Hijack. An alert. A combat warning. He blinked once and crushed down the fear and went to work. First thing he did was lie to her. Combat is about time and space and opposing forces. Like a huge four-dimensional diagram. First step is misinform the enemy. Let him think your diagram is a completely different shape. You assume all communications are penetrated, and then you use them to spread lies and deceit. You buy yourself an advantage.
He wasn’t in St Louis. Why should he be? Why fly himself all the way down there when there were
telephones in the world and he had already built a working relationship with Conrad? He called him from the Greenwich Avenue sidewalk and told him what he needed and Conrad called back just three minutes later because the file in question was right there in the A section nearest the harassed runner’s desk. He listened with the pedestrians swirling around him and Conrad read the file aloud and twelve minutes later he clicked the phone off with all the information he was ever going to need.
Then he hustled the Lincoln south on Seventh and dumped it in a garage a block north of the Twin Towers. He hurried down and crossed the plaza and he was already inside the south tower’s lobby when Jodie called. Just eighty-eight floors below her. He was talking to the security guy at the desk, which was the voice she heard in the background. His face went blank with panic and he clicked the phone off and took the express elevator to eighty-nine. He stepped out and breathed hard and forced himself to calm down. Stay calm and plan. His guess was eighty-nine would be laid out the same as eighty-eight. It was quiet and empty. Corridors ran around the elevator cores, narrow, lit by bulbs in the ceiling. There were doors opening into the individual office suites. They had rectangular wired-glass portholes set off-centre at a short person’s eye level. Each suite door had a metal plate listing the name of the occupant and a buzzer to press for entry. He found the fire stairs and ran down one level. The stairwell was utilitarian. No finesse in the decor. Just plain dusty concrete with metal handrails. Behind every fire door was an extinguisher. Above the extinguisher was a bright red cabinet with a red-painted axe clipped into place behind glass. On the wall next
to the cabinet was a giant stencil in red, marking the floor number.
He came out into the eighty-eighth-floor corridor. It was equally quiet. Identical narrow width, identical lighting, same layout, same doors. He ran the wrong way and came around to CCT last. It had a light oak door, with a brass plate next to it, and a brass pushbutton for the buzzer. He pulled the door, gently. It was locked tight. He stooped and looked in through the wired-glass porthole. He saw a reception area. Bright lights. Brass-and-oak decor. A counter to his right. Another door, straight ahead. That door was shut, and the reception area was deserted. He stood and stared straight through at the closed inner door and felt panic rising in his throat.
She was in there. She was in the inner office. He could feel it. She was in there, alone, a prisoner, and she needed him. She was in there and he should be in there with her. He should have gone with her. He stooped down and put his forehead against the cold glass and stared through at the office door. Then he heard Leon in his head, starting up with another of his golden rules. Don’t worry about why it went wrong. Just damn well put it right.
He stepped back and glanced left and right along the corridor. Put himself underneath the light nearest the door. Reached up and unscrewed the bulb until it went out. The hot glass burned his fingers. He winced and stepped back to the door and checked again, a yard from the porthole, well out in the corridor. The reception area was brightly lit and the corridor was now dark. He could see in, but nobody would see out. You can see from a dark place into a light place, but you can’t see from a light place into