The Steel Shark

Chapter 13

Joe knew he should be getting dressed for tonight’s party, but instead, he sat in his parlor and tried to catch up on his email. He’d taken a day off after the sub accident, and things were still piled up. Pleasant down here, with the electric fire lit in the hearth, Edison curled at his feet, and a warm cup of Earl Grey steaming on the antique side table.

He loved the room — thick Persian carpet, floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with leather-bound books, carved mantel over the electric fire, oil painting of the builder’s daughter in a yellow dress, and original Victorian furniture. This room had survived nearly unchanged for a century, a time capsule from the days of Jules Verne, HG Wells, and Nikola Tesla himself. The only thing from the modern era was Joe’s laptop.

But he still felt out of sorts. He’d heard nothing about a further investigation of the crash and was starting to worry they were either treating it as an accident, or they weren’t even trying to find another suspect beyond him. He’d tried to hire another submarine to go out and look at the crash site, but even Marnie hadn’t been able to find one. He could rent a dive boat, but he’d have to go outside to board it. He needed a submarine, something small enough to make it up the pipes to his dock, something he could get in and out of without going outside. He’d already ordered another one, but the company was backed up and it would take months to be delivered to New York. So, he was stuck.

A ping told him he had another email.

“Last one,” he told Edison.

The dog didn’t even twitch an ear. He was used to false promises.

The email was from Alan Wright, a billionaire involved in the scavenger hunt. Joe had known him a long time, but he wouldn’t call him a friend. Still, he clicked on it. He could practically hear Alan’s voice as he read the words.

You mucked it up for all of us. I know you didn’t run down Prince Timgad’s sub, but public opinion is running against you. Blue Dream’s video of you swimming in to get the flag with a dopey grin on your face has gone viral. I figure your people are too kind to send you the link, but here it is.

Will you show your face at the gala tonight or hide away in your hole?

- A

Joe hesitated before clicking the link. Footage from the scavenger hunt. Probably embarrassing, but maybe there would be something useful. Either way, he’d better see it before he left. Someone was bound to ask about it.

The video started off pretty innocuous — ten flags drifting from side to side underwater. He’d forgotten they’d been so well-lit. So peaceful looking.

Then a dark form some distance away came into view — him with Edison tucked under his stomach. The dog looked calm, glancing around with his eyes relaxed and his tail wagging.

“You love being underwater, don’t you, boy?”

Edison lifted his head.

“Sorry.” Joe’s stomach tightened at the thought of going out in a submarine. But he would, as soon as the new sub arrived. He wasn’t going to let his world get any smaller. “We’re going to stay on land for a while.”

On-screen he advanced on the beckoning flags. He looked so smug and self-satisfied. He’d never really understood before that moment what people meant when they said someone looked punchable. Dopey grin was actually a kind characterization. The figure shot, missed, then nailed the flag right in the middle, and mercifully turned away from the camera. At least it had been a good shot.

A shadow appeared in the frame behind him — too large to be his sub or the prince’s. He leaned forward. This might be worth the embarrassment of having watched the rest of the video.

He downloaded the video and enhanced the shadow, but the ocean’s visibility was so low he couldn’t get a clearer view no matter what he tried. The police were right — the shadow could have been a boat passing overhead. But he knew it was something else.

Deciding he needed more information, he hacked into the contest site, accessed its database, and got a longer version of the video. He hadn’t known it, but the organizers had had an underwater camera set up by the contest flags. Which made sense. They wanted to show the flags being taken and had to verify the order in which the submarines arrived.

He fast-forwarded through the footage. Nothing of interest happened before his arrival, but after he took the flag, a giant shadow went by and stopped. That must have been the larger sub passing by and crashing into the prince’s submarine. Unfortunately, the crash was off camera, or that would have solved all his problems. The shadow wasn’t definitive enough to be identified as a submarine either, but he knew it was.

Time passed with nothing happening. Then the camera caught a faraway figure in a black wetsuit and long fins. It wasn’t him, because Edison wasn’t nearby and Edison had never left his side down there. It wasn’t Vivian, because she’d been wearing the emergency suit and hadn’t had fins. It wasn’t the bodyguard, because he was already dead.

