The World Beneath (Joe Tesla) (10 page)

Doors worked both ways. Anyone might come or go through that lie.

Chapter 12

November 28, 9:55 a.m.

Office building

Tuckahoe, New York

Dr. Dubois ran a finger inside his collar under his damned designer tie. He found his office too hot, as he always did in winter, but he at least preferred this to the sweltering heat of Cuba. Even before the escape of Subject 523, he’d hated the island. Every time he’d gone out into the humid air, something had crawled on him, flew at him, or stung him. He preferred nature contained and controlled, as it was in his office.

He glanced around the room. It was just the way he liked it—glass desk spotless, ergonomic chair properly adjusted, a purposefully uncomfortable visitor’s chair facing the desk, a dust-free computer and monitor, and a few prints of waves painted by an allegedly famous artist. His secretary had picked them out—nature in a frame.

His only personal touch was the putter that leaned in the corner behind the door, a putting cup next to it. Golfing cleared his mind. And, after the distasteful events in Cuba, he liked having something within reach that could be used as a weapon.

He scrolled through his online calendar. Yesterday he’d interviewed yet another unsatisfactory candidate for Dr. Johansson’s job. The woman had proved harder to replace than he had anticipated. Since her death, his workload had more than doubled.

With a grunt, he shifted the position of his wounded leg. The doctors kept telling him how lucky he was that it hadn’t been worse. The bullet had missed his artery, or he would have bled out on the foul Cuban ground. The bullet had missed the bone, too, or he’d have needed emergency surgery performed by an underpaid Navy hack right there on the island. Neither of these so-called lucky circumstances changed the fact that the leg hurt like hell, then and now, or that his wife had to drive him back and forth from work, sighing each time she turned on the car, as if he’d gotten himself shot just to annoy her.

Pain pills in his drawer beckoned, but he wouldn’t let himself take them. They dulled his mind, and he had important things to do today. He was scheduled to speak to another candidate to replace Dr. Johansson, but first he’d be meeting with a source on the Senate Armed Services Committee. The meeting wasn’t on the calendar, so that they both could deny that it had ever happened.

His gaze strayed to the secure cell phone on his desk. He expected a call from Mr. Saddiq today about 523’s status, but the phone hadn’t rung yet. It would be good news. The deadline he’d worked so many years to achieve was so close. He needed things to stay stable for just a few more days.

His intercom buzzed.

“Your ten o’clock is here,” said the nearly mechanical voice of his secretary.

He hadn’t given her the name of the man he would be meeting. She didn’t need to know it. “Show him in.”

Roderick Kirkland swept through the door with a sense of entitlement that surrounded him like a fog. He sat uninvited. “There's going to be a shakeup. December first.”

The doctor eyed him with distaste. The man’s suit was rumpled. He reeked of tobacco, and he couldn’t sit still for more than a few seconds at a time, but he was the best source that Dr. Dubois had. “Who?”

“The entire division.” Kirkland jiggled his muscular leg. “That means a new level of oversight on your Guantanamo Bay trials. Back to the beginning.”

“Indeed?” He tried not to look at Kirkland’s bouncing knee.

“Will everything pass muster?” Kirkland put a hand on his knee as if to steady it. His dishwater-gray eyes looked skeptical.

“It will.” With a bit of luck. He’d eliminated the 500 series, then purged them from the electronic records. Painstaking work, yes, but he’d had little else to do during the weeks that he was laid up with the wounded leg. The official record indicated the lab ran only four series of tests—the 100, 200, 300, and 400 series—all successful.

He’d hired Saddiq to dispose of the bodies of the 500s at one stroke, along with Dr. Johansson and the soldiers murdered by Subject 523. Records showed that they had died in an unfortunate boating accident while returning to the United States.

The only loose end was Subject 523 and the papers that he had stolen. The soldier had confiscated evidence of the 500 series before the campaign of obliteration.

“Doctor?” Kirkland asked. “Do we have a problem?”

“No.” He’d worked on this project for most of his adult life. He wouldn’t allow the truth to cost him control of it now.

Over the years he’d learned about taking risks, about compromising some principles to keep the work going. It was for a greater good—thousands of soldiers who came home with PTSD or lost their nerve and never came home at all would be saved because of his work. US soldiers would be more effective, and effective longer, because of his work.

