From the Ashes (31 page)

The chill in the air at dusk had evolved into a full-fledged biting cold by half-past midnight. Jon and Mara shivered in their coats, but recognized the advantage that the temperature afforded them. The less pleasant the weather, the less likely it was that someone would come into the area and interrupt their admittedly suspicious activities.

Since the area was now closed for the night, all the hustle, bustle, and special effects of the Plaza were now dormant. The once active fountain was now just a placid pool of water. The lights for artfully illuminating the statues and architectural features of the Plaza were now dark.
Prometheus
was draped in shadow, his bronze arm continuing to point as it had for decades, waiting for someone to finally release his maker from the secret that had consumed him until the end of his days. Those someones had finally come, dressed in dark shades of blue and green – but not black, for black-clad persons skulking around the Center at night just
had
to be up to no good.

When Rockefeller Plaza had closed for the night, barricades had been put in place at the entrances and exits to the area. Though they sent the message to passersby that the site was closed for the night, they did not present a particularly potent obstacle to the determined. After hopping over the barricades and sneaking past the sleepy security, Jon and Mara found themselves staring not at the centerpiece of the Plaza, but at the dingy and neglected hole next to the monument – captured in thousands if not millions of photographs taken by tourists and publicists alike, none of whom realized the gravity of what lay within. None except Roger Blumhurst, Jon Rickner, and Mara Ellison. One of the three was dead. And the other two were doing their best to keep from joining him.

Having gotten a closer look at the hole prior to leaving that afternoon, Jon had realized that it wouldn’t be as simple as just reaching in the hole and pulling out Rockefeller’s secrets. That would’ve been too easy, so of course it couldn’t have been that simple. A small square of dull glass covered each of the holes, seemingly housing floodlights within. Moreover, the distance from the hole to the platform below it was far greater than Jon’s height. Having Mara sit on his shoulders would be far too precarious an enterprise, and bringing a stepladder... that was simply out of the question. The idea was to look as inconspicuous as possible, and walking into the abandoned plaza in the middle of the night with a stepladder in tow was just asking for trouble. Luckily, the hole was only a few feet from the
top
of the wall in which it was set, so it could be reached, albeit with some effort and balance, from the Upper Plaza above.

Jon checked the small utility door on the opposite side of the wall from the hole. The door was too high on the wall, didn’t correspond with the backside of the hole in the granite. Of course it didn’t, he thought. Again, that would have been too easy. And, after seventy years,
somebody
would have definitely found it in such an often-used location. The only way in was from the other side. The difficult side.

Jon unzipped his coat and consulted his tool belt. The tools still bore the price stickers from the hardware store he had purchased them from a few hours earlier. Two screwdrivers – one Phillips and one flathead – and a small rubber mallet hung on the belt, which Jon now unbuckled and laid on the flat surface of the ledge. When leaning over the ledge with most of his weight on his waist, having a clunky tool belt with a screwdriver and a mallet between his center of gravity and a hard granite surface didn’t seem like a desirable experience. Mara stood at his side, holding the beam of a penlight steady on the top-left hole, ready to hand him a tool from the belt at a moment’s notice, like a surgeon’s assistant. She would also be keeping a lookout for any potential trouble – from security personnel, police officers... or worse. Setting his feet firmly on the pavement, Jon graciously accepted Mara’s wishes for good luck, and bent over the ledge, doubled over as far as his seventy-four inches would allow.

He had only gotten a cursory glance at the holes and their protective glass earlier this evening, when the Plaza was as busy as the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal, so he didn’t know exactly how the glass was held in place. He only knew that it was in the way of his goal, and thus, it had to go.

“Flashlight,” he said, stretching his torso flat – and up – and extending his hand toward Mara. She handed him the small penlight, and he relaxed his back muscles, allowing his weight to lower him back into position. The beam of the flashlight shone on each of the four smaller holes created by the cross and reflected back at Jon. On the first pass, Jon could detect nothing out of the ordinary in any of them, no bundle of papers, no cylindrical tube, no neat little box that might hold the prize that they sought.

