by Dean Koontz
“Thank you ... Billy. ”
“You’re welcome, Dwight.”
Neither Harris nor the woman had started down from the thirty-third-floor setback.
He couldn’t wait any longer. He had squandered too much time already. He would have to go looking for them.
39
Connie hammered a piton into a horizontal mortar seam. She hooked the safety tether to the piton with a carabiner, then untied herself from the main line.
The moment it was free, Graham reeled up the rope.
Climbing this face of the building was proving easier than scaling the front on Lexington Avenue. Not that there was a greater number of setbacks, ledges or foot-holds here than there; the distribution of those was the same. However, the wind was much less fierce on the side street than it had been on Lexington. Here, the snowflakes that struck her face felt like snowflakes and not like tiny bullets. The cold air hugged her legs, but it did not press through her jeans; it didn’t pinch her thighs and stab painfully into her calves as it had done earlier.
She had descended ten floors—and Graham five—since they had seen Bollinger waiting for them at the window. Graham had lowered her to the yard-wide twenty-eighth-floor setback and had rappelled down after her. Below that point there was only one other setback this one at the sixth floor, three hundred and thirty feet down. At the twenty-third level, there was an eighteen-inch-wide decorative ledge—quintessential art deco; the stone was carved into a band of connected, abstract bunches of grapes—and they made that their next goal. Graham belayed her, and she found that the carved ledge was large and strong enough to support her. In less than a minute, powered by his new-found confidence, he would be beside her.
She had no idea what they would do after that. The sixth-floor setback was still a long way off; figuring five yards to a floor, that haven lay two hundred and fifty-five feet below. Their ropes were only one hundred feet long. Between this ledge of stone grapes and the sixth story, there was nothing but a sheer wall and impossibly narrow window ledges.
Graham had assured her that they were not at a dead end. Nevertheless, she was worried.
Overhead, he began to rappel through the falling snow. She was fascinated by the sight. He seemed to be creating the line as he went, weaving it out of his own substance; he resembled a spider that was swinging gracefully, smoothly on its own silk from one point to another on a web that it was constructing.
In seconds he was standing beside her.
She gave him the hammer.
He placed two pitons in the wall between the windows, in different horizontal mortar seams.
He was breathing hard; mist plumed from his open mouth.
“You all right?” she asked.
“So far.”
Without benefit of a safety line, he sidled along the ledge, away from her, his back to the street, his hands pressed against the stone. On this side of the building, the gentler wind had formed miniature drifts on the ledges and on the windowsills. He was putting his feet down in two or three inches of snow and, here and there, on patches of brittle ice.
Connie wanted to ask him where he was going, what he was doing; but she was afraid that if she talked she would distract him and he would fall.
Past the window, he stopped and pounded in another piton, then hung the hammer on the accessory strap at his waist.
He returned, inch by inch, to where he had placed the first two pegs. He snapped his safety harness to one of those pitons.
“What was all that for?” she asked.
“We’re going to rappel down a few floors,” he said. “Both of us. At the same time. On two separate ropes.”
Swallowing hard, she said, “Not me.”
“Yes, you.”
Her heart was thumping so furiously that she thought it might burst. “I can’t do it.”
“You can. You will.”
She shook her head: no.
“You won’t rappel the way I’ve done.”
“That’s for damned sure.”
“I’ve been doing a body rappel. You’ll go down in a seat rappel. It’s safer and easier.”
Although none of her doubts had been allayed, Connie said, “What’s the difference between a body rappel and a seat rappel?”
“I’ll show you in a minute.”
“Take your time.”
He grabbed the hundred-foot line on which he had descended from the twenty-eighth-floor setback. He tugged on it three times, jerked it to the right. Five stories above them, the knot came loose; the rope snaked down.
He caught the line, piled it beside him.
He examined the end of it to see if it was worn, and was satisfied that it wasn’t. He tied a knot in it, looped the rope through the gate of the carabiner. He snapped the carabiner to the free piton that was one mortar seam above the peg that anchored his safety tether.
“We can’t rappel all the way to the street,” Connie said.
“Sure we can.”
“The ropes aren’t long enough.”
“You’ll rappel just five floors at a time. Brace yourself on a window ledge. Then let go of the rappelling line with your right hand—”
“Brace myself on a two-inch sill?”
“It can be done. Don’t forget, you’ll still be holding onto the line with your left hand.”
“Meanwhile, what will my right hand be doing?”
“Smashing in both panes of the window.”
“And then?”
“First, attach your safety tether to the window. Second, snap another carabiner to the center post. As soon as that’s done, you take your weight off the main line and then—”
“Tug on it,” Connie said, “pull apart the overhead knot like you did just a minute ago.”
“I’ll show you how.”
“I catch the line as it falls?”
“Yes.”
“And tie it to the carabiner that I’ve linked to the window post.”
“That’s right.”