They didn’t have to be US soldiers, either. The project could make him a fortune if sold to the right allies. He wanted no setbacks.

He touched the disposable cell phone on the desk. Saddiq was overdue to call and tell him that the situation was resolved. Saddiq was very reliable. He’d do the job. But it was impossible to relax until that call came in.

“Subject 523 has been contained?” Kirkland asked.

The doctor rocked back in his chair. How did Kirkland know about that, and what else did he know? He’d better give him a small truth in order to forestall more complicated questions. “The man has been located and will be contained shortly.”

“Is there any risk that he will infect others?”

“Minimal.” Indeed, risk of infection was great, but the risk that such a catastrophe would be traced back to his project was minuscule, and that was all either of them cared about.

“If you can’t get your leak plugged in the next forty-eight hours,” Kirkland said. “We’ll have to burn the project. We can’t move forward.”

He had been through reorganizations before. There were worse things than sitting and waiting until they passed. “When will we pick up the trials afterward?”

“Never.” Kirkland’s nervous fingers tapped his knee. “Your work has been deemed too risky. If you can’t fix your problem, trials will be canceled, and the project will be completely disavowed.”

“Disavowed? They’ve funded this project since the beginning—”

“And if you can’t get it under control, they’ll stop.”

“There are records,” the doctor said.

“As you know,” he smiled, “records can be altered. There is a team in place to paint you as a rogue doctor, hired to conduct fitness trials but secretly performing unsanctioned experiments of your own.”

The doctor’s leg throbbed. “They would regret it.”

Kirkland was already on his feet and heading out the door. “Fix it so nobody has to regret it.”

The door closed behind him. The doctor opened his drawer and took out the pain pills. He dropped two onto his palm and swallowed them with cold coffee. He needed to make that clear. Records were more difficult to alter than Kirkland seemed to think.

Before he started in with those calls, the cell phone vibrated. He glanced down at it. A text. Two words.

It’s done.

Chapter 13

November 28, 3:55 p.m.

Gallo Underground House

Joe stretched his feet toward the electric fire in the parlor and took a sip of coffee from the Victorian teacup on the side table. Cold. The clock on the mantel told him that it was almost four, time to take a break.

He’d been trying for most of the day to find out more about the presidential train car and its grisly contents. Torres’s presence in the house distracted him. Floorboards creaked when she walked around, and he worried that she’d find the secret passageway behind the upstairs bookshelf. She had declined lunch, but agreed to help herself to anything in the kitchen if she got hungry later.

Every hour she went out and walked the tunnel, as if someone could break in there without him noticing. But it was her job, and he left her to it. He remembered what it had been like to have a clearly defined job. He missed it.

All day, he’d been racking his brain to figure out why she seemed so familiar. He was good with faces—he’d built a multimillion-dollar company off that talent, and he could not remember where he’d seen hers. By afternoon, he’d developed a suspicion, and he had to know if it was true.

He locked the parlor door from the inside with a long skeleton key, ready to see if he was right.

In his long weeks of confinement at the Hyatt, he’d hacked into the surveillance cameras installed nearby. It gave him something to do, and a feeling that he could watch the outside world, even if he couldn’t join it. These days he sometimes flipped through them, as if he were strolling down the sidewalk, like everyone else. Like he used to do without thinking.

He’d been careful with his spying, of course, and he hadn’t been caught. In his endless free time, he’d managed to compile a thorough list of the nearby cameras, including what they watched and where they sent the video they obtained. He had a long list now, and, key for his current problem, it included all the cameras at Grand Central Terminal.

Joe connected through a few different computers to cover his tracks and got down to business. He took pleasure in hacking—being able to see what others couldn’t, to do things most people were afraid of doing. At the circus, he’d grown up behind the scenes, always knowing more than the marks who’d paid to see the show. Hacking felt the same way.

Edison lay on the floor next to his chair, head on his outstretched paws. He sat up and gazed at Joe with reproachful brown eyes.

“Do you think this is a morally gray area?” he asked, quietly so that Torres wouldn’t hear him through the parlor’s door. “This kind of snooping?”

Edison lowered his head back to his paws with a sigh.

Joe felt a twinge of guilt. “I don’t care what you think, Edison. I have to know.”

The dog thumped his tail against the floor. Once (cyan), twice (blue). Joe decided to take that as assent. He was going to do it anyway.

