It didn’t take me long to decide I was wasting my time. There wasn’t a single opening or fracture in the area.
Giving up, I used a series of maintenance tunnels to transfer to the IRT Flushing line. It took me another twenty minutes to walk up and down both sides of that tunnel.
Seeing nothing, I walked back to the Lexington Avenue Line and headed toward the 42nd Street Shuttle Line. As I strode forward, I kept one eye on the concrete ledge at my feet and the other on the tunnel. The tracks, including the third rail, were now completely covered with water. Although I couldn’t see sparks or other signs of electricity, I still didn’t want to take any chances.
I heard a splash. Reeling to the side, I pointed my light through the tunnel and waited, breathing heavily.
But nothing emerged.
An eerie feeling came over me. What if the alligator spotted me? What if it was hunting me? By the time I saw it, I’d already be within striking distance, with mere seconds to defend myself.
I shoved the thought out of my mind. If electricity continued to flow into the third rail, anything trying to follow me would suffer the consequences. And if it didn’t, the ledge offered me several feet of protection from anything on the track bed.
As I walked down the first leg of the 42nd Street Shuttle’s long, twisting tunnel, my thoughts flipped back to Ghost and his colony. Something about our most recent meeting bothered me. It wasn’t the animosity between us. Nor was it the overriding tension in the room. It was something smaller, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
A soft whooshing noise pierced the stale tunnel air. I froze in place, not moving a muscle.
Pipes hissed.
Water lapped gently against the tracks.
A full minute passed.
Then I heard it again.
It seemed to come from the direction of the wall. Gently, I placed my ear against the cold concrete.
I heard nothing.
I waited a few seconds.
Still nothing.
I continued to wait.
Then the whooshing noise echoed softly in my ear, sounding close yet far away at the same time.
I frowned. The noise, whatever it was, had definitely originated from the wall. It didn’t sound like a subway train, not that it mattered since they weren’t running anyway. And to the best of my knowledge, there were no maintenance shafts in the immediate area.
It didn’t make sense. Other than bedrock, there was nothing on the other side of that wall. And yet the whooshing noise persisted as if air circulated around a large space.
Curious, I looked around. I realized that the portion of concrete on which I stood appeared newer and thicker than the rest of the ledge.
Bending over, I examined the surface. I saw a very thin, jagged crack. Using my flashlight, I followed its path. The crack ran across the length of the ledge and then started up the wall. After a few feet, it turned at a right angle and cut across another section of concrete. Then, it drifted down again, cutting a second crack through the ledge.
Near the second crack, I spotted something etched in the wall. I pointed my flashlight at the distinct marks. They appeared to form a skull and two crossed pickaxes, designed in a similar manner to that of the skull and crossbones.
A couple of lines were carved out of the wall, surrounding the design. An idea hit me. Reaching out, I placed my thumb against the etching.
And pushed.
The design depressed, acting like a button.
Something clicked.
The ground rumbled.
I stumbled as the ledge shifted. Leaning down, I clutched it for support. A cloud of dust filled the air, blinding me. I coughed, hacking out a handful of the particles.
As the dust cleared, I raised my flashlight. My heart began to pound.
Save for a few feet at the top and bottom, the entire wall had shifted inward, like a door on hinges.
Shifting my beam, I illuminated a hidden corridor, ten-feet deep and five-feet in diameter. It was dusty and dry, with the bottom part of the wall acting as a barrier against the rising water.
It can’t be…Hartek’s treasure?
The possibility shot through my brain. Of course, it was just a possibility. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that there were plenty of other explanations, none of which involved lost Nazi gold.
Still, I wavered for a few seconds, debating my options. Part of me wanted to find Chase. If Hartek’s gold bars did reside on the other end of the corridor, Chase deserved to be there to see them. The other part of me felt compelled to gather evidence…and satisfy my curiosity.
That other part won easily.
I leapt off the ledge. Landing lightly in the passageway, I heard another click and swung around.
The wall slammed shut behind me.
My body tensed.
I’m trapped.
I lifted my light and examined the wall. Then I tried to shove it. But it didn’t move an inch. After a few attempts, I turned to the side to search for a lever or another button.
In the process, my beam illuminated the dark abyss. All thoughts of my predicament instantly vanished.
A sizeable room, shrouded in dust, lay on the other side of a short passageway. In the dull glow provided by my flashlight, I could see large tables, chairs, beakers, tubes, and strange-looking apparatuses.
I twisted my light, examining every inch of the room.
Then I froze.
A sense of horror arose within me.
A corpse lay on the floor, positioned partially in front of the tunnel. I could see the rotting flesh…the dried blood…the holes.
It was the body of a dead man.
A man riddled with bullet holes.
A man who’d been murdered.
THE BELL
Chapter 24
Questions bounced through my mind like ping-pong balls. The room looked like an old laboratory. But what was a laboratory doing buried under the city streets, behind a false wall? Who was the dead person in the lab? Who killed him?
And why?
I didn’t have a single answer. But I knew one thing for certain. I wasn’t going to find any standing in that passageway.
I studied the area around me. The passageway consisted of smooth concrete walls. The laboratory itself appeared to be constructed from bricks, painted grey. No matter where I looked, I didn’t see any cracks or signs of disrepair. Whoever built the lab and connecting tunnel had built them to last.
I strode into the laboratory. A cloud of thick dust burst from the floor. It swiftly devoured my flashlight beam. Coughing, I waved my arms, brushing away the annoying particles. The edges of a nearby desk, covered with a heap of unorganized papers, came into view.
Secluded from society? Check.
Messy beyond belief? Check.
Yup, these people were definitely scientists.
