Moses found he was trembling as he went on down the stairs, but he passed the doormen without a glance and the janitor in his cubicle barely lifted his eyes before concentrating once more on his newspaper.
It was vital to Moses' plans that he should be able to leave the building unaccompanied, and constant repetition had made that possible.
To the doormen he was almost invisible.
However, they had still not solved the problem of access to Shasa's inner office. Moses might go in there long enough to deposit the armful of parcels, but he could not risk remaining longer, and especially he could not be in there behind a closed door, or alone with Tara. Tricia, Shasa's secretary, was alert and observant, and obsessively loyal to Shasa; like all Shasa's female employees she was more than just a little in love with him.
The discovery of the concealed rear door to the suite came as a blessing when they were almost desperately considering leaving the final preparation to Tara alone.
'Heavens, it was so simple, after all our worrying!" Tara laughed with relief, and the next time Shasa left for his inspection tour of the H'am Mine, taking Garry with him as usual, she and Moses made one of their visits to parliament to test their arrangement.
After Moses had left her parcels in the inner office and in front of Tricia, Tara sent him away. 'I won't need the car until much later, Stephen, I'm having lunch with my father in the dining-room." Then as he left, closing the outer door behind him, Tara turned back to Tricia.
'I have a few letters to write. I'll use my husband's office. Please see that I'm not disturbed." Tricia looked dubious, she knew that Shasa was fussy about his desk and the contents of his drawers, but she could not think of any way to prevent Tara making use of it, and while she hesitated, Tara marched into Shasa's office, closed the door and firmly locked it behind her. Another precedent had been set.
On the outside there was a light tap, and it took her a moment to discover the inside lock, disguised as a light switch. She opened the panelled door a crack, Moses slipped through it into the office. She held her breath against the snap of the lock, and then turned eagerly to Moses.
'Both doors are locked,' she whispered, and she embraced him.
'Oh Moses, Moses - it's been so long." Even though they spent so much time in each' other's company, the moments of total privacy were rare and precious and she clung to him.
'Not now,' he whispered. 'There is work to do." Reluctantly she opened her embrace and let him go. He went to the window first, standing to one side as he drew the drapes so that he could not be seen from outside, and then he switched on the desk lamp and removed his uniform jacket, hanging it on the back of Shasa's chair, before crossing to the altar chest. He paused before it, putting Tara in mind of a worshipper, for his head was bowed and his hands clasped before him reverently. Then he roused himself and lifted the heavy bronze Van Wouw sculpture from the top of th chest. He carried it across the room and placed it on Shasa's desk He went back and carefully opened the lid, wincing as the antiqu, hinges squeaked.
The interior of the chest had been half-filled with the overflor from Shasa's bookshelves. Piles of old copies of Hansard, out-of date white papers and old parliamentary reports. Moses was annoye( at this unexpected obstacle.
'You must help me,' he whispered to Tara, and between them the began to unpack the chest.
'Keep everything in the same order,' Moses warned, as he passer the piles of publications to her. 'We will have to leave it exactly as il was." The chest was so deep that at the end Moses found it easier to climb into it and pass the last of the contents out to her. The carpel was covered with stacks of paper now, but the chest was empty.
'Let me have the tools,' Moses ordered. They were in one of the packets that Moses had carried up from the car, and she handed them to him.
'Don't make any noise,' she pleaded.
The chest was large enough to conceal him completely. She went to the door and listened for a moment. Tricia's typewriter was tapping away reassuringly. Then she went back to the chest and peered into it.
Moses was on his knees working on the floor of the chest with a screwdriver. The screws were authentically antique, taken from another old piece of furniture so that they were not obvious recent additions, and the floor panels of the chest were likewise aged oak and only close examination by an expert would have revealed that they were not original. Once the screws were loose, Moses lifted out the panels to reveal the compartment beneath. This was tightly packed with cotton waste and gently Moses worked it loose, and as he removed the top layer placed it in the package that had contained the tools.
Tara watched with awful fascination as the contents of the first secret compartment came into view. They were small rectangular blocks of some dark amorphous material, like sticky toffee or carpenter's putty, each covered with a translucent greaseproof wrapper and with a label marked in Russian Cyrillic script.
There were ten blocks in the top layer, but Tara knew that there must be two layers below that. Thirty blocks in all, each block weighed two pounds, which made a total of sixty pounds of plastic explosive. It looked mundane and harmless as some kitchen commodity, but Moses had warned her of its lethal power.
'A two-pound brick will destroy the span of a steel bridge, ten pounds would knock down the average house, sixty pounds --' he shrugged. 'It's enough to do the job ten times over." Once he had removed the packing and reassured himself of the contents, Moses replaced the panel and screwed it closed. Then he opened the centre panel of the floor. Again it was packed with cotton waste. As he removed it, he explained in a whisper, 'There are four different types of detonators to cover all possible needs. These,' he gingerly lifted a small flat tin the size of a cigarette pack out of its nest of cotton packing, 'these are electrical detonators that can be wired up to a series of batteries or to the mains. These,' he returned the tin to its slot and lifted the loose cotton to reveal a second larger tin, 'these are radio receiver detonators and are set off by a VHF transmission from this miniature transmitter." It looked to Tara like one of the modern portable radios. Moses lifted it out of its nest. 'It needs only six torch batteries to activate it. Now these are simple acid time-fused detonators, primitive, and the time delay isn't very accurate, but this here is a trembler detonator. Once it is primed, the slightest movement or vibration will set it off. Only an expert will be able to defuse the charge once it is in place." Until this moment she had considered only the abstract dialectic of what they were doing, but now she was faced with the actuality.
Here before her was the very stuff of violent death and'destruction, the innocent appearance no less menacing than the coils of a sleeping mamba, and she found herself wavering.
'Moses,' she whispered. 'Nobody will be hurt. No human life, you said that - didn't you?" 'We have discussed that already." His expression was cold and scornful, and she felt ashamed. 'Forgive me, please." Moses ignored her and unscrewed the third and last panel. This compartment contained an automatic pistol and four clips of ammunition. It took up little space and the rest of the compartment was packed with cotton waste which Moses removed.
'Give me the other packet,' he ordered, and when she passed it to him, he began to pack the contents into the empty recess. Firstly there was a compact tool kit which contained a keyhole saw and hand drill, drill bits and augers, a box of hearing-aid batteries for the detonator and torch batteries for the transmitter, a Penlite torch, a five-hundred-foot roll of thin electrical wire, diamond glass-cutters, putty, staples and tiny one-ounce tins of touch-up paint. Lastly there was a pack of hard rations, dried biscuit and cans of meat and vegetables.