The Presence

CHAPTER 32

Midnight.

Four more hours.

How was she going to make it?

I will make it, she told herself. I won’t let Michael die. Not here, not anywhere!

Inside the Plexiglas box, Michael seemed to be asleep, though Katharine suspected he wasn’t. Stephen Jameson was gazing down at her son with no more concern than if Michael had been suffering a minor case of the flu. “I think our patient is doing quite well, all things considered,” he said in the professionally comforting tones Katharine thought he must have learned in medical school.

Patient? How could he call Michael a patient! Victim was more like it! She felt like smashing her fist into his face, like locking him into the box in which Michael was trapped, and letting him breathe the deadly atmosphere that was suddenly the only thing that could keep her son alive.

Why wouldn’t he go home? What if he was planning to stay up with Michael all night? What would she do?

Though she managed to keep her own mask in place — a mask she’d carefully composed of equal parts concern for Michael and appreciation of the doctor’s efforts — her mind was racing. But then she heard the words she’d been waiting for.

“I think maybe I’ll see if I can catch some shut-eye,” Jameson told her, scanning the monitors that were keeping track of Michael’s vital signs one more time. “Everything seems to have stabilized. If there’s a problem, LuAnne knows how to reach me.”

LuAnne, Katharine repeated silently to herself. One look at her hard gray eyes had told Katharine that, despite the nurse’s uniform, the primary job of the woman who sat in the anteroom outside — perhaps her only job — was security. Carefully concealing her true feelings, Katharine tried to inject exactly the right mixture of worry and confidence into her voice. “Do you really think he’s going to be all right?”

“He’ll be fine,” Jameson assured her.

As if I’m a child! Katharine managed a sigh she hoped sounded like relief. “Well, I hope you get enough sleep for both of us,” she said. “I just don’t think I’ll be able to sleep a wink tonight.” Oh, God. Had she overplayed it? Jameson, though, seemed willing to accept her at face value.

Or did he simply know there was absolutely nothing she could do to extricate Michael from this room? She instantly rejected the question, unwilling to deal with its implications.

Fifteen minutes after Jameson finally left, she set off on the first of what she’d begun to think of as reconnaissance missions. Certain that every word she spoke was being overheard, every move she made watched, she forced herself to tell Michael not to worry and try to get some sleep. Hoping the words didn’t sound as ludicrous to whoever might be listening as they did to her, she took a Ziploc bag out of her suitcase, left Michael’s room, and asked the “nurse” if there was a kitchen on this level. “If I don’t get some coffee, I’m never going to make it through the night,” she said, sighing.

Eyeing her sharply, LuAnne hesitated, then pointed toward the end of the corridor. “But there’s no coffee,” she said.

“Not to worry.” Ignoring the woman’s coolness and holding up the Ziploc bag, which contained a fistful of single-cup coffee bags still in their foil packets, Katharine explained, “I brought my own.”

LuAnne made no reply, so Katharine proceeded to the kitchen. As she passed the door behind which lay the Serinus Project laboratories, she noticed that the brass plaque was gone, and had to resist an urge to try the knob to see if it was locked.

In the kitchen she put a kettle of water on to boil, then washed out two cups, dropping one of the coffee bags in each of them. After the coffee had steeped, Katharine fished out the bags, then carried both cups back to the anteroom in which the nurse was stationed. “I made you a cup, too,” she announced, setting both cups on the nurse’s desk and willing herself not to react to the look of suspicion that immediately came into the other woman’s eyes. “This one’s Chocolate Mocha, and the other’s French Vanilla Bean.”

“Which one’s your favorite?” the nurse asked.

“I think maybe the vanilla.”

“Maybe I’ll try that one.”

Picking up the other mug, Katharine took it into Michael’s room. Though he appeared still to be asleep, she was almost certain he was pretending. Grateful for his pretense, which removed the need to make up conversation that would undoubtedly sound as false to whoever might be listening as it would to them, she turned off the light. The room was plunged into near blackness, save for the glow of the monitors that still displayed Michael’s vital signs, and the chemical makeup of the atmosphere inside the plastic box.

Even the darkness has eyes, Katharine thought, remembering the cameras at the gate. She settled down to wait, hoping that by four in the morning the darkness and silence of the room would have lulled the watchers into sufficient inattentiveness to let her make the final move in the game she’d planned.

Moving surreptitiously, she fished the cellular phone from her pocket and switched it over so that instead of ringing it would vibrate silently.

Forty minutes later, playing out the script she’d devised while packing her suitcase a few hours earlier, she got both herself and the nurse a second cup of coffee. This time, though, she lingered at the desk in the anteroom long enough to find out that LuAnne’s last name was Jensen, that she had no family, lived alone, and seemed to take no interest in any subject on which Katharine tried to engage her.

But she accepted the second cup of coffee, which she finished in less than ten minutes.

