From the elevator, Chris handed them the panel. Squirming up, he leaned down, sliding the panel back in place. He shut the trapdoor. “Now what? God Almighty, the dust. I can hardly breathe.”
“Above us. On the roof, there’s a superstructure for the elevator. It’s the housing for the gears.” Erika’s voice echoed in the dark shaft. She climbed, her shoes scraping against the concrete wall.
Saul reached up, touching a metal bar. The moment his shoes left the elevator’s roof, he heard a rumble. No! The elevator was going down! He dangled. “Chris!”
“Beside you!”
Saul’s fingers almost slipped from the greasy bar. If he fell, if the elevator went all the way to the bottom… He imagined his body crashing through the elevator’s roof and squirmed to get a better grip on the bar. Erika’s hand tightened on his wrist. He scrambled up.
“Keep your head low,” she ordered. “The gears are directly above you.”
Saul felt the speeding cables, the rush of air from the whirring gears. He hunched on a concrete ledge.
“My jacket,” Chris said. “It’s caught in the gears.”
Their rumble was magnified by the echo in the shaft. Saul spun to him, useless, blind. The rumble stopped. The cables trembled in place. The silence smothered him.
He heard the rip of cloth. “My sleeve,” Chris said. “I have to get it out before—”
The rumble began again, muffling Chris’s words. Saul reached for him, almost losing his balance, straining not to fall.
“I did it,” Chris said. “My jacket’s out.”
The elevator stopped below them. As silence returned, Saul heard the door slide open. A sickened voice moaned, someone gagging. “It’s worse than they told us! A goddamn slaughterhouse! Call the station! On the double! We need help!” Footsteps rushed from the elevator. The door slid shut. The rumble began once more as the elevator descended.
“They’ll seal off the building,” Erika said.
“Then let’s get out of here.”
“I’m trying. There’s a maintenance door to the roof. But it’s locked.”
Saul heard a rattle as she tugged at a latch. “We’re stuck in here?”
The elevator stopped. He heard the scrape of metal.
“The hinge pins. One of them’s loose.” Erika kept her voice low. Saul heard more scraping. “There. I’ve got it out.”
“What about the other one? Use my knife.”
“It’s moving. Okay, I’ve got it.” She pulled the hatch. Through a crack, Saul welcomed the glow from the city. He leaned close, gasping fresh air.
“They’ll check the roof,” Erika said. “We’ll have to wait till they’ve finished.” Despite Saul’s eagerness to leave, he knew she was right; he didn’t argue. “I can see the door to the roof,” she added. “If it opens, I’ll have time to shut the hatch and slide the pins back in.”
The elevator rumbled again, rising. A male voice drifted up, muffled. “The coroner’s on the way. We’re searching the building. Who lives in that apartment?”
“A woman. Erika Bernstein.”
“Where the hell is she? I searched the apartment. I didn’t see any bodies.”
“If she’s still in the building, we’ll find her.”
Ten minutes later, two policemen came through the door to the roof, aiming revolvers and flashlights. Erika shut the maintenance hatch, silently replacing the pins in the hinges. Saul heard footsteps and voices.
“Nobody up here.”
“What about the hatch to the elevator?”
A flashlight glared through the grill in the hatch. Saul pressed back with Chris and Erika, deep in the shadows.
“There’s a lock.”
“Better check it. Maybe it’s been jimmied.”
The footsteps came closer.
“Be careful. I’ll stay back and cover you.”
Saul heard a rattle as the lock was jerked.
“You satisfied?”
“The captain said to be thorough.”
“What difference does it make? He always double-checks everything himself. Then he sends us back to triple-check.”
The footsteps drifted away. The door to the roof creaked shut.
Saul breathed out sharply. Sweat stung his eyes. Double-check and triple-check? he thought, dismayed. We’re trapped in here.
