“Knock, knock,” whispered Jay. “Comfy in there?”
“Let’s get this over with,” Ren whispered back.
“What are you complaining about, tailor boy? You get to sit there and wait for my signal while Plank and I do the talking and string-pulling. Sounds simple enough to me.” Jay’s words were teasing, but Ren didn’t hear any playfulness in them. He had a hunch that Jay was thinking the very same thing he was — how if this plan didn’t go well, then they’d likely be dead before the night was over.
“Where’s Plank?” Ren said, shuddering as Jay dumped three more bags of garbage into the can.
“She’s on her way. You know, she was a little skeptical about you joining the mission so late in the game when she had been expecting your dad. But Marty vouched for you, so she’s completely on board.”
Ren huffed at the thought of Plank not trusting him. He wasn’t the Nazi. But if she truly believed in the Resistance and in the mission itself, then he couldn’t really blame her for doubting a “tadpole’s” abilities.
Jay placed a lid on the garbage can. “Showtime. Sit tight and don’t make a peep.”
Whistling a little tune as he went, Jay rolled the garbage from corridor to corridor until he slowed it to a stop. They must have reached the security office. Ren held himself absolutely still as Jay knocked on the door and one of the security guards on duty answered.
“I’m here to clean the office,” Jay said, using a humble voice that Ren had never heard before. “I also brought your new uniforms to change into. My supervisor sent out a notice about them earlier.”
“We didn’t get any notices,” the guard said gruffly. “And we don’t need new uniforms.”
“My sincerest apologies. The notice might have gotten lost.” Jay’s voice lowered a decibel. “If you haven’t heard already, there has been an outbreak of Rocky Mountain lice on the first floor. Just to be safe, we need to bleach the floors and wash your uniforms in boiling water.”
There was a pause. “Rocky Mountain lice?”
“They’re like regular lice except they’re much harder to get rid of. Not to mention the bloodsucking part,” explained Jay, somberly serious. He was lying through his teeth — there was no such thing as Rocky Mountain lice — but Jay delivered his lines with such earnestness that Ren almost believed him, too. “We have to keep the infestation hush-hush because the ball is coming up so soon, which means we’re bleaching the floors in every room. If you don’t mind changing out of your uniforms, I can take care of them after I’m finished.”
Soon, the second security guard on duty joined the conversation at the door. He sounded strangely familiar to Ren. “What if the lice got to us already?”
“A hot shower can definitely help. The bugs don’t like that,” offered Jay.
A cramp spiked in Ren’s calf while the guards murmured about what they should do. One of them even whispered how he had felt a little itchy since lunchtime.
“Watch my station,” the first security guard said to the second. “I’ll shower and change first, and then we can switch out.”
The first security guard hurried out of the room, and Ren silently cheered. Now there was only one left to get rid of, but that was where Plank was supposed to come in — whenever she decided to show up.
Ren counted the seconds, waiting for her arrival. Jay had said not to worry, but Ren was already plotting what-ifs. What if she had gotten held up? What if she had gotten cold feet? What if she was turning them in right this moment?
A new set of footsteps came down the hall, the click-clack of heeled shoes. Ren dared to hope that it was Plank.
“Oh, good. You’re here,” said Fräulein Plank to the remaining security guard. She sounded a little breathless. “I could use your help, Sasaki-sama.”
Ren resisted a groan. That was why this security guard had sounded familiar to him — it was his old friend Sasaki. He and Plank must have known each other if she called him by name.
“Is something wrong, Fräulein?” said Sasaki. His polite tone couldn’t have been more different from how he barked orders to Ren in the bunkroom. Ren’s hands fisted as he thought about polishing Sasaki’s boots and getting spat upon. It took a few seconds for him to calm himself.
“I have to drop off these files on the sixth floor, but I’m having trouble with my security card at the elevator. Could you swipe me in?” Plank said sweetly.
“I can’t leave this room unattended, Fräulein. Could you wait until my partner gets back?” said Sasaki.
