Vertical Run (8 page)

Reluctantly, he urinated in the paper coffee cup, filling it to its brim.

A new voice came over Carlucci’s radio. “Robin, do you read me?”

Ransome answered. “Robin here.”

“This is Myna. Robin, there’s been a screw-up.”

“Seems to me there’s been more than one.” Ransome spoke without inflection.

“Affirmative. However, this one is a current issue. Homebase just took Thrush out of his body bag and started the procedures.”

“So?”

“Inventory reports his weapon is missing.”

“No surprise.”

“So’s his radio.”

There was a long moment of silence. Then Ransome muttered flatly, “I am exceptionally disappointed to hear that.”

“The subject has been listening to every word we’ve said.”

“I already worked that out, Myna. Attention all stations. All right, ladies, listen up. I have something to say. I want our Mr. Elliot to hear it too. Mr. Elliot, please acknowledge.”

Dave’s thumb twitched toward the transmit button. He didn’t push it.

Ransome took a deep breath and blew it out. “Mr. Elliot?” he said. “Mr. Elliot? Very well, have it your way. You have so far. The rest of you people, pay attention. I am going to outline the agenda for the rest of this little soiree.”

Ransome’s tone was smooth. He spoke slowly and clearly, with not the least trace of emotion. “I want double teams on the ground floor. I want extra watchers on the elevators and the stairs, and two reserve teams on call outside. Partridge, tell homebase to order those people up here ASAP. Mr. Elliot, I imagine that your current thinking calls for attempted exit during the lunch hour or at the end of the business day. You are, I presume, hoping that you won’t be noticed in the crowd. But you will be. Bank on it. You are
not
going to get out of this building. Now, as you have no doubt deduced, there is a security blanket on this operation, and we really don’t want to alarm the civilians. It will be business as usual for all the good folk and gentle people who work in these premises. Tonight, after everyone has cleared out, we’ll run a floor-by-floor sweep. Partridge, alert homebase that I will be requiring dogs. Dogs, Mr. Elliot. I am confident that they will get a good solid taste of your scent from the running gear you stow in your office. Unless I miss my bet, it will be over well before midnight.”

Ransome paused, waiting for a reaction. Dave gave him none. Instead he stood still, his head cocked slightly to the left, listening to an unwelcomely familiar vocabulary and vocal rhythm.

“No comment, Mr. Elliot? So be it. Let me say with all
candor, that I find your conduct this morning to be unseemly. However, in light of your service record, I suppose I should not be surprised. You know, I trust, the portion of the record to which I refer?”

Dave winced.

“Well, you surprised me. Perhaps you even surprised yourself. And speaking of surprises, you may rest assured that the booby trap you rigged in your office performed as per specification. It cost us ten minutes figuring that one out.”

Dave had gimmicked Bernie’s .25 automatic so that it would fire into the floor as soon as someone opened his office door. He had hoped Ransome’s people would think he was in there, making his last stand. Apparently they’d fallen for the trick.

“Another thing, Mr. Elliot. I have examined my weapon. What you did to it was a nice touch. Please accept my compliments. If I hadn’t found that paper clip you wedged in the muzzle of my pistol, the next time I fired a round I would have had a nasty surprise, wouldn’t I?”

If that’s all you found, you
still
may be in for a nasty surprise, you jerk!

“Now I’m thinking that there is more to the merry hell you are raising with this operation than your fine training—the best Uncle Sam could provide—can account for. What I’m thinking, Mr. Elliot, is that it’s in your blood. I think what you are doing just comes naturally. That makes you an especially dangerous man.”

Ransome paused again.

“But then, so am I.”

Dave felt his lips tighten. Ransome was turning up the heat. He had something in mind … something drawn, no doubt, from one of the standard psychological warfare textbooks.

“I’ve lost two of my troops so far, one to your marksmanship and one to an unfortunate accident outside your office. I do not wish to lose another. Therefore I am going to offer you a proposition. Given your present circumstances,
you would be well advised to accept it. I hope, therefore, you will do the reasonable thing, and cooperate.”

Reasonable? Good God! The man is trying to kill you, and he wants you to cooperate!

