Paranoia (47 page)

Until I reached Secure Facility C, where the security definitely got harsh.

“Got it,” Seth said, staring at the police scanner’s digital readout. “I just heard ‘Trion Security’ and something else Trion.”

“Okay,” I said. “Keep listening, and alert me if there’s anything I should know.”

“How long you gonna take, you think?”

I held my breath. “Could be ten minutes. Could be half an hour. Depends on how things go.”

“Be careful, Cas.”

I nodded.

“Wait, here you go.” He’d spotted a big yellow wheeled cleaning bucket in the corner, rolled it over to me. “Take this.”

“Good idea.” I looked at my old buddy for a moment, wanting to say something like “Wish me luck,” but then I decided that sounded too nervous and mushy. Instead, I gave him the thumbs-up, like I was cool about all this. “See you back here,” I said.

“Hey, don’t forget to turn your thingy on,” he said, pointing to my Talkabout.

I shook my head at my own forgetfulness and smiled.

Opening the door slowly, I looked out, saw no one coming, stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind me.

86

Fifty feet up ahead, a security camera was mounted high on the wall, next to the ceiling, its tiny red light winking.

Wyatt said I was a good actor, and now I’d really need to be. I had to look casual, a little bored, busy, and most of all not nervous. That’d take some acting.

Keep watching the Weather Channel or whatever the hell is on now,
I mentally willed whoever was in the command center.
Drink your coffee, eat your donuts. Talk basketball or football. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

My work boots squeaked softly as I walked down the carpeted hall, wheeling the cleaning bucket.

No one else around. That was a relief.

No
, I thought,
it’s actually better if there’re other people walking by. Takes the focus off of you.

Yeah, maybe. Take what you get. Just hope no one asks where I’m going.

I turned the corner into a large open cubicle-farm area. Except for a few emergency lights, it was dark.

Pushing the bucket through an aisle down the middle of the room, I could see even more security cameras. The signs in the cubicles, the weird unfunny posters, all indicated that engineers worked here. On a shelf above one of the cubicles was a Love Me Lucille doll, staring malevolently at me.

Just doin’ my job,
I reminded myself.

On the other side of this open area, I knew from the map, was a short corridor leading directly to the sealed-off half of the floor. A sign on the wall (
SECURE FACILITY C—ADMITTANCE ONLY TO CLEARED PERSONNEL
, and an arrow) confirmed it for me. I was almost there.

This was all going a lot more smoothly than I’d expected. Of course, there were motion detectors and cameras all around the entrance to the secure facility.

But if the call I’d made to Security the day before had worked, they’d have shut off the motion detectors.

Of course, I couldn’t be sure of that. I’d know in a few seconds, when I got closer.

The cameras would almost certainly be on, but I had a plan for that.

Suddenly a loud noise jolted me, a high-pitched trill from my Talkabout.

“Jesus,” I muttered, heart racing.

“Adam,” came Seth’s voice, flat and breathy.

I pressed the button on its side. “Yeah.”

“We got a problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Get back here.”

“Why?”

“Just get the fuck
back
here.”

Oh, shit.

I spun around, left the cleaning bucket, started to run until I remembered I was being watched. I forced myself to slow down to a stroll. What the hell could have happened? Did the ropes give us away? Did the ventilation grate drop? Or did someone open the door to the mechanical room, find Seth?

The walk back took forever. An office door swung open just ahead, and a middle-aged guy came out. He was wearing brown double-knit polyester slacks and a short-sleeved yellow shirt, and he looked like an old-line mechanical engineer. Getting an extra-early start on the day, or maybe he’d been up all night. The guy glanced at me, then looked down at the carpet without saying anything.

I was a cleaning guy. I was invisible.

A couple dozen surveillance cameras had captured my image, but I wasn’t going to attract anyone’s attention. I was a cleaning guy, a maintenance guy. I was supposed to be here. No one would look twice.

Finally I reached the mechanical room. I stopped in front of the door, listening for voices, prepared to run if I had to, if someone was in there with Seth, even though I didn’t want to leave him there. I could hear the faint squawk of the police scanner, that was all.

