Iron Orchid

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AN HOUR LATER, Teddy was looking at a three-room furnished space over a dry-cleaner’s shop on Lexington Avenue. “Does anyone live in the building?” he asked the super.

“No, sir. The place is empty by six.”

“What’s immediately below?”

“A storeroom for furs. The cleaners store them there for clients.”

“And above?”

“The roof.”

“I’ll take it.” He wrote the man a check for a year’s rent and was given the keys.

Now all Teddy had to do was to begin shopping for tools. He already had a detailed list of what he would need, and he knew where to find them. He walked downstairs and out onto Lexington Avenue and hailed a cab.

FIVE

HOLLY FOLLOWED THE MAP to the room number on her map, which turned out to be an underground firing range. She was issued an electronic noise-canceling headset and shown to an equipment room where she could leave Daisy. Someone had thoughtfully left a bowl of water and a blanket for her.

A dozen trainees had assembled in the range, and shortly, a short, thickly built man in what Holly assumed to be his late fifties, wearing an olive-drab T-shirt, army-issue fatigue trousers, black te

“You may call me Sarge,” he said in a clipped voice. “I will teach you how to shoot, if you do not already know how. Your employer does not issue a standard weapon, so you will fire many weapons- handguns, assault rifles and machine guns. You will learn how they work and to disassemble and reassemble them in light and dark. You will learn about silencers and flash suppressors. Someone else will teach you how to eviscerate others with knives and kill them with your hands. That is out of my line.”

He looked at a clipboard. “Harry One?”

Holly raised a hand. “Here, Sarge.”

“Have you ever fired a handgun?”

“Yes, Sarge.”

“Come over here and show me how you do it. Ears on, everyone. We didn’t bring you here to send you out into the world deaf.”

Everyone put on their headsets.

Sarge indicated half a dozen handguns lined up on a bench. “Take your pick, Harry One.”

Holly chose a standard Model 1911 Colt semiautomatic pistol. While pointing it downrange she removed the magazine and found it full and the chamber empty. She shoved the magazine back into the weapon, racked the slide, took up a combat position and emptied the weapon into the target, fifty feet away, at the rate of a round per second. She removed the magazine from the gun and returned it to the bench.

Sarge pressed a button, and the target traveled toward the group. He examined the tight group, all eight shots in the bull’s-eye, then turned back to his class. “I have been at this installation for an extended period of time, and that is the first time I have ever seen a trainee do that on the first day,” he said. “When I am done with you, you will all be able to do it.” He turned to Holly. “Harry One, you are my assistant instructor.”

Holly spent the next two hours teaching other trainees what Ham had taught her since she was a little girl.

When the class ended, Sarge pulled her aside. “Do you own a little nine-millimeter custom-made with Caspian parts?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“I know who made that weapon,” he said. “Not because I’m psychic but because he put his initials on the frame. That sonofabitch cost me the national shooting championship twice, and I can see he taught you what he knows. Before we’re done, you may learn some things he didn’t teach you. Now get out of here.”

Holly got out of there. She collected Daisy and made her way to the next room number on her schedule in another underground building. She entered the room and found three other trainees there, waiting. On a low platform at the end of the room was an array of safes and locks and prop doors.

“Come in and sit down, please,” an elderly man said. He had a thick German accent and was wearing a seedy cardigan sweater over a bright orange polo shirt, which Holly thought he had probably not chosen for himself. “You may call me Dietz.

“You are in this class to learn how to be a criminal,” Dietz said. “You will learn how to pick locks and jimmy windows and crack safes. I say, ”crack,“ because you will not be here long enough for me to teach you to open any safe in the world by learning the combination. With some, you will have to employ explosives, and I will teach you that, too. You may comfort yourself with the knowledge that if, by the end of your training, you have not measured up in some way and are dismissed, you will at least be able to earn a good living as a burglar.”

Everybody laughed.

Dietz picked up a remote control, pressed a button and a screen came down from the ceiling. He pressed another button and a slide of a cutaway view of a lock flashed onto the screen. “Now, we have here a common, domestic, double-bolt lock, in this case, a Yale.” And he proceeded to explain how it worked.

By the end of the class, two hours later, each of the students knew how to pick the lock, open it with a credit card or remove the lock from the door with tools. Holly thought she was going to enjoy this class.

HOLLY EMPTIED DAISY and went to lunch in the cafeteria. She chose her food, sat down and was immediately joined by a young Asian woman of around thirty. She was petite and very pretty.

“Mind if I sit down?” she asked. Her accent was completely American.

“Please do. This is Daisy.”

The woman scratched Daisy behind the ears and made baby talk, then she turned to Holly. “You’re Harry One, right? I’m Harry Three. There are five Harrys, and I’ve already met the others. I have a feeling we’re going to be working together when we get out of this joint.”

“Well, you’re way ahead of me,” Holly said.

“You were recruited by Lance Cabot, right?”

“I don’t think I should confirm or deny that,” Holly said. “How do I know you’re not a spy who’s just trying to get me to talk.”

“Yeah, well you’re right. Not that I’m a spy, but they told us not to say anything, right?”

“Right.”

“I was really impressed with your shooting,” Harry Three said.

“Thank you.”

“Where did you learn?”

Holly smiled and shook her head. “I’m not biting, Three.”

“Oh, shit!” Three replied, looking disgusted. “This goes against every natural instinct I have. I always want to know everything about everybody, and in this place I can’t find out nothing about nobody.”

“I believe I can deduce that you were not an English teacher in your past life.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” Three said, glumly. “You sound just like my mother, except you don’t have a Chinese accent.”

“And that you are a first-generation American,” Holly said.

“Yeah, sure; big deal, Sherlock. Well, look, it’s my guess that all five of the Harrys were recruited by Lance and that we’re all going to be working together when we finally bust out of here. Any idea how long it’s going to be?”

“All I’ve been told is that we’ll be here until we’re ready,” Holly said. “I don’t think I’m giving away any secrets by saying that.”

“I think Lance is hot, don’t you?”

“You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you? You’re probably wired, for God’s sake.”

“You want me to strip down right here in this weird dining room? You know, they don’t even have any noodles here? How can a nice Chinese girl get along without noodles? My mother would really be pissed, if she knew.”

“Maybe if you put in a request, they would serve some noodles.”

“A request to who? That guy Hanks already said they weren’t going to answer any questions.”

“It wouldn’t be a question; it would be a request. Why don’t you write it down and hand it to one of the restaurant workers?”

“Well, all right, but I don’t think it’s going to work.”