“So he’d be able to move around?”
“Oh, sure. The injury caused severe shock, but he’s out of that now; and the wound itself is not critical.” He paused to look pointedly at me. “What I don’t understand is how the damned thing went off prematurely.”
Meaning I was somehow to blame, since I had supplied Eric with the matériel for the bomb. Armand looked over at me too.
“Ross? What sort of device was it?”
“Standard,” I said. “Two sticks of dynamite liberated from that P.G. and E. site four months ago. An electric blasting cap with a small battery to detonate it. Alarm clock timer. He was going to carry the whole thing in a gift-wrapped shoe box to make it less conspicuous. There are several ways that detonation could—”
“None of that is pertinent now,” interrupted Danzer. His voice was cold and heavy, like his face. He even looked like a younger Raymond Burr. “Our first concern is this: Will the focal be compromised if they break him down and he starts talking?”
“Eric was my best friend before I joined the focal,” I said, “and he was my roommate for four years. But once we had determined it was better to use someone still a student than to set this one ourselves, I observed the standard security procedures in recruiting him. He believes the bombing was totally his own idea.”
“He isn’t even aware of the existence of the focal, let alone who’s in it,” Armand explained. “There’s no way that he could hurt us.”
Danzer’s face was still cold when he looked over at me, but I had realized he always looked cold. “Then it seems that Ross is the one to go in after him.”
“If there’s any need to go at all,” said Benny quickly. I knew what he was thinking. Any operation would entail the hospital, which meant he would be involved. He didn’t like that. “After all, if he can’t hurt us, why not just...” He shrugged.
“Just leave him there? Mmmph.” Danzer publishes a couple of underground radical newspapers even though he’s only twenty-seven, and also uses his presses to run off porn novels for some outfit in L.A. I think he nets some heavy bread. “I believe I can convince you of the desirability of going in after him. If Ross is willing...”
“Absolutely.” I kept the excitement from my voice. Cold. Controlled. That’s the image I like to project. A desperate man, reckless, careless of self. “If anyone else came through that door, Eric would be convinced he was an undercover pig. As soon as he sees me, he’ll know that I’ve come to get him away.”
“Why couldn’t Ross just walk in off the street as a normal visitor?” asked Danzer.
“There’s a twenty-four hour police guard on Whitlach’s door.” Benny was still fighting the idea of a rescue operation. “Only the doctors and one authorized nurse per shift get in.”
“All right. And Ross must not be compromised. If he is, the whole attempt would be negated, worse than useless.” Which at the moment I didn’t understand. “Now let’s get down to it.”
As Danzer talked, I began to comprehend why he had been chosen to coordinate the activities of the focals. His mind was cold and logical and precise, as was his plan. What bothered me was my role in that plan. But I soon saw the error in my objections. I was Eric’s friend, the only one he knew he could trust — and I had brought him into it in the first place. There was danger, of course, but that only made me feel better the more I thought of it. You have to take risks if you are to destroy a corrupt society, because like a snake with a broken back it still has venom on its fangs.
It took three hours to work out the operational scheme.
Alta Monte Hospital is set in the center of a quiet residential area off Ashby Avenue. It used to be easy to approach after dark; just walk to the side entrance across the broad blacktop parking lot. But so many doctors going out to their cars have been mugged by heads looking for narcotics that the lot is patrolled now.
I parked on Benvenue, got the hypo kit and the cherry bombs from the glove box, and slid them into my pocket. The thin strong nylon rope was wound around my waist under my dark blue windbreaker. My breath went up in gray wisps on the chilly wet night air. After I’d locked the car, I held out my hand to look at it by the pale illumination of the nearest street lamp. No tremors. The nerves were cool, man. I was cool.
3:23 a.m. by my watch.
In seven minutes, Benny Leland would unlock the small access door on the kitchen loading dock. He would relock it three minutes later, while going back to the staff coffee room from the men’s lavatory. I had to get inside during those three minutes or not at all.
3:27
I hunkered down in the thick hedge rimming the lot. My palms were getting sweaty. Everything hinged on a nurse who came off work in midshift because her old man worked screwy hours and she had to be home to babysit her kid. If she was late...
The guard’s voice carried clearly on the black misty air. “All finished, Mrs. Adamson?”
“Thank God, Danny. It’s been a rough night. We lost one in post-op that I was sure would make it.”
“Too bad. See you tomorrow, Mrs. Adamson.”
I had a cherry bomb in my rubber-gloved hand now. I couldn’t hear her soft-soled nurse’s shoes on the blacktop, but I could see her long thin shadow come bouncing up the side of her car ten yards away. I came erect, threw, stepped back into shadow.
It was beautiful, man; like a sawed-off shotgun in the silent lot. She gave a wonderful scream, full-throated, and the guard yelled. I could hear his heavy feet thudding to her aid as he ran past my section of hedge.
I was sprinting across the blacktop behind his back on silent garage attendant’s shoes, hunched as low as possible between the parked cars in case anyone had been brought to a window by the commotion. Without checking my pace, I ran down the kitchen delivery ramp to crouch in the deep shadow under the edge of the loading platform.
Nothing. No pursuit. My breath ragged in my chest, more from excitement than my dash. The watch said 3:31. Beautiful.
I threw a leg up, rolled onto my belly on the platform. Across to the access port in the big overhead accordion steel loading door. It opened easily under my careful fingertips. Benny was being cool, too, producing on schedule for a change. I don’t entirely trust Benny.
Hallway deserted, as per the plan. That unmistakable hospital smell. Across the hall, one of those wheeled carts holding empty food trays ready for the morning’s breakfasts. Right where it was supposed to be. I put the two cherry bombs on the front left corner of the second tray down, turned, went nine quick paces to the firedoor.
My shoes made slight scuffing noises on the metal runners. By law, hospital firedoors cannot be locked. I checked my watch: in nineteen seconds, Benny Leland would emerge from the men’s room and, as he walked back to the staff coffee room, would relock the access door and casually hook the cherry bombs from the tray. I then would have three minutes to be in position.
It had been 150 seconds when I pulled the third-floor firedoor a quarter-inch ajar. No need to risk looking out: I could visualize everything from Benny’s briefing earlier.
“Whitlach’s room is the last one on the corridor, right next to the fire stairs,” he’d said. “I arranged that as part of my administrative duties — actually, of course, in case we would want to get to him. The floor desk with the night duty nurse is around an ell and at the far end of the corridor. She’s well out of the way. The policeman will be sitting beside Whitlach’s door on a metal folding chair. He’ll be alone in the hall at that time of night.”