He wanted to find late-night video from the concourse itself, most particularly the camera that showed the round information booth that led to the entrance to his home. He wanted to try to find out what had happened to him after he’d returned to the concourse on the night before he’d become afraid to go outside.

On that night, he’d come down here for the first time. Leandro Gallo had been throwing a birthday party, and he’d hoped to see Celeste there, or at least find out why she had stopped returning his calls. When he’d found out that she was ill, actually dying, he drank too much and lost track of most of the night, something that had never happened to him before. He remembered taking the elevator up to the concourse, where a person had helped him back to his hotel.

He hadn’t cared before, but tonight he was going to find out who.

He hacked into the Grand Central video surveillance database and scrolled through files until he reached the right time. Then he watched himself stumble out of the information booth alone. On-screen Joe closed the door behind himself and then fell flat on his face. He hadn’t remembered being so drunk, but he must have been, and he was horrified that surveillance cameras had caught him out, that anyone with access could post him looking like a newb on YouTube for the world to mock. It could have been a media disaster, could still be.

A tall woman with short dark hair helped him to his feet and dusted him off. An uneasy feeling rose in him. She looked familiar, but he could see only the back of her head. Maybe she was simply a Good Samaritan who’d stepped in to keep him from being arrested for public drunkenness.

He switched to the next camera and watched as she helped him stagger across the giant room. He flopped around, his face clear in the video, but she kept her head down as if she were well aware of the cameras.

The quality of the video went up after he switched to the outside cameras. He held his breath when a man entered the frame and drew a knife. How could he have been too drunk to remember that? Damn. The woman on-screen easily disarmed the man, knocked him down, and stomped on his balls. Joe winced.

As the man curled around his crotch, she dragged Joe to his feet and resumed walking him to the Hyatt. Based on her quick actions and her cool response, he guessed that she had specialized training. Probably military.

He rewound, then froze on the image of her face as she confronted the attacker, because for a second she was more concerned about safety than about the cameras. The tall woman with the dark hair and lovely cheekbones was sitting on a chair in his hall. Vivian Torres.

Goose bumps raised on his arms.

He glanced at the closed wooden door, wishing it had a stronger lock. Had Daniel hired her to watch out for him on that night, too? If not, why had she been there? If so, why hadn’t he been told about it?

With one finger, he touched the face on his screen. A beautiful woman, but much more than that. He replayed the mugger scene one more time. She was calm and in control. He wished that he could hear what she was saying.

Now that he had an identification, he wanted to find out more. Not a problem.

The Army was the biggest branch of the armed services, so he’d start there. He used the login for Agent Bister, a CIA operative he’d worked with at Pellucid, to connect to the Army personnel system. Bister had led the charge to appropriate Pellucid’s software just for the CIA, and Joe couldn’t stand him. So, he used the man’s accounts often. He had it coming.

Once inside the database, Joe started a search for Vivian Torres. He got a hit right away. She’d served in the Army, but had been dishonorably discharged a year ago. His unease grew, and he searched for more information, the Victorian parlor around him practically fading away as he moved into the high-tech world on the other side of the screen.

According to her record, she’d served well and earned commendations from her superior officers. As he’d seen on-screen, she was good in a fight, level-headed, and competent. She had been on track to making a solid career when something had gone wrong in an Afghani village where she was on patrol. The details of the event weren’t in the file, but whatever happened had resulted in a dishonorable discharge. Since her discharge, she’d worked for various private-security companies and law firms as a bodyguard, including Daniel Rossi’s law firm.

With nothing else left to search for, he logged out of Bister’s account and broke his connection with the computer he’d used to hide his real location.

“What do I do with this knowledge?” he whispered to Edison. “And why didn’t she tell me herself?”

The dog eyed the parlor door. Joe had canceled his daily walk with Andres, not wanting the dog to be out of his sight today. Instead, they’d spent the day with a dangerous woman who had her own dangerous secrets.

Joe stood and paced the ancient Persian carpet. Ever loyal, Edison rose and paced next to him.

The video of Torres and the mugger made it clear that she could take him in a fight, even if she weren’t armed. She could have done that when he’d stumbled out of the booth drunk. He’d been completely at her mercy, and she’d only helped him. If she meant him harm, he’d already be dead. Besides, over the course of the day, he’d grown to like her. She didn’t seem as if she wished him ill. But it would be stupid to rely on that judgment completely.

