Alex wriggled again and worsened her situation. In her mind she saw her parents waiting for her. Her grandmother, for whom she had lit all those beautiful
There! When she held on to thoughts like that and felt the strength drain out of her, it didn’t seem so bad.
Oh God, please take me to heaven…
The silence was the same immense size as the darkness. Up ahead, a few yards from Alex’s head, there was a slight scratching. Alex, her head at an impossible angle, knew they were rats. Alex spat at them, gave a flick of her head, and screamed!
Couldn’t she even die in peace? They’d be back to get her body after she died, wouldn’t they?
She fought tears.
Now her neck was cramping. Badly. She had no way to relieve the pain. She dug in with her shoes. She pushed again and felt the stone around her grow tighter and sharper. It tore at her clothes.
She sucked in all her strength, dug in her sneakers, pushed with her arms and pushed with all the strength she had left.
A few inches.
Nothing else.
The air in the tunnel was becoming thin. Then thinner.
She summoned up what was left of her courage. A deeper darkness was starting to swallow her.
Now she knew. She was a goner. A few moments later, locked in place, she started to lose consciousness.
In her father’s house, she knew, there were many rooms. And deep down, she also believed, someone had gone ahead to prepare a place before her.
It was easy, really; much like falling asleep.
SEVENTY-ONE
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 19, SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT
Alex’s eyes flickered open, and she thought she had her first glimpse of heaven.
She was wrong, but every bit as pleased.
At the end of the tunnel in front of her there was a light, then a stronger light. And all around her now was the sound of tapping.
Then hammering. More hammering. All around her hammering!
She yelled. “I’m here! I’m here!”
There was the sound of machinery. She could feel vibrations behind her. A rescue team had knocked their way into the same tunnel. The next thing that happened startled her all the more.
Her feet. Something touched her feet. Hands. Human hands. And after that, someone had pushed a hose past her and was pumping air into the narrow passageway. Breathing became easier. An air pump was part of the machinery she heard. Up ahead of her, she could feel a drill.
A voice in English screamed. “Alex! Alex, we got you!”
“I’m here!” she yelled again. She fought back tears, tears that none could see, but which she could feel cascading down her cheeks. Ahead of her, the light became more intense as workers had broken through the basement floor of the embassy to where the explosives had been stashed and then defused by bomb experts.
Then part of the wall behind her broke away. Her legs were free. So was her upper body. Hands in heavy gloves worked their way up to her hips. The hands cleared debris from the wall.
Firemen. Rescue teams from the police. Rarely had she been so happy to feel strange male hands upon her. Stuck for hours, she was being freed within minutes, once they had located her.
A voice in English. Familiar. “Alex?”
It was Peter.
“Yes! Yes!” she gasped in response.
“They’re going to pull you backward gently. Are you okay with that?”
“I’m okay!” she yelled.
They pulled. And she slid. It was the greatest ride of her life. Ten feet, a dozen, maybe twenty as her jeans and shirt dragged and ripped. They pulled her out into the light, into the clammy underground cavern where she had entered the tunnel.
She turned over and trembled, trying to sit up. Peter knelt down and wrapped his arms around her, and as he embraced her for a moment, she sobbed almost uncontrollably.
They wrapped her in a blanket. They stood her up. Her legs were unsteady, rubbery, but they supported her. The rescue workers had unlocked some doors in the old tunnels and broken through a wall.
“How did you ever find me?” she finally asked. “How? How?”
“Your wallet,” he said.
“What?”
He made a motion to where her wallet rode in her back pocket. She pulled the wallet out and handed it to him. From it, he pulled the Swiss consular ID card that he had forced upon her the day before.
“I doctored it,” he said. “Homing device. After you disappeared once in Switzerland, I wasn’t going to let it happen again.”
She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. So instead, she did both.
Distantly, as they evacuated her, the sound of demolition grew louder from underneath the embassy.
SEVENTY-TWO
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 21, AFTERNOON
Two days later, after a single night of hospital recovery, Alex found herself at Madrid International Airport, seeing Peter off on his return flight to China.
They stood together at the departure gate. She saw some emotion in his eyes, but she equally saw him retreat from it, as if it would be a dangerous place for him to go.
“I guess I better get moving,” he said.
“Guess so,” she said.
For a moment they stood apart. Peter took her hand, and there was something in his eyes that she still couldn’t fathom. Again, he didn’t smile, not at first, but then he did. The small gesture served to only confuse her more.
In assessing Peter Chang, she had come to know him quite well, yet not know him at all. She didn’t know whether the man before her was large and grand or small and mean. Nor could she fathom his moral compass, though she was certain he had one somewhere.
He had murdered savagely and vengefully, something that she couldn’t accept. Yet he had twice saved her life. There were aspects of him that reminded her of Yuri Federov and yet there were strains in him that reminded her-unless she was deluding herself-of her late Robert. Or even herself.
After all, weren’t they all in the same line of work?
Wasn’t everyone imperfect? Wasn’t life a daily compromise? Were there absolutes? Were all ethics at least partially situational? Weren’t we
He reached under his jacket and removed his firearm. He bundled it and gave it to her, concealing it. She pulled it into her purse.
“That’s a heck of a souvenir,” she said with half a smile.
