“The paint is fluorescent. After all these years, it still works.”
Kröte paced slowly down the corridor with his light beam focused on the wall. “Licht,” he said in a faint voice.
Tristan told Hollis and Mother Blessing to turn off their flashlights. In the dark they saw that Kröte’s movements had created a bright green line on the wall that glowed for three or four seconds before fading.
They switched on the flashlights again and continued through the bunker. In one room there was an old bed frame, stripped of its mattress. Another room looked like a small clinic, with a white examination table and an empty glass cabinet.
“The Russians raped the women of Berlin and looted almost everything,” Tristan said. “They stayed away from only one place in this bunker. Maybe they were too lazy or it was too horrible to see.”
“What are you talking about?” Mother Blessing asked.
“Thousands of Germans killed themselves when the Russians arrived. And where did they do it? In the toilet. It was one of the few places where you could be alone.”
Kröte was standing beside an open doorway with the word Waschraum painted on the wall. Arrows pointed in two directions: Männer and Frauen. “The bones are still in the toilet stalls,” Tristan announced. “You can see them-if you’re not frightened.”
Mother Blessing shook her head. “A waste of time.”
But Hollis was compelled to follow the boy up three steps and through a door that led to the women’s washroom. The two light beams revealed a row of wooden toilet cabinets. Their doors were closed, and Hollis felt as if they concealed the remains of more than one suicide. Kröte took a few steps forward and pointed. Near the end of the room one of the wooden doors was slightly open. A mummified hand, looking like a black claw, pushed through the gap. Hollis felt as if he had been guided into the land of the dead. His entire body shivered and he hurried back to the main corridor.
“Did you see the hand?”
“Yeah. I saw it.”
“And all Berlin is built on top of this,” Tristan said. “Built on the dead.”
“I don’t give a damn,” Mother Blessing snapped. “Let’s go.”
At the end of the corridor was another steel hatch, but this one was unlocked. Tristan grabbed the handle and pulled it open. “Now we enter the old sewage system. Because this area was near the wall, both East and West Germany left it alone.”
They climbed beneath the bunker into a drainage pipe about eight feet in diameter. Water trickled along the floor of the pipe. Their flashlights touched the surface and made it gleam. Salt stalactites came down from the top of the pipe like pieces of white string. There were white mushrooms and a strange-looking fungus that resembled yellowish globs of fat. Splashing through the water, Kröte guided them forward. When he reached a juncture and turned to wait, the light jiggled like a firefly.
Eventually they reached a much smaller pipe that emptied into the larger system. Kröte began chattering in German to his cousin, pointing at the pipe and gesturing with his hands.
“This is it. Crawl about ten meters down the drain and force your way in.”
“What are you talking about?” Mother Blessing glared at Tristan. “You promised to take us all the way.”
“We’re not going into a Tabula computer center,” Tristan said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“The real danger is in front of you, young man. I dislike people who don’t deliver what they promise…”
“But we’re doing you a favor!”
“That’s your interpretation, not mine. All I know is that you accepted an obligation.”
The coldness in the Harlequin’s eyes and the precise way she spoke were intimidating. Tristan stopped dancing around, frozen in the middle of the tunnel. Kröte glanced at his cousin and looked frightened.
Hollis stepped forward. “Let me go in first. I’ll check things out.”
“I will wait for ten minutes, Mr. Wilson. If you’re not back, there will be consequences.”
39
Hollis crawled through the horizontal pipe toward a distant patch of light. The pipe was narrow and his hands touched a slimy liquid that felt like motor oil mixed with water. Quickly, he reached a steel drainage grate set in a frame at the top of the pipe. The light from the room above him was divided into little squares by the grate, and he lay directly beneath a grid of lines.
He bent his head so that his chin was touching his chest, and then he came up so that his upper back was in contact with the grate. The steel rectangle was about three inches thick and very heavy, but his legs were strong and the grate didn’t appear to be bolted in place. Hollis pushed upward until the rectangle broke out of its frame. He raised his hands and shifted the grate a few inches to the right. When a four-inch gap appeared, he changed his position and pushed the grate sideways across the floor.
Hollis pulled himself out of the drainage pipe and immediately drew his handgun. He found himself in an underground corridor lined with electric cable and water pipes. When nothing happened, he returned to the drainage pipe and crawled back to Mother Blessing and the two Free Runners.
“This pipe takes us to a maintenance area. It looks like a safe entry point. There’s no one there.”
Tristan looked relieved. “You see?” he asked Mother Blessing. “Everything is perfect.”
“I doubt that,” she said, and handed the equipment bag to Hollis.
“Can we go?”
“Thank you,” Hollis said. “And be careful.”
Tristan had regained some of his confidence. He bowed from the waist, and Kröte gave Hollis a big smile. “Good luck from the Spandau Free Runners!”
HOLLIS DRAGGED THE equipment bag down the pipe with Mother Blessing a few yards behind him. When they were both standing in the maintenance corridor, the Harlequin pressed her mouth against his ear. “Speak softly,” she whispered. “They could have voice sensors.”
They moved cautiously down the corridor to a heavy steel door with a slot for a key card. Mother Blessing placed the equipment bag on the floor and unzipped it. She took out the submachine gun and something that looked like a credit card fastened to a thin electric cable. The Harlequin attached the cable to her laptop computer, typed a command on the keyboard, and inserted the card in the door slot.
They both watched the computer screen as six blue squares appeared on the screen. It took about a minute to place a three-digit number in the first square, but then the process went faster. About four minutes later, all six squares were filled and the lock clicked open.
“Do we go in?” Hollis whispered.
“Not yet. We can’t avoid surveillance cameras, so we’ll have to use a shielder.” She picked up something that looked like a small video camera. “Carry this on your shoulder. When I open the door, press the silver button.”
As Mother Blessing repacked the equipment bag, Hollis placed the shielder device on his right shoulder and aimed it forward.
“Ready?”
Holding the submachine gun, Mother Blessing eased the door open. Hollis stepped into the doorway, saw a surveillance camera, and pressed the button of the shielder as if he were taking a video. An infrared beam was projected down the corridor. The beam struck the retroreflective lens of a surveillance camera and the infrared light was bounced back to the source. Once the position of the camera was determined, a green laser beam was automatically aimed at the camera lens.
“Don’t stand here,” Mother Blessing said. “Start moving.”
“What about the surveillance camera?”