The Talbot Odyssey (66 page)

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.

The oak flooring creaked. A head appeared over the back of the couch. A female voice said in Russian, “Who is there?”

Abrams replied in Russian, “Me.” He leaned over the couch and leveled his rifle. It was, as he suspected, the woman who had done the security check. She stared at him in the glow of the video tube. She seemed, he thought, neither surprised nor frightened. She said, “What do you want?”

“You watch too much television.”

She smiled. “That’s my job tonight. To watch the news. Your Russian is bad.”

“You’re drunk. What’s your name?”

“Lara.” She looked at his camouflage gear and focused on his rifle, then said in perfect English, “Are you going to kill me?”

Abrams replied in English, “Quite possibly. That’s
my
job tonight.”

She shrugged and reached for her drink on the end table. “We’re all going to die anyway. Those asses are starting a nuclear war.” She took a long drink and added, “Everyone is in the bomb shelter.”

Abrams remembered the sad expression on her face when he had seen her in this room earlier. He saw the same expression now. He said, “Get up.”

She stood up unsteadily.

Katherine approached and Abrams said, “This is Lara. She’s a recent defector.”

The woman looked at Katherine without curiosity and shrugged again.

Abrams led the two women out into the hallway where the metal detector stood. Across the hall were two impressive oak doors: one led to the security office; the other was the door to Androv’s office. Abrams whispered to Lara, “Is anyone in those rooms?”

She nodded toward the security office. “At least two men at all times.” She looked at the other door. “That’s Androv’s office. He was in a few minutes ago. He has a prisoner. An American paratrooper.”

Abrams looked at the Russian woman. “Knock on the door.”

Lara hesitated, then walked to Androv’s door and knocked. There was no response. She knocked again. “Viktor, may I have a word with you?”

Abrams motioned with the muzzle of his rifle and Lara opened the door. She screamed.

Abrams and Katherine rushed in. The office was empty, but a cigarette still burned in the ashtray. On the floor was Claudia Lepescu. Abrams closed the door. They stared at the body a moment, but no one spoke.

Abrams looked around the office.
So,
he thought,
this is the inner
sanctum of the chief KGB resident in New York, the second
highest-ranking KGB man in America
. A former chapel in the former home of one of America’s leading families. A preview of things to come, perhaps.

Katherine was kneeling beside Claudia’s body. She saw the pistol still clutched in her hand. “Look.”

Abrams knelt beside her and said, “Russian make . . .” He saw where she had been shot—twice in the side—and his gaze went to the wingback chair in the corner.

Katherine stood and moved to the chair. She picked up the ashtray on the end table. “American cigarettes. Camels.” She saw a bottle of Scotch beside a glass. “Dewar’s.”

Abrams said, “By the looks of it, this American paratrooper was not a prisoner but a confederate.”

A loud alarm bell suddenly began ringing somewhere in the house. Katherine, Abrams, and Lara rushed into the hall. Alarm bells were ringing everywhere now and the house was filled with the staccato noise.

The security office door burst open and a uniformed officer holding a pistol came through. Abrams’ M-16 blazed and the man was thrown back into the office.

Katherine threw a concussion grenade into the office and pulled the door closed to maximize the shock waves. The grenade blew and the door fell off its hinges, followed by a billow of plaster dust.

Cameron and Davis came quickly down the hallway. They ran into the security office and began spraying the room with automatic fire. All the lights were blown out, but the windows were clear of glass and the lights from the forecourt revealed two dead men, one at the switchboard and one behind a desk. A third man was stumbling toward a small door concealed in the oak paneling. He slipped through the door and it snapped shut.

Abrams, Katherine, and Lara came into the room. Abrams and Davis ran to the door and fired through it, then pulled the splintered oak panel open. Davis burst in and a shot rang out, sending him falling back into the office, a bullet hole in the center of his forehead. Abrams dropped into a crouch and fired into the darkness. He heard a man scream, then heard retreating footsteps.

Cameron joined him and they moved cautiously through the panel door into a small, windowless room lit by a wall sconce. To the immediate left was a narrow set of service stairs, and crawling up the stairs was a man in a suit. Blood trailed from his legs onto the wooden steps. Cameron bounded up the steps as the man turned. Cameron kicked the gun out of his hand and stared down at him. The man was bleeding from the mouth and nose, a result of the concussion grenade, and his features were twisted with pain, but Cameron recognized him. “Valentin Metkov, top pig in charge of murder. Who says there’s no justice in the world?”

Metkov stared at Cameron with clouded eyes. “Please . . . I can help you . . . please don’t—”

“Where’s Androv?”

Metkov blurted, “Upstairs. In the attic.”

