by Sarah Lovett
“You ran.”
“I damned myself.”
She stood, and walked to the door, where she stopped for one last look back. “M is alive, isn’t he?”
“It’s all over, Dr. Strange.” Dantes offered her The Count of Monte Cristo. “I already know how it comes out,” he said. “Read it one of these days.”
* * *
3:55 P.M. Behind the wheel of the rental, Sylvia turned west on Sunset.
The famous boulevard ran like a seam through the city. The seedy offices, the fast food mini malls, the restaurants advertising Thai, Korean, Spanish, Indian, sushi, and Kentucky Fried all blurred together into a ribbon of simple commerce that revealed the complex patterns of human migration, cultural exchange, and expansion.
Keep going and narrow high-rises constructed of glass and steel stood shoulder to shoulder, bordering concrete and asphalt. At Doheny, the real estate consisted of trendy shops. Jog west, and the clubs and night joints sat sullen during daylight hours, like floozies waiting to come alive at sunset with that first sip of eighty proof. Traffic formed a constant glimmering ribbon, winding, twisting, mile after mile. The air held the bite of smog.
But she was only aware of the anxious looping thoughts: a boy named Simon Mole was reborn as an international terrorist who called himself Ben Black; when U.S. missiles hit Afghanistan in 2000, Black escaped to reconstruct himself yet again—into M.
A man who had survived bombings, train wrecks, prison, and military attack wasn’t going to conveniently commit suicide in downtown LA.
M doesn’t die, he transforms.
So, where was he? What was he waiting for?
She turned south and east, drawn once again to the heart of the city. Downtown, she followed the seam of Main Street, the zero point, the dividing line between east and west. Shadows were coming to life under the glow of neon.
Fifth, east of Broadway, was no-man’s-land: skid row.
It was the barrel bonfires center street and the cop cars rousting drunks that gave the Nickel away. In Los Angeles, the fifty-block row is centered between Main, Third, Alameda, and Seventh. Liquor stores—windows blocked with cardboard—were plentiful, and the multistoried transient hotels showed depressing, dingy facades.
Driving slowly—not stopping—Sylvia recognized the faces of the mentally ill, the addicted, the homeless. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find, but she was left with the hangover of misery and poverty.
She turned west, heading for the ocean and one last night in LA. Early this morning, Leo had flown to Arizona to consult on a case. His condo was dark. Inside bungalow number four, the shades were still drawn.
She made phone calls—and she heard the news from Matt: Mona Carpenter’s husband was being held in custody, charges pending. He’d violated a restraining order; he’d seen Mona an hour before her suicide.
“Her parents want him charged with assault and attempted murder,” Matt said.
“He didn’t force the pills down her throat.”
But Sylvia knew the dark power Bob Carpenter had wielded over Mona. The news brought sadness, but also the beginnings of closure.
She showered, lingering under the hot beads of water; her skin was splotched red when she slathered on cream. Crawling naked between clean white sheets, cradling the pillow, she fell into an almost narcotic sleep to wrestle with dreams that were fitful, nightmarish.
It was Molly Redding who smiled at Sylvia from the dream world. She held out one hand, beckoning. Her mouth didn’t move, but she spoke: Is it revenge that counts at the end?
As Sylvia surfaced to consciousness, the question echoed. She made her way to the window, opening pale yellow blinds. The night was dark, and fog shrouded the streets and the ocean beyond. There were nine circles in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. M had taken them through eight. Why would he stop there?
She picked up the copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. Thumbing through, she missed it the first time. But the key was there—a half dozen words, almost invisible—traced between the margins.
The world is filled with such joyous noise when one is deaf to the sound of pain.
Mole’s Manifesto
Monday—4:12 A.M. Sylvia slammed both fists on Sweetheart’s front door.
Molly Redding’s message from the dream ran through her head: Is it revenge that counts at the end?
She raised her fists to knock again—
The door opened and she stumbled forward, connecting with Luke’s chest. Recovering her balance, she caught a quick glimpse of day-old beard and bleary blue eyes.
“Where is he?” She pushed past him, stepping into the foyer. “Where’s Sweetheart?”
“Dr. Strange—Sylvia—we’re all exhausted,” Luke began. He followed the psychologist, watching her nervously, not trusting her manic energy. “Listen, we’ve all been through—”
He broke off, looking past her toward the private wing of the house.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
Sylvia swung around at the sound of the deep voice. She found herself within inches of Sweetheart. The sight of him—face blanched ashen, gray circles, disheveled clothes—was frightening. He shook his head, turning to leave.
“I have the coordinates.” Sylvia held up the book—The Count of Monte Cristo.
Sweetheart stopped.
“The true coordinates for Babylon,” she said softly. “We were wrong. Ishtar’s Gate isn’t MTA. I don’t believe M was even near the tower when it blew.”
“Molly?” Sweetheart whispered. No one said anything for several seconds. Slowly, he held out his hand for the book. His fingers were trembling.
She opened to the page to find the words carved in paper: brdwy = euphrtes/e wall = 110/pro wy = la st/neb pal = pueb.
