I crouched there motionless. I was stunned. My mind was blank. Everything had changed so fast, so unexpectedly. One moment, the thing was impossible, the next it was done. I was completely taken by surprise. I could not believe I was actually in the building.
For another second, I hunkered, breathless, gaping at the wall as the door to the outside slowly swung shut behind me. I was in a long, dark, unadorned corridor. There were men in workclothes on either side of me. An efficient-looking young woman in jeans and a sweatshirt was carrying a clipboard somewhere. A security guard in a blue uniform scanned the area, a two-way microphone clipped to his shoulder. There was also a plainclothes security man at the far end of the hall.
For that one instant, as I crouched near the door, in a daze, all of them were occupied. None of them was looking my way. Even in my startled state, I realized I must have no more than a fingersnap's worth of time before one of them noticed me and raised the alarm.
I had to get going. I had to get out of sight.
My eyes shifted quickly, this way, that. I saw another door, about two long steps to my left. I had no choice. Another moment, I'd be caught. I stood up and moved to the door. I pulled it open. I went in.
I was just in time. Even as I drew the door closed again, I heard a low, crackling voice come over the uniformed guard's two-way.
"One-oh-one, you report any intruders at that location?"
I heard the guard answer out in the corridor, probably not more than ten yards away from me, "No, everything's clear here."
The crackling radio voice: "Okay, we had a civilian sixty-three report."
"Nope, it's four, it's good."
"Roger."
I heard the guard's footsteps stroll past, just on the other side of the door from me. I heard him push the door open-the door to the courtyard outside. I guess he wanted to make sure no one was lurking out there. I stood where I was, breathing, listening, waiting-wondering if he might check behind this door next. I turned around to get a better look at where I was, where I might hide.
That's when I saw I was trapped.
I was in a closet, a long storage closet. There was all sorts of junk in here: brooms, mops, buckets, ladders, coats and jackets hanging from a rod, a shelf full of paper towels and toilet paper, another shelf with boxes of stationery and markers, and so on. A bright light shone down on all of it from the high ceiling. There were no shadows to sink into. There was only the one door, the one way in and out.
I held my breath. I leaned my ear toward the door. I listened over the beating of my heart. But the guard didn't try to come in. I heard his footsteps moving on now. I heard his voice speaking again farther along the corridor-speaking to another security guy.
"NYPD outside had a citizen's report of someone in the courtyard. You see anything?"
"Nah. I been right here. I'd've noticed anyone come in."
"Me, too."
I let out a long sigh of relief.
Then the closet doorknob turned and the door came open.
I was standing so close to it, trying so hard to hear through it, that it nearly smacked me in the side of the face. But it opened only a crack. Then it stopped-a centimeter from my jaw.
A woman's voice called from the corridor. "House is full, Maryanne. Five minutes to lights out."
"Okay." Maryanne's voice came from the other side of the door, inches from me. "I'll be right there. I just gotta get something."
The door came open the rest of the way. But by then, I was already gone. I'd taken two gigantic, panicked strides down the length of the closet and slipped behind the last coat hanging on the rods. It was a long trenchcoat. It covered me to my knees. Still, it wasn't much of a hiding place. You only had to look down to see me from my shins to my shoes. And if you came close enough, I'd be visible plain as day, my back pressed into the corner, my face rigid with fear.
Maryanne stepped into the closet and shut the door behind her. Peeking through the coat hangers, I could see her. She was a typical backstage worker, slovenly, rad, short-chopped black hair and crystal blue eyes in a pudgy, pixie face, an enormous shapeless sweatshirt and ridiculous striped tights ending around her calves. The kind of glamourless girl the glamour-puss actresses like to have around because they don't steal the limelight. Just a misfit from the Midwest, you know, calling her divorced mom back home every other day to tell her about her cool job in the big city.
I wondered if I was going to have to knock her out.
I couldn't think of what else to do if she saw me. I wasn't expert enough to deck her with a punch, but I could probably choke her until she lost consciousness. Find something to tie her up with. Gag her so I'd have time to get away.
