The Amsterdam Chronicles: Def-Con City Trilogy Part 1
Page 52
The sound of the applause in the concert hall just after ten o'clock that evening woke Webber from his nap. Luckily it was Schubert, Chopin and Satie - not Wagner or Rachmaninov, otherwise he would never have slept at all.
Karl waited until just after midnight before he put on the pouch containing the ampoules. Tonight was going to be the toughest assignment yet. The apartments he needed to reach were not as easy as the others, and spread out over different streets with canals between which meant he had to spend more time on the ground than usual.
Next to the rear wall inside his hideout he reached up and grabbed a rectangular metal panel slotted into the roof, then pushed it to one side. The sky was clear, the stars spectacular. The outside temperature was warmer than it had been for the last few weeks, but not warm enough for people to want to sleep on a roof or balcony.
He gripped each side of the large roof beams and propelled himself up, catching the underside of the opening with his feet. He hung in the gap then shimmied down to the flat area of the roof where he picked up a second panel lying out of sight in a corner, and placed it over the exposed hole, sealing off his hideout.
Karl had accidentally found the panel when they were renovating the roof, which gave him the opportunity to create the entrance to the attic. It served its purpose, mostly at night, when there was no concert and alarms were switched on in other parts of the building which restricted his movements. Within a few minutes, he was down on the ground at the rear of the Concertgebouw.
In the distance, he could hear the last of the night trams race by, familiar sounds of steel wheels on rails gave him comfort and a certain amount of reassurance.
He should have been dead, he knew that. It felt good to be able to soak up life as it was in the air in the Vondelpark and the warmth of the sun on his face this afternoon was an experience many failed to appreciate.
A normal part of life for regular people, it came naturally, its uniqueness lost among days of normality. This was life, the true life he could feel and touch, but without the experiments this would never have been possible.
Chapter Thirty-Six