Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [67]
“Actually, it’s only about two in the afternoon,” Charlie said, but he understood why his father would think it was nighttime. The perpetual fluorescent twilight of the cellblock offered no clue to the actual hour. Outside light didn’t reach the floor, and for that matter, neither did fresh air. “Also we need you to come up with one of your exit strategies.”
“You want to break out of here?” Drummond asked, more vociferously than discretion dictated. Or maybe it was just the relative silence. Only the buzz of the fluorescent tubes could muffle their conversation.
Charlie whispered, “Of course.”
“Impossible.”
“Why? This isn’t exactly a state-of-the-art maximum-security penitentiary.”
“Well, I have no idea how to do it.”
“Listen, if any of your good old ex-colleagues gets wind of us being here—I should say when they get wind of us being here—we’ll be lucky to get life imprisonment. We’ll be lucky to get life anything.”
Charlie paused to listen to a low-pitched whine, like that of a small plane, flying low.
Had a Cavalry hit team arrived on cue?
The noise died away.
He turned to his father. “You get the deal here, right?”
“Yes, yes, they’ll neutralize us immediately. Alice will be in big trouble too. Where’s our attorney?”
Charlie’s hope shattered.
He gripped one of the rusty bars, expecting it to give a little.
Not a millimeter.
The rust wasn’t even skin-deep. Drive a truck into these bars at full speed: The truck would be accordioned.
How about the breaker switch that opened the wall of bars?
Not just out of reach. Out of sight.
Studying the rest of the cell and coming up empty, Charlie remembered what should have been Step One.
Taking a seat beside Drummond, he asked, “What might a professional covert operations officer do to get out of a place like this—say, a guy who took the two-month Escape and Evasion course at the Farm?”
Drummond sat straighter, only an inch or two, but enough for Charlie to feel a spark of hope. “Spies are only human, and as such can’t pass through solid walls.”
“What about through bars?”
“There’s a gap of, what, three inches between each?”
“But it’s been done, right, and not just by people who went on extreme diets first?”
Drummond nodded. “You do hear those Wild West stories of horses tied to the bars and yanking them free.”
“There’s a start …”
“Taking into account the laws of physics, even with a team of especially strong draft horses, I’d say those stories are apocryphal.”
“Well, we probably won’t have the chance to put it to the test, given that we’re three floors up from the ground and don’t have a window. But, come on, jailbreaks are in the papers all the time.”
“Because they’re news. Are you thinking about breaking out of here?”
Charlie sighed. “It crossed my mind.”
“Would you like to hear an interesting piece of information?”
“Does it have anything to do with getting out of a jail cell?”
“Yes.”
“Then, yes, I’d love to hear an interesting piece of information,” Charlie said, undoubtedly a lifetime first.
“In 1962 three prisoners at Alcatraz used spoons and a vacuum cleaner part to chisel away at the concrete around a fan vent leading from their cell to a utility corridor. They worked during the cellblock’s music hour, so the guards wouldn’t hear, and they concealed their progress with bits of false wall, good enough that the cell passed its inspections. When their escape route was finally ready, they left papier-mâché dummies in the beds, then they climbed through the fan vent—they’d removed the fan blades and the motor ahead of time. That got them into an air shaft. On the way out, they stole some raincoats, which they used to make a rubber raft to get across San Francisco Bay.”
“I thought that no one ever escaped Alcatraz.”
“Correct. They either drowned, or they were shot to death, I forget which.”
“Whatever, you lost me at spoons.”
“They used the spoons to chisel away—”
Drummond was cut short by a gunshotlike crack that reverberated throughout the detention facility.
Charlie froze. “I don’t think that