Philip Kerr - Gridiron

'Well, I think it's a lousy idea,' drawled Richardson. 'Not least because it makes a mockery of us having risked life and limb to climb up here in the first place. We might just as well have stayed down on the atrium floor. I mean, we climb all the way up here, and now Mitch says that someone has to climb all the way down again?'

'But on the service ladder,' Mitch pointed out.

Curtis nodded thoughtfully. 'OK,' he said. 'Syndicate 2. What's your big idea?'

Richardson smiled unpleasantly. 'We've got a million ideas. But our best one was that we get some beers, watch the World Series on TV and wait for Monday morning when — and correct me if I'm wrong, Helen —

when Warren Aikman will be back here with Mr Yu and his people. Even they should be able to work out that something's wrong.'

'We sit tight and wait for the fuckin' cavalry. Is that it?'

'Why not? We've got plenty of food and water.'

'And how long would you say it was until this clerk of works shows up here? Forty-two, forty-three hours, maybe?'

'Yes. Yes, that's about right. One thing you can say about Warren Aikman is that the man gets in early. He'll be here eight o'clock, Monday morning. No fail.'

'And we've been stuck here for what, less than twenty-four hours?'

'Thirty,' said Helen Hussey. 'Thirty hours and forty-five minutes, to be precise. Since the door wouldn't open, anyway.'

'And nine of us have been killed,' continued Curtis.

'God, I wish my ex was here right now,' Helen added with a wry smile.

'Spoken like a true redhead,' murmured Richardson.

'Maybe ten if Ellery doesn't get to a doctor soon.' Curtis glanced over at the man lying asleep on the floor close to the wall. 'On average that's just over a fatality every two hours. If Ishmael keeps up with that rate of attrition the rest of us will be lucky to survive for another day. And you want to sit tight.' He grinned and waved his arm at the room. 'Well, pick your spot, friend.'

'Like I say, we sit tight. Take no chances. All watch out for each other, OK?'

'Ray's right,' argued Joan. 'We just have to be patient. I can think of worse places to be stuck than this building. The first principle of survival is to wait for rescue.'

'Is that what you both climbed up here to tell us?' asked Curtis. 'What are you, on Prozac or something? You're being stalked, lady. Your card has been marked by a fucking psycho computer who wants to play Super Mario Brothers with your ass. Do you honestly think that Ishmael is going to leave us alone up here? Right now he's probably planning how to nail his next victim. Sit tight, you say. Wait to get killed, more like. Jesus, I thought architects were supposed to be constructive.'

Beech pushed himself away from the computer terminal. 'Hold the front page,' he said. 'Staying put until Monday morning is not an option here. Sunday afternoon will probably be too late. The game stakes just went up.'

'Do you want to unpack that?' Richardson said after a moment or two.

'Or do you just expect us meekly to carry it away? We can't stay put because the great Bob Beech told us so. The man who built this piece of psycho-hardware. There I was blaming Kenny when really it couldn't have been his fault at all. He was only making use of one lousy corner of that computer. I don't see how anyone could blame him.'

'But you gave it your best shot, didn't you?' sneered Beech. 'And now you're blaming me.'

'No one's blaming anyone,' said Curtis.

'The hell they're not,' replied Richardson. 'That's what people get paid for, Sergeant. To take the blame. And the more you get paid, the more blame you have to take. You wait until this is all over. People will be lining up to kick my ass.'

'You'd better hope you've got an ass to kick,' said Curtis. 'Now why don't you listen to what he has to say.'

Curtis nodded at Beech, who continued to stare belligerently at Richardson.

'Well, don't make us go down on our knees for it,' Curtis added. 'Let's hear what you've got.'

'OK. I've been looking at some of the game commands, trying to understand the game we're in,' explained Beech. 'If it's possible to understand it. But there's one thing I've found that changes everything. There's a time factor here that we didn't even know about. As Ishmael sees it, we have to complete the game within the next twelve hours, or — '

Beech shrugged. '- Or something catastrophic is set to happen to us all.'

'Like what?' said Richardson.

'Ishmael is a bit vague, but he calls it his time bomb. There are obviously no explosives in this building, so it's safe to assume that Ishmael has something else in mind. My best guess is the standby generating set in the basement. It's oil-fired, isn't it?'

Mitch nodded. 'An oil-fire in the basement could be disastrous,' he sighed. 'Especially if Ishmael were to override all the safety devices and let it burn. With no HVAC the smoke would kill us before the fire department even knew about it.'

'Well, that's just fucking great,' said Richardson. He smiled ruefully.

'Look, I'm sorry Bob.'

'Forget it.'

'No time outs?'

'No time outs.'

Richardson clapped Mitch on the back.

'Well then,' he said, 'it looks as if Mitch gets to play Bruce Willis after all.'

Saturday night brought no relief from the heat. It was as hot as an engine block in an October jam on the Freeway. Sweat poured off the living bodies trapped in the Gridiron.

Before he set out on his self-appointed mission, Jenny walked Mitch up the corridor and round the corner to a wide empty room that looked down on the Pasadena Freeway. Cars were streaming north and south. A KTLA helicopter hovered in the hazy downtown air. She wondered how long before the Los Angeles Breakfast TV show's chopper and its cameraman would attempt to steal prurient pictures of their dead bodies as they were carried out of the building. Like the day the chopperazzi had caught Rock Hudson's return to California in the terminal stages of Aids, or the beating of Reginald Denny during the LA riots. Was that going to be her own fifteen minutes' worth of fame? She waved desperately in the hope that someone might see her, but the insect-like aircraft was already heading away, across Little Saigon and Korea Town in search of another car chase or a robbery in progress. She looked at Mitch.

'This is a bit of a mess, isn't it?' he said.

'I'm here with you,' she said. 'That's all that matters. Besides, I don't mind a bit of mess. I used to be married to one.'

Mitch laughed.

'I was thinking what Alison will say when I tell her where I've been,' he smiled. 'If I live that long. Right now she's probably with her lawyer filing divorce papers. But I'd just like to see her face when she finds out that, for once, I wasn't bullshitting her.'

'Mitch? Hold me?'

'Huh?' He put his hands around Jenny's waist and kissed her on the cheek.

'I wanted to tell you to be careful.'

'I'll be careful.'

'And that I love you.'

'I love you, too.'

'Are you sure?'

Mitch let himself be kissed as if he had been tasting the choicest, most exotic fruit. When Jenny drew back there was a dreamy, steamy look in her eyes, as if the kiss had left her slightly intoxicated.

'Yes.' He squeezed her again. 'I'm sure.'

'You know, Mitch, it might be nice if we were to — you know — '

'To what?'

Twisting away from his arms Jenny reached up under her skirt. For a brief moment Mitch thought she must have been bitten by an insect. She lifted one foot, then the other from the plain white figure-of-eight that had suddenly arrived around her ankles, and spun her prestidigitated panties on one forefinger, as if signalling surrender.

'Suppose someone comes?' Mitch said nervously.