Now he came to the safe. They must have lifted it to this floor with a crane before the windows were installed, he thought. He checked every square inch of the exterior to see if the safe was wired. No wires.
Tommy Carmellini tried the handle.
No.
Turned the circular combination dial ever so carefully to the right, maintaining pressure on the handle. If the safe had been closed hastily, all the tumblers might not have gone home. He took his time.
No. The safe was locked.
He checked his watch. Now 1:47.
The lights would come on soon, powered by the emergency generator.
He opened the duffel bag and began extracting items. The first item he removed was a telescoping rod which he extended and positioned over the safe’s combination dial; he secured it there with clamps placed on each side of the safe. Working quickly, with no lost motion, he clamped a small electric motor to the rod, then adjusted the jaws protruding from the motor so that they grasped the dial of the safe.
Other sensors were placed on the top, bottom, left, and right sides of the safe door. These sensors were held in place by magnets.
Wires led from the sensors and electric motor to a small computer, which he now took from the bag and turned on. There was one lead remaining, which he connected to a twelve-volt battery which was also in the bag.
As he waited for the computer to boot up he checked all the leads one more time. Everything okay.
Tommy Carmellini pursed his lips, as if he were whistling.
This contraption was of his own design, and with it he could open any of the older-style mechanical safes, if he were given enough time. An electrical current introduced into the door of the safe created a measurable magnetic field. The rotation of the tumblers inside the lock caused fluctuations in the field, fluctuations that were displayed on the computer screen. Finally, the computer measured the amount of electric current necessary to turn the dial of the lock; an exquisitely sensitive measurement. Using both these factors, the computer could determine the combination that would open the safe.
Sitting cross-legged in front of the safe with the computer on his lap, Carmellini tugged the latex gloves he was wearing tighter onto his hands, then manually zeroed the dial of the lock. Now he started the computer program.
The dial rotated slowly, silently, driven by the electric motor clamped to the rod. After a complete turn the dial stopped at 32. The number appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. After a short pause, the dial turned to the left, counterclockwise, as Carmellini grinned happily.
In his mind’s eye he could visualize the lock plates rotating, the tumblers moving ….
The line on the screen that tracked the magnetic field twitched unexpectedly. Carmellini frowned. He hadn’t moved, the building was quiet.
Another squiggle, so insignificant he almost missed it. And another.
Someone was coming. Someone was walking softly down the hall; the sensors were picking up the shock waves of their footfalls as the waves spread out through the structure of the building.
Careful to make no noise at all, Tommy Carmellini set the computer on the duffel bag, stood up and moved over behind the door. As he did he drew the Ruger from its holster under his shirt and thumbed off the safety, then turned off the light attached to his headband. Now he transferred the pistol to his left hand. With his right he reached into a hip pocket and extracted a sap, a flexible length of rubber with the business end weighted with lead.
The darkness appeared total as his eyes adjusted. Gradually a bit of glare from headlights faintly illuminated the room.
Carmellini had good ears, and he couldn’t hear the footfalls. He could hear the tiniest whine, however, that the electric motor made as it turned the dial of the lock, the distant honking of some vehicle blocks away, and faintly, ever so faintly, the wail of a fire or police siren.
Tommy Carmellini stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stood absolutely frozen as the knob on the door slowly turned, then the door began to open.
William Henry Chance walked slowly back and forth in front of the glass doors that marked the main entrance to the Ministry. The duty officer and his two men were in the basement, doing God knows what to the emergency generator. Chance wondered how long it had been since the generator had been fueled, oiled, checked carefully, and started.
The second hand on his watch seemed frozen. He checked his watch, walked, watched cars and trucks pass by, adjusted his duty belt and pistol, reset the cap on his head, strolled some more, promised himself he wouldn’t look at the luminous hands on his watch, finally peeked anyway. A minute. One lousy minute had passed.
Someone was coming along the sidewalk … a uniformed guard carrying an AK-47 at high port. He must be stationed at one of the side or rear entrances. The man stopped, slightly startled, when he saw Chance’s figure standing in the door. Now he peered closer. And saluted.
“Sir, I am looking for the duty officer.”
“He is in the basement, starting the emergency generator. Is there someone else at your post?”
“Uh, yessir. I was coming around to check if—”
“I think you should stay at your post. The emergency power for the building will come on in a few minutes, then you can make your request of the duty officer.”
“Yes, sir. But the last time we started that thing, all the alarms went off, every one of them. The duty officer always wanted the alarms off before he turned the power back on.”
“I am sure he will take care of that. He knows the system.”
“Yessir.”
“And when was the emergency generator last used, anyway?”
“The big storm last year, sir. Eight or nine months ago, I think.”
“Go back to your post”
“Yes, sir.” The man saluted, turned, and marched down the sidewalk. Chance could hear his footsteps for several seconds after he disappeared into the gloom.
The guy accepted him as Cuban, as had Lieutenant Gómez and his men. If they only knew the hundreds of hours of language classes that Chance had endured to learn the accent, to get it exactly right!
All in anticipation of a moment that might never come. Yet the orders did arrive, and here he was, walking around in the foyer of secret police headquarters in Havana spouting Cuban Spanish like José Martí.
He went to the guard’s station, used his flashlight to examine the equipment there. The video monitors were of course blank, everything off, but where was the tape? If the power came on while he was there he didn’t want to give Alejo Vargas a souvenir videotape of the men who cracked his safe.
Ah, here was the videotape machine, in this cabinet. He pushed the eject button, futilely. Without power the machine would not eject the tape that it contained. He used the Ruger — four shots into the heads of the machine.
The brass kicked out on the floor. He picked them up, pocketed them.
More pacing. Each minute was an agony of waiting.
When the power was restored to the building, he had expected the alarms to go off in Vargas’s office, and to have to cover Carmellini as he made his exit. By whatever means necessary, he intended to be the only man at the main entrance when Carmellini emerged. Yet if alarms were a normal occurrence, perhaps violence would not be necessary.
The silenced Ruger rode inside his shirt under his left armpit. The pistol was an assassin’s weapon, shot a .22 Long Rifle hollow-point bullet that would do minimal damage unless fired into someone’s brain at point-blank range. Wounds in the limbs or body would be painful but not immediately incapacitating. The Ruger’s only virtue was the silencer that dramatically muffled the report, reduced it from an ear-splitting crack to a soft, wet pop that was inaudible beyond a few feet.