“Phillips screwdriver,” he said before sticking the handle of the penlight in his mouth, using his lips and teeth to keep its beam steady on the hole, thrusting his open hand up toward Mara. She handed him the screwdriver, which Jon quickly moved to the top-left hole, loosening the brackets that held the glass in place. The pane finally came free, and he handed it to Mara. He peered inside the hole, around the floodlight within – which, thankfully for Jon’s eyes, was turned off like the rest of the lights behind the granite cross. He unscrewed the floodlight, removed it, looked again.

Nothing.

He blew a frustrated sigh from his lips. It had to be here though. If it wasn’t, if there was nothing here... No, he couldn’t think like that. He was still three holes from a dead end. Press on.

He replaced the glass, screwed the brackets tight – one of them
too
tight, cracking the glass. Started on the next hole, the top right, the one that, really, Prometheus’s finger seemed to be pointing closer to than any of the others. Removing the pane, he took a deep breath, silently mouthed a brief prayer, and got to work on the floodlight. From above, heightened breathing and nervous scuffles of rubber soles on concrete reminded him that his assistant was excited, impatient, and cold.

The floodlight free and dangling by its cord out of the way, Jon shone his light into the hole. Still nothing. Zero-for-two. He felt his spirits beginning to sink.

He put the flashlight back between his lips and started to pull up the dangling floodlight, when the flashlight’s beam reflected off something in the hole. Some surface that caught the light in a slightly different way. Jon started, almost dropping the penlight. He quickly lowered the floodlight again and took his penlight from his mouth.

Something
was in there.

He could hear the blood pounding in his ears, unsure as to how much of it was due to nerves and exertion, and how much owed to the fact that all of the blood from the top half of his upside-down body was rushing to his head.

With his fingertips, he could touch the object. It was small, flat, boxlike, set almost flush with the left-hand wall, where the head of the Crucified would have been had the symbolic cross been real. The dull silvery sheen of old polished tin, a visual contrast to the gray granite around only if you were
looking
for something different in the hole, reflected off the flashlight beam, almost tauntingly. The object was
just
out of reach.

Jon grunted as he wriggled his body further across the ledge, his feet leaving the ground on the other side.

“Careful,” Mara cautioned. So enrapt was she in the excitement – and danger – of Jon’s endeavors, Mara didn’t even notice when the security guard, making his rounds of the Center grounds, came around the corner of the GE building, spotted the pair of them, and started making his way toward them.

Down below, Jon perched precariously on the precipice, his fingers finally able to grip the lid of the box, which, of course, was stuck. Affixed somehow to the stone.

“Flathead.” Mara traded his Phillips screwdriver for a slotted one.

He used his flathead screwdriver to attempt to pry the box loose. The screwdriver jammed into the gap between box and stone. Jon pulled on the handle. Harder and harder, trying to break the resistance of seven decades of inertia. The tip of the screwdriver slipped from the gap and Jon’s torso slid a few inches further down the vertical granite face.

“Jon!” Mara cried, grabbing the bottom of his coat and helping to haul him back to the top.

Jon took a deep breath, grateful for the chance to still be breathing.

“Thanks,” he said before lowering himself back down into position.

“You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Hey!” came the voice behind her. She turned to see the beam of a flashlight pointed at her, the light bobbing as the security guard walked toward them.

“Cop,” Mara warned Jon out of the corner of her mouth. Jon, penlight between his teeth, flathead screwdriver in hand, dangling within inches of the truth they sought, stiffened.

“No, make that rent-a-cop,” she revised as the uniformed guard walked into the light at the edge of the Plaza, the patch of the security company he worked for visible on his shoulder. Jon kept working, wriggling the box until finally the box
opened,
a horizontally positioned lid separating from the box itself on a hinge. Not quite what he was going for, but he’d take it.

“What’re you two doin’ here this hour of the night?” demanded the guard. His demeanor seemed forced, his uniform rumpled, head balding, and jowls sagging. Mr. Ace Detective he was not.

