It seemed to him that the wilderness of doors was a condition not merely
of this one night but of his entire life. Doors. Doors that opened on
darkness. On emptiness. On blind passages and dead ends of every sort.
Each day of his life, he had expected to find a door that, when flung
wide, would present him with all that he deserved. Yet that golden door
eluded him. He had not been treated fairly. After all, he was one of
the new men, superior to everyone he saw around him. Yet what had he
become in thirty-seven years? Anything? Not a president.
Not even a senator. Not famous. Not rich. He was nothing but a lousy
vice detective, a cop whose working life was spent in the grimy
subculture of whores, pimps, gamblers, addicts and petty racketeers.
That was why Harris (and tens of millions like him) had to die.
They were subhumans, vastly inferior to the new breed of men. Yet for
every new man, there were a million old ones. Because there was
strength in numbers, these pitiful creatures-risking thermonuclear
destruction to satisfy their greed and their fondness for childish
posturing-held on to the world's power, money and resources. Only
through the greatest slaughter in history, only in the midst of
Armageddon, could the new men seize what was rightfully theirs.
The thirtieth level was deserted, as were the stairs and the elevator
shafts.
He went up one floor.
Connie's feet touched the ledge. Thanks to the scouring wind, the stone
was pretty much free of snow; therefore, there had been no chance for
the snow to be pressed into ice. She wasn't in any danger of sliding
off her perch.
She put her back to the face of the building, staying as far from the
brink as she could.
Surprisingly, with stone under her feet, she was more impressed by the
gulf in front of her than when she was dangling in empty space.
Swinging at the end of the rope, she had not been able to see the void
in the proper perspective. Now, with the benefit of secure footing, she
found the thirty-eight-story drop doubly terrifying; it seemed a
bottomless pit.
She untied the knot at her harness, freed herself of the main line. She
jerked on the rope twice, hard. Immediately Graham reeled it up.
in a minute he would be on his way to her. Would he panic when he got
out here?
I trust him, she told herself. I really do. I have to.
Nonetheless, she was afraid he would get only part of the way out of the
window before he turned and fled, leaving her stranded.
Graham took off his gloves, leaned out of the window, and felt the stone
below the sash. It was planed granite a rock meant to withstand the
ages. However, before the icy wind could numb his fingertips, he
discovered a tiny horizontal fissure that suited his purpose.
Keeping one hand on the crack in order not to lose it, he took the
hammer and a piton from the tool straps at his waist. Balanced on the
sill, leaning out as far as he dared, he put the sharp tip of the steel
peg into the crack and pounded it home.
The light he had to work by was barely adequate. It came from the
aircraft warning lights that ringed the decorative pinnacle of the
building just thirty feet, above him; it alternated between red and
white.
From his upside-down position, the work went more; slowly than he would
have liked. When he finished at'i last, he looked over his shoulder to
see if Bollinger was behind him. He was still alone.
The piton felt as if it were well placed.
He got a good grip on it, tried to wiggle it. It was firm.
He snapped a carabiner through the eye of the piton.
He snapped another carabiner to the center post of the window, above the
one that secured Connie's safety line.
Next, he pulled the knots out of the belaying rope. He took it from
around his waist and dropped it on the floor by the window.
He closed one of the tall, rectangular panes as best he could; the
carabiners fixed to the center post would not permit it to close all the
way. He would attempt to shut the other half of the window from the
outside.
He hurried to the draw cords and pulled the green velvet drapes into
place.
Eventually, Bollinger would come back to this office and would realize
that they had gone out of the window. But Graham wanted to conceal the
evidence of their escape as long as possible.
Stepping behind the drapes, he sidled along to the window. Wind roared
through the open pane and billowed the velvet around him.
He picked up an eleven-yard line that he had cut from another
hundred-foot coil. He tied it to his harness and to the free carabiner
on the window post. There was no one here to belay him as he had done
Ct)nnie, but he had worked out a way to avoid a singleline descent; he
would have a safety tether exactly like Connie's.
He quickly tied a figure-eight knot in one end of the forty-five-foot
line. Leaning out of the window once more, he hooked the double loops
of rope through the carabiner that was linked to the piton. Then he
screwed the sleeve over the gate, locking the snap link. He tossed the
rope into the night and watched to be sure that it hung straight and
unobstructed from the piton. This would be his rappelling line.
He was not adhering strictly to orthodox mountain climbing procedure.
But then this "mountain" certainly was not orthodox either.
The situation called for flexibility, for a few original methods.
After he had put on his gloves again, he took hold of the thirty-foot
safety line. He wrapped it once around his right wrist and then seized
it tightly with the same hand. Approximately four feet of rope lay
between his hand and the anchor point on the window post. In the first
few seconds after he went through the window, he would be hanging by,
his right arm, four feet under the sill.
He got on his knees on the window ledge, facing the lining of the office
drapes. Slowly, cautiously, reluctantly, he went out of the room
backward, feet first.
just before he overbalanced and slid all the way out, he closed the open
half of the window as far as the carabiners would allow. Then he
dropped four feet.
Memories of Mount Everest burst upon him, clam-A ored for his attention.
He shoved them down, desperately forced them deep into his mind.
He tasted vomit at the back of his mouth. But he swallowed hard,
swallowed repeatedly until his throat was clear. He willed himself not
to be sick, and it worked. At least for the moment.
OL With his left hand he plucked the rappelling line from the face of
the building. Holding that loosely, he reached above his head and
grabbed the safety rope that he already had in his right hand.
Both hands on the shorter line, he raised his knees in a fetal position
and planted his boots against the granite. Pulling hand over hand on
the safety tether, he took three small steps up the sheer wall until he
was balanced against the building at a forty-five-degree angle. The
toes of his boots were jammed into a narrow mortar seam with all the
force he could apply.
Satisfied with his precarious position, he let go of the safety tether
with his left hand.
Although he remained securely anchored, the very act of letting go of
anything at that height made the vomit rise in his throat once more.
He gagged, held it down, quickly recovered.
He was balanced on four points: his right hand on the shorter rope, now
only two feet from the window post; his left hand on the line with which
he would rappel down; his right foot; his left foot. He clung like a