The World Beneath (Joe Tesla) (5 page)

A stir in the lobby drew his attention from his laptop. A few quick keystrokes disconnected him from the phones and computers until his laptop looked ordinary and honest. He bet the seagulls would make the news. He’d have to tell Celeste to watch for it. Seagulls were her favorite birds.

Edison stood and wagged his tail, and Joe followed his gaze. Andres Peterson, a half-Estonian artist, was walking across the lobby toward them. A long woolen coat that looked as if it had been through a mysterious Eastern European war or two flared out behind him. He had light blue eyes and artfully disheveled brown hair. Celeste had recommended him as both an artist and a dog walker. Joe liked the photos he’d seen of his melancholy giant metal sculptures, and Edison adored him.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Tesla.” Andres took Edison’s head in his hands. “And Edison the Dog.”

Edison’s eyes shone and his tail wagged furiously. Edison was usually a somber dog, but Andres turned him into a puppy.

“Today we go to Central Park, bury some bones?” He lifted an eyebrow to ask. A scar bisected the eyebrow, perhaps from a fight or a long-ago piercing. The scar worked as a distinctive identifying mark. With his air of mystery and sexy accent, Andres was more Celeste’s type than Joe had ever been, and Joe wondered again if the two had dated.

“Central Park sounds good,” Joe said. No point in being jealous of the past. He liked Andres—the man was good-natured, smart, and great at his dog-walking job.

“One day, you come with us,” Andres said. “Not always working.”

Joe suspected that Celeste hadn’t told Andres about his condition. If she had, Andres never let on. “Maybe.”

He handed Andres the leash and watched the pair walk across the lobby on their way outside. For them, it was as simple as that.

Once they were out of sight, he dialed the number he’d dialed every day since he’d become trapped in New York. He held his breath waiting for an answer. One ring, cyan; two rings, blue; three rings, red.

“Hey, Joe,” said a weak and breathless voice.

“Celeste.” Relief flooded through him. She was well enough to talk on the phone.

“Think me a number,” she said.

“Seven,” he said. “Slate blue, like your eyes.”

Only Celeste understood about the numbers. A talented abstract painter, she loved blocks of color. She danced them around in her head as he did numbers.

“A cheap line,” she whispered. “I’ll take it.”

“Your eyes are cerulean,” he said. “Blue with a wash of gray, like slate or the sea before a storm—and the number seven.”

A tiny laugh came down the line, and he laughed with her.

When they’d been together, she’d painted him a giant canvas using shades of blue and gray, and called it Joe’s #7. It hung on the wall of his house in California. By the time he’d thought to buy it, it had cost a fortune. He made a mental note to get the painting shipped to New York.

“Is it a strong day?” he asked.

“Minus one,” she answered.

Celeste had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It was slowly paralyzing her. Eventually, it would reach her respiratory system, and she would die. Most people who contracted it died within three to five years. He reminded himself every day that Stephen Hawking lived with it for more than fifty years (brown followed by black—a big, reassuring number).

“Minus one,” he said. “Cyan for one, but pale because it’s negative.”

“You make me smile,” she said.

“I made you a present today.”

“Oh, God,” she said. “Have you taken up knitting or papier-mâché?”

“Not yet.” He smiled. “Check the news. Look for the seagulls.”

She laughed, a short wheezy sound. “As soon as I get off the phone, but I wish you were here to show me in person.”

His stomach clenched. “If I could, I’d get a cab at the curb and see you in ten minutes.”

“Best you don’t,” she said. “My hair looks awful.”

“You always say that.” He remembered the last time he’d seen her, how her wavy blond hair had blown into his mouth when she hugged him good-bye at an airport. “And it’s never true. You have the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen—like butterscotch syrup with strands of honey gold.”

“Remember the chocolate syrup at my parents’ house in the Hamptons?”

“Till my dying day.” Messy for the sheets, but worth every frantic second of cleanup after.

“It should have been butterscotch.”

He closed his eyes and wished that he could arrive on her doorstep with a jar of butterscotch syrup and a smile. Of all the things the agoraphobia had taken from him, this was the worst.

“Joe?”

“Just thinking.” He would order a butterscotch sundae sent to her penthouse apartment. It was New York City, and he was a multimillionaire, how hard could it be? It wasn’t what he most wanted to do with that syrup, but it was better than nothing.

“Any progress on breaking out of your prison?” she asked.

He hesitated. She rarely spoke of his illness, or of her own. “You have it a million times worse. I know that.”

“Do I?” she asked. “Everyone pities me and cares for me, and no one ever blames me for this. No one tells me to buck up and stop being such a pussy. Even when I am a pussy.”

“I’d trade you,” he said.

“Only because you want to cure me, because you’re a hopeless romantic.”

“Hopeful romantic,” he said.

She sputtered into the phone.

“You OK?” he asked.

“The nurse Googled seagulls,” she said. “Times Square? You rogue.”

Joe smiled. The risk of the hacking had been worth it to hear lightness in her voice again.

Chapter 5

November 28, 12:49 a.m.

Platform 23, Grand Central Terminal

Rebar reached the half-empty train platforms. The numbers twenty-three and twenty-four told him he’d found the right place. He liked to go down into the tunnels from Platform 23. It felt right. He ducked to the side, away from a familiar silver train with blue stripes, and made for the far end of the platform, centering himself between the rows of fluorescent lights that hung from the ceiling next to the tracks and avoiding the yellow stripes installed on the floor to tell people when they were getting too near the trains. He didn’t like the color yellow anymore, although he couldn’t remember why.

In Cuba his door had been painted yellow. Maybe that was it. There, the doctors had called him Subject 523, but here, in the tunnels and streets of New York City, the homeless called him Rebar. He liked the name. Ramrod straight, hard iron, invisible—but at the center of everything, giving it shape and strength.

