by Cuba (lit)
could be kept in sight at all times yet no one would
be directly behind them, following where they could be seen
or noticed. The subjects would seem to be alone,
moving of their own will through the urban environment, yet
their isolation would be an illusion.
He knew all that, yet he could detect no
tails or signs of people that might be
watching, taking an interest in him or Carmellini.
Chance was no neophytehe had a great
deal of experience in this line of work, he knew what
was possible and he knew what was likely.
He thought about all these things as the flawlessly
decked-out Cuban waiter served coffee. The
music formed a backdrop to the babble of conversation from
his fellow diners, who were gabbing in at least five
languages, perhaps six.
Chance sipped the coffee, let his eyes wander the
room. No one was paying the slightest attention. Not
a single furtive glance, no hastily broken eye
contact, no one studiously ignoring him.
Well, if he and Carmellini were going to do it, tonight
was the night. The longer they stayed in Havana, the more
likely it was that they would attract the interest of the
Department of State Security, the secret
police. The interest of Santana and Alejo
Vargas.
The truth was that Vargas might have burned them, might
have devoted the resources necessary to learn everything about
them. Vargas or his minions might be waiting tonight in
the science hall, waiting to catch them redhanded,
to embarrass the United States, perhaps even
to execute Chance and Carmellini as
spies.
In this line of work the imponderables were always huge,
risks impossible to quantify. Still, he and
Carmellini were going to have to look inside that building,
see what was there.
If there was a biological weapons program in
Cuba, it had to be in that building, which housed the
largest, bestequipped laboratory known to be on the
island. And the most knowledgeable people were nearby, the
microbiologists and chemists and skilled lab
technicians that would be needed to produce large
quantities of microorganisms.
Chance was well aware that the most serious technical
problem a researcher faced when constructing a
biological weapon was how to keep the
microorganisms alive inside a warhead or
aerosol bomb for long periods of time. Some
biological agents were easier to store than others,
which
was why they were most often selected for weapons
research. For example, the spores of anthrax were
very stable, as were the spores of the fungal disease
coccidioidomycosis, which incapacitated but rarely
killed its victims. Of course, the
naturally occurring strains of an infectious disease
could have been altered to make the microorganisms more
stable, more virulent, or to overcome widespread
immunity: years ago researchers produced a
highly infective strain of poliomyelitis
virus for just these reasons.
Idly he wondered about the microbiologist who
ran the program. Who was he? What were his
motivations? Perhaps that question answered itself in a
totalitarian society, but it was worth researching,
when he had some time. If he ever had some time.
"Ready"..."...Chance muttered to Carmelliniea"...who drained
the last of his coffee.
The two men paid their bill in cash and left the
casino. They got into a car parked at the curb, one
driven by one of their associates, and sped off into the
night.
In a dark, deserted lane on the outskirts of the
city the car in which Chance and Carmellini rode met the
former telephone van they had used before, but now it
bore the logo of a wholesale food supplier.
Inside the van Carmellini and Chance changed
into black trousers, a black pullover shirt with a
high collar, black socks, and black
rubber-soled shoes. When they were dressed,
they sat listening to the insects, drinking water,
monitoring a radio frequency. One of their
colleagues was observing the science building at the
university. He checked in every fifteen minutes.
So far he had seen nothing out of the ordinary.
"Why did you get into this line of work"..."...Chance asked
Carmellini as they sat listening to the chirp of
crickets.
"The challenge of it, I guess. I had an
uncle who cracked a few safes... he was a
legendary figure. The only time he ever went to the
pen was for tax evasion: he did a couple
years that time. I was always asking him questions. He
told me if I wanted to be a safecracker, go
to work for a firm that manufactured and installed the
things. That was good advice. I installed safes for
several summers while I was in college, got
too cocky for my own good. Thought I had this stuff
figured out, you know? One thing led to another, and before you
know it I was cracking the things."
Chance nodded.
"Here I am still at it. Only this time I won't go
to the pen if they catch me."
"Yeah. The Cubans will probably execute us as
soon as Vargas gets through with us, if
there's anything left to execute."
"The way I figure it, I finally made the big
leagues."
"You optimists, always looking on the bright side."
"Which brings up a point. You got us garroting
wires and knives and pistols. I never carry
weapons. I'm a safecracker, not a killer."
