The man shook his head. “Yes, your assistant already told me that.” Dr. Basu did not bother to correct the man about Faiz’s status. “And you had a man go down yesterday. It’s disruptive.”
Dr. Basu stared at him and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She’d found that this tactic made men, in particular, uncomfortable. Sure enough, he started to fidget, and Dr. Basu decided to speak. “Is not the whole point of your having an earthquake warning system so that you can be warned if there are earthquakes? And is it not correct that you would like this system to be working properly?”
“That’s correct, but—”
She cut him off again. She took great pleasure in doing that to men like this who didn’t want to take her seriously. “Then we need to get down to the sensor to see if we can understand why we are getting these readings.” Dr. Basu brushed past him. The man started to speak but then decided to just keep pace with her. She smiled to herself.
She was sweating too much to be comfortable, and they might not get an answer, but at least this area seemed to be where the activity was the highest. She pulled a tissue from her purse and wiped her forehead. She stopped in front of a large iron door.
“Open it,” she said.
The man hesitated. “I can open this one, but I don’t have the codes for the next two.”
“But you brought our associate down there yesterday.”
“Yes. Well, no, not exactly. Not me personally. I am the supervisor, after all. I sent one of the maintenance men down with your man.”
Faiz leaned against the wall. “What’s with all the doors?”
The man punched a series of numbers into the electronic keypad. “Water protection. For flooding. The doors are watertight, and they are set up in a series like on a boat or submarine. If one is breached, the next is designed to hold everything out. And if we know the water is coming, we can shut everything down, close the doors, and wait. Once the worst is over, we pump it out and are back up and running in just a few days. You only open one at a time, pass through, close it behind you, and then open the next. Like an air lock.”
He opened the door and ushered them through. He had to push hard to get the door to open. It was maintained well, but the tolerances had to be tight, Dr. Basu thought, if they were meant to hold out water. The man closed the door behind them. The bolts shot home with a loud clank. The light in the hallway was fluorescent and shaky. Dr. Basu pulled a bottle of water from her purse. She unscrewed the cap and was about to take a sip when the ground shook and she stumbled a little. She spilled water on her blouse.
“Did you . . . ?” Faiz let his voice trail off.
“Yes,” Dr. Basu said. “That was a big one.” Ahead of them was another door that looked exactly like the one behind them.
She looked at the Delhi Metro man. “Get the codes. We’re going to need to open all the doors.”
Stornoway, Isle of Lewis,
Outer Hebrides, Scotland
The plane was late. It was bad enough that Aonghas Càidh saw his girlfriend only every two weeks, but usually he was the one flying to her. Somehow it felt harder to have to wait for her plane from Edinburgh than it did to wait when his own plane was delayed.