The two men turned the corner and walked on. Sam waited only a couple of seconds to be sure they were gone and then trotted up the lawn to the end of the mansion they had just passed. He tested the drainpipe running downward near the open window to see if its supports would hold a man’s weight. Then he began to climb. He reached the second floor, put his hand on the window frame, and pulled himself in over the sill. He crouched near the window and listened. He didn’t hear the sound of footsteps.
He thought he heard something else in the total silence, a faint tapping of metal on metal. Beside him was an open door. He moved toward it and saw it was a bedroom. He moved in farther to the next door, which was a bathroom. He could hear the tapping clearly now, and, after a moment, he knew exactly what it was.
Remi 4th floor.
.-. . --.. ....--.... ..-. .-.. --- --- .-.
Remi 4th floor.
.-. . --.. ....--.... ..-. .-.. --- --- .-.
She used the metal strut she had taken from the cabinet to rap on the pipe for what she imagined must be the thousandth time. Each night, when the house was silent and she was sure the others were asleep, she would begin signaling again. First, she would pick the lock on the bedroom door, leaving the separated fork tine in it so she could lock it by raking the pins aside on the tumbler and hiding the tine. She would open the door, listen carefully, and then make her way along the corridor to a window so she knew for sure it was night and all were asleep. Then she would go back and signal.
She always left the door closed but unlocked so she would be ready for Sam. It would be very difficult for him to find her, but she knew he would. He was a brilliant man, and he loved her as much as he loved breathing. He had once promised her that if they were ever separated this way, he would simply keep coming for her until he had her. Nothing would stop him while he was alive. She had no idea when he would arrive at this remote Russian manor house, but she knew he was on his way.
Most nights, she kept up the signaling on the pipes until she judged it must be around five a.m. and nearly light outside. Then she would look down the hall to confirm it was predawn, close and lock her door, and sleep. She had become nocturnal in the past week, sleeping during the long periods between meals except while she was exercising, bathing, or interrogating Sasha about the world outside.
And then he came. Remi was tapping on the pipe as usual when she became aware that something had changed. She had been in this small space so long that adding another human being changed everything—air, sounds, a new vibration on the floor as he walked in the door.
Remi sprang up instantly, hurried to Sam and threw her arms around him. She held him as tightly as she could for a full ten seconds, tears welling in her eyes. She recognized the familiar contour of his shoulders under the bulky jacket. Then she looked up at him and whispered, “What took you so long—enjoying being single?”
“No. You just forgot to tell me you were leaving.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Ready to get out of here?”
“Almost,” she whispered. She sat on the bed and put on her shoes. “We’ve got to go that way and down the back stairs to the second floor, which will get us past the family’s floor and the bodyguards. Then we use the main staircase to reach the first floor, so we miss the kitchen, where the night guards go for their breaks.”
“You know that?”
“I made a friend—a girl who works in the kitchen. How did you get into the house?”
“I saw a second-floor window that had been left opened. It turned out to be a hallway. I heard your signal, and from there I went up the back stairs.”
“Dumb luck. That was about the only way that was clear.” She stood. “I’m ready.” She opened the door and walked out, waited for Sam, and locked it behind them.
She led him down the spiraling stairs for two stories, then silently and carefully moved up the hallway to the broad main staircase. She stopped for a moment to listen for the two guards in their room snoring, then moved onto the stairs. The steps were carpeted, so their footsteps were muffled. They descended to the ground floor, where there was a large foyer with a marble floor with a round escutcheon mosaic at the center. As they stepped onto its surface, three men seemed to materialize from a shadowy doorway somewhere beside the stairs.
One man pulled back the charging lever on his Škorpion machine pistol, but the man beside him grasped his shoulder and said something in Russian that made him lower the weapon. Sam said to Remi, “They need us alive, to turn over the treasure.”
“Do you promise?”
The three rushed toward Sam and Remi, who separated and dodged them. Sam faked to the side and redirected the first man’s momentum into the staircase railing, then gave the second a glancing punch along the side of the head as he went by.
Remi backed up to the large fireplace that dominated the foyer. As the third man came toward her, she snatched up the poker. He took a tentative step toward her, but she didn’t budge. “You just came after me because I’m the only girl.”
He smiled.
“Bad choice.” Remi performed a fencing thrust with the fireplace poker, which extended it at least a foot farther than the man had anticipated and poked him hard in the stomach. As he bent over to grasp his stomach, Remi swung the poker overhand and hit him on the head. He straightened and charged for her, knowing that in close quarters he could overpower her. She swung as she stepped to the side, bashed the back of his head as he went by, and put him out, unmoving, on the floor.
She saw the other two had recovered and were beginning to rush Sam and so she thrust the poker between the ankles of the nearest man. As he tripped, she withdrew the poker and brought it across his head as he fell. The third man, the one who had the Škorpion machine pistol on a sling, started to raise it toward her, and Sam delivered a kick to the side of his knee. The sudden pain brought the man down, and Sam was on him to wrest the gun away.
The gun went off, firing an unaimed burst into the floor, the far wall, and the staircase. Then it was empty, and Sam delivered a punch to the face that bounced the man’s head off the floor. He took the gun and pulled the spare magazine out of the leather case attached to the sling, ejected the spent one and inserted the spare.
Remi was already halfway across the foyer to the dining room. They both could hear the thunderous sound of many booted feet coming down the stairs from the second and third floors.
Sam caught up with her, and they dashed through the huge formal dining room, with its thirty-foot table, and then ran into the kitchen. Sam whispered, “Do you know where we’re going?”
“We need to get out, but we can’t go outside yet or they’ll get a clear shot at us.”
“We’ll have to try to make a splash from here.” Sam bolted the door to the dining room, ran to the other side of the kitchen and bolted the door to the back stairway, then locked the door that led outside. They could hear running feet outside as men got into position.
Sam went to the big restaurant-sized gas stove and turned on the burners. There was no sound except the electric starters clicking repeatedly as they produced a spark. “They turned off the gas,” he said. “Electricity’s still on because they expect to catch us in the lights.”
Sam flung open the pantry door, turned on the light, and looked inside. There was a barrel about five feet deep and three feet in diameter. He took off the top. “Flour,” he said. He tilted it and rolled it to the middle of the floor.
“What are you doing?” asked Remi.
“I need two ounces of flour per cubic yard of air,” he said. “Help me.” He pushed over the flour barrel, lifted flour with both arms, and tossed it into the air. Remi did the same. He ran to the far side of the kitchen, where there was a big fan on a five-foot stand. He turned it on and aimed it at the big pile of spilled flour. In a couple of seconds, it was blowing it into the air, filling it with the fine white powder, turning the air in the kitchen into a cloud. “Get in the pantry,” he said, then picked two pie pans off the counter, knelt on the floor, and tossed panfuls of flour into the air as fast as he could.