At ten feet it was obvious they might overshoot the house and land on the brightly lit south terrace, where the Russians below, who were in a state of alert now, could massacre them.
Grenville closed his eyes and waited.
Joan Grenville wandered around the dark basement, pistol in one hand, a diagram of the basement in the other. She had come to her senses and decided to go back to the boiler room where she belonged. Unfortunately, she was lost. She was in a section that had apparently not been seen by a defector or spy, because it was marked on her diagram Unknown. KGB personnel only. That sounded spooky.
She checked her compass and turned down a narrow passage until she came to an unmarked door that was painted red, the only red door she had seen so far. She passed it, hesitated, then turned and listened at the door, but heard nothing. Slowly, she twisted the white porcelain knob and pushed in on the door.
There was a black void before her as she passed through the door and stood silently in the dark. She was aware of a rank odor.
Joan pulled a small red-filtered flashlight from the elastic pouch on her stomach and switched it on. She swung the beam around the walls. Just an empty room. She took a step and found herself falling forward. She put out her hands to break her fall and was surprised to find herself lying in sand. “What the hell…?”
Joan got up on one knee and took the filter off the light. She played the beam around and saw that the entire floor of the small room was of white sand, newly raked. She couldn’t imagine what it was for. A child’s sandbox? No, absurd.
She rose to her feet and her beam caught something on the far wall. She moved toward it. It was the base of a fireplace chimney, set in the concrete foundation. There was a partly opened ash door at chest height. At least now she had a landmark. She consulted her diagram and noted the location of the fireplace chimneys. She glanced back toward the iron ash door and saw now that it was much larger than an ash door ought to be. It was also fairly new, embedded in fresh mortar around the older brick. It looked, she thought, more like an oven or kiln than an ash trap.
Joan directed the light inside the black open space and saw a charred skull, the black hollow eye sockets staring back at her. She screamed, dropped the flashlight, and stumbled backward, falling into the loose sand. “Oh… oh, my God!”
She realized, in a flash of intuition, coupled with something she had once overheard, that she was lying in the sand of an execution pit. She jumped to her feet, her hands flailing at the sand clinging to her body-suit as she made her way through the shallow pit and found the door. She ran out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
Joan leaned back against the wall and caught her breath. She had lost the flashlight, but at least the pistol was still in her shaking hand.
She began walking again, willing herself to calm down. “All right, Joan… it’s all right.” But the image of the skull stayed with her, and she could actually picture herself kneeling in the damp pit, a cold pistol to her neck, the cremation furnace glowing red across the white, raked sand. “Oh, dear God… what sort of people are these…?” Then, suddenly, all the cloak-and-dagger idiocy made sense in a way that Tom could never explain. Nothing she had read or heard about the KGB or the Soviets had made the slightest impression on her. But that room had burned itself into her psyche and she knew it would be part of her forever.
She walked until she realized she had come around in a circle. “Oh, shit.” She glanced at the diagram under the glow of a dim light bulb, then moved to a door she hadn’t noticed before. The door was solid-looking oak, set in a concrete wall, unlike the doors of thin boards that cut through the wooden partitions. This might lead to the wing of the basement from which she’d strayed.
She put her ear to the door, but heard nothing. The door was bolted on her side and she slid the iron bolt back and pushed in. The door felt as if it was on spring hinges, and she pushed harder, swinging it inward a few feet.
A blinding light hit her and she drew back, ready to run, but there were no threatening sounds. She squinted in the light that came from bright overhead fluorescent tubes and saw a room, about twenty feet square, the walls and floor entirely covered with white ceramic tile. Like a giant bathroom. In fact, she noticed, there was a shower head in the far wall, and close by were a white porcelain toilet and washbasin. There was a hospital gurney in the corner and leather straps hung on the right-hand wall. She thought, A hospital operating room. But she knew it wasn’t. It was the straps, or perhaps the red stain on the floor around the shower drain, so stark against the white tile, that drew her to the obvious conclusion that she was looking at a modern torture chamber.
“Hello, Joan.”
She felt her mouth go dry and almost lost control of her bladder. She swung her head to the right and stared into the corner. Her eyes widened.
“Thank God it’s you,” said Peter Thorpe.
She tried to speak, but couldn’t. Her eyes focused on him, sitting naked with his arms wrapped around his bent knees. His face, she saw, was bruised and one eye was swollen shut. Joan felt her hand tighten around her pistol.
Thorpe stood slowly, revealing his full nakedness, and she saw his body had taken some punishment as well.
Thorpe said, “Nice outfit, Joan. Does you justice. They’ve attacked, haven’t they? I knew they would.”
Joan nodded. Nothing surprised her anymore, and she found her voice. “How did you get here?”
Thorpe ignored the question and asked, “Who’s winning the war upstairs?”
Joan was wary. She answered, “We are.”
Thorpe looked at her closely, then said, “Are the others close by?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Well, let’s go.” He came closer.
“Stop there.” She raised her pistol and remained standing in the open door.
Thorpe stopped, then said sharply, “Come in here and close the door before someone comes by.” He added, “We’ll talk.”
Joan hesitated, then stepped fully into the room, and the door swung closed on its spring.
Thorpe said, “Tell me why you’re pointing that at me. Certainly naked men don’t make you nervous.”
Joan snapped, “You’re a Russian agent. That’s what they told me when I was briefed.”
Thorpe smiled and shook his head. “Would I be here in this room if I was working for them?”
She didn’t reply.
“Van Dorn and his clowns think they have all the answers, but those harebrained amateurs don’t know anything. I’m a triple agent, a loyal CIA operative.”
Joan winced at the string of intelligence terms. “Oh, fuck this double, triple shit, Peter. You all give me a headache. They told me if I ran into you, to shoot you on the spot, and I just might do that.”
Thorpe laughed, then said pleasantly, “Joan… I haven’t forgotten that time we went out on my boat—”
“Go to hell.”
Thorpe looked downcast. He said, “What are you going to do to me? I’d rather you shot me than leave me here to be tortured by the Russians again.”
She looked at his body. They had not hurt him too badly, from what she could see. She tried to draw some conclusions. Either he was working for the CIA, or he was working for the Russians. Van Dorn could be wrong. After all, if he was working for the Russians, why did they beat him? And if he was a CIA agent, she couldn’t leave him here… She thought a moment, then said, “Look, Peter, I’m a little new at this, but I think even an old pro wouldn’t know what the fuck to make of you.”