Her legs were cold. She stamped her feet on the ledge. “I guess then I unhook my safety line and rappel down five more floors.”
“And brace yourself in another window and repeat the entire routine. We’ll go all the way to the street, but only five stories at a time.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“You’ll manage better than you think. I’ll show you how to use a seat rappel.”
“There’s another problem.”
“What?”
“I don’t know how to tie one of those knots that can be jerked loose from below.”
“It isn’t difficult. I’ll show you.”
He untied the main line from the carabiner in front of him.
She leaned close to him and bent over the rope that he held in both hands. The world-famous glow of Manhattan’s millions of bright lights was screened by the storm. Below, the rimed pavement of the street reflected the light from the many street lamps; but that illumination scarcely affected the purple shadows twenty-three floors above. Nevertheless, if she squinted, she could see what Graham was doing.
In a few minutes, she learned how to attach the rope to the anchor point so that it could be retrieved. She tied it several times to make sure she would not forget how it was done.
Next, Graham looped a sling around her hips and through her crotch. He joined the three end-points of the rope with yet another carabiner.
“Now, about this rappelling,” she said as she gripped the main line. She manufactured a smile that he probably did not see, and she tried not to sound terrified.
Taking another snap link from the accessory strap at his waist, Graham said, “First, I’ve got to link the main line to the sling. Then I’ll show you how you should stand to begin the rappel. I’ll explain—”
He was interrupted by the muffled report of a gun: whump!
Connie looked up.
Bollinger wasn’t above them.
She wondered if she actually had heard a gun or whether the n
oise might have been produced by the wind.
Then she heard it again: whump! There was no doubt. A shot. Two shots. Very close. Inside the building. Somewhere on the twenty-third floor.
Frank Bollinger pushed open the broken door, went into the office, switched on the lights. He stepped around the receptionist’s desk, around a typewriter stand and a Xerox copier. He hurried toward the windows that overlooked the side street.
There was a noise at the window on their right as Bollinger pushed up the rusty latch.
“Follow me,” Graham said.
He was perspiring again. His face was slick with sweat. Under the hood, his moist scalp itched.
He turned away from Connie, from the window that Bollinger was about to open, turned to his left, toward Lexington Avenue. Without benefit of a safety line, he walked the narrow ledge instead of sidling along it. He kept his right hand on the granite for what little sense of security it gave him. He had to place each foot directly in front of the other, as if he were on a tightrope, for the ledge was not wide enough to allow him to walk naturally.
He was fifty feet from the Lexington Avenue face of the highrise. When he and Connie turned the corner on the ledge, they would be out of the line of fire.
Of course, Bollinger would find an office with windows that had a view of Lexington. At most they would gain only a minute or two. But right now, an extra minute of life was worth any effort.
He wanted to look back to see if Connie was having any difficulty, but he didn’t dare. He had to keep his eyes on the ledge ahead of him and carefully judge the placement of each boot.
Before he had gone more than ten feet, he heard Bollinger shouting.
He hunched his shoulders, remembering the psychic vision, anticipating the bullet.
With a shock he realized that Connie was shielding him. He should have sent her ahead, should have placed himself between her and the pistol. If she stopped a bullet that was meant for him, he didn’t want to live. However, it was much too late for him to relinquish the lead. If they stopped they would make even better targets than they already were.
A shot cracked in the darkness.
Then another.
He began to walk faster than was prudent, aware that a misstep would plummet him to the street. His feet slipped on the snow-sheathed stone.
The corner was thirty feet away.
Twenty-five....
Bollinger fired again.
Twenty feet....
He felt the fourth shot before he heard it. The bullet ripped open the left sleeve of his parka, seared through the upper part of his arm.
The impact of the slug made him stumble a bit. He lumbered forward a few quick, unplanned steps. The street appeared to spin wildly below him. With his right hand he pawed helplessly at the side of the building. He put one foot down on the edge of the stone, his heel in empty air. He heard himself shouting but hardly knew what he was saying. His boots gripped in the drifted snow, but they skidded on a patch of ice. When he regained his balance within half a dozen steps, he was amazed that he hadn’t fallen.
At first there was no pain in his arm. He was numb from the shoulder down. It was as if his arm had been blown off. For an instant he wondered if he had been mortally wounded; but he realized that a direct hit would have had more force, would have knocked him off his feet and pitched him off the ledge. In a minute or two the wound would begin to hurt like hell, but it wouldn’t kill him.
Fifteen feet....
He was dizzy.
His legs felt weak.
Probably shock, he thought.
Ten feet....
Another shot. Not so loud as the ones that had come before it. Not as frighteningly close. Fifteen yards away.
At the corner, as he started to inch around onto the Lexington Avenue face of the highrise where a violent wind wrenched at him, he was able to glance back the way he had come. Behind him, the ledge was empty.
Connie was gone.
40
Connie was four or five yards below the thirty-third-floor ledge of stone grapes, swinging slightly, suspended over the street. She couldn’t bear to look down.
