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Armendariz laughed again, then smacked his hands together. “Jorge here will show you to your quarters. We’ll meet in the great hall at noon, and after lunch—we have roasted a suckling pig, one of our specialties here—we’ll talk business. That should be interesting—no?” After a moment, he added, his voice dropping an octave in tone: “Very interesting indeed.”
62
FERENC WALKED DOWN THEbasement hall, whistling a tune fromOklahoma!—probably the most boring musical ever performed on stage. But he was in a good mood, and he’d grown used to the gloom and damp of his surroundings. He thought with satisfaction about the fat stack of money—unexpectedly large at this point, yet unquestionably deserved—now accumulating interest in an offshore account. Even more satisfying was the fact that, now that the difficult part of his task was basically done—the machine had been repaired to realistic tolerances and, just as important, Pendergast had successfully used it four times—he just had to maintain the thing until the man returned, when he’d get another hefty compensation.
Along with a good possibility of more where that came from.
As he rounded the corner and approached the heavy door leading to the machine, his whistling broke into full-throated voice:
Oh, what a beautiful mornin’
Oh, what a beautiful day
I’ve got a—
What the hell? Something was wrong with the security keypad beside the door. He’d typed in the code and pressed his hand against the fingerprint screen, but the authenticator light remained red. He tried again, with the same result.
As he was about to try a third time, he heard an all-too-familiar voice behind him: “Don’t bother.”
Annoyed, he turned to see Proctor coming down the passage. He was dressed in the usual monochromatic palette: gray mock turtleneck, black sports jacket, dark trousers, black cap-toe Oxfords with extra-thick soles—all purchased, no doubt, in the mercenary department of Brooks Brothers.
“Stop singing,” he said by way of welcome. “I just finished my breakfast.”
“This damn keypad is broken,” Ferenc said.
“It’s not broken.” Stepping in front of Ferenc and shielding his movements from view, he pressed a code into the keypad—more digits than before, from the sound of it—and then used the fingerprint scanner beside it. Now the light turned green and Ferenc heard the lock snap open.
Proctor indicated Ferenc to precede him inside.
“What’s going on?” Ferenc asked as he opened the door.
“Change of protocol.”
Ferenc was about to reply, then stopped. Along the wall nearest the door—the one spot in the makeshift lab that had always remained more or less empty—there was now a small table, with a plain wooden chair beside it. What might be on the table Ferenc didn’t know, because it was completely covered by an olive-green drop cloth. Above this table, close to where the wall met the ceiling, three small devices of unknown function had been installed.
Wordlessly, Ferenc walked over to the machine, picked up the tablet that lay beside his own worktable, and brought the tablet to life with the press of a button. He wasn’t going to give Proctor the satisfaction of asking questions. He didn’t like Proctor—he hadn’t from the first moment he saw him walking up his driveway, and the passing weeks had only deepened that impression. The man was humorless, sarcastic, terse, almost sleepy in his movements even while radiating a cool, lethal ferocity. The fact was, Proctor scared the hell out of Ferenc—but he’d never admit it.
Today’s business was fairly simple. The machine, currently idling, had to be exercised at half power on a regular schedule, like a generator—which, Ferenc thought, it more or less was. Since running the machine was a two-person job, he’d need Proctor for that. Assuming all went well, that only left an hour or two of checking the various components, looking for anything that might be trending toward failure or showing signs of stress or fatigue. This was something he could do on his own—thank God. But it was something the engineer in him knew had to be done: the last two times Pendergast had used the machine, he’d taken along a sidekick of some kind—a cop, Ferenc figured. The present trip was expected to last at least a week. From what he’d gathered—and overheard—this current trip was the main event. Once they emerged from the portal, he’d get the rest of his dough…and the job would be complete.
At this thought, he stole a glance at Proctor. It unnerved him to see the man standing by the door, arms folded, staring back at him.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Ferenc said, put out by the eye contact. “Let’s run this test cycle—while we’re still young.”
Wordlessly, Proctor stepped forward and took up a position at his station, while Ferenc ran through the primary checklist he’d designed. Then they went through the activation sequence, bringing first the main laser, then the secondary laser online.
“Talk to me,” Ferenc said in his best commander’s voice.
“Flatline,” came the equally flatline response.
Ferenc glanced at his set of controls as the familiar humming sound grew louder. “Lattice stable. I’m bringing the fields up to 50 percent.”
More humming. Proctor was staring at his control panel, apparently seeing no abnormalities. Ferenc listened as well as watched. He noticed no glitches, no spikes.
“Thirty seconds,” he said. “Prepare for baseline.”
They went through the power-down sequence until they were once again at idle; Ferenc completed the post-op checklist, and then he readied himself for the tedious process of examining the three main assemblies and their ancillary components. Grabbing a few tools off his worktable, he prepared to duck behind the machine without bothering to wish that bastard Proctor a nice day.
But there was no sound of a door opening and closing. Ferenc waited a minute, then looked over. To his surprise, Proctor—instead of leaving the lab as usual at this point—had taken a seat in the chair by the door and was looking back at him.