‘… you see – it there?’ Sevki asked. ‘Cleena – you – now?’

Cleena shoved Sheetrock out of the way and peered into the empty space. Darkness filled the area on the other side of the broken wall, but the light that filtered in around her exposed a greasy network of cables.

‘I’ve found the elevator shaft,’ she said.

She checked the wall studs again and hoped Lourds could squeeze through. If anything, it would be the professor’s big head that got him stuck. She almost smiled at that, but the thought of the men waiting out in the hallway with guns took the fun out of that possibility. The elevator sat at the first floor. When the fire alarm had been set off, the cages had all automatically gone to the ground floor.

She pulled her head back out and addressed Lourds and Olympia. ‘Elevator shaft. We can use it to get downstairs.’ This time she could hear herself a little.

Lourds nodded, then picked up a leg from the broken table that had held the miniature war pieces. He swung it experimentally, then went to work on the Sheetrock still barring the door.

Cleena had to admit that once the professor decided on a course of action, not much deterred him. When he was satisfied, he reached into his backpack and took out a mini-flashlight. The fact that he seemed to be prepared for everything except being kidnapped irked Cleena. But it was probably more because she hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight herself.

‘The elevator cage is downstairs,’ he said. ‘We can’t get through.’

‘We go to the second floor,’ Cleena said. ‘Then to the stairs.’

‘They’ve got to have men outside,’ Lourds told her.

Cleena nodded. ‘They do. We’ll have to get round them.’

‘No,’ Olympia said. ‘We go downstairs. To the basement. There are tunnels that connect this building to other buildings on the campus.’

‘Sevki?’ Cleena asked.

‘It’s true,’ Sevki said. He sounded tinny and far away. ‘There’s an infrastructure throughout the college. The maintenance people use the tunnels to move large pieces of equipment and check on the utilities.’

‘All right.’ Cleena gestured to Olympia. ‘You know the way.’

Olympia peered through the hole, then back at Cleena. ‘You expect me to jump?’

‘I’ll go first,’ Lourds volunteered. He took off his backpack and handed it to Olympia. ‘That way I can help you down.’ He shone the flashlight round, then put it in his mouth and eased down into the shaft. Tension wound Cleena almost to the breaking point. Images of the scar-faced man and others like him kept bouncing through her mind. The effects of the pepper gas had made her eyes and nose run and she knew she couldn’t rely on her damaged hearing to hear anyone approaching.

When he was below, thankfully without breaking his neck, Lourds talked Olympia into descending, guiding her feet with his hands. Cleena followed at her heels in case they decided to bolt and attempt to get away from her.

‘Sir, we’re about to enter the red zone on our time line,’ Mayfield stated calmly.

‘I know. Everyone outside be prepared to exfiltrate instantly. There should be confusion enough on the campus to cover some of our retreat.’ Eckart didn’t like giving those orders. It was too near admitting failure, and he wasn’t prepared to do that yet. ‘Let me know when the police are on site.’

‘Affirmative.’

Too much time had elapsed for Lourds and the women to emerge from the office. If they hadn’t come out by now, they’d either been overcome by the gas – or they’d found another way out.

He took a fresh grip on his pistol and stepped forward in a combat crouch. He wore Kevlar under his shirt, but his head was unprotected. He reached the door, took a breath to steady himself, then ripped away his gas mask to clear his vision. The gas stung his eyes, but he’d been exposed to it on close-quarter battlefields numerous times. Whipping around the doorframe, he dropped to his knees with the pistol gripped in both hands before him.

No one was inside the room. It took him a moment to spot the hole in the wall through all the lingering gas. He slipped his gas mask up from his neck and back over his face.

‘They’re not inside,’ Eckart growled. He coughed as vestiges of the gas raked through his lungs.

‘There’s no other way out.’

‘They found one. It looks like a door.’

‘It was a door. Evidently it had been sealed off some time in the past.’

‘Where does it lead?’

‘To the adjoining office. If you’ve got that office door covered, then you’re covering the office next door as well.’

Eckart looked down the hall and saw the office was next to the elevator.

‘They can’t get out of there,’ Mayfield said.

‘They couldn’t get out of the last room they were in.’ Eckart swung back to the doorway and fired a half-dozen rounds into the hole in the wall.

There was no response.

A bad feeling ripped through Eckart’s stomach as he gazed back at the elevator next to the other office. The woman was a street rat. She was clever and dangerous.

‘Open the elevator doors,’ Eckart ordered. ‘Check the shaft.’ As his men ran to do that, he ducked into the office and crossed over to the hole in the wall. The door lay inside the room, torn from its hinges. He cursed as he scanned the room over his pistol sights and saw no one.

Then he spotted the hole in the opposite wall.

‘They’re in the elevator shaft. Check the cameras on the second floor.’

Mayfield took a moment to reply. ‘Negative. They haven’t exited either set of elevator doors.’

‘All right.’ Eckart stepped across ships and soldiers and paused at the second hole. ‘They’re still inside the shaft. Kill the two women but I want our target alive.’

He took a mini-Maglite from his trouser pocket, flicked it on, then crossed his wrists so the flashlight beam and the pistol pointed in the same direction. He leaned into the hole and spotted movement below.

‘Let’s go.’ Olympia spoke in Turkish and yanked at Lourds’ arm.

Lourds looked up at the hole. The air inside the shaft seemed to burn his lungs and nasal membranes even more. The logical side of his brain that wasn’t hunkered down in fear realized that the gas was heavy enough to hug the ground and now it was settling into the elevator shaft.

‘Come on, Thomas. Let’s go before she gets down here.’ Olympia pulled at the elevator doors in front of her. Standing on the elevator cage, the second floor exit was almost at her chin. ‘Help me.’

‘We’re not leaving her,’ Lourds said as he joined Olympia.

‘What?’

‘We’re not leaving her.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding.’

Lourds hooked his fingers into the seam between the door and yanked. The doors gapped open a few inches, then slid back into place.

‘We’re not leaving her,’ Lourds repeated. ‘She’s part of this. We need to know what she knows.’

‘As if she’s going to tell you.’

‘You don’t know where the Joy Scroll is, do you?’

Olympia hesitated. ‘No.’

‘I thought so. Otherwise you wouldn’t have needed the book.’

‘We have a copy of the book. We couldn’t translate it. That was why – that is why we need you.’

That stopped Lourds in his tracks. ‘Qayin didn’t have the only copy?’

‘No.’

‘How many copies are there?’

‘We don’t know. There can’t have been many.’

Lourds tried the door again. ‘I would hope not. And we’re not going to leave her. She has a gun.’

‘Do you think she’s going to shoot us?’

‘No, but she’s been doing fantastically well shooting the people chasing us.’

Cleena dropped into the elevator shaft and looked at them.

‘Too late,’ Olympia grumbled in Turkish.

‘Did I miss the lovers’ quarrel?’ Cleena asked.

Lourds ignored her and bent his attention and strength to prising the doors open. This time when the doors opened he kept pushing till he reached the breakover point. The doors slid back into the wall on either side. He turned and hooked his hands together in front of him.