“The deal is as follows. I will contact my superiors and I will seek their approval to communicate certain facts to you. I hope to persuade them that, if you are made aware of these facts, an accommodation can be reached. It may be possible to negotiate a revision of my current orders. Those orders, as I am sure you have concluded, are of a sanctionary nature. To do that—for you and I to discuss the terms upon which the sanction can be canceled—we will have to speak. So, Mr. Elliot, please do as I tell you. It really is quite important. Momentarily we will be changing the encrypt codes on our radios. Once that is done, you will be unable to descramble our transmissions. Indeed, you will hear absolutely nothing. However, do not, I repeat, do not discard your radio. Keep it with you at all times, and keep it activated. Should my superiors determine that we might arrange an amiable conclusion to this affair, I will reset the encrypt codes so that you can hear me. Let me reiterate that. Keep your radio on. I will be using it to contact you again, relatively soon I hope.”

Ransome halted, then added, “I really would appreciate an acknowledgment, Mr. Elliot.”

Aw, go ahead, say something. Get it out of your system
.

Dave depressed the transmit button and spoke. “Ransome?”

“Yes, Mr. Elliot?”

“Up your poop with an ice cream scoop.”

Ransome inhaled sharply. “Mr. Elliot, I am coming to believe that you lack the maturity one expects of a man of your age and experience. Nonetheless, and despite your unseemly comment, I am going to give you a very important piece of information. It is something that I should not say, but I’m going to say it anyway. Right now you think your best case scenario is to get out of
this building and into the streets. Well, Mr. Elliot, I’m here to tell you that it is
not
your best case scenario. Indeed, it is your
worst
case scenario. If you get out of this building, what will happen is worse than any worst case scenario you ever dreamt of.”

The radio went dead, just as Ransome promised. Dave shrugged, slipped it into his shirt pocket, and reached for the phone. His call was answered on the first ring. “WNBC-TV, Channel Four Action News. Can I help you?”

When he first concocted his plan, Dave thought it would be best to speak with an accent—Irish or Arabic or vaguely Hispanic. But for the scheme to work, he would have to sound credibly foreign, and he wasn’t sure he could manage that. It was simpler to sound like an ordinary, conventional lunatic. New Yorkers were used to those.

Babbling as fast as his tongue would let him, Dave spewed out the words: “Can you help me? No. But I can help you. I can help everyone. And I will. I’ve had enough.
Enough!
Now I’m going to do something about it. Remember that movie. ‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.’ Well, I’m not going to take it anymore. That’s why they’re going to die!”

“Sir?”

“Rivers of blood. The opening of the seventh seal. Behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death. I am Death, and I am come today upon the unrighteous. Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more. I bring the fire of the Lord this morning, and it will purge evil from the earth!”

“Sir, I’m not following you.”

“Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and
maketh a lie. That’s what I’m saying, and I’m saying that today they are cast into the pit!”

“Yes. Yes sir, but can I …”

“The corner of Fiftieth Street and Park Avenue. Send a camera crew. Just tell them to point at the middle of the building. They’ll see it. This morning. Soon. Satan and his legions are going out of business. They are going out of business with a bang. Do you take my meaning? With a bang!”

“Sir? Sir? Are you still there?”

“I am. They won’t be! They’ll be in hell!”

“Please, can I ask you a question? Just one …”

“You cannot.” Dave hung up the phone. He allowed himself a satisfied grin.

Minutes later he heard the sounds of the evacuation. A moment after that someone rattled the handle of the telephone room door and called out, “Is there anyone in there? Hello? We’ve got a bomb threat. Everyone has to get out of the building.”

Success
, Dave’s acerbic guardian angel crowed.
The television people called the cops. The cops sent the bomb squad. Ransome couldn’t stop them from ordering an evacuation if he tried. And he wouldn’t dare try—because, if you were a guy like Ransome, you’d know that it just might be true. Some loony-toon actually could have planted a bomb in this building. The odds might be a hundred to one against it, but it could happen. And you’d know that if you
did
try to stop an evacuation and if a bomb
did
go off, then you, a.k.a. John Ransome, would be swimming in a sea of sorrow
.

