.
I veered off and walked round to a yard at the rear of the building, where there was a loading bay with a closed roller shutter and a clutch of rubbish skips. The sound of splashing was echoing around the yard, and I looked up to see a stream of water spewing from a broken pipe on the fourth floor.
A uniformed guard with an AK-74 slung across his chest stepped out from beneath a tree and told me to get lost, that the building was off-limits. He was big and unshaven and I guessed he’d been here all night and was feeling hostile.
‘I’m looking for work,’ I told him. ‘This is a hotel. I’ve worked in lots of hotels.’
‘Big deal.’ He nodded back towards the front of the building and the road beyond. ‘Leave, now.’
Just then a picket gate to one side of the loading bay clanged open and a chubby man in a creased shirt and tie emerged and stood staring up at the overflow, which was gradually turning his loading bay into a swimming pool. He swore loudly and glared at the guard as if it were his fault. Which, as it turned out, by association, it was.
‘How can I operate when my staff can’t get to work?’ he yelled in frustration. I guessed he was the manager and was clearly too mad to be intimidated by the sight of the gun, and happy to vent his anger on the only military representative he could see close by. ‘I need my maintenance engineer here right now.’
‘Not my decision,’ the soldier replied. ‘Ring those in charge.’
He might as well have told him to ring someone who cared. The manager looked ready to have a fit. ‘Huh? Who do I ring, smart-arse? You think there’s a directory I can pick up and find out who’s responsible for stopping public transport? Is there a person I can shout at for bringing this entire city to a standstill?’ He waved a hand which told the soldier what he thought of the whole shooting match and turned to go back inside.
‘I could fix it,’ I said.
He turned back. ‘Who the hell are you?’
The soldier decided to help calm the situation and get the manager off his back. ‘He’s a hotel worker,’ he said, ‘looking for work.’
The manager hurried towards us and peered at me, checking my clothing and making an instant assessment. ‘Is that so? What sort of work? Don’t say waiter — I’ve got waiters coming out of my arse.’
‘Maintenance, electrical, repairs — whatever,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any tools, though. I wasn’t allowed to bring them with me.’
‘Of course you weren’t; with all the military might standing around here, think of the damage you could do with a screwdriver and a wrench!’ His angry sarcasm was wasted on the guard, who merely shrugged and picked at his teeth. ‘We’ve got tools. Plenty of tools.’ He looked at the guard. ‘I’m allowing him in. You OK with that or do I have to ring Moscow and speak to the judo player?’
If the guard minded the reference to Putin, he didn’t let on. ‘Do whatever you want. I’m off duty shortly, anyway. Not my problem.’
The manager grabbed my arm. ‘Have you eaten this morning? I bet you haven’t. You fix that damned overflow and I’ll send you to the kitchen and you can have a meal. At least we still have some food. How’s that? Then we’ll see what we can do about keeping you on for a few days to sort out some other problems.’ He hustled away through the side door, beckoning me after him and slamming the door behind us.
I was in.
FOURTEEN
The manager’s name was Yuriy and if he didn’t slow down he was heading for a seizure. He didn’t ask to see any papers but marched me down a flight of concrete stairs to the basement where there was the usual mishmash of equipment, stores and furniture awaiting repair. It smelled of damp and the drip-drip of water was echoing along the corridor.
‘That bloody pipe’s causing me serious problems,’ he muttered, gesturing at a growing pool of water on the floor. It looked fresh, without any covering of dust, and I guessed it was finding its way through the fabric of the building from the outside. ‘You need to stop it quickly. Can you do that?’
‘Of course. I’ll turn off the water supply and fix the pipe. It shouldn’t take long. Where are the stopcocks?’
He waved me towards the far end of the corridor. ‘I believe the controls are all down there. But you can’t turn them all off.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it would screw up the heating. There are important people staying here.’ He made rabbits’ ears at the word ‘important’ and pulled a face to show his disgust. ‘They’ll have my balls if they can’t have their little luxuries. Try and find a way round it, can you? Isolate that damned water pipe.’ He checked his watch. ‘Look, I’ll have to leave you to it. Just do what you can. The tools are in a room down the end.’
I watched him go and checked for security cameras. There were none that I could see, but I made a show of grabbing a toolbox from the workshop just in case and made my way up the back stairs towards the fourth floor where I’d seen the broken pipe.
The layout on each floor was the standard design of a hoteclass="underline" stairs and elevator, lobby and fire doors leading to a corridor running the length of the building with rooms on either side, with emergency stairs down the back. I checked each level through the glass panel in the doors but couldn’t see anyone. In spite of the manager’s comment about VIPs staying here, the place looked and felt deserted. I chanced a stroll down the corridor on the second floor and found no sign of occupation save for a couple of locked doors near the elevators.
It was on the third floor where things were slightly different.
I peered through the panel and saw an armed guard on the other side, standing about five doors down. Another guard was at the far end of the corridor, blocking entry from the other stairs and the elevator. Both men looked bored but wide awake.
I ducked back and went up another flight. No guard and an empty feeling in the air. Now I knew where Travis was being held.
I got on with finding the broken pipe while mulling over tactics in my head. I was in luck; it was located in a washroom at the end of the building, and I tracked it back to a stopcock in an inspection panel and turned it off. In spite of what I’d told Yuriy, I had a barely rudimentary knowledge of water systems, and had no idea if the stopcock would interfere with the rest of the building’s water supply or not. If it did, I had only a short time to locate Travis and get him moving before Yuriy and a bunch of angry VIPs came looking for my scalp.
I went down to the third floor and pushed through the door to the corridor. It got an instantaneous reaction from the nearest guard, who swivelled like he was on ball bearings and pointed his rifle at me.
‘No entry!’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m the maintenance engineer,’ I told him, and made a show of putting down the toolbox and raising my hands. Over his shoulder I saw the other guard unslinging his rifle and walking towards us. ‘There’s a bad leak on the floor above. I need to turn off all the taps on this floor so I can isolate it.’
‘There’s nobody on this floor,’ he said, the gun dipping away slightly. ‘Try the other levels.’
‘I’ve already done that. Someone must have left a tap or shower running up here,’ I insisted. ‘I can tell by the flow of water. I’ll have to check the rooms — it won’t take a minute.’
The other guard had opened his mouth to add his two cents’ worth when he stopped and turned his head. He made a gesture for us to stop talking. The hum of an elevator was coming from the far end of the corridor.