“Get me the hell out of here. I can’t hold on much longer.”
“Okay… ” Stanley reached in and worked his hands into the compressed space between her forearms and breasts.
“Watch it, Stanley.”
He stammered. “This is the way Bergen—”
“Just pull.”
His fingers hooked around her pectoral muscles and he pulled back. The trolley under her rolled toward him. After a good deal of twisting and pulling, she came free and dropped into his cradled arms. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, as they listened to the trolley rolling back down the conduit. Joan said, “Oh, Christ… ”
Stanley looked at her. “You were supposed to secure it with a cord… ”
Joan snapped, “I forgot. Put me down.”
Stanley lowered her and she stood quickly, then hopped up to the bench and stared into the black conduit. “Well, the trolley left without me, Stan.”
Stanley was shaking his head. “I should have reminded you.”
She jumped down to the floor. “Hey, I forgot, not you. Don’t pull your adolescent macho shit on me.”
He stared at her, slightly bewildered. “Sorry… ”
She drew a short breath. “Well, let’s get this dog-and-pony show on the road.”
He nodded, but didn’t move. “How are you going to get back?”
“Limo. First class.” She looked around. “All right, next we cover our arrival. Correct?”
Joan and Stanley quickly gathered up the thin slabs of broken concrete from the floor below and put them behind a boiler. Joan moved Stanley’s trolley there as well. Stanley reached into his pouch and retrieved a round section of cloth with adhesive backing. He stood on the bench, unfolded the cloth, and stuck it over the conduit opening.
Joan looked at it from across the room. It was colored and textured like concrete and she supposed it would pass a cursory inspection of the room. “Looks terrific. We’ll donate it to the Guggenheim.”
Stanley hopped down from the bench and carried it back to where he had found it. Joan reached up with her gloved hand and partially unscrewed two of the four overhead light bulbs, throwing the back of the room where the conduit was into near darkness. “Much nicer. All right, let’s go.”
Stanley hesitated, then went toward the door. He drew his pistol again and glanced back at Joan. He saw that she had done the same. He grasped the door handle and pushed outward, peering through the crack into the large storage room that he remembered from his last visit. He motioned to Joan and they both slipped through the door.
Stanley led the way through the stacked boxes of canned food. He knew the way up to a point, but he took out a small rough diagram and stared at it. This section of the basement was a maze of wooden partitions. There were doors everywhere, some marked in Russian and a few still marked in English. He found the one he was looking for, marked in the same Russian letters as those on his diagram. He opened it slowly and began heading along a dark narrow passage, Joan behind him. They were traveling toward the west end of the house.
The passage ended and they stepped into an open area. Ten feet to his front was a wall of fairly new concrete, about fifty feet long. He approached a single massive door sheathed with lead, and he knew this was the bomb shelter.
Inside the bomb shelter, he had been told, were over a hundred Russians: men, women, and children. He and Joan had to keep them in there.
Joan came up beside him and nodded. They both pulled tubes of epoxy weld from their black stretch suits and began running a bead of the fast-drying weld around the edge of the door where it met the steel casement jamb. The Russians inside would not be able to pull it open.
Stanley looked at his diagram again. He had been told that there was a staircase that ran up to the first floor and into a hallway that lay between the living room and trophy room. He had been briefed about the little girl who had come up the staircase. Van Dorn seemed to know a lot about this place, from defectors and spies, but he didn’t know if the staircase lay inside the bomb shelter or outside.
Joan was searching the dimly lit area in front of the shelter wall. She tried a few doors, but none of them led to a staircase. She whispered, “The stairs must be inside the shelter.”
Stanley nodded.
Joan said, “We have to do the other thing. It’s over here.” She led Stanley to the south foundation wall. Standing against the wall were three steel boxes about the size and shape of large freezers. In fact, each unit was an air conditioner and air purifier for the bomb shelter. Ducts led out of the top of each unit through the wall and surfaced somewhere out in the plantings around the south terrace. Ducts also ran from each unit along the ceiling and penetrated the concrete wall of the bomb shelter.
None of the three units was running at the moment, and Stanley felt each one until he found the one that was warm with electrical heat. “This one.”
He examined the steel sides. They were completely sealed, but there was a hinged access panel on the side. He turned a latch and the panel swung open. Stanley peered inside and saw the charcoal and fiber-glass filters. He pulled one out and dropped it behind the unit. Joan handed him a vacuum-sealed plastic bag and he tore it open, quickly dumping the clear crystals through the intake where the filter had been. He drew away immediately, knowing that the crystals were vaporizing into an invisible and odorless gas. He shut the access panel and stepped away from the unit.
Joan whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”
“I have to be sure this unit kicks on. Orders.”
“I’ll kick you in the ass, Stanley. Don’t push our luck.”
Stanley remained motionless, staring at the big gray steel box. After what seemed a very long time, but was less than a minute, he heard an electrical relay click and the unit vibrated, emitting a noise like a refrigerator. Stanley nodded with satisfaction. “They’ll be sleeping soon. Let’s—” He turned and saw that Joan was already heading back along the passage. He followed quickly.
They turned right, back toward the boiler room, but didn’t enter it, continuing instead to the door of the utility room.
Stanley opened the door and stepped into the long, narrow room. He found himself standing ten feet away from a man in overalls holding a clipboard in one hand and a pencil in the other.
Joan let out a scream. The man did the same. Stanley raised his pistol instinctively and fired three times, the silencer making a noise like air rushing out of the neck of a toy balloon. Phfft! Phftt! Phftt!
Stanley watched the man stagger aimlessly, a surprised look on his face, his hands covering his groin and chest as though he’d been caught naked.
Stanley didn’t know what to do. People were supposed to fall down dead when you shot them. He tried to fire again, but his hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t have hit the wall.
Joan closed her eyes.
Finally the man fell to the floor. Stanley approached hesitantly. Blood flowed from the man’s shoulder and groin, spreading over his khaki overalls and puddling on the gray floor. The man’s chest heaved rapidly and his eyes stared up at Stanley.
Stanley turned away. He felt his stomach heave. Without further warning he vomited up bile, acid, and a chocolate candy bar.
Joan came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Oh… oh, my God… Stanley…”
Stanley took several deep breaths and with some effort got control of himself. “We have to… to finish him… ”
Joan didn’t reply.
Stanley turned and looked down at the man, hoping he was dead, but he was not. Stanley wanted the man to live, but he had his orders: no witnesses. He aimed at the man’s head, closed his eyes, and fired, hearing the bullet thud against the skull and crack into the concrete floor.