She was in a narrow passageway. The floor was wood and the walls were stone. Down one way it was pitch-black, but in the opposite direction she could detect a faint amount of light. She decided to go that way.
Keeping one hand on the wall to guide her, she started off, placing each foot carefully ahead of her, inches at a time. The old plank flooring creaked, and her feet crunched on occasional pieces of stone and cement that had fallen from the walls over the years.
The air in the passageway was stale and chilly; it irritated her lungs when she inhaled. Thick cobwebs brushed against her face.
She stuck her free hand out in front of her to ward them off.
Layer after layer of intricate olfactory sensations swarmed through her nostrils, forming a complex tapestry of ancient smells, from the pungent bittersweet of decomposing wood and insect and rodent remains to the dusty, astringent sting of the masonry. It reminded her of the musty, dirt-floored cellar under the old stable at the house on Long Island.
The light became a little brighter. She could see a dimly glowing area in the distance. She increased her pace, taking full steps.
The dim light was coming from a tiny hole in the wall, too high up for Genny to look through. She put her hand against the wall, then braced her feet against the opposite wall and walked her way up the stone until she could put her eye to the opening. She saw part of a bedroom.
There was a double bed with a canopy over it, and a big, round, windowed alcove with melon-colored drapes. A polished antique desk and chair were positioned on a small oriental rug in the center of the alcove. The floor, decorated in an elaborate parquet design, gleamed warmly in the lateafternoon sunlight. Clothes were thrown on the bed, along with some funny-looking black and red underwear.
Genny listened for sounds. No one seemed to be in the room.
She put her nose to the peephole and sniffed. Cigarette smoke. It was from a different kind of cigarette—not the kind the people from home usually smoked. She could also smell several kinds of soaps, colognes, bath oils, and shampoos. And some kind of alcoholic drink. She could catch subtle traces of a woman’s odor.
Not the baroness’s, though—Genny would recognize her smell immediately.
Genny dropped back to the floor, then reached up and probed the edge of the hole with her fingers. She felt a round metal plate on a pivot that could be swung down to cover the opening. She moved it back and forth a couple of times, then left it as she had found it. The part of the wall around the hole seemed to be wood.
Genny continued down the passage. Six feet further along she ran smack into a wall. When she had recovered from her surprise, she felt around with her hands and feet and discovered that the passage continued to the left. It was utterly black. Even with her extraordinary eyesight, she could see nothing. She moved her hands carefully along the wall surface. The stones were rough and irregular, and she had to proceed slowly. She listened for sounds.
Someone was walking along the other side of the wall on her left.
She heard a door open and close nearby.
Her fingers made contact with more wood. She reached up and felt another small metal disk like the first one. She slid it back and forth but saw no light. There was probably a room on the other side here too, she decided, but something must be blocking the view. A door opened and closed somewhere nearby, and she could hear, further away, the soft murmur of women’s voices, talking in German.
There must be a door somewhere, she thought, because she could smell the odors left by people who had been in the passageway recently. If only she had a flashlight.
Genny yawned. It was her nap time. She was also thirsty and had to go to the potty. She thought she should probably turn around and go back to her room. Later, she could explore further.
Then she remembered the hole she had fallen through. It was so high up. How was she ever going to climb back through it?
Genny pressed her hands against the walls and moved forward cautiously.
She heard a muffled scurrying close by, then some high-pitched squeaks.
Mice. She wished she could see them. There must be a lot of them around, because she could smell their urine everywhere, as well as the peculiarly delicate musty scent of their fur.
Genny felt a slight current of air moving against her face.
Where was it coming from? she wondered.
She took another step forward and fell through the dark.
Dalton Stewart crouched with his feet braced against the driver’sside door, and pushed up against the passenger-side door with his head and both hands. The smoke was choking him and his eyes were swimming. He pushed until he was standing erect, his head and shoulders out the doorway, still bearing the weight of the door. He brought one foot up onto the passenger-side headrest, then heaved himself up again.
He finally crawled out, bearing the weight of the door all the way. He flung his feet free and rolled onto the ground, letting the door slam closed again.
He coughed and rubbed his burning eyes. The smell of gasoline made his nose sting. The gas tank under the rear trunk had ripped open and fuel was pouring out of it, flowing down the concrete ditch toward the smoking engine compartment.
Stewart staggered to his feet, patted the breast pocket of his trench coat, felt the pistol, and started climbing back up the grassy bank toward the roadway.
He reached the shoulder of the highway and turned around just in time to see the BMW engulfed in flames. He felt both dazed and exhilarated: nothing like a narrow escape to make one feel lucky.
Stewart brushed himself off, waited for a break in the traffic, then crossed the roadway to the right side and started walking.
Cars had slowed to watch the fire, and someone pulled over to offer him a ride almost immediately. He was an old man driving a beat-up Opel Kadet. He spoke almost no English, and Stewart was grateful for that.
