Veronika looked at Albane.
Albane removed her eyeglasses, carefully folded them, and placed them inside her breast pocket. She then stared directly into the reception attendant’s eyes, holding the gaze in silence until the other woman looked away. Then she removed her mobile phone from its belt holster and began to dial.
The woman fidgeted. “What are you doing? Who are you calling?”
“This facility is hereby closed, until further notice by the Ministry of Health. I am calling the state police,” Albane replied stoically in Czech.
“What? You can’t do that!”
“I can, and I am.” Albane leaned forward, pretending to strain to read the name tag on the woman’s shirt. “Not to worry, Ms. Provst, in my report I will be sure to document that you were steadfast in your truculence and hindrance of official Ministry business. I’m certain that your management will take your loyalty into consideration when they are rehiring security positions six months from now when the facility reopens.”
“What? You can’t close this facility for six months! How am I supposed to provide for my family?”
“It is funny that you keep telling me what I can and cannot do. The Ministry does not care about your opinion. Now, either you give me your full cooperation this instant, or you and your coworkers will all be arrested by the state police. Do I make myself clear?” Albane slammed the bottom of her clenched fist on the reception desk with such force that Ms. Provst, the security guards, and even Veronika, were startled.
“Okay. Please, please do not call the state police. You will have our cooperation. I have never had one of these inspections before. What do we need to do?”
Albane put her mobile phone back into its holster. “It’s quite simple really. Madame Viskaya will stay here and interview you. Once your interview is complete, then you can begin filling out the official paperwork, while she interviews the guards. My colleague and I will tour the facility and then conduct a record review.”
“How long will the inspection last?”
“That depends on what we find, now doesn’t it?”
“We have a shift change soon.”
“That’s okay, we don’t mind. You will need to make sure that someone is available during the next shift to answer our questions should we have any. If the hour grows late and the record audit is not complete, we’ll return in the morning to finish.”
“But, I’m not sure that—”
Albane interrupted, “But, nothing. We are wasting time.” She then retrieved her eyeglasses with hidden nano-camera technology from her suit pocket, and put them on. “The first thing we’ll need to look at are the blueprints of this building.”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Technical online?”
E. VanCleave—RS: Technical: “Technical online.”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Technical, report status of acquiring network access.”
E. VanCleave—RS: Technical: “Negative access. Bio is a go for entry.”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Bio, online?”
A. Archer—RS: Bio: “This is Bio, I copy you.”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “You are a go for entry. Social has scanned the building plans. I am uploading the data now.”
A. Archer—RS: Bio: “Is my route inside the building mapped yet?”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Standby. I’ll advise you when it is… Electrician online?”
Local Embed—Electrician: “This is the Electrician, online and in position at the underground electrical distribution box. Standing by to cut power on your mark.”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Roger. What about the backup generator?”
Local Embed—Electrician: “Disabled.”
C. Remy—RS: Coordinator: “Roger… Physical, this is the Coordinator. All Resources are in position, you’re a go for blocking the door.”
The middle-aged security guard flashed Albane a furtive grin; she pretended not to notice. After twenty-three years working security, smiling was as foreign to the muscles of his face as performing a cartwheel is to a nursing home patient. Even after the tongue lashing Albane had given Ms. Provst, Officer Clive Moderkiek had eagerly volunteered to escort the inspectors during their tour of the facility. It was not for fear of losing his job; he wasn’t worried about that. It was simply to be near her. He had never encountered a woman as beautiful and confident as this Inspector woman before, and now he was captured by her gravity.
“Officer Moderkiek, please show us where the contamination breach occurred,” Albane directed in Czech.
“Do you mean the emergency exit where the patient escaped?”
“Yes. We can start there and work backward. I want to see the exact path that he took. I want to know how he escaped from his room and got outside this building.”
“Okay, no problem. All compromised areas have been thoroughly decontaminated. Follow me,” Moderkiek said. Leaving his colleagues behind in the lobby with Veronika, Moderkiek led Albane and Kalen past the elevator bank and through a closed door with an exit sign overhead.
“This is an old building. The elevators were not installed until the 1980s. At one time, this stairwell was the main stairwell for traveling between all the floors of the building, but now it functions as the emergency exit. During the incident, the patient jumped from the fourth floor and landed here,” Moderkiek explained.
Albane looked down at the concrete floor. “How did he accomplish such a feat without injury?”
“I wasn’t on duty that night, but the story is that he tied bedsheets together into a rope and used it to repel down to the ground.”
Kalen snorted.
“Interesting. What did he do next?” Albane asked.
“He went through this door to Corridor E. At the end of the corridor is the emergency exit door which leads to the street.”
“Show us.”
“There is nothing to show. It is a typical emergency exit door.”
“I want you to show us anyway.”
The guard nodded obediently and led the pair down the long empty corridor until they arrived at the red metal door. “See, just a door.”
“Does this door have a magnetic lock?”
“No,” the guard replied quizzically.
“So my colleague can just push it open?”
“Of course, it’s an emergency exit… Hey, what are you doing? Don’t open that. The alarm will sound!”
A shrill pulsating alarm reverberated in Corridor E, and white strobes on the emergency exit sign above the door flashed. Kalen had opened the red door and was pretending to peer outside onto the street. With his hip depressing the horizontal rocker bar, he used his body to block the guard’s view of the lock mechanism. In his left hand, he held a small cylinder — the size of a tube of lipstick — which contained a quick-dry epoxy adhesive mixed with propellant. He sprayed the adhesive liberally over the door latch mechanism while it was retracted. The epoxy film hardened on contact, instantly seizing the latch. Behind him, he could hear the security guard yelling, arguing with Albane. He released the rocker arm, looking down to make sure the latch did not spring back into position. It did not. He then let the door swing shut and turned to face the others, while slipping the epoxy back into his pocket with the fluidity of a magician.
“What the hell did you do that for? That is a security violation. I have to file a report on all security violations,” Moderkiek complained.