Kazimi prayed to Allah for protection and guidance. Then he took a flashlight and, easing along a line that he hoped was beyond the angle of the camera, made his way across to the shelves of cages filling the far wall. Everything appeared normal until he dropped to his knees and shined the light under the bottom shelf, which was three inches above the floor. At the very base of the wall, there was a gap—a dark space no more than half an inch wide, but it was there, running the full length of the wall.

It took only seconds for him to reason out the most likely significance of the narrow gap. He stood and, reaching between two cages, pushed with all his strength. Grudgingly, the wall pivoted inward two inches. His heart pounding like a bucking stallion, he inched along the wall and turned off the fluorescent overheads. Then, shielding the flashlight beam, he returned to the spot between the cages and pushed once more. The pivot was precisely at the midpoint of the wall. The small opening expanded to more than a foot. He turned sideways and in an instant, he was behind the wall.

His mind visualized a single bacteria of the Janus strain, entering a body through a small cut. Like that Doomsday Germ, he was inside his target.

Now to cause some serious trouble.

The wall glided closed more smoothly than it had opened. The darkness was impenetrable. Kazimi took in a breath of musty sea air, and switched on his flashlight. A wall switch was just a few feet away. A moment later, the secret space was bathed in dim incandescent light.

Kazimi’s grin was triumphant. “Don’t give up,” he said out loud as he illuminated a grated metal staircase, descending from the center of the narrow room. “Don’t ever give up.”

At the base of the first five stairs was a rectangular platform, lit from a sconce. If Red Cliff was an exact, modernized replica of a medieval German castle, then this was the escape route should the master’s soldiers fail to hold the keep.

Kazimi climbed aboard the sturdy platform, flicked on his light, and peered down through the grate into what appeared to be a crudely cut vertical shaft. Then he noticed the cables … and the pulleys … and finally, the bands of corroding metal that formed a largely open cage.

He was standing in an ingeniously constructed elevator.

Sea air filled his lungs. From below, he could hear waves crashing on rock. He pictured the boathouse he had seen jutting out from the base of the cliff. That had to be what lay beneath him now. He was standing in the artery that pumped life-giving supplies up into Red Cliff from the sea.