NATIONAL TREASURE by Barry Faulkner (life books to read .TXT) 📗

‘Look.’

I looked. A metre-square trapdoor was set into the concrete floor. Perhaps there was a cellar beneath? I took a closer look; it had a hasp and staple latch locked by a combination set padlock.

‘Go into the corner and get down facing the wall, with your hands over your ears,’ I told Janie, pointing towards the far corner.

She hurried across and did just that. I shot the padlock off. No silencer on the goon’s gun, so the bang reverberated around the room. Surely they must have heard that in the bar? Quickly I pushed the door bolts across; they were a sturdy kind and would hold fast against anybody trying to open the door from the outside. I kicked the padlock remains off the hasp and pulled up the trapdoor. Inside it looked like a pitch black hole, with an iron stairway fastened on the side disappearing down into the darkness. There was a switch set into the side, so I reached in and flicked it. Twelve feet below a shaft of light lit the bottom of the hole; it led down to a tunnel entrance at the bottom. Only one thing to do then: use it.

‘Down you go.’

This girl was good – no if and buts, she was down that ladder as fast as she could go. I followed and pulled the trapdoor shut above me. It had two good strong gate bolts, their receiving holes drilled into the concrete side of the shaft. I slid them home. With them and the bolts on the room door, this was obviously an escape route for the Bogdans if the law came calling in force.

I stepped off the bottom rung and stood beside Janie, looking along the tunnel. It was a very professional job: three metres-high by two wide, with fluorescent tubes lighting it every ten metres. I half-expected to see a motorbike with stabilizers parked ready to go like the Chapo Guzman prison escape tunnel. No such luck, we had to walk. I started off; were I on my own I would be racing along, but I had to take into account she’d been locked up with no exercise for a while, so the muscles would be complaining by now. I rolled up my balaclava into a beanie hat.

‘You okay?’ I asked over my shoulder.

‘Can we rest?’

‘No.’ I slowed down. ‘Once they find you gone and realise we took the tunnel, they’ll get to wherever it comes out and be waiting – so we need to get there before them.’

‘Okay.’

‘I have to make a call, so take a quick break.’

‘A call?’

I lifted my sweater to show Janie the com,s battery and switched it on. We wouldn’t be too far below ground to block a signal.

‘Nevis to Gold.’

‘Where the fuck have you been? I’ve been calling for ages!’ Gold was angry. Gold doesn’t swear.

‘I’ve got Janie with me – we are in an escape tunnel leading from the club, don’t know where it leads. Will let you know as soon as I do.’

‘Okay, I’m in the car. Keep the line open. There’s not a lot of activity at the club, so perhaps they haven’t noticed she’s gone yet.’

‘Hope so.’

I turned to Janie who couldn’t hear Gold’s side of the conversation coming through my earpiece. ‘My partner thinks they haven’t sussed that you’ve gone yet. We need to keep going to keep ahead of them. Come on.’

I set off again and Janie followed with renewed effort; good news can have a lifting effect.

I estimated we’d gone about three hundred metres when the tunnel ended with another steel door. Large bolts held it firm, but luckily no padlocks; whoever built this tunnel wanted to exit fast, as they were well greased. I slid the bolts across and slowly pulled the door; it opened inwards, which I thought was unusual. As I opened it the light from our tunnel showed another tunnel, a much bigger one forming a T junction with ours going off left and right. It was pitch black. I was about to step out when a Bucharest Metro train hurtled past, causing such an air rush into our tunnel that it flattened the pair of us onto our backs.

I hadn’t seen the rail track from our tunnel as the exit was set in the wall well above it; we had a good five foot drop down to the maintenance walkway that skirted beside it. I leaned carefully and slowly out, looking both ways and listening. Silence. To the left I could see the platform lights of a station about sixty metres away, the train that had sped by was standing at the platform filling with late night revellers on their way home. It blocked out most of the view and would act as a shield stopping people seeing us from the platform as the rear of the last carriage was just poking into the tunnel.

‘Come on.’ I jumped down to the walkway and reached up to help Janie down. We kept stooped down as we hurried towards the rear of the train; there was a platform step up to a door into the rear of the last carriage, and I took it and looked inside through the window. It was a guard’s compartment, no guard; the door from it into the rear carriage proper was shut, with a blind down over the glass. I opened the door and stepped inside, turning to haul Janie up from the line as the train began to move off; she stepped inside and I closed the door as she sank to the floor exhausted. I looked out of the side window; the station was Izvor – didn’t mean a thing to me, but looking back down the fast disappearing empty platform four men had appeared down the stairs from the street above and were congregated at the