Whiteout

There was a chime like a doorbell. All three of them looked at the light over the door. It turned green, and the heavy door swung slowly open on motorized hinges.

Susan said, "How did you open the door?" Her voice betrayed fear now.

Involuntarily, Kit looked down at the stolen card in his hånd.

Susan followed his gaze. "You're not supposed to have a pass!" she said incredulously.

Nigel moved toward her.

She turned on her heel and ran.

Nigel went after her, but he was twice her age. He'll never catch her, Kit thought. He let out a shout of rage: how could everything go so wrong, so quickly?

Then Daisy emerged from the passage leading to the control room.

Kit would not have thought he would ever be glad to see her ugly face.

She seemed unsurprised at the scene that confronted her: the guard ru

Susan saw Daisy and hesitated, then ran on, apparently determined to push past.

The hint of a smile touched Daisy's lips. She drew back her arm and smashed her gloved fist into Susan's face. The blow made a sickening sound, like a melon dropped on a tiled floor. Susan collapsed as if she had run into a wall. Daisy rubbed her knuckles, looking pleased.

Susan got to her knees. Sobs bubbled through the blood covering her nose and mouth. Daisy took from the pocket of her jacket a flexible blackjack about nine inches long and made, Kit guessed, of steel ball bearings in a leather case. She raised her arm.

Kit shouted: "No!"

Daisy hit Susan over the head with the blackjack. The guard collapsed soundlessly.

Kit yelled: "Leave her!"

Daisy raised her arm to hit Susan again, but Nigel stepped forward and grabbed Daisy's wrist. "No need to kill her," he said.

Daisy stepped back reluctantly.

"You mad cow!" Kit cried. "We'll all be guilty of murder!"

Daisy looked at the light brown glove on her right hand. There was blood on the knuckles. She licked it off thoughtfully.

Kit stared at the unconscious woman on the floor. The sight of her crumpled body was sickening. "This wasn't supposed to happen!" he said in alarm. "Now what are we going to do with her?"

Daisy straightened her blond wig. "Tie her up and hide her somewhere."

Kit's brain began to come back on line after the shock of sudden violence. "Right," he said. "We'll put her inside BSL4. The guards aren't allowed in there."

Nigel said to Daisy, "Drag her inside. I'll find something to tie her up with." He stepped into a side office.

Kit's mobile phone rang. He ignored it.

Kit used his card to reopen the door, which had closed automatically. Daisy picked up a red fire extinguisher and used it to prop the door open. Kit said, "You can't do that, it will set off the alarm." He removed the extinguisher.

Daisy looked skeptical. "The alarm goes off if you prop a door open?"

"Yes!" Kit said impatiently. "There are air management systems here. I know, I put the alarms in myself. Now shut up and do as you're told!"

Daisy got her arms around Susan's chest and pulled her along the carpet. Nigel emerged from the office with a long power lead. They all passed into BSL4. The door closed behind them.

They were in a small lobby leading ro the changing rooms. Daisy propped Susan against the wall underneath a pass-through autoclave that permitted sterilized items to be removed from the lab. Nigel tied her hånds and feet with the electrical lead.

Kit's phone stopped ringing.

The three of them went outside. No pass was needed to exit: the door opened at the push of a green button set into the wall.

Kit was trying desperately to think ahead. His entire plan was ruined. There was no possibility now that the theft would remain undiscovered. "Susan will be missed quite soon," he said, making himself keep calm. "Don and Stuart will notice that she's disappeared off the monitors. And even if they don't, Steve will be alerted when she fails to return from her patrol. Either way, we don't have time to get into the laboratory and out again before they raise the alarm. Shit, it's all gone wrong!"

"Calrn down," Nigel said. "We can handle this, so long as you don't panic. We just have to deal with the other guards, like we dealt with her."

Kit's phone rang again. He could not tell who was calling without his computer. "It's probably Toni Gallo," he said. "What do we do if she shows up? We can't pretend nothing's wrong if all the guards are tied up!"

"We'll just deal with her as and when she arrives."

Kit's phone kept ringing.

12:30 AM

TONI was driving at ten miles an hour, leaning forward over the steering wheel to peer into the blinding snowfall, trying to see the road. Her headlights did nothing but illuminate a cloud of big, soft snowflakes that seemed to fill the universe. She had been staring so long that her eyelids hurt, as if she had got soap in her eyes.

Her mobile became a hands-free car phone when slotted into a cradle on the dashboard of the Porsche. She had dialed the Kremlin, and now she listened as it rang out unanswered.

"I don't think anyone's there," Mother said.

The repairmen must have downed the entire system, Toni thought. Were the alarms working? What if something serious went wrong while the lines were down? Feeling troubled and frustrated, she touched a button to end the call.

"Where are we?" Mother asked.

"Good question." Toni was familiar with this road but she could hardly see it. She seemed to have been driving forever. She glanced to the side from time to time, looking for landmarks. She thought she recognized a stone cottage with a distinctive wrought-iron gate. It was only a couple of miles from the Kremlin, she recalled. That cheered her up. "Well be there in fifteen minutes, Mother," she said.

She looked in the rearview mirror and saw the headlights that had been with her since Inverburn: the pest Carl Osborne in his Jaguar, doggedly following her at the same sluggard pace. On another day she would have enjoyed losing him.

Was she wasting her time? Nothing would please her more than to reach the Kremlin and find everything calm: the phones repaired, the alarms working, the guards bored and sleepy. Then she could go home and go to bed and think about seeing Stanley tomorrow.

At least she would enjoy the look on Carl Osborne's face when he realized he had driven for hours in the snow, at Christmas, in the middle of the night, to cover the story of a telephone fault.

She seemed to be on a straight stretch, and she chanced speeding up. But it was not straight for long, and almost immediately she came to a right-hand bend. She could not use the brakes, for fear of skidding, so she changed down a gear to slow the car, then held her foot steady on the throttle as she turned. The tail of the Porsche wanted to break free, she could feel it, but the wide rear tires held their grip.

Headlights appeared coming toward her, and for a welcome change she could make out a hundred yards of road between the two cars. There was not much to see: snow eight or nine inches thick on the ground, a drystone wall on her left, a white hill on her right.

The oncoming car was traveling quite fast, she noted nervously.

She recalled this stretch of road. It was a long, wide bend that turned through ninety degrees around the foot of the hill. She held her line through the curve.

But the other car did not.

She saw it drift across the carriageway to the crown of the road, and she thought, Fool, you braked into the turn, and your back slipped away.