Bart Denum steered the car skillfully, taking them as directly as he could to their destination where, when they abandoned the car out front, the tourists were already back in line, shaking out umbrellas and looking hopefully toward the brightening sky.
“How do we get in?” Denum asked as he rounded the front of the car.
“Shiny badges and attitude,” Hugo said grimly. “If that doesn’t work, we push and let them call the cops — we’ll need them anyway.” Hugo chose the door designated for groups to enter the museum, figuring it would be easier to deal with people already in sheep mode than dozens of irritated singles and couples.
Their badges got them the initial attention, but it was Hugo’s brusque and urgent tone that got them inside. Two guards gave him their full attention as he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, relaying the threat of a danger much greater than merely letting two American officials in without paying. After radioing for their chief, the two anxious guards started turning guests away and steered those nearby back into the street. Hugo and Denum moved to a map of the interior.
“I’ve never been here before, which way?” asked Hugo.
“I was here with the wife and kids, it should be …” Denum quickly traced a path from where they stood to where they were going. “Here.”
“Not exactly direct. And God knows how long he’s been here already.”
“If he’s here at all.” Denum looked around. “Wouldn’t there be a commotion?”
“That’s the beauty of it, from his perspective. He’s worked here and knows the place, which includes the shortcuts. He can go through his entire weird setup and no one will bat an eyelid.”
“OK, then I’m going to have security clear that area. I know, I know.” Denum held up a hand. “Quietly and without alerting him.”
“Fine, but the security people may not know who they’re looking for, so have them close off that part of the museum subtly. People will leave of their own volition, so we just need to stop people going in.”
“You don’t think any of the tourists are in danger?” Denum asked.
“Do you?”
“No, but you seem to know him better than I do. I just want to be sure of that if we’re not going to hit the panic button and clear the whole place.”
“We do that and he disappears with the crowds. Bad idea, Bart, very bad.”
“OK, I hope you’re right.” He nodded at a broad-shouldered man in his midfifties, tall and lean, headed their way. “Here’s the cavalry leader. I’ll start giving orders.”
“Good, but I’m not going to wait.”
Denum patted Hugo’s shoulder. “I never thought you would.”
Hugo took another look at the map, drilling the route into his mind. Dammit, gotta go up before I can go down. He nodded to Denum and started up the stairs to the first exhibit, his eyes automatically drawn to the people around him. He passed plenty he didn’t recognize but several he did and had to resist the temptation to slow down; he wasn’t there to stare into Nicole Kidman’s sparkling eyes or check out the tone of Brad Pitt’s skin. A pink light tinted the whole room, and he brushed past the tourists who laughed and pointed at the stars, many going nose to nose with their favorites. He followed directions to the next space, where red and gold dominated, except for the looming green figure of Shrek and the even greener and larger Incredible Hulk. Hugo looked for the way through, stepping around the gawkers who lingered in the spaces between Marilyn Monroe and Spiderman, all the while the buzz of voices around him giving the colorful room the air of a Hollywood after-party. He spotted the way out and moved quickly down some stairs into the Sports Zone, where a Formula 1 motor-racing exhibit seemed to be drawing most of the spectators, the waxen Pele almost ignored, save for a small boy who stood gazing upward, his head tilted to one side as if trying to place the soccer legend.
As Hugo pressed on, a sense of surreality wrapped itself around him, a many-layered blanket woven from the lifelike images of the Tussauds exhibits, the blissful ignorance of the tourists who admired them, the bizarre nature of the man he was looking for, and the horror of what that man had planned. Hugo had already noted that cameras were allowed in the museum — not just allowed, but being held in almost every hand, a fact that Walton was no doubt counting on.
In the next exhibit, Hugo bumped into a German couple as he passed several members of British royalty, almost tripped over a little girl taking some kind of interactive test with Albert Einstein, and wanted to block his ears at the music as he sped through the Music Megastars Zone. Finally, adrenaline pumping and barely able to think amid the crowds and visual stimulation, Hugo moved to the last door, the exit out of the World Leaders Room. Two men stood in front of the closed door, calmly steering customers to an alternate exit to their left, their buzz haircuts and cold eyes persuasive enough for most, their bulk and stony silence adequate deterrents to at least one irate tourist, an Eastern European who’d paid to see the Chamber of Horrors and was going to either see it or get his money back.
Hugo caught the eye of the security guard farthest from the now-crowded exit, a rock of a man whose narrow eyes told of an Asian lineage, and showed him his US security badge, hoping these guys had been told he was coming.
The man looked at him, unblinking, then took Hugo’s ID in a meaty paw. He handed it back with the merest of nods. “You want some company down there?”
“No, I’ll be fine.” If I’m right about what he’s doing.
“I hear you screaming, I’ll be down.” The man nodded again and stepped aside, opening the door with the flat of his hand. Hugo started down the stone steps.
The door to the bustling exhibition room closed behind him, darkening the stairwell and bringing a quiet that had been sorely missing for the last five minutes. Hugo took a calming breath and moved slowly downward, aware of the cold air that pressed up to meet him.
The stairs were wide and made of stone, the walls slick blocks of granite like those of a medieval, Thames-side dungeon. The realism of his descent into the museum’s most gruesome display extended his earlier surreal feeling, the garish colors of the entertainment world supplanted by indistinct black-and-white images that flickered in the back of his mind, creating a schizoid and dichotomous eeriness that put him as either a soon-to-be victim in a Béla Lugosi horror flick or a doomed explorer in the real world.
He touched the cold wall to bring himself back into reality, sure that tiredness was helping play tricks with his mind. It’s a museum, just a museum.
His feet echoed softly on the steps and he tried not to scuff them. Halfway down, he paused, listening, glad to hear silence because it meant that the exhibit had emptied. Almost emptied, anyway. As he started forward, he heard a shuffling sound from the foot of the stairs, then the squeak of something metallic opening or closing. He kept going, now able to see the cobbled floor of the chamber, eerie glow from recessed lighting casting shadows in front of him.
As he reached the last step, he looked around for Walton, but his eyes were drawn to the men and woman who lay, or hung, dead and dying around him. A pair of ragged figures were strapped to suspended wheels, their frail bodies broken by the executioners’ rods. Gaunt figures, hard to discern whether men or women, hung around the little anteroom, imprisoned in rusting gibbets for the feasting eyes of the curious. Under his feet, Hugo noticed that the cobblestones had been laid in concentric circles, in rings that grew smaller and smaller, the last one encircling a grate in the floor that looked like it would welcome the blood of the tortured hanging from the walls.