Cuba (37 page)

Other sensors were placed on the top, bottom,

left, and right sides of the safe door. These

sensors were held in place by magnets.

Wires led from the sensors and electric motor to a

small computer, which he now took from the bag and

turned on. There was one lead remaining, which

he connected to a twelve-volt battery which was also in

the bag.

As he waited for the computer to boot up he checked

all the leads one more tune. Everything okay.

Tommy”…Carmellini pursed his lips, as if he were

whistling.

This contraption was of his own design, and with it he could

open any of the older-style mechanical safes, if

he were given enough time. An electrical current

introduced into the door of the safe created a

measurable magnetic field. The rotation of the

tumblers inside the lock caused fluctuations in the

field, fluctuations that were displayed on the computer

screen. Finally, the computer measured the amount of

electric current necessary to turn the dial Of the

lock; an exquisitely sensitive measurement.

Using both these factors, the computer could determine

the combination that would open the safe.

Sitting cross-legged in front of the safe with the

com-

puter on his lap, Carmellini tugged the latex

gloves he was wearing tighter onto his hands, then

manually zeroed the dial of the lock. Now he started

the computer program.

The dial rotated slowly, silently,

driven by the electric motor clamped to the rod.

After a complete turn the dial stopped at 32.

The number appeared in the upper right-hand corner of the

screen. After a short pause, the dial turned to the

left, counterclockwise, as Carmellini grinned

happily.

In his mind’s eye he could visualize the lock

plates rotating, the tumblers moving….

The line on the screen that tracked the magnetic

field twitched unexpectedly. Carmellini

frowned. He hadn’t moved, the building was quiet

Another squiggle, so insignificant he almost

missed it And another.

Someone was coming. Someone was walking softly down the

hall; the sensors were picking up the shock waves of

their footfalls as the waves spread out through the

structure of the building.

Careful to make no noise at all, Tommy

Carmellini set the computer on the duffel bag,

stood up and moved over behind the door. As he did

he drew the Ruger from its holster under his shirt and

thumbed off the safety, then turned off the light

attached to his headband. Now he transferred the

pistol to his left hand. greater-than caret ith his

right he reached into a hip pocket and

extracted a sap, a flexible length of rubber with the

business end weighted with lead.

The darkness appeared total as his eyes adjusted.

Gradually a bit of glare from headlights faintly

illuminated the room.

Carmellini had good ears, and he couldn’t hear the

footfalls. He could hear the tiniest whine, however,

that the electric motor made as it turned the dial

of the lock, the distant honking of some vehicle

blocks away, and faintly, “ver so family, the

wail of a fire or police siren.

Tommy Carmellini stopped breathing, stopped

thinking,

stood absolutely frozen as the knob on the door

slowly turned, then the door began to open.

William Henry Chance walked slowly back and

forth hi front of less-than he glass doors that

marked the main entrance to the Ministry. The duty

officer and his two men were hi the basement, doing God

knows what to the emergency generator. Chance wondered

how long it had been since the generator had been

fueled, oiled, checked carefully, and started.

The second hand on his watch seemed frozen. He

checked his watch, walked, watched cars and trucks

pass by, adjusted his duty belt and

pistol, reset the cap on his head, strolled some

more, promised himself he wouldn’t look at the luminous

hands on his watch, finally peeked anyway. A

minute. One lousy minute had passed.

Someone was coming along the sidewalk… a uniformed

guard carrying an AK-47 at high port. He

must be stationed at one of the side or rear entrances.

The man stopped, slightly startled, when he saw

Chance’s figure standing in the door. Now he peered

closer. And saluted.

“Sir, I am looking for the’duty officer.”

“He is hi the basement, starting the emergency

generator. Is there someone else at your post?”

“Uh, yessir. I was coming around to check if”

“I think you should stay at your post. The emergency

power for the building will come on in a-few minutes, then

you can make your request of the duty officer.”

“Yeseamsir. But the last time we started that thing,

all the alarms went off, every one of them. The duty

officer always wanted the alarms off before he turned the

power back on.”

“I am sure he will take care of that. He knows the

system.”

“Yessir.”

“And when was the emergency generator last

used, anyway?”

“The big storm last year, sir. Eight or nine

months ago, I think.”

“Go back to your post.”

“Yes, sir.”…The man saluted, turned, and marched

down the sidewalk. Chance could hear his footsteps for

several seconds after he disappeared into the gloom.

The guy accepted him as Cuban, as had

Lieutenant G6mez and his men. If they only

knew the hundreds of hours of language classes

that Chance had endured to learn the accent, to get it

exactly right!

All in anticipation of a moment that might never come.

Yet the orders did arrive, and here he was,

walking around in the foyer of secret police

headquarters in Havana spouting Cuban Spanish

like Jose Marti.

He went to the guard’s station, used his flashlight

to examine the equipment there. The video monitors

were of course blank, everything off, but where was the

tape? If the power came on while he was there he

didn’t want to give Alejo Vargas a souvenir

videotape of the men who cracked his safe.

Ah, here was the videotape machine, hi this

cabinet. He pushed the eject button,

futilely. Without power the machine would not eject the

tape that it contained. He used the Rugerfour shots

into the heads of the machine.

The brass kicked out on the floor. He picked

them up, pocketed them.

More pacing. Each minute was an agony of waiting.

