“He is not here. Perhaps the bathroom? It’s this way. I had better check,” she said quietly.
The cones of light above the man’s head darkened his face, but his eyes penetrated the shadow. Max held his breath, heart banging away in his chest. It was a split-second moment-was the man going to take those extra few paces and push open the door? In less time than it took to think about, the heavyset man turned and followed the nurse.
Max sighed as quietly as he could.
There was nothing else but to jolt Sayid down the flight of steps to the floor below. It was a slow, muscle-straining process, and by the time they got there Max felt his T-shirt clinging to his back with sweat. He prayed he wouldn’t have to do this down every floor. He turned the corner, avoided another cleaning trolley, and, like a welcome sign on a lonely night, the service elevator doors were already open. Max said a silent thank-you to whatever night-cleaning staff had last got out on that floor.
Max wheeled Sayid inside the broad-sided elevator. His finger hovered over the floor buttons. Where had the second man gone? The back of the hospital was most likely. Safest bet for Max and Sayid was the basement. That might offer another hiding place for a while and then a way out. Max pressed the button.
The doors shuddered closed and the creaky elevator graunched its way down. When it finally groaned to a halt, a maze of service corridors faced Max and Sayid. Air-duct pipes ran along the ceiling, and licorice-twisted cables, color-coded red, green and blue, clung to the rough cement roof. A choice had to be made.
“What do you reckon, Sayid? There should be an under-ground parking garage for the ambulances somewhere … left, right or center?”
Sayid’s head nodded onto his chest again.
“I’ll take that as a yes then to all of the above-and take potluck,” Max said.
He pushed the wheelchair straight ahead, towards the darkened end of a corridor-more of a tunnel than anything else-but Max had smelled a slight whiff of car exhaust from somewhere, and he thought it came from that direction.
No sooner had he made the decision than he heard someone push the bar on a fire door a couple of floors above. He waited a second. He listened. Nothing. But then there was an almost inaudible footfall of a rubber sole catching the lip of a step. Someone was moving slowly down the emergency staircase. There were only a dozen steps between Max and the first turn of the stairwell. If whoever was coming down decided to move more quickly, they would see Max and Sayid in no time at all.
Max put his hand over Sayid’s mouth. His friend’s eyes opened.
“We have to hide. Someone’s coming,” Max whispered.
That got Sayid’s attention. A rush of fear pumped adrenaline. He steadied the crutch as Max pushed him towards the nearest door. Gently, they eased through to an older-looking corridor. A fluorescent ceiling light crackled and flickered over a linoleum floor. A different smell here. Not disinfectant. Something else. Max couldn’t put his finger on it. He stopped the door swinging closed behind them from disturbing the air-a sound that would be heard to anyone half listening. And Max’s guess was that whoever was creeping down those stairs would be listening for any sound at all.
There was no time to go farther. A double-tiered trolley stood in the corridor. Neatly folded on top were a rubber under blanket and a cotton sheet. Opposite, a door with a slide bolt and with a transom window above was the only other exit to be seen. A small sign read: MORGUE.
“Hang on a sec,” Max whispered.
He eased the bolt. Inside the room was a wall of stainless-steel refrigerators, each with a door big enough to slide a body in, and there was another trolley, like the one outside. It was obviously used for bringing bodies from the wards or, as Max hoped, from down that other corridor, where he reckoned the underground parking garage was located and where ambulances might arrive to deliver their fatalities.
Max knelt next to Sayid and whispered in his ear, “We’ll go in there. It’s pretty gloomy and there’s a trolley we can hide in like this one. You go underneath; I’ll go on top with a sheet over me. Chances are whoever it is won’t want to go poking around a mortuary. I should be able to hold my breath long enough to fool them.”
Sayid shook his head. “Not a chance.”
“This is no time to be squeamish, mate. Someone’s coming down those stairs and I bet it’s not nursey to tuck you up for the night.”
“No. Can’t go in there, Max. Can’t,” Sayid whispered back.
“They won’t hurt you. They’re dead,” Max assured him. “They’re in the fridge, like last week’s leftovers.”
Sayid’s eyes scrunched tight and he shook his head adamantly. There was no time to argue. Someone had pushed a swing door on the floor above them. Whoever was up there, they were checking the corridors.
“All right! Blimey, Sayid, you make life difficult at times.”
“Me!” Sayid whispered indignantly.
A door clanged shut above their heads. They looked up, trying to imagine the intruder walking back towards the stairs. Max grabbed Sayid’s arm.
“Wheelchair stays here, you climb underneath this trolley. I’ll go in there,” Max said, with a nod towards the mortuary door.
Sayid eased himself onto the bottom tier of the trolley as Max threw the sheet across the top so that it draped over the whole thing.
He poked his head under the corner of the sheet. “Stay dead quiet until I come and get you.”
“This is no time for making jokes, Max!”
“I’m not. He’s going to come through those doors, so whatever you do-don’t move!” Max told him.
Sayid lay rigid, clutching the clothes bundle to his chest as Max dropped the sheet corner back.
Inside the mortuary Max eased the door closed so the lock didn’t catch, its edge resting against the frame; then he climbed under the trolley as he had shown Sayid. This sheet was shorter than the last. It wouldn’t cover the length of his body or the whole trolley. Max pulled off his boots and socks and rolled his cargo pants to his knees. Tucking a boot under each armpit, he lay down on the top of the trolley, pulled the sheet over his head and straightened himself out, as if at attention, determined not to move. The cold air on his bare feet made him want to rub them together. They would be drained of warmth and blood any minute now. Placing his heels together, he let each foot drop away naturally from the other. No sooner had he settled his breathing than he heard the swing doors whisper open.
Max prayed Sayid didn’t lose his nerve.
5
The man who moved almost silently down the last couple of floors had spent more than half his lifetime in the French Foreign Legion. His young life of violent crime had been officially forgotten with no questions asked when the Legion accepted him that day in Marseilles twenty years ago. They gave him a new identity and, more importantly for him and others like him, a new family-the Legion. When he left that legendary fighting force he found better-paid work that utilized his specialist skills.
The Legion had given him the name Corentin, a Celtic Breton name meaning “hurricane,” and he had the strength and energy of a storm. But he had stealth as well as power, and now he moved lightly along the half-lit corridors. Despite there being no obvious signs of either boy, Corentin’s instincts told him someone had been behind those swing doors. Having easily convinced the nurse he’d left the building, he had worked his way methodically downwards. Now he’d heard something move. He carried a concealed 9-mm semiautomatic pistol-a Glock 18-and a short-bladed fighting knife. Close-quarters unarmed combat was part of his armory, but he wouldn’t need any of these weapons or skills. He was hunting kids, not killers.
Sayid smothered his face into the bundle on his chest, desperately hoping that his shallow breathing would not be heard. Under the edge of the sheet he could see soft-soled black boots. Whether it was the stress and fear of the situation or still the effects of the drugs, Sayid began to feel faint.