Dark Zone

32

It sounded absurdly easy when Rubens outlined it — walk into the restroom, remove the old package, put in a new one.

But in real life, the fifty feet down the hall to the steps that led to the lavatory were treacherously long. Lia’s legs trembled beneath her long, African-style skirt. The muscles in her thighs and calves felt weak and her mouth horri bly dry.

There were soldiers posted along the walls and at the steps. Each man had a French-made FAMAS assault rifle, a smallish, odd-looking weapon nicknamed the bugle (or le clarion). Lia pulled the scarf a little farther down around her face but found herself staring at the weapons as she walked by, wondering if the guns were safed or ready to fire. It took all of her self-control to wrest her gaze back toward the carpet on the floor.

She started to slip on one of the steps as she descended. She grabbed the railing, just barely keeping herself from falling off the step.

I can do this, she told herself. I’m just going to the bathroom.

Two more soldiers stood outside the women’s room near the bottom of the steps. She put her hands on her scarf, hooking her thumbs beneath the fabric — it wasn’t an attempt to feign modesty or even hide her identity but rather to keep her hands from jerking wildly out of control.

I can do this. It’s the easiest thing in the world.

An attendant sat inside, an old woman in a black chador who jumped as Lia opened the door.

The old woman began speaking in Arabic. Lia didn’t wait for the translator to explain, nor did she attempt one of the rudimentary phrases she’d memorized on the plane. She walked directly to the last stall and closed the door.

“You were supposed to give her change,” said Sandy Chafetz, her runner. “You get towels.”

Lia didn’t answer. She had no intention of leaving the stall now that she was inside. She knelt next to the commode. There wasn’t enough room to see what she was doing, and so she slid her fingers along the floor until they found the bolt cover. Sure of where it was, she withdrew her hand and reached to the pocket of her dress, removing what looked like a small lipstick holder. She twisted the two halves, then pushed them together. The device was designed to provoke a response from the bug beneath the bolt cover. If she got a beep from the device, she would know that it had not been tampered with.

That, of course, was how it was supposed to work in theory. Lia thought that a really clever engineer could come up with a way to defeat it — the Desk Three people did that all the time. She felt herself leaning her head back as she reached in.

Nothing.

Run. Run now!

She put her hand back in the space behind the toilet, reaching farther.

Still nothing.

Get out!

Her hand trembled. A tiny beep sounded as she pulled it back.

“You’re good to proceed,” said Chafetz.

Lia took out a small medicine bottle with an eyedropper and placed it down on the floor, where she carefully unscrewed the top. The bottle held a strong solvent, which she needed to loosen the bolt cover. The scent was somewhere between rubber cement and ammonia; Lia coughed so hard she nearly lost the dropper.

The compact. She could use the mirror to see what she was doing.

As Lia reached into her pocket, her knee brushed against the bottle of solvent. Its contents spewed on the floor in front of the toilet.

Her hand trembled as she tried refilling the dropper from the nearly empty bottle, but she got no more than a half of the plastic tube filled. During the mission briefing they’d told her it would take at least four full eyedroppers of the solvent to remove the glue holding the bolt cover in place.

Lia applied what she could, trying to work the few drops around the base as if the dropper were a paintbrush. She got a little more from the floor, but most of the liquid had burned into the grouting around the mosaiclike floor tile. Panic surged in her chest, turning her esophagus to fire.

Almost too late she realized she was going to retch.

She got the top of the commode up just in time. Tears ran from her eyes; she gripped the porcelain lip with her hands, wanting to die.