‘No, I –’
‘You selfish, self-seeking bastard. I can’t bear to look at you.’ She stared out into the night.
‘I’m sorry, Kat.’
‘I need to tell this story. So you can understand what I mean about betrayal.’ Pain filled her voice. ‘So you can understand what you’ve done.’
Unexpectedly, tears welled in his eyes. He’d hurt her far more badly than he’d imagined. An image flashed into his mind of a tiny, misshapen fool. Himself, his ego. Shrivelled, lost in self-gratification.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again, more thickly. She saw his impending emotional release, saw where it would lead. She denied him it. There would be no crying in each other’s arms, no reconciliation.
‘Let me tell this. You can’t understand me unless you know this.’
‘Go on.’
‘Something about one of the suspects we looked at in 2002 rang a bell with me. It wasn’t nice work. We were looking at potential spies in the scientific community. There was a particle physicist, an Arab-American, working out at Brookhaven on Long Island, showing suspicious behaviour. He’d only been in the country two or three years.’
‘Were you using your gift at all? I thought it died after you came out of the service.’
‘After I lost Tariq?’
‘Yes.’
‘Guess what. I found him again. At Brookhaven. Working on the particle accelerator, and also showing a lot of interest in metallic-glass research.’
‘You found him? He wasn’t killed after all?’
‘I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He’d survived. But to have been released, then to have come to America – they must have forced him to spy on us. There was no other way.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I’m ashamed of what I did.’
‘I thought you’d loved him. And you were his reason for living. For betraying. For everything.’
‘I know. I used that. I sought him out. Accidental meeting. Amazement. Tears. Protestations of innocence, of miraculous escape. I didn’t believe him for a moment. But it got me close to him. Got me to what he was doing.’
‘You started seeing him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you sleep with him?’
She paused. ‘No.’
‘Did you make him think you would?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then?’
‘America went into Iraq. A few weeks later, I led him to a secluded spot and handed him over.’
‘To whom?’
‘Interrogators.’
‘Jesus.’
‘I told myself it was the job. A necessary job. It was. Then when the Abu Ghraib things started to come out… The bestial things they were doing. I heard about them before they broke publicly. I was sick. It made me sick.’
‘You hid it well.’
‘You helped a lot. Though you didn’t realize. I quit again. I’ve had happier years with you than I thought possible, Robert. And then there was the Blackout.’
‘Our miracle came along. Moss. You a mother at forty-three.’
‘And then I lost him.’
‘We lost him.’
‘And I was cold to you. Lifeless. Since then.’
It was what he’d wanted to say. Yes, she’d been cold. Yes, it was humiliating. To be turfed out into a separate room. To be so suddenly estranged that they killed desire in each other. And yes, in a dark corner of his heart he had wanted revenge.
‘It wasn’t your fault, Kat.’
‘I always felt he was a twin.’
‘That’s what you said.’
‘From the very start, when the doctors said there was only one, I thought they were mistaken. Something had to have gone wrong.’
Katherine had slid from elation to numbness after the miscarriage. Despite all evidence to the contrary, she’d held on to the idea that somehow Moss wasn’t entirely gone. It was a common traumatic response. She’d held on to her dream creature.
‘I know it’s impossible. But you thought I was going mad.’
‘I didn’t know what to think. I just saw myself losing you. I’ve ached to be touched. By you. And then just to be touched. When it happened, it was like life returning.’
She looked into his eyes. ‘Was she good?’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘She wasn’t a bore, at least. Some people are, you know. In bed.’
‘Would it make any sense to say in some ways it’s not even about you?’
She slapped his face, without warning, her face white with rage. ‘Not about me? You couldn’t even find your wedding ring to put it back on, and it’s not about me?’
‘I’m sorry. Kat, I – ’
‘I always thought I’d be able to deal with it if you ran around. Had an affair. I’d just leave. It’s harder than that. But…’
She sighed, fought back tears. Made up her mind.
‘I have safe places arranged that you don’t know about. I have to. I’m going to one now.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘This is what it costs, Robert.’
‘Kat, please. Don’t do this. I want to protect you. To do that I have to help Adam get out. Horace is adamant. I have to go deeper in to help him.’
‘You don’t trust Adam, though.’
‘I don’t trust whatever he’s becoming. What he will become if I don’t help.’
‘Are you going to tell me that this fling with Adam’s woman is part of helping him?’
‘No. I’m not saying that.’
‘It might be.’
‘I’m not saying that. Not hiding behind that.’
‘Maybe part of the cost of saving Adam is my trust in you. Maybe that’s one of the sacrifices that’s required. Because it’s gone, believe me.’
