“Or just one secret weapon,” she said, “but so huge that it spreads across half of Europe.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t. But this is it, Floyd. This is what it was worth killing people to protect. Not just the ones we know about, but all the other people who’ve probably had to die while all this has been planned, financed and put together.”
“Why did they leave it here, then?”
She pushed a battered old toolkit to the floor. It clattered thrillingly, spilling shiny spanners and wrenches from its innards. “I don’t think this sphere is the real thing.”
“It looks real enough to me.”
“I mean, I don’t think this was ever intended to be delivered to the client. It’s too crudely finished, and something obviously went wrong during the casting process. I’m not even sure this is aluminium or that aluminium-copper alloy Altfeld mentioned. It could just as easily be cast iron.”
“You’re thinking this was a dry run?”
“Yes. A try-out for the final set, so they could practise the casting and machining, and work out how to move it around afterwards.” She shrugged. “Or maybe it’s one that went wrong and had to be abandoned during the finishing process. It doesn’t really matter. What does is that it got left behind.”
“So whoever torched this factory, or arranged for its demolition…”
Even as he said the word, Auger heard the machines take apart another wall or floor, the roar of their engines sounding even closer and even more bestial.
“I don’t think they had any idea this basement existed. They knew that the three main castings had been finished and delivered. My guess is that they burnt down the factory afterwards to hide any evidence of what had been made. But they never thought there might be a fourth sphere, still here.”
“Then we need to search the place really thoroughly,” Floyd said. “If they missed this, there’s no telling what else they left behind.”
“You’re right,” Auger said. She felt her heart beating faster. She knew that she was much closer to an answer now than she had ever been. She could almost feel it, lurking at the back of her mind like a gift-wrapped present. “You’re right, and it would make sense to search this room with a fine-tooth comb. But we’re not going to. We’re leaving now, while we still can.”
“Just five minutes more,” Floyd said. “Somewhere in here there might be a record of the shipping addresses for the finished spheres.”
“Long shot, Wendell.”
“They were careless, or in a hurry, or they’d never have left this down here in the first place.”
“Because they thought someone was on to them?”
“Who are we dealing with, Verity? Are you ready to tell me yet?”
“We’re dealing with very bad people,” she said. “Isn’t that enough for you?”
“That depends on who’s defining ‘bad.’ ” Floyd tapped the barrel of the automatic against the metal sphere. It made a dull clank. “Well, I guess Basso was right after all. It definitely wasn’t meant to be a bell.”
“Basso?”
“A metalworker contact of mine. I showed him the sketch of the blueprint from Susan’s things. He said it might be a plan for a bell. He meant diving bell. I thought he meant the kind you ring.”
Auger heard the roar of the demolition machines again, the crunch of stone and brick beneath their caterpillar treads.
“I don’t think either kind of bell would be something people had to die to protect,” she said. “Besides—it’s broken.”
Floyd tapped the gun against the sphere again, narrowing his eyes as he listened for reverberations. He moved around the object and struck it again.
“You mean if it wasn’t broken, it might sound prettier?” he said.
“Do it again.”
“Do what again?”
“Knock the metal, the way you just did.”
“I was only trying to see if it was really solid. I still like my idea that it might be an atomic bomb.”
“It’s not an atomic bomb. Knock it again.”
Floyd tapped the automatic against the sphere, moving from spot to spot. “It rings,” he said, “but the sound is all off, like a cracked bell.”
“That’s because it is cracked. But if it wasn’t, it’d ring with a much purer note, don’t you think?”
Floyd lowered the gun. “I guess so. If it matters.”
“I think it matters a lot. I think ringing is exactly what these spheres are meant to do. I think you were right and Basso was wrong.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Floyd looked at her with half a smile. “Ringing?”
“Ringing.”
“And that’s worth at least two murders, and maybe a lot more than that? If you’re going to build a bell, build a goddamned bell.”
“They’re not goddamned bells,” she said.
Floyd pointed the butt of the automatic in her direction. “For a nice girl from Dakota, you’ve sure developed a foul mouth all of a sudden.”
“You think this is foul,” Auger said, “you should stick around a while.”
“You know, you can knock that enigmatic act off any time you like. I’ve about had it up to here.”
He had just finished speaking when there was a crash of collapsing masonry, shaking the entire room. Fist-sized shards of cement dropped from the ceiling, filling the air with powdery grey dust. Auger coughed, shielding her eyes and mouth with her hand.
“That sounded close,” she said. “Maybe they’re already demolishing part of building fifteen. We’ve got more than we expected: let’s get out before we’re buried alive.”
“For once I couldn’t agree more.”
They climbed the ladder back to the balcony level, Floyd leading. The building shook again, more of the ceiling coming loose. A gap as wide as a man had appeared in it, revealing severed wood and concrete, pipes and electrical wires. Motors roared overhead, revving and ebbing as the bulldozers surged back and forth. The cast-metal plinth of a lathe or a drill leaned precariously over the hole.
“Move,” Auger hissed.
They ran around the balcony until they reached the door into the stairwell. Floyd pushed on it, trying to coax it open. When it refused to yield, he leaned his entire bulk against it and pushed until his face was a mask of effort, but the door showed no sign of moving.
“It’s stuck,” he said, gasping for breath.
“It can’t be stuck,” Auger said. “We just came through it.”
“It was stiff, though. The whole frame must have subsided. I can’t get it open.”
“Why did you ever close it?”
“I wanted to hear if anyone came after us. I figured they wouldn’t be able to get the door open without making a sound.”
“I bet you’re regretting that particular bright idea now, aren’t you?”
Floyd gave the door one last shove, but it was obvious that even their combined efforts would not be enough to get it open. “I can see you’re the kind of person who likes to say ‘I told you so,’ ” he said.
“Only when people deserve it. Now what are we going to do?”
“Find another way out of this building, that’s what.”
“There isn’t one.”
“Down the ladder again,” Floyd said. “Our only hope is that there may be doors at the other end of the room.”
She looked at him dubiously. “And if there are, do you think we stand any more chance of getting them open?”
“Until we’ve tried, we won’t know.”
They hurried down to the floor, skirting around the sphere and the gas tank to reach the far end of the room. There were indeed doors there, twice as high as Floyd and wide enough to drive a truck through. The doors were obviously meant to slide back into the walls on either side, but when Floyd tried to part them, they remained as resolutely fixed as the door to the stairwell. Again he screwed up his face in determination and again the doors stayed put.