AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I followed West along a path that led to one of the large apartment blocks ahead of us. He stepped off the path and ran across asmall lawn, aiming for a gap between the block and its neighbor. I saw more apartment buildings through the gap, set around a large square.
“Come on,” he said, and when I glanced round I saw the reason for his urgency; there were more police officers coming from almost every direction.
We ran on, passing through the gap between the two buildings, emerging onto the square. A path edged a park that featured a small football pitch and playground.
We ran along the path for a short distance until West suddenly turned right and raced toward the entrance to one of the apartment blocks. He yanked the front door open and held it for me as I struggled to catch up.
“Thanks,” I said breathlessly, but he didn’t acknowledge me. Instead he sprinted across the lobby to an interior door that led further into the building.
We burst into a corridor lined with numbered doors. West ran ahead until he came to apartment 12. There were a couple of locks, but he ignored these and touched the center of the figure 2 in the apartment number.
“Fingerprint reader,” he explained.
The door clicked open and West pushed it wide. As I followed him inside, I glanced down the corridor to see police officers in hot pursuit.
West slammed the front door shut and locked it. Moments later there was the hammering of fists on the other side.
“Come on,” he said, leading me from a narrow hallway into a sparsely furnished living room.
He ran over to a black fabric-covered couch and lifted it surprisingly easily.
“Spring-loaded,” he explained, as the wooden floor beneath the couch slid back to reveal a set of steps.
“Down,” he said.
I did as instructed and hurried down a dozen steps.
He followed and allowed the couch to fall in place behind him. When he reached the bottom of the steps and the couch and hatch had sealed closed, West bolted the mechanisms into position and a light came on.
Above us we heard the thunder of footsteps and then the start of what I’m sure would be many bemused questions in Russian.
“Come on,” West said as he started running down what looked like a very long tunnel.
“What is this place?” I asked, following him.
“It’s the rat run. A way in or out of the embassy without being seen,” he replied. “We bought the apartment and built the tunnel after all those times you had trouble getting in and out.”
It was an impressive escape route.
“A few things changed after your last visit, Jack.”
“The Ambassador?” I asked
“Ambassador Dussler is still here. In fact, he’s waiting at the embassy, eager to see you.”
CHAPTER 86
THE TUNNEL RAN in a straight line for about half a mile. Tiny motion-activated LED lights came on as we approached them, illuminating our way. West slowed to a gentle jog as we left the Moscow police behind us.
“That was a little too close,” he said.
He had the decency not to blame me for being too slow. Each step was making me feel better though, and I was shaking off some of the worst after-effects of the crash.
After six or seven minutes we reached a dead end. The tunnel was capped by a concrete wall. West found a particular area near the bottom right corner and held his palm to it. An optical reader disguised as a patch of concrete scanned his handprint and the wall retracted and then descended into the floor.
We went through the newly created opening into what looked like a ten-feet-long six-feet-wide metal bank vault. Rivetspeppered the walls and thin structural supports propped up the ceiling. There was no door, just a metal wall at the other end, but when the slab of concrete closed and returned to its position, the inner metal wall rose into the ceiling.
“Tempered steel,” West said. “The roof is a solid block that can be dropped into the space, sealing it.”
