Call After Midnight (27 page)

“She is smarter than she looks.”

“Undoubtedly.” The mask turned back to Sarah. “Where is your husband?”

“I don't know.”

“You found Eva. And Helga. Surely you must know how to find your own husband.”

She bent her head and stared down at the floor. “He's dead,” she whispered.

“You're lying.”

“He died in Berlin. The fire.”

“Who says this? The CIA?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe them?” At her silent nod, the man turned to Kronen in fury. “This woman is worthless! We've wasted our time! If Dance shows up for her, he's a fool.”

The contempt in his voice made Sarah stiffen. To Magus her life was worth nothing more than an insect's. Killing her would be as easy for him as rubbing his heel in
the dirt. There would be no regret, no pity; all he'd feel would be distaste. A knot of anger tightened in her belly. With sudden violence her chin came up. If she had to die, it wouldn't be as an insect. Swallowing hard, she lashed out at him defiantly.

“And if my husband does show up,” she said, “I hope he sends you straight to hell.”

The pale eyes in the mask registered a faint flicker of surprise. “Hell? We'll meet down there in any event. An eternity together, your husband and I. I've already felt the flames. I know what it's like to burn alive.”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“But your husband did.”

“He's dead! Killing
me
won't make him suffer!”

“I don't kill for the dead. I kill for the living. Dance is alive.”

“I'm just an innocent—”

“In this business,” he said slowly, “there are no innocents.”

“And your wife? What was she?”

“My wife?” He stared off, as though suddenly hypnotized by something on the wall. “My wife…yes. Yes, she was an innocent. I never thought she would be the one…” He turned to her. “Do you know how she died?”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what happened. But can't you see it had nothing to do with me?”

“I saw it. I watched her die.”

“Please, won't you listen—”

“From my bedroom window, I saw her walk through the garden to the car. She stopped beside the roses and waved. I have never forgotten that moment. How she waved. And smiled.” He tapped his forehead. “It is like a photograph, here, in my mind. The last time I saw her alive…”

He fell silent. Then he turned to Kronen and said, “Before morning move her to a safer place. Where she cannot be heard. If Dance does not come for her in two days, kill her. Make it slow. You know how.”

Kronen was smiling. Sarah shuddered as he reached down and playfully ran a strand of her hair through his fingers. “Yes,” he said softly. “I know how….” Suddenly his body went rigid, and his jaw snapped up.

Somewhere in the building, an alarm had gone off. Over the door a red light blinked on the warning panel.

“Someone is inside!” said Kronen.

Magus's eyes were bright as diamonds. “It's Dance,” he said. “It must be Dance….”

Kronen already had his gun drawn as they ran from the room. The door slammed shut. The bolt squealed into place. Sarah was left alone, her eyes fixed on the red warning light flashing on and off.

The effect was hypnotic. Red, the universal color of alarm, the color of blood, the color of fear, went on blinking. You are going to die, it screamed at her. In two days you are going to die.

Just moments ago she had accepted her own death calmly. Now fear was pumping adrenaline by the quart into her veins. She wanted to live! In panic she lunged at the door, but it was made of solid oak and impossibly strong. Two days, her brain kept repeating. Two days, and then she'd feel Kronen's knife. The way Eve had felt it. But Sarah couldn't let herself think that far ahead. If she did she'd go mad with terror.

The light was still flashing. It seemed to blink faster and faster, accelerating with the pounding of her heart.

She fell back against the door and stared around the room. In their haste to leave, Kronen and Magus had left
the lights on. For the first time, she examined her surroundings.

The storeroom was not empty. Cardboard boxes, stamped with F. Berkman, were piled in a corner. She turned first to the boxes and found only a wrinkled invoice, made out in Dutch. Then she spotted a band of strapping tape around the largest box. She tore off the tape and pulled it taut a few times, testing its strength. Used right, it could easily strangle a man. She didn't know if she had the power—or the nerve—to do it. But in her current situation, any weapon—even four feet of old tape—was a gift from heaven.

