"Hey, there"s someone in here," Alastair shouted.
The heavy door slammed shut, plunging the room into complete darkness. A few seconds later I heard Alastair curse somewhere near me.
"Something"s jamming it from the other side. My badge works on the keypad, so the door"s unlocking, except I can"t open it." He paused and added with cla.s.sic British understatement, "I"m rather afraid we can"t get out of here."
14.
The darkness in the vault was so dense and solid there were no shadows, just black and more black. A light like a tiny spotlight flicked on about two feet in front of me. Alastair"s phone. The beam swiveled and found me.
Had someone moved the doorstop and deliberately barricaded us in here, or had Alastair placed it poorly and the weight of the door caused it to swing shut, so this was an accident?
"Alastair, do you-?" I started to say.
"Come here." His voice was harsh with urgency. "Hold this torch so I can try the door again. We haven"t got a lot of time."
I wanted to ask "before what?" but I already knew the answer. I also knew the door wasn"t going to budge.
"It"s not minus twenty degrees Celsius in here, is it?" I asked.
"No. Probably closer to plus five or six." He sounded grim. "Believe me, though, it"s cold enough without protective clothing."
I did some mental math and took his phone. "A few degrees above forty Fahrenheit." All I had on was a sweater, a turtleneck, and lightweight wool pants. "I suppose it"s a stupid idea to suggest using this phone to make a call rather than as a flashlight."
"Nothing, and I do mean sweet b.l.o.o.d.y nothing, will penetrate this vault. Remember, I told you it was built to withstand a nuclear bomb."
"In other words, no one will hear us if we start yelling, either?"
"Not even if someone were standing on the other side of the door," he said. "Which is highly unlikely since, as you saw, this place isn"t used for anything but storage."
"What about the alarm system?"
"There"ve been plans to install one here, but it keeps getting deferred since there"s really nothing to secure. All the funds go for our work."
"Oh."
"Shine that torch on the sensor one more time, will you?" I did as I was told, and Alastair swiped his badge again and again. Each time a mechanism clicked like the door was unlocking, but when he pulled on the handle, nothing moved. "d.a.m.n and b.u.g.g.e.r. It"s jammed shut from the outside."
"How long have we got?" I asked. "And is there another way out of here?"
"Between thirty minutes and an hour before hypothermia sets in. Give or take. And, yes, there is another exit, though I"ve never used it. It"s at the far end of this room."
"Lead the way," I said. "Let me get out my phone. At least we"ll have two flashlights."
"Save yours. We may need it later. But take mine and shine the light so we can see where we"re walking. It wouldn"t do for one of us to take a header over some piece of wood or something we didn"t know was underfoot. I"ll keep one hand on the wall and we"ll eventually reach the other door. Take my other hand. It"ll be like finding our way out of a maze."
Only blindfolded and racing against hypothermia.
I could already feel the cold seeping into my bones as we made our way along the wall of a s.p.a.ce big enough to contain thirty double-decker buses. The darkness never grew any less substantial, though I could make out Alastair as a darker shape in the complete gloom. He sneezed a couple of times, and somewhere above our heads I heard the rustling of something that had been disturbed.
"Bats, I should think," he said.
"I hate bats."
"They won"t bother you."
"So once we open this door," I said, "where will we be?"
"Presuming they haven"t changed the code on the security sensor because it"s not a door anyone uses, we ought to be in a meadow on the far side of the gla.s.shouse."
"Let"s not even discuss changed security codes, shall we?"
He sneezed again and stumbled, pulling me with him. I caught his arm.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes, sorry. I"m having a bit of trouble feeling my feet."
I sucked in my breath. "We"ve got to be almost to that other door."
"I . . . wait, here"s a corner. The door ought to be somewhere along this wall."
To keep him talking and his mind focused, I said, "Do you think someone moved the doorstop?"
"And deliberately locked us in here?"
"Yes."
"Once we get out of here," he said with conviction, "I fully intend to do a data dump on the door sensors that lead to this s.p.a.ce. I"ll find out who came through there after we did and . . . crikey, here we are. The other door. Shine the torch over here."
I obeyed and Alastair wiped the sleeve of his sweater over the pad to clean it before pa.s.sing his badge across it. There was an audible click and, as he turned the door handle, he sounded relieved and triumphant. "Success. Just in the nick of time."
Then silence.
"What-?" I asked.
"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l."
"What"s going on?"
"I can"t open it."
"My G.o.d, it has to open. What"s wrong this time?"
"Come over here and help me push," he said. "I can turn the handle, but there"s something on the other side of the door that"s physically blocking it . . . something heavy."
We both threw our weight against the door, and it moved a fraction of an inch. Or at least I thought it did.
"Try again," I said.
"On three."
But after half a dozen attempts that probably would leave us each with sore, bruised shoulders, he said, "We"re running out of time and we"re losing strength in this cold. I can barely feel my hands and feet anymore."
He"d begun slurring his words. Not a good sign. He already had a bad cold, plus he was older and more frail than I was. Next he"d start becoming disoriented . . . we both would.
I said, "What do you think is blocking the door?"
"I know what"s blocking it. Some of the volunteers have been mulching the garden beds for spring. I saw a truck bringing in bags the other day and a couple of the workers were stacking them near places where they"d be needed."
"If bags of mulch are piled against this door, they"ll weigh a ton," I said. "And if we"re going to open it we need to find something to use as a lever. That way we"ll have more strength."
"A b.l.o.o.d.y brilliant idea. There were some iron rods on the shelves by the other door. If we can insert one of them between this door and the jamb, we might be able to pry it open. If I"m not mistaken the ends were flattened, so I think it"ll be possible to do."