When the power was restored to the building, he had

expected the alarms to go off in Vargas’s office,

and to have to cover Carmellini as he made his exit.

By whatever means necessary, he intended to be the only

man at the main entrance when Carmellini emerged.

Yet if alarms were a normal occurrence, perhaps

violence would not be necessary.

The silenced Ruger rode inside his shirt under his

left armpit. The pistol was an assassin’s

weapon, shot a .22 Long Rifle hollow-point

bullet that would do minimal dam-

age unless

fired

into someone’s brain at point-blank range. Wounds

in the limbs or body would be painful but not immediately

incapacitating. The Ruger’s only virtue was the

silencer that dramatically muffled the report,

reduced it from an ear-splitting crack to a soft,

wet pop that was inaudible beyond a few feet.

He wondered how Carmellini was coming on getting the

safe open. Come

on, Tommy!

Footsteps from within the building.

Here came a flashlight.

“Ah, Colonel, the lieutenant sent me to tell

you that it will not be much longer, that the generator will s.tart

very soon.”

“Yes.”

“He is having difficulty, the mechanical

condition is not as it should be.”

“I understand. I have faith in your lieutenant.”

The man went back down the hallway in the

direction from whence he came.

More pacing.

At least three more minutes had passed when the

lieutenant came down the hallway. The occasional

flicker of passing headlights revealed him to be a

large, rotund man.

“I am sorry, Colonel, but we cannot make the

cursed thing run.”

“No harm done, if your guards stay alert. And

I can always come back tomorrow for my errand, I

suppose.”

“We will stay alert, sir. Our duty is

our trust.”

“You and your men have done what you can, have you not?”

“We could awaken Colonel Santana, I

suppose. Perhaps he knows more about the generator than

any of us.”

Chance tried to keep his voice under control.

“Colonel Santana is in the building, then?”

“Yes, sir. He came in about an hour ago.

He went to his apartment on the top floor. I

think he was investigating the

incident of the two saboteurs that were killed near a

highvoltage tower south of town.”

“A high-voltage tower? That sounds like attempted

sabotage.”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“I hadn’t heard of that incident.”

“Enemies of the regime, sir. Apparently some of

them were successful.”

“Santana is the very man I came to seeea”…Chance

declared. “Still, I did not expect to find him

asleep. I suggest you give the generator one last

mighty heroic effort, and if you are unsuccessful,

I shall awaken Colonel Santana.”

When the doorknob had turned as far as it would go, the

door to Alejo Vargas’s office slowly

opened. Tommy Carmellini was behind the door, still as

a statue hi the park, with a sap in his right hand and the

silenced Ruger in his left.

Now a flashlight beam shot out, swung quickly around

the room, hit the safe and swung away for an

instant, then returned to the door of the safe. The

apparatus Carmellini had attached to the door was quite

plain in the small beam, as was the tangle of wires

that ran to the computer.

Faster than he would have ever believed possible, the

door smashed Tommy Carmellini in the face. The

impact stunned him, threw him backward against the

wall.

The man sprang into the room, swung something that

smacked Carmellini in the skull and made him see

stars.

He was falling, off-balance, the other man coming for him

in a brutal, ferocious way, when he got the

Ruger more or less pointed and began pulling the

trigger as fast as he could. He could barely hear the

pops.

He fell to the floor and his assailant leaped on

him, began smashing him in the face with his fist,

repeatedly.

Swinging his right hand with all his might,

Carmellini hit the other man in the side of the head

with the sap. And again.

The man was slumping, falling to the left.

Carmellini gathered his strength and smashed the man

again, one more time, square in the head.

The man rolled onto the floor, slumped on his

back.

Carmellini sat up, his breath coming

in

ragged gasps. Part of his face was numb, he was

drooling from a mighty punch to the mouth.

He forced himself to his knees. He pocketed the

sap, reached for the flashlight, which was lying on the

floor still lit. He played the light on the face

of his assailant.

San tana.

Oooh, damn!

He checked the pistol. He had fired at least

five shots. A couple of the spent brass were lying

near Santana, who had a bloody place on his

chest, one on his neck. Hit twice, at least.

Maybe one of the little .22 bullets would kill

him.

Maybe not.

Tommy Carmellini found to his

surprise that he didn’t care one way or the

other.

He put the pistol back in its holster, wiped

his face with his shirt, and went back to the computer.

The combination was right there on the screen, all three

numbers. The dial wasn’t moving.

He tried tiie handle, put some weight on it.

It moved.

The safe was open!

He wiped his face on his sleeve, willed himself

track to his task. First he stowed the computer and

sensors and telescoping rod hi his duffel bag.

Then he opened the safe, examined its contents with

Santana’s flashlight, then turned on his headband

light.

Lots

of papers, files, two shelves of them. The top

shelf consisted of files on people, each file had a

person’s name. These were the files he had come to find.

He raked these into his duffel bag.

Ah, on the second shelf… files labeled with

numbers.

He looked inside one. Engineering drawings,

possibly of a warhead…

He dumped everything that looked interesting

into his duffel bag, including the stack of files

on Vargas’s desk.

Oh, here was a file about supplies from a Miami

laboratory supply house … one about

susceptibility studies, lethality, vaccines

… he stuffed all these in the bag, began checking

another handful.

The hell with it! He would take everything..the files