At this distance, he couldn’t tell much about the figure. He compared the swimmer to the gait-recognition videos he had on his computer that he’d been analyzing for Pellucid, his first company. They’d started with facial-recognition software, still their bread and butter, and moved into gait-recognition. Easier to identify someone at a distance from their walk than their face, and walks were harder to disguise. He didn’t have much data on swimming recognition, but something about the way the diver moved at the hips and shoulders looked feminine.

His phone buzzed. A text from Maeve Wadsworth. She’d designed his underground garden, and they’d been seeing each other for a while. She was his date for the gala tonight, and he was late.

Will I be alone here all evening? she asked.

On my way, he texted back. Not exactly true yet, but it would be soon.

He closed the laptop and jogged upstairs to put on his tuxedo. It was just back from the cleaners. He took off the plastic covering and put the tux on as fast as he could. He even remembered to dress up the dog. It didn’t take too long.

He fiddled with his bow tie. Easier to memorize the schedule of the trains going into Grand Central than to tie a simple tie. Why was that?

He stepped back and looked at himself in the cheval mirror as he imagined the previous owners had been doing since the turn of the last century. They probably hadn’t looked much different than he did now. His tuxedo was cut in a classic style. Simple black with a crisp white shirt, no tails.

“I look like a penguin,” he told Edison.

The dog looked handsome in his black service vest with a bow tie attached to his collar. He didn’t look like a penguin.

“And not a cool-looking emperor penguin either, more like a goofy macaroni penguin.”

Edison wagged his tail, hopefully appreciating the joke.

“It won’t matter because everyone will be looking at you, and you look very dapper.” But that wasn’t true. Everyone would be looking at Joe. He was attending a gala at the Museum of Natural History arranged by Blue Dreams weeks before to celebrate the team that captured the first flag. The contest was to take place over several weeks, and they had plans to celebrate each stage.

Now the celebration was to remember Prince Timgad’s bodyguard and the accident that had killed him and spared Joe. They were going to discuss whether the contest should continue. It would, of course, continue. It involved too much money and had too much momentum to stop. But many attendees would probably blame Joe that the discussion had to come up at all.

He’d dropped out of the race. After that, he’d wanted to donate his entrance fee to the bodyguard’s family quietly, but Mr. Rossi had convinced him to announce his intentions publicly. He was even going to have to give a speech. He touched the notecards in his pocket, and Edison nudged his knee. The dog knew how much he hated public speaking.

“Let’s get moving. We’ll walk to the Bryant Park Station, then take the B to the museum station. Does that sound good?”

Edison padded across the marble floor and into the hall. He was ready to go.

Joe took another last look at himself, tilted the mirror to check out his newly polished shoes, and gave up on any more preening. He looked as good as he was going to, and Maeve was already irritated. Best to get moving.

He hurried down the stairs and made a quick stop in the front hall to take a few keys off the ring hanging there and to pick up a flashlight from his collection. He never left the house without a flashlight these days. As well-lit as most tunnels were, he didn’t want to get stranded if the lights went out.

Edison waited by the front door. He looked striking — yellow fur bright against the red door, black bow tie gleaming.

Joe opened the door and stepped out into his garden. The rich green smell of plants greeted him. The ceiling lights had dimmed to indigo. In the world above, the sun had long since set and night had settled.

Edison followed across the soft carpet of green to the back door. Joe entered his security code and pushed open the thick steel door. It always reminded him of opening a vault. He reset his alarm codes. He’d upgraded his security after a break-in and was pretty sure it was easier to break into Fort Knox than his house.

Edison went out first. Joe went second and closed the giant door. The difference between this raw tunnel and his finished and cheerful home tunnel was stark. Out here, the air smelled of rock, mildew, and rust. He grinned. Some people hated the tunnels, but he loved them. They were his backyard.

Edison sniffed an unused train track gone rusty with time, probably tracing the footsteps of a rat. He looked back as if to signal an all clear. That was good enough for Joe.

