Part 28 (1/2)

A key snapped open the door bolt, startling Charlie. The ancient floorboards in the hallway were so whiney he'd antic.i.p.ated he would be able to hear a caterpillar's approach. The door popped open, and in sailed the man who introduced himself the other night as Smith, attorney with an expertise in negligence suits against boiler manufacturers. His real name was Dewart, Charlie had learned since. It took a beat to recognize him with the swollen face, which was Drummond's handiwork. As was the right wrist*stabilized now in a splint that permitted him full use of the hand. In the hand was a sound-suppressed SIG Sauer.

'Why would our Special Forces leave ammunition for the Vietcong?' came the reporter's voice. She sounded intrigued.

Dewart pantomimed for Charlie to hang up.

Charlie glanced out the window. A man now stood just below, on the ma.s.sage parlor roof, apparently inspecting the elevated water tank.

Charlie sighed in dismay. 'Listen, I'm sorry to have bothered you,' he told the reporter. Over her protest, he ended the call.

'What do you say we go grab a cold one, sport?' Dewart said.

'Gee, that'd be fun,' Charlie said.

He followed him out of the room, head lowered in defeat.

Really he was elated. He'd counted on their coming. He wanted them to think he'd gone to ground at an out-of-the-way fleabag. He wanted them to believe he'd gone so far as to plan an escape route to the neighboring building. Hopefully they'd heard every word of his call to the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post and accordingly believed he would have spilled the beans if Dewart hadn't broken into the hotel room when he did. In fact, Charlie would have revealed little, if anything, that the reporter couldn't have found in the archives of her own paper. But if the Cavalry thought of Charlie Clark as a bean spiller, they would worry that the call to the and accordingly believed he would have spilled the beans if Dewart hadn't broken into the hotel room when he did. In fact, Charlie would have revealed little, if anything, that the reporter couldn't have found in the archives of her own paper. But if the Cavalry thought of Charlie Clark as a bean spiller, they would worry that the call to the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post wasn't the extent of it and that their secret could be making its way into the blogosphere now or onto the morning news. So they would question him. And the response he had at the ready would enable him to get to Drummond. wasn't the extent of it and that their secret could be making its way into the blogosphere now or onto the morning news. So they would question him. And the response he had at the ready would enable him to get to Drummond.

Dewart didn't ask him anything, though. On the way out of the hotel, all he said was, 'The car's just up the block.'

As he drove them out of Little Odessa, Dewart listened to music on the car radio, humming along. 'Silent Night,' of all things.

When the song ended, he unpocketed a pill bottle and tipped two white capsules into his mouth. 'Your old man did a number on my wrist, I'll tell you that,' he said, swallowing the capsules. He chased them with a mouthful of bottled water, then glanced at Charlie. 'You've probably done painkillers before, right?'

Ignoring the implication, Charlie shook his head.

Dewart guzzled more water. 'The pharmacist said cotton mouth was one of the side effects, but this is ridiculous.'

Charlie looked out at Manhattan's sparkling skysc.r.a.pers as they began to appear from behind the big dark shapes on Brooklyn's side of the East River. Maybe Dewart was waiting until they reached 'Cuba' to ask questions. Or maybe he just lacked the requisite clearance.

Instead of taking either the Williamsburg or the Brooklyn Bridge, the most direct routes to Manhattan, Dewart followed the Brooklyn sh.o.r.eline north, into a stretch of darkened warehouses and factories. The East River here was notorious as a gangland corpse depository. Charlie began to think he'd wildly miscalculated. He contemplated opening his door and leaping out. With no traffic to contend with, the car was cruising at fifty. To strike the pavement at that speed would be to do Dewart's job for him.

Dewart swung the car toward the Queensboro Bridge's Manhattan-bound ramp. With an eye at the rearview, he said, 'Well, if anyone tailed us, they've perfected the invisible car.'

Charlie smiled as if amused, but really because he was pleased to be going across the East River rather than into it.

Dewart continued into Manhattan, traversing Central Park at 86th Street. He parked on West 112th, between Broadway and Riverside. By day the block was a ruckus of chatter and honking and boom boxes. Now, at 4:10 A.M., the only signs of life were a gypsy cab prowling for a fare and a few Columbia students who had stayed in town through Christmas break.

Dewart prodded Charlie toward the Perriman Appliances' building. The six-story Georgian postwar was faced with a creamy granite browned by the Manhattan air to match its neighbors, a mid-sized apartment building and a parking garage.

Inside, Perriman was as shoddy as Charlie remembered. Cramped offices surrounded the support staff's network of plastic workstations. The stagnant air smelled of copier toner. The poor souls who answered the phones and tabulated the legitimate end of the business probably hated this place, by design*diminis.h.i.+ng the chance that curiosity would lead them downstairs to the moldy bas.e.m.e.nt and over to the grimy utility closet, then down the flight of stairs the 'utility closet' opened to.