"You'll probably become a dead safecracker
if they catch you in there."
"I've never carried weapons. Ever."
"A wise precaution if you are burgling
gentlemen's safes. You're in the major leagues
now."
"Listen, Chance"
"This isn't a game, Tommy. Speaking for myself,
I want to keep breathing. You'll do as I say."
The driver parked the van in an alley near the
science building. He sat hunched over the wheel
watching people on the sidewalks as Chance and
Carmellini examined the building through binoculars.
They were behind him, in the body of the van, looking forward
through the windshield.
The way in, they decided, was through the roof. To get
there, they would need to go into the building beside the science
building, a lecture hall, ascend to the
top floor, then get access to the roof. From here they
would need to cross to the roof of the science hall, then
find a way in.
The lecture hall was locked at night, though it was
not guarded.
It was one in the morning when the van stopped in the
empty alley behind the lecture hall. The two men
in back pulled on latex disgloves, swung on
backpacks, then went out the van's side door.
The door was not wired with an alarm. Carmellini
picked
the lock in thirty seconds, and they were in.
The van drove away as the door closed behind mem.
They stood in the darkness letting their eyes adjust
to the gloom.
Carmellini led off. Behind him Chance took out his
pistol and thumbed off the safety, keeping the pistol
pointed downward at the floor.
The weak light filtering through windows in classrooms
and thence through open doors to the hallway did little
to alleviate the darkness. The floors were uncarpeted
concrete, the walls massive masonry, the
ceilings at least twelve feet high. The building
was devoid of decoration or even a trace of
architectural imagination.
Carmellini moved like a shadow, making no
detectable noise. Chance seemed to be making enough
noise for both of them. He could hear himself breathing and
his heart pounding, could hear the echoes of his
footfalls
in
the cavernous hallways.
Keeping near the wall, they climbed the stairs to the
second floor. Carmellini moved slowly,
steadily, listened carefully before turning every corner,
then lowered his head, keeping it well below the place
one would naturally look for it, and peeped around the
corner. Then he slithered around the corner out of
sight; Chance followed as silently as he could.
The top of the staircase put them out on the fourth
floor of the building. There had to be another
staircase, probably very narrow, leading to the roof.
Where might it be?
Carmellini was ready to go explore when he suddenly
held up his hand. He held a finger to his lips.
Chance listened with all the concentration he could muster.
He
could
hear something! Voices? Carmellini slowly inched
along the hallway toward an open door, then
froze there.
He came back down the hajlway to Chance, put his
lips against Chance's ear. "A couple of kids
making love."
The silenced Ruger felt heavy in Chance's hand.
"Gonna kill 'em?"
Not shooting them was a risk, sure.
Chance listened carefully. The lovers were whispering.
No other sounds.
"Find the stairs up."
The stairs were at the end of a hall, behind a locked
door. Carmellini worked on the lock in the darkness
for almost a minute before he pulled the door open.
They closed the door behind them and climbed the totally
dark staircase, feeling their way. They ended up in
a stuffy, black attic. Chance used the
flashlight. Furniture, desks, chairs,
stacked everywhere. In the middle of the attic was another
stairway up.
The door to the roof was also locked, this time with a
padlock, which was on the interior side of the door.
"What if there is a padlock on the other
side"..."...Chance asked.
"Then we're screwed. Unless you want to kick this
thing down."
"No."
"Let's try to get this lock open, then the door."
"Okay."
The lock was rusty, corroded. After several
minutes" effort Carmellini admitted his defeat
and used a wire saw to cut through the metal loop of the
lock. That took two minutes of intense effort but
didn't make much noise, considering.
With the lock off and hasp pulled back, they pushed
at the door. It refused to open. With both men
heaving, the
door slowly opened with great resistance, and groaned
terribly.
"That'll wake the deadea"...Chance muttered, and wiped the
sweat from his face as Carmellini slipped out onto
the roof.
Chance followed along.
The metal roof sloped away steeply in several
different planes. Moving on hands and knees they
worked themselves over toward the edge that faced the science
building.
"Let me do thisea"...Carmellini whispered, and
extracted the rope from his backpack. "Get out of the
way, up by the door."
Chance went.
The glare of the city and the streetlights below
illuminated the roof quite well, too well in fact.