The doorknob rattled again. “Anyone there?” Dave didn’t answer. He heard whoever it was walk away.

He forced himself to wait. After a little time, it became quieter outside. Only a few hurried footsteps passed. Then it was silent. He flicked the thumb latch and pushed
the door open. He stepped out, looking left and right. The corridor was empty. He peered down it, studying the distant wall of the intersecting hallway. He listened for the echo of heels on linoleum, looked for a shadow against the beige painted plaster.

It’s not really beige, is it? More of a light taupe or a café au lait, don’t you think?

Who gives a damn what color it is?

Just trying to be helpful
.

Satisfied that everyone had left, Dave sprinted up the hall, turned right, and ran past the cafeteria. Empty. Everyone gone. Next stop …

The accounting department’s bullpen. Five thousand square feet of commodity office space, separated into eight-by-eight cubicles by grey …

More of a dove color, I’d say
.

 … fabric dividers. Each cubicle contained a small desk, a chair, and a two-drawer file cabinet.

The dividers were low enough for Dave to peer over. He hurried by them, glancing into each cubicle as he passed. In an environment carefully designed to eliminate individuality, each cubicle’s occupant had injected a small personal touch. Here a Garfield doll crouched on a file cabinet; there a flower vase with fresh cut irises; elsewhere photographs of children or their crayon drawings tacked to the grey, or rather dove-colored dividers. One or two art posters; a photograph of a castle in Bavaria and another of a man and woman, their arms around each other, standing on a bright gold beach; an amateur oil painting; a model plane; a framed piece of pseudo-needlework reading,
EMPLOYEE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES
.

But nowhere could he find what he needed. And time was short.

There! Whoops. No. Not those. They’re a woman’s
.

Dave ground his teeth in frustration. It was such a simple thing. So simple, but so important. It should have been easy. There is always someone who …

Aha!

A pair of reading glasses. Wire-rim, a man’s style, about the right size. Somebody farsighted had set them down before evacuating the floor. Most bomb scares are false alarms. The owner of the glasses wouldn’t need them, wouldn’t want them while he walked down the stairs. He was sure he’d be back in a few minutes.

Dave put the glasses on. His world turned tiny, slanted the wrong way, and out of focus. He removed them and popped the lenses out. From a distance no one would notice—he hoped—that the frames were empty.

Bound to work. In a crowd, you’ll just be another big galoot with glasses. No tie, no jacket, tool belt, wearing glasses and a pair of slacks that could pass for khaki workpants—yeah, you’ll make it. None of them but Ransome has ever seen you face-to-face. Pal, you’re out of here!

And indeed he was—down the hall, around a corridor, through a fire door, into a stairwell and then …

Aw, hell
.

There were people on the stairs, and not merely stragglers. The occupants of the upper ten floors were still coming down. Hundreds of them. The stairs were packed.

First the good news: Some of those people might come from the forty-fifth floor. They could be your friends. Now the bad news, you thought Bernie and Harry were your friends.…

Dave glanced at faces. Nobody looked familiar. He stepped into the pack. Nervous, alert, he listened to every voice, trying to catch the tones of someone he might know or who might recognize him.

“… probably the Arabs, again.”

“No, I was in the office when the call came in. They think it’s the damned stupid Irish.”

“I’m Irish.”

“Oh. Well, then …”

Nope. He’d never heard those voices before.

Just ahead of him. Two women. “… so he says he thinks he can move me out of the word processing pool on a direct report to him. But, I don’t know, he’s so creepy.”

“Honey, he’s a lawyer. They’re
born
creepy!”

He knew neither of them.

Two more voices, even farther ahead. Dave strained to hear them. “… with a formal proposal letter in two weeks. Not that they’ll accept our proposal or pay our fees. That particular company never does.”

“Why? They know somebody has to do the job, don’t they?”

The speakers were two men, one younger, one older, both impeccably attired and expensively coiffed. Dave guessed they were management consultants from the firm of McKinley-Allan, headquartered on floors thirty-four to thirty-nine. Charging price tags of $3,000 and up for a day of professional time, McKinley-Allan was, if not the bluest of the blue chip consulting organizations, surely the most expensive.