His voice was weaker, but he sounded hopeful and that cheered me up. The light from his phone suddenly dimmed like a guttering candle.
"I"ll get a couple of those rods," I said. "You stay here and save your strength. I"m worried about you."
"No, it"s better to stick together. I don"t think we should split up."
He had a point. If he got confused and wandered off in the darkness, I"d never find him.
"All right," I said. "I don"t suppose you know how long we"ve been in here."
There was a poignant pause before he said, "I"m not sure, but I believe it"s been about twenty minutes. Maybe twenty-five."
Close to the beginning of the end, the outside edge of the danger zone.
"Why don"t I lead the way this time?" I said. "Your phone battery is almost gone. Let"s use mine now."
He started coughing as though he were hacking up something from deep in his chest. He wheezed and said, "All right."
I reached out and found his shoulder. "Alastair, are you okay?"
"I will be when we get out of here."
At least he still said "when."
But by the time we reached the shelving back at the other entrance, we were both shivering uncontrollably. Alastair had almost completely lost the feeling in his hands, so he kept dropping the iron rod until I tucked it under one arm and locked his hands across his chest, making him grip his elbows in a kind of mummy pose. It seemed like it took an eternity to get back to the far door, and I refused to think about how we were going to muster the strength to pry it open.
Or what would happen if we didn"t.
They say in extraordinary life-or-death situations that adrenaline kicks in and wires some message to the brain so that a person possesses an almost superhuman burst of strength enabling him or her to lift a car off the ground so a victim pinned underneath can be rescued or fight off an animal to allow a child to escape to safety. Somehow, between us, Alastair and I found that adrenaline strength, and after much tugging and grunting, we managed to shove the door open so a sliver of daylight appeared. I shouted as loud as I could through the opening, and after what seemed like hours-though it was probably only a couple of minutes-we heard voices on the other side of the door. That was followed by heavy thuds as bags of mulch were flung away and the door, mercifully, swung open and we stumbled outside.
Alastair was in far worse shape than I was. Two men in overalls and mud boots practically carried us to a wooden bench near a series of raised garden beds, and a woman who was working with them called 999, emergency services.
"I need an ambulance and medical a.s.sistance," she said. "The Seed Bank. We"ve got two possible cases of hypothermia. Come as fast as you can."
"I don"t need to go to the hospital," I said. "I"m fine."
"Let"s get you inside, love, and we"ll see about that," one of the men said. He reached down to pick me up in his arms. "We have to start getting you both warmed up."
"I can walk," I said. "If you"ll just support me, I"d rather walk on my own."
I made it inside with someone on each side holding my arms for a.s.sistance, but Alastair, whose lips were a worrying shade of bluish-purple and his skin nearly translucent, was so weak that the two men who"d found us made a seat with their arms and carried him to the infirmary. By the time the ambulance arrived, we were both swaddled in blankets and someone had made us cups of tea. Already I felt better. But there was no doubt Alastair was going to be taken to the local hospital for observation.
"We"d like you to come as well, Ms. Medina," one of the EMTs said to me. "Though we can"t insist. It"s up to you."
"No, thank you. I"ll be all right once I warm up. But I"m worried about Dr. Innes."
"Oh, don"t you worry, we"ll put him as right as rain. We"ll be keeping him at least for the night."
"Sophie." Across the room, Alastair was being helped onto a gurney. Besides the EMTs, a woman in a white lab coat had joined the growing number of people squeezing into the infirmary now that word was apparently spreading about our dramatic rescue. Fiona Eccleston stood next to Alastair, her pleasant face lined with concern.
I overheard the woman in the lab coat say in a clear voice, "I"m sorry, Alastair. I"m positive."
I stood and went over to them, dragging my blankets. "What"s going on?"
"Apparently there was nothing blocking the door to the storage area," Alastair said. "They want to reprogram my badge."
"There was something."
The woman shook her head. "I"m afraid not. Perhaps it was some sort of glitch with the card swipe reader. Obviously there will be a thorough investigation because the consequences could have been tragic," she said. "The only good thing to come out of this is that now installing a security system in that area will become a priority, rather than being deferred all the time."
"Are you ready, Dr. Innes?" One of the EMTs gave me a cursory smile and said, "We need to take him, miss. If you"d like to say goodbye . . . ?"
Alastair reached for my hand with surprising strength and pulled me close. "Watch out," he whispered. "You know what I"m talking about."
I squeezed his hand and whispered back, "Someone blocked that door. Take care of yourself, Alastair. I"ll be in touch tomorrow to see how you"re doing."
He gave me a meaningful look. "You take care, too."
After he left and the infirmary nurse had shooed everyone out of the room, she turned to me. "I think you should stay here and rest for a while before we let you go, my love. You"ve been through a h.e.l.l of an ordeal."
She was smiling and there was nothing in her demeanor to suggest anything but genuine concern for my well-being. It seemed to me that as far as she knew, an unfortunate accident had been averted before it became a tragedy and all was well that ended well.
But Alastair had just warned me to be careful because he believed someone who worked at the Seed Bank had deliberately locked us in the storage room. Maybe he or she had even stopped by the infirmary to check in on us just now and neither of us had known it.
There was no shortage of people from the library who knew my name and knew I was visiting Alastair. Plus the receptionist knew as well. Tomorrow when I spoke to Alastair, I would remind him to check with Fiona and see if she remembered who had been in the library when she had brought me in.
"Thank you, but I can"t stay," I said to the nurse. "I really should be leaving."