Whiteout(67)

"If she is, we'll neutralize her."

"She's an ex-cop—she won't be as easy to deal with as these guards. And she might recognize me, even in this disguise."

He pressed the green button that opened the door. He and Nigel ran down the corridor and into the Great Hall. To Kit's monumental relief, it was empty: Toni Gallo had not yet arrived. We made it, he thought. But she could get here at any second.

The van was outside the main door, its engine limning. Elton was at the wheel, Daisy in the back. Nigel jumped in, and Kit followed him, shouting: "Go! Go! Go!"

Elton roared off before Kit got the door shut.

The snow lay thick on the ground. The van immediately skidded and slewed sideways, but Elton got it back under control. They stopped at the gate.

Willie Crawford leaned out. "All fixed?" he said.

Elton wound down the window. "Not quite," he said. "We need some parts. We'll be back."

"It's going to take you a while, in this weather," the guard said conversationally.

Kit muffled a grunt of impatience. From the back, Daisy said in a low voice, "Shall I shoot the bastard?"

Elton said calmly, "We'll be as quick as we can." Then he closed the window.

After a moment the barrier lifted, and they pulled out.

As they did so, headlights flashed. A car was approaching from the south. Kit made it out to be a light-colored Jaguar sedan.

Elton turned north and roared away from the Kremlin.

Kit looked in the mirror and watched the headlights of the car. It turned into the gates of the Kremlin.

Toni Gallo, Kit thought. A minute too late.





1:15 AM

TONI was in the passenger seat beside Carl Osborne when he braked to a halt alongside the gatehouse of the Kremlin. Her mother was in the back.

She handed Carl her pass and her mother's pension book. "Give these to the guard with your press card," she said. All visitors had to show identification.

Carl slid the window down and handed over the documents.

Looking across him, Toni saw Hamish McKinnon. "Hi, Hamish, it's me," she called. "I've got two visitors with me."

"Hello, Ms. Gallo," said the guard. "Is that lady in the back holding a dog?"

"Don't ask," she said.

Hamish copied the names and handed back the press card and the pension book. "You'll find Steve in reception."

"Are the phones working?"

"Not yet. The repair crew just left to fetch a spare part." He lifted the barrier, and Carl drove in.

Toni suppressed a wave of irritation at Hibernian Telecom. On a night such as this, they really should carry all the parts they might need. The weather was continuing to get worse, and the roads might soon be impassable. She doubted they would be back before morning.

This spoiled a little plan she had. She had been hoping to phone Stanley in the morning and tell him that there had been a minor problem at the Kremlin overnight but she had solved it—then make arrangements to meet him later in the day. Now it seemed her report might not be so satisfactory.

Carl pulled up at the main entrance. "Wait here," Toni said, and sprang out before he could argue. She did not want him in the building if she could avoid it. She ran up the steps between the stone lions and pushed through the door. She was surprised to see no one at the reception desk.

She hesitated. One of the guards might be on patrol, but they should not both have gone. They could be anywhere in the building—and the door was unguarded.

She headed for the control room. The monitors would show where the guards were.

She was astonished to find the control room empty.

Her heart seemed to go cold. This was very bad. Four guards missing—this was not just a divergence from procedure. Something was wrong.

She looked again at the monitors. They all showed empty rooms. If four guards were in the building, one of them should appear on a monitor within seconds. But there was no movement anywhere.

Then something caught her eye. She looked more closely at the feed from BSL4.

The dateline said December 24. She checked her watch. It was after one o'clock in the morning. Today was Christmas Day, December 25. She was looking at old pictures. Someone had tampered with the feed.

She sat at the workstation and accessed the program. In three minutes she established that all the monitors covering BSL4 were showing yesterday's footage. She corrected them and looked at the screens.

In the lobby outside the changing rooms, four people were sitting on the floor. She stared at the monitor, horrified. Please, God, she thought, don't let them be dead.

One moved.

She looked more closely. They were guards, all in dark uniforms; and their hands were behind their backs, as if they were tied up.

"No, no!" she said aloud.

But there was no escaping from the dismal conclusion that the Kremlin had been raided.

She felt doomed. First Michael Ross, now this. Where had she gone wrong? She had done all she could to make this place secure—and she had failed utterly. She had let Stanley down.

She turned for the door, her first instinct being to rush to BSL4 and untie the captives. Then her police training reasserted itself. Stop, assess the situation, plan the response. Whoever had done this could still be in the building, though her guess was that the villains were the Hibernian Telecom repairmen who had just left. What was her most important task? To make sure she was not the only person who knew about this.