“Ah, I think you’re being paranoid,” Curt said with a wave of his free hand. “Yuri is not mad at us. And I know he wants to hit this Fed building. He’s pissed at our government just like we are. They’ve refused to acknowledge his education. After all the years of schooling he’s had, he’s still driving a cab. Hell, I’d be pissed, too.”
“But we don’t know he’s had all the schooling he says he’s had,” Steve said.
“That’s true,” Curt said. There had been no way to check.
“Maybe this isn’t the time to be talking about all this,” Steve said. “But now that we’re on the brink of putting ourselves at risk going into this building when we are not supposed to, I wish we had more to go on to prove Yuri’s doing his part.”
“Do you think there’s a chance Yuri didn’t work in the Soviet bioweapons industry?” Curt asked.
“I think he did,” Steve said. “He knows too much about it to be making it up, especially the personal stories like about his mother’s death. But what I’ve been asking myself is why the CIA wasn’t more interested in him when he got to the U.S. Maybe all he did was mop the floor instead of working on the production line like he’s told us.”
“It was because he got to the U.S. too late,” Curt said. “Remember he told us about those two bioweapons big shots who’d defected a couple of years before he got here. Apparently they told the CIA all they wanted to know, including how much the Soviet Union had violated the 1972 bioweapons treaty.”
“All I’m saying is I’d like to see some proof of what Yuri’s doing,” Steve said. “Anything.”
“Last week he said he was close to testing the anthrax,” Curt said.
“I’d settle for that,” Steve said. “Provided the test works.”
“You’ve got a good point,” Curt admitted. “But I still think we should go ahead with this site visit. We’re not risking anything. especially with the captain out.”
“I guess you’re right,” Steve said. “Especially with that violation notice you found.”
“So, you’re game?”
“I’m game,” Steve said.
The two men entered by way of the revolving door. They had to wait in line to go through the metal detector. Once through, they were directed to the maintenance office by the head of the security detail.
“So far so good,” Steve whispered.
“Relax,” Curt said. “This is going to be a breeze.”
The maintenance door was ajar. Curt preceded Steve and presented himself in front of a secretary’s desk. The office was busy with people answering phones and typing into word processors.
“Can I help you?” the secretary asked. She was a heavyset woman who was perspiring despite the air conditioning.
Curt opened his wallet and showed his lieutenant’s Fire Department badge. The only time he wore the badge was with a black ribbon at funerals when he dressed in his class A uniform.
“Fire inspection,” Curt said.
“Of course,” the secretary said. “Let me get the chief engineer.”
She disappeared into an inner office.
Curt looked at Steve. “Piece of cake.”
“Can you feel the amount of air movement in here?” Steve asked.
“I do,” Curt said.
Steve gave him the thumbs-up. Curt nodded. He knew what Steve was thinking. The more the air moved around inside the building, the more efficiently the agent would be spread.
The chief engineer appeared a few moments later. He was a middle-aged African-American, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. Curt was taken aback. He expected coveralls and grease stains. Curt glanced briefly at Steve to see if he was equally surprised. If he was, he didn’t show it.
“My name is David Wilson. What can I do for you gentlemen? I’m surprised you are here. There was no fire inspection scheduled for today.” David’s tone was not confrontational, just questioning.
“That’s correct, sir,” Curt said. “This is a nonscheduled visit to check up on the violation noted on the last inspection involving the grill downstairs. But as long as we’re here, we’d like to run down the normal list and check the stand pipes, extinguishers, sprinklers, hoses, smoke detectors... you know, the usual.”
“The Ansul unit was installed immediately,” David said. “We sent the paperwork to the fire department directly.”
“We’d like to check the unit itself,” Curt said. “Just to be on the safe side.”
“Will it be all right if I send one of my maintenance workers with you?” David asked. “I’m in the middle of a meeting.”
“That would be fine,” Curt said agreeably.
Five minutes later Curt and Steve were accompanied by a tall, thin, taciturn individual who was dressed in the coveralls Curt had expected to see one David Wilson. The maintenance man’s name was Reggy Sims. He was an electrician’s assistant.
The first thing they checked was the grill in the sandwich kiosk on the ground floor. It was full of sizzling franks and burgers, since the noontime lunch rush was about to begin. It took about two seconds for Curt to declare that the Ansul unit was fine.
For the general inspection Curt and Steve just went through the motions, and they certainly didn’t try to see everything. If the maintenance man was suspicious, he didn’t show it in the slightest. Nor was he in any hurry to get back to his shop.
“What about the HVAC system?” Curt asked.
“What about it?” Reggy questioned.
“We should take a look at it,” Curt said. “We’ve got to know how to turn it off or at least isolate areas if need be. If there was a fire, we wouldn’t want to spread the smoke all over kingdom come. Where’s the main control console?”
“It’s in the machinery spaces on the third floor,” Reggy said.
“How about the main air induction. Where’s that?”
“Same place,” Reggy said.
“Good,” Curt said. “Let’s take a look at it.”
“How come?” Reggy asked.
“There’s supposed to be smoke detectors both for the new air coming in and the recirculated air,” Curt explained. “We’ve got to at least eyeball them. Actually, we’re supposed to give them a test.”
Reggy shrugged and led the way.
The noise level in the machinery spaces was horrendous. It was a huge room that was filled with all manner of equipment, including massive electrical panels, huge boilers, compressors, and pumps. A bewildering array of pipes, ducts, and conduits angled off in all directions. Few people ever paused to think of what it took to warm and cool a building the size of the Jacob Javits Federal Building or for the elevators to function or even for water to come out of a faucet on the thirty-second floor. It all required a lot of power and machinery, and it ran twenty-four hours a day.
The main air ducts were so large they didn’t look like ducts. They ran along one wall of the oversized room before branching off like a large, felled tree. At intervals there were hatch-like doors that were dogged like those on a ship.
Reggy had to shout to be heard. He pounded the side of one of the ducts and yelled that it contained the fresh air being pulled in from outside. He showed where it mixed with recirculated air.
Reggy walked along the duct, then pounded it again. “Here’s where the filters are located,” he yelled. “What part of the duct do you want to see?”
“The part downstream from the filters,” Curt yelled back.
Reggy nodded. He walked over to a huge circuit breaker switch and threw it. A portion of the cacophony of machinery noise in the room wound down.
“That’s the switch to the main circulating fan,” Reggy explained. Then he walked over to one of the hatch-like doors and undogged it. It opened into the room on creaky hinges.
“We’re upstream of the main circulating fan,” Reggy said. “When it’s running you can’t open this door. There’s too much suction.”