Juice. Aka power. Status. And in some places, slang for electricity. If the door lock was remotely triggered by a signal from a transponder, it must run on electricity. I crossed to the wall by the water tank. Where the fuse box was mounted. It was a decrepit-looking thing. Dark wood. Scuffed and battered. Like an electrocution waiting to happen. I opened its door. There was a row of insulators inside. Old school. Made of porcelain. Six of them. Each cradling an exposed section of fuse wire. They all looked intact. They all looked equally obsolete. There were no labels. No markings. Nothing to indicate which circuits they served. I figured I could pull them, one at a time, and see what happened. But it would be quicker to hit the switch at the top that controlled them all. I reached for it, then stopped. At the bottom, tucked away in the right-hand corner, there was a pack of matches. I was amazed how often people put matches and flashlights in their fuse box. It made no sense. It was the wrong way around. The fuse box is the destination in a power failure. Not a starting point.
I took the pack, struck a match, and flicked the switch. The bulb on the first floor blinked out. The cellar shrunk until it felt no bigger than the flickering pool of light from the flame. I couldn’t see much. I couldn’t swear to it, but I thought I heard something. Behind me. From the wall below the bathroom. A click. Soft. But definitely mechanical.
I moved back to the section I’d been gouging with the knife. I took out my gun. Leaned against the wall. And pushed. It didn’t move. I slammed my shoulder against it. And felt it give. Just an inch. I figured it wasn’t only the lock that was electric. The door itself was motorized. The mechanism wasn’t designed to work without power. So I pushed harder. The panel swung back another inch. And another.
A crack appeared and light shone through. It wasn’t bright. It had kind of an orange tone. But the other side was definitely illuminated. I dropped the match and crushed out the flame with my shoe. I stepped aside. Listened. I picked up no sound at all. No movement. No breathing. I waited a minute. Then I threw my full weight at the door. I kept shoving. The crack stretched to four inches. I dropped into a crouch. My gun was ready. I peered through the gap. I could see a wall of bricks to the right. They were slightly uneven sizes. They’d been whitewashed at some point and now the surface was flaking away. The mortar was crumbling. The floor was covered with the same tiles as the main part of the cellar. There was no sign of Mansour. I braced myself. I expected him to try to push the door back and knock me flying. Or pull it open and send me sprawling at his feet. But nothing happened. There was no movement. No sound. None of the subliminal vibrations emitted by another living creature. I was left with the feeling of being alone. I waited two minutes. Just to be sure. Then I pushed the door until the gap was big enough to squeeze through.
Chapter 36
The room on the far side was empty. There were no people. No things. The other walls were also brick. They had the same peeling surface. But the one ahead of me, at the west side of the house, below the bathroom window, was mainly missing. There was a hole, six feet tall by five feet wide. The top was straight. A steel girder had been installed. Presumably to reinforce the structure. And to stop the whole thing from collapsing. The edges were like cartoon teeth where the bricks had been removed. They’d been knocked out neatly, one by one. On the far side there were more bricks. These were pale yellow. The wall they were part of was curved. It was like looking into a circular passage. Or a giant pipe. But dry. A cable ran down the center of its ceiling. It connected a daisy chain of lightbulbs. They were naked, and threw a subdued golden glow. There was a track set into the floor, like the kind trolleys run on in mines. The passage continued on the level, to the left, for a hundred yards. Then it begin to climb, gradually, until it disappeared from sight. It looked like it originally extended to the right, as well, but now that side was all bricked up.
* * *
—
I had to go back to the main part of the cellar for my phone to pick up any signal. As soon as it was happy, I called Wallwork.
I said to him, “I need a map of the town’s water system.”
Wallwork was silent for a moment. “I might be able to find something online. What exactly do you need to know?”
“I’m in the basement of the house I told you about. The one owned by Dendoncker’s shell company. I found a way into some kind of hidden passage. An old storm drain, maybe. Or a sewer. The guy I was chasing escaped down it. I want to know where it goes.”
“All right. This drain. Does it look old? Or new?”