The Key to Midnight

ice. The shiny, chitinous, gear-jointed fingers of his steel hand reminded her of the grasping legs of certain carnivorous insects.
        Mariko had assured her that she'd find this man less frightening in reality than he was in her nightmares, but the opposite was true: She was weak with terror.
        As he approached the bed, he said, 'Sleepy, little lady?'
        Though it was clear that he expected her to be in a stupor or on the edge of one, her mind wasn't in the least clouded. She wondered if Zaitsev had made a mistake and given her the wrong drug.
        'Hmmm?' he said. 'Sleepy?'
        Fate - or someone in its employ - had given her a last, desperate chance, though it was as thin as an atheist's hope.
        'Let me go,' she said, slurring her voice as though sinking under the influence of the medication. Through her half-closed eyes, she thought that he was suddenly suspicious, and she said, 'Wake up. Gotta… wake up.'
        'You think you're already asleep?' he asked, amusement replacing any suspicion that he might have had. 'You think getting rid of me will be as easy as waking up? Not this time.'
        She closed her eyes and didn't answer him at once, pretending to slip away for a moment. Then she opened her eyes but squinted as if having difficulty focusing on him. 'I… hate you… hate… you,' she said with no edge of true anger, but in a dreamy voice, as though the drug had disconnected her mind from her emotions.
        'Good,' he said. 'I like it when there's hatred.'
        The steel fingers clicked as he reached for her.

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    67
        
        The house was solidly built. Not one step creaked.
        Alex paused at the second-floor landing. The deserted hallway was hung with shadows, illumined only by a weak amber mist of light that drifted into it from the stairwell. The air was redolent of disinfectants and medicinal odors, indicating that Joanna might have been imprisoned twelve years ago in one of these second-floor rooms.
        He was about to investigate the first of the closed doors when he heard voices. He crouched, prepared to run or open fire, but then he realized that he was hearing a conversation in progress downstairs and that no one was approaching. Deciding to explore the second floor later, he descended toward the ground floor.
        In the dimly lighted lower hallway, he edged close to a door from behind which the voices arose. It was ajar an inch, and as he reached it, he heard someone say Joanna's name and then his.
        He risked looking through the crack between the door and the jamb. Beyond was a conference room. Three men sat at a large oval table that could have accommodated a dozen, and a fourth man stood at the tall windows with his back to the others.
        The nearest man was extremely obese. He was opening the end of a roll of Lifesavers.
         Anson Peterson.
        Alex heard the name as if someone had whispered it to him, but he was still alone in the hall. He had never seen the fat man before, yet he knew his name. He was intrigued and still frightened by the sense of being caught up in events as preordained as the course of a bobsled in a luge chute, but he was not surprised. He didn't think anything could surprise him after he'd found his gun in the library desk where he'd somehow known that it would be.
        The next man at the table was unusually large but not obese. Even sitting down he appeared to be tall. Bull neck. Massive shoulders. His face was broad and flat beneath a low brow.
        Again, an inner voice spoke the name: Antonio Paz.
        The third man at the table had coarse black hair, a prominent nose, and deeply set dark eyes. He was shorter than Paz but even more powerfully built.
         Ignacio Carrera.
        The fourth man turned away from the windows and the cascading snow beyond them.
        Alex was capable of surprise after all. The fourth man was Senator Thomas Chelgrin.

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    68
        
        With his mechanical hand, Rotenhausen grasped the sheet, pulled it off Joanna, and tossed it to the floor.
        She was wearing only a thin hospital gown tied in back, but she was so cold inside that the cool air didn't chill her.
        Faking the effects of the drug as she imagined they would have been, she let her eyes swim out of focus and murmured wordlessly to herself.
        'Pretty,' he said, looming.
        She required all the courage that she could summon