I huddled behind the trench coat. I closed my eyes. I prayed she would leave the closet before I was forced to hurt her. Rashid flashed into my mind again. Rashid writhing and sobbing behind his gag after I'd shattered his second kneecap. Thank God he'd started talking then. Thank God he'd confessed the whole thing-the whole plan, years in the making, devised way back during the New Coliseum's construction, run with the help and permission of terror masters in the Middle East. Thank God he'd sobbed out the whole story before I had to start crushing his balls.
But it was enough. Enough to show me to myself. Enough, I said to God. Don't make me hurt the girl, too.
My fingers curled at my side as if they were already around her throat. Images flashed unbidden in my mind, images from long ago of other women in my harsh hands. I shook them away. My heart strained up to Heaven, praying I would not have to do this thing.
I opened my eyes, peeked through the hangers. Maryanne was coming forward, coming right toward me. Now she was two feet away, standing beside the coats dangling in front of the trench coat from the same wooden rod. She was so close, I could smell her perfume, tart and coy. I could see strands of her black hair shining in the closet light. Sweat coursed down my forehead, over my cheeks.
She began sorting through the coats. She was searching for one in particular. Each one she pushed aside brought her closer to me, closer and closer. I could hear her breathing. I could feel the heat of her skin.
Father in Heaven, I prayed. No more. No more.
Maryanne pushed another coat aside. Now she was only two coats away. Her perfume surrounded me. Looking through the hangers, I could see a crescent of the white skin of her cheek. Another moment, another coat, and we would be face to face and I would have to do it.
But now she paused. I felt a coat moving as she handled it. She must have stuck her hand into a pocket because I felt the cloth-softened shape of her fingers graze my hip. I heard a rattling noise. Pills in a bottle. She was taking a pill bottle out of a coat pocket.
At that moment, the lights went out. Startled, I stiffened, held my breath. Then they came on again-then went out and came on. It was a warning signal. The show was about to start.
Maryanne pulled back from the coats and for a moment her full profile was clear to me, inches from my nose. I could've leaned forward and kissed her cheek with no effort at all. But she was already turning away, turning to the door. I heard the pill bottle rattle again as she carried it off. I heard her footsteps. The scent of her perfume grew fainter around me.
Thank you, I thought.
The lights started blinking again. The closet door opened and shut. Maryanne was gone. I brought my palm to my face and swabbed away the sweat.
Thank you.
I stumbled out from behind the coats. I felt empty. Disgusted. Weak and dead. I stood in the center of the closet, hunched, panting, pouring sweat. I stared grimly at the base of the door. In the line of light at the bottom, I saw shadows passing: the workers, the guards out there. I was still trapped. In minutes, the theater would be ready, the show would begin. Rashid's gang of killers would be ready, too. I had to find them. I had to find Serena. I had to clear out the theater. And I couldn't even think of a way to get out of here.
Once more, the lights began to blink, and now there was a rhythmic chime as well, a warning tone, telling the audience to take their seats. I looked around me, searching for an idea. I noticed the shelves holding stationery and pens and the like-metal shelves with gray cardboard boxes on them. Some of the boxes had lids; some were open to show pads, envelopes, and forms of various types inside. I stepped over to them. I saw a smaller box with a blue fabric lanyard snaking out of it. I looked in and saw a tangle of lanyards attached to the sort of plastic envelopes you use for ID cards. Quickly, I untangled one lanyard from the rest, tugging until its plastic envelope came free of the others.
I glanced down at the line of light beneath the door. The shadows had stopped moving there. The people, I guess, had taken their places. The show was about to begin.
I grabbed a piece of paper off one of the pads. Tore off a square. The light in the high ceiling above me dimmed and dimmed and went out. Darkness settled over me. Feeling my way, I worked the blank square of paper into the plastic envelope. I pulled the lanyard over my neck. In the dark, maybe it would pass for an ID card.
I could see nothing now but the light at the bottom of the door. It had changed from a bright line to a smoky red glow. That would be the glow of the sign above the emergency exit, I figured. Aside from that, it must be dark now in the corridor, too. If I had any chance of getting out of here unseen, this was it. Empty as I was, weary as I was, weak as I was, it was time to move.
I took a breath. I went to the closet door. For a second, I thought about cracking it open, peeking out to see if the way was clear. But I decided that now, in the dark, it was best to act boldly, as if I belonged here. So, with tension like a fist in my throat, I pulled the door open quickly and stepped out into the hall.
