Алистер Маклин - Borrowed Time

Adequate forward planning was something else he should have considered: maintenance plans of the twenty-sixth floor of the UN Secretariat building were comprehensive when it came to showing where everything was, but they didn’t reveal – to take the case in point – that the air shaft above the office of the Secretary of Policy Control narrowed to a width of forty-five centimetres at the grille opening.

Whitlock lay with his arms doubled under him, his elbows pressing on the sides of the shaft. He was pretty sure the office below him was empty, because Secretary Crane was a creature of habit, and he always went to lunch at 12:30. It was now 12:38. Nevertheless, having come this far, and at the expense of so much trouble and discomfort, Whitlock wasn’t going to take any unnecessary chances.

He eased his hands forward and seized the grille by its two handles. He pushed gently and felt the resistance go as the grille detached smoothly. He turned it sideways, pulled it into the shaft and used his knees to inch himself forward far enough to look down into the room.

A second before he poked his head through the opening he heard Crane’s voice and jerked back into the shaft.

Crane was down there! He was in the office using the telephone!

‘Issues in that category are always the province of the Director,’ Crane said, his voice sounding curiously close in the metal confines of the air duct. ‘I’ll be happy to pass your concerns along to him on your behalf, but that won’t be possible until he gets back from lunch. As a matter of fact it won’t be possible until I get back from lunch, and the longer we keep this conversation going, the later that will be.’ A pause. ‘Not at all. Goodbye.’

Whitlock lay there, listening. Crane had made one break with custom so he could make another. The office door opened, then closed. The key turned. At no point had there been the soft beep of the movement-detector being switched on. Crane probably considered himself thorough but not obsessive: who was going to break into his office in broad daylight?

Whitlock turned over on his back and slowly, painfully inched his arms up on to his chest. Reaching downward with the fingertips of both hands he pulled the coiled nylon ladder from the top of his overalls and let it uncoil out through the end of the duct and dangle down into the office.

Holding the end of the ladder with one hand, he eased out a telescopic brace from his breast pocket and pushed it through the looped end of the ladder. He then placed the brace lengthways at the edge of the duct opening and squeezed the spring release on the brace. It sprang out at both ends, its rubber stops clamping to the sides of the duct.

To get down the ladder he had to slide back along the air duct the way he had come, until he reached a four-way junction. He turned around and inched himself back to the opening, feet first.

He had never before used a ladder made entirely from nylon. His feet skidded uncontrollably on the first two rungs and he had to freeze all movement and wait for the ladder to stop swinging before he eased himself down any further. He began taking the rungs slowly, letting his weight settle on the centre of each one, waiting until the ladder was stable before going down another rung.

When he was finally on the floor he stood by the desk and let his gaze travel around the fastidious tidiness of the place. He could not even be sure the snapshot of Philpott was here. But it was likely to be.

He began with the filing cabinet, a six-drawer unit with a single lock at the top. A U-shaped piece of piano wire had the lock open in three seconds. In six minutes he went through every file in the cabinet. He found no snapshots, but he did come across a folder marked UNACO Hearing – Notes Towards Structured Argument.

He laid the folder on the desk, took out his Minox 16mm camera and photographed the four pages in the file, using the desk lamp for illumination. He put back the folder and locked the filing cabinet.

The desk drawers were locked but they were as easy to open as the cabinet. Whitlock found a whole range of unused desk equipment – stapler, paperclips, tape dispenser, paperknife – all in their original packets. There was also a book of personal telephone numbers, a dictation machine, tapes, personalized notepaper and envelopes, a loaded Mauser 7.65mm pistol, a Nikon F501 camera, handsome Pentax binoculars and a plastic wallet marked EVIDENTIAL. It contained ticket stubs, bills of sale and expense sheets relevant to departmental investigations; among the papers at the back of the folder was the photograph of Philpott.

Whitlock put it face down under the desk lamp and centred the pencilled writing carefully in his Minox viewfinder. A moment before he took the picture he detected a bell ringing in some shadowy corner of his memory. He took a second shot, closer this time, then put away the camera and returned the picture to the wallet.

He put everything back where it had been and looked round the room to make sure nothing was out of place. Satisfied, he turned and heard the bell ring again, a tiny irritation, nothing he could pinpoint or even narrow down.

‘Time to get back up the ladder,’ he whispered.

As he stepped on the first rung and began to sway, the words on the back of the picture came back to him. He could see them, the smudged curves, the way the letters looped and slanted.

It occurred to him suddenly why the bell had rung. He had seen that handwriting before. He didn’t know where, but he had definitely seen it.

‘This temple,’ Deena said, ‘is dedicated to the worship of Ganesh.’

Sabrina smiled in the gloom. The faint light that seeped into the room through a high slit in the wall was growing now. For long hours they had been in darkness and for a while Deena had slept. Their preparations were made and now they simply waited. There was nothing else to do. Sabrina could scarcely see Deena’s face, but she knew from the way the girl talked, from her nervousness and her growing animation, that the effects of the marijuana leaves had all but worn off.

‘How can you tell, Deena?’

‘From the symbols and pictures painted on the walls. Also from the images on the coloured window at the far end.’

‘You remembered all that, even though you were so frightened?’

‘It is long afterwards that I remember things.’

‘And who is Ganesh?’

‘The child of Siva and his consort Parvati, the beautiful. Ganesh is the god of prosperity and wisdom. He has an elephant’s head.’

‘Why is that?’

‘The story is that one day, coming back from a long journey, Siva saw Parvati in her private quarters with a young man. Siva forgot that in his absence, his son would have grown. So he mistook Ganesh for Parvati’s lover and cut off his head. Parvati was furious, she made Siva understand what he had done and demanded that he bring their son back to life. Siva could only do so by giving Ganesh the head of the first living thing he saw, which happened to be an elephant.’

At another time Sabrina would have been enchanted. Now she was too alert to sounds beyond the room, too focused on the need to be ready. Two hours earlier she had nearly fallen asleep. When she caught herself nodding she stood up, marched up and down for ten minutes to re-oxygenate her blood, then sat down and began declining Latin verbs in her head. It was tough work, but it kept her awake.

‘Our companions will be dead by now,’ Deena said. Her voice trembled. Her fear was gaining control.

‘You mustn’t think about that. You have to concentrate on one thought: there is a world of freedom outside. It is only the thickness of a wall away. Think of a straight line between you and the outside world. Think of nothing being able to stop you travelling along that line.’