“Are you okay?” Lou asked.
“What… oh, yes… I’m all right. Merely… well, frankly, I’m frightened.”
“Of what?”
Kirby fluttered his hands again. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know why we’re here, or what they want to do with us. That’s what frightens me. They won’t let me call my wife or even a lawyer—”
Lou paced the room in a few strides. “They grabbed me at the Institute. They wouldn’t let me call anybody, either. Nobody knows I’m here.” Back to the door he paced. “Why are they doing this? What have we done? What’s it all about?”
Abruptly the door opened. The same two men stood in the corridor. “You will come with us, please.”
Kirby started to stand up. But Lou said, “No I won’t. Not until you tell us what this is all about. You can’t arrest us and push us around like this. I want to talk…”
The Norseman pulled a needle-thin gun from his tunic. It was so small that his hand hid all of it except the slim barrel. But the muzzle looked as big as a cannon to Lou, because it was pointed straight at him.
“Please, Mr. Christopher. We have no desire to use force. You are not technically under arrest, therefore you have no need for a lawyer. However, you are wanted for questioning at government headquarters in Messina. It would be best if you cooperate.”
“Messina? In Sicily?”
The blond nodded.
“But… my family,” Kirby said in a shaky voice.
“They have been informed,” said the Puerto Rican. “No harm will come if you cooperate with us.”
With a shrug, Lou headed into the corridor. The Norseman tucked his gun back inside his tunic. The four of them walked slowly down toward the elevator, their footsteps clicking on the bare plastic floors and echoing off the walls. When they got to the elevator, the Puerto Rican touched the DOWN button and instantly the elevator doors slid open.
This building’s empty except for us! Lou realized.
He stepped into the elevator, then whirled, grabbed the Puerto Rican and hurled him into the Norseman. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, shouting. Lou punched the DOOR CLOSE button and yelled to Kirby:
“Come on!”
Kirby stood frozen, his jaw hanging open, as the doors started to slide shut. The Norseman was still on the floor, but he had pushed the Puerto Rican off and was reaching for his gun. The doors shut. Lou pushed the GROUND button and the elevator started down. He could hear somebody pounding on the metal doors at the floor above.
On the ground floor he tried to retrace his steps back to the corridor landing pad outside. He got lost in the corridors, finally saw an EXIT sign, and banged through the doors. It was full night outside, dark and damp-cool, with the ripe acrid smell of the garbage-choked river a sudden shock to Lou’s senses. The city was almost completely dark; only a few lights shone, mostly high up in skyscrapers where people had their own power generators and had barricaded themselves in for the night.
He heard footsteps and flattened himself into the deeper shadows along the wall.
“Shall we turn the lights on?” The Norseman’s voice.
“And attract every gang of pack rats on the East Side?” the Puerto Rican answered. “You don’t know this city very well. He’ll never live out the night alone. Either he’ll come begging at our doors inside an hour, or he’ll be dead. No one can get through a night on these streets alone.”
“My orders are to bring them to Messina unharmed,” said the Norseman.
“You want to search for him? Out there? You’ll be killed, too.”
They said no more. Lou could sense the Norseman shaking his head, not satisfied, but not willing to risk his own skin against the city streets. Lou heard a door click shut. He slid along the wall carefully and found the door he had come through. It was locked from the inside.
He turned away and looked at the city again with new understanding. He was alone in the city.
And the night had just begun.
4
Lou hunkered down on his heels, resting his back against the rough wall, and tried to think. He could bang on the door until they came and got him. Then he’d be safe enough. The Norseman might jab him with a sleeping drug, but probably nothing worse. Then they’d take him to Messina. But why.’ And where was Bonnie? Had they taken her, too?
And why should he let them pull him around by the nose, Lou asked himself with mounting anger. They had no right to take him here. Who do they think they’re pushing around, a frail old professor like Kirby?
But—out here alone in the city! Lou remembered his high school days in Maryland, when the best way to show you had guts was to sneak into the city at night. Of course, you always went with your friends, never less than a dozen guys. And now that he thought about it, Lou realized that despite their loud claims of bravery they never went deeper than a few blocks into the outskirts of Baltimore. Then back to the friendly hills of Hagerstown, as fast as their cars could take them. And still John Milford had been killed on that one trip. Lou remembered tripping over his mutilated body as he ran for his car that night. It still made him shiver.
And this was New York, the heart of it at that! The closest place to civilization and safety was the old JFK jetport, out on Long Island someplace.
If l can get to the jetport in one piece, Lou reasoned, I can get back to Albuquerque. Maybe Bonnie’s waiting for me there.
But how to get to the jetport?
As he sat there wondering, Lou heard the distant whisper of a turbocar. He paid no attention to it at first, but gradually it grew louder and louder. A car! In the city, at night. Can I get it to stop for me?
No doubt of it, the whine of the turbine was much closer, coming this way. Lou got up and walked across the blacktopped courtyard, heading for the sound. Far off to his left he saw a glimmer of light. Moving toward him! He ran to the railing that bordered the courtyard. There was a sunken roadway beyond the railing, and down below Lou could see the lights of the approaching car. The roadbed was patched and rough, but apparently some cars still used it.
Lou leaned over the railing and tried to wave at the speeding turbocar. It roared right past him, making his ears pop with the scream of its engine echoing off the walls of the sunken throughway. A puff of hot, grit-laden, kerosene-smelling air blew into his face.
Maybe if I get down to the road I can get somebody to stop and pick me up.
In the darkness left by the passing car, Lou could barely make out a pedestrian bridge spanning the road, down at the end of the courtyard. He trotted to it. A wire screen fence blocked access to it, but Lou scrambled over it like a kid sneaking into a playground after it had been closed for the night.
He crossed the bridge and found himself on the sidewalk of an empty city street. There’s got to be a stairway down to the road someplace along here, he told himself. He started walking along the street. In the darkness, he stumbled over a bottle and sent it clattering across the pavement. The noise made the city’s silence seem more ominous. Lou got up and went on, keeping his eyes on the roadway. The city seemed deserted. But Lou realized that there were people all around him, by the tens of millions. Most of them were barricaded in for the night, terrified of those who roamed the dark. And the rest…
Another car raced by, coming up the other way. Lou didn’t bother waving. The driver couldn’t see him from down on the road. Besides, Lou was beginning to understand that no driver in his right mind would stop to pick up anybody in the heart of the city. It was enough of a chance to drive through the East Side. If the car should break down or have an accident…