Next she examined the window. Immediately she discarded it as an escape route. She'd never fit through.

There was only one way out of the room: the door. But how was she to get out?

The stacking chairs gave her an idea. A single chair was light enough to lift and swing. Good. One more weapon. Stacked together, the chairs were so heavy she could barely drag them across the floor. Her plan just might work.

She tugged the stack of chairs to one side of the doorway and tied the strapping tape to a leg of the bottom chair. She strung out the tape and crouched on the opposite side of the doorway. She pulled her end of the tape. It rose a few inches off the floor. If her timing was right, it would work as a trip wire. It would buy her a few seconds, enough time to get through the door.

Over and over she rehearsed her moves. Then she ran through everything with her eyes closed, until she could do it blind. It had to work; it was her only chance.

She was ready. She climbed onto one of the chairs and disconnected the fluorescent light tubes in the ceiling. The room was plunged into darkness. It would be to her
advantage; she now knew her way around the room in the darkness. As she was jumping off the chair, she heard what sounded like thunder. It was gunfire echoing off the buildings. Outside there were shouts, then more gunfire. The building was in an uproar. In all the confusion, her escape would be easier.

First she had to draw someone's attention. She took a chair to the window. At the count of three, she swung. The chair shattered the glass.

She heard another shout, then footsteps pounding up the stairs. She brought the chair to the doorway and groped in the darkness for her end of the tape. Where was it?

The footsteps had reached the next room and were crossing to her door. The bolt squealed. Desperately her fingers swept across the floor and came up with the tape just as the door swung open. A man lunged into the room, moving so fast she barely had time to react. She jerked on the tape. It snagged the man by the foot. His momentum almost wrenched the tape out of her hand. Something clattered across the floor. The man pitched forward and fell flat on his belly. At once he scrambled to his knees and started to rise.

Sarah didn't let him. She swung the chair, slamming it on his head. She felt, more than heard, the heavy thud against his skull, and the horror of what she'd done made her drop the chair.

He wasn't moving. But as she rummaged through his pockets, he began to moan, a low, terrible sound of agony. So she hadn't killed him. She found no gun in his pockets. Had he dropped it? There was no time to search the dark room on her hands and knees. Better to run while she could.

She fled the storeroom and bolted the door behind her.
One down, she thought with a raw sense of satisfaction. How many more to go?

Now to find her way out of the building. Three flights of stairs and then a front entrance. Could she slip through it all without being seen? No time to think, no time to plan. Every nerve, every muscle, was focused on this last dash for freedom. She was nothing but reflexes now, an animal, moving on instinct.

She dashed through the office and started down the stairs. But a few steps into her descent, she froze. Voices rose from below. They were growing louder. Kronen was climbing the steps—her only escape route was cut off.

She scrambled into the office and closed and bolted the door. Unlike the other door, it was not solid wood. It would hold them off for only a few minutes, no longer. She had to find another way out.

The storeroom was a dead end. But in the office, above the desk, there was a window….

She climbed up on the desk and peered out. All she could see was mist, swirling in the darkness. She tugged at the sash, but it wouldn't budge. Only then did she see that the window had been nailed shut. For security, no doubt. She'd have to break the glass.

Clutching the sash for support, she kicked. The first three tries were worthless; her heel bounced harmlessly off the glass. But on the fourth kick, the window shattered. Shards flew out and rained onto the tiles below. Cold air hit her face. Peering outside, she saw she was at a gable window. A few feet down was a steeply tiled roof that dropped off into darkness. What lay below? It could be a deadly three story fall to the street, or it could slope down to an adjacent roof. In the older blocks of Amsterdam, she'd seen how the buildings were crammed side by
side, the roofs running in an almost continuous line. In this mist she had no way of knowing what the darkness hid. Only a fall would tell her….

