Tower of Terror Read Online Free PDF Page B

services, and instructions for those officers forced to enter those areas, so that they will not inadvertently endanger the survival of the data systems. We will also have an emergency crew standing by in case of damage to the systems. You must understand what a disaster this could be to our corporation, and to the capitalist enterprise in this country. Is there anything I've forgotten?"
    The butler opened the ten-foot-high hand-carved entry doors. Lyons squinted against the afternoon light.
    "Yeah. How about the names of the people that the terrorists have trapped in the building? Can't forget about
their
survival, can we?"

5
    This is how it happened, hours earlier.
    On the fifty-third floor of the Tower, Charlie Green, Director of Eastern European Accounts for the World Financial Corporation, watched a video display screen.
Saturday morning
— 
what a time to be watching blocks of numbers and commodity codes rolling upwards on a screen and listening to a Russian clerk calling long-distance from Hungary
! The Russian spoke English with a heavy French accent.
    "Mr. Green, this is a State problem. It does not concern your company. If you will be patient..."
    "One hundred and fifty thousand United States dollars this joker carries off in his briefcase, and it doesn't concern us? Please explain that, comrade!"
    "I assure you, the security forces of the People's Socialist Republic of Hungary will not allow the money to leave the country."
    "Where is the money? We're not talking about bankruptcy, but I want to know about the cash. He had the money in the briefcase, and police have him. Do they have the money?"
    "The matter will be investigated completely, I assure you. The dollars United States will be returned to your company. It is very important for the State to clear this problem."
    "If you want to do business with WorldFiCor again, your government
will
clear this problem. Do we understand each other?"
    "You have my complete understanding."
    Green hung up, left his desk. He wore gray sweatpants, a bright red sweatshirt. His running shoes felt clammy on his sockless feet. His suit hung in his office closet. More than twelve hours before, the Vice-President of European Operations had told him they had a problem with an account in Hungary. Would Mr. Green check on it before he left for the weekend?
    "Sure, I'll check on it. I'll chase the jerk to Siberia, is what I'll do," he said to the air.
    "Did you call me, Mr. Green?" Mrs. Forde, his senior office assistant, came into the office. Mrs. Forde, a forty-year-old mother of two, trim and athletic in her tailored gray skirt and jacket, held stacks of printouts. In the outer office, automatic typewriters printed information from Hungary as it simultaneously appeared on the video display.
    "The commies are driving me blinkers," Green said.
    "How can I help?"
    "You can't," he told her, and tried to put his hands in his pockets. There were no pockets on his sweatpants. "Yes you can. Is there a delicatessen where I can get breakfast? How about you? Have you had a chance to eat this morning?"
    "No, thank you, sir, I'm skipping."
    "You? Why, are you dieting?" Green glanced at her. She had a figure like a twenty-year-old. Maybe better.
    "Oh, no, sir," she smiled. "Last night, it was dinner, a concert, disco dancing, then a party with so much to eat. Would you like for me to send one of the temporary girls?"
    "No. I'll be back in half an hour."
    As he walked through the outer office, the temporary girls glanced at his mismatched sweatclothes, flashed him polite smiles. But they didn't pause in their work, stacking and collating sheets of information on the embezzlement and bankruptcy in Hungary. He stopped in midstride.
    "Anyone want coffee? Food, anything. I'll treat."
    One of the temporary girls, a dark-haired twenty-year-old in thick glasses, struggled with two heavy boxes of printouts. "I'll go for you, sir. Just give me a list. I'm going down to Xerox anyway."
    Green took one box