Page 63 of V-Day
He considered her, his eyes narrowed.
“Whatever you tell us, we’ll inject you with, so you’d better get it right,” Calli told him.
“He might tell us to give him something which makes him ten times stronger,” Annamaria pointed out.
“He has nothing like that in his bag,” Calli said, her voice flat. “He’s been keeping women subdued in a bordello. Let’s just pick a bottle and give him ten units of whatever we grab first.”
“No, no! I’ll tell you!” the doctor cried, fear making his voice quaver.
*
THEY GAVE THE GUARD THEsame dose from the same bottle as the doctor had directed them to give him. When the doctor passed out, they dumped him on a bed and Annamaria squeezed his earlobe between her fingernails. He didn’t move.
“Well, he wasn’t lying,” she decided.
Calli zipped up the jeans someone had thrust at her and slipped her feet into the flat pumps they had found. “Quietly, now,” she warned them, taking the security pass Annamaria handed to her.
Calli eased out into the lounge area with its overwhelming red velvet upholstery and gilded fringing. There were no guards in this area. The fire doors closing off the stairs to the upper basement were shut. They could be pushed open with one hand from the other side, although they were steel-lined and impenetrable from this side.
Calli moved over to the electronic pass plate and looked at Annamaria. “Now we find out if Ibarra has canceled the old card, or if he’s still trying to figure out where he lost it.” She swiped the card over the plate.
An electronic chirp sounded which seemed to stretch for five seconds. The doors unlocked with a solid thunk of turning metal tumblers.
Annamaria squeezed her hands together, drawing in a deep, deep breath.
“I think I just peed myself,” someone whispered, behind them.
Calli smiled and eased the door open and looked around it. The stairs up to the turning were clear. She pushed the door open, looked back at the women and put her fingers to her lips.
They all nodded back at her, their eyes huge.
Calli climbed a step at a time up the flight, moving sideways so she could see up the next set of stairs. Those opened on the basement proper. No one lurked on that flight either.
Moving quickly, Calli turned the stairs and hurried up the second flight until her head would show above the stairs and paused. She moved closer to the wall, her heart thumping. She didn’t know how soldiers stole around enemy buildings as they did without having embolisms from the stress. It was stroke-inducing to think that at any second someone might appear who would send up an alarm. Her nerves were crawling with the uncertainty.
She took the steps one at a time, scanning the basement area as more of it came into view. This was the basement with the big round columns and the beautiful artwork on the wall she suspected belonged to the Escobedoes. It had been empty of anything else when she had been brought down here with Marisa Roldán.
Calli spared a thought for the Mexican ambassador. Annamaria didn’t know where they were keeping her and fifteen unarmed women couldn’t search the Palace looking for her. It was not in any of the rooms of the bordello, for Annamaria had searched them all as soon as they had the doctor and the guard immobilized.
Another step and now Calli could see the opposite wall of the basement. The room looked empty, only there were large areas to either side of the stairs which were not within view yet.
She climbed to the step below the top and peered out, checking left and right.
Nothing.
Her heart still doing funky calisthenics, Calli moved into the basement and beckoned the others. The way to the rotunda was to the left. She walked out to the middle of the room, between the twin rows of pillars marching either side and turned left.
Annamaria and the others bunched behind her. It was sensible. Better to have just one of them taken out, while the others turned and ran, if someone came across them. The women knew where to go if anything happened to her. Calli suspected little would stop them, now they were this close to freedom.
They tiptoed down the basement, passing pillars. The glass doors which closed off the rotunda, with its double helix stairs, was twelve yards away when an Insurrecto pushed open one side of the doors and moved into the basement.
He stopped, his mouth opening.
So did Calli.
Someone gave a soft gasping sound.
No one spoke.