‘I’m not making excuses.’ But it was hopeless. The anger surged in him. ‘But you know what? I might want to fuck Terri again.’
‘So it was that good, was it?’
‘You bet.’
‘You bastard. Don’t try to stop me. You know you won’t find me till I’m ready. Now get out of my way.’
Hours later Robert sat in his study, rubbing his eyes till stars shone, exhausted and alone. After Katherine had left Kerry’s place, he’d returned home to their empty house. Now he was poring over his three-dimensional map of Manhattan. Yellow pins marked the Hare Krishna tree, the site of the Triangle factory fire, Adam’s apartment. Coloured threads ran between them and the red pin at St Paul’s, an orange pin at Mercer, just below Prince. He’d traced a shape that suggested a triangle, but wasn’t one; that suggested a letter G, but wasn’t one.
He felt the cost of the decision in his very flesh. He’d made himself immune to blackmail. Told Katherine about Terri before Adam could. Asserted his power to stand alone. Completed the trial. And now, in his utter freedom, that’s what he was: utterly alone.
He knew he could be cold. Detachment had been a professional virtue. But this was something else: he had deliberately chosen to hurt Katherine. Set her pain against his need and found his need greater. And what if she never came back? He still found his need greater.
Forgive me, he whispered to himself.
His head spun. Part of him felt relieved to have told her. Even to have told her he’d like to make love with Terri again. It was the truth. But he’d taken the confession and twisted it on its head: he’d used it as a weapon, to hurt her. To gain revenge for the pain she’d caused him since the miscarriage. It was unforgivable.
Yet he was now free of the threat of blackmail. It was part of completing the Trial by Fire. He’d assumed responsibility for his actions, and he was paying the price. He could take it.
The way out was on the other side of the darkness gathering around him, around all of them. The way out was the Path of Seth.
He returned to his map of Manhattan, extrapolating lines on the map, seeing them shoot off into New Jersey and Queens and along Manhattan in his mind, seeking meanin
g.
Look at Water Tunnel Number One, Horace had said.
Tunnel Number One was an iron snake under the city, bringing freshwater, bringing life. Too vital to turn off for repair, too old to shut down safely, sustained by the very flow of water it carried, the tunnel coursed through the Bronx, under the length of Manhattan and away into Brooklyn, bearing water from an array of reservoirs to the northand west. Ninety years old. Slaking a one-billion-gallon-a-day thirst.
He looked at its route. Gravity bore the water south into Manhattan, through a chain of city parks. Central Park, Bryant Park by the New York Public Library, an intersection just by Madison Square Park, down into Union Square Park… Sinking the tunnel-digging shafts on public land had presumably made sense, to avoid hassles with eminent domain.
He looked at the other water tunnels. Number Two never entered Manhattan, feeding Queens and Brooklyn and connecting to Staten Island. Number Three, a behemoth that had been under construction for decades, was designed to allow the other two to be turned off and properly inspected for the first time.
Without Tunnel Number One, Manhattan would die. Was that what Horace was talking about?
So far the waypoints of each trial had been located further north than the previous day’s. If that continued, then the route of the tunnel would connect with his map at… Union Square. Would it then follow the tunnel’s course back towards its origin? He stretched a thread over his map from St Paul’s Chapel, past the waypoint on Mercer where he’d met Terri, through the site of the Triangle fire and towards the top of Manhattan. It led up into Central Park, first passing near the tunnel’s shafts at Union Square Park, Madison Square Park, Bryant Park…
A shape formed in his mind and then vanished as soon as he thought he could see it. Maddeningly, he knew it was something that could give him an edge over the evil that was corroding Adam from the inside out. But it could not be looked at directly.
He stared at the map until he could think of nothing else. But after the initial flash, the pattern eluded him. He was left with just the conviction that he’d found part of the puzzle.
Doubts continued to rack his brain. To what extent was Adam telling the complete truth? Why had he asked to see Katherine?
He needed more information still.
He needed to find Kat, and win her back to him. He needed to find out more about Adam’s and Terri’s lives. And, being honest, he wanted Terri again. Perhaps he needed to fuck it out of his system. Or be with her again and find it less mind-blowing. Find fault with her. Something. He couldn’t reach Adam. He had to meet Terri. All roads led to her. He looked at the map again. With a shout of rage and frustration, he swept his arm across it, sending the miniature buildings and pins flying across the room. He stared into the blackness.
The way out was the way in. He had his freedom, and now he had to make it right. He was growing in strength. Understanding was coming to him in flashes, fading immediately, but he felt tantalizingly close to breaking through.
He rubbed his temples. He closed his eyes for a moment, and slept.