Charlie and Dewart took precisely that route, arriving in a subbas.e.m.e.nt nearly as big as a hockey rink. Unlike the bas.e.m.e.nt*which had been stacked with file boxes, worn-out furniture, and old computers no longer worth the expense of hauling away*the subbas.e.m.e.nt was free of clutter. No reason to maintain the pretence here, Charlie thought.

At the far wall, Dewart pressed a cinder block, which slid aside, revealing a small scanner. He leaned his right eye into its gla.s.s screen. A few seconds later, locks within the wall clicked open. A rusty, seven-foot-high ventilation grate swung outward, exposing a bare concrete tunnel two city blocks long and wide and high enough to accommodate a light truck.

Charlie gazed into the facility in awe of its history. He was also terrified*the Cavalry's decision to make him privy to it was effectively a statement that they had no intention of letting him leave. More than anything, though, he was glad he'd been right.

7.

The eighteen-year-old who would become known in Columbia lore as Poughkeepsie Pete enrolled at the university's School of Engineering in 1990. From his first day on campus, wherever he went, he marveled at the possibility that the hallowed Manhattan Project tunnels might be beneath his feet. Little was known about the complex beyond its role in the Allied victory. Nothing about the offices and laboratories had been decla.s.sified. Entry was forbidden. The facility became Poughkeepsie Pete's holy grail. who would become known in Columbia lore as Poughkeepsie Pete enrolled at the university's School of Engineering in 1990. From his first day on campus, wherever he went, he marveled at the possibility that the hallowed Manhattan Project tunnels might be beneath his feet. Little was known about the complex beyond its role in the Allied victory. Nothing about the offices and laboratories had been decla.s.sified. Entry was forbidden. The facility became Poughkeepsie Pete's holy grail.

He learned that in years past, likeminded students had pried their way past boarded-up parts of Furnald Hall's bas.e.m.e.nt, where the famous grocery store had been. Those who made it farthest entered a dark, cement tunnel, empty but for a few wagon-wheel-sized wooden cable spools stamped U.S. ARMY. After a hundred feet, the tunnel dead-ended. The students turned back, generally thrilled at getting as far as they had.

Trying a brand-new tool, the World Wide Web, Pete found a site with a blueprint of the entire complex. Late one night, he snuck past a campus security guard and into the crew team's indoor rowing tank facility, across the quad from Furnald Hall. He easily hammered through what the same Web site had promised would be a thin plaster wall in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

At the back of a defunct boiler room, using a technique also provided by the site, he picked the lock on what appeared to be a closet door. It opened onto a short tunnel at the end of which he discovered a full-sized laboratory, seemingly frozen in time from 1945. The built-in tables and cabinets had been stripped of all equipment and instruments, save a dusty cathode ray tube. The cathode ray tube later drew dozens of awestruck cla.s.smates to his dorm room, where he held court with the tale of his experience. For years thereafter, Columbia students dodged campus security guards to visit 'Al's,' as the lab became known*Al was Albert Einstein.

A second-year medical student from California thought they were fools. Why didn't they find it odd, he asked, that the same Web site that mysteriously provided the blueprint also provided the method to pick the lock? Or that of the hundreds of kinds of locks, the formidable Manhattan Project complex was protected by perhaps the simplest, a basic pin and tumbler? He suspected the laboratory was real, but utilized as a decoy by someone with extensive knowledge of the complex, the aim being to divert students from the relatively mundane tunnel they'd breeched so often in the past. Although the medical student never had given much thought to the Manhattan Project complex before, he found himself unable to stop wondering what was going on there now.

Determined to find out, on Christmas Eve, 1990, at 11:45 P.M., he accessed Furnald Hall's bas.e.m.e.nt by prying open the shaft of an outmoded service elevator and rappelling down. He sprung the old employee washroom door's intricate lock with a quiet surgical drill. Leaving the door ajar, he crept into the tunnel.

The tunnel ended after about a hundred feet at a grimy cinder block wall. He suspected the rusty ventilation grate there, wadded with a half-century's worth of dust, was really a door*the dead end of a tunnel was an odd place for a ventilation grate. If so, the door probably opened with a retinal scanner concealed somewhere. Even if he knew where, the odds were one in 100,000 at best that his eyeball would open it. If he had brought a torch and five or six tubes of acetylene, or a grenade launcher, the odds would have been a bit better. These were still odds, he thought, that the people inside the complex could live with.