While it was easy to see where to walk, anyone below
who bothered to look could probably see the black
shapes silhouetted against the glare of the sky.
Chance huddled against the dormer that formed the staircase
up from the attic. He watched Carmellini on the
edge of the roof, shaking out the rope, checking the
grappling hook. Now he began to twirl the hook
above his head, letting out more and more line to make the
hook swing an ever-larger circle. Just as it seemed
the ckcle was impossibly wide, he cast the line
and hook across the chasm separating the buildings at a
metal vent sticking up out of the roof.
The hook made an audible metallic sound as it
hit the far roof, then it began sliding off.
Carmellini quickly pulled in line in huge coils,
but too late to stop the grappling hook from sliding
off the roof.
He kept pulling on the line. In seconds he
had the hook in his hand and bent down against the roof.
Someone was down below. Even back here Chance could hear
voices. He scanned the surrounding roofs, the
streets that he could see, the blank windows looking
at him from other buildings.
Minutes ticked by, the voices below
faded.
Now Carmellini was standing, swinging the rope and hook,
now casting it... and it caught! He tugged at it,
worked his way back up the roof to where Chance was
kneeling.
Carmellini put the disend of the rope around the dormer,
pulled it as taut as possible, then tied it off.
"Well, there is our way acrossea"...the younger man said.
"You want to go first, or should I?"
"Anchored solid, is it?"
"You bet."
"Age before beautyea"...Chance said, and tugged on leather
gloves, wrapped his hands around the rope. He worked
out hand over hand, then draped his lower legs over the
rope. His backpack dangled from his shoulders.
Hanging from the rope like this took a surprising amount
of physical strength. The rope sagged dangerously
with his weight, becoming a vee with him at the bottom,
which made it more difficult to move along it.
Gritting his teeth, trying to keep his breathing even,
William Henry Chance worked his way along the
rope, taking care not to look down. At one point
he knew he was over the chasm but it didn't
matter: if he slipped off the rope the fall would
kill him, whether he hit the roof and slid
off or missed it clean.
He kept going, doggedly, straining every muscle,
until he felt the bag dragging along the roof of the
science building. Only then did he unhook his
legs from the rope and let them down to the roof. Still
pulling on the rope, he heaved himself up by the vent and
grabbed it.
wrapped the rope around the vent and set the hook, then
tugged several times to make sure it would hold.
Wiping his forehead, he breathed heavily three or
four times. He had one hand on the rope, so he
felt the tension increase with Carmellini's weight.
He peered at the other
building. Carmellini came scurrying along the
rope like a goddamn chimpanzee.
The younger man was over the gap between the buildings when the
rope broke, apparently where it was anchored atop
the lecture hall. Carmellini's body fell
downward in an arc and disappeared from view. An
audible thud reached Chance as Carmellini's body
smacked against the side of the science building.
"Our Lady of Coldn
was under this storm system; out of sight of the
satellites passing over, for six
hours," Toad Tarkuigton explained to Jake
Grafton. They were bent over a table in Mission
Planning, studying satellite radar images.
"When next it reappeared, it was steaming for Bahia
de Nipe at twelve knots, yet its average
speed of advance while it was out of sight was two
knots."
"Two?"
'Two."...Toad showed him the positions and
measurements.
"So it was stopped somewhere."
"Or made a detour."
"What if the ship rendezvoused with another ship and the
warheads were transferred?"
"Possible, but if you look at these other ship
tracks, it doesn't seem very likely. All these
other tracks were going somewhere, with speed-of-advance
averages that seem plausible."
"Okay. What if the ship stopped and the crew
dumped some of the weapons in the water? Maybe all
of them. Dumped them in shallow water for someone
to pick up later. How deep is the water in that
area?"
"That area is the Bahamas, Admiral. Pretty
shallow in a lot of places in there."
"Have NSA put that area under intense surveillance.
Have them study every satellite image since that storm
passed. If those warheads were dumped overboard from the
Colon,
someone is going to come along to pick them up.
We have to get there before that somebody gets them
aboard."
"Yes, sir."
"Ask Atlantic Fleet to get a P-3 out
to that area as soon as possible, have the crew search for
anchored or stationary ships. Any ships not actually
under way. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
Jake Grafton rubbed his forehead, trying