Manado felt the instant fear, and then he thought, That’s what I look like too, and all at once he felt very good. Not afraid of anything.
Standing beside him, Formutesca looked at his watch and whispered, “Ten after. Not bad.”
Manado was grinning. “I’m ready to go right now,” he whispered.
Formutesca grinned back at him. “I know what you mean. It’s too bad we have to wait.” He looked around. “Well, we might as well get ourselves comfortable.”
Manado’s grin faded slowly. Comfortable. Wait. His good feeling evaporated as fast as it had come. He looked up, the top of the housing indistinct up there now that the light source was down here. All at once it seemed as though they were in a grave.
“Sit down,” whispered Formutesca, who had already done so. “I want to switch off this light.”
Manado sat down, and Formutesca switched them into darkness. They had had to leave the housing open up there, and damp, cold air was settling in. Manado shivered.
4
Patrick Kasempa couldn’t sleep. It was the usual thing. He sat in the small room at the rear of the top floor, what he called his insomnia room, and he played hand after hand of solitaire. He never cheated, he rarely won, and he kept track of his record on a notepad he kept just to his right on the tabletop.
He never had insomnia at home in Tchidanga, never. It was the climate that did it; he’d known that for years the clammy climate of Europe and North America affected him badly. He always had insomnia when he traveled north from Dhaba. Only in the soft nights of the tropics could he find normal sleep.
Another two months of this. He didn’t know if he could last; he wasn’t sure how much longer he could take this. Joseph had made his move too early, that was obvious. He should have waited another three months before starting; he should have organized his timetable better. The result was, here they were, seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds in their possession, sitting here like monkeys in a treetop waiting for some hunter to notice them and shoot them out of the branches. It was enough to keep a man awake even if he didn’t have insomnia to begin with.
The answer was, Colonel Joseph Lubudi was a stupid man. And the Colonel’s sister Lucille, whom Kasempa had married out of misplaced ambition, was as stupid as her brother or they wouldn’t be here now. No, the two of them would be in Acapulco at this very minute with the diamonds, rich and anonymous and safe. And asleep.
But no. They had to stay here in New York, this ugly city, this clammy graveyard, the whole city dank and gray. It’s a wonder anyone could sleep in a place like this. They had to stay here another two months; they had to wait for Lucille’s stupid brother to make his stupid move, to be caught, to be torn to pieces by an enraged mob and the pieces to be buried in some potter’s field somewhere. Thenthey could go to Acapulco, not before.
“Joseph will get away,” Lucille kept saying. “You’ll see.”
Bah.
The fact was, Colonel Lubudi would notget away, and Kasempa knew it. The Colonel had handled this whole affair so sloppily it was a miracle they hadn’t been found out yet. Would his enemies let him out of Dhaba without first counting the governmental knives and forks? Nonsense. Joseph was a dead man, and Patrick Kasempa knew it.
But he couldn’t tell that to Lucille. He could hint, he could talk around it, he could try to make her understand it herself, but if he were to directly advocate their disappearing with the diamonds, Lucille would be thrust into a dilemma of loyalties, husband versus brother, and Kasempa wasn’t all that sure in his mind which way such a dilemma would be resolved.
So there was nothing to do but wait. In New York City. Sleeplessly.
Another hand was stuck. Kasempa sighed and gathered the cards together and shuffled them. His wristwatch said the time was two forty-five. The way he was feeling, with luck he might be able to get to bed and to sleep by four. He shook his head and dealt out a new hand.
There was an explosion.
Kasempa looked up, the cards in his left hand. The blackness outside the window was unchanged.
It had been near, very near. In the building?
The alarm hadn’t sounded, so it couldn’t be either the front or back door. When the building had been converted to a museum and this apartment put in for the full-time curator the place had never needed, an alarm system had been built in to help protect the place from burglaries at night. When switched on, the alarm rang a bell in the master bedroom if either door was tampered with or opened. They kept the alarm switched on at all times, and the only instances when it had rung were the two times Gonor had brought visitors to the museum, once a few weeks ago and then again just this afternoon. If the explosion had meant someone trying to break in through one of the doors, the alarm would have sounded. So if it was in the building it had to be something else.
What?
Kasempa put the cards down, and got to his feet. He went to the door, opened it, and stood in the hallway listening.
Nothing.
A door along the hall opened, and Kasempa’s brother Albert appeared, sleepy-eyed but with a pistol in his hand. “What was it?”
“I don’t know. Listen.”
The two brothers stood facing one another listening. All the brothers were physically alike, short and bull-like and broad, but faster-moving than they looked.
Another. A sudden loud blast, an explosion. Like a hand grenade going off, or something larger.
In the building.
Albert said, “What the hell? It’s downstairs!”
“Come on!”
Another door opened as they hurried toward the elevator, and their brother Ralph called, “What’s going on?”
“Stay here,” Kasempa shouted back. “We’ll take a look downstairs.”
The elevator was already on this floor, and the door slid back when Kasempa pressed the button. They went in together and Albert said, “All the way down?”
“Of course!”
Albert pushed the button for the first floor, the door slid shut, and they started down.
Kasempa heard the slight sound above him. He looked up, and a rectangular opening was spreading in the ceiling. He saw eyes, hands in darkness, and something was flung in.
A grenade!
“No!” he shouted, recoiling. The elevator was suddenly too small. He and Albert were cramped together; neither could move.
But the thing hit the floor without exploding. It seemed to fall apart, to break open in two halves. A faint yellowish mist rose up.
Albert was shouting, Kasempa couldn’t tell what. But he knew what that was; he knew it was gas; he knew he’d been mousetrapped and he was a dead man. He knew it, but he refused to let it be so. He pushed savagely past his brother, reaching for the buttons. He wouldn’t breathe; he refused to breathe, though he had already inhaled some of it in the first few seconds after it broke open. Albert was falling over, falling into his path, his weight leaning on Kasempa’s chest. Kasempa gritted his teeth, pushed the heavy weight away, and got his fingers on the buttons.
If he could stop the elevator. If he could get the doors open. If he could get outof here.
He could feel the nausea welling up, feel the darkness behind it. He could feel his strength draining away. He leaned on his fingers, pressing all the buttons.
The elevator was stopping. Green kaleidoscopes were irising in around the edges of his vision. Albert had slid to the floor, his weight now leaning against Kasempa’s legs, and the strength was rushing like blood out of his legs.
The door slid open. He saw it sliding, as slow as eternity, with the last of his vision, saw the second-floor displays in semidarkness, saw the green kaleidoscope iris close over his eyes, felt his hands sliding down the smooth wall of the elevator. He tried to take a step, out and away, but all that happened was that his knee bent. It kept bending.