been wearing with that of the superintendent. Even unconscious, the man would be his ticket out.
The steel gate at the west service exit bore a white-and-red sign that stated the policy bluntly: USE OF THIS PASSAGEWAY BY NONAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL STRICTLY PROHIBITED: ALARM WILL SOUND. There was no keyhole or card reader by the push bar. Instead, there was something far more formidable: a wall-mounted device whose simple interface consisted of a horizontal glass rectangle and a push button. It was a retinal-scan device, and it was virtually infallible. The capillaries that emerge from the optic nerve and radiate through the retina had a unique configuration in every individual. Unlike fingerprint-based readers, which worked with only sixty indices of resemblance, retinal scans involved many hundreds of them. As a result, retinal-scan devices had a false-accept rate that was essentially zero.
Which wasn't the same as fool-proof.
Say hello to your authorized personnel, Ambler thought as he put his arms beneath those of the unconscious supervisor, hoisting him before the scanner and holding his eyes open with his fingers. He pushed the button with his left elbow, and two bursts of red light came from the scanner glass. After a couple of long seconds, there was the sound of a whirring motor from inside the steel door, and it swung open. Ambler let the man drop to the floor, walked through the gate and then up a short flight of concrete steps.
He was at a loading dock at the west side of the building, breathing unfiltered air for the first time in a very long while. The day was overcast: cold, wet, dismal. But he was
outside.
A giddy, silly feeling rose in him, fleetingly, clamped down by a larger anxiety. He was in greater danger than ever before. From Laurel Holland he knew about the electrified perimeter fencing. The only way out was to be officially escorted out-or to be one of the official escorts.
He heard the distant sound of a motorboat and then, closer by, another motorized sound. An electric vehicle, like an oversize golf cart, was driving up to the south side of the building. In short order, a gurney was wheeled up to the back. The electric cart would take the patient to the boat.
Ambler took a deep breath, strode around the building, and ran up to the vehicle, banging on the driver's side. The driver regarded him warily.
You're calm; you re bored. It's just a job.
"They told me I was supposed to stick with the heart-attack guy all the way to the medical center," Ambler said, climbing aboard. Meaning:
I'm no happier with the assignment than you are.
"Newbies get all the shit jobs," he went on. The tone was of mild complaint, the message one of apology. He folded his arms on his chest, concealing his badge and its ill-matched photo ID. "This joint's the same as every place I ever worked."
"You with Barlowe's team?" the driver grunted.
Barlowe? "You know it."
"He's a real shitheel, isn't he?"
"You know it," Ambler repeated.
At the wharf, the men who were in the express cruiser-the boat's pilot, a paramedic, and an armed guard-grumbled when they were told that the body was to be accompanied by an attendant from the facility. They weren't trusted to do the job right? Was that the message? Besides, the paramedic pointed out, the patient was already dead. This was going to be a morgue run. But the combination of Ambler's blase manner and the driver's shoulder shrugging reassured them, and nobody wanted to loiter in this weather. The crew members each grabbed one end of the aluminum-framed stretcher, shivering slightly in their navy windbreakers as they transported the body to a below-deck sleeping berth, toward the rear of the boat.
The forty-foot Culver Ultra Jet was smaller than the vessels that transported staff to and from the facility. It was also speedier: with its twin five-hundred-horsepower jet drives, it could complete the distance to the coastal medical center in ten minutes, faster than it would take to summon, land, and load a helicopter from either the Langley Air Force Base or the U.S. Naval Base. Ambler kept close to the pilot; the boat was a recent military model, and he wanted to make sure he understood the control panels. He watched as the pilot adjusted the stern and bow thrusters, then shifted the throttle to full. The boat was riding high in the water now, pressing past thirty-five knots.
It would be ten minutes to shore. Would the ruse survive that long? It