Chapter 46

An endless succession of water dripping sounds every two seconds woke Irma Vep. They provided a gentle serenity to counter the violence of having much electricity run through her body. These splashing sounds would usually be an irritating constant but not now. She'd had her sleep, now those drops were the rational sequence Irma needed to reconnect with the world.

Her surroundings were close and narrow; she was in a bluestone cell with a thick steel door, no window, a single bunk and a ventilation shaft. It was the latter that interested her the most. Beyond the grill it traveled upwards. Irma's body had been through much abuse, such physical exertion required to climb it may be too much for her.

She was slow to rouse: gradually moving her fingers and toes; then arms and legs. After wetting her gums she imparted some effort to lift herself up to a sitting position on the bunk.

Irma felt like she had been squeezed through a laundry ringer.

The dripping came from a pipe near the ceiling with a single dull light. There was no hole in the wall, just the shaft grill. A tray dispensing panel was at the door's bottom, but there was no window, barred or otherwise. She had expected better if the Paris police ever caught her.

Touching her wrists told her that both concealed blades had been removed from her jump suit. The hood was still there, though her eye shadow had been wiped away. A finger search around her waist gave a fresh hope for her escape. A mock buckle was still attached, so too was a rectangular stud; she extracted both items and joined them together to form a spanner.

She got up off the bunk and exercised her body, it gradually was restored to full functionality. When the neck twists were finished she focused her attention on the shaft grill, it was bolted into the wall. The spanner was roughly the right size for the nuts; a strained effort was required to loosen each one, but afterward they spun off with ease. Progress was slow but the grill eventually came out.

Irma spent a few minutes catching her breath and preparing herself for the cramped quarters travel. She crawled into and up the shaft, it was narrow; her arms needed only to spread out one foot on either side to press against the sides and lift her upwards until her feet could do likewise and support her. Another heave upwards with her arms gained her a few measures of height until her legs and feet were again called upon to stop her slipping down. This process was repeated with increasingly strained effort Irma feared her recently tortured body may not manage.

It was dark, the light below was getting fainter, and she was getting weaker, she could not see an end to this vertical passage, but she had to persevere. There were no footholds in this shaft, her legs needed to press hard against the sides to stop her plummeting to the bottom. Such a fall would be injurious, the light of her cell below was not visible anymore, she had ascended far when a strained heave upwards brought her head into contact with something metal.

Irma fixed herself on the spot with her overstrained legs then groped the impediment above; it was a grill. She tried to push it up and was relieved to find it was not bolted in. It was heavy but it only needed to lift two inches before sliding aside. One last effort was called upon her arms and legs to lift her through the gap; it was narrower than the shaft but Irma was a thin woman; she slid through with her usual professional grace.

This was a wide horizontal shaft, probably one of the main ones. She could lie down now and relax her limbs. After a few minutes she took an interest in a light source at one end of the dark tunnel. Her limbs had recovered some strength, she began a crawl along the metal floor. Industrial noises of hammering, welding and riveting sounded in the distance. There were no side grills here leading to rooms or laboratories,so there were no distractions until she reached the end louvre.

On the other side was the volcano interior, a high level above the floor. A series of steel catwalks traversed the heights at this level, one led to a bright archway beyond which had to be outside.

The louvre was fixed to the wall so Irma began the repetitive task of applying her crude spanner to the nuts. Silence was maintained while straining her muscles when loosening the firmly tightened bolts; which was just as well; she noticed two machine gun nests perched on a lower catwalk on the volcano interior's other side. A fusilier occupied each nest with their Parabellums directed at the centre catwalk on her level, a look down through the slats revealed two similarly placed machine gun nests on the catwalk just beneath her. They were clearly waiting for a hostile intruder to enter through the archway and walk across the centre.

Irma carefully continued working on the louvre, despite the fact that she could not leave the shaft without being seen by the machine gunners. She was nearly finished when a black clad presence ambulated across the centre catwalk towards the archway. It was a woman carrying a shepherd's staff; her jump suit was much like Irma's except for a cape that shook in the breeze. The hood covered her head but was removed when the figure signaled the far machine gunners: it was when she turned around to signal the other two that Irma's shock memories of electricity coursing through her and that sanity ripping moment when she was facing her own evil face, returned. The face on that black clad woman was her own: the eyes were shaded like hers usually were; the jump suit, an exact copy of her own. This imposter was obviously setting up someone to be ambushed while traversing the catwalk.

"That future man has made another me." Irma thought to herself. "But this double is much more evil than I am. How horrible."

As the black clad figure walked into the bright archway, Irma finished unfixing the louvre, but did not push it out. To proceed any further would certainly mean being seen; she had to wait and observe.

Ape sounds emanated from the light as if something was agitating them. The black clad woman stepped on to the catwalk, she was motioning someone to enter the interior and follow her. In other words she was luring some poor bastard or bastards into a lethal trap. Two guys stepped through the archway onto the catwalk; they were Captain Mors and Lord Greystoke.