After a three-minute drive from the Pointe Simon docks, two giant, beige Chevy Suburbans entered a quiet pocket of the city, sliding to a stop in a pitch-black cul-de-sac service alley beneath the American consulate, which occupied the lowest two levels of a nine-story contemporary glass hotel. The monolithic tower, bisected by a block of terraces lit sapphire-gray, reminded Charlie of a stainless steel refrigerator.
Two marines propelled him from the lead Suburban and toward the consulate’s service entrance. Foreboding filled him, so heavy that he strained to put one foot in front of the other. What were the odds, he thought, that the Cavalry would not drop by here tonight?
Before he could see if his father was in the second Suburban, he was prodded down a short flight of cement stairs. Punk rock, from a club in the hotel lobby overhead, shook the clammy air. The men whisked him into a back office hallway. Fluorescent tubes caused the white tile walls to shimmer a pale blue.
Halfway down Charlie spotted another marine, whose uniform said he was Private First Class Arnold. The man’s baby face clashed with his 270-pound weight-room physique. He pushed open a wooden door, revealing an empty room suitable for a copier and some office supplies. “Mr. Clark, sir, you are being placed here for the time being for your own protection,” the marine said.
Two to one the exact words lawyers had fed him.
Charlie’s eyes fell on perhaps the smallest toilet seat in the world. Standing on spindly foldout legs, it fed a disposable plastic bag. Beside the toilet lay a ham sandwich in a vending machine’s triangular container.
Hefting his massive shoulders into an apologetic shrug, Arnold said, “I’ll get you a Coke if the guys outside have got the right change.” He pulled the door shut.
Charlie heard a jangle of keys, then the raspy slide of a bolt, possibly the only detainment measure other than Arnold himself. The window was covered with a cage of bars, but so were all the others along the lower two floors of the building. Probably just to keep the locals out.
Charlie supposed he could stab the windowpane using one of the plastic toilet legs, in which case fragments of glass would rain onto the sidewalk, snaring the attention of someone in the apartment buildings across the street. Maybe the residents would call the local cops, who in turn would call the consulate and then the marines would-what? Deny Charlie his Coca-Cola?
He leaned his full weight against the door. The wooden slab, although not thick, didn’t budge. Who exactly were the men who broke down doors, he wondered, and how did they do it? If he were to kick at this one, he suspected, he would break his foot. And still fail to budge the door.
The ceiling was an ordinary office-style ceiling, eight soundproof tiles suspended by a tic-tac-toe board of thin metal strips. At one side the strips tripled into a vent from which cool air trickled, suggesting that there was an air duct above. Charlie thought of Drummond’s tale of the prisoners who had escaped Alcatraz via the fan vent.
Standing directly beneath the vent, he could see the air shaft. It was about ten inches high and fifteen inches wide. Even if he could somehow gain access to it-springing from the windowsill or climbing from atop the spindly legged toilet, for instance-a freak-show-caliber act of contortion would be required to enter it, let alone crawl through it. If he were to crawl atop the ceiling grid, like they always do in the movies, the whole works would almost certainly collapse.
He had no better ideas. Not even any other ideas.
But his father might. Hearing the three sets of approaching footsteps in the hallway, Charlie’s hope rose.
On the other side of the door, Private First Class Arnold grunted, “Hey.” He received similar salutations from two other men.
As the new arrivals continued past the detention room, Charlie heard Drummond say: “I’m going to have to take my medicine before bedtime.”