Androv said, “You’re overwrought. Did Kalin abuse you?”
“Kalin is dead.”
Again, Androv nodded as if to say, “I understand, I’ve always understood about you.” He said aloud, “What’s that behind your back. A pistol?”
She brought the pistol up and pointed it at him. “Stand up.”
Androv stood slowly.
“I wish I had time to humiliate you the way you’ve humiliated me. I wish I had a whip, I wish I could have you in a torture cell—”
“Claudia.”
She froze. The voice came from the dark corner of the room to her left. The voice said in English, “Claudia, put down the gun.”
She kept the gun pointed at Androv, but her hands were shaking. No, she thought, it can’t be him. It can’t be—
She saw a flash of light out of the corner of her left eye and felt a searing pain in her side, then another. Then she felt nothing.
The man in the corner remained in the darkness.
Androv looked toward him, then said, “I certainly never thought I’d be rescued by an OSS paratrooper.” He chuckled, then added, “What a game we play.”
Joan Grenville rushed for the door of the torture chamber, reaching for the handle. She did not want to be locked in this room, but neither did she want to face Thorpe. She heard him fumbling with the bolt and yanked back on the handle. The door opened a few inches and she slammed it again, then repeated the motion until Thorpe understood that he was not going to be able to throw the bolt. Thorpe pushed in on the door, but she pushed it back, marveling at how much difference a pint or so of blood made even in a man that powerful. She heard the silencer wheeze and saw the door splinter, but the round, a .25-caliber, did not penetrate the oak. She kept shaking the door as she yelled, “Get out! Go!”
She heard him cough, a liquid sort of sound, then heard the sound of his bare feet slapping on the floor.
Joan waited a full minute, then peeked out the crack around the jamb. There was a trail of blood on the concrete floor of the passage leading away from the door. She was tempted to follow the trail in the hope that she could retrieve her pistol if he collapsed, but she decided she had displayed enough stupidity for one night. She slipped through the door and headed down a narrow passage that ran off to the right of the torture chamber. She intended to get out of this madhouse, fast.
The passage proved a bad choice. It ended at a door, and she had by now resolved not to open another door in this basement. She turned and began heading back, then someone spoke in a language that wasn’t English. Fuck.
She turned and quietly went back to the door. She took a deep breath, opened the door, and slid through, standing with her back against it in total darkness, listening. Nothing. Her hands searched the wall to her right and she located an old push button — type electrical switch. She pressed it and the light went on.
Joan Grenville stared into the huge room, only slowly realizing that she was in a kitchen. But it was an incredibly ancient kitchen, the original downstairs kitchen, she realized. There were exposed pipes and antique stoves, and the walls were gray plaster. There was nothing in there that postdated the 1940s, and by the looks of the dust and cobwebs, it hadn’t been cleaned since then. The kitchen that time forgot. She almost laughed.
Joan knew the basic attack plan well enough, and she knew that if everything had gone right, then Abrams, Katherine, and two of Marc Pembroke’s people were in the house. Marc himself might be up there; yet she heard nothing above to indicate a battle. She decided to wait it out in this time capsule.
Joan looked around at the slate-topped counters, the tub sinks, the wooden cupboards. She looked for something to sit on, then noticed a dumbwaiter in the wall. She approached it curiously and saw that the cage was still there and that the cables were steel, not rope. She walked back to the light switch, shut it, then found her way in the dark to the dumbwaiter. She hesitated, then squeezed herself into the dusty dumbwaiter. “Last place they’d look.” She pulled tentatively on the cable and the cage rose a few inches.
She began pulling hard and the dumbwaiter rose farther. This reminded her unhappily of the damned trolley cable. She continued her ascent. There may be someone up there who can help me, she thought. Certainly her luck couldn’t get any worse. She felt sorry for herself but took comfort in the fact that she was alive, and would stay that way as long as she stayed in the dumbwaiter.
The cage moved surprisingly fast, with little creaking, and she saw a crack of light, then the full outline of the dumbwaiter door on the first floor. She stopped pulling, listened, but heard nothing.
Joan settled back and made herself as comfortable as possible. She closed her eyes and yawned, feeling relatively secure for the first time in hours.
She drifted off for a few moments and was awakened by a light glaring into her eyes. She turned her head and bumped her nose on the muzzle of a rifle. “Oh!” She reached for the cable but a hand grabbed her wrist. A voice said, “You snore.”
She looked up into the blackened face of a very good-looking man. “I know. Everyone tells me that. You’re Davis, aren’t you?”
“At your service. Is the boy all right?”
“Yes, he’s gone back.”
Davis said, “Did you complete the other parts of your mission?”
“Yes. Sleeping gas in the bomb shelter, roof lights on—”
Cameron came running over. He glanced at Joan in the dumbwaiter but showed no particular curiosity. He said to Davis, “Paraztrooper landed out there. They marched him in through the front doors.”
Joan blurted, “Was it Tom? My husband?”
Cameron looked at her. “No… an older man.” He shifted his attention to Davis. “I don’t think it was Johnson or Hallis, either… however, the face looked familiar.”
Joan said, “Listen, can I get out of here? I’m a civilian.”
Davis smiled. “Not yet. You’ll be safest here for a while. We’ll come for you later.”
Joan nodded. As Davis and Cameron started down the hallway, she called to them, “Peter… Peter Thorpe. Is he good or bad?”
“Bad,” said both men simultaneously.
“Good,” she replied. “Because I think I killed him.”
Katherine and Abrams entered the hallway. To the right were the French doors from which Abrams had taken the metal scrapings. Across the hall were the doors to the music room, and to the left were the bathroom and the cellar stairs. Katherine dropped to one knee and scanned the doorways as Abrams moved quickly to the French doors. He peered through the panes and saw something on the north terrace that he hadn’t seen on his earlier visit: four Russian guards, speaking animatedly, standing around the body of a man dressed in black. “Damn it.” As he watched, two of the Russians raised their rifles. Then all four keeled over as the deadly fire from the roof cut them down.
At least some of the paratroopers had made it to the roof, Abrams thought. He hurried back into the hallway, going directly to Katherine at the cellar stairs. The door was ajar and he swung it fully open with the barrel of his rifle.
Katherine suppressed a gasp. The stairs and landing were littered with men, women, and children, sprawled over one another. Some of the men held pistols in their hands. Abrams said, “That’s the bomb shelter down there.”
Katherine nodded.
Abrams looked for the little girl with the doll but didn’t see her. He pulled Katherine away from the door and closed it. “Still some gas… ”
She nodded again and realized she was dizzy. “Let’s get moving.”
They approached the glass-paneled doors that led to the music room and Abrams peered through the curtains. The room was dark except for the glow of the Russian television set. The screen showed a fuzzy picture of a newscaster. Abrams opened the door slowly and they entered. Abrams walked across the frayed rug and Katherine raised her rifle.