Nick motioned Julia to absolute silence and went to work on the lock. It was indeed new, and it was as sturdy as the complicated locks on the main doors throughout the plant… incredibly sturdy for a lock to a simple storage cabinet.
At last, it gave. He eased the door open cautiously, and it opened as if freshly oiled. Rows of boxes still stood undisturbed upon the shelves. He pushed at them. Most of them were small and light. But they did not move.
“Why, they’re attached to the shelves!” Julia whispered. “Why in the world…?”
“I’m a bloody fool,” Nick muttered. “Should have realized it before. They’re stuck there so they won’t fall off, of course.”
The thin beam of his pencil flashlight probed the inside of the cabinet. The boxes contained junk parts, leftover material which could have very little use. Which meant, thought Nick, that the cabinet itself would need to be opened rarely, if at all. And yet it had been open earlier in the evening, when he had looked into it after being slugged.
Minutes passed as he made his probing search. He glanced at his watch. Eight minutes now since he had burned his way into the room. Well, that should give him time enough — if he could only find the thing.
And then he saw it. A small, sliding knob at the rear of the cabinet, half-hidden by the cardboard flap on an open box.
“Julia,” he whispered, “kill the lights in the room — there’s a switch at the door — and tell those guards out there to keep absolutely still and silent.”
Her eyebrows questioned him but she glided quietly away without a word. The lights went out, all but the thin beam from his flashlight, and from behind him he had heard the low murmur of her voice. Then silence. He felt rather than saw her come back to him in the darkness.
“It’s a door,” he murmured. “I’m going through; you’re staying here.”
He slid the knob aside. There was the slightest of clicks, and the shelves swung inward several inches. A dim and ghostly light shone through the opening, and he heard a thin sound like the echo of a distant voice. And now that the false back of the cabinet was open so that its edge was revealed, he could see the marks upon it — as though someone had levered it open, literally beaten it open, from the other side.
It was the one last answer that he needed. He knew for certain, now, how and why the power had gone out. But how ironic that he should have been trapped in an elevator cage!
He pushed the shelf-door back, stepped into the wide but shallow cabinet, and looked down into space.
There was a crude ladderway leading downward toward the glow of light, and at its foot there was a narrow passageway through which a brighter light spilled.
A smell of raw earth rose to meet his nostrils as he descended. But what interested him more than anything was the one stair that was splintered as if by a sudden heavy weight, and the fragment of dark cloth that clung to one of the splinters.
He reached bottom. There was no time now, nor any need, to inspect the scuff marks in the dirt at the foot of the ladder. Someone had lain there, and someone had risen, but that no longer mattered. Only the sounds filtering through the lighted passageway could matter to him now… two voices, murmuring, both of them deep and low.
Nick padded silently toward the brightness and stopped where the passage widened into a small crude room occupied by the two people who were murmuring to each other.
One was Comrade Valentina Sichikova of Russian Intelligence.
The other was J. Baldwin Parry, Chief of West Valley Security.
“That is good, Comrade, very good,” said Parry, and his voice was almost loving. “So you told them about the nine of us yes? Ah, so. That was only natural. But what about this Egyptian you say has certain dangerous information — what is his name, do you recall?”
Valentina’s wide features wobbled sideways in an expression of regret.
“Not now,” she said. “Not now. But wait — it will come to me. Let me think a moment. Patience, Comrade. Patience.”
For one blinding, awful moment Nick’s faith hit bottom. She, Valentina — his Valentina — had set this whole thing up to blab to one of the Nine….
And then Valentina moved and Parry moved with her, and Nick cursed himself for a doubting fool.
Her arms were tied behind her back and there was a heavy chain around her ankles. And Parry had a hypodermic needle in his hand.
“I have no time for patience, Comrade,” Parry said softly. “I cannot believe your elephant’s memory has failed you. We fight the same fight, your people and mine. We must co-operate. I must know who else suspects anything about us. I must know who there is to recognize us. I must know this man’s name and where he is. Time is short — I must know, I must know, I must know! Who is he?”
Valentina yawned prodigiously. Her eyes opened suddenly in a bright and beady stare. “No, you are no Comrade, and our fight is not the same as yours. There is a lake nearby, you Chinese devil. I say go jump in it!”
Her bound feet lashed out and struck solidly against Parry’s crouching form. He snarled like a dog as he stumbled back and struck out viciously with the thin whip in his left hand.
“Fat bitch! I have other methods — drugs to make you scream for mercy, but you will not even scream because that great gawping mouth of yours —”
“Silence, pig!” Valentina roared, and this time her huge body moved like a battering ram and slammed hard into Parry.
Neither of them saw Nick’s flying tackle — but Parry felt the steel-trap grip around his lower body as he staggered back, spitting with rage, from Valentina’s ramrod blow. He dropped on the crude earth floor like a sack of ballast.
“Ho, ho, ho! That was pretty, Nickska!” Valentina roared.
But Parry was not finished. He writhed like an outraged python in Nick’s clutch, and his digging, clawing hands were the hands of a man well-trained in the art of killing.
They rolled over together. Nick slammed an axe blade of a punch at Parry’s temple and found raw earth instead as Parry squirmed aside. Nick caught at the wrist that came at him and twisted savagely, hauling himself to his feet as he tightened the armlock until Party dangled over his shoulder like a drunk being hauled home after too much party. Then something snapped. Parry yelped shrilly and Nick let him drop, slicing a neck punch at him on his way down. He lay flat, like a man out for the count, and Nick’s foot arced through the air in what should have been the knockout chin kick.
But Parry was quick. You had to give him that. He lurched aside and one hand snaked deep into a pocket, and then there was a sharp bark of sound and a smell of burning cloth. Nick felt the bullet crease his thigh, and then he jumped — hard down on Parry’s fallen form, hard down on the one hand in the pocket. This time his kick went straight and true. Parry’s head snapped back and he gave a sort of belch, and then the man was silent.
Nick took a deep breath and turned to Valentina.
“Thank God,” he said, and knelt beside her with Hugo in his hand. “Let’s get these cords off you and onto him.”
“Thank you,” said Valentina simply. “I knew that you would come, my friend.”
Her clothes were torn and covered with dirt; her face and arms were bloody. But she smiled, and when her arms were free she put them lightly around him and kissed him on the cheek.
“It was my fault, Nick. The cage, I had to go up in it, because I felt something was bound to happen then and I was most curious to know what it would be. And I made much trouble for you. I am so sorry.”