4:25 A.M. Topographic images flashed across the monitor. Magenta, turquoise, ebony, onyx, peach, violet—a blinding swirl of colors delineating contour feet, rivers, zones, erosion and flow patterns, counties, roads, municipalities.
To center on urban Los Angeles.
And Babylon.
The images jumped as the skeleton of the twenty-first-century megalopolis filled the ghostly skin of Babylon, encompassing more than three thousand years of urban history.
Shifting one way—then the other at lightning speed.
Perched restlessly in front of the monitor, Luke spoke in the clipped sentences of someone short on time. “Four correlation points—should be enough to rubber-sheet—to overlay. Say your prayers—I’m switching overhead.”
Sylvia blinked, shielding her eyes. Light from the projecting system illuminated the floral patterns of the antique rug. She saw Sweetheart watching her; she offered him a weak smile. She felt afraid—they were a day late, a dollar short.
This was one last game dreamed up by Dantes, the master manipulator.
Overhead, red, yellow, and pink stars were exploding in infinite space. The lost world of Babylon. Los Angeles, a dying civilization.
“All right,” Luke murmured tightly. “I can zero in on the coordinates now. Hollywood-Babylon, here we come.” His fingers flew over the keyboard.
Turning away from the light, she looked up. On the dome of the ceiling lost galaxies glowed. Shadows erased the stars and brought the maps into stark relief. Overlapping points burned red.
Suddenly the screen image froze—coordinates aligned and locked in three-dimensional space. She was staring at a web of intersecting lines—at its locus stood the Tower of Babel and LA’s ziggurat; north to south the Euphrates melded with Broadway, each a river of transport through an urban center.
North wall of Babylon—the 101 freeway.
East wall of Babylon—the Harbor Freeway.
Euphrates—Broadway.
Processional Way—Los Angeles Street.
Nebuchadnezzar’s palace—the historic pueblo Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles—Our Lady Queen of the Angels.
Sylvia paced nervously. She needed to be in motion. Tension was a palpable presence in the ro
om.
All civilizations come to an end. Dantes’ world.
Mole’s hell. Excavation of the past.
The two had finally met, overlapping to create one doomed city.
“The traitors of the ninth circle,” she whispered.
“The deepest level of hell.” Sweetheart’s delivery was sharp. “Luke—take the picture down; show me the lowest level of the grid.”
The images began to shift, moving through the city’s topography in an ever deepening pattern until infrastructure covered the screen: an intricate web of gas, telephone, cable, electrical conduits, water, sewage, storm drains, subways, manholes, transmitting stations, and subterranean utility vaults.
A subterranean world where a person could get lost.
Or be found.
Luke clicked a mouse and a red light shimmered on the overhead projection.
“Ishtar’s Gate,” Sweetheart whispered.
“Aligned with the corner of Cesar Chavez and North Vignes,” Sylvia said.
As Sweetheart crossed the room, he said, “Allowing a half-kilometer radius for error.”
“When I spoke to Pete Carson with county flood control, he said there are condemned utility vaults in that area,” Luke said. “And some underground storage areas that belong to the railroad.”
“So . . .” Sweetheart glanced away from the screen, closing his almond eyes. Behind him, the first light of dawn leaked through louver shades, outlining his body with a faint golden glow. “John Dantes sends us west from the LA River in an underground drainpipe for three quarters of a mile, to turn north at the lesser drain and head for Sunset, now Cesar Chavez, to keep an eye out for Ishtar’s Gate along the way.”
“You’ll be following the street grid, only lower,” Luke said, ignoring the professor’s caustic tone. “Because that’s how the utilities are laid out, although there are exceptions.” When he saw their questioning expressions, he said, “We can’t plan for all the possibilities: condemned tunnels, old locks, abandoned sewers, oil pipes from the boom days, or train tunnels.”
Luke leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers like a drummer. “Pete Carson says he’ll guarantee us old railroad and subway tunnels run through this entire area from Union Station to Roundout Street, which is traversed by tracks.”
“Adjust the image to the east.”
“Roger that.” Luke guided the mouse with his thumb; the subterranean world slid across the ceiling.
“Looks like this flood drain runs just north of Union Station all the way to the old pueblo.” He stopped, as if he was registering the immensity of the search, the odds against finding anything at all—alive or dead.
“Purcell says LAPD will send officers along with county maintenance, if we tell them where to go in,” Sylvia interjected, trying to pull her mood out of its downward spiral; they couldn’t afford to crash, not now. “And you said this guy from county flood control—Pete—will take us in? That gives us two teams.”
“Pete’s ready to meet you both at the two forty-one maintenance station,” Luke said.
“Purcell’s contacted LA Detention,” Sylvia added. “They’re moving Dantes out within the next hour.”
“Let’s go down,” Sweetheart said bluntly.
Sylvia stopped in her tracks. “You said Ben Black had a master plan—he was going to destroy New York.”
“Detailed plans to attack major infrastructure—water, power, shipping, air transportation.” Sweetheart’s voice faded, but he recovered. “We found the blueprints after the missile strike. Among other things, Black knew which vault and transformer to blow in order to knock out Wall Street.”
