Keith Thomson - Twice a Spy

“It sounds really interesting, but-”

“Trust me, bud, you do not want to miss this.” With the air of a magician, Corbitt reached for the bar and unscrewed the top from the crystal scotch decanter. The round bottletop was sculpted with so many facets that it sparkled like a disco ball. “Would you believe this contains a camcorder that can hold sixteen hours of video and sound?”

“Only from context,” Stanley said, to be polite. At least five years ago at headquarters, one of the Toy Makers showed him a collar stay containing far superior micro-camcorder technology. Probably Saint Lucia wasn’t a Toy Maker priority. “The problem is time, or the lack of it. The men we’re chasing-”

Putting a finger to his lips, Corbitt turned and glanced nervously at the driver. “We’ll discuss it in the SCIF,” he said as if any other course of action would be utterly reckless.

An hour later, Stanley was still in the sensitive compartmented information facility within the American consulate, a small suite of low-end offices on the ground floor of a white building resembling a sheet cake.

“One more time, for the record,” said a flushed Corbitt, pushing the strands of hair back into place over his bald spot. “You expect me to tell Claude Beslon, the Saint Lucia chief of police, to just release the criminals into your custody, no questions asked?”

“Alleged criminals, for the record,” said Stanley, even though the point of a secure conference room was that there would be no record.

“Can you even tell me whether or not these guys have actually done any of the stuff they’re charged with?”

Stanley leaned forward over the conference table. “Listen, Chief Corbitt, if you-”

“What? ‘Need to know’?”

“I was going for a less trite way of phrasing it.”

Corbitt jerked off his trifocals, which were misted by perspiration. “I do need to know. I don’t want to be a prick, but, come on, bud, this is my turf.”

“The chief of the Latin America division was told less.”

“I’ve built relationships here based on trust. A flap and it all blows up. I mean, what in the world am I supposed to tell my friends here?”

“Make up whatever you think will impress them the most.”

“How about a pinch of truth to fortify the deception?”

“What I can tell you is that Lesser and Ramirez pose a threat to national security with what’s in their heads alone,” Stanley said. It was certainly more than Corbitt needed to know, and, Stanley hoped, enough to placate him.

The three holding cells constituting the fourth floor were vacant, giving the stocky Starfish guard, Bulcao, his choice for Charlie and Drummond. He chose the smallest, an eight-by-ten-foot cement box fronted by a sliding wall of thick, rusty bars.

Inside the cell, two cots hung from a moldy wall by chains, one on top of the other. A metal sink sprouted from the adjacent wall. On the floor lay a filthy porcelain platform the size of a notebook, with slip-resistant shoe-shaped pads on either side and a hole in the center: the bathroom.

“Same interior designer who did Leavenworth, am I right?” Charlie asked Drummond.

Drummond put a hand to his chin and regarded the cell, as if giving the question serious consideration, until Bulcao propelled him and Charlie inside. Disappearing into the corridor, the guard heaved a breaker switch, sending the barred front wall shut with the force of a locomotive.

“Supper is at nineteen hundred,” he called over the ringing echo as he disappeared down the stairwell.

Taking a seat on the lower cot, Drummond remarked, “Surprisingly comfortable.” He looked underneath for the label, as though contemplating a future purchase. Finding nothing, he shrugged, then lay down.

“Don’t go to sleep just yet,” Charlie said.

“It’s nighttime, isn’t it? Speaking of which, I need my medicine.”

“Actually, it’s only about two in the afternoon,” Charlie said, but he understood why his father would think it was nighttime. The perpetual fluorescent twilight of the cellblock offered no clue to the actual hour. Outside light didn’t reach the floor, and for that matter, neither did fresh air. “Also we need you to come up with one of your exit strategies.”

“You want to break out of here?” Drummond asked, more vociferously than discretion dictated. Or maybe it was just the relative silence. Only the buzz of the fluorescent tubes could muffle their conversation.

Charlie whispered, “Of course.”

“Impossible.”

“Why? This isn’t exactly a state-of-the-art maximum-security penitentiary.”

“Well, I have no idea how to do it.”

“Listen, if any of your good old ex-colleagues gets wind of us being here-I should say when they get wind of us being here-we’ll be lucky to get life imprisonment. We’ll be lucky to get life anything.”

Charlie paused to listen to a low-pitched whine, like that of a small plane, flying low.

Had a Cavalry hit team arrived on cue?

The noise died away.

He turned to his father. “You get the deal here, right?”

“Yes, yes, they’ll neutralize us immediately. Alice will be in big trouble too. Where’s our attorney?”

Charlie’s hope shattered.

He gripped one of the rusty bars, expecting it to give a little.

Not a millimeter.

The rust wasn’t even skin-deep. Drive a truck into these bars at full speed: The truck would be accordioned.

How about the breaker switch that opened the wall of bars?

Not just out of reach. Out of sight.

Studying the rest of the cell and coming up empty, Charlie remembered what should have been Step One.

Taking a seat beside Drummond, he asked, “What might a professional covert operations officer do to get out of a place like this-say, a guy who took the two-month Escape and Evasion course at the Farm?”

Drummond sat straighter, only an inch or two, but enough for Charlie to feel a spark of hope. “Spies are only human, and as such can’t pass through solid walls.”

“What about through bars?”

“There’s a gap of, what, three inches between each?”

“But it’s been done, right, and not just by people who went on extreme diets first?”

Drummond nodded. “You do hear those Wild West stories of horses tied to the bars and yanking them free.”

“There’s a start …”

“Taking into account the laws of physics, even with a team of especially strong draft horses, I’d say those stories are apocryphal.”

“Well, we probably won’t have the chance to put it to the test, given that we’re three floors up from the ground and don’t have a window. But, come on, jailbreaks are in the papers all the time.”

“Because they’re news. Are you thinking about breaking out of here?”

Charlie sighed. “It crossed my mind.”

“Would you like to hear an interesting piece of information?”

“Does it have anything to do with getting out of a jail cell?”

“Yes.”

“Then, yes, I’d love to hear an interesting piece of information,” Charlie said, undoubtedly a lifetime first.

“In 1962 three prisoners at Alcatraz used spoons and a vacuum cleaner part to chisel away at the concrete around a fan vent leading from their cell to a utility corridor. They worked during the cellblock’s music hour, so the guards wouldn’t hear, and they concealed their progress with bits of false wall, good enough that the cell passed its inspections. When their escape route was finally ready, they left papier-mache dummies in the beds, then they climbed through the fan vent-they’d removed the fan blades and the motor ahead of time. That got them into an air shaft. On the way out, they stole some raincoats, which they used to make a rubber raft to get across San Francisco Bay.”