“This won’t take long, I promise.” Fräulein Plank’s voice lowered. “These files are meant for Crown Princess Katsura, you know. They came straight from Tokyo and I really need to bring them upstairs. Won’t you help a girl out?”
Ren braced himself inside the garbage can. That was another lie they were using tonight, and if Sasaki sniffed it out, they would definitely get hauled in for an interrogation. There were no urgent files sent from Japan — Plank was merely using a manila envelope filled with old office paper.
“Please, Sasaki-sama?” said Fräulein Plank, her words dripping with syrup. “I’d be so grateful. It’ll only take a minute, and after your shift we could grab a cup of tea.”
Ren waited for Sasaki to turn her down. How could Sasaki fall for this? But then —
“I suppose if it’ll only take a minute …,” Sasaki said.
Ren could almost see the smile radiating from Plank’s face. “You’re such a lifesaver,” she gushed. “It won’t take us long at all. I promise.”
Their voices trailed off as they left the security room behind, and Ren felt a hearty knock on the side of the garbage can.
“You’re up, TB.” Jay removed the lid and helped Ren out of the can. Blinking under the fluorescent lights, Ren saw over thirty video monitors in front of him, capturing every angle of the Fortress and switching every few seconds from feed to feed. But there, tucked in a corner, he spotted three file cabinets and made a beeline for them.
Mop in hand, Jay strode to the open door. “I’ll keep watch. We’ll have a couple of minutes at most.”
Ren didn’t even bother replying; he didn’t want to waste a second. He opened the first drawer and thumbed through the folders, his eyes scanning for any key word that he and Jay had discussed earlier. Floor plan. Blueprint. Map. But nothing popped up.
“Find anything?” Jay whispered.
“Still looking.” Ren opened the bottom cabinet and started the search again, but his fingers only landed on criminal records and tech manuals and endless spreadsheets that had nothing to do with what he needed. By the time he reached for a new drawer, his hopes were shriveling fast.
Until his gaze snagged on a phrase. Facility Plans, circa 1989. He cocked his head and pulled it out.
It was a map. Jackpot. But soon Ren’s brows knitted together because this map showed nothing that he recognized. He didn’t see the hotel lobby or the ballroom or the workers’ wing. Instead, the diagram showed something else completely — small rooms labeled Storage, with a few stairwells and a crisscross of narrow hallways. Tunnels, maybe? His eyes zigzagged across the paper, and there in the corner he saw the phrase Access Restricted.
Ren’s neurons fired fast. He noticed that there weren’t any windows on this map, either. Could this be a sublevel of the hotel? An underground facility? He’d never heard of such a thing, but this might be what they were looking for — if there was an exit to the outside.
“Did you find something?” Jay whispered.
“I think so.”
“Good,” said Jay, sweeping his mop furiously around the door, “because one of the guards is heading back right now.”
“Stall him.”
“You kidding? Get inside!”
But Ren lingered. He was so close. Too close. He needed another minute, maybe half of that if he hurried. He stared at the diagram, searching desperately for an access point to get down to this sublevel so that they could explore it.
A hand fell
on Ren’s shoulder. “I said come on!” said Jay.
Ren barely had time to shove the map back into place, shut the drawer, and fold himself into the garbage can before Jay slammed the lid back on. Just then, footsteps marched into the room.
“I’m finished here,” said Jay. Ren could hear the nervous twinge in his voice. “Let me take your old uniform and I can be off.”
“What happened to Sasaki?” said the guard.
“He went to help Fräulein Plank with her security card, but he’ll return in a minute.” Jay spoke fast, probably too fast, but he was ready to get out of the security office. And so was Ren.
Before the security guard could pepper Jay with more questions, Jay wheeled the garbage can the same way they had come. It felt like hours had passed before they returned to the janitorial closet, and even then Ren waited for the door to shut before he dared to breathe.
Jay removed the lid and offered Ren a clammy hand. “We’re clear.”
Ren brushed himself off, although he couldn’t get rid of the sour smell clinging to his uniform, but a quick change and a hot shower would fix that. What mattered was that they had breached the security room without getting caught. They’d beaten the odds. “We did it.”
