Poe (30 page)

“I’m not sure. I’ve never been down there. Symon…Dr. Teterya said it’s in one of the rooms close by. That’s all I know.”

“You’ve never seen it?”

“No.”

Disappointing, the assassin thought, but not the end of the world.

Smiling again, she thanked the nurse, and for a moment the poor girl looked relieved. The assassin let her hold on to that feeling for a few seconds, then reached out and snapped her neck.

Never one to disrespect the dead, she gently laid the nurse on the floor, out of the way.

Then she returned her attention to the elevator doors.

It took them
a couple minutes—and more than a few grunts and groans—to finally pull the grated cover free and drop it to the stone floor.

Alex retrieved her flashlight, flicked it on, and shone it through the hole they’d just uncovered.

The opening was a cement cylinder about three feet long, stopping where the roof of the tunnel began. As she’d been warned, it was a leg-breaking drop down to a damp floor. The tunnel walls seemed to be oozing water. The passageway was so old and decrepit it was leaking groundwater.

Badly.

There was no missing the smell, either—dank and tinged with rot.

The cable the doctor had mentioned was embedded in the cylinder about half a foot up from the bottom. What it had been used for, there was no telling, but Alex did notice three other evenly spaced points around the tube where other cables had most likely been anchored.

She pulled herself back up, and stuffed the flashlight into her pocket. “I’ll go first,” she said, looking at El-Hashim. “Wait until I’m down, then you start. The trickiest part will be shimmying down the tube. Take it as slow as you need to, and make sure you have a good grip on the cable before you commit yourself. When you reach the end, I’ll be there to help you.”

El-Hashim peered into the hole. She looked as if she were unsure she could actually do this, but she said nothing.

Alex turned to Teterya. “Thank you, Doctor. After you help her into the hole, your job is done.”

She held out her hand for him to shake. He hesitated, then took it.

“You are welcome. Please not to come back.”

Alex grinned. “I promise.”

Alex swung her legs into the opening and moved down, bracing herself against the cement. Reaching the cable, she grabbed on, then carefully relaxed the tension that was holding her body in the tube. As her legs dropped down she swung a bit from side to side, so she hooked a foot around the end of the cable to arrest the movement.

Hand over hand she lowered herself until she was just a few feet from the end of the line. She peeked down to get a glimpse of the tunnel floor, but without the use of the flashlight, all she saw was black. Hoping there was no stone beneath her that might trip her up, she bent her knees in anticipation of absorbing the shock, and let go.

Barely a second passed before her feet touched the ground. She started to fall to the side, but a quick hand to the stone floor helped her maintain her balance.

She pulled out her flashlight, turned it on, and looked up at the hole in the ceiling. “All right. Come on down.”

She could see only shadowy movement as El-Hashim entered the tube, but could clearly hear the woman’s nervous breathing. At one point, a short cry of surprise echoed through the chamber, and Alex was sure El-Hashim would come crashing down on her. But whatever had prompted the noise, El-Hashim seemed to have gotten things under control, and was soon lowering herself down the cable.

“Just a bit more,” Alex said, “and I can grab your feet.”

“There’s not much cable left.”

“It’s okay. You can go all the way to the end of it if you need to.”

“I’m not sure. I don’t want to—”

“Don’t worry. Just a few more inches.”

The surprised cry again, this time lasting as long as it took for El-Hashim to fall through the air and land in Alex’s not quite ready arms.

Alex staggered back a step, before slipping on the wet stone and falling to the ground. The flashlight skittered away, its beam spinning around a few times then settling on an unhelpful view down the tunnel.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked.

El-Hashim’s hips lay across Alex’s stomach, while her shoulders and head were tipped back against the floor of the tunnel. She groaned, then twisted as she tried to push herself up. “I think so.”

Alex scooted out from under her and climbed to her feet. She could feel the aches from the spots that she was sure would bruise later, but the pain in her shoulder, which had taken the brunt of El-Hashim’s fall, was the worst. She moved it around, trying to stretch it out, and hoped that nothing was torn inside.

When this job was over, she was going to need a month’s stay in the VA hospital to recover.

She reclaimed the flashlight, and turned back to El-Hashim, pleased to see the woman had risen to her feet again.

“Ready?” Alex asked.

“Yes. Please, let’s go.”

Alex consulted the hand-drawn map again, and started down the tunnel.

* * *

W
HEN DOCTOR TETERYA
heard the crash, he looked down the hole, but could only see the beam of the woman’s flashlight along an empty patch of the tunnel floor. He was about to call out to them when he heard them speak.

They were all right. Of course, if they weren’t, what would he have done? He certainly wouldn’t have crawled down the cable. There would have been no way for him to get back.

No, the moment they descended into the tunnel, they were out of his hands.

Thank. God.

Never again would he agree to something like this.

He stood up. There was still much to do. The infirmary needed to look like a violent escape had occurred, then he and Irina would take sedatives so they could later be found unconscious. A bruise or two wouldn’t hurt, either, though he wasn’t looking forward to that part.

But first he had to get the damn cover back over the hole.

He positioned himself so that he could pull it into place without lifting it, grabbed the edge, and started to give it a yank.

* * *

THERE WAS NO
trapdoor in the top of the elevator car.

Getting to it had not been a problem. The doors above were old and had been easy enough to pry open. A pair of rags the assassin had found, and tied around her hands, had allowed her to grab hold of the cable and slide down to the top of the car with little risk of injury.

The assassin had then crouched down, put her ear to the wood, and listened.

Silence.

Which was a good thing. It meant the car itself and the room beyond it was empty.

Unfortunately, the absence of a trapdoor made getting
into
that room a bit complicated.

