The Cleaner

CHAPTER 19

It was a quarter after ten. Schandauer Strasse was quiet and dark. The only illumination came from a few security lamps attached to apartment buildings farther down the block. There were no streetlights.

Cars lined either side of the road, leaving no place to park, but Quinn and Nate didn’t need one. A taxi had dropped them off several blocks away, near the city administrative building on Karl Marx Strasse. They were dressed warmly, in dark clothes. On Quinn’s back was a black backpack. Heavy, but manageable.

“You want me to go over it again?” Quinn asked as they walked down the cobblestone sidewalk toward Schandauer Strasse.

Nate shook his head. “I keep out of sight, watch the street, let you know if there’s anything unusual. Right?”

“Not just unusual,” Quinn said. “Anything. Got it?”

“I got it.”

A couple of hours earlier it had begun to snow. Lightly at first, but it had increased steadily until it was falling at a rate of nearly an inch an hour. Quinn guessed by morning there probably would be over a foot on the ground.

At the corner of Schandauer Strasse, they paused to study the water plant. Like most of the rest of the buildings on the street, it was dark.

“There,” Quinn said, speaking in a low voice. “The Ford parked near the gate.”

The Volvo that had been there that afternoon was gone. In its place was a Ford sedan. Quinn could just make out the shape of a person sitting in the driver’s seat.

“I see him,” Nate said.

“Are you in yet?” Orlando’s voice sounded in Quinn’s ear.

“We’re at the end of the street,” Quinn said.

“Tell me what you see,” Orlando said.

Quinn scanned the street. “Schandauer Strasse. It’s cobbled. Just wide enough for cars to park on both sides of the street and still have two-way traffic. Quiet. The water plant is half a block away. To the right, there’s a three-story building. Looks like it’s used for offices. To the left a smaller building. Brick. There’s a Ford sedan with a guard in it parked where the other car had been this afternoon.”

“What about the water plant?”

“Just like I described it to you this afternoon. Only dark now.”

“Anything else?”

“Other than it’s cold and wet and snowing and I should still be on Maui?”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing,” Quinn said.

Quinn and Nate made their way carefully along the row of parked cars until they came to the back of the Ford. They waited a moment to be sure they hadn’t been noticed, then Quinn reached up and attached a small ball of a putty-like substance to the bottom corner of the rear passenger-side window. When activated by heat, it would work its way around the rubber weather strip lining the window and enter the interior of the car as an odorless gas. Within moments, whoever was inside would be knocked out for up to two hours.

Quinn waited a moment to be sure the putty was staying in place, then retrieved a small plastic packet from his coat. He carefully opened it and removed a thin, mesh fabric pad. He placed this directly over the compound on the window, careful to cover the putty completely, then took several steps back.

They watched as the ball began to reduce in size, the pad not only heating it but also directing the gas to go into the car instead of out onto the street. When it was done, Quinn looked at his watch and waited a full three minutes before nodding to Nate.

“He’s out,” Nate said, after he’d peeked into the front of the car. “That stuff’s cool.”

“Are you ready?” Quinn asked, all business.

Nate nodded.

Quinn put a hand on Nate’s back. “Remember—”

“To tell you everything,” Nate finished.

“Good man.” Quinn made a final scan of the street. All was quiet. “Okay, into position.”

Nate nodded, then moved across the street to a spot they had determined prior to arriving. Quinn checked the guard one last time. The man’s head was tilted back against the seat, his mouth half open. Quinn glanced down at the sentry’s chest to make sure the man was breathing. He was.

After giving Nate a quick wave, Quinn moved over to the fence. He quickly scanned the street and the water plant for signs of another sentry. There was no one.

After taking a deep breath, Quinn pulled himself over the fence and dropped down on the other side. He found himself on a short driveway that ran in front of the building and around to the south end, where the door was.

In the left-hand pocket of his jacket was the key Duke had given him and a small but powerful flashlight. Quinn removed the key but left the flashlight. For the moment there was enough residual light to see what he was doing. As he neared the door the silence that had enveloped the street was replaced by a muffled, low-level hum. It took him a second before he realized it was coming from inside the building.

He slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The lock was a little sticky, but it appeared to be old, so that wasn’t surprising. After he heard the latch click, he slowly pulled the door open. There was no light coming from inside. He took a deep breath, then stepped into the building and closed the door behind him.

He was instantly enveloped by total darkness. He remained motionless for several moments, listening. Other than the loud hum, there was no other noise. He shoved the key back in his pocket, pulled out the flashlight, and turned it on. A quick sweep of the beam revealed he was alone.

“Nate, how’s the street?” Quinn asked.

“Freezing,” Nate said, then added, “all quiet.”

“You should be used to the cold by now,” Orlando said.

“I seem to remember you not being too happy when you had to stand in front of the Dorint,” Nate said.

“I was just faking it,” she said. “Thought it might make you feel better.”

“Enough,” Quinn said. “In case anyone’s interested, I’m in.”

He aimed the light at the front of the building and began to make a more thorough investigation of his new surroundings. It didn’t take long to discover why it was so dark inside. Wooden baffles had been erected over the inside of the windows and were secured firmly to the walls. As an added precaution, thick cloth strips had been affixed to where each baffle met the wall, guaranteeing no light from outside could seep in.