The same thing happened with the third.

On none of the trips to the kitchen did Katharine hear or see anyone else. Nor was there any sign of a security guard, if she didn’t count LuAnne Jensen.

Which meant one of two things: either they thought she’d bought Takeo Yoshihara’s story, or they were so supremely confident of their security that they simply weren’t worried.

When Katharine finally saw the minute hand on her watch creep toward five minutes past three, she picked up her empty cup and stepped out into the anteroom one more time.

LuAnne Jensen actually smiled at her. “I was just about to come in and see if you wanted me to fix it this time.”

“Not a problem,” Katharine replied, picking up the empty mug from the desk. “Michael’s still sound asleep, and I’m tired of sitting in the dark. Any particular flavor this time?”

“Maybe another Chocolate Mocha?”

“Coming right up.”

Heading for the kitchen for the fourth time, Katharine once again set about making two mugs of coffee. But this time she removed one more tinfoil packet from the Ziploc bag.

This one, though, contained more than coffee, for before she left her house, she’d carefully slit it open and added to the original contents three of the Halcion tablets that her doctor had prescribed for her more than a year ago. That had been during one of Michael’s bad periods, when she’d worried so constantly about his asthma that she couldn’t sleep. Though she’d never taken the pills, she’d kept them, superstitiously, as though their mere possession would act as a charm against needing to use them.

“Does it ever seem like the nights will never end?” she asked now as she set one of the coffee mugs on LuAnne Jensen’s desk.

“Every one of them gets longer,” the nurse agreed, picking up the mug, blowing on the steam for a moment, then taking the first sip. “You have no idea how much this helps.”

“Have as much as you want,” Katharine replied. “I brought plenty.” Leaving with her own mug of coffee, Katharine went back into Michael’s room.

In the darkness, she stripped off the clothes she’d been wearing all day and put on the jeans and shirt she’d brought from home. The cellular phone went into one of the front pockets of the jeans, where she’d feel its vibration if Rob tried to call her.

At three-forty she cracked the door to the anteroom open just wide enough to allow her a glimpse of the desk. LuAnne Jensen was still in her chair, but her head had rolled forward so her chin nearly touched her chest, and a rhythmic snoring was emanating from her open mouth. Katharine silently closed the door.

At three forty-five she felt the cellular phone vibrate in her pocket. Slipping it out, she flipped it open and was about to utter Rob’s name when she thought better of it. “Michael?” she asked. “Are you awake?”

Instantly, her son’s voice crackled from the speaker. “Uh-huh.”

At the same time, she heard Rob’s voice coming through the telephone: “If you don’t say anything, we’ll pick you up in exactly fifteen minutes. If there’s a problem, speak to Michael again.”

Katharine hesitated. She had a plan, but she had no idea whether it would work. If it didn’t … But what choice did she have?

Silently, she pressed the End button on the cellular phone, closed it, and returned it to her pocket. Then she went over to the bed. In the dim light emanating from the monitor, she could barely make out Michael’s face. But he was staring at her, his eyes wide open, and she no longer had any doubt that he’d been as wide-awake as she through the long hours of the night.

She held a finger to her lips, then took the bundle of clothes she’d brought for him out of the suitcase and pushed them into the air lock. He immediately began wriggling into them, staying under the covers and doing his best to move as little as possible. When he was done, she signaled him to pull the covers up and pretend to go back to sleep. Then she stepped out into the anteroom.

“Are you ready for—” she began, then cut herself off. “LuAnne? LuAnne, what’s wrong?” Moving around behind the desk, she shook the nurse, who slid off the chair onto the floor. Straightening, she looked wildly around the anteroom as if uncertain what to do, then picked up the telephone and pressed the button that was labeled “Lobby Desk.” Someone picked it up in the middle of the second ring.

“Jensen?” a voice asked.

“It’s Dr. Sundquist,” Katharine said. “Something’s happened to LuAnne. I just came out to make us some more coffee, and I thought she’d fallen asleep. But when I tried to wake her up, she slid off the chair.”

“Oh, Jesus,” the guard swore. “I’ll be right there.”

Katharine darted back into Michael’s room and took three more items out of the suitcase.

Two of them were large plastic garbage bags.

The other was the fossilized femur of an anthropoid that had become extinct several million years ago.

Shoving the garbage bags into the air lock, Katharine finally risked speaking to Michael out loud. “Hold these up to the intake tube,” she said. “Get them as full as you can.” Then, taking the femur with her, she went back to the anteroom and once again pressed the Lobby Desk button on the phone. When there was no answer by the second ring, she hung up, left the anteroom, and went to stand by the elevator door, her back pressed against the wall.

As she counted the passing seconds, she prayed that the camera above her was being monitored only by the guard who should be stepping out of the elevator in five more seconds.

In at least partial answer to her prayers, the doors slid open exactly five seconds later and the guard stepped out.