Not that she minded. This was all part of the hunt. The part she so loved.

It took her less than thirty seconds to find a way in.

There was, she noticed, a gap on either side of the elevator car that would allow her to access the braking tracks. Untying the rags from her hands, she was able to use them to hook the elevator stops and pull the release.

As she had hoped, there was enough play in the cable that the car dropped half an inch. This was just enough to expose the top of the basement opening, the gap the perfect size for her to slip her fingertips through. Setting her feet firmly against the top of the car, she grabbed the lip of the opening and pulled upward, putting all of her strength into it.

The ancient cable groaned as it stuttered a few more inches down. She kept this up until she heard the next set of stop latches engage.

Using the same technique as before, she released them, then started pulling again. It didn’t take her long before the gap was wide enough for her to slip through.

The assassin smiled, feeling quite proud of herself. She took a quick look around, and spotted the tracks on the dusty floor, leading to the doorway. She was happy to see they continued into the hallway beyond, too.

Though there were several doorways along the corridor, light was only spilling out of one. The footsteps, however, didn’t go all the way to the light, instead stopping a doorway short.

The assassin listened at the closed door. More silence. As she was about to open it, she heard a noise from the next room down, the lit one.

She contemplated what to do for a moment, but knew she needed to make sure she left no potential problems behind her. So she abruptly changed course and continued down the hallway.

The light was actually coming through a window in the door. On the other side was a hallway with several more doors along it—a hallway that looked as if it saw far more traffic than the one she was in.

The source of the noise, she discovered, was a guard walking away from her down the hall.

The assassin gently took hold of the handle and tried to turn it. Locked. Just as she suspected. The part of the basement she was currently in was likely little used and mostly forgotten.

Good, then. Nothing to worry about.

She returned to the other door, and turned the knob. Within the first few inches of movement, it squeaked. She paused, listening again, but there was no noise indicating that someone had heard her on the other side. She continued pushing the door open, glad that the squeak didn’t return, and found herself in a dark corridor, save for some light spilling out of a doorway further back.

Choosing each step with care, the assassin moved quietly down the corridor. It turned out the light wasn’t coming out of a doorway so much as an arched opening in the wall that led into a wide room.

At the far end, on his hands and knees, looking at the floor, was the doctor.

No. Not looking
at
the floor.

Looking
through
it.

The tunnel entrance, she guessed. That would explain the absence of Powell and El-Hashim.

The doctor suddenly leaned further down, as if straining to see something. After several moments, he put a hand to his mouth. The assassin thought he was going to say something, but he sat back, his hand falling away.

Then she heard a voice. Faint, coming from…below the man.

Definitely the tunnel.

Dr. Teterya repositioned himself, and grabbed on to a grated metal plate sitting nearby. There was no question what he was about to do.

Before he could proceed, however, the assassin stepped into the room and said, “That actually won’t be necessary.”

One of the doctor’s hands slipped from the cover as he twisted around in surprise, throwing him off balance. He fell backward, and managed to miss tumbling through the hole only by inches.

The assassin was on him before he had the chance to get back on his feet.

“What…what are you doing down here?” he asked.

She smiled. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m following you.”

His confusion lasted several more seconds, then his eyes widened in understanding. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

“Me, what?”

“You. You’re the one…you’re the one who—”

To answer his question, the assassin reached forward and dispatched him with the quick, deadly efficiency that had made her reputation.

After appropriating his flashlight, she took a look into the hole.

It was quiet down there, no sense of movement. She shone the light and moved it around. She could see that an area on the wet ground directly below had been disturbed very recently, the slowly advancing water already starting to reclaim it.

Someone had fallen, she thought.

Good. Maybe that’ll slow their progress.

The assassin climbed into the hole and used the cable to descend into the tunnel. Once her feet were firmly on the stone floor, she masked most of the light with her hand, paused, and listened.

Footsteps. Echoing back.

Coming from…

…the left.

“
Building Three secure
,”
Danya said into his radio.

There was a hiss of static, then Plachkov, manning the desk at the prison control center, repeated in a bored monotone, “Building Three secure.”

“Moving to Building Two,” Danya said.

“Moving to Building Two.”

Danya Sosna had long ago stopped rolling his eyes when his messages were repeated back to him, and hardly even noticed it anymore. It was, after all, procedure. But tonight the practice grated on his nerves, like almost everything else.

Because tonight he wasn’t supposed to be here.

This was Danya’s night off. The one night every week he could spend in his beloved Ivanna’s bed and eat her wonderful dinners, two finely tuned skills that had always kept him coming back for more.

But instead of lying in Ivanna’s arms with a belly full of expertly prepared
chee-börek
, Danya was stuck here in this prison, forced to work another man’s shift.

This was all Vanko’s fault. Vanko, who, at the best of times, was a terrible card player and lovestruck fool. Vanko, who, for reasons unknown to anyone here, had decided not to report for duty tonight, and could not be found in his sleeping quarters.

Danya himself had tried calling the man, but the stupid fool hadn’t answered.

Where had he gotten to?

Danya could only guess. Saw him drunk and sprawled out on a mattress with some local whore, undoubtedly imagining that she was the object of his obsession, the lovely nurse Irina.

Danya hoped he was enjoying himself, because the money he had used to hire such companionship would soon be very hard to come by.

It wasn’t likely that Vanko would have a job after this.

Cursing the man’s name as he checked Building Two, Danya called it in, did the same for Building One, then made his way to Administration. He briefly chatted with the guards at the security point, airing his complaints about Vanko, before heading inside to check and double-check the doors and windows, as he had so many times before.

He was on the second floor when he noticed something wrong. The door to the infirmary was unlocked and no one was manning the reception area.