I entered the dim red glow of the exit sign. At the edge of the glow, I could see other figures: those workers and guards. I could sense more people farther off along the hall as well. I could feel them there, standing still and quiet as the show began in the auditorium.
Music started. Brass and strings, slow, solemn, and yet somehow triumphant: the grand opening theme of the first Real 3-D movie ever, The End of Civilization as We Know It. The music was muffled by the corridor walls, but still loud. It still surrounded me. As I started striding along the corridor, my footsteps fell naturally into sync with the majestic beat of the sound track.
Soon I could make out the plainclothes security man posted at the far corner. He stood with his hands behind his back, scanning the shadows. As I came near him, the gleam of his eyes, the outline of his features, the coiled wire running up his jaw to his ear, all became visible in the red light. I offered him a quick businesslike smile. A wave of the hand to distract him from the blank ID card around my neck. He smiled back indulgently. I went past him, and continued around the corner.
There was more red light in the next hall, a sign about halfway down pointing back to the exit behind me, and a bare red bulb at the far end. The bulb illuminated a heavy metal door with a push-bar across it. Yet another guard was posted here, standing to one side of the door, a great black shape limned by the misty red light. Judging by his position, he was distracted at the moment. He was leaning off to one side, trying to catch a glimpse of the show. The music lifted and swelled as I went toward him.
As I came near, the guard noticed me. He straightened, looked me over. I smiled again, pointed at the metal door, and held up the bogus ID tag around my neck as if to let him read it. I covered it with my thumb, but it didn't really matter. He barely glanced at it. He went back to trying to see the movie.
I approached the door. I could make out a word stenciled onto it: STAIRS. That's what I wanted. Rashid had told me the blast would be most powerful in the cellar. He told me he thought Jamal would leave Serena there. Because he loved her and wanted to impress her, because he wanted her to witness his great achievement and to be a part of it.
I pushed the door open carefully to keep the noise to a minimum. At that moment, there was a loud gasp of delight from the theater. I hesitated-but it was just the audience-some three thousand people getting their first look at Real 3-D technology. There was an outbreak of applause.
I went into the stairwell. The applause faded behind me.
At first, there was dim white light in here. A small square fluorescent lamp was fastened to the wall just above my head. It spread a pale glow over the falling and rising flights of gray steps. I was glad it was there. It helped me find my way to the downward flight, helped me get a grip on the banister. But as I descended into the theater's cellar, the light grew fainter. The music grew fainter, too. I heard another burst of applause and a burst of laughter, but they sounded very far away.
Then, when I reached the cellar door and pushed through, I stepped into what seemed at first impenetrable blackness. I knew at once that this was strange; wrong. There should have been some light, some small light somewhere. But when the door slipped from my hand and clacked shut on the stairs behind me, I could see nothing, absolutely nothing out in front. There was silence, too. The air felt deep and thick with it, like a cushion pressing in on me.
I stood where I was, staring uselessly, afraid to move away from the exit, afraid to remain there and do nothing. That dark, that silence-they were so dense, so present, so palpable that, for the first time, I began to believe I was going to die here. For the first time, that possibility became real to me. With the dark so deep, so vast, with the silence so eerie and oppressive, I could not see how I would be able to do what I needed to do here; how I would ever find Serena, how I would locate the detonators and disable them. Even with Rashid's frantically precise directions, his complete knowledge about how and where the explosives were planted, it seemed an impossible task. I had a sure sense that time was running out, that it may have run out already. The show had already started. There was no more reason for them to wait. There was just me and the dark and the silence and the coming explosion.
So I began to believe I was going to die. At that point, the thought came almost as a relief. I was so sick of myself, so sick of the things I'd done that night. Sick at what I'd done to Rashid. Sick that I had crouched in that closet as if I were some kind of predatory monster, ready and willing to strangle that poor girl, Maryanne. How was I supposed to go home after that? Make love to my wife, play with my children? How was I supposed to go to church again and shake the hands of my neighbors there and wish them God's peace?
To be honest, if it had just been me, I think I would've sat down right then, right there, invisible in the darkness. I think I would've just laid my forehead on my knees and waited to be blown away.
