The World Beneath

Chapter 18

Joe couldn’t stay much longer, but he didn’t know where else to go. He paced from one end of the small locker room to the other, closed laptop under his arm. Edison didn’t bother to pace with him this time. He had curled up on a pile of dirty towels to sleep. He’d clearly had a rough night, too.

Joe knew he had to act fast, but he didn’t know why. Rebar had told him that something big was due to happen by the end of the month, and that was the day after tomorrow. Obviously, something more important than Rebar’s life, and Joe’s.

He hadn’t found out anything about Ronald Raines that might indicate why he’d been murdered, much less why the CIA cared.

The information Joe had uncovered about mysterious deaths in Guantanamo Bay might be related. A few days after Rebar had been reported AWOL, one hundred and two soldiers and a doctor were lost at sea when the ship they were on went down halfway between Cuba and Florida. Pretty suspicious, but the Navy had done only a cursory investigation, blaming freak weather conditions. He’d checked weather satellite data for the period in question, confirming the weather had been calm and clear the night the ship was lost. It looked to him as if the boat had been sunk on purpose.

Had Rebar been involved in their deaths? Had he killed them?

Joe leaned against the wall and made a VoIP call on his computer to the number he’d memorized from Rebar’s file. The call might be traceable, but it wouldn’t be easy.

He settled headphones over his ears and listened to it ring once (cyan) and twice (blue).

“Raines,” said a woman’s voice. She sounded so tired and defeated that he almost hung up. He hated to worry her further.

“Good morning, Mrs. Raines.” He introduced himself and lied about being from the Navy. “Have you had any word from your son, Ronald?”

“Have you?” She coughed into the phone, a deep, retching hack. A smoker.

He didn’t dare tell her the truth. “I’d like to go over some facts in his file, ma’am.”

“Why?” she wheezed.

“The file doesn’t seem to support what Specialist Raines’s fellow soldiers had to say about him.” He had no idea if that was true, but it seemed like a good starting point.

“What’d they say?” She didn’t sound worried that anyone would say anything bad about her Ronald, and Joe wondered what he might have been like before the events in Guantanamo Bay.

She was asking more questions than he was.

“What would you like to tell me about him?” he asked.

“Ron’s a good boy,” she said. “Smart. Tough. He always wanted to be a soldier like his father, God bless him.”

“I see.” He kept his voice pitched low.

“He never would have gone AWOL. Never. That’s a mistake.”

“His file says—”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “And I know him better than you do.”

Joe couldn’t argue with that. “What do you think he did?”

“I think he’s on some kind of special mission, undercover, and that once he’s done they’ll clear his name and let him come home.” She coughed as if to underline her point.

He wished, for her sake, that she had been correct about the last part. “I see.”

She laughed bitterly. “I know you can’t tell me even if you do know, which you probably don’t.”

“When did you last hear from him?”

“He called a couple of months ago, like I told the last investigator I talked to.”

Last investigator? “How did he seem when he spoke to you?”

She hesitated. “He said that he wasn’t feeling well and that he had an important mission, but not to worry about him. So, I’m not.”

Why the pause before answering? “Did he say anything specific about the nature of his mission, ma’am?”

“Of course he didn’t.” She sounded offended by the question.

After a few more minutes of trying, he gave up on getting any other information out of her. He thanked her for her time and closed the connection.

The only thing he’d learned was that Rebar thought he was sick, and that didn’t seem relevant. Maybe it was. Joe’s suspicions of an infectious disease could be right. That might explain why the monkey was there — it could have been a long-ago test subject.

If that was the case, the cops weren’t after him to arrest him — they were after him to quarantine him.

He’d have to turn himself in.

Maybe he was wrong. How could a pathogen live seventy years bricked in underground? The longest-living spore that he could think of was anthrax, and that lived only fifty years in the soil. Even if the men in the train car had been infected, they couldn’t have infected Rebar after all that time.

No. Rebar had been sick before he’d broken through the wall.

Still, it might be worth checking to see if the cops were treating the scene as if it were biologically contaminated.

Just because he hadn’t caught anything from the people in the car didn’t mean he hadn’t caught anything from Rebar. If he had, he’d walked, potentially infected, through a giant crowd of people just to get here. He needed to get away from people until he knew more — a self-imposed quarantine. He snorted. That described his current life, more or less, anyway.

The risks were low that he’d caught anything. Joe was basically paranoid about the world, so he knew a lot about disease vectors. There weren’t many strictly airborne diseases — fewer than five (brown) — so it was statistically very unlikely that this one was airborne. He’d had no direct contact with Rebar. He was probably fine and, even if he wasn’t, it was improbable he’d infected anyone else. Everything was fine.

But knowing for sure would be even more fine.

Brandon walked into the locker room wearing a blue tennis club shirt and his bright Pellucid cap. “Do you need anything else, Mr. Tesla? I’m only working a half-day today.”

Joe sighed. He hated what he was about to say. “I need a giant favor.”

“What is it?” Brandon smiled expectantly, a kid willing to go the extra mile to impress his future boss.

“Could you take Edison to a friend’s house for me?”

“Of course!” Brandon looked relieved that it wasn’t more complicated.

“Much appreciated.” Joe rattled off Celeste’s address and handed him another twenty.

Joe snapped Edison’s leather leash on to his collar. Those brown eyes gave him a betrayed look, his whole furry body pleading. Joe handed the leash to Brandon.

“Don’t worry, boy,” said Brandon. “It sounds like you’re going on a doggie vacation.”

“Exactly.” Joe didn’t know how he’d manage without Edison, but the dog was too conspicuous, and maybe in too much danger, to let him stay.

Edison’s head and tail drooped as he obediently followed Brandon out of the locker room. Joe fought down feelings of guilt and panic. Edison would be fine. Celeste would spoil him terribly. And Joe would be fine, too. He’d lived most of his life without a psychiatric service animal, and he’d last a few days until he got this sorted out.

The cold truth was, he’d be in greater danger if Edison came with him.

Joe packed everything up and put his gym bag back into his locker. He’d head down to check out the crime scene, but first he wanted to watch Edison leave. He circled the blue tennis court, likely annoying the players, to stand in front of the rounded window that ran along one wall. The windows were set in sturdy frames, which made it easy for him to look through them without panicking. Ridiculous that such things mattered.

Hiking his backpack up on his shoulder, he looked down on the entrance to Grand Central. People walked in and out, coming and going, a simple thing that he couldn’t do anymore. He had been just like them, before his ill-fated trip to New York. What use was he to anyone wasting away here underground?

Maybe Edison should have a real life as Celeste’s pet.

He spotted Brandon’s bright blue baseball hat, and his eyes lingered on the yellow dog walking dispiritedly next to him. Brandon swung his arms and talked to Edison. The dog looked over his shoulder at the front door as if he expected Joe to come for him. Celeste would take good care of him until Joe could take him back. He’d call her in just a second. It would be good to hear her voice.

Brandon, as energetic and cheerful as ever, made it down the front stairs and onto the sidewalk, where a short man wearing a dark blue parka and a Yankees cap jostled him. Edison’s leash dropped to the ground as Brandon turned toward the man. Joe leaned closer to the window. What was Brandon thinking, letting go of Edison like that?

Brandon’s legs buckled, and he crumpled to the ground. The man in the dark parka melted into the crowd. Blood spread out from Brandon’s body onto the sidewalk.