hands slipping on the moss-covered rocks. The drain was four feet in diameter and long. It snaked out of light range. Far in the back, O’Hara could hear the steady trickle of a dozen streams echoing through the tunnel. Cold air moaned past them.
Chameleon moved on all fours, like a cat. And fast. They were both dressed in black pants and turtlenecks and black sneakers. Chameleon carried a rope with a small telescoping grappling hook on one end. They had four microwave transmitters, each wrapped in heavy Styrofoam, tucked in their sweaters. Nothing else but the flashlight.
They both crept along on all fours, their backs curved away from the top of the drain, past two feeder drains. At the third, Chameleon stopped. He pointed up and O’Hara flashed the light toward the ceiling. A shaft went straight up into the guts of the fortress. It was thirty or forty feet straight up to a grate at the far end. Chameleon put his back against one wall and his feet against the other and started shinnying up. It was a torturous ascent because the walls of the shaft were dripping wet. Foot by slippery foot he jerked his way up the narrow enclosure. When he reached the top he fastened the grappling hook to the grate and unwound the rope. It dangled down to O’Hara’s fingertips. He climbed up ii, hand over hand. He braced himself with feet and back while Chameleon very cautiously pushed up the grate and slid it aside.
The subterranean passage was grim. Only two lamps illuminated the low-ceilinged dungeons. What were once cells had been converted into storage bins, but the place still seemed to be permeated with soughs of torture and despair, as if history were whispering through its cold stoae corridors. It was the wind, keening through cracks in the walls and down the stairways,
They quickly pulled themselves into the hail and replaced the grate. They hid the grappling hook and ran to an open winding stairway. Chameleon cautioned O’Hara to wait. They looked up and saw a camera shake its head Lack and forth, slowly scanning the staircase and the hail above. As it swept away, toward the hallway, Chameleon ran up the stairs and stopped directly under the camera. He stood with his back against the wail as it moved silently overhead, pointing back toward the stairwell. Then he ran the rest of the way down the hail to a fire door. The locker room was just inside. He had to make a move before the camera completed its swing back, If there was someone in the hallway on the other side of the door, they were in trouble.
He opened it and stepped through. The hallway was empty. Behind him, O’Hara dashed to the spot under the camera and waited until it swung back and then ran to the doorway.
They ran to the locker room and jumped through the door. A man was standing in front of them.
Outside, Eliza and the Magician had driven to the top of the mountain to a point where the road curved close to the edge of a precipice. Eliza pulled off to the side and parked. They could not see into Dragon’s Nest from there, but the Magician was sure the reception would be excellent. He was sitting in the back of the van before three built-in videotape decks and monitors, twisting dials, looking for the signal. There was nothing but static.
‘They’re not in there yet,’ he said.
‘I just hope when they do get in they get it done and get their fannies out of there,’ Eliza said.
‘I just hope they don’t run into one of those sumo wrestlers they have as guards. Four hundred pounds of bad news.’
They had left a Toyota parked near the bottom of the mountain. If they were being chased when they left, Eliza would take the tapes and switch to the car. O’Hara, the Magician and Chameleon would stay with the truck and lead pursuers away from her.
It was O’Hara who had realized that they only needed to get some tape of the pumping system on Midas to prove that AMRAN had stolen the plans. That and the existence of the Midas field itself would be enough for them to justify blowing the AMRAN story wide open.
The Magician looked at his watch.. They had been gone an hour. That’s how long Chameleon had estimated it would take to get into the control-panel corridor behind the big map. The Magician would monitor the video screens in the truck and record anything that was shown. Each of the transmitters was set to beam its signal at a different frequency so the pictures would not overlap. He couldn’t think of anything they had forgotten,
The man in the locker room appeared to be in his fifties. His eyes were faded, his skin was creased with age and his white hair was as thin as wisps of cotton.
‘You’re early,’ he said in Japanese.
‘Yes,’ Chameleon said quickly, ‘there is a problem with one of the air conditioners.’
‘It takes two of you? My, times have changed. It is much too extravagant for a janitor like me. Good night. Don’t work too late.’ He left.
‘Close,’ said O’Hara.
‘Let us hope he does not mention it to anyone on the way
‘What next?’
‘Check the open lockers. The fixing men usually leave their internal ID badges on their coveralls,’ Chameleon said. There were several, and the members of the maintenance crew obviously were not as large as those on the security force. They both found coveralls that fit.
Chameleon handed O’Hara a hardhat and said, ‘Put this on. Keep your head down so the cameras will not see your face. If you see anyone, just nod and go on.. You will find there is little conversation up above. We will go to the top of the stairs and enter the main floor. The map room is immediately to your left, and the corridor leading behind the map is next to it. We are lucky. We do not have far to go.’
‘We hook up, check the map room to make sure the cameras are scanning what we want and then split,’ O’Hara said. ‘No hanging around rummaging through wastebaskets, okay?’
‘I will try to control myself.’
Getting behind the map was a piece of cake. The main corridor was empty and the door was unlocked. The wall was a myriad of TV monitors.
‘It’s going to be tough to find the monitors for the map room,’ O’Hara said.
‘They are marked. See.’
Each of the boxes had its location written on the frame with a felt-tip pen. Checking the inscriptions, O’Hara
