Conviction (2009)

No choice, Sam.

He started hobbling toward the elevator. He heard the wall of water approaching and could feel on his back the rush of cool air being pushed ahead of the surge, but he ignored it and kept his eyes fixed on the elevator.

He was ten feet from the door when the wave slammed into him.

EPILOGUE

PORTINHO DA ARRABIDA , PORTUGAL

HEfelt a vague pang of guilt for not being excited at the prospect of having company, but he consoled himself with the knowledge that if he told them the truth, they would probably understand and even forgive him for it. They were friends, certainly, but not in the pure sense of the word. Of course, that predicament wasn't uncommon in a business where friendships were usually forged in the fire of hardship and tragedy. It was a strong, almost instantaneous bond, one that most people rarely took time to examine. The proverbial elephant in every room. He was cynical, that much he could admit, but whether that was his permanent mind-set or simply a bad habit that would fade with time, he didn't know. He would find out.

Fisher stepped away from the sunlit floor-to-ceiling windows and walked to his nearby leather armchair. He propped the cane against the arm and took a test lap around the room. The limp was almost gone and would eventually disappear altogether. Thanks to pins and screws and plates, the bones in his ankle were almost as good as new. His only reminder of the injury would be an unca

The wave that had slammed into his back drove him headfirst into the side of the elevator-shaft wall, momentarily stu

His headlamp flickered and went dark.

His fingertips touched the escape hatch, then his palms. He drew his knife and stabbed around the edge of the hatch, hacking away at the thin metal until it fell away and disappeared in the swirling water. He stuck both arms through the hatch, braced his elbows on the roof, and levered himself up and out. Water bubbled up behind him and began flowing over the elevator car's roof.

He tested the cable: It was thick with grease and grit. Half-a-decade old or not, the lubricant made the cable unclimbable. He looked around for a maintenance ladder. There wasn't one. Fisher knew what this meant: a ride up the shaft like a piece of flotsam. The trip took only a few minutes, but in the narrow confines of the shaft the water roiled and whooshed as air from the complex below sought escape through one of the few exits left.

When he drew level with the door, he found it closed, but ten seconds of levering with his knife opened a gap wide enough for him to squeeze both hands through; another twenty seconds and he was lying on the concrete floor of the hut. Water gushed after him and sloshed across the floor.

Bad to worse, Fisher thought. The hut was made of cinder block, the door of thick steel secured by a virtually indestructible lock. Fisher looked around. The inside was barren, just a floor, four walls, and a roof. Fisher caught himself. Not just walls--five-decade-old walls. He didn't need to find an exit; he needed to let the water make him an exit.

As the water rose past his ankles and then his knees, he hobbled from wall to wall, using the tip of his knife to test the grout between the cinder blocks. It wasn't until the water had reached his waist that he found the spot he wanted. He began chiseling at it, concentrating the knife's point on a quarter-sized spot. He stopped, stuck his finger into the hole. Halfway there.He jammed the knife back into the hole and hammered at it with his fist until his skin split and blood ran down his forearm. He switched hands and kept pounding.

The tip punched through. He pressed his eye to the hole. He saw bright sun.

The water reached his shoulders.

He thrust the knife back into the hole and began levering the haft in a circle, grinding away at the grout. A thumb-sized chunk of cinder block popped free, then another, and another. And then, with a sucking sound, the water found the hole and surged through. The water lapped at his chin and into his mouth. He sputtered and kept chopping at the block. The fifty-year-old grout began disintegrating. Horizontal and vertical gaps appeared, revealing daylight. The water level dropped an inch, then bubbled up again.

Fisher clamped the knife between his teeth, shoved both hands into the hole, and, using them as leverage, rammed his knee into the wall. Then again, and again, until his leg was numb.

A whole cinder block broke free and tumbled out. Fisher adjusted his aim and drove his knee into the neighboring block until it shifted sideways and slid halfway out. He drew his knee back, set his jaw, and--

A three-by-three section of the wall gave way and Fisher tumbled out onto the snow-covered ground and lay still. Hansen found him ten minutes later. Not content to sit on his hands at the entrance vent and wait for something that might never come, he'd left Gillespie to stand watch and taken the other team members on a perimeter search. Their first stop had been the hut.

FISHERwatched the car pull down the driveway and stop beside the flagstone path leading to the front door. Fisher got there before either of them could ring the bell. Having left Washington two weeks after returning from Russia, Fisher had seen neither Hansen nor Grimsdottir for three months. He'd stayed around only long enough to recover from the surgery on his ankle and sit through three days of debriefing.

Fisher invited them in. "Mojito?" he asked.

"Sure," said Grimsdottir, and Hansen nodded.

"Head down to the deck. I'll meet you there."

Ten minutes later they were sitting beneath an umbrella overlooking the water. Hansen took a sip of his mojito and smiled. "It's good."

"They've grown on me," Fisher said.

"So this is it," Grimsdottir asked, "the villa of the late, great Chucky Zee?"

Fisher nodded. "Thanks for that, by the way."

Through her contacts at Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, Grimsdottir had enlightened the Serious Organised Crime Agency, or SOCA, about Zahm's nonliterary endeavors. From there Zahm's now-defunct criminal empire unraveled. Surprisingly, most of the jewelry and art and gems Zahm and his Little Red Robbers had stolen had never been fenced. SOCA found the bulk of the loot in a storage unit outside Setubal. At her encouragement, the British Home Office had given Fisher a free, one-year lease on Zahm's villa.

"The least I could do," Grimsdottir said. "I see they took his yacht, though."

Fisher smiled. "A few days after I got here some very polite gentlemen from the Home Office came and asked for the keys. It's okay. I've had enough of water for a while. Besides, if I change my mind, I've still got the rowboats."