The tiles would be slippery. She'd be better off barefoot. She bent down and pulled off her shoes. With sudden alarm she noticed the blood on her ankle. Her brain registered no pain; all it noted was the brightness of the blood as it oozed steadily down her foot. Even as she stared at it, mesmerized, she was aware of new noises: Kronen's pounding on the office door, and from the storeroom the loud moans of the man she'd knocked unconscious.

Time was running out.

She stepped through the window, onto the sill. Her dress caught on a shard of broken glass; with a desperate jerk, she ripped the fabric free. For a few seconds she clung by one hand to the sash and groped for another handhold, for some way to pull herself up over the gable. But the roof was too high, and the eaves hung too far out. She was trapped.

The sound of splintering wood forced her to act. Her choice was simple now. A quick death or a painful one. To fall into the darkness, to feel a split second of terror and then to feel nothing at all, would be infinitely better than to die at Kronen's hands. She could stand the thought of dying. Pain was another matter.

She heard the door give way, followed by Kronen's shout of rage. With that shout ringing in her ears, she dropped from the window.

She landed on a roof a few feet below and began sliding helplessly down the tiles. There was nothing to grab on to, nothing to stop her descent. The tiles were too wet; she felt them slipping away beneath her clawing fingers. Her legs dropped over the edge. For an instant she clung to the roof gutter, her feet dangling uselessly. The night
sky swirled with mist above her, a sky more beautiful than any she had seen, because it was her last. Her numb fingers could hold on no longer. The gutter slipped from her grasp. Eternity rushed toward her from the darkness.

“I
T'S ONLY A
flesh wound.”

“Get back in that bed, O'Hara!” barked Potter.

Nick stalked across his hospital room and flung the closet door open. It was empty. “Where's my damn shirt?”

“You can't walk out of here—you've lost too much blood.”

“My shirt, Potter.”

“In the garbage. You bled all over it, remember?”

Cursing, Nick wriggled out of his hospital top and glanced down at the bandages on his left shoulder. The pain shot they'd given him in the emergency room was wearing off. He was starting to feel as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to his upper torso. But he couldn't lie around here waiting for something to happen. Too many precious hours had already slipped away.

“Look,” said Potter, “why don't you just lie down and let me handle things?”

Nick turned on him in fury. “You mean like you've handled everything else?”

“And what the hell good are
you
gonna do her out there? Tell me that.”

Nick turned away, grief suddenly replacing his anger. He slammed his fist against the wall. “I had her, Roy! I had her in my arms….”

“We'll find her.”

“Like you found Eve Fontaine?” Nick shot back.

Potter's face tightened. “No. No, I hope not.”

“Then what are you doing about it?” cried Nick.

“We're still waiting for that guy you knocked out to start talking. All we've gotten out of him so far is gibberish. And we're tracking down that other lead, the Berkman company.”

“Search the building!”

“Can't. We need Van Dam's go-ahead and we can't reach him. We also need more evidence—”

“Screw the evidence,” muttered Nick, turning toward the door.

“Where you going?”

“To do some breaking and entering.”

“O'Hara, you can't go there without backup!” He followed Nick into the corridor.

“I've seen your backup. I think I'd rather have a gun.”

“You know how to shoot one?”

“I learn real fast.”

“Look, let me clear this through Van Dam—”

“Van Dam?” Nick snorted. “That guy wouldn't clear a trip to the john!” He punched the elevator button, then glanced at Potter's clothes. “Give me your shirt.”

“What?”

“Breaking and entering's bad enough. I don't need a charge of indecent exposure.”

“You're nuts! I'm not giving you my shirt. I'll get it back full of bullet holes.”

Nick hit the elevator button again. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

The elevator doors suddenly whished open. Potter looked up in annoyance as agent Tarasoff stepped out. “Sir?” said Tarasoff. “We've got a new development.”

“Now what?”

“Just came over the police radio. There's been a report of gunfire. The Berkman building.”