desire to climb through and wait eight hours out in the cold.
But for somebody looking for an unlimited field of fire on a
sunny afternoon the trapdoor would be attractive. It was there
for changing the flag, he guessed. The lightning rod and the
weathervane might have been there since 1870, but the flag
hadn’t. It had added a lot of stars since 1870..
He put the knife back between his teeth and started up the
new ladder. It was a twelve-foot climb. The wood creaked and
gave under his weight. He made it halfway and stopped. His
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hands were on the side rails. His face was near the upper
rungs. They were ancient and dusty. Except for random
patches, where they were rubbed perfectly clean. There were
two ways to climb a ladder. Either you hold the side rails, or
you touch each rung with an overhand grip. He rehearsed in his
mind how the grip pattern would go. There would be contact,
left and right on alternate rungs. He arched his body outward
and looked down. Craned his neck and looked up. He could see
clean patches in that exact pattern, to the left and right on
alternate rungs. Somebody had climbed the ladder. Recently.
Maybe within a day or two. Maybe within an hour or two.
Maybe the churchwarden, hanging a laundered flag. Maybe
not.
He hung motionless. Chatter from the crowd drifted up to
him through the louvres. He was up above the bells. The maker
had soldered his initials on top of each of them where the iron
narrowed at the neck. AHB was written there three times over
in shaky lines of melted tin.
He eased upward. Placed his fingertips as before on the wood
above his head. But these were thick balks of timber, probably
faced with lead on the outside surface. They were as solid
as stone. A guy could be dancing a jig up above and he would
never feel it. He eased up two more.rungs. Hunched his
shoulders and stepped up another rung until he was crouched
at the top of the ladder with the trapdoor pressing down on his
back. He knew it would be heavy. It was probably as thick as
the roof itself and weatherproofed with lead. Some kind of a lip
arrangement on it to stop rain leaking through. He twisted
round to look at the hinges. They were iron. A little rusted.
Maybe a little stiff.
He took a long wet breath around the knife handle and
snapped his legs straight and exploded up through the trap. It
crashed back and he scrambled up and out onto the roof into
the blinding daylight. ‘rabbed the knife from his mouth and
rolled away. His face grazed the roof. It was lead, pitted and
dulled and greyed by more than a hundred and thirty winters.
He snapped upright and spun a full Circle on his knees.
There was nobody up there.
It was like a shallow lead-lined box, open to the sky at the top.
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The walls were about three feet high. The floor was raised in
the centre to anchor the flagpole and the weathervane post and
the lightning rod. Up close, they were huge. The lead was
applied in sheets, carefully beaten and soldered at the joints.
There were shaped funnels in the corners to drain away rainwater
and snow melt.
He crawled on his hands and knees to the edge. He didn’t
want to stand. He guessed the agents below were trained
to watch for random movement taking place in high vantage
points above them. He eased his head over the parapet.
Shivered in the frigid air. He saw Armstrong directly below,
seventy feet down. The new senator was standing next to him.
The six agents were surrounding them in a perfect circle. Then
he saw movement in the corner of his eye. A hundred yards
away across the field cops were running. They were gathering
at a point near the back corner of the enclosure. They were
glancing down at something and spinning away and hunching
into their radio microphones. He looked directly down again
and saw Froelich forcing her way out through the crowd.