The Talbot Odyssey Read Online Free PDF

lay on his back in the upward-curving culvert, his arms above his head and his head bowed under an immovable metal grate. Tears formed in his eyes. “Stupid . . . moron . . . Stanley, you asshole. . .”
    He looked up at the grate, all that separated him from the cellar of the mansion. He thought about trying to go back, but if he got caught somewhere below, he’d die there and rot and his stink would be awful and they’d call a plumber who would use a Roto-Rooter and . . .
ugh!
    He knew that the Russians would be waiting for him where the culvert opened into the bulrushes, but after a while they’d figure out that he’d gone this way instead. They’d be down here soon and yank him out and shoot him. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. . . .” In anger and frustration he balled his hands into fists and beat against the grate, tears running freely down his face as he sobbed.
    He heard something that sounded like a sharp clink, and stopped. Tentatively he pushed against the grate and it lifted. He cocked his arms and pushed up like a shot-putter, throwing the heavy grate into the air with a strength he didn’t know he had. The grate crashed to the concrete floor a few feet away.
    Before the adrenaline gave way to the paralyzing muscle fatigue he felt, Stanley grabbed the sides of the opening, pulling and kicking at the same time, heaving himself up and out of the hole, then tumbling onto the floor.
    He lay there on the cold concrete for several seconds, breathing heavily, feeling his muscles flutter and his body shake. He drew a deep breath and stood unsteadily. “Well, that wasn’t so bad.”
    Stanley brushed himself, straightened his clothes, and checked his gear. Everything was in place including the tightly girthed flag.
    He looked quickly around. He was in the boiler room. Three huge furnaces stood across the room along with three hot-water tanks and oil tanks.
    He opened a crudely made wooden door and passed into an unlit room. He found an overhead pull chain and turned on a single light bulb. He looked around. Stacks and stacks of boxes filled with canned foods lined the walls and formed aisles in the immense space. “Christ, they could feed an army.”
    He turned on his flashlight and walked through the storage space, reading the familiar brand names until he came to a door. He listened, but could hear nothing. He opened the door and entered a room filled top to bottom with steel file cabinets. He selected one at random and pulled open a drawer, shining his light on the file tabs marked with Cyrillic lettering. He extracted a sheaf of papers and stared at the top one. “Crazy goddamned language . . .” He stuffed the entire sheaf into his field bag and continued walking.
    He could see basement windows, opening out to window wells, but there were bars over all of them. He knew he had to find a cellar door that led outside. He could faintly hear music, talking, and laughing in the room above. He continued prowling around the cluttered area.
    His flashlight picked out something on the wall, and he steadied the beam on it, then walked toward it. He played the beam around the area and counted three large electrical panels. He opened one of them. Inside were two rows of modern circuit breakers. They were all marked in Russian, leading Stanley to believe that it had not been an American electrician who installed the new system. Stanley retrieved his Minolta and slid the close-up lens into place. He stood directly in front of the electrical panel and held the camera cord straight out to measure fifty centimeters. He framed the panel, stood perfectly still, closed his eyes, and hit the shutter button. The camera flashed. He moved to the next two panels and shot two more pictures. Now he had proof that he’d been in the mansion itself.
    Stanley played his flashlight around and spotted something on the floor to the right of the electrical panels. He quickly moved closer to it and knelt. It was a big brute of a generator,