12:30 AM
TONI was driving at ten miles an hour, leaning forward over the steering wheel to peer into the blinding snowfall, trying to see the road. Her headlights did nothing but illuminate a cloud of big, soft snowflakes that seemed to fill the universe. She had been staring so long that her eyelids hurt, as if she had got soap in her eyes.
Her mobile became a hands-free car phone when slotted into a cradle on the dashboard of the Porsche. She had dialed the Kremlin, and now she listened as it rang out unanswered.
"I don't think anyone's there," Mother said.
The repairmen must have downed the entire system, Toni thought. Were the alarms working? What if something serious went wrong while the lines were down? Feeling troubled and frustrated, she touched a button to end the call.
"Where are we?" Mother asked.
"Good question." Toni was familiar with this road but she could hardly see it. She seemed to have been driving forever. She glanced to the side from time to time, looking for landmarks. She thought she recognized a stone cottage with a distinctive wrought-iron gate. It was only a couple of miles from the Kremlin, she recalled. That cheered her up. "Well be there in fifteen minutes, Mother," she said.
She looked in the rearview mirror and saw the headlights that had been with her since Inverburn: the pest Carl Osborne in his Jaguar, doggedly following her at the same sluggard pace. On another day she would have enjoyed losing him.
Was she wasting her time? Nothing would please her more than to reach the Kremlin and find everything calm: the phones repaired, the alarms working, the guards bored and sleepy. Then she could go home and go to bed and think about seeing Stanley tomorrow.
At least she would enjoy the look on Carl Osborne's face when he realized he had driven for hours in the snow, at Christmas, in the middle of the night, to cover the story of a telephone fault.
She seemed to be on a straight stretch, and she chanced speeding up. But it was not straight for long, and almost immediately she came to a right-hand bend. She could not use the brakes, for fear of skidding, so she changed down a gear to slow the car, then held her foot steady on the throttle as she turned. The tail of the Porsche wanted to break free, she could feel it, but the wide rear tires held their grip.
Headlights appeared coming toward her, and for a welcome change she could make out a hundred yards of road between the two cars. There was not much to see: snow eight or nine inches thick on the ground, a drystone wall on her left, a white hill on her right.
The oncoming car was traveling quite fast, she noted nervously.
She recalled this stretch of road. It was a long, wide bend that turned through ninety degrees around the foot of the hill. She held her line through the curve.
But the other car did not.
She saw it drift across the carriageway to the crown of the road, and she thought, Fool, you braked into the turn, and your back slipped away.
In the next instant, she realized with horror that the car was heading straight for her.
It crossed the middle of the road and came at her broadside. It was a hot hatch with four men in it. They were laughing and, in the split second for which she could see them, she divined that they were young merrymakers too drunk to realize the danger they were in. "Look out!" she screamed uselessly.
The front of the Porsche was about to smash into the side of the skidding hatchback. Toni acted reflexively. Without thinking about it, she jerked her steering wheel to the left. The nose of her car turned. Almost simultaneously, she pushed down the accelerator pedal. The car leaped forward and skidded. For an instant the hatchback was alongside her, inches away.
The Porsche was angled left and sliding forward. Toni swung the wheel right to correct the skid, and applied a featherlight touch to the throttle. The car straightened up and the tires gripped.
She thought the hatchback would hit her rear wing; then she thought it would miss by a hair; then there was a clang, loud but superficial-sounding, and she realized her bumper had been hit.
It was not much of a blow, but it destabilized the Porsche, and the rear swung left, out of control again. Toni desperately tugged the steering wheel to the left, turning into the skid; but, before her corrective action could take effect, the car hit the drystone wall at the side of the road. There was a terrific bang and the sound of breaking glass; then the car came to a stop.
Toni looked worriedly at her mother. She was staring ahead, mouth open, bewildered—but unharmed. Toni felt a moment of relief—then she thought of Osborne.
She looked fearfully in the rearview mirror, thinking the hatchback must smash into Osborne's Jaguar. She could see the red rear lights of the hatch and the white headlights of the Jag. The hatchback fishtailed; the [ag swung hard over to the side of the road; the hatchback straightened up and went by.
The Jaguar came to a stop, and the car full of drunk boys went on into the night. They were probably still laughing.
Mother said in a shaky voice, "I heard a bang—did that car hit us?"
"Yes," Toni said. "We had a lucky escape."
"I think you should drive more carefully," said Mother.
12:35 AM
KIT was fighting down panic. His brilliant plan had collapsed in ruins. Now there was no way the robbery would go undetected until the staff returned to work after the holiday. At most, it might remain a secret until six o'clock this morning, when the next shift of security guards arrived. But if Toni Gallo were still on her way here, the time left was even shorter.
If his plan had worked, there would have been no violence. Even now, he thought with helpless frustration, it had not been strictly necessary. The guard Susan could have been captured and tied up without injury. Unfortunately, Daisy could not resist an opportunity for brutality. Kit hoped desperately that the other guards could be rounded up without further nauseating scenes of bloodshed.
