The Talbot Odyssey (63 page)

“Get me the hell out of
here.
I can’t hold on much longer.”

“Okay. . . .” Stanley reached in and worked his hands into the compressed space between her forearms and breasts.

“Watch it, Stanley.”

He stammered. “This is the way Bergen—”

“Just pull.”

His fingers hooked around her pectoral muscles and he pulled back. The trolley under her rolled toward him. After a good deal of twisting and pulling, she came free and dropped into his cradled arms. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, as they listened to the trolley rolling back down the conduit. Joan said, “Oh, Christ. . . .”

Stanley looked at her. “You were supposed to secure it with a cord. . . .”

Joan snapped, “I forgot. Put me down.”

Stanley lowered her and she stood quickly, then hopped up to the bench and stared into the black conduit. “Well, the trolley left without me, Stan.”

Stanley was shaking his head. “I should have reminded you.”

She jumped down to the floor. “Hey,
I
forgot, not you. Don’t pull your adolescent macho shit on me.”

He stared at her, slightly bewildered. “Sorry. . . .”

She drew a short breath. “Well, let’s get this dog-and-pony show on the road.”

He nodded, but didn’t move. “How are you going to get
back?
”

“Limo. First class.” She looked around. “All right, next we cover our arrival. Correct?”

Joan and Stanley quickly gathered up the thin slabs of broken concrete from the floor below and put them behind a boiler. Joan moved Stanley’s trolley there as well. Stanley reached into his pouch and retrieved a round section of cloth with adhesive backing. He stood on the bench, unfolded the cloth, and stuck it over the conduit opening.

Joan looked at it from across the room. It was colored and textured like concrete and she supposed it would pass a cursory inspection of the room. “Looks terrific. We’ll donate it to the Guggenheim.”

Stanley hopped down from the bench and carried it back to where he had found it. Joan reached up with her gloved hand and partially unscrewed two of the four overhead light bulbs, throwing the back of the room where the conduit was into near darkness. “Much nicer. All right, let’s go.”

Stanley hesitated, then went toward the door. He drew his pistol again and glanced back at Joan. He saw that she had done the same. He grasped the door handle and pushed outward, peering through the crack into the large storage room that he remembered from his last visit. He motioned to Joan and they both slipped through the door.

Stanley led the way through the stacked boxes of canned food. He knew the way up to a point, but he took out a small rough diagram and stared at it. This section of the basement was a maze of wooden partitions. There were doors everywhere, some marked in Russian and a few still marked in English. He found the one he was looking for, marked in the same Russian letters as those on his diagram. He opened it slowly and began heading along a dark narrow passage, Joan behind him. They were traveling toward the west end of the house.

The passage ended and they stepped into an open area. Ten feet to his front was a wall of fairly new concrete, about fifty feet long. He approached a single massive door sheathed with lead, and he knew this was the bomb shelter.

Inside the bomb shelter, he had been told, were over a hundred Russians: men, women, and children. He and Joan had to keep them in there.

Joan came up beside him and nodded. They both pulled tubes of epoxy weld from their black stretch suits and began running a bead of the fast-drying weld around the edge of the door where it met the steel casement jamb. The Russians inside would not be able to pull it open.

Stanley looked at his diagram again. He had been told that there was a staircase that ran up to the first floor and into a hallway that lay between the living room and trophy room. He had been briefed about the little girl who had come up the staircase. Van Dorn seemed to know a lot about this place, from defectors and spies, but he didn’t know if the staircase lay inside the bomb shelter or outside.

Joan was searching the dimly lit area in front of the shelter wall. She tried a few doors, but none of them led to a staircase. She whispered, “The stairs must be inside the shelter.”

Stanley nodded.

Joan said, “We have to do the other thing. It’s over here.” She led Stanley to the south foundation wall. Standing against the wall were three steel boxes about the size and shape of large freezers. In fact, each unit was an air conditioner and air purifier for the bomb shelter. Ducts led out of the top of each unit through the wall and surfaced somewhere out in the plantings around the south terrace. Ducts also ran from each unit along the ceiling and penetrated the concrete wall of the bomb shelter.

None of the three units was running at the moment, and Stanley felt each one until he found the one that was warm with electrical heat. “This one.”

He examined the steel sides. They were completely sealed, but there was a hinged access panel on the side. He turned a latch and the panel swung open. Stanley peered inside and saw the charcoal and fiber-glass filters. He pulled one out and dropped it behind the unit. Joan handed him a vacuum-sealed plastic bag and he tore it open, quickly dumping the clear crystals through the intake where the filter had been. He drew away immediately, knowing that the crystals were vaporizing into an invisible and odorless gas. He shut the access panel and stepped away from the unit.

Joan whispered, “Let’s get out of here.”

“I have to be sure this unit kicks on. Orders.”

“I’ll kick
you
in the ass, Stanley. Don’t push our luck.”

Stanley remained motionless, staring at the big gray steel box. After what seemed a very long time, but was less than a minute, he heard an electrical relay click and the unit vibrated, emitting a noise like a refrigerator. Stanley nodded with satisfaction. “They’ll be sleeping soon. Let’s—” He turned and saw that Joan was already heading back along the passage. He followed quickly.

They turned right, back toward the boiler room, but didn’t enter it, continuing instead to the door of the utility room.

Stanley opened the door and stepped into the long, narrow room. He found himself standing ten feet away from a man in overalls holding a clipboard in one hand and a pencil in the other.

Joan let out a scream. The man did the same. Stanley raised his pistol instinctively and fired three times, the silencer making a noise like air rushing out of the neck of a toy balloon.
Phfft! Phftt!
Phftt!

Stanley watched the man stagger aimlessly, a surprised look on his face, his hands covering his groin and chest as though he’d been caught naked.

Stanley didn’t know what to do. People were supposed to fall down dead when you shot them. He tried to fire again, but his hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t have hit the wall.

Joan closed her eyes.

Finally the man fell to the floor. Stanley approached hesitantly. Blood flowed from the man’s shoulder and groin, spreading over his khaki overalls and puddling on the gray floor. The man’s chest heaved rapidly and his eyes stared up at Stanley.

Stanley turned away. He felt his stomach heave. Without further warning he vomited up bile, acid, and a chocolate candy bar.

Joan came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Oh . . . oh, my God . . . Stanley . . .”

Stanley took several deep breaths and with some effort got control of himself. “We have to . . . to finish him. . . .”

Joan didn’t reply.

Stanley turned and looked down at the man, hoping he was dead, but he was not. Stanley wanted the man to live, but he had his orders: no witnesses. He aimed at the man’s head, closed his eyes, and fired, hearing the bullet thud against the skull and crack into the concrete floor.

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.

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.