“There,” Tamás said. “Shine the light over there again.”
“Where?”
“Over by the window. No, on the floor.…”
It might have been normal decay, or one of the small tremors that caused ripples in their coffee cups at home. Whatever the cause, the old infirmary had taken a big step closer to total ruin. The crack in the wall had made part of the floor tumble into the basement below—the basement that had been inaccessible since the day the Russians had sealed both entrances with concrete.
Pitkin and Tamás looked at each other.
“There must be tons of stuff down there,” Tamás said.
“All kinds of things,” Pitkin said. “Maybe even a grenade.…”
Personally, Tamás would rather find a couple of microscopes like the ones that had proved such a windfall for Marius Paul.
“I can fit through there,” Tamás said. “Give me the light.”
“I want to come down, too,” Pitkin said.
“I know. But we have to do it one at a time.”
“Why?”
“You idiot. If we both jump down there, how are we going to get back out again?”
They didn’t have a rope or ladder, and Pitkin reluctantly conceded Tamás’s point. So it was just Tamás who sat down at the edge of the gap and cautiously stuck his feet and legs through the irregularly shaped hole. He hesitated for a moment.
“Hurry up. Or I’ll do it!” Pitkin said.
“Okay, okay. Just a second!”
Tamás didn’t want Pitkin to think he was chicken, so he pushed himself forward and slipped through the hole. As he began to fall, there was a sharp stab of pain in his arm.
“Ouch!” he cried out.
He landed crookedly on a heap of rubble from the collapsed ceiling, but though it jarred his bones, the sharper pain still came from his left upper arm.
“What’s wrong?” Pitkin asked from above.
“I cut myself on something,” Tamás said. He could feel the blood soaking his sleeve. Goddamnit. A ten-inch wooden splinter was embedded in his flesh, just below his armpit. He pulled it out, but it left a jagged tear. The longer he waited for the pain to die down, the harder it throbbed.
“Well, is there anything down there?” Pitkin asked impatiently, his concern for Tamás’s wellbeing already forgotten.
“Can’t see a thing, can I? Pass me the light.”
Pitkin lay down on the floor and lowered the flashlight through the hole. Tamás was just able to reach it. Luckily the ceiling in the basement was lower than in the rest of the infirmary.
It was obvious right away that they had struck gold. Everything was still there, just like he had hoped. Two hospital gurneys, a steel cabinet, tons of instruments—although he didn’t see anything that looked like a microscope. The radiators, faucets, and sinks were intact, there were books and vials and bottles on the shelves and in the cabinets, and in the corner there was a standing scale like the school nurse’s, with weights you slid back and forth until they balanced. And this was just the first room. The thought of what it might be worth almost made Tamás forget the pain in his arm. If they could get it all out of here before anyone else discovered their treasure trove, of course.
“Any weapons?” Pitkin asked.
“I don’t know.”
He opened the door to the hallway—there were still doors down here. Thick, heavy, steel doors that squeaked when he pushed them. Tamás moved quickly down the corridor, opening them one by one, shining his light into the rooms beyond. This one was obviously an operating theater, with huge lamps still hanging from the ceiling and a stainless-steel operating table in the middle. Next came a storage room full of locked cabinets. Tamás’s heart beat faster when he realized there were still unopened boxes of drugs behind the glass doors. Depending on what they were, and how they had held up, they could be worth even more than microscopes.
But it was the next room that made him stop and stare so intensely that Pitkin’s impatient yells faded completely from his consciousness.
Once it must have hung from the ceiling, but tremors or decay had loosened the fat bolts, and at some point the whole thing had come crashing down onto the cracked tile floor. The sphere had been ripped off the arm in the fall and was lying by itself, cracked and scratched, its yellow paint reminding him a little of the bobbing naval mines he had seen in movies. He cautiously stretched out his hand and touched it, very, very gently. It felt warm, he thought. Not scalding, just skin temperature, as though it were alive. He could still make out the warning label, black against yellow, despite the scratches and the concrete dust.
He took a couple of steps back. The light from his flashlight had grown noticeably dimmer. The battery must be running low. He would have to get back to the hole while he could still see anything at all. On the way he smashed open the glass door of one of the medicine cabinets, blindly snatching a few jars and boxes. Pitkin was yelling again, more audibly now that Tamás was closer to the hole.
Tamás’s mind was working at fever pitch. It was as if he could suddenly see the future so clearly that everything he would need to do fell neatly into place, almost as if he had already done it and was remembering it, rather than planning it. Yes. First we’ll have to do this. And then this. And then if I ask.…
“Did you find a grenade?” Pitkin interrupted his train of thought, less loudly now that he could see Tamás was back.
Tamás looked up though the hole. Pitkin’s face hung like a moon in the middle of the darkness, and Tamás could feel a strange, involuntary grin tugging at his own mouth, turning it as wide as a frog’s.
“No,” he said breathlessly, still seeing in his mind’s eye the cracked yellow sphere with its stark, black warning sign.
“Well then, what? What did you find?”
“It’s better than a grenade,” he said. “Much, much better.…”
APRIL
When he got out of bed in the mornings, he felt a certain amount of resistance as he inhaled, as if breathing was no longer something that could be taken for granted. He had to exert himself. The pains in his joints had long ago turned into a constant background noise that he barely noticed, even though it wore him out.
It was no wonder, he supposed. After all, his originally serviceable body had been in use since 1925, and some degree of decay was only to be expected. What bothered him wasn’t so much the aches and the shortness of breath in itself; it was what they signified.
He looked across the shiny, white conference table at the lawyer sitting opposite him, duly armed with professional-looking case files and what was presumably the latest in fashionable eyewear.
“I just want to be sure my wife has the support she needs once I’ve passed on,” Skou-Larsen said. That was what he had decided to call it, passing on. There was something graceful about the expression, he thought. It implied a smooth and civilized progress toward a destination, and for a moment he imagined himself aboard a tall ship, sails billowing in the breeze, flags flying, and the sunlight rippling on blue waves as the land of the living fell away behind him. He liked the image. It obscured the clinical reality of death, so he didn’t need to think about fluid in his lungs, morphine drips and failing organs, lividity, and the moribund blood slowly congealing in his shriveled veins.