Not a lot of folks came down here this late. Once the train left, the platform would be empty, and no one would notice what he did. He walked by people stumbling on to the train. Late-night smells assailed his nostrils—beer, onions, and wet wool.

A couple leaned against the railing by the entrance with their arms around each other and their tongues down each other’s throats. The sheer animal need of them brought memories—girls he’d kissed and girls he hadn’t. He hadn’t kissed enough of them.

He walked until he reached the end of the subway platform. The train made ready to leave, and the amorous couple hurried aboard. Two men slurred insults at each other, but neither seemed to have the energy or the passion to act on them. He made himself small against the wall and waited.

It was warm here, and safe. Maybe he should just sit here for a while. He was tired all the time since Cuba. Maybe he just needed rest.

The train pulled out and away, red taillights growing small.

The platform was empty. He could have dropped a grenade in here without hurting anyone. White light beat down on flattened gum, forgotten newspapers, an empty paper cup.

He dozed and woke with a jerk. He had to go down. It was his mission. Without checking to see if anyone had come onto the platform, he vaulted the metal divider and trotted down the stairs without breaking stride. No shouts behind him, but he didn’t slacken his pace until he was fifty yards in and invisible to anyone in the station.

He walked through the graffiti, broken beer bottles, and used condoms that gathered by the platforms, half-hearted attempts to assert ownership over the dark tunnel. Most desperate people’s tolerance for darkness extended about a hundred feet in.

He had a much higher tolerance than other people. For a lot of things.

He stopped next to the second pillar unmarked by graffiti and picked up his tools. He hefted a sledgehammer in one hand, a battery-powered lantern in the other. The pockets of his filthy jacket bulged with maps and papers, some old and others new. Since he’d left Cuba, he’d carried them with him everywhere. He needed to keep them safe, but also to reread them often to remind himself that he wasn’t crazy. Everyone was wrong about that. And he had to do it soon. He’d overheard them talking about December. December first was an important deadline for them. He wasn’t sure why right at this moment, but he would remember it again.

The yellowed pages crinkled when he moved. They were important. That’s why he’d stolen them from a filing cabinet in the Naval hospital. They described experiments carried out years before he was born by scientists taken straight from Nazi Germany and put to work for the US government. Even they had abandoned this research because it was deemed too risky.

Years later, however, another doctor had started the research back up. On him and five hundred men like him. He just had to prove it.

Even in the cool tunnel, sweat dripped off his nose, and he slowed his pace. It was the fever. He was weaker than he used to be. Before, he’d hiked for hours without faltering, but not anymore. Not since they infected him. The tiny organisms swimming around in his blood were eating away at his strength, his control, his identity.

He was too weak to protect the papers now. He must find a place to hide them. That way, if he were ever caught, they wouldn’t get the information. But what if he forgot where he hid them? He forgot so many things these days.

Setting down the heavy hammer, he patted his pockets. The papers were there. A big man had tried to take them from him. Rebar thought that he’d killed the thief, but he couldn’t remember. Whatever had happened, the thief hadn’t bothered him again. The papers were safe.

A far-off rumble warned him of an approaching train. He picked up his hammer and stepped over the third rail, being careful to keep clear of the tracks’ points. They might snap together as a train approached, shunting the train off in a different direction. If his foot got caught in one, he could lose it. Or be killed by the train.

He couldn’t be hit, and he couldn’t be seen. If the train engineer saw him, he’d call it in, and transit police would be down here with flashlights and baying dogs. It’d happened once before, and only his knowledge of the tunnel layout had saved him. He worked from a map that was older than theirs. It showed extra tunnels, and access doors that led to long-unused rooms. Places to hide. He needed a place to hide right now, from the train.

Two sets of tracks separated by concrete pillars ran up ahead. If he hurried, he could take cover behind a column on the side away from the approaching train. Good enough. Not caring about his fever or his weakness, he ran and ducked behind a pillar before the train’s headlights came into view. He leaned his back hard into the cool concrete.

The sound and shaking reminded him of night combat, of the aftermath of an IED, except that this went on and on, noise and light and the ground heaving under his feet. He’d fallen to his knees by the time the last car passed, the faces of dead friends swimming before his eyes as the red taillights winked out in the distance.

He fought back against the memories and forced himself to his feet. He was in New York, not Afghanistan or Cuba. His buddies weren’t here. And he had a lot of tunnel to walk tonight. Hours.

He would not think about how he was searching for objects that might not exist.

According to the papers in his pockets, the scientist who’d done the first experiments after World War II had last been seen on a train heading from Washington, DC, to New York, but the car had never arrived. The official version was that he’d escaped with the files and taken them back to Europe to sell to the highest bidder. The project had been shut down after that, deemed too risky to continue even with another scientist.

But Rebar didn’t believe the doctor had fled. He would not have fled. The United States was the safest place for him to be. Someone had taken the man before he’d arrived and silenced him. And, if he had gone back to Europe, what had happened to the train car? No, a bad thing had happened to him on the way to New York.

If someone had taken that car from the open tracks between the cities, Rebar would never find it. So his only hope was that the car had been abandoned underneath the city. He had a map on which he’d marked potential tunnels in red and crossed them off in black after he’d cleared them. For weeks he’d been walking through old passages, checking walls, seeking decades-old clues. It was crazy, but no crazier than anything else.

And his best chance lay up ahead. He knew it. Sometimes, he forgot what he was looking for, but not today. Today he was looking for answers.

He felt stronger than he had minutes before and whistled as he walked on the train ties, stepping on every other tie as if it were a game that he could win. The lantern didn’t weigh much, and even the sledgehammer didn’t slow him down anymore. Today was a good day.