The Zero Game

51

Standing in front of the empty elevator shaft, Janos narrowed his eyes at the steel cable, waiting for it to start churning. “Did you try to reach your guy down there?” he said into his cell phone.

“I’ve been trying since early this morning — no answer,” Sauls replied.

“Well, then don’t blame me when you don’t get what you want,” Janos said. “You should’ve called in security the moment I said they were headed this way.”

“I told you sixteen times: Those locals down there… they may be thrilled to be working again, but they don’t know the extent of all this — we start calling in armed guards, and we might as well shove the microscope straight up our own ass. Believe me, the longer they think it’s a research lab, the better off we’ll all be.”

“I hate to break it to you, but it is a research lab.”

“You know what I mean,” Sauls shot back.

“That still doesn’t mean you should just risk it all for-”

“Listen, don’t tell me how to run my own operation. I hired you because-”

“You hired me because two years ago, a scaly little Taiwanese silk dealer with an Andy Warhol dye job had a surprisingly finer eye for art than you anticipated. Remarkably, just as he rang the inspector to call you out on that poorly forged Pissarro — which you must admit had none of the lushness of the original — that tiny bug of a man suddenly disappeared. Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?” Janos asked.

“Truly,” Sauls replied, surprisingly calm. “And to be clear, the Pissarro was the original — it’s the museum that has the fake — not that you or Mr. Lin were ever sharp enough to consider that, am I right?”

Janos didn’t answer.

“Do your job,” Sauls demanded. “Understand? We clear on the mine now? Once the system’s in place and we can clean out all the local trash, this place’ll be locked down tighter than a flea’s dickhole. But in terms of calling in security, y’know what? I already did — and you’re it. Now fix the problem and stop with the damn lecturing. You found their car; you found their tags — it’s just a matter of waiting at the mine.”

Hearing the click in his ear, Janos turned back to the elevator shaft. He was tempted to call the cage and go down into the tunnels himself, but he also knew that if he did, and Harris and Viv got off on a different level, he’d just as easily miss them. For now, Sauls had it right. What goes down must come up. All he had to do was wait.