“Blow it to hell,” Luke said softly, a stricken look on his face.
Sylvia took a quick breath. How much damage could one man do?
When I was a young boy I knew right from wrong, somewhere ‘cross the years I lost my way.
Jai Uttal, “Conductor”
Monday—4:28 A.M. In darkness, John Dantes lay on the jail bed, fingers laced behind his head.
It was time.
He stood carefully, stretched, and walked across the small cell to the door. When he angled his neck to get a view through the window, he could just see the back of Officer Jones’ head. Tight dark curls bobbed gently. Dantes smiled. His faithful watchdog was asleep at the door.
He walked to the toilet, where he unzipped his pants, slid them down, and sat.
Prisons took away the privilege of privacy. He was used to performing almost every bodily function in front of witnesses. But this time, there were no obvious witnesses, and he wasn’t responding to physical demands.
He let his right hand brush the wall. In his palm, he possessed an ordinary penny. He gripped it tightly between close-cut fingernails.
He tapped the penny against the metal pipe of the toilet. Metal was an advantage of an old facility.
None of this had happened by chance. He was pleased with that fact.
Tap, tap, tap.
The sound echoed, then it was still again.
Two young men bound together by idealism, by brotherhood, by loneliness, and finally, by hatred.
Tap, tap, tap.
At the age of eighteen, they had made a pact; they had taken a vow of blood: “If either one of us is ever imprisoned, the other will set him free.”
Deliverance. Salvation. The ideals of love before love turned to hate.
Dantes had broken the vow.
Simon Mole had not.
Tap, tap . . .
Finally, at 5 A.M., Dantes heard what he’d been waiting for.
His own signal coming back at him from below.
Tap, tap, tap . . .
Good.
Very soon now it would be time to face his friend, his enemy.
Pausing in his savage meal, the sinner raised
His mouth and wiped it clean along the hair
Left on the head whose back he had laid waste.
The Inferno of Dante, canto XXXIII, translated by Robert Pinsky
5:01 A.M. Think of a labyrinth, a dark cloister laid beneath a city of light and air, a conglomeration of cells, a network of arteries, veins, a pathway of neurons, which are the messengers of everything utilitarian in the body of Los Angeles.
Think of gas, electricity, water, oil, steam, fuel and waste, heat and coolant flowing through a maze of conduits and pipes inside tunnels, all laid out beneath the four thousand square miles of the LA basin.
In this way, every building, every high-rise and warehouse, every subway, every airport, every bus station and train station and gas station is interconnected and allowed to breathe, eat, shit.
Welcome to the underground infrastructure of any megalopolis.
Welcome to the belly and the backbone of Los Angeles—the place where she is most vulnerable.
Welcome to the core of urban existence.
M intends to shoot it all to hell.
Not for the last time in his life, he is a dead man. First it was Simon, then Ben Black. What happens from here on out is up to M and Dantes.
M will create change through molecules; they are his god—those invisible jots, those fragments, those bonds to be broken, resulting in explosive reaction.
Dantes will create change by revisiting the past.
M hasn’t seen sunlight for almost thirty-six hours. He’s been too busy with final touches on Project Inferno to come up for air. That doesn’t matter much because his desire for close, dark spaces has turned to a pressing hunger.
M has come to worship darkness.
Only in her soft arms does he find fleeting peace.
Darkness and revenge—sweet, sweet revenge.
Here, beneath the city, the earth surrounds him.
If I was mad, I’d never return to daylight.
But he isn’t mad, he thinks, smiling to himself. A lesser man would never have survived the loss, the imprisonment, the torture. He isn’t a lesser man; he’s just a guy who settles old scores.
One for his s
ister, Laura’s, death.
One for his scars.
One for loss of innocence.
One for disillusionment.
One for his years in that hellhole.
One for the torture.
One for the Tomahawk missiles.
One for the loss of his god and his soul . . .
And who will pay the price?
While he works, he gazes up at the metal racks where two cables join in a lead sleeve. He wraps his hand around the molded sleeve, feels the warmth of a live thing—the heat, the faint vibrations of a heart or a pulsing neuron.
Phase two: a series of explosions will rip open the city’s nervous system. He has chosen strategic locations.
One: just beneath the Criminal Courts Building complex, the nerve center of LA’s Superior Court.
Two: Los Angeles International Airport with its jet fuel feeder lines.
Three: First Interstate World Center and the Central Library.
Four: Santa Monica–Golden State–Pomona–Hollywood Freeway interchange.
Five: Santa Monica–San Diego Freeway interchange.
Six: Los Angeles Harbor, San Pedro.
Seven: Union Station and the nerve center of the city’s transportation (to finish the job he started with the MTA tower).
Eight: the war room at the dams.
Initiation is easily accomplished by a remote dialing system hooked through the city’s own communication system. He is pleased with this simple solution. He has spent more than a year infecting this city; like the AIDS virus, he can turn LA’s cells against themselves.
The beast is crouching in the bowels of the city.
The monster has spread her tentacles of death and destruction.
And the beast, the monster, goes by the name of technology.