Joan and Stanley stood quietly for a few seconds, then Joan said with forced calmness, “Help me hide him.” They dragged the man into a corner where wooden skids were stacked and lowered a skid over his body. Joan found a rag mop and Stanley located an overhead water valve. They cleaned up the blood and hid the mop under the big electrical generator.
Joan and Stanley stared at each other for a brief second, their expressions revealing the fact that they had been intimate accomplices in something that neither of them would ever forget. Joan broke eye contact and looked quickly at her watch. “Oh, God, we’re nearly four minutes late.”
Stanley quickly drew a photograph from his chest pouch and compared it to the large electrical panel. The photograph was a blown-up reproduction of the shot he had taken a month before. There were grease-pencil marks next to the circuit breakers in question. One was to be shut, the other, the only circuit breaker that was in the off position, was to be turned on.
Van Dorn had explained that he wasn’t to touch anything else, that it must appear that the one circuit breaker tripped off by itself because of an overload. The one to be turned on wouldn’t be noticed immediately. Stanley held the photograph up to the circuit breakers, reached out, and switched the two that were marked in the picture.
Van Dorn’s last instructions had been to get out fast, because there would be people racing down to the utility room. Stanley turned to Joan. “Let’s go!” He dashed through the open door, Joan close behind. As they headed toward the boiler room, Stanley heard the sound of hurrying footsteps on a nearby staircase. “Oh, shit!” He picked up his pace, but he was in the area of the small compartmentalized rooms and doors and he became disoriented.
Joan said breathlessly behind him, “I think we passed it.”
Suddenly a door to their right burst open and Stanley instinctively dropped into a crouch and remained frozen. Joan did the same.
Four men, two armed guards and two men in overalls, came quickly through the door, just fifteen feet away. They pivoted left on the run and ran through the passage from which Stanley and Joan had just come.
Stanley remained in his crouch, his entire body shaking and a cold sweat forming on his face. Joan rose shakily and pulled Stanley to his feet. She whispered, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
They moved cautiously now, finally finding the food-storage area outside the boiler room. Joan stayed in the shadow of a pile of boxes. “Go on. I’ll cover.”
Stanley dashed across the open space and swung the door out, slipping halfway inside. He scanned the boiler room quickly, and it appeared the same as they’d left it. He motioned to Joan and she dashed across the open area, slipping inside the boiler room behind Stanley.
Stanley wasted no time. He grabbed the bench and placed it below the conduit, then went behind the boiler and retrieved his rubber trolley. He jumped on the bench and ripped the cloth cover from the hole, raised the trolley, then stopped. His trolley was supposed to be kept from rolling down the sloped conduit by her secured trolley. But hers was gone, of course.
Stanley wondered for a second what Bergen and Claire had made of the returned empty trolley. He wondered also why they hadn’t sent it back on the cable, attached by a cord or wire. Stanley took out his flashlight and shone it into the conduit. “Christ…” About two hundred feet down the conduit his beam picked out the silhouette of the trolley. It had become stuck, probably on a small ridge where the clay conduit pipes joined. “Oh… shit!”
Joan said, “What is it? Why aren’t you going?”
He turned to her. “Your trolley’s stuck in there. They don’t know you lost it.”
She nodded as she began to appreciate the situation. “I really fucked up. Well, go on Stanley. Here, I’ll help you in.” She stepped up on the bench.
“No. No, you go. I’ll wait here. You tell them what happened and they’ll send a trolley back. I’ll be okay while—”
Joan slapped him hard across the face. “Get in that fucking hole or I’ll beat the shit out of you.”
He put his hand to his face as he stared at her.
She pulled the trolley out of his hand, then pushed it back to his chest, curved side toward him and the wheels facing out. “Hold that.” She took a length of nylon cord from around her waist — the cord she was supposed to have used to secure her trolley to the handgrips. She passed the cord under Stanley’s arms and tied the trolley to his chest. “All right, kid, you’re set.” She looked at him a moment, then leaned over and planted a kiss on his lips.
Stanley flushed and his eyes widened.
Joan knelt on one knee, then made a stirrup with her hands. “Come on. Move it.”
Stanley stuck his foot into her hands and found himself lifted up and into the conduit opening. He felt a slap on his buttocks, and he wiggled farther in, holding his arms out to the front. He felt Joan push on the soles of his shoes and he began rolling forward, gathering momentum as the trolley began its long journey home.
His outstretched hands hit Joan’s stuck trolley and set it rolling free ahead of him. Stanley closed his eyes for what seemed a long time, then opened them again and saw the light at the end of the long dark tunnel. Then the light became blurry as tears formed in his eyes.
Joan Grenville drew her pistol and walked slowly to the door of the boiler room. She knew that the shit was going to hit the fan very soon and she didn’t know if the boiler room was the place to be when it hit.
Tom was out there somewhere, and so were the others. She’d just completed a very difficult task, and she was in a position to get out. The others weren’t. But as Van Dorn said, no place was safe anymore. Perhaps, she thought, they could use another gun upstairs. She opened the boiler room door without fully realizing what she was doing.
She found herself wandering through the dimly lit passages of the basement, looking for a staircase that would lead upstairs. She thought that, after all, she should be with Tom.
66
Claudia Lepescu worked the small-caliber automatic out of Alexei Kalin’s holster hanging on the doorknob. Kalin, lost in his sexual reverie, noticed nothing. She brought the pistol out, flipped off the safety, and thrust the cold steel deep between his legs to muffle the sound. She fired.
Kalin’s feet left the floor from the impact and he fell back against the door, uttering only a short groan. Claudia rocked back on her haunches and stared up at him. He seemed unhurt, still standing, a puzzled expression on his face. Then she saw the blood pouring out between his spread legs like an open faucet. Kalin felt it too, and his hands shot down to the wound, the blood collecting in his cupped hands and running between his fingers.
Claudia stood and took a step back, keeping the gun trained on him, waiting for some sign that he was mortally wounded. Then she saw the color drain from his face and watched incredulously as the whiteness moved downward, like a wave of waxy death, the florid chest becoming milky, then the abdomen and pelvis, the redness pouring onto the floor, leaving his body through the hole behind his scrotum.
Kalin took a mincing step toward her and opened his mouth. “Claudia…”
She spit on the floor and wiped her mouth.
Kalin tried another step, but his knees buckled and he fell forward, his hands still on his groin and his face thudding against the floorboards.
Claudia retrieved her clothes and dressed quickly. She stepped out into the hallway and began walking, Kalin’s small automatic held tightly to her side. She had never been in this house before, but she had seen the floor plans in Van Dorn’s study and she thought she could locate Androv’s office. She had scores to settle, indignities to be redressed. She was a proud woman, and they had not broken her nor turned her into a docile, craven whore, as they’d thought. From the moment she landed in the United States, she had begun to play a cautious double game.