I pulled the door open. Seth was standing just on the other side of the door, the radio near his ear.

He looked panicked.

“We gotta get out of here,” he whispered.

“What’s—”

“The guy on the roof. On the seventh floor, I mean. The security guy who took us to the roof.”

“What about him?”

“Must have come back out to the roof. Curious, whatever. Looked down, didn’t see us. Saw the ropes and the harnesses, and no window cleaners, and he freaked. I don’t know, maybe he got scared something happened to us, who knows.”

“What?”

“
Listen!
”

There was squawking over the police scanner, a babble of voices. I heard a snatch: “Floor by floor, over!”

Then: “Bravo unit, come in.”

“Bravo, over.”

“Bravo, suspected illegal entry, D David wing. Looks like window cleaners—abandoned equipment on the roof, no sign of the workers. I want a floor-by-floor search of the whole building. This is a Code Two. Bravo, your men cover the first floor, over.”

“Roger that.”

I stared at Seth. “I think Code Two means urgent.”

“They’re searching the building,” Seth whispered, his voice barely audible over the roar of the machinery. “We have to get the fuck
out
of here.”

“How?” I hissed back. “We can’t drop the ropes, even if they’re still in place! And we sure as hell can’t get out through the mantrap on
this
floor!”

“What the hell are we going to
do?
”

I inhaled deeply, exhaled, tried to think clearly. I wanted a cigarette. “All right. Find a computer, any computer. Log on to the Trion Web site. Look for the company security procedures page, see where the emergency points of egress are. I’m talking freight elevators, fire stairs, whatever. Any way we can get out, even if we have to jump.”

“Me? So what are
you
going to do?”

“I’m going back out there.”

“What? You’re fucking
kidding
me. This building is crawling with security guards, you moron!”

“They don’t know where we are. All they know is we’re
somewhere
in this wing—and there’s seven floors.”

“Jesus, Adam!”

“I’ll never get this chance again,” I said, running toward the door. I waved my Motorola Talkabout at him. “Tell me when you find a way out. I’m going into Secure Facility C. I’m going to get what we came for.”

87

Don’t run.

I had to keep reminding myself. Stay calm. I walked down the hall, trying to look blasé when my head was about to explode. Don’t look at the cameras.

I was halfway to the big open cubicle area when my walkie-talkie bleeped at me, two quick tones.

“Yeah?”

“Listen, man. It’s asking me for an ID. The sign-on screen.”

“Oh, shit, right, of course.”

“Want me to sign on as you?”

“Oh
God
no. Use . . .” I whipped out the little spiral notebook. “Use CPierson.” I spelled it out for him as I kept walking.

“Password? Got a password?”

“MJ twenty-three,” I read off.

“MJ . . . ?”

“I assume it’s for Michael Jordan.”

“Oh, right. Twenty-three’s Jordan’s number. This guy some kind of amazing hoops player?”

Why was Seth blathering on? He must have been scared out of his mind.

“No,” I said, distracted, as I entered the cubicle area. I took off the yellow hard hat and the safety glasses, since I no longer needed them, stowed them under a desk as I passed by. “Just arrogant, like Jordan. They both think they’re the best. One of them’s right.”

“All right, I’m in,” he said. “The Security page, you said?”

“Company security procedures. See what you can find out about the loading dock, whether we can get back down there using the freight elevator. That might be our best escape route. I gotta go.”

“Hurry it up,” he said.

Straight ahead of me was a gray-painted steel door with a small, diamond-shaped window reinforced with wire mesh. A sign on the door said
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
.

I approached the door slowly, at an angle, and looked through the window. On the other side was a small, industrial-looking waiting room, a concrete floor. I counted two CCTV cameras mounted high on the wall near the ceiling, their red lights blinking. They were on. I could also see the little white pods in each corner of the room: the passive infrared motion detectors.

No LED lights on the motion detectors, though. I couldn’t be sure, but they seemed to be off. Maybe Security really had shut them down for a few hours.