“We almost didn’t. You really put our necks on the line, Ren.” Jay crossed his arms — and he looked mad.
“I’m sorry. It was stupid of me, I know, but I was so close,” said Ren.
“It better be worth it. What did you find?”
“The Fortress has a sublevel or a basement that was closed off at some point. I found a map of a network of tunnels that might lead outside. It’ll take some work, but we could take Aiko from the top floor and down to the basement and out to the car.”
Jay chewed on this information. “How do we get to this basement exactly?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I needed more time.” Ren watched Jay’s face fall, and it hit him like a punch. “But I did notice something called Stairwell Fifteen. If we could locate that, it should lead us underground.”
Jay shook his head. “I’ve swept all sorts of stairwells, and I haven’t seen any with numbers.”
“Maybe they had them at some point.”
“Maybe. I guess.”
Ren could hear Jay’s frustration, and he swelled with guilt. Both Jay and Plank had done their jobs. It was Ren who had misfired. If he wanted to salvage this mission, he needed to fix it.
“I’ll find a way to the basement,” Ren said firmly. “I’ll figure something out.”
“We’ll keep trying. Don’t have much of a choice.” Jay pinched the bridge of his nose, his usual easiness nowhere to be found. “Right now, though, I could really use a deck of cards.”
This was news to Ren. “You’re playing poker tonight? How are you getting out of the Fortress?”
“I’m friendly with one of the checkpoint guards, and I could use a little relaxation. I can’t disappoint Marty, either. I lost a bet with her a while ago, and she’s making me donate half of my earnings to her little Resistance fund.”
“Could you get me out, too?” Ren said, the question spilling out of him. Even if he only got an hour with Marty and his father, it would be worth it. He wouldn’t even mind if his dad spent the whole time lecturing him.
“Not this time, TB.” Jay sounded genuinely apologetic but like he wouldn’t budge on the matter. “It’ll be too risky to sneak us both out.”
“Oh. Right.” Ren coughed to hide his disappointment. “Be careful out there.”
“I do have a little good news, though. I saw your cousin at lunch today and relayed your message about the vials. She’s going to pass that on to the San Francisco cell, and she told me to tell you that she’s proud of you and that your dad is doing fine.” Jay shifted his head from side to side, working out a crick in his neck. “Anyway, I should go. Stay here for a few minutes after I leave. I don’t want anyone seeing us heading out together.”
Ren nodded. “Good luck with your game.”
“I’ll need it. Good night, tailor boy.”
For the first time in days, Ren saw a glimmer of hope on his horizon. There was just a glint of it, but it was there, all shiny and golden and ready for the picking.
Little did Ren realize how fleeting that hope would be.
After a solid night of sleep, Ren tackled the Wednesday workday with yesterday’s hope glowing inside him. There was a lot of work ahead, but they had gotten the mission back on track — and that was no small feat. Now he and Jay and Plank had to figure out how to get to the Fortress’s sublevel and scout out another escape route. And with only two and a half days before the ball, they’d have to make every minute count.
Ren slipped out of his bunkroom a full hour before the alarm went off, hoping to avoid Sasaki and his friends, and luckily his early rising paid off. Not only did Ren evade the soldiers, he bought himself a little time to search for Stairwell 15. With the hallways almost empty, he peeked inside a few cleaning closets, then the kitchens, then a couple of storage areas. In case anyone asked him what he was doing, he had slung a bag of dirty laundry over one shoulder so that he could claim he was looking for the laundries. Fortunately, Ren didn’t have to explain himself to anyone. Unfortunately, though, he didn’t find any secret stairwells.
Ren’s scouting trip came to a quick end once his shift started, but as he readied a rack with the ten-year-old class’s dress uniforms he kept thinking about the escape route. Even if he found a new way out of the hotel, that still left the problem of sneaking Aiko’s unconscious body out of the penthouse. Jay had brought up the idea of hiding the princess in a cleaning cart and simply wheeling her down to the elevator, which might work. But they would have to move Aiko from the cleaning cart and into the sublevel and out to the getaway car that Plank would be driving. She had swiped the keys to a company car.