Cameron fired a single shot and Metkov collapsed.

The alarm bells were sounding cautiously, and the house had come alive as though awakened from an unnatural sleep. Running footsteps could be heard overhead and throughout the surrounding rooms and hallways.

Abrams heard gunfire in the security office. He rushed to the concealed doorway. Katherine was firing at the open hallway door, backing toward him as bullets ripped through the paneled walls. Abrams fired at the open door. “Quickly! Run!”

Katherine made it into the small room while Abrams looked for Lara in the dark, dust-filled room. He saw her bullet-ridden body slumped near the door. He knelt down beside Davis and felt for a heartbeat, but there was none.

Cameron shouted, “Let’s go!”

Abrams took the hand grenade from Davis’ belt, pulled the pin, and flung it toward the hallway door. He dived back into the small, windowless room as the grenade exploded.

Cameron and Katherine were on the first landing of the narrow service stairs and Abrams scrambled up to join them. They continued quickly up the winding staircase toward the attic.

Marc Pembroke heard the shooting below. In the hallway outside the attic stairs foyer, alarm bells rang and people ran. He said, “The whole bloody house is up and about. Well, another explosion won’t make a difference.” He nodded to Sutter.

Sutter struck a match and touched it to six twisted strands of detonator cord running up the staircase. The cords flashed and the flame ran along the staircase, split into six directions, and blew the plastic charges on the steel door.

The house shook and plaster fell from the ceiling and walls of the stairwell. Pembroke charged up the narrow stairs and dove into the room, rolling across the floor, followed by Llewelyn, Ann, and Sutter. They all began firing automatic bursts into the dimly lit attic room. Pembroke yelled, “Hold fire!”

Sutter and Ann took cover behind a wall of metal file cabinets facing toward the south end of the attic; Pembroke and Llewelyn, in an alcove formed by a gable. Pembroke peered around the corner of the alcove. “Big room. Takes up half this wing. Empty. Brick partition at the end. The communications room will be on the other side of it.” He glanced back at Ann and Sutter. “Well, let’s push on.”

They all stood. Suddenly there was a sound on the stairs and Pembroke turned. A shot rang out and Pembroke staggered back and fell.

Llewelyn turned in time to see the head and shoulders of a uniformed Russian coming up the stairs, rifle raised. Llewelyn fired a short burst, sending the man reeling back down the stairs. He ripped a fragmentation grenade from his belt, pulled the pin, and lobbed it into the stairwell, then hit the floor.

There was a deafening explosion, followed by the sound of the old staircase collapsing.

Llewelyn slid across the floor and peered over the edge of the open stairwell. A cloud of smoke and dust filled the dark space and he could see small fires crackling below. He thought,
That protects
our rear. That also cuts off our line of withdrawal.
He pivoted on the floor and crawled back to Pembroke, who was sitting up in the alcove, Sutter and Ann beside him.

Pembroke ran his hand under his bulletproof vest. “Cracked a rib.”

“Don’t move.” Llewelyn stared at him and saw a trickle of blood running from the corner of his pale mouth. “The lung is punctured, you know.”

“Yes, it’s my lung and my rib, so I knew it immediately. Get moving.”

“Yes. See you later.” Ann and Sutter followed Llewelyn cautiously toward the partition that separated the wings. Ann noticed several canvas bags and wooden crates marked in English and French DIPLOMATIC—RUSSIAN MISSION TO THE UNITED NATIONS—NOT SUBJECT TO U.S. CUSTOMS INSPECTION.

Sutter had taken the lead, and he approached the brick wall that rose through the floorboards and ended at the sloping ceiling. A brick chimney formed part of the wall, and a sliding steel door lay to the left of the chimney.

Sutter said softly, “This is more than we expected.”

Llewelyn nodded. “Nice old house. Built them like fortresses, they did. Russkies added the steel door, I should think. Well, we’ve a bit of plastic left.”

Sutter looked at the door. The rollers were on the far side and it was probably barred with steel. “Possibly there’s more door than plastic.”

Ann stepped forward and the two men watched wide-eyed as she banged the butt of her rifle against the steel door. She shouted in Russian, “Androv! I want to speak to Androv.”

Sutter and Llewelyn said nothing.

Ann banged again. After a full minute, a voice called back through the door in English. “Who are you?”

She replied, “I am Ann Kimberly, daughter of Henry Kimberly. Are you Androv?”

“Yes.”

“Listen carefully. I know my father’s in here somewhere. I know about Molniya and so does my government. They are prepared to launch a nuclear strike against your country. Van Dorn has mortars aimed at you. Do you understand?”

Androv replied, “What do you want?”