I set to work looking for some kind of souvenir for Nikki right away, thumbing through logoed towels, golf tees, coffee mugs, and wine glasses, which, while crystal, didn’t speak to me as being “Nikki.” That took all of thirty seconds, and while the whiskey glasses weren’t top quality, they would do as a cover, so I snagged a box of them. By now a minute had passed, so I peaked around the corner. No sign of Sonia, so I padded my way down the corridor.
On either side, the “lockers” she had indicated, were non-descript, solid looking doors with electronic locks considerably more advanced than what protected the wine cellar. Each door also bore a number, but I had no way of knowing which room belonged to whom.
The corridor extended much farther than I thought it should, with other crossing corridors sectioning off more lockers. The brickwork disappeared, too, in favor of more modern concrete, and the corridor widened to at least eight feet. I didn’t have a GPS signal this far underground, but I figured that we were well beyond the boundaries of the original building, so I began counting steps.
Three hundred more steps and four corridors, and I ran into a wall. It looked like the corridor should continue, but it abruptly ended. I felt around for some kind of secret passage, but couldn’t figure it, but every instinct I had told me that there was something. After all, how did the goods get into the storage lockers? The Club’s conventional loading docks were too far away to truly be useful to moving stuff down here. I was convinced this wall was more than it seemed.
I just didn’t have time to figure it out. I had been away from Sonia for long enough. Much longer, and she would probably start to get suspicious, so I headed back.