Reaching for the massive bunch of keys attached to his leather belt, he frantically rattled through them, identified the one he was looking for, tried it, found it didn't work, tried another.
The door opened.
He leaped into the room, his flashlight raised over his head as a makeshift club. But the room was empty. A sharp bite of cold air on the back of his neck made him look up. One of the skylights had been smashed. The intruder had escaped to the roof.
Glass crunched beneath his feet and he looked down. The floor was wet. His eyes followed the stream of dark liquid to the guard's body, slumped against a workbench. Mironov ran to his side and felt for a pulse. Seeing that he was still alive, he laid him down on the floor and radioed for assistance.
Within forty-five seconds, men were pouring through the door, guns drawn.
"What happened?" demanded the senior officer.
"We had two new men start tonight. I sent them up to clean a few of the Western Art galleries, but they never showed up. I think they bribed one of the guards to allow them down here. I came looking for them. All I heard was a shout and then the sound of breaking glass. I think they must have gone up there." He pointed up at the shattered skylight.
"Could you recognize them if you saw them?"
"Absolutely."
"Good. In that case you're coming with us. I want people up on the roof and all exits sealed. Then I want a room-by-room search until we find these bastards. Alexsei?"
"Yes, sir." A young guard who had until now remained by the door stepped forward.
"Stay here with Ivan. I'll get a medical team up here as soon as I can."
"Yes sir."
Mironov and the guards trooped out of the room, their voices excited and determined. Alexsei crouched next to Ivan and loosened his collar, wiping small pieces of broken glass from his hair.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
As he crouched behind the worktop, Tom's mind was racing. Smashing the skylight had convinced the guards that he must have escaped through it. But it was a trick that would last only as long as it took them to get up there and find the roof deserted. He had to find a way past the guard and out of this room. Fast.
He peeked out from behind the worktop and caught a glimpse of the guard they'd left — Alexsei, the others had called him. Tom's heart leapt. It was the same guard who'd deactivated the metal detector when scanning Turnbull. Clearly, he owed Viktor a favor. Tom hoped the debt would extend to helping him. He was hardly loaded with options.
Tom stood up and the guard's hand shot instinctively to his hip.
"Wait," Tom said urgently.
"You go." The guard looked terrified. His eyes flicked nervously to the door.
"How?" Tom pulled out his map of the museum and pointed at it questioningly. The guard grabbed it and traced a route with a shaking finger. It led down an adjacent stairwell, all the way along the first floor into the Small Hermitage, then into the Great Hermitage until… Tom squinted, uncertain that he was seeing it right.
"The canal?" he asked uncertainly.
"Da," said the guard, then made some hand and leg movements that seemed to imply Tom should make his escape by climbing down into the canal and swimming away.
Now wasn't the time to explain that, with his shoulder in its current state, he wouldn't be able to climb or swim anywhere. He'd have to figure something out when he got there. With a muttered "spasibo" he grabbed the key that the guard was holding out to him.
"Call Viktor. Let her know what's happening," said Tom, acting out making a phone call while thrusting the scrap of paper Viktor had given him with her number written on it into the guard's hand.
The guard nodded dumbly in response, but Tom was already gone, the crunching of feet on the roof overhead as the guards arrived at the shattered skylight echoing in his ears as he sprinted out of the room.
The key the guard had given him unlocked the door at the top of the staircase. Tom flew down it, emerging onto the first floor moments later. The corridor was deserted, the guards having presumably joined the search upstairs and on the roof, and he broke into a run across the polished herringbone parquet floor, his shoulder burning, the pain making him feel faint. He followed the map across the small bridge into the northern pavilion of the Small Hermitage and then used the key to enter the passage gallery that led into the Great Hermitage.
He found himself in the museum's Italian collection, a group of thirty rooms dedicated to the development of Italian art between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries, and slowed to a cautious walk. The parts of the museum he had just run through were mainly administrative and therefore only sparsely patrolled. The galleries, however, contained two of only twelve paintings in the world known to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci. Here, security wouldn't be so lax.
His caution was well founded. No sooner had he crossed into the first room than he made out a man's silhouette in the distance. The rooms here were all interconnected, and it was almost possible to see from one end of the building to the other through the open doorways. Tom estimated that the person he had seen was no more than two rooms away.
He quickly decided against taking him on. Even if his shoulder had been up to it, he couldn't risk the guard getting a shot off. Moreover, he didn't know how many other guards there were on that floor. Any disturbance would bring them all rushing in.
The room offered no natural cover apart from the wood-paneled walls, so Tom crouched by the door, his back flat to the wall, hidden in the shadows. A few moments later, the guard entered the room and walked straight past him.
As soon as the guard had moved on, Tom slipped into the adjacent room, then the one after that. Again, though, he saw the looming shadow of an approaching guard. This time, with light pouring through the window from one of the floodlights outside, there were no shadows to hide him. Tom dropped to his belly and crawled under a red velvet chaise longue. Peering through the golden-tasseled brocade, he saw the guard enter the gallery, pause, look around, then move on.
Tom continued on to the next room and ducked behind the base of a large statue. He was almost at the northeastern corner of the building. Ahead of him, he could see the glazed bridge that led over the Winter Canal to the Hermitage Theatre. But first he would have to evade one final guard, who was loitering in the room, muttering to himself. Finally he gave a sigh, turned on his heel, and retreated south. From his movements, it looked as though he was on some sort of set patrol, which meant that the others would soon be retracing their steps toward Tom. Whatever he was going to do, he had to do it now.
As soon as he was certain that it was safe, he padded over to the far wall and looked expectantly out the window. His heart sank. Not only was the canal's surface frozen, but even if he'd been able to negotiate the thirty-foot drop, his escape route to the river was barred by a thick iron grille that ran between the underside of the bridge's arch and the ice. He was trapped.
He turned, desperately searching for some inspiration, however remote, before the guards returned. Almost unconsciously, he found himself locking eyes with a large white marble bust of Catherine the Great, who leered at him, silently challenging him to escape her palace.
But her unfeeling stare gave him an idea. He examined the windows that gave onto the narrow canal. They were alarmed but, thankfully, not screwed shut. That meant he could open them if he wanted to.
He went back to the bust and, grimacing with the pain, lifted it off its plinth and staggered over to the window, rolling it with relief onto the top of the deep wooden windowsill. He wasn't sure how thick the ice would be, or how heavy the bust was, but he knew that it would fall heavily from that height. If it broke through, he could jump through the hole, swim under the ice and the grille, and come up in the Neva itself, which thankfully had not frozen that year.