Arms extended above her, she held the nylon rope with both hands. She had considerable difficulty maintaining her grip. Strain had numbed her fingers, and she could no longer be certain that she was clutching the line tightly enough to save herself. A moment ago, relaxing her hands without realizing what she was doing, she had slipped down the rope as if it were well greased, covering two yards in a split second before she was able to halt herself.
She had tried to find toeholds. There were none.
She fixed her gaze on the ledge overhead. She expected to see Bollinger.
Minutes ago, when he opened the window on her right and leaned out with the pistol in one hand, she had known at once that he was too close to miss her.
She couldn’t follow Graham toward the Lexington Avenue corner. If she tried that, she would be shot in the back. Instead, she gripped the main line and tried to anticipate the shot. If she had even the slimmest chance of escaping—and she was not convinced that she had—then she would have to act only a fraction of a second before the explosion came. If she didn’t move until or after he fired, she might be dead, and she would certainly be too late to fool him. Fortunately, her timing was perfect; she jumped backward into the void just as he fired, so he must have thought he hit her.
She prayed he would think she was dead. If he had any doubt, he would crawl part of the way through the window, lean over the ledge, see her—and cut the rope.
Although her own plight was serious enough to require all of her attention, she was worried about Graham. She knew that he hadn’t been shot off the ledge, for she would have seen him as he fell past her. He was still up there, but he might be badly wounded.
Whether or not he was hurt, her life depended on his coming back to look for her.
She was not a climber. She didn’t know how to rappel. She didn’t know how to secure her position on the rope. She didn’t know how to do anything but hang there; and she wouldn’t be able to do even that much longer.
She didn’t want to die, refused to die. Even if Graham had been killed already, she didn’t want to follow him into death. She loved him more than she had ever loved anyone else. At times she became frustrated because she could not find the words to express the breadth and depth of her feeling for him. The language of love was inadequate. She ached for him. But she cherished life as well. Getting up in the morning and making French toast for breakfast. Working in the antique shop. Reading a good book. Going out to an exciting movie. So many small delights. Perhaps it was true that the little joys of daily life were insignificant when compared to the intense pleasures of love, but if she was to be denied the ultimate, she would settle willingly for second best. She knew that her attitude in no way cheapened her love for Graham or made suspect the bonds between them. Her love of life was what had drawn him to her and made her so right for him. To Connie, there was but one obscenity, and that was the grave.
Fifteen feet above, someone moved in the light that radiated through the open window.
Bollinger?
Oh, Jesus, no!
But before she could give in to despair, Graham’s face came out of the shadows. He saw her and was stunned. Obviously, he had expected her to be twenty-three stories below, a crumpled corpse on the snow-covered pavement.
“Help me,” she said.
Grinning, he began to reel her up.
“So you read Nietzsche last night. What did you think?”
“I agree with him. ”
“About what?”
“Everything. ”
“Supermen?”
“Especially that. ”
“Why especially?”
“He has to be right. Mankind as we know it has to be an intermediate stage in evolution. Otherwise, everything is so pointless. ”
“Aren’t we the kind of men he was talking about?”
“It s
ure as hell seems to me that we are. But one thing bothers me. I’ve always thought of myself as a liberal. In politics. ”
“So?”
“How do I reconcile liberal, left-of-center politics with a belief in a superior race?”
“No problem, Dwight. Pure, hard-core liberals believe in a superior race. They think they’re it. They believe they’re more intelligent than the general run of mankind, better suited than the little people are to manage the little people’s lives. They think they have the one true vision, the ability to solve all the moral dilemmas of the century. They prefer big government because that is the first step to totalitarianism, toward unquestioned rule by the elite. And of course they see themselves as the elite. Reconcile Nietzsche with liberal politics? That’s no more difficult than reconciling it with extreme right-wing philosophy. ”
Bollinger stopped in front of the door to Opway Electronics, because that office had windows that overlooked Lexington Avenue. He fired the Walther PPK twice; the lock disintegrated under the bullets’ impact.
Weeping, he hugged her with both arms, squeezed her so tightly that he would have cut off her breath if they hadn’t been wearing the insulated parkas. They swayed on the narrow ledge; and for the moment they were unaware of the long drop beside them, temporarily unimpressed by the danger. He didn’t want to let go of her, not ever. He felt as if he had taken a drug, an upper, something to boost his spirits. Considering their circumstances, his mood was unrealistic. Although they were a long way, both in time and in distance, from safety, he was elated; she was alive.
“Where’s Bollinger?” she asked.
Behind Graham, the office was full of light, the window opened. But there was no sign of the killer.
“He probably went to look for me on the Lexington side,” Graham said.
“Then he does think I’m dead.”
“He must. I thought you were.”
“What’s happened to your arm?”
“He shot me.”
“Oh, no!”
“It hurts. And it feels stiff, but that’s all.”
“There’s a lot of blood.”