In one hand I was holding a clipboard, trying to look official, like I was obeying printed instructions. With my other hand I tried the doorknob. It was locked. Mounted on the wall to the left of the door frame was a little gray proximity sensor, just like you saw all over the building. Would Alana’s badge open it? I took out my copy of her badge, waved it at the sensor, willing the red light to turn green.

And I heard a voice.

“Hey! You!”

I turned slowly. A Trion security guard was running toward me, another guard lagging behind him.

“Freeze!” the first man shouted.

Oh, shit. My heart leaped in my chest.

Caught.

Now what, Adam?

I stared at the guards, my expression changing from startled to arrogant. I took a breath. In a quiet voice, I said, “You find him yet?”

“Huh?” said the first guard, slowing to a stop.

“Your goddamned intruder!” I said, my voice louder. “The alarm went off five fucking minutes ago, and you guys are still running around like idiots, scratching your asses!”
You can do this
, I told myself.
This is what you do
.

“Sir?” the second guard said. They both were frozen in place, looking at me, bewildered.

“You morons have any idea where the point of entry was?” I was shouting at them like a drill sergeant, tearing them new assholes. “You think we could have made it any easier for you guys? For Christ’s sake, you do an exterior perimeter check, that’s the first thing you do. Page twenty-three of the goddamned manual! You do that, and you’d find a ventilation grille dislodged.”

“Ventilation grille?” said the first one.

“Are we going to have to spray-paint the trail in fucking Day-Glo colors? Should we have given you guys engraved invitations to a Bendix surprise security audit? We’ve run this drill in three area buildings in the past week, and you guys are the worst bunch of amateurs I’ve seen.” I took the clipboard and the attached pen and began writing. “Okay, I want names and I want badge numbers. You!” The two guards had begun to retreat, backing up slowly. “Get the fuck back here! You think Corporate Security’s all about the Krispy Kremes? Heads are going to roll, I promise you that, when we file our report.”

“McNamara,” the second guard said reluctantly.

“Valenti,” said the first.

I jotted down their names. “Badge numbers? Aw, Christ, look—one of you get this goddamned door open, and then both of you, get the hell out of here.”

The first one approached the card reader, waved his badge at it. There was a click and the light turned green.

I shook my head in disgust as I pulled the door open. The two guards turned and began loping back down the hall. I heard the first one say to the other sullenly, “I’m going to check with Dispatch right now. I don’t like this.”

My heart was hammering so loud it had to be audible. I’d bullshitted my way out of that, but I knew all I’d done was to buy a couple of minutes. The guards would radio in to their dispatch and find out the truth immediately—there was no “surprise security audit” going on. Then they’d be back with a vengeance.

I watched the motion detector, mounted high on the wall in this small lobby area, waiting to see whether a light would flash on, but it didn’t.

When the motion detectors were on, they triggered the cameras, shifted them in the direction of any moving object.

But the motion detectors were off. That meant the cameras were fixed, couldn’t move.

It’s funny, Meacham and his guy had trained me to beat security systems that were more sophisticated than this. Maybe Meacham was right—forget about the movies, in reality corporate security always tends to be sort of primitive.

Now I could enter the little lobby area without being seen by the cameras, which were pointed at the door that opened directly into Secure Facility C. I took a few tentative steps into the room, flattening my back against the wall. I sidled slowly over to one of the cameras from behind. I was in the camera’s blind spot, I knew. It couldn’t see me.

And then the Talkabout bleeped to life.

“Get the hell out!”
Seth’s voice screeched. “Everyone’s been ordered to the fifth floor, I just heard it!”

“I—I can’t, I’m almost there!” I shouted back.

“
Move it!
Jesus, get the hell out of there!”

“No—I can’t! Not yet!”

“Cassidy—”

“Seth, listen to me. You’ve got to get the hell out of here—stairs, freight elevator, whatever. Wait for me in the truck outside.”

“Cassidy—”

“Go!” I shouted, and I clicked off.

A blast of sound jolted me—a throaty mechanical
hoo-ah
blaring from an alarm horn somewhere very close.