Feeling uncomfortable, but looking forward to coffee and sleep, Agent Jan Holzer left.
Irena waited a moment, and then rested the magazine on her lap. After watching the Department door for a minute more, she stood and walked to the windows. She looked out across the city, towards the Chrysler Building, on the beautiful morning.
She reached up, sliding a gloved hand beneath her veil, and touched the earpiece buried deep in her right ear. It was new technology, advanced, but one of the advantages of her cover was that her hat was big enough to carry both the radio’s battery and transmitter.
“Alpha One, in position.”
She listened, nodded, and then helped herself to a cup of water.
TWENTY-SIX
Security agent Jan Holzter had been on the money. Behind the closed doors of Tisiphone Realty it was organized chaos.
Every desk on the floor was occupied, half by men, mostly in rolled-up shirt sleeves, cigarettes burning bright, filling the air with a thick fog of tobacco smoke. Some shuffled paper, a lot held telephones between shoulder and ear as they jotted down notes. The other half of the staff were women, most looking considerably less flustered than their male counterparts as they focused on typing and filing, filling the air with a machine gun clatter of keys striking paper. The cacophony that filled the office wasn’t loud, but it was constant and unending.
Nimrod watched the hubbub through the open door of his office. Behind him, the ticker tape machine sprang into life, slowly feeding paper onto the floor. Mr Grieves quickly picked up the tape and began to read.
Nimrod folded his arms and turned around. “Well?”
The agent pulled the tape through his fingers. “All departments acknowledge the alert and are awaiting further information. The Vice President has been taken to a secure location and the President is currently at the State Department in DC.”
“Very good.”
“Also the Secretary of Defense wants to speak with you, urgently.”
Nimrod sighed. He should have expected this, but it was exactly the kind of distraction with which he didn’t want to deal. Nimrod was keenly aware that it was Atoms for Peace, not his Department, in favor with the Secretary. “He can wait.”
Mr Grieves smirked as the phone on Nimrod’s desk rang. Nimrod nodded and Grieves picked it up. He listened a moment, and as Nimrod watched his smirk quickly faded.
Grieves held out the phone to his superior. “It’s the Secretary.”
Nimrod gritted his teeth and closed the door of his private office. Then he took the receiver.
“Mr Secretary, we were just talking about you.”
The Captain smiled at Mr Grieves and walked around his desk, phone pressed tight against his ear.
“Yes, Mr Secretary. I believe so.”
Nimrod sat heavily at his desk and listened a moment longer, then barked a laugh.
“Bad? My dear chap, ‘bad’ does not begin to describe it. What I am talking about is nothing less than the end of the world.”
The door to the Department opened, and Captain Nimrod stormed out. Irena lowered her newspaper, trying to keep the surprise from her face. But it wasn’t an issue, as the target wasn’t watching. Nimrod muttered under his breath and waved one hand in the air like he was arguing with someone who wasn’t there as he strode the short distance across the lobby and vanished into the corridor leading to the main elevators.
Irena listened until she heard the elevator ping and the doors open. A moment later the doors rattled shut and silence returned.
Irena leapt from the sofa and crossed to the window to get the best reception. She looked down, trying to get an angle on the street below, but the stepped shape of the Empire State Building hid the main entrance.
The radio clicked in her ear.
“Cloud Club, this is Alpha One,” she said. “We have a problem.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
The lobby of the Chrysler Building was deserted. Nimrod noted the fact, but didn’t pause as he strode across the marble floor and into the walnut and silver interior of the elevator.
She would know he was coming, of course. She saw everything in the city, some said, though Nimrod knew that if this was so, she ignored most things. Maybe she had heard the conversation between him and the Secretary of Defense, the conversation Nimrod cursed himself for not expecting. But that would have been like trying to pick a single conversation out of a stadium full of people; even the Ghost of Gotham had her limits. Besides which, he doubted she found it very interesting. For someone — something — with such power, she was remarkably single-minded. Perhaps that was not surprising. Nimrod had often tried to imagine what it was like, to die and be brought back, granted with all the power of the universe. If your mind didn’t break, then, with the universe at your fingertips, surely your perspective changed somewhat.
The Secretary’s decision was a disaster waiting to happen, Nimrod knew that now. The order to hand over all responsibility and duties to the Director of Atoms for Peace and allow her department to proceed with their operation was not just ridiculous, it was foolhardy, perhaps even suicidal.
There was no alternative. He had to see her, talk to her, convince her to change her mind, make her understand that they should be working together, not fighting. Nimrod just hoped there was enough left of a human being inside the Ghost of Gotham that he could make her see reason.
The elevator pinged, and the doors opened. Nimrod felt his mustache bristle as he stepped out into the lobby of the Cloud Club and found himself alone. Ahead of him, the giant doors of the Director’s personal domain, with their silver sunray decoration and frosted glass, were closed.
Beyond, the former nightclub was quiet. The room was truly cavernous, and Nimrod had the odd sensation of walking through a cemetery, or into a mausoleum. The Cloud Club was a relic of another era, when New York City had been an entirely different world. Nimrod pondered this as he walked to the single desk, the one the director of Atoms for Peace had no need for. He noticed, for the first time, that the desk was dusty. His eyes moved over the murals on the wall. For some reason they looked dull, faded.
Maybe there was something left of Evelyn McHale. In a way, she was like the room, a relic of another era. She had been plucked from time and then dumped in an alien world. She may as well have been taken to Mars.
Nimrod walked to the great glass wall and looked out over the city. The Empire State Building sparkled in the sun, and below the streets were filled with people and cars. Nimrod smiled. None of them knew they lived in just one universe out of… well, who knew. None of them knew about Atoms for Peace or the Director, although there would be plenty in the city who remembered Evelyn McHale. Many had even seen her ghost, glowing in the night.
Nimrod turned back to the empty room.
“Director?” His voice didn’t echo as much as he thought it would. “Evelyn, I need to talk to you,” he said to the ceiling.
There was nothing, not even an unusual breeze or a drop in temperature or a knock on the wall, one rap for yes, two for no.
Nothing. No one came, not the dead woman, not agent or guards. No staff at all; the Cloud Club was empty.
Nimrod frowned, and then wondered how far he could go before the orders from the Secretary of Defense circulated around the building.
Nimrod straightened his tie and brushed down the front of his safari jacket, and marched towards the door.
It was time to find out what Atoms for Peace were really doing.
In the elevator Nimrod punched the button for level B6, the last-but-one sub-level listed on the panel, and to his surprise the key lit around his thumb. If Atoms for Peace were hiding anything, it was going to be down there, under the city.
Level B6 was a series of plain corridors, lined with polished grey concrete and lit by functional utility lights. Nimrod’s footsteps echoed as he walked down one corridor after another, each intersection he came to presenting him with a choice of three equally featureless alternatives. He counted each as he passed through: First right, second straight, third straight, fourth left. There was no signage, no doors, no cameras, no mirrors. He had passed no security stations, no gateways or doors or screens. He was alone.