Jon plunged his hand in the open box, his fingers tracing the mostly smooth surface of the metal – save for one side that had more than its share of deep scratches – feeling around for whatever was inside. Something, anything. Nothing. No papers, no Dossiers. They must have already gotten to them... Just as he was about to give up hope, his hand brushed against a shape on the lid of the box. It felt textured and relatively warm, not smooth and cold like the tin or stone it was entombed within. He tugged at it, and it popped right off. A small dab of epoxy or some other adhesive was all that had held the object to the lid. Pulling the object from the hole, Jon knew from its shape what it was before he even saw it. Another cross.

Mara was stammering up above, unsure of what to say, caught off-guard and at a complete loss for words. Pulling his arm from the hole, he shoved the cross in his coat’s lapel pocket, zipping it closed so the artifact wouldn’t fall out.

“Hey, you, get up from there.” Jon felt a tug at his pants leg accompanying the tired but irritated voice of the security guard. While dangling below, Jon had been considering how to go about this confrontation. Fight? He could probably take some rent-a-cop, especially if he caught him off-guard, but he didn’t need the police hunting him for assault. Flight? He and Mara could probably outrun the guy, but they still might have the cops after them for trespassing. And besides, if there were something else in that box, he wouldn’t be able to come back and look for it after this. When he finally pulled himself upright, a look of indignant consternation already painted on his face, Jon surmised that his plan just might work.

“‘Get up from there’?” Jon began, throwing his hands into the air in a display of exasperation, the blood that had rushed to Jon’s recently upside-down face presenting a convincing image of indignation. The guard took a step back, already adopting a defensive posture. Jon pressed ahead, taking a step toward the shorter man. “D’ya think I
want
to be down here in this freakin’ cold tonight? D’ya think I wouldn’t rather be home in my nice warm bed right now? But no, my supervisor calls me up at quarter-to-midnight, tells me to get my butt down here and fix these damn lights. I says can I just come in and fix it in the morning when my shift begins, and he says no. Maintenance,” he continued, his voice growing more snide, “has to be done at night, when we won’t bother the freakin’ tourists. So here I am workin’ my butt off for jack pay in the freezin’ cold, and then Joe Detective comes and tries to start trouble.” He shook the flathead screwdriver at the man, continuing his charade of exasperation. “What’s the name of your supervisor? I oughta report you and your interfering with important Center maintenance work.”

The security guard was visibly shaken, the lines in his face deepening as though his features were trying to retreat from Jon’s verbal onslaught. But he didn’t relent.

“Could I see your work order to verify?” he stammered, trying to maintain some semblance of authority.

“My work order? Didn’t you hear me? I got called out of bed less than an hour ago. I just know what my boss told me; he must’ve forgotten to FedEx me the work order. Jeez.” Jon fished his cell phone out of his pocket, and held it ready to dial. “What’s your supervisor’s name and number? And
your
name, too, for that matter?”

“Th- that won’t be necessary,” sputtered the guard, beginning to back away with his hands forward in a defensive gesture. “I’m sorry for interfering, just trying to do my job, you know. I won’t keep you.” And with that he briskly continued his beat around the corner and out of sight.

“Nice work, Jon,” Mara said, admiration twinkling in her eyes.

“Meh,” Jon said with a shrug. “Could’ve just as easily backfired. Michael tried the same thing with a security guard in a Viennese cemetery one time. Didn’t work out so well. Landed us both a cell overnight until Dad managed to pull the requisite strings to get us out. We got lucky this time is all.” He unzipped his pocket and pulled out the small wooden cross. “Doubly so, you could say,” he added holding it so he and Mara could both study it.

It was a simple, unadorned object, two pieces of beveled and varnished wood dovetailed together in a cruciform arrangement. Jon turned it over, scrutinized it. There was nothing particularly strange about it. It still had a slightly woody odor, a daub of dried adhesive at the intersection of the cross pieces where the object had been affixed to the lid of the box, but no Dossiers, no clue, no message.

“That’s it?” Mara asked expectantly. “That’s all that was down there?”

“It was in a little metal box set in the wall. But yeah, that’s all that...” He drifted off.