Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,30

the operative word here, as she remained unable to see where the Three Stooges were taking her.

With her face pushed down in the rear rubber floor mat, unable to look at her watch, she tried to keep track of the time the best way she knew how—by counting her heartbeats. This was a little trick her E and E (Escape and Evasion) instructor had taught the class. The human heart beats approximately sixty times a minute, he’d told them, so use your heartbeat as a clock to keep track of the time. Waiting until her heart rate had returned to normal, she placed her right forefinger on the pulse in her left wrist and tried to count her heartbeats as best she could, reckoning that it took the cab approximately 12,600 heartbeats, or three and a half hours, to reach its destination. It took all her concentration to keep track, but counting also distracted Jackie from thinking about what lay in store for her once they reached their destination.

Jackie had also been instructed to be aware of her surroundings. If you were in a position where you couldn’t see, her teacher had told her, use your ears to keep track of where you were being taken. During the drive, Jackie could hear the heavy city traffic give way to a more occasional vehicular sound and could feel the road beneath the tires go from the usual smooth running of asphalt to the bounce of unpaved roads, with the accompanying pings of pebbles bouncing up against the sides of the car. Which led her to surmise that she was somewhere in the country.

So now she was in possession of two rough facts about where she was being taken, good to know should she be fortunate enough to extricate herself from this situation.

Finally, the sedan came to a halt, the rear doors opened, and Jackie was ushered out of the vehicle and into a large, featureless building of some unknown function. From nearby, she thought she could hear the sound of ocean waves crashing and smell the tang of salt air—another important clue to her unknown location.

The blindfold and the gag were removed, much to Jackie’s relief. It took several minutes for her eyesight to come back into focus and adjust to the dim light in the room. It was coming from a bare bulb hanging from the low ceiling.

Larry held Jackie’s handbag. He opened it up and dumped its contents out on the floor. Moe knelt down and sifted through the detritus of Jackie’s daily life—lipstick, keys, handkerchief, address book, old movie and theatre stubs—apparently looking for anything that she might use as a weapon or escape device. He came up with a nail file and took it, along with her hotel key. As he rose, he pocketed the potential weapons and left the rest of Jackie’s things, along with the handbag, lying on the floor. Then he and Larry left the room. She heard a metallic clicking sound from outside and assumed that she had been locked in.

Looking around, Jackie quickly inventoried the furnishings of the room, which appeared to be some kind of empty storage space. It didn’t take long, because the only piece of furniture in it was a rickety wooden chair. Jackie sat down on it. One leg was slightly shorter than the other three, making the chair rock like a ship at sea.

From this vantage point, Jackie saw that the door was metal and thick and, most dismaying, without a doorknob or handle. The walls were made of rough poured concrete, and there were no windows or vents to make even the merest hope of escape possible. She tried to get comfortable in the chair and figure out her options. Unfortunately, there were none that she could think of. She would just have to wait for the Stooges to return and take it from there.

She didn’t have long to wait.

After what could only have been a half hour or so—Jackie had stopped counting her heartbeats when they arrived at this unknown destination—Moe and Larry entered the room and stood on either side of her. They motioned for her to rise; then each took hold of one arm and led her out of the room, down a dimly lit hallway, and into another room, the central feature of which was a shallow, funnel-like depression set in the floor. It was blocked at the bottom by what appeared to be a round hatch. Jackie wondered where the hatch