As he stood there, in the black shadow of the vast facade, the words he’d spoken to Benedict in her laboratory came back to him. This device of yours is…unthinkable. To drive somebody, perhaps an entire army, insane…There are reasons chemical weapons were outlawed. Just how long do you think it will take for the technology to be leaked — and the same diabolical ordnance used against our own men and women?
The device had to be destroyed. She still needed it if she was to complete her work — she’d said as much. But what could he do? He was unarmed, facing a trained squad of killers. As he stood there in the shelter of the mansion’s south wall, he patted at his pockets, even though he knew the gesture was futile. A flashlight. A kitchen knife. A digital recorder. A cell phone…
As his hand closed over this last item, the vaguest outlines of a plan began to come together. And as it did, his heart began to accelerate once again. He took a deep breath, then another, looking around to make sure the coast was clear. But there was only him and the howling storm.
Logan pushed himself away from the protective wall and forced himself out into the wrath of the elements. Turning his back to the East Wing, he began plodding forward. The hurricane was like an animal force, trying its best to spin him around, force him back, prevent him from staggering on. He took one step at a time, laboring against the appalling force of nature. As he did so, the shriek of the storm intensified, as if outraged by his attempts to defy it. His injured leg, and the blow to his head, throbbed and protested with the effort. Once, his feet slipped from under him and he fell face forward into the sodden grass. It was so thick with water that, for a crazy moment, he felt as if he was lying at the lip of a lake. It would have been easy, so very easy, just to close his eyes and drift into unconsciousness. Instead he forced himself to his feet once again, but was almost immediately knocked down once more by the hurricane. The howling of the banshee wind rang painfully in his ears. Against all reason, the tempest was still escalating.
Logan realized he couldn’t fight against the elements. The storm would sap all his strength before he even reached his destination…strength he would need for what lay ahead.
He veered out of the teeth of the storm and made his way back to the facade of the mansion. It seemed to tower endlessly over him, its crenelations and beetling gables invisible in the raging night. But here, under its eaves, the storm abated somewhat. Not much — but enough to allow him to continue forward.
One step, another, another. He soon lost track of time and, stupid with exhaustion, could not even begin to guess how far he’d come. The only way he was able to orient himself, to know that he was making any progress at all, was by sliding his right hand along the stonework of the mansion….
And then, directly ahead, something loomed up out of the darkness, black against black. At first, he sensed rather than felt it. And then, as he began to trudge forward yet another step, he walked straight into it. Half blinded by the wind-driven rain, he pressed his hands forward, feeling his way, trying to determine what it was that impeded his progress.
It was another wall of dressed stone, taller than he could gauge and perpendicular to the one he’d been following, dark and unlit and uninhabited, stretching away to his left into unguessable distances.
The West Wing.
Turning now ninety degrees to the south and leaning against this new support, Logan moved forward until he found what he was looking for: a small window, low, barely at knee height. Dropping to the ground, heedless of the pain in his leg, he applied numb fingers to the sash, tried pulling it upward.
Locked.
Taking shallow breaths, coughing out the rainwater that kept filling his mouth and eyes and ears, he took off his jacket, placed it against the glass, and then beat at it — first with his fists, then with his left shoe. On the third blow, the window gave.
Using his jacket for protection, he gingerly plucked away the remaining shards of glass. Then he slipped through the window, careful this time to slide down to the floor feetfirst.
He shook the glass from his jacket. A brief circuit with the flashlight showed him he was in a small storage room, apparently used by the workmen who’d been engaged in the reconstruction. There were wooden sawhorses; stacked cans of paint; boxes full of caulking tubes; carefully folded tarps covered with Pollock-like drips and sprays in a multitude of colors.
His flashlight made out an open door on the far side of the room. He’d grab one of the tarps and stuff it into the window, then close the door behind him as he left the room; that would mute the sound of the storm, conceal the fact that he’d broken into the wing.
Just as he grabbed the topmost tarp, he hesitated. No, he told himself. First, there was something he had to do.
51
Putting his flashlight aside, Logan reached into the pocket of his sopping trousers, searching for his phone. He found it, shook off the beads of water that had accumulated on its face, then pressed the button to wake it from hibernation.
Several rows of faint orange light appeared beneath its number keys: a good sign.
He examined the tourniquet on his right thigh. It was as sodden as the rest of him, but it seemed to have stanched the flow of blood.
Now, raising the phone, he dialed Kim Mykolos’s number. No answer. He tried once again with the same result.
Then he paused in the darkness, phone in hand, carefully thinking through his next move. Finally, he raised the phone once more and dialed another number from memory. It was the internal extension that had appeared on his phone when Laura Benedict dialed his Lux apartment, perhaps one hour before.
The phone rang five times before it was picked up. “Hello?” came the tense voice on the other end of the line.
“Hello, Laura,” Logan replied. He moved closer to the broken window, made sure that the storm could be clearly heard behind him.
“Who is this?”
“Who do you think it is?” Logan breathed raggedly, careful to add a manic, desperate tone to his voice.
“Dr. Logan?” Benedict sounded shocked, dismayed, uncertain.
“Right the first time. Want to come out and play? The water’s fine.”
There was a pause. “What happened?” she finally asked.
“What happened? Your boys led me on a merry chase. It took a lot of doing, and a lot of running, but I managed to escape them.”
“Where are you now?”
Logan let out a chuckle he hoped wasn’t too high-pitched. “I’m outside of the East Wing, near the parking lot.”
“Parking lot?” Alarm sounded in her voice.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. Actually, that’s not true — I am going somewhere.”
Silence.
“Care to guess where I’m going, Dr. Benedict?”
The silence continued.
“No? Then I’ll tell you. Why shouldn’t I? You may get me, but by the time you do it’ll be too late.”
“Too late—” the voice began.
“I tried to make you see reason. But you refused. You even sent mercenaries to kill me. So I’m going to do it myself.”
A brief pause. “Do what? Kill yourself?”
Logan chuckled mirthlessly. “Destroy the forgotten room.”
“Dr. Logan…Jeremy—”
“You said yourself that your work there isn’t complete. So I’m going to make sure your work never gets finished. I’m going to torch the whole goddamned room, and the rest of the wing with it if I have to. Just like your mercenaries torched Pamela Flood. And then I’m going to find the old notes and journals and lab reports — they’ll be around here somewhere, maybe in your lab, maybe in your private rooms — and I’ll torch those, too.”