Except for the sound of their breathing, the fortieth floor was silent.
'I'm not a clairvoyant,' she said, 'but I don't like the way it feels. I
sense it, Graham. Something's wrong.'
'In a building like this, the telephone lines are in the walls. Outside
of the building they're underground. All the lines are underground in
this city. How would he get to them?'
'I don't know. But maybe he knows.'
'He'd be taking such a risk,' Graham said. 'He's taken risks before.
Ten times before.'
'But not like this. We're not alone. The security guards are in the
building.'
'They're forty stories below.'
'A long way,' he agreed. 'Let's get out of here.'
'We're probably being silly.'
A haunted look filled his bright blue eyes.
'Probably.'
'We're probably safe where we are.'
'Probably.'
'I'll grab our coats.'
'Forget the coats.' He took hold of her hand. 'Come on. Let's get to
those elevators.'
Bollinger needed eight shots to finish off Macdonald and Ott.
They kept ducking behind the furniture.
By the time he had killed them, the Walther PPK was no longer firing
silently. No silencer could function at peak efficiency for more than a
dozen shots; the baffles and wadding were compacted by the bullets, and
sound qscaped. The last three shots were like the sharp barks of a
medium-sized guard dog. But that didn't matter. The noise wouldn't
carry to the street or up to the fortieth floor.
I in the outer office of Cragmont Imports, he switched on a light.
He sat on a couch, reloaded the Walther's magazine, unscrewed the
silencer and put it into his pocket. He didn't want to risk fouling the
barrel with loose steel fibers from the silencer; besides, there was no
one left in the building to hear shots when he killed Harris and the
woman. And a shot fired on the fortieth floor would not penetrate walls
and windows and travel all the way down to Lexington Avenue.
He looked at his watch. 8:25.
He turned off the light, left Cragmont Imports, and went down the hall
to the elevator.
elevators served the fortieth floor, but none of them was working.
Connie pushed the call button on the last lift. When nothing happened,
she said, 'The telephone, and now this.'
In the spare yet harsh fluorescent light, Graham's laugh lines looked
deeper and sharper than usual; his face resembled that of a kabuki actor
painted to represent extreme anxiety. 'We're trapped.'
'it could be just an ordinary breakdown of some sort,' she said.
'Mechanical failure. They might be making repairs right now.'
'The telephones?'
'Coincidence. Maybe there's nothing sinister about it.
Suddenly the numerals above the elevator doors in front of them began to
