Five years before, three max-security patients had escaped from the Kelley. They were of course picked up again inside of two hours, but the incident had shaken the administration, and the entire security system had been revamped to make a similar occurrence impossible.
But Alexander, when he was assigned to the Wildwood Plant, had spent several weeks studying all the major security systems of note in the world: prisons, psychotic wards, A-plants, computing centers, the Kingsley mines, the Chinese and Soviet political camps. He had also spent three months in the Army hospital in Buenos Aires after the Antarctic incident, where as an esteemed guest he had had the run of the place, and had learned a certain amount about hospital customs and routines.
During his Mexican tour he had worked with a special Army Central Intelligence team that was trying to break up the Qualchi ring of smugglers who were constantly moving Chinese guerillas, weapons, and supplies into the southwestern United States. After six weeks of intensive coaching, and with a cyanide capsule adequately concealed, he was methodically beaten up, flogged, and dumped in a filthy Mexican bastille where three known Qualchi agents had been incarcerated, after much careful maneuvering, for slugging and robbing a couple of American touristas (actually CI agents) who were slumming in Mexicali.
The whole affair had been so neatly staged that even the Mexican police did not know they had Qualchi agents in their jail; the three agents were completely duped, especially since they were not interrogated, and cursed their ill luck rather than Army CI.
Alexander was turned over to Mexican authorities when he tried to accuse the Army of sweating him over to make him confess to being a Qualchi agent, instead of merely a petty thief who was broke and hiding out in Mexico. His charges were of course denounced as preposterous by the same Army CI Major who had supervised his mauling. The Mexican police, while they believed his story, were still quite willing to lock him up anyway, because the Army was good for their whorehouses.
He was soon on confidential terms with the three Qualchi agents, who turned out to be part of an isolated cell and had no real information. They did, however, have certain contacts in Nuevo Laredo, so Alexander, unable to notify the CI people, planned and executed a breakout from the bastille that he had thought beyond his capabilities, taking the three Qualchi men with him, and heading south.
For the next four months Alexander was on the CI report as a deserter and bug-out (an agent who went over to the enemy camp); they posted substantial rewards for him or his cyanided body. He turned up one day in Des Moines, Iowa, and furnished an order of battle for the entire Texas-New Mexico-Oklahoma-Kansas Qualchi net, having worked himself up to the rank of Supervisor of Local Theft and staging six still-unsolved supply raids on warehouses in the area for the benefit of guerilla troops.
With twelve other Qualchi agents he was arrested, interrogated for two days without breaking (before witnesses who were returned to the Qualchi six months later on a prisoner exchange) and then, like three other top Qualchi agents, one of whom turned out to be a BRINT man, he simply vanished. In the ensuing roundup, carried out strategically over a nine-month period, 120 Qualchi agents were captured and interrogated, the un-co-operative ones being turned over to BRINT for unrestricted examination, and over 600 Chinese troops from the tough Mukden school were trapped and committed suicide. The operation was considered to be a major coup, even by BRINT. Consequently, as is customary in intelligence work, all the credit was given to a few CI and DIA figureheads who were military-looking, telegenic, and willing to accept the risk of assassination that accompanied such notoriety. Alexander, like the other CI main links, had his face altered slightly by surgery and was given a new assignment halfway around the world, with his Army records adjusted to cover the five month lapse.
The only records of the affair were in the central CI files where his name had been replaced by a meaningless cover number. There was no decoration, commendation, record of service, or even mention of his CI experience after that. Most of the CI people who had worked most closely with him did not know his real identity, and the trail of Agent C451933 ended as abruptly as if he had never existed, as was customary in intelligence work.
But Alexander had never forgotten the experience, particularly the breakout from the bastille, which he had considered a maneuver with overtones of brilliance. As a result of his intimate acquaintance with intelligence operations, he always, in any new assignment, imagined himself in the role of an intelligence agent and/or prisoner, and studied the existing security system for loopholes.
This was not merely a hobby or diversion; he had no way of knowing when the dead trail of Agent C451933 might be reopened by a chance recognition, or when he might have to worry about getting people into places or getting himself out.
The fact that he was confined in an American hospital in the outskirts of Chicago, rather than in a Chinese or satellite compound, was slightly irrelevant under the circumstances. There was no question in his mind that his neck at the present moment depended upon his finding out what had actually happened at the Wildwood Plant, and he was satisfied that Bahr’s DIA henchmen were at least as dangerous an enemy, to him personally, as a dozen Qualchi knife-men.
But the Kelley Hospital was a break. He had studied the Kelley system—modeled on the Bronstock system used in the Eastern European “rehabilitation” centers—when he had developed the Wildwood plan. He had found no noticeable weakness in the Kelley system at that time, but then he had been on the outside, not inside.
And that, he decided, made a very great deal of difference.
Moving out of his bed, he put his ear to the door. There was no sound in the corridor. He opened the door a crack, ear pressed against the aluminum sill, listening for the telltale vibrations of the alarm gongs used in the Kelley. There was nothing. No ringing, no pounding of feet. Somewhere below, he knew, a master-panel lit up any time a patient’s door was opened, but it was nearly dinner time and most of the personnel would be occupied. A blue light might go unnoticed for a while. Even the hall TV scanners were dim, though he knew the slightest alarm would throw the hallways and rooms under surveillance in ten seconds flat.
Out in the hall he padded across to the men’s lavatory and ducked inside. There were commodes, a urinal, and sinks. He collected all the toilet paper rolls and hand towels he could find and crossed swiftly back into his room again.
It took only moments to crumple the paper and towels, wrap them in a sheet from the bed, and stuff them under the sponge-plastic mattress. There was a bed-light on the wall; he pulled out the plug, ripped the lamp off the wire, and bent the naked copper ends into a neat pair of lobster claws.
Finally, he dropped the three metal toilet-paper rollers into a pillow case stripped from the bed. Pulling all his clothes off, he plugged the lamp cord back in the wall socket and touched the lobster-claws together near the nest of torn paper. There was a shower of sparks, and the fuse blew, but he blew gently into the paper nest and was rewarded by a tiny flame.
The power came back immediately on an emergency circuit. He heard a buzzer down the corridor summon the maintenance men. The smoke was already beginning to pour from the heated sponge mattress, stinking and acrid. Choking, Alexander threw the door into the hall open and peered out as smoke began to billow out.
As he had expected, there was a turnoff at the end of the corridor, with a civilian guard just settling back to his magazine after the buzz for the blown fuse. Alexander waited until the smoke in the corridor grew thick enough to haze out the nearest TV scanner. Then he screamed, “Fire!” and began running toward the guard, with the pillow-case blackjack held out of sight.