His mind raced as he and Katsaris returned to the cargo chute. There was something. The realization went from inchoate to merely murky, but something was better than nothing, hope better than no hope.

Manipulating the fiber-optic cuff, he shifted the field of vision away from the seated soldier and toward the worn staircase that rose up at the end of the room. “Stairway,” he said. “Landing. Ductwork. Ledge.” Projecting out from the midlevel landing was a shelf of poured concrete. “A relatively recent addition—the last few decades, I’d guess, done when the plumbing got modernized.”

“Can’t get there without being spotted.”

“Not necessarily. The period of exposure—going from the landing to the concrete shelf—would be relatively brief, the room is filled with the haze of cigarette smoke, and they’re all playing a pretty damn engrossing round of proter. You still get the principle of simultaneity. It’s just that we’re going to have to resort to the main entrance as well as the chute.”

“This was your backup plan?” Katsaris shot back. “You’re doing more improvising than the Miles Davis Quintet. Jesus, Paul, is this an operation or a jam session?”

“Theo?” It was a request for understanding.

“And what guarantee is there that there won’t be a guard hived off, stationed in the dungeon with the prison?”

“Any close contact with Peter Novak is dangerous. The KLF knows that—they’ll guard him, but they’ll keep him isolated from any of the Kagama rebels.”

“What are they afraid of—that he’ll stab a guard with a cuff link?”

“His words are what they’re afraid of, Theo. In a poor country, the words of a plutocrat are dangerous things—implements of escape more formidable than any hacksaw. That’s why the guards are going to be grouped together, and at some distance from the prisoner. Let the prisoner have the opportunity to strike up a relationship with a single guard, and who knows what manipulations might occur? Remember, Theo, the per capita income in Anura is less than seven hundred dollars a year. Imagine a Kagama guard being drawn into conversation with a man worth tens of billions . You do the math. Everybody knows that Novak is a man of his word. Suppose you’re a Kagama rebel, and he’s telling you that he could make you and your family rich beyond the dreams of avarice. You’re going to start to think about it—it’s human nature. Ideological fervor might immunize some men against that temptation, the way it has with the Caliph. But nobody in command is going to count on it. BSTS—better safe than sorry. So you guard him, but you isolate him, too. It’s the only safe way.”