Hours later he awoke with a start, fully clothed, stiff and cold, twisted in the chair in his study. The Quad was buzzing. It was a text message from Terri. Washington Square Park. 11.30 a.m.
He looked at his watch. It was after nine. He staggered to the shower.
Robert stood under the arch in Washington Square Park, facing uptown, waiting for Terri’s call. If he was right, he knew where she was going to send him.
It buzzed.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi. Waypoint 057.’
‘Union Square.’
‘Very good. Impressive. South-west corner. You’re getting quicker. But pay attention as you go. The point is the journey.’
‘Where the hell were you yesterday?’
‘Get moving, lover. It’s a whole new day today. Check out Number 2, as you go.’
‘Water tunnel?’
‘What? No. Number 2, Fifth Avenue. What’s with the water tunnel?’
‘Ignore me. I’m tired.’
He started moving north on Fifth. Across the street was the NYU mews at Number ½, an Elizabethan-looking statue at the far end. To its left, the great Deco heap of 1 Fifth Avenue. Its bronze-plated doors reminded him of the Waldorf-Astoria and its hidden railway siding.
He took a closer look at Number 2, a nondescript apartment building. To the right of the main entrance, inside the lobby but visible through glass, rose a seven-foot-tall plastic tube, yellowishand clear, its lower half enclosed in a marble base. Water bubbled up into it.
‘A brook winds its erratic way beneath this site,’ he read on the plaque affixed to the wall outside. ‘The Indians called it Manette, or Devil’s Water. To the Dutch settlers it was Bestevaer’s Killetje, or Grandfather’s Little Creek. For the past two centuries familiar to this neighborhood as MINETTA BROOK.’
Devil’s water, bubbling up. The snake under Manhattan.
The Quad pointed him away from Fifth, a block over to the east, taking him to University Place. There he headed north. The seven glistening parabolas of the Chrysler Building swung into view again along the avenue as he reached East 9th Street.
He walked on. As he emerged on to 14th Street, at the bottom of Union Square Park, the roof structures of Zeckendorf Towers appeared, three pyramidal forms that seemed to float on the horizon as he moved, momentarily aligning like the Giza Pyramids in Egypt. He walked towards them, seeing a fourth pyramid emerge from behind the other three. From trial three to trial four.
Off in the distance, he could hear drums in the still air, chanting and whistles and shouts. The temperature had to be in the nineties. He was already dripping sweat.
‘Arriving destination’ the Quad showed. Then it buzzed. ‘Welcome to Dead Man’s Curve,’ Terri said. ‘Right where you’re standing.’
‘Hell of a name.’
‘Hell of a game. It’s where the cable cars coming up Broadway used to crashor send people flying as they tried to negotiate the bend. There was no way to decelerate. Sound familiar?’
‘I am that streetcar. Where are you?’
‘Cross to the park and look down. There’s a pattern in the sidewalk, a kind of wheel of time, in a horseshoe shape, wrapping around the south end of the park. Walk the wheel and you’ll find me. Can you hear the march coming?’
The protest march against the Republican Convention was routed to end and disperse at Union Square after passing Madison Square Garden, the venue for the meeting. Hundreds of thousands of people were on their way. He looked about the square. There were some cops, but there were many hundreds more at a discreet distance, he was sure.
He crossed 14th Street and looked down at his feet. There were more inlaid plaques, like those near City Hall, but in metal instead of stone.
Pay attention to everything, Horace had said.
He walked the half-wheel along its western side first, looking for Terri and inspecting the rendering of Union Square Park at different times in history. It was a place of labour protests, free speech, activism, vigils. After 9/11 he’d been here and sat amid the glow of hundreds of candles at a makeshift altar, soaking up the dreadful loss, trying to believe in a force of love so mighty – like the heat and light of the candles at dusk, endlessly multiplied – that it could actually fight and defeat such violence, that it was possible to break the cycle of killing and revenge. There had been such urgent graffiti crying Love, Love and Fight War with Peace… and in his heart he had not been able to believe. He’d felt a black flint of cynicism lodged there, and he bore it still. Love was not enough. Sometimes you had to fight.
‘Robert.’
‘Terri.’
‘Walk to the eastern tip of the wheel.’
‘Coming for you.’
He retraced his steps and followed the other arm of the horseshoe back in time: 1859… 1857… 1855.
He didn’t immediately see Terri.
His eyes were drawn to the corner of one of the larger histo
ric plaques set into the sidewalk. It was a compass, showing north. But not just any compass design. It was a compass rose. It was made of four hearts conjoined.
Robert, Katherine, Adam, Terri.
Images flickered rapidly in his mind. The four of them, dancing through time, connected by strands of fire… and a shadow among them