To the side of the door was a steel reinforced panel. The panel was mounted on tracks and could easily slide in front of the entrance, effectively sealing off the room.

He uttered aloud, “What the hell do they need that for?”

“What’re you talking about?” Orlando asked.

He described the baffled windows and the security door to her. “Everything looks recently installed.”

He noticed there was a distinct odor in the room, too. Not offensive. In fact, quite the opposite. Clean, almost antiseptic. But not like a hospital. The antiseptic smell of a hospital was tinged with medicine and death. This smell was the clean of a room thoroughly disinfected, scrubbed from top to bottom and then wiped down with an abundance of ammonia.

“What do you think it means?” she asked after Quinn described the odor to her.

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me about the rest of the room.”

He pointed the flashlight toward the ceiling. “The room’s big all right. Just like Duke said. Cavernous. Maybe seventy feet to the ceiling.”

“What’s that noise?” Orlando asked.

Slowly, so he wouldn’t miss anything important, he swung the flashlight around to his right.

“What the hell?” he said.

“What did you find?”

“I’m not sure,” he told her. “Give me a few minutes.”

At first Quinn wasn’t sure what he was looking at. The object took up over half the length of the room, side to side, and almost reached the ceiling. It was a giant sphere, not unlike a hot-air balloon, except it seemed to be sitting on a black pedestal. From where Quinn stood near the front door, it looked like the sphere was made of a thick white fabric. Maybe canvas. The black pedestal, a wide ring around the bottom of the sphere, looked to be about seven feet high. Unlike the sphere, it appeared to be made of something solid — metal, wood, or hard plastic. He wouldn’t know for sure until he took a closer look. The whole thing made Quinn think of a giant golf ball sitting on a black tee.

He moved the flashlight across the object. A quarter of the way around to the left was a solid-looking scaffolding tower. Up one side of the tower ran a metal staircase. Quinn followed it with his light. It ended at a platform that was then connected to the sphere by a fifteen-foot-long canvas tunnel.

Interesting, Quinn thought.

As he played the flashlight over the tower again, he noticed something else. There was an elevator running up through the center of the structure.

Quinn’s next thought was that the whole thing was some sort of makeshift containment unit, perhaps for the transfer of hazardous materials. Or, unable to keep the image of the glass slide out of his mind, something biological.

He took a few steps into the room. Whatever was making the noise was coming from deeper in the room, toward the back. He moved farther into the room to get a better angle, then shone his light past the sphere in the direction of the noise.

It looked like an air pump. That made sense. Something had to keep the sphere from collapsing in on itself. He relaxed for a moment, relieved. The pump would be pushing air into the sphere, inflating it. The pressure needed to keep the sphere from collapsing had to be greater than the pressure outside, which would be an unsuitable arrangement when working with dangerous materials. To be effective that way, the pressure in the sphere would have to be less than the surrounding room, preventing the unintentional release of anything nasty, and the structure itself would have to have something other than the air supporting it.

Without going inside, there was no telling its purpose. Perhaps it had nothing to do with the meeting. Then again, perhaps it did. Quinn would have to bug it, just in case.

“Well?” Orlando said.

“I’m still not sure,” Quinn told her.

“You’ve got to give me more than that.”

“Why don’t I just show you?” he said.

He pulled the backpack off his shoulders and set it on the ground. From inside he took out two objects. One was tiny and black, and the other was a rectangular box about the size of a candy bar. He put them both on the ground, then set the flashlight on top of the backpack, pointing it in front of him so he could use it as a work light. That done, he picked up the smaller object, turned it over and found a small number etched into the object’s base. “Camera 17,” he told Orlando.

“You’ll need to power up the signal booster,” she told him.

“Hold on.” He picked up the rectangular box, the booster, and flipped a tiny switch on its side. He felt a slight vibration as the booster came to life.

Five seconds later, Orlando said, “I’ve got signal.”

Quinn set the booster on the ground next to his backpack. “How much light do you need?”

“Is there any seeping into the room?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“Point your flashlight in the general direction of what you want to show me. That should be enough.”

The camera’s night vision was top of the line. Orlando would have settled for nothing less. Quinn turned his backpack so that the flashlight was pointing toward the sphere. He then stood up and began a sweep of the room with the camera.

“What the hell is that?” Orlando asked.

He was aiming the lens at the sphere. “I don’t know. There’s a staircase and an elevator over here.” He pointed the camera toward the scaffolding. “At the top it looks like that tunnel thing is some sort of entrance.”

“Duke didn’t tell you about this?”

“He said he hadn’t been in the building for several years. Probably doesn’t even know it’s here.”

“I’m not sure I like this,” Orlando said. “Maybe we should call it off. See if we can find a little more information first.”

Quinn paused a moment before answering. “No,” he said. “I’m here. We’ll do this now.”

He panned the camera over the sphere, giving Orlando a longer look.

“How many cameras did you give me?” Quinn asked.

“Twenty,” she said.