Now, as they ran to the control room, both Nigel and Daisy drew guns.
Kit was horrified. "We agreed no weapons!" he protested.
"Good thing we ignored you," Nigel replied.
They came to the door. Kit stared aghast at the guns. They were small automatic pistols with fat grips. "This makes it armed robbery, you realize that."
"Only if we're caught." Nigel turned the handle and kicked the door open.
Daisy burst into the room, yelling at the top of her voice: "On the floor! Now! Both of you!"
There was only a moments hesitation, while the two security guards went from shock and bewilderment to fear; then they threw themselves down.
Kit felt powerless. He had intended to enter the room first and say, Please stay calm and do as you're told, then you won't get hurt. But he had lost control. There was nothing he could do now but string along and try to make sure nothing else went wrong.
Elton appeared in the doorway of the equipment room. He took in the scene in an instant.
Daisy screamed at the guards: "Face down, h?nds behind your backs, eyes closed! Quick, quick, or I'll shoot you in the balls!"
They did as she said but, even so, she kicked Don in the face with a heavy boot. He cried out and flinched away, but remained prone.
Kit placed himself in front of Daisy. "Enough!" he shouted.
Elton shook his head in amazement. "She's loony fucking tunes."
The gleeful malevolence on Daisy's face frightened Kit, but he forced himself to stare at her. He had too much at stake to let her ruin every-thing. "Listen to me!" he shouted. "You're not in the lab yet, and you won't ever get there at this rate. If you want to be empty-handed when we meet the client at ten, just carry on the way you are." She turned away from his pointing finger, but he went after her. "No more brutality!"
Nigel backed him. "Ease up, Daisy," he said. "Do as he says. See if you can tie these two up without kicking their heads in."
Kit said, "We'll put them in the same place as the girl."
Daisy tied their h?nds with electrical cable; then she and Nigel herded them out at gunpoint. Elton stayed behind, watching the monitors, keeping an eye on Steve in reception. Kit followed the prisoners to BSL4 and opened the door. They put Don and Stu on the floor next to Susan and tied their feet. Don was bleeding from a nasty cut on his forehead. Susan scemed conscious but groggy.
"One left," said Kit as they stepped outside. "Steve, in the Great Hall. And no unnecessary violence!"
Daisy gave a grunt of disgust.
Nigel said, "Kit, try not to say any more in front of the guards about the client and our ten o'clock rendezvous. If you tell them too much, we may have to kill them."
Kit realized, aghast, what he had done. He felt like a fool.
His phone rang.
"That might be Toni," he said. "Let me check." He ran back to the equipment room. His laptop screen said, "Toni calling Kremlin." He transferred the call to the phone on the desk at reception and listened in.
"Hi, Steve, this is Toni. Any news?"
"The repair crew are still here."
"Everything all right otherwise?"
With the phone to his ear, Kit stepped into the control room and stood behind Elton to watch Steve on the monitor. "Yeah, I think so. Susan Mackintosh should have finished her patrol by now, but maybe she went to the ladies' room."
Kit cursed.
Toni said anxiously, "How late is she?"
On the monitor, in black-and-white, Steve checked his wristwatch. "Five minutes."
"Give her another five minutes, then go and look for her."
"Okay. Where are you?"
"Not far away, but I've had an accident. A car full of drunks clipped the rear end of the Porsche."
Kit thought, I wish they'd killed you.
Steve said, "Are you okay?"
"Fine, but my car's damaged. Fortunately, another car was following me, and he's giving me a lift."
And who the hell was that? "Shit," Kit said aloud. "Her and some fellow."
"When will you be here?"
"Twenty minutes, maybe thirty."
Kit's knees went weak. He staggered and sat in one of the guards' chairs. Twenty minutes—thirty at the most! It took twenty minutes to get suited up for BSL4!
Toni said goodbyc and hung up the phone.
Kit ran across the control room and out into the corridor. "She'll be here in twenty or thirty minutes," he said. "And there's someone with her, I don't know who. We have to move fast."
They ran along the corridor. Daisy, going first, burst into the Great Hall and yelled: "On the floor—now!"
Kit and Nigel ran in after her and stopped abruptly. The room was empty. "Shit," said Kit.
Steve had been at the desk twenty seconds ago. He could not have gone far. Kit looked around the half-dark room, at the chairs for waiting visitors, the coffee table with science magazines, the rack of leaflets about Oxenford Medical's work, the display case with models of complex molecules. He stared up into the dimly lit skeleton of the hammer-beam roof, as if Steve might be hiding among the timber ribs.
Nigel and Daisy ran along radiating corridors, opening doors.
Kit's eye was caught by two stick figures, male and female, on a door: the toilets. He ran across the hall. There was a short corridor leading to separate men's and ladies' rooms. Kit went into the men's room.
It appeared empty. "Mr. Tremlett?" He pushed open all the cubicle doors. No one was there.