5
All night, the elevator kept going up and down, raising dust that smeared their faces and clogged their nostrils, making them gag. After Erika reopened the maintenance hatch, they took turns straining for fresh air through the gap. Saul kept checking the luminous hands on his watch. Shortly after six, he began to see Chris and Erika, their haggard features becoming more distinct as the morning sun filtered through the grill.
At first he welcomed the light, but as he sweated more intensely, he realized the shaft was getting warmer, baked by the sun’s glare on the elevator’s superstructure. He felt suffocated. Taking off his jacket, he pried his gritty shirt away from his chest. By eleven o’clock, he’d removed his shirt as well. They slumped in a stupor, wearing only their underwear. Erika’s flesh-toned bra clung to her breasts, sweat forming rivulets between them. Saul studied the exhaustion on her face, worrying for her, at last concluding she was tougher than Chris and he. She’d probably outlast both of them.
By noon, the elevator went up and down less often. The ambulance crew and the forensic squad had come and gone. In the night, the bodies had been taken away. From muffled conversations in the elevator, Saul learned that two policemen were watching Erika’s apartment, two others watching the lobby. Still it wasn’t safe to leave. Grimy, they’d attract attention if they showed themselves in daylight. So they continued to wait, struggling to breathe. When the sun went down, Saul’s vision was blurred. His arms felt heavy. His stomach cramped from dehydration. They finally reached the limit they’d agreed on—twenty-four hours from the attack.
Crawling wearily from the narrow hatch, they stumbled to stand on the roof. Fingers slack, they put on their clothes, gulping the cool night air, swallowing dryly. Dizzy, they stared toward the far-off gleam of the Capitol building.
“So much to do,” Chris said.
Saul knew what he meant. They needed transportation, water, food, a place for them to bathe and find clean clothes and rest. Above all, sleep.
And after sleep, the answers.
“I can get us a car.” Erika pushed her long dark hair behind her shoulders.
“Your own or from the embassy?” Chris didn’t wait for an answer. He shook his head. “Too risky. The police know who you are. Since they didn’t find your body, they have to figure you’re involved. They’ll watch your parking spot beneath the building. They’ll find out where you work and watch the embassy.”
“I’ve got a backup car.” Her breasts arched as she put on her blouse. She buttoned the sleeves. “I used a different name to buy it. I paid cash—a slush fund from the embassy. The car can’t be traced to me. I keep it in a garage on the other side of town.”
“That still leaves us with the other problem—a place to go,” Chris said. “The police have our descriptions from the neighbors who saw us outside your apartment. We can’t risk going to a hotel. Two men and a woman—we’d be obvious.”
“And whoever’s hunting us will check your friends,” Saul added.
“No hotel. No friends,” she said.
“Then what?”
“Stop frowning. Don’t you like surprises?”
6
The captain of homicide clutched the phone in his office, staring bleakly at the half-eaten Quarter Pounder on his cluttered desk. As he listened to the imperious voice on the phone, he suddenly lost his appetite. His ulcer began to burn. Past the screen of the open window, sirens wailed in the Washington night. “Of course.” The captain sighed. “Sir, I’ll take care of it. I guarantee no problem.”
Curling his lips in disgust, he set the phone down, wiping his sweaty hand as if the phone had contaminated him. A man appe
ared in the doorway. Glancing across his desk, the captain saw his lean-faced lieutenant—jacket off, tie loosened, wrinkled shirtsleeves rolled up—light a cigarette.
Beyond the lieutenant, phones rang; typewriters clattered. Weary detectives searched files and questioned prisoners.
“That scowl on your face,” the lieutenant said. “You look like you just heard the department’s forcing you on another exercise program.”
“Shoveling shit.” The captain sagged in his creaky chair.
“What’s wrong?”
“That bloodbath last night. Six men with enough weapons to invade a small country, blown away in an apparently ordinary apartment building.”
“You ran out of leads?”
“You could say that. It never happened.”
The lieutenant choked on his cigarette smoke. “What the hell are you talking about?” He stalked past filing cabinets into the room.