Five more than he’d asked for. “Okay. I think I can cover most of this room with just seven.” Quinn had worked it out in his mind ahead of time, but now he was going to have to make an adjustment. “I haven’t had a look at the rest of the place yet, but based on the blueprints, let’s say another eight for the back offices. That leaves five. One for outside the front door of the building. One for around back to cover the door there. One for directly across the street, and two for either end of the block. Shit, that’s all of them.” He thought for a moment. “Okay, maybe only seven for the rest of the building. That’ll give me one I can put inside the sphere.”

“You’re not going inside there,” Orlando said, surprised.

“If I get the feeling something’s wrong, I’ll just turn around and back out, okay?”

“That sounds like a great plan,” she replied, not hiding her displeasure.

“Glad you like it.”

It took him an hour to place the cameras throughout the building. Each was paired with a microphone that was really no more than a tiny disk attached to a piece of adhesive. As long as it was placed within ten feet of the camera, audio could also be picked up.

Seven cameras were still one shy for covering the two rooms per floor on the four floors in the back of the building, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He hid the booster in the attic, jamming it between the rafters where it would be hard to find. Duke had been right. The floor of the attic was definitely weak. More than once Quinn was worried that he might crash through.

When he was done, he headed back downstairs. There were six cameras left in his bag when he returned to the front room, five for outside the building and one for inside the sphere. Quinn walked over to the metal staircase that led up to the platform.

As he mounted it Orlando asked, “Do you think you can make a little more noise?” She was undoubtedly watching him from one of the cameras he’d placed around the large room earlier. The stairs, though sturdy, were loose in their fittings. No matter how quietly Quinn tried to move, they clanked with every step.

He came to the short platform at the top of the stairs. Ahead of him was the entrance to what he’d started to think of as the air lock. Now that he was close to it, he could see that the material surrounding the sphere and the tube wasn’t made from simple canvas. It was thicker and had an almost rubbery look to it.

The entrance to the tube was through a hard plastic doorway mounted in an equally sturdy frame. There didn’t appear to be any lock. Quinn turned the knob and opened the door. “I’m going into the tunnel,” he told Orlando.

Flashlight in hand, he stepped into the tube and shut the door behind him.

The inside was lined with a dark opaque material. As a test, he switched off his flashlight. He held his hand up in front of his face, but couldn’t see it.

He switched the flashlight back on and proceeded forward along a narrow metal platform. Glancing at the ceiling of the tube, he realized there was something there he hadn’t noticed before. Something colored the same matte black as that of the material that lined the tube. Not only was it on the ceiling, but it also covered the walls. Quinn took a step closer for a better look.

Thin rods, he realized. Made of some sort of sturdy yet flexible material that could bend with the shape of the structure. They formed a series of triangles that covered the whole inside of the tube. A geodesic skeleton of some sort?

Quinn continued moving forward. At the far end was another door similar to the one he had just passed through. As he approached it, a green light set into the door frame at eye level came on. The light was about the size of a half-dollar. He guessed it must have been triggered by a motion sensor.

“I’m going into the sphere itself now,” Quinn said. He reached for the handle and opened the door. There was a rush of air as he carefully stepped over the threshold. Once inside, he pushed the door closed behind him.

Almost immediately, his ears popped. It only took a moment for the meaning to register on him. His ears had popped. Not only that, but the rush of air when he entered, hadn’t it been moving in with him? He turned back to the door and opened it again. There was another rush of air, not as strong as before, but definitely moving into the sphere from the tube.

Quinn closed the door again, then played the light along the inside surface of the sphere. It was identical to that of the tube: black opaque material, and the same metal skeletal structure. It all added up to one thing. The air pressure in the sphere was lower than that outside.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered.

“What’s wrong?”

He told Orlando what he’d found.

“Okay, don’t panic,” she said.

“I’m not panicking.” He took a deep breath.

His original instinct had been correct. The place was a classic bio-secure zone. Quinn turned around, putting his back to the door and shining his light toward the center of the space. The platform he was standing on extended out another ten feet. At the other end of the platform was a door to a structure that looked like a large square box. It was what he had expected to find. A stand-alone containment room. Undoubtedly the pressure inside it was even lower than that in the sphere. It would be the place in which the real work was done.

Peeking over the edge of the platform, Quinn could see the whole thing was sitting on an elaborate metal scaffolding tower that plunged downward into the bowels of the sphere. He allowed himself to relax a little. If there were deadly bio-agents inside the containment room, he should still be safe where he was.

They had been looking for a link to the disruption, but what they’d found was a link to the deaths in Colorado. The bracelet. The slide and now this? It was too much to ignore. And though he didn’t have the proof yet, Quinn was sure it all tied into the disruption.

“Take some pictures of the setup here. I want to send them to Peter when I get back, okay?”

Orlando didn’t answer. Quinn tapped the receiver in his ear. “Orlando, did you hear me?”

Still nothing. “Nate, are you there?”

The only thing Quinn heard was his own breathing. There was a prickling sensation at the back of his neck. “Orlando?”

Silence.

“Orlando?”

No response.

Then he heard something. Not over his receiver, but from somewhere beyond the walls of the sphere. It was the clank of metal on metal.

Someone was coming up the scaffolding stairs.