There were so many details that Ren needed to get right, and the weight of it sat heavily on his shoulders. He had one chance to pull this off … or the mission would be a bust and the prisoners would remain stuck at Alcatraz — and he’d lose his chance of finding out what had happened to his mom.
Ms. Clarke clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Finish your stitches and let’s get going.”
The rest of the team nodded and stood at their workstations, but Ren had no clue what was going on. He was supposed to head to the cadet changing rooms in fifteen minutes.
Ms. Clarke noted his confusion. “We have to go to the common room, remember? There was an announcement at breakfast.”
“I didn’t go to breakfast. What kind of announcement?” As soon as he asked that, fear spread through Ren’s insides. There was only one kind of announcement that the Empire usually made.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Ms. Clarke replied, elbowing him out.
When Ren reached the common room, he found it already crammed full with people. The ratty sofas had been pushed to the walls to make room for everyone around the lone black-and-white television. Some of the maids had sat down on the couches, with a few gardeners leaning against the armrests. No one stood close to the television. Nobody wanted a front-row view to this show, even though they were spared from watching it on the beach. With the ball looming so close, the Fortress couldn’t waste any time by sending its workers to the shore.
The room hushed as three soldiers entered the room. One of them clicked on the television and turned the dial to the state news channel. The anthem had already started, and the soldiers gestured for everyone to join in. Ren pretended to sing along while he looked around for Jay, wondering if his friend had wiggled out of watching the broadcast.
The cooks next to Ren began whispering. “Who are they going to kill this time?” one of them said.
“Just be glad it isn’t one of us,” another replied.
Ren stood silently as they talked, and he was sure the Empire would have smiled at their exchange. For years, the Empire had made Americans believe that if they obeyed the laws and rat
ted on their neighbors, then they would be safe. This line of thinking had pitted American against American, dividing communities and possible allies while the Empire did whatever it wanted. It was a smart strategy, and Ren relished the thought of dismantling it one day. Hopefully, one day very soon. He never wanted to attend another one of these broadcasts again.
The anthem concluded, and the cameras swept across the rough seas and up the cliffs and zeroed in once again on Crown Prince Katsura. His makeup looked heavier than the last time — more foundation on his cheeks and more concealer covering the underside of his eyes. It looked like something was keeping him awake at night, perhaps the Viper’s whereabouts. Ren felt no remorse about making the crown prince lose sleep, but his stomach churned over what this meant for the WAT. As long as the Viper remained at large, the Empire would keep slaughtering Americans who didn’t deserve to die. There would be more Daisy Montgomerys, and every one of them would weigh on Ren’s conscience. A tangle of emotions hit him hard in the chest — hopelessness and desperation and a hot spike of wrath. He began counting to twenty before he lost it in front of all these people.
“Citizens of the Western American Territories, I speak to you again from Fort Tomogashima. I had hoped that our last meeting would have encouraged the criminal known as the Viper to come forward, but the Viper lacks both dignity and honor. He hides in the shadows while his treacherous ideas infest the minds of innocent civilians. Until the Viper is caught, I have no choice but to continue broadcasting from these cliffs.”
So much for your “reforms,” Ren thought bitterly. Maybe the crown prince had once believed in bringing change to the territories, but now he was like any other minion of the Empire — as soon as he began losing face, he was quick to curl his fists.
“As guardian of the Western American Territories, I will not tolerate the spread of the Viper’s vile disease.” Crown Prince Katsura signaled to Major Endo. “Bring them forward.”
Them? thought Ren.
Major Endo escorted not one but three prisoners from the helicopter and toward Crown Prince Katsura. Hoods covered their heads, and handcuffs restrained their hands behind their backs. Ren leaned forward, trying to figure out who these “criminals” were. None of them looked thick enough to be his father, but he couldn’t rule out Marty just yet.
Live in Infamy Page 11