He and the dog set off up the unused track. This track would connect with other tracks where trains still ran, so they’d have to stay on their toes, but the subway station they were after wasn’t far, about half a mile. He fell into the gait he’d developed for the train tracks — shorter than his usual stride, measured by the distance between train ties, and not his natural pace. He ought to film it for his gait-recognition database.

“Feels good to be out, doesn’t it?” He took a glow-in-the-dark tennis ball out of his pocket and tossed it along the unused track.

Edison ran for it.

He felt himself unwind. He kept up a quick pace while playing fetch. He bet he’d be the only person with a wet tennis ball in his tuxedo pocket.

Eventually, they reached an in-service track, with a live third rail, and that was the end of their game of fetch. They’d gone this way so many times before that they were both on autopilot.

He and Edison walked to the Bryant Park Station at 42nd Street (green, blue). The station felt homey. He liked the dark orange pillars and the gleaming white tiles. Edison liked the smells. He stayed close — as soon as he donned his vest, he was all business — but his nose swept back and forth along the platform until the train came and they got on together. The subway riders, as always, smiled at Edison. A little girl wearing a Batgirl costume told him his tie looked sharp. Edison’s tie, not Joe’s. He wondered why she was dressed up as Batgirl, since it wasn’t Halloween, but it was New York, so he didn’t ask.

At 81st Street Station (purple, cyan), he exited the train and waited for the crowd to disperse, then headed to the stairs at the end of the platform. He and Edison had unlimited access to the tunnels under the city — a perk of his underground house. The house came with access to all the tunnels for the designer and his descendants. While he wasn’t technically a descendant, he’d procured the house from one, and his security clearance made it easy for him to receive the keys to the kingdom.

Several yards down the tunnel, an old metal door had been set into the wall. It had been placed there a century before and been well maintained ever since — the surfaces were regularly painted and the hinges oiled. The door opened onto a steam tunnel. Many buildings in New York City ran on steam, including the Museum of Natural History. He had keys for all of them, at least for their steam tunnels.

He unlocked the door using a key from another era — long-barreled with a hexagonal head.

Insulation-wrapped pipes ran along the right-hand wall. Little dust had gathered on the insulation, so the pipes had been changed recently. Con Edison worked constantly on the system, and he often met their workers in his wanderings in his giant backyard.

Edison crowded up next to him, and he petted the dog’s head. “It’s OK, boy. Just us.”

He walked faster. Although he usually liked being underground, Edison hated the hot and humid steam tunnels. He’d had a bad experience in a steam tunnel, and he clearly remembered it.

The door at the other end of the tunnel stood open, and a woman in a black and silver evening gown beckoned. “Come on, Edison! Don’t you look fancy?”

The dog broke away and hurried toward her. Maeve. She’d dyed her hair silver and swept it upward. Black stripes ran down her silver dress, curving across her breasts in toward her waist and back out across her hips. Joe wanted to run his hands along those lines.

“You look fantastic.” She always did. He leaned in to kiss her, and a long time later, she stepped back.

“We could skip the first part of the party and come back later.” His voice was husky.

“Tempting.” She kissed his neck above his collar. “But I’m not letting you out of your speech.”

He kissed her again. “You sure?”

She pulled away. “Nice try.”

Someone cleared his throat from the shadows behind her, and Joe jumped.

“It’s Mr. Karpenko,” Maeve said. “The museum sent him to keep an eye on us.”

“Thank you for taking the time.” As part of his steam-tunnel life, he had to get special permission and an escort to enter many buildings from the basement door. He knew a lot of security guards.

“Just doing my job.” Karpenko stood only a little taller than Maeve and was small-boned. He seemed like an odd choice for a security guard, but maybe he had ninja skills.

Maeve took Joe’s hand and led him up a set of utility stairs, her glamorous dress out of place against the raw concrete. “You wouldn’t believe who is up there.”

Karpenko locked the door behind them and traipsed a foot from Joe’s heels. His proximity made Edison uncomfortable, and Joe motioned for the dog to go farther ahead.

“They’re even filming it,” she said. “They have drones flying around the museum.”

Films with multiple angles of his humiliation. Great.