First he sat on the parapet facing the rear of the building. Then, holding on to the handrail, he stood up. Keeping his eyes fixed on each rung, Jack lowered himself down the short run of ladder. He moved slowly and deliberately until his foot hit up against the grate of the landing. Never once did he look down.
Maintaining one hand on the ladder, he leaned over and peered through the window. The space was indeed a loft as Jack had surmised, but he could see it was partially divided with six-foot-high partitions. Immediately in front of him was a living area with a bed to the right and a small kitchen built against the left wall. On a round table was the opened remains of Jack’s parcel. The doorstop and the crumpled newspaper were strewn about the floor.
What interested Jack more was what he could just see over the partition: it was the top of a stainless-steel appliance that did not look as if it belonged in an apartment. With the window in front of him invitingly open, Jack could not control his urge to climb into the apartment for a better look. Besides, he rationalized, he could exit into the stairwell rather than subject himself to climbing the fire-escape ladder again.
Although he continued to avoid looking down, it took Jack a moment to convince himself to let go of the ladder. By the time he had slithered into the apartment headfirst, he was perspiring heavily.
Jack quickly collected himself. Once inside with his feet planted on the floor, he had no compunction about peering back out the window and down at the street. He wanted to make sure the man in the ski parka wasn’t coming back, at least not for the moment.
Satisfied, Jack turned back to the apartment. He went from the combination kitchen-bedroom into a living room dominated by a storefront-sized window. There were two couches facing each other and a coffee table on a small hooked rug. The walls of the partitions were decorated with posters announcing international microbiological symposia. The magazines on the coffee table were all microbiological journals.
Jack was encouraged. Perhaps he had found Frazer Labs after all. But there was also something that disturbed him. A large, glass-fronted gun cabinet stood against the far partition. The man in the ski parka was not only interested in bacteria; he was also a gun enthusiast.
Moving quickly, Jack passed through the living room intent on locating the door to the stairwell. But as soon as he passed beyond the living room’s partition, he came to a stop. The entire rest of the large, multicolumned loft was occupied by a lab. The stainless-steel appliance he’d seen from the fire escape was similar to the walk-in incubator he’d seen in the General’s lab. In the far right-hand corner was a type III biosafety hood whose exhaust vented out the top of the sashed window.
Although Jack had suspected he’d find a private lab when he climbed through the window, the comprehensiveness of the one he’d discovered stunned him. He knew that such equipment was not cheap, and the combination living quarters/lab was unusual to say the least.
A generous commercial freezer caught Jack’s attention. Standing to the side were several large cylinders of compressed nitrogen. The freezer had been converted to using liquid nitrogen as its coolant, making it possible to take the interior temperature down into the minus-fifty-degree range.
Jack tried to open the freezer, but it was locked.
A muffled noise that resembled a bark caught Jack’s attention, and he looked up from the freezer. He heard it again. It came from the very back of the lab where there was a shed about twenty feet square. Jack walked closer to examine the odd structure. A vent duct exited from its rear and exhausted through the top of one of the rear windows.
Jack cracked the door. A feral odor drifted out as well as a few sharp barks. Opening the door farther, Jack saw the edges of metal cages. He flipped on a light. He saw a few dogs and cats, but for the most part the room was filled with rats and mice. The animals stared back at him blankly. A few dogs wagged their tails in hopeful anticipation.