'You're the one who keeps noticing something strange,' Katherina pointed out angrily.
Jon shushed his two colleagues and shone the torchlight down the stairs in front of them.
'You're sure this is the way we should go?' he asked, turning to point the torch at Pau's face.
'Yeah, I'm sure,' replied Pau, holding up his hand to block out the beam of light. 'Can't you sense it? This is where the energy is coming from. Trust me.'
'You've certainly become awfully sensitive all of a sudden,' muttered Katherina.
Jon shone the light back on the stairs and began descending. After a couple of metres the stairs turned sharply round a corner. At the turn, Jon noticed a strange tingling of the hairs on the back of his neck, the same sensation he'd felt the first time he entered the library in the basement of Libri di Luca.
'Okay,' he admitted. 'I think we're on the right track. Now I can feel it too.'
Katherina confirmed that she also felt the energy.
'What did I tell you?' muttered Pau.
Cautiously Jon continued down the stairway. With each step he could feel the energy getting stronger, at the same time as the air got damper and stuffier. At the foot of the stairs was a corridor that led forward a couple of metres before it turned yet another corner. As far as Jon could tell, it ran along the back of the school.
The walls were more rustic in this part of the building, with big uneven patches and exposed granite.
They found two more doors when they turned the corner. The metal door on the right had a peephole of the type that might be expected in the door to a prison cell. The other door marked the end of the corridor and was made of heavy oak with black iron hinges and handle.
Jon peered into the hole in the metal door, but it was too dark to see anything. He pressed his ear against the door and listened hard. When he didn't hear anything, he pressed the metal handle down and opened it.
Inside was a small room, no more than two metres wide and about five metres long. The walls were covered with pale wooden panels. In the middle of the room two big leather chairs faced each other. They both had wide armrests, and over the back of each hung a metal helmet connected to a jumble of wires. With the beam of his torch, Jon followed the wires to where they gathered into one thick cable coming out of the wall. That same wall was dominated by a big window, which provided an adjacent room with a view of the chairs.
Jon found a light switch and turned it on. Fluorescent light flooded the room and all three of them stepped inside. As soon as Jon crossed the threshold, he sensed the energy disappear, as if someone had turned off a switch. Judging by the others' reaction, they had noticed the same thing.
'It must be shielded in some way,' Pau concluded.
'What is this place?' asked Katherina.
'The electric chair?' suggested Pau. 'All teachers must have an urge to use this sort of thing on their pupils once in a while.'
Jon leaned towards the glass pane and peered into the room next door. He glimpsed a series of red and green LEDs, and in the light from the cell he could see a table right on the other side of the window and a row of computers and printers along one wall. On the table stood a computer monitor surrounded by papers and half-empty coffee cups.
'Remer said they had the equipment to measure the powers,' said Jon. 'This must be where they do it.'
Katherina picked up a helmet. 'Very likely,' she said, looking with disgust at the helmet in her hands. 'The shield must prevent the measurements from being disturbed by the energy down here, wherever it's coming from.'
'Okay, Mr and Mrs Sherlock, shouldn't we find out where it's coming from?' said Pau, moving towards the door. 'This place is giving me the creeps.'
'Do you still think this is an innocent school building?' asked Katherina, but Pau didn't answer.
Out in the corridor they again felt the familiar tingling, and it got stronger as they headed for the oak door at the end of the hall. That door wasn't locked either, and it gave them free access to the room they had seen through the window in the cell room. In addition to the rows of computers, the printers and the table with the papers, there was another door leading further into the school.
Jon set his sports bag on the floor and went over to the table to have a look at the papers.
They were covered with graphs, sketches of parts of the brain and rows of numbers, some of them underlined or circled in pencil. At the top of each page was the name and age of the person being tested. Judging by these documents, the latest test subjects were aged ten to twelve. For some of the individuals, the numbers were a measurement of their actual strength, while for others the numbers represented an estimate of the person's expected potential.
'It looks like they can predict the strength of those who haven't even been activated yet,' said Jon.
'Could that be the criterion for admission to the school?' suggested Katherina, who had come over to the table and was looking over his shoulder. Pau stayed near the door, casting nervous glances down the corridor.
'Maybe, but it's hard to imagine how they could take the measurements without arousing suspicion from the parents,' said Jon.
Katherina shrugged. 'There's no limit to what parents will subject their beloved offspring to if it means giving Little Peter a head start.'
'God only knows whether the parents even find out the truth,' said Jon, thinking aloud. 'It's not certain they're Lectors themselves. But what about the children? When are they told? Are the parents informed, or are the kids forced to lie to their mother and father?' He shook his head. 'What would that do to a child?'
'It doesn't sound healthy,' Katherina chimed in. 'They must have more tests than this one to find suitable candidates. It's one thing to possess the powers, either activated or latent, but it's another matter whether the kids are mature enough to join the Shadow Organization.'
Katherina peered under the table and found what she was looking for. She bent down and lifted out the wastebasket. From the wastebasket she removed a number of printouts similar to those lying on the table, folded them up and stuck them in the back pocket of her jeans.
'They won't even notice they're gone,' she said, putting the wastebasket back on the floor.
The monitor on the table was blank, but a quick tap on the keyboard brought it to life. Slowly an image emerged, but Jon was disappointed when it turned out to be a command to enter the computer by typing in a name and password.
'We could use Mehmet's help right now,' he said.
Pau was still standing in the doorway, nervously shifting his feet. 'Shouldn't we get going?'
Jon nodded. 'We're not going to get anything out of this, anyway.'
He went over to Pau and picked up his sports bag. At the next door he nodded to his companions before he pressed down the handle. Pau turned off the light in the room behind them before Jon pushed open the door. It was dark, but Jon could feel a soft carpet underfoot when he stepped inside. After fumbling a bit with the torch, he switched it on and then located the light switch inside the door.
He was standing with his back to the room, Pau stood in the doorway with the crowbar in his hand and Katherina had taken a few steps inside on the carpet. Her eyes were fixed on the far end of the room, displaying both surprise and horror.
'Campelli,' they heard. 'How nice of you to drop by.'
Jon recognized the voice at once.
It was Remer.
'Get out!' shouted Jon, and took a step towards the door, but Pau didn't budge from the entrance. Instead, he broke into a big grin, and without hesitation he swung the crowbar at Jon's head.
Jon was so surprised that he didn't manage to fend off the blow, and a fierce stab of pain shot through his skull.
29
Katherina threw herself over Jon's unconscious body. He had dropped like a rock with the blow, as if all his muscles had been loosed at once, leaving gravity to do its work. Blood was pouring from his forehead where the crowbar had struck and running down his cheek onto the carpet. He groaned faintly.