He concealed himself in the core of one of the giant cable spools. He planned to stay the entire weekend, during which time he would not eat. He would drink a minimal amount of a citrus beverage he'd made after reading about it in one of his books on desert survival. The beverage was stored in the small rubber bladder he'd sewn onto his backpack. He'd taken preventive measures so that his bodily waste would be limited to urine, discharged into a tube and stored in the rubber bottle secured to his thigh by spandex bicycling shorts. Just being balled up in the cable spool for so many hours might have been torture, but he'd spent three weekends rehearsing in his small clothes closet. Also he viewed self-deprivation as something of a sport.

His plan hinged on his theory that the tunnel's entry door was outfitted with at least one motion sensor. His backpack contained forty-eight small lab rats. At precisely 12:00 A.M., four minutes after his arrival, he sent the first of his rats scurrying out of the cable spool, through the open tunnel door, and into the Furnald bas.e.m.e.nt, where he'd placed a hunk of cheddar cheese. At exactly every hour on the hour thereafter, he sent another rat on the same course. The first rat was meant to simulate the motion of his own departure. The subsequent rats were intended to make whoever was in the Manhattan Project complex conclude that the motion sensor had gone haywire, then come out to do something about it.

At 9:07 the next morning, the ventilation grate swung outward and two men in business suits emerged. The medical student revealed himself to them and owned up to what he'd done. They invited him into the complex. Although not one for emotional displays, he found himself pumping a fist.

While gloomy, the labyrinthine facility dazzled him. Racing the n.a.z.is to develop 'the gadget,' the Manhattan Project scientists never got around to decorating or even painting the concrete walls. The medical student would learn that when the current occupants moved in, they had no more time or inclination. But in the early '80s, on one of the chaotic August days that Columbia students all arrived on campus, the custodial alley behind Furnald Hall received a truckload of items confiscated by the DEA from a local drug kingpin*tables and chairs and fixtures befitting the Palais de Versailles in jarring combination with furnis.h.i.+ngs better suited to Las Vegas. Typical of the resulting scheme was the conference room, with an elegant antique Persian carpet and a contemporary black lacquer table inlaid with a s.h.i.+ny soaring hawk rendered in silver, gold, and bronze.

At the head of the table on the morning of December 25, 1990, sat Drummond Clark, then in his mid-forties. When brought into his stern glare, the medical student considered for the first time that he might be killed.

'We're undecided what to do with you as yet,' Drummond said. 'Some of my colleagues have suggested that, as a penalty, you have to work here.'

And so, after the usual vetting, Nick Fielding joined the Cavalry.

Now, nearly two decades later, Fielding entered the same boardroom and stood at the head of the same hideous conference table. Snowflakes from the 165th Street helipad still glinted on his suit coat. Drummond sat slumped at the foot of the table, in a chair whose scrolled ironwork formed a pattern of diamonds within diamonds. One of its front legs had been bent so that its occupant couldn't get comfortable. This was a trick as old as interrogation. And it wasn't working: Drummond was fast asleep. If not for the handcuff clamping his right wrist to the arm of the chair, he would have slid to the floor.

'Duck?' Fielding said.

Seeming to snap to, Drummond said, 'Sorry, it's been a long night.'

'How are you feeling?'

'Fine, fine. Yourself?'

'Not so fine. But I'll be better when I find out if you've spilled Placebo.'

Drummond looked him over. 'Oh, I thought you were the fellow who was here before.'

Probably he meant O'Shea, the guard who stood outside the conference room. O'Shea had fair hair like Fielding. He also had fifty more pounds and twenty less years. Fielding was troubled by his mentor's failure to recognize him, but only insofar as he couldn't tell whether it was attributable to illness or artifice.

8.

Ventilators the size of jet engines heaved fresh air into the complex. Still, the tunnel from the Perriman subbas.e.m.e.nt was clammy, the way Charlie imagined a submarine would be. It ended at an ordinary door, through which Dewart ushered him into a stark, concrete hallway lit with fluorescents that caused the walls to s.h.i.+mmer in a dull blue. size of jet engines heaved fresh air into the complex. Still, the tunnel from the Perriman subbas.e.m.e.nt was clammy, the way Charlie imagined a submarine would be. It ended at an ordinary door, through which Dewart ushered him into a stark, concrete hallway lit with fluorescents that caused the walls to s.h.i.+mmer in a dull blue.

In the sporadic dark offices and meeting rooms on both sides, activity was minimal. Charlie saw only a desk chair roll partly into view and a shadow fluctuate just so. His hope that Drummond was still alive rested in large part on the length of time it took to fly an interrogator from the Caribbean to New York. Twice when he tried to ask questions, Dewart shushed him.

Dewart stepped into the employee lounge, an alcove whose amenities included a spotty coffee urn and a refrigerator on which somebody had taped the note THROW OUT OLD MILK. THROW OUT OLD MILK. Still clacking a dry tongue, he opened the refrigerator and plucked out a bottle of Gatorade. Still clacking a dry tongue, he opened the refrigerator and plucked out a bottle of Gatorade.