Stewart managed to communicate to him that he wanted to go to Regensburg. The old man muttered some objections. Stewart got the impression that he thought he should get off at the next exit and report the accident. Stewart insisted on Regensburg. The old man ignored him. He took the next exit off the autobahn and deposited Stewart squarely in front of the police station in the tiny village of Geisenfeld.
Stewart stood on the sidewalk until the old man’s Opel had disappeared around the corner, and then went in search of a car rental agency.
There was none in the town. Stewart ended up paying an exorbitant price with a credit card to “rent” a very used Volkswagen sedan from the owner of an auto repair shop.
Stewart drove north to Neustadt and Abensberg on Route 300 as fast as the narrow, winding road would permit, then took Route 16 to Regensburg. He wondered if the men in the trucks were still looking for him. He knew it was unlikely they would spot him in this car; but every time he encountered a large semi on the highway, he felt his chest tighten.
In Regensburg, he wound through the narrow medieval streets of the city center and turned into the Haidplatz, the town’s oldest square. He parked the VW across the square from the entrance of one of Regensburg’s more notorious clubs, a raffish hole-inthe-wall establishment called the Tischgesprach—German for “table talk.”
It was the middle of the afternoon. Some time in the next seven or eight hours Katrina would pay her nightly visit to the club.
The club’s manager dealt drugs on the side, and Katrina was one of his regular customers. She’d stay awhile, have a drink, buy some heroin, shoot up in the ladies’ room, and then go back to the castle. Stewart knew her routine because he had accompanied her on several occasions.
He had even tried the heroin.
He sat back to wait for her.
Genny sat up and felt around carefully in the dark. She had tumbled down a steep, narrow flight of stairs. Her head hurt, and so did one of her arms. Fortunately, the steps and the floor she ended up on were made of wood, not stone. She guessed she was okay.
She crouched forward, feeling the way
with her hands, and began to explore the passage on this level. Barely three steps from the stairs she felt the way blocked by a solid wall. She felt around, but there was no question that it was a dead end.
She groped her way back to the stairs and stood there, listening.
She could still hear the squeaking of mice. And the smell of people was much stronger here than on the floor above.
She worked her way around behind the stairs and discovered that the passage extended back in that direction. Feeling her way cautiously, she walked the full length of it. It was exactly like the floor above—a narrow passage that went around a ninety-degree corner. After she had advanced about twenty feet past the corner, she got down on her hands and knees and crawled. Her bare knees felt very sore.
Her hand soon felt the top edge of another wooden stairway.
She turned around and backed carefully down the steps. When she finally reached the bottom, she noticed that the atmosphere was quite different. It was damper and warmer, and the odors of laundry soap mixed with those of wood shavings, paint, and fuel oil.
A few feet from the stairs she saw what looked like four faint lines of light in the shape of a rectangle. She stretched a hand out and felt wood. A door. Along one side her fingers encountered three small hinges. On the other side she found the door’s handle.
She pressed down on it and felt a little click as the latch slipped free. She pushed tentatively. The door moved with a squeak. She pushed a little more. The door opened further but made an even sharper squeak. She peeked around the edge.
The door opened into a small closet. She pushed the door open further, moving it as slowly as she possibly could to minimize the squeak. When it was about a quarter open, she slipped out. The opposite wall of the closet contained another door. She opened it and peeked cautiously around the corner.
A long, low stone passageway rambled along under a spaghettilike mass of pipes, conduits, and wires suspended from a series of heavy archways. Bare bulbs hung down every thirty feet or so, their low wattage casting dim, pale yellow pools of light onto the rugged stone.
She heard the hum of a furnace nearby, and low voices. The people smells down here were strong and salty.
Genny tiptoed down the corridor, keeping close to the wall. She saw an open doorway on her left and stuck her head around. Inside was a low-ceilinged chamber that had been converted into a laundry room. On one wall were several washing machines and dryers, and shelves stacked with linens. At a big table in the center, a stocky, gray-haired woman in a blue uniform dress was ironing something.
Next to her another woman was folding sheets and towels.
Genny retreated back to her closet, then explored another arched passageway on the other side, peeking quickly in the open doorways as she raced along. She saw a dark, dirty room with a furnace in it, another filled with big pumps and tanks, and a third that was a kind of repair shop. She darted in and looked around.
Lights were on over a workbench, and her nose told her that someone had been there as recently as a few minutes ago. The floor was cluttered with sections of metal plates. Someone was repairing a suit of armor.
Genny glanced over the tools on the workbench. The height of the bench’s surface just barely allowed her to see over it on her tiptoes.
To her delight she discovered a flashlight. She grabbed it and slid the switch forward. It worked.
Next to a metal vise she spied a package of cigarettes and a small box of matches. She grabbed the matches and tucked them up inside the cotton sleeve of her blouse.
An old sword was clamped in the vise. She twisted the vise’s handle a couple of turns and pulled the sword out. It was about three feet long and surprisingly heavy. Her spirits soared. Now, she thought, let someone try to catch her….
From the shop Genny wandered past a large area stacked with firewood for the castle’s many fireplaces. She smelled fresh air.
There must be a door to the outside, she thought, to bring the wood in.