As the second hand of Katharine’s watch ticked one more time, she raised the femur high, then brought it down on the back of the guard’s neck as hard as she could.

Grunting, he dropped to his knees.

Katharine smashed the fossilized bone down one more time.

The guard sprawled out on the floor, facedown, and lay still.

Grabbing both his hands, Katharine dragged him down the hall and into the anteroom. Closing the door, she tied his hands behind him with the telephone cord, then pulled his wallet out of his back pocket.

If the elevator card stolen from Jameson didn’t work, the guard’s would.

Rising to her feet, she looked once more at her watch.

Seven minutes had gone by.

Going back into Michael’s room, she finally turned the lights on. Inside the plastic box, one of the garbage bags was inflated, and Michael was pulling its drawstrings tight.

“Don’t tie them,” she said. “Hurry, and get the other bag filled, and—” Her words died on her lips as she realized for the first time that none of the corners of the Plexiglas box had hinges.

“My God,” she whispered, staring at Michael in horror. “How am I going to get you out of there?”

Holding the second garbage bag up to the intake tube, Michael jerked his head toward the corner of the room. “Over there. There’s a button.”

Katharine searched the corner where he’d gestured, saw nothing for a moment, then spotted a small button mounted flush into the wall. When she pressed it, nothing seemed to happen, but then she saw Michael pointing toward the ceiling.

A small panel had slid open directly above the center of the Plexiglas box. From it a stainless steel rod, perhaps an inch thick, was descending. A knob on the rod slipped into a socket on the box’s top. She heard a click as something locked in place.

A second later the box began to rise up off the floor. Instantly the room filled with the noxious gases with which the cube had been filled. Katharine, already coughing from the fumes, lurched toward the anteroom door.

“Take one of the bags,” she heard Michael say as the box cleared the bed. Grabbing the strings of the bag he had shoved in her direction, she darted out into the anteroom, yanking the door shut behind her.

Nine minutes had gone by.

She waited as another minute passed, and was about to go back into the inner room when suddenly the door opened and Michael, clutching the second garbage bag, came out.

“Follow me,” Katharine told him. Pulling the door to the hallway open, she raced down the corridor to the elevator, the key card already in her hand. Holding it up to the panel, she uttered a silent prayer.

The light on the gray panel changed from red to green, but nothing happened.

The doors remained closed.

Then she understood: the elevator had returned to the upper floor.

The fifteen seconds it took for the elevator to arrive back on the lower level seemed to take forever, but at last the doors slid open.

Katharine almost shoved Michael inside, stepped in after him, and pressed the Up button. Then, as the doors began to slide shut, she saw someone come out of one of the doors down the hall.

The door to the Serinus Project.

The man stared at her in surprise and started toward her, but the elevator doors closed before he could get to them.

The elevator was only halfway up when Katharine heard the faint ringing sound. An alarm.

As the doors slid open at the top and the sound of the alarm battered against her eardrums, Katharine looked at her watch again.

Five minutes left.

“Come on,” she told Michael.

She raced down the corridor toward the double doors at the far end, the inflated garbage bag bouncing clumsily behind her. Michael, pausing only to suck a deep breath from the second bag, ran after her, catching up to her just as she came to the lobby doors.

She pushed them open.

Here, the sound of the alarm was even louder, but the lobby was still empty.

“Outside,” she said.

They ran for the front door, and a few seconds later burst out into the night. For an instant, seeing no pursuers, Katharine dared to hope that, after all, they might escape. Then the blackness was washed away by a brilliant beam of white light.

Like two insects caught on a pin, Katharine and Michael cowered in the brilliance.

Over the alarm, Katharine heard another sound.

The familiar whup-whup-whup of a helicopter.

Shielding her eyes against the glare of the light, she looked up. As suddenly as the beam had appeared, it disappeared, and finally she saw it.

The helicopter dropped down no more than twenty yards away.

She froze in horror, thinking:

Takeo Yoshihara.

Then, as lights all over the estate began to go on, she caught a glimpse of a face inside the chopper’s cabin.

Rob Silver’s face.

Grabbing Michael with one hand and still clutching the garbage bag with the other, Katharine stumbled toward the hovering aircraft and shoved Michael inside.

As Rob’s strong hands closed on her wrists and began to lift her into the cabin, she heard the helicopter’s engine roar.

Even before she was fully on board, it lifted off, wheeled around, and began racing away into the darkness.

From the lanai outside his bedroom, Takeo Yoshihara watched the helicopter disappear into the night, then spoke into the telephone he had picked up the instant the alarms had wakened him from sleep.

“Track them on radar,” he ordered. “Find out where they are going. We will bring them back. Do you understand? Both the mother and the son.” Before hanging up, he spoke once more: “And when we go, I shall want a special guard with us. One who has been trained as a sniper.”