Star was asleep under Wingate’s jacket, a thin windbreaker he’d decided to wear, recalling the cool of the tunnels. Now, as the cold seeped into every part of him, he wished he’d brought a parka. She’d more or less panicked herself into exhaustion, and Cherry had translated her keening wail: Now there is no one to help us. He’d tried to reassure her that the law was steps away from releasing them, but as time passed, her anxiety consumed her, and finally, she had slid down the wall in a heap, her eyes unseeing, and Wingate had settled her on her side. Cherry had given the younger woman the windbreaker earlier. She was made of sterner stuff, but he could tell how cold she was now. She paced, trying to keep warm, beating her hands against herself. They’d been trapped for more than an hour now.
His eyes had adjusted and it was like dusk in the underground pit. Looking up through the pipe, he saw daylight hovering high above him. Thin filaments moved back and forth over the mouth of the pipe twenty-five or so feet above his head and he realized they were leaves and stems of the soy plants in the field above. In the tomblike room, everything had a greyish hue, but he could make out details in the wall, on the ground, and he could see Cherry’s expression. The muscles in her face were slack, but she was alert and alive. He felt a bond to this woman, whose real name he finally knew: Katrina Volkov. From Elizavetgrad.
“I am worry for Stoya,” she said, using Star’s real name. “She is smaller.”
“I’m going to get you both out of here alive,” said Wingate. “You’re going to go home.”
“In a box,” she said. “Silly to take us out of one grave and put us in another.”
“My people know where we are and they’re coming. All you and Stoya have to do is not panic.” But she knew what he knew: the room was inescapable. The door set in concrete was four inches thick and had to weigh half a ton. The room itself had been excavated from within and the structural integrity of the earth on all sides and above and below made it almost as hard as brick. The seams of the room – its edges and corners – were slightly loose from being disturbed, but there was no chance anyone could dig their way out of here. He’d already tested the wall at various points with his fingers and only where three seams met was there any give at all. These were the eight sort-of corners: four rounded ones on the ceiling and four on the floor. It was overall hopeless.
He kept examining the steel lattice that held the pipe closed. It was level with the roof of the room. Why would they have put a grille on that pipe? He’d been worrying this question for an hour now. There was no way up the pipe, of course, but closing the bottom of it off could present the possibility that someone would drop something into it. They were meant to die slowly in here, but the pipe could ensure a quicker demise in an emergency. There would be no escape from water or gas, and an explosive tossed into the pipe would sit at the level of the ceiling and bring tons of earth down on them.
This case had gotten worse and worse. He’d heard of things like this happening, and there had certainly been cases like it in Toronto during his time there, but this operation had been so rustic that its cruelty and deviousness took his breath away. Literally. The illegal casinos were a fact of life everywhere, but to hide something else inside of one, like an afterthought? This was more than a sideline, though. It was the work of a person who could convince others to follow. Wingate wondered now if he would survive to learn if this case would be solved. It would be a pity to die in an unsolved case. Hazel would see to it, though, that his body was recovered and given a proper burial.
When he heard something land in the lattice with a dull clank, he realized, ruefully, that his surmise had been accurate. He’d been good at his job. It made him think ahead. He’d had about half an hour to prepare, but it wasn’t going to be enough. He’d used his belt buckle, but he was fairly sure, when he heard the fuse sizzling in the ceiling, that he was passing his last moments on earth. He thought of David.
Ray Greene had a force of ten men and two mechanical teams descend on the soy fields. Helicopter support had been ordered in from Mayfair, and he could hear them in the distance, closing. The incendiary team blew the door in the grove open and five men went in. The other mechanical, using the gridmap Howard Spere had created, brought an excavation digger to the place they believed the underground hold was. There was no need for Spere’s map: there was an indentation in the wave of soybeans and it led to a small cave-in about two by two metres and ten centimetres at its deepest point. A little scoop in the field. Dust and smoke was still floating up from a circular opening they found in the middle of the plants. Greene called in his other team and told them to collect evidence, but not to enter the tunnels. He sent a second team into the farmhouse. But if Wingate was under the soy, they were probably going to have to dig him out. He sent three more officers to the grove and told the other two to go up on Sideroad 1 and see what LeJeune’s cruiser was doing in the middle of the road.
“Try to go easy,” Greene said, and the guy in the digger gestured at the giant metal scoop he was operating. “Well, try anyway!”
The man let down the head of the digger and scraped a groove in the dirt. Greene winced. When the operator dumped his load, it looked like a beach pail’s worth. Anyone who was down there had a long wait ahead of them, unless they were already dead.
LeJeune rang him on his cell. “Are we still radio silent?”
“As far as I know.”
“And is the detective inspector there?”
“No,” he said, “but your car is.”
“My car? Where is –”
“She traded up. She’s in your colleague’s Mercedes. They’re headed north in it.”
“She dumped my cruiser?”
“Did you know Bellecourt drove a Mercedes?”
“No,” she said, after a moment.
He took a few steps toward the road, where he could see LeJeune’s car better. The two officers were circling it, and one of them was putting his firearm away. The other kneeled at the front of the crushed hood. “It seems to be shorter now.”
“What?”
“We’ll have to work this out later, Commander. I’m trying to dig a hole here.”
“Seems the one you are standing in is deep enough.”
The digger was down almost a quarter of a metre in the middle of the depression. It scraped something, and the operator came out onto his step. “Skip?”
Greene came back to the excavation. “What is it?”
“There’s a pipe down there.”
He waved the digger back as well as the two men returning to the middle of the field. He tested the surface of the indentation as he walked across it to where a plain five-inch pipe was bent against the dirt. He leaned down to it. “Fried banana.”
“Meaning?” asked one of the returning officers.
“Dynamite,” Greene said. He put his eye to the opening and then pulled back, blinking furiously. Before anyone could inquire what had happened, he’d put his face back down and was talking into the pipe. “My name is Superintendent Raymond Greene. Can anyone hear me?”
He turned his ear to the pipe. After a moment, he repeated his message.
There was a faint whisper in his ear. He bolted upright, then anxiously settled himself again. The voice was faint and weak. “My name … Katrina … Volkov.”
“Hello! Hello! Can you hear me?”
“I hear …”
“Are you injured?” he asked. “Can you see or hear anyone else down there?”
But there was no further reply. Greene stood and backed away from the opening. He waved the operator back into his cab. “Get going,” he said. “Do it as quickly and safely as possible.”
He made room and drew his other officers back with him. There were voices in the distance, men emerging from the stairway that led down under the grove.
Wingate had not been alone down there. He’d either been put with other prisoners or he’d been trying to effect a rescue when the place had been blasted. Either way, he was due for a commendation. Greene only hoped he wouldn’t be giving it to him posthumously.