But of course it wasn't just me. It never was. Serena was out in that blackness somewhere. And the people upstairs-all those thousands of faces, flickering in the movie-light-and the faces waiting on the street outside-and the faces all over the city and on the TV, too-the faces in the wars all around the world which somehow were one war and which somehow, insanely, I'd become a part of.
So I took a step forward, a slow, tentative step into that almost-visible dark. I began edging forward bit by bit, staring, listening. Unable to see-blind here-blind completely-I became aware of sounds first. It was not as silent in the cellar as I'd originally thought. There were still some muffled noises from the theater above. Voices-music-dim-impossible to make out. And there were other sounds, too: a steady hum of machinery, an electric buzz, a soft click or two, the hollow whisper that a furnace makes. My foot touched a wall, but when I reached out my hand to the right, I felt a space beside it, an opening, maybe, into another room, another hall. I couldn't tell. I went through. I went slowly on, feeling my way. I could sense death near me, like a figure walking beside me in the dark.
Soon I became aware of something else. A smell. It was faint but definite. Sour, stinging, organic. It was the smell of sweat and urine, the smell of fear: a human smell. I tried to follow it.
The scent grew thicker, harsher, step by step. My heart beat harder. I paused to sniff the air, to test it, trying to figure out the way to the source. Then I started moving again, reaching out with my hands to feel the way.
I don't know how long I went on like that. I remember I banged my shin at one point. At another point, I stumbled over something hard and staggered into nothingness a few terrifying steps before I regained my balance. Mostly, though, I just moved, slowly, blindly, my hands out in front of me, until the progression became dreamlike, until it seemed it would simply continue and continue and never end.
Then at last-at last, I began to see. Not much at first. Small lights here and there, lights I guess the killers couldn't disable. There was a green indicator on a machine of some sort and a red indicator not far from it. And there was another of those soft white fluorescents glowing somewhere around a corner out of sight. My eyes fed on these and began to pick out shapes. Large, looming structures all around me. There was nothing I could make sense of. The trace of grillework here, a clawing metallic arm arching overhead, a large clockwork of some sort with pendulums and pistons moving quietly but powerfully. I felt I had stepped into the heart of some great and terrible machine.
I stopped moving. I peered around me, disheartened, bewildered. Where the hell was I? What was I supposed to do now? How would I ever find the detonator in this dark? How would I ever find Serena?
The smell was dense here, dense as dense. My nostrils stung with it. My eyes teared. And the noises: guttural hums, periodic soughs, steady whirs of movement-they were louder, closer. I felt as if black mills and engines were hovering over me in the darkness, hovering almost hungrily, like living creatures, ravenous beasts. For a moment or two, in my tension and confusion, the sounds of them, their huge presence, that smell-it all nearly overwhelmed my senses.
And so, for a moment or two, I didn't hear those other, softer sounds nearby: the sound of something moving on the floor, the sound of a soft, struggling, breathless human voice.
Then I did hear it. I turned quickly, searching for it. I stepped blindly toward it. My foot touched something heavy and soft. I dropped to my knees, reaching out with my hands. I felt her. Yes, and I could see her now, too. I could make out the dim shadow of her. Struggling, tied. I put my hands on her arm.
"Serena!" I said, my voice breaking. "Serena. It's me. It's Jason."
She struggled harder, went on trying to speak even more urgently than before. I felt my way to her shoulder, to her face. I felt for the gag across her mouth. It was the same sort of duct-tape gag I'd used on Rashid. My heart was wild as I tried to get a purchase on it. I was wild with surprise and joy-and surging terror, too, because she was alive-which meant there was a chance I might save her-which meant there was a chance I might fail to save her, a chance she'd die under my hands.
My fingers found the edge of the duct tape. I worked it off her. I felt for the rag in her mouth. She was already trying to spit it out. I got the tip of it, worked it between her lips and pulled it free.
Serena gasped and coughed. She gulped air. I held her close to me, my eyes swimming. I felt her press her face against my neck. Then she pulled back. She looked up at me. I saw her eyes gleaming out of the dark.
"I knew it, I knew it, I knew it," she whispered fiercely. "I knew you'd come for me."