He should just ask her, but he was afraid. Overly paranoid, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t going to talk to her without insurance. He set up his phone to film his conversation, with the video streaming straight back to his laptop, where it would be stored in a file. He set a timer for ten minutes (cyan, black). If he wasn’t back to shut it off, the video file would be emailed to Daniel at the highest priority. He’d know what to do.

Of course, he reminded himself, that wouldn’t actually save him. It would just make sure that she got nailed for the crime if she killed him.

With only that tiny bit of reassurance, he tapped the screen to start filming, dropped the phone into his breast pocket so that the top of the phone peeked out, careful to make sure that the camera lens was not obscured, and opened the door.

Torres shifted in her chair when he walked into the hall. He’d insisted on moving one of the leather wingback chairs out here for her. If she had to spend her day staring at his front door, she might as well be comfortable. She looked calm and collected, like a competent bodyguard. He balanced his open laptop in one hand, feeling like a waiter holding a tray.

“No activity to report out there,” she said. “How’s work coming?”

He stood awkwardly in the door frame and stared at her face, eyes traveling across her features to confirm that she was the woman on the video. No doubt.

“First, I want to thank you,” he said.

“I’m just doing my job,” she answered.

“Not for that. For getting me home safe last spring.”

Surprise flickered across her face, but disappeared in less than a second. Microexpressions were impossible to control. Without his training in spotting them, he’d have missed it.

“Were you paid for this service?” The laptop trembled as he pressed a few buttons, starting up the surveillance video of their meeting in Grand Central months before, when she’d brought him back drunk.

“If I were paid for that kind of service, I wouldn’t be able to reveal that information.”

“Why not?” What was his goal here? To get her to confess? To what, exactly?

“As you know, sir, I work in close protection. Anything I do or see while on the job is confidential.” Her dark eyes met his levelly. She clearly was not intending to back down.

“So, you were on a job?”

“I can’t say.” She squared off her shoulders.

“Does that mean that you were stalking me?”

She laughed. “Not hardly. Maybe I just happened by, helped you home, did the right thing. I’m a Good Samaritan.”

Joe didn’t believe that.

She pointed behind his head. “What’s that mean?”

Joe turned around to look at the round red light recessed above the front door. “It means that the elevator has started going up. But that doesn’t make sense, because no one has access to it but me and the Gallos, and they never come down here.”

Someone else was coming.

Joe stared at the light that indicated the elevator was right now heading up to the clock and the information booth. He’d never seen it lit before, hadn’t known if it really worked, but Celeste had assured him that it did. Evaline wouldn’t have let anyone past her who wasn’t on the list. Maybe it was Leandro. If not, he hoped no one had hurt her.

“I’d like you to move to the back of the house, away from the windows.” Torres’s voice was matter-of-fact.

She drew her gun and stood next to the front door, away from the window, and peeked through the filmy curtains. Her phone buzzed in her pants pocket. Without taking her eyes off the tunnel, she eased it out and glanced at the screen.

“It’s from Mr. Rossi. He says that he’s coming down with police and two CIA agents.” Torres holstered her gun. “They’re here to question you about the death in the tunnels. Your fingerprint was found at a murder scene.”

Joe stumbled backward. The police and the CIA?

“Mr. Rossi will take care of you,” she said.

“They might take me.” Joe’s heart raced. “They might take me outside. I can’t go outside.”

He heard panic in his voice, and Edison must have heard it, too. The dog tugged his pant leg, trying to pull him back into the parlor. That wouldn’t help.

“Good boy,” Joe said automatically.

“I’m sure that Mr. Rossi will explain the situation to them.”

Joe didn’t think they’d care about his mental issues. If anything, they’d weigh against him. He measured the distance to the doors at the end of the tunnels in his head. He might make it to one of them before the elevator arrived and the men came out, but he also might not.

Edison bumped Joe’s knee with his head, reminding him that he was there, that everything was OK. Except that it wasn’t.

“I’m going upstairs,” Joe said. “Can you buy me time?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I’ll stall them as long as I can.”

Joe dropped his laptop in the backpack by the front door, pulling on the hoodie hung there, and pocketing the flashlight. He ran back through the parlor to get his power cord and then sprinted up the stairs, heading for the back bedroom.