The other upstairs room was the same size. It was also vacant. There was no furniture here, either, but one item standing in the far corner told me what the place was used for. It was a chemical toilet. It looked ridiculous on its own in such a wide, empty space, but I don’t suppose the guys from the Cadillac would mind too much. I’d seen plenty of temporary billets with much more spartan facilities over the years.
The derelict theme continued downstairs. I checked all eight rooms carefully, one at a time, and there was no sign of any of them having been used recently. Not by humans, anyway. Rodents and spiders were a different story. I avoided the worst of the webs and the droppings and finished my sweep at the far end of the left-hand corridor, next to the metal doors. Which told me that if there was anything to find, it had to be on the other side. I tested the handle. It was locked, so I lifted the brick and brought it down just hard enough to break the mechanism. Even with a minimum of force the sound still echoed alarmingly, so I crouched down low, grabbed the handle and eased the door open four inches. Thirty seconds passed without any unwelcome attention. I waited another thirty, then opened the door wider and darted through to the other side.
The space I entered stank of oil and burned carbon, and was much colder and brighter than I’d expected. The polluted air was being stirred up by giant fans and the whole place was flooded with harsh, artificial light. It was coming from a forest of heavy-duty lanterns. They were hanging on chains from metal beams near the high, corrugated ceiling. There were four rows of maybe twenty-five. All of them were switched on, and their efficiency was boosted by polished steel reflectors. Their main purpose would be to illuminate the dozens of industrial machines that were bolted in place all across the floor. I could see hydraulic presses. Radial drills. Bench grinders. All sorts of equipment I’d noticed in the machine shops on battleships, and plenty of other kinds I didn’t recognize. The larger machines seemed to be concentrated at the far side, near a concrete loading dock. I moved across to take a closer look and spotted the entrance to a narrow office at the back of the raised area. I also saw the front fender of a vehicle, half concealed behind a turret lathe. It was another Cadillac, dark blue, just like the one I’d seen leave through the corresponding roll-up door. Wooden crates were lined up at the edge of the platform behind it. They were five-foot cubes, and there were five of them. At first I thought they were identical.
Then I saw one of them move.
TEN
Don’t mock the afflicted, my parents always used to say.
That’s kind advice. I’ve always tried my best to follow it. But there have been occasions when that’s been pretty hard to do. I remember one of them very clearly. It was in my third week of training. A group of us had completed an exercise early, so we’d stopped at a café on the way back to base. We were sitting, drinking coffee, minding our own business, when a twenty-something businessman came bustling into the place. He had a shiny Armani suit, a mop of curly blond hair, and a walk that told you he had a more than healthy regard for himself. He picked a large round table in the nearest corner and plonked himself down with a newspaper. At first we assumed he was waiting for some colleagues, but after a few minutes it became clear he was there on his own.
I couldn’t help watching him out of the corner of my eye, and soon saw he was fiddling with something underneath the table. It was a cell phone. A huge one, since this was back when even the most modern kind were the size of bricks. He poked at the buttons for a few moments, then went back to reading the paper. Until the peace was disturbed a minute or so later by a raucous electronic squeaking. The guy made a show of sighing, throwing down the paper, and whipping a radio pager out of a cradle on his belt. He studied its little screen, then produced the phone and embarked on a suspiciously one-sided conversation.
Ten minutes later, the whole cycle repeated itself.
The woman to my right nudged me with her elbow.
“He’s doing that himself,” she said. “He’s calling his own pager, then pretending to talk to someone.”
She was right. And faced with that degree of idiocy, it was hard not to be unkind about the guy. The jokes about him were still going strong a quarter of an hour later, when two policemen arrived. They walked straight up to him. Picked him up under the arms. And carried him outside, kicking, screaming, and showering electronic gadgets in his wake.
Back at base that evening we found out what had happened. Later in the program, pagers were due to be issued to everyone on our course. Officially they were to send urgent updates about changes to our briefs or exercises. In reality, though, they served two other purposes.
To give us practice in using gadgets discreetly, at a time when such things were a novelty. That’s where the guy in the café fell down. A tout for the instructors in the town had mistaken him for one of us, and the police had been dispatched to make an example of him.
And to teach us that with access to up-to-date information, any given situation can be flipped on its head at a moment’s notice.
For better. Or for worse.
The crate had been secured with a padlock, but that didn’t concern me. I still had my brick. One sharp blow was all it took to remove the whole assembly. I kicked the pieces of wood and broken metal away, eased the side panel back a couple of inches, and peered through the gap. There was enough light for me to make out the outline of a person. A man. He looked about my age. And he was naked. A ball gag had been shoved in his mouth. His wrists were bound with rope and attached to a hook at the center of the crate’s roof. His forearms were caked with dried blood. I couldn’t see his ankles. He was kneeling awkwardly and seemed to be slumping over to one side. That would partly be due to the confined space, I guessed. And partly to relieve the pressure on the grimy bandage that covered the right-hand side of his abdomen.
I leaned inside and went to work again with the brick. It was hard to get the angle, but after a couple of minutes the hook was sufficiently bent for me to release the rope. The guy slumped farther into the corner, suddenly missing the support it had given him. He sprawled there for a moment, looking at me suspiciously. Then he pitched himself forward and with a little help managed to struggle to his feet.
“McIntyre,” I said. “I’d like to say it was a pleasure. But that would be a lie.”
The guy was in a seriously sorry state. Far worse than when I’d seen him at the apartment he’d been hiding in. He rocked slightly as he stood, unable to hold himself completely still. His naked body was streaked with more blood, and in the brighter light I could see bumps and bruises showing through the layer of grime that covered his skin. The guy obviously hadn’t been treated well. Far from it. But even so, I couldn’t summon much sympathy. In my book, you choose to sleep with the dogs, you wake up with the fleas. And you don’t complain about it afterward.
“Hold out your hands,” I said.
McIntyre shifted his weight to his other foot and braced himself against the crate. Then he leaned away from me and started to tug at the ball gag.
“Forget it,” I said. “It won’t come off. There’s a little padlock at the back.”