I saw scattered equipment among the papers, including test tubes, rubber stoppers, pipettes, and clamps. Three framed pictures sat at the back of the desk. Toward the front, I noticed a small calendar.
The date read March 6,1976.
It hit me like a bombshell. Had the laboratory really sat untouched all of this time?
More questions poured into my brain. Who built the lab? What was its purpose? And why was it connected to the subway system?
I walked toward the west wall and pointed my beam at the ground, illuminating the corpse of a young man. He wore a lab coat and pants, punctuated with bloody bullet holes. What remained of his mouth lolled open, revealing a blackish interior. His eyes stared at me, seeing everything and nothing at the same time.
Carefully, I stepped around him. At the corner, I noticed a small hole at the bottom of the wall. A pile of bricks lay in a heap next to it. It looked like someone had started a repair job but never got a chance to finish it.
The dust seemed to gather around me as I walked past the corner. My flashlight dimmed.
On the south wall, I saw a metallic door built into the concrete. I tried the knob. It creaked open, revealing a neat, manmade corridor behind it. I entered and stopped next to a pile of rubble.
The corridor seemed long enough to stretch across the street to the buildings that faced Grand Central Terminal. Perhaps the laboratory was originally connected to the basement of one of those buildings. At some point, the corridor collapsed, sealing the laboratory behind a wall of crushed rock and concrete.
But why did no one come to recover the dead body?
The answer hit me immediately. Most likely, the lab was built and maintained in absolute secrecy. After the man was killed, no one alive would’ve known where to look for him.
No one except the killer.
I headed back into the laboratory and closed the door. As I turned around, I tripped on something and stumbled.
Rotating my head, I saw what I’d tripped over.
I grimaced.
Another corpse.
This one belonged to a young woman, or what was left of her anyway. Her head had been ripped in half as if someone shot off her skull at close range. Her body, covered in a bloodstained lab coat, lay awkwardly on the ground. A pair of glasses, attached to her shriveled neck by a thin chain, lay smashed at her side.
My chest tied itself in knots as I stared at her pathetic form. I wondered about her friends and family. What happened to them? Were they still looking for their lost loved one? It angered me just to think about it.
I started walking again, this time at a slower pace. I swung my flashlight in wide arcs to avoid another stumble.
After I finished trekking around the room, I returned to the desk and looked at the photos. One face stood out in particular. It belonged to a lopsided man, attired in a cheap suit. His nose was too big for his wrinkled face. His eyes looked large and baggy. Yet for all his imperfections, he carried a certain aura about him that caused him to stand out above the other faces.
I recognized him instantly.
Karl Hartek.
I tried to fit the information into place. I knew that Hartek worked as a Nazi physicist during World War II. After coming to America, he could’ve used the gold bars supplied by ODESSA to build the laboratory and continue his work. Maybe Jenson stumbled onto the lab, found a leftover gold bar, and tried to pawn it.
The story explained everything and nothing at the same time. More questions came to mind.
What was Hartek working on? Why had he hidden it deep underground? Who had invaded his lab and murdered the other scientists? And what happened to him? Why wasn’t his body in the lab along with the others?
I shifted the flashlight to my other hand. In the process, my beam lit up a strange contraption.
I walked over and studied it. Several metal bars were secured to the concrete ceiling. Other bars led straight down to the floor, forming a sort of metal cage. Every couple of inches, I saw metallic struts attached to the bars, providing ample reinforcement. Thick chains hung loosely from the structure.
As I followed the bars to the ceiling, I spotted something odd. I leaned into the structure and looked up. Without exception, every single one of the reinforcement bolts had been completely sheared off. It was awe-inspiring. Nothing less than an abrupt, extremely powerful force could’ve caused such damage.
The longer I stood in the structure’s presence, the edgier I felt. I’d never seen anything like it before. It looked like some sort of rigging designed to support a massive object. However, the object was missing. Did that explain the murders? Did someone kill the scientists to steal the object? Or was it still in the lab?
I looked around, searching for something that would fit into the rigging. Near the northwest corner, close to where I spotted the bricks, I noticed a humongous, black cylinder. It lay tipped on its side, as if someone had knocked it over.
I walked over to the heavy cylinder and knelt down. It had crashed to the ground with a ton of force, cracking the cement in the process.
As I moved my beam across its dented surface, I heard a faint dripping noise. I realized that the cylinder was filled with some sort of liquid. Liquid that was slowly seeping into the cracked cement.
This isn’t the object missing from the rigging.
It’s a chemical container.
And right now, it’s leaking those chemicals into the cement…
And into the river.
Chapter 25
As I heaved the massive cylinder back to a standing position, I felt distinctly uneasy. I’d located and removed the source of the poison that plagued the river. However, I sensed that the room’s darkest secrets remained concealed from my eyes.
I stared at the cylinder. Part of me wanted to return to the surface and alert Chase. The other part of me felt drawn to the laboratory. I didn’t want to leave it, not without finding more answers to my endless questions.
Turning around, I let my flashlight’s beam linger on the male corpse. He and the woman were nobody special, just two nameless people who’d died before I was even born. Yet, their stories needed to be told.
They deserved to be told.
I knew that poking around the room could destroy valuable evidence. Evidence that could help the police locate the killers. If I was going to search it, I needed to take precautions.
I removed a pair of worn leather gloves from my satchel and donned them. Then I walked over to the male corpse, fished in his pockets, and withdrew a wallet.
For a few seconds, I stared at the lumpy old billfold.
Is this just a wallet?
Or is it Pandora’s box?
Shutting away my doubts, I flipped it open and removed a driver’s license. I scanned it quickly, noting that the man’s name was Jason Hatch Cook. The dull color photo showed a serious-looking fellow with thin brown hair and jocular cheeks.