Binary - Michael Crichton [52]
It could be anywhere.
Nordmann stuck his head into the room. 'Maybe you should get out of here,' he said. 'We can let the room blow if the tanks are far enough away. No sense in risking anything.'
'I'll stay until we find it,' Graves said. He walked to the window and looked out. He saw Lewis running across the street with the sniffer on his shoulder.
'Five ten,' Phelps said.
It would take Lewis at least two minutes to scramble up all those stairs. Graves stared out the window, wondering what was happening to Wright. Had they managed to cut his body out of the wrecked car yet?
Odd, he thought, how the game continues. 'Lewis is coming,' Phelps said.
'I saw.'
'How much explosive is supposed to be in this room?'
'Twenty pounds.'
'Christ.'
Graves continued to stare out the window. Where would Wright hide twenty pounds of explosive? What would be the supremely logical hiding place? Nothing less would satisfy Wright, he was sure of that.
He shifted his position at the window, careful to avoid the jagged splinters of glass around the sill. As he did so, he looked down at his shirt. There was printing on the shirt; some of the lettering from the tanks had come off on his arms and chest when he had leaned on them. '
"IMEHC" it said, and then faintly, "TON DO"
He looked at his watch. 5:12.
'Where the hell is Lewis?'
Lewis appeared, running down the corridor redfaced and out of breath. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Came as fast as I could.' He turned on his sniffer and walked around the room, pointing the gunlike wand, staring at the dial on the shoulder unit.
Graves and Nordmann watched him.
Lewis began with the door, then turned to the walls. He checked carefully from baseboard to ceiling. In a slow, methodical way he went entirely around the room. Finally he stopped.
5:13.
'You get a reading?'
'No,' Lewis said, checking the machine. 'Nothing.' 'Maybe it's in another room,' Nordmann said.
'I doubt it,' Graves said.
'Let's check it,' Lewis said. He disappeared into the bathroom, worked through it and through the adjoining bedroom of the apartment. He came back a moment later. 'Maybe the machine's broken.'
'How can we test it?'
'Give it a smell of some kind.'
'Like what?'
'Anything strong. Cologne, perfume, food...'
Graves went to the refrigerator, but it was empty. When he came back he saw Nordmann strike a match, blow it out and hold the smoking tip in front of the sniffer wand.
'Off the dial,' Lewis said. 'It works all right. Reading sulphur and carbon, minor phosphorous. It works.'
'Then why isn't it picking up explosive in this room?'
Graves sighed. 'Maybe I was wrong,' he said. 'Maybe there isn't any explosive. Maybe it's all over, after all.'
'There's certainly nothing in here,' Lewis said.
One of the cops came in to Nordmann. 'We're going to carry the tanks down the stairs now,' he said. 'We -'
'Take them one at a time,' Nordmann said. 'I want those tanks well separated from now on.'
'Okay,' the cop said and went back to the hallway.
Graves stared at Lewis. 'Look,' he said, 'there was a lot of information Wright gave us that hasn't paid off. The washing machine, the spray paint...'
As he spoke he wandered restlessly around the apartment, from the living-room into the empty bedroom, them the bathroom. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror.
'We'll probably never know,' Lewis said, 'Maybe they were all false clues designed to throw us.'
'And those plastic tanks,' Graves said. 'We've completely forgotten the fact that -'
He stopped. He stared at himself in the mirror. The lettering from the tanks that had come off on his shirt was clear now. It was reversed in the mirror.
DO NOT
CHEMI
'My God,' he said aloud. 'Of course!' He went running back into the living-room.
'What is it?' Nordmann said.
'What? What?'
'The tanks!' Graves said, going out to the hallway. The first tank was already being carried down the stairs. The second still lay on the hallway floor. It was the black tank, with yellow and white stencilling.