She started looking for it, then heard steps coming from the other direction.
She ran back into the repair shop and ducked under the workbench. The steps came closer. From under the bench she could see green trousers and brown work boots by the doorway. They paused, then came into the shop and moved toward the workbench.
She clutched the sword resolutely in her little hands and squeezed as far into the corner as she could and waited, heart pounding. The green trousers took something down from a shelf over the bench, then turned out the light and left.
When she was sure the way was clear, Genny hurried back to the secret passageway behind the closet, lugging the cumbersome sword along with her. Once inside, she turned on the flashlight and scampered up the steps.
With the light, she was able to see what had eluded her in the dark.
There were many little peepholes in the walls, all of them covered with sliding metal discs—and all of them too far over her head for her to look through. Around each peephole, she now could see, were small wooden doors as well, each one cut flush into the stone. She tugged tentatively at one, but it appeared to be locked from the other side.
Genny climbed the second flight of stairs and found the spot where she had fallen through. She shined the flashlight up at it.
It looked very high. There were wooden beams overhead that bisected the passageway at regular intervals, but they were at least eight feet beyond her reach.
She had to get back through that hole somehow. The walls of the passageway were of rough stone and so close together that she thought she might be able to climb right up them by putting a foot on each side.
She braced her hands against the walls, placed her sneaker in a little foothold on the right side, then brought her left foot up and wedged it in another little depression between the stones on the other wall. It was awkward, but if she was careful and took her time, she thought, she could probably make it. She jumped back down.
The flashlight was a problem. She needed it to find footholds and handholds as she climbed, but she also needed her hands free.
She tried holding it in her mouth, but it was too big.
There was no choice but to try to hold the flashlight in one hand. It reduced her ability to brace herself against the wall, but she still thought she could manage it.
The sword was another matter. There simply was no way she could carry it up with her. Reluctantly, she left it on the floor of the passageway.
The first few feet up went easily enough, but she couldn’t train the flashlight down enough to find good toeholds in the stone.
She had to feel her way with her feet, and that made the climb slow and strenuous. Each upward placement of hand and foot got harder and harder. The stone scraped at her wounded knees and made them bloody again. The muscles in her legs began to tremble from the exertion, and her energy started to fade. Eight feet up, part of the wall crumbled loose under her left foot and she slipped partway down. She adjusted quickly and found new toeholds before she fell. She gasped, caught her breath, and looked up. Not much further. She gathered her courage and willpower and started up again, inching along from handhold to toehold.
Genny’s head finally emerged through the hole. She quickly threw her arms out across the floor to take her weight. She let go of her flashlight, then pushed down against the floor until she had raised her knees through the hole.
She kicked one leg out, then the other, then rolled onto the floor, panting for breath. When she felt strong enough to get up, she pulled the bed over the hole, hid the flashlight and the small box of matches under the mattress, and went into the bathroom to wash up and use the potty.
Anne left the Munich police station in a state of shocked disbelief.
She was trembling from head to foot. There was nothing left for her to do but confront the baroness by herself. She was afraid to do it; the woman terrified her. But she’d do whatever she had to do to get Genny back. The certain knowledge that she was in the right armed her wit
h some small courage.
She took a taxi back out to the airport, picked up her luggage, and rented a car.
She asked an English-speaking woman at the rental counter if she could provide directions to an estate called Schloss Vogel, somewhere outside the city of Regensburg. The woman called her company’s rental office in Regensburg, and someone there knew precisely where the castle was located.
The woman marked the spot on a road map and handed it to Anne with a smile. “They said you can’t miss it. It has four big turrets on the corners, and it stands on very high ground back off this road. But .
. .” The woman paused.
Anne waited. “But what?”
“Well, they said you won’t be able to get very close to it. The owner doesn’t like visitors. There are big fences, and dogs to keep people away.”
Anne thanked the woman and tucked the map into her handbag. “No problem. I have a standing invitation from the owner.”
The drive took Anne a little over an hour.
By the time she saw the castle, looming to the east over the winding mountain road just north of the village of Regenstauf, she became worried that the baroness might not accept the code word “Watson” as genuine. Anne had already tried one deception, after all—feeding the phony word “Minerva” to the men spying on her apartment. Whose men were they, anyway? Dalton’s? The Baroness’s? In any case, she had to convince the woman that this time she was giving her the real thing.
As well as the Jupiter RCD, she had brought with her copies of three genomes—Dalton’s, Genny’s, and her own. With them, and the use of a computer, she could feed Dalton’s genome and her genome into the program, run it, and produce an exact copy of Genny’s genome. But would the baroness accept it?
The driveway leading to the castle was hard to miss. It was blocked by a mammoth gate of wrought iron bars and a big sign: EINTRITT VERBOTEN.
Anne drove the car up to the gate. TV cameras were mounted on each of the stone pillars framing the gate. A harsh, scratchy voice, amplified by a speaker hidden somewhere around the gate, challenged her: “Was wunschen Sie?”
Tom Hyman Page 38