“The call I just got.” The captain gestured with contempt toward the phone. “It came from high up. I mean so high I’m not even allowed to tell you who. It makes me sick to think about it. If I don’t handle this thing right, I’ll be back in a squad car.” Wincing, the captain pressed his burning stomach. “This damn town—sometimes I think it’s the ass-end of the universe.”
“For Christ’s sake, tell me.”
“The men who got killed. The government’s impounded their bodies.” The captain didn’t need to explain what “government” meant. Both he and his lieutenant had worked in Washington long enough to recognize the synonym for covert activities. “For security reasons, those corpses won’t be identified. Official business. No publicity. The government’s handling almost everything.”
“Almost?” The lieutenant jabbed his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray. “You’re not making sense.”
“Two men and a woman. We’ve got the woman’s name—Erika Bernstein. We’ve got detailed descriptions. If we find them, I’ve got a number to call. But we can’t let them know they’ve been seen, and we can’t pick them up.”
“That’s crazy. They shot six men, but we can’t arrest them?”
“How the hell can we? I told you the government impounded the bodies. Those corpses don’t exist. What we’re looking for are three nonkillers for a mass murder that never happened.”
7
Erika left the building first. One at a time, Chris and Saul followed shortly afterward, using different exits, scanning the dark before they retreated along shadowy streets. Making sure they weren’t pursued, they each hailed a taxi as soon as they were out of the neighborhood, giving the drivers instructions to take them to separate districts on the other side of Washington. While Erika went to the parking garage to get her car, Chris waited at a pizza parlor they’d agreed on. Saul in turn went to a video-game arcade where he played Guided Missile while he glanced through the window toward the street they’d chosen.
Just before the arcade closed at midnight, he saw a blue Camaro stop at the curb, its engine idling. Recognizing Erika behind the wheel, he went out, automatically scanning the street as he opened the passenger door.
“I hope the two of you won’t feel cramped in back.”
He wondered what she meant. Then he noticed Chris hunched down out of sight behind the driver’s seat. “The elevator shaft, now this?” Groaning, he climbed in back. As Erika pulled from the curb, he hunkered on the floor near Chris.
“You don’t have to be chummy too long,” she said.
Saul noticed the periodic glow of streetlights as she drove. “How long exactly?”
“An hour.”
He groaned again, shoving Chris. “Hey, move your big feet.”
She laughed. “The cops want two men and a woman. If they saw us together, they might pull us over, just on a hunch.”
“I’m not so sure,” Chris said.
“But why take chances?”
“That’s not what I mean. While I waited at the pizza parlor, I got a look at a newspaper. The killings weren’t mentioned.”
“It must have been yesterday’s paper,” Erika said.
“No, today’s. Six men dead. Your apartment shot up. I expected a front-page story, descriptions of us, the works. I checked some other papers. I found nothing.”
“Maybe they got the story too late to run it.”
“The shooting happened at quarter after ten last night. There was plenty of time.”
She turned a corner. Headlights flicked past the Camaro. “Someone must have convinced the papers not to run it.”
“Eliot,” Saul said. “He could’ve impounded the bodies and asked the police to stay quiet for the sake of national security. The papers would never have known what happened.”
“But why?” Chris said. “He’s hunting us. He could have our pictures on every front page in the country. With so many people searching for us, he’d have a better chance to catch us.”
“Unless he doesn’t want publicity. Whatever this is all about, he wants to keep it private.”
“What, though?” Chris clenched a fist. “What’s so damned important?”
8
Saul felt the Camaro turn. In the night, the smooth highway suddenly changed to a bumpy side road. On the back floor, he gripped the seat. “Don’t you have any shocks in this thing?”
Erika grinned. “We’re almost there. It’s safe to sit up now.”
Grateful, Saul raised himself to the seat. Easing back, stretching his cramped legs, he peered through the windshield. The Camaro’s headlights showed dense bushes on both sides of a narrow dirt lane. “Where are we?”
“South of Washington. Near Mount Vernon.”
Saul tapped Chris’s shoulder, pointing toward a grove of trees. Beyond them, moonlight glimmered on an impressive red brick mansion.
“Colonial?” Chris said.
“A little later. It was built in 1800.” Erika stopped the car where the lane curved from the trees toward the lawn before the extensive porch. She aimed her headlights toward the forest beyond.
“You know who lives here?” Chris said. “We agreed we couldn’t risk going to friends.”
“He’s not a friend.”
“Then who?”
“This man’s a Jew. I fought beside his son in Israel. I’ve been here only once—when I came to tell him his son died bravely.” She swallowed. “I gave him a photograph of the grave. I gave him the medal his son never lived to receive. He told me if I ever needed help…” Her voice sounded hoarse.
Saul felt what she hadn’t said. “You knew the son well?”
“I wanted to. If he’d lived, I might have stayed in Israel with him.”
Saul put a comforting hand on her shoulder.
The house stayed dark. “Either he’s asleep,” Chris said, “or he isn’t home.”
“He’s cautious. Unexpected visitors this late—he wouldn’t turn the lights on.”
“Sounds like us,” Chris said.
“He survived Dachau. He remembers. Right now he’s probably staring out here, wondering who the hell we are.”
“Better not keep him waiting.”
She stepped out, walking past the headlights toward the house. From the car’s backseat, Saul watched her disappear behind a flowering dogwood, absorbed by the night. He waited five minutes. Suddenly nervous, he reached for the door.
Her tall slim figure emerged from shadows. She got back in the car.
Saul felt relieved. “He’s home? He’ll help us?”
She nodded, driving past the front of the house. A lane curved toward the murky forest in back. “I told him some friends and I needed a place to stay. I said it was better if he didn’t know why. He asked no questions. He understood.” The Camaro bumped along the lane.
Saul turned around. “But we’re leaving the house.”
“We won’t be staying there.” Her headlights glared through the trees.
With the windows open, Saul heard the predawn songs of birds. Mist swirled. He hugged his arms against the dampnes
s.
“I hear frogs,” Chris said.
“The Potomac’s up ahead.” She reached a clearing and an old stone cottage, partly covered with vines. “He says it’s his guest house. There’s power and water.” Stopping, she got out, studied the cottage, and nodded approvingly.
As she went in with Saul, Chris walked around to the back, instinctively checking the perimeter. Wooden steps angled down a steep slope to the misty river. In the dark, he heard waves lap the bank. Something splashed. He smelled decay.
A light came on behind him from a window in the cottage. Turning, he watched Saul and Erika open cupboards in a rustic kitchen. With the window closed, he couldn’t hear what they said, but he was struck by their ease with one another—even though they hadn’t been lovers in ten years. He’d never experienced that kind of relationship. His inhibitions nagged at him. His throat felt tight as Saul leaned close to Erika, gently kissing her. Ashamed to be watching, he turned away.
He made a warning noise when he entered. The living room was spacious, paneled, with a wooden floor and beams across the peaked ceiling. He noticed a table to his left and a sofa before a fireplace to his right, the furniture covered with sheets. Across from him, he saw two doors and the entrance to the kitchen. The air smelled stale.
“We’d better open the windows,” Erika said as she and Saul came into the living room. She took the sheets off the furniture. Dust swirled. “There’s some cans of food in the cupboards.”
Chris felt ravenous. He lifted a window, breathing fresh air, then checked the doors across from him. “A bedroom. A shower. Tell you what. I’ll cook. You can have the bathroom first.”
“You won’t get an argument.” She touched her hair, already unbuttoning her blouse as she stepped in, closing the door behind her.
They heard the sound of the shower and went to the kitchen, where they cooked three cans of beef stew. The steam from it made Chris’s stomach growl.
The water soon stopped. When Erika came back, she wore a towel around her hair and a robe she’d found in the bathroom closet.