Once he died, his retina would start to decay. According to Charlie, if that happened as little as five seconds before they reached the retina scanner at the entrance to the Manhattan Project tunnel, they might as well turn around and go home.
Grudzev tried to hide his worries from his men. “I’m thinking we go in through the little offices on the fourth floor,” he said in Russian. Perriman took up the first three of the building’s six stories. One-man travel agencies, tarot card readers, and such had the upper floors. Most building managers, in his experience, were lazy, cheap, or both, and put alarms on only the lower two floors, occasionally the third, and sometimes the roof.
“What if somebody sees us and calls nine one one?” said Pyotr from the passenger seat. The onetime Red Army weapons specialist was so tall and burly it was a wonder the van didn’t list to his side.
He and Grudzev both turned to the backseat to Veshnijakov, a veteran second-story man everybody called Bill, short for Chernobyl, a reference to his face, badly pitted by childhood acne. Although too old to scale buildings, he still had the wiles, as they say in the old country, to outfox a wolf.
“A couple roach traps ought to solve that,” he said.
Grudzev, who considered himself a religious man, muttered a quick prayer, then pressed a few buttons on the intercom panel at the front door of the apartment building that neighbored the office building. As most New Yorkers knew, getting into a locked apartment building in the middle of the night was as simple as hitting enough buttons on the front door panel until a resident intent on getting back to sleep decided he just wanted to shut the buzzer the hell up. Grudzev was thus in the lobby in twelve seconds.
Many of the wall-mounted mailboxes were swollen with mail. No surprise there: It was Christmastime. Affixed to Apartment 4A’s box was a note instructing the residents to contact the post office upon their return to receive overflow items.
Grudzev climbed the stairs and knocked on the door to 4A. When no one answered, he slipped on cotton gloves, flicked a torsion wrench and a feeler prong into the lock, then fished around. Thirty seconds later, he was gratified to hear the faint snap of the bolt skipping free of the doorframe.
The apartment was hot and smelled of dust-good signs in terms of occupancy. He groped for the intercom panel and buzzed in Bill, who would admit the others.
The bedroom had been hit by a hurricane of last-minute packing. Stepping over a skirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts that hadn’t made the cut, he raised the window and looked out onto the sliver of an alley between the apartment and the office building.
The one-room Globetrotter Travel office would be a short jump. A mist of streetlight outlined a diagonal grid of metal mesh within the pane there: shatterproof glass, the best kind from the burglar’s point of view in such a situation. When knocked in properly, a shatterproof pane falls in one piece, as opposed to a regular pane, which rains bits of glass and gets the attention of everyone within a couple of blocks.
When Grudzev felt certain no one was watching, he climbed out the window and onto the ledge. He stepped across the dark alley, touching down firmly on the far ledge.
Police sirens ripped into the night, freezing him, until he gratefully recalled Bill’s “roach traps.” To cut down the number of cops available to respond to a call here, Bill had dispatched a man to do a torch job in Riverside Park, a block west, and a second man to heave a garbage pail through one of the storefront windows up by Columbia, to which the university’s ass-kissing 26th Precinct gave disproportionate attention.
Grudzev kicked the pane as if it were a soccer ball. Other than a dull thud, nothing happened. Undaunted, he tried hitting the glass with an open palm. The entire pane recoiled and plunged into the travel agency, landing with a muted tap on pile carpet. He slid into the office, then beckoned the silhouettes massed at the bedroom window across the alleyway.
Although loaded down by Kevlar and weapons, the men crossed the gap like birds. First Karpenko, then Bill, and finally Pyotr with the unconscious American cradled in his massive arms. Grudzev helped them into the office. He thought the vapor seeping from the American’s mouth a beautiful sight.
Habitually wary of building employees working late, Grudzev used gestures to direct his men into the dark hallway and toward the rear stairwell, clearly demarcated by an illuminated sign. They raced down the stairs to the basement, where, beneath the monstrous growl of the furnace, they were free to speak.
Pointing to the utility closet, Grudzev said, “That’s where our guy thinks the entrance is.”
It wouldn’t open, not even when Pyotr tugged.
“We need to find a service box,” Bill said.
“Got it.” Pyotr pointed to the box ten feet down the dark wall. “But…”
The access panel was padlocked shut.
“No problem.” Bill drew a can of Freon from his overcoat and sprayed. The lock glistened but nothing more.
With a condescending snort, Karpenko aimed his AK-74 at the lock.
“No, wait, stop!” Grudzev shouted.
Karpenko held his fire, but he didn’t lower the gun. Grudzev sought short, simple words to explain to the trigger-happy brute that they’d yet to spot any heat or motion sensors, and that they wanted to postpone announcing their presence to the Manhattan Project complex security guards until the last possible instant. If the guards could be taken by surprise, they would be limited to the weapons on them-likely sticks and stones compared to what the Russians had. Along with a. 357 Magnum and a Walther machine pistol designed for close-quarter combat, Grudzev’s XXXL leather overcoat concealed an AK of his own with an underbarrel grenade launcher capable of piercing armor two football fields away. Karpenko packed at least as much punch, Bill carried incendiary devices, and Pyotr was a walking arsenal.
Bill said, “Abracadabra” and struck the padlock with the base of the spray can. The frozen lock shattered as if made of porcelain. Grudzev expected Karpenko’s face to be red, but the big fool gaped as if he’d witnessed real magic.
Bill opened the service box and pulled the lever inside. The utility closet door sprung outward, revealing a flight of stairs. Ecstatic, Grudzev led the charge down.
There were no lights in the giant subbasement, but the fluorescent ring in the stairwell was enough to reveal the door-sized ventilation grate on the far wall.
“That’s gotta be it, yeah?” Grudzev said.
Advancing for a closer look, Bill said, “The plating’s awfully thick for a vent.”
“That better be it,” said Pyotr with uncharacteristic anxiety.
A glance at the young man in his arms explained it: He’d lost color, and his breathing was barely noticeable.
Bill examined the grate. “Did the horses guy have any idea where the scanner is?”
“No, but I’m sure we’ll find it,” Grudzev said, keeping private his fear that they wouldn’t. Studying the huge, essentially featureless room left him at a loss.
“Maybe hidden inside a cinder block, yeah?” Karpenko said, tapping the wall beside the grate.
“Yeah, could be,” said Bill. “A pressure-sensitive or spring-loaded deal. But…”
The wall was a good twenty meters of cinder blocks. And who was to say the scanner wasn’t in one of the other three walls? With no better option, Grudzev began rubbing his palms along the rough, musty cinder blocks. The others followed his lead.
“Probably at eye level,” Bill suggested.
Seconds later, Karpenko pressed a cinder block about six up from the floor and the same distance from the left of the grate. The facing hissed sideways, revealing a scanning module like a telescope eyepiece. Grudzev thanked God.
Pyotr took up the American like a puppet, pulled open his right eyelid, and positioned his eye before the scanner. The machine within it whirred, glowing green, then faded back to black. The ventilation grate didn’t stir.
Grudzev said of Charlie, “I’m gonna make that cocksucker eat one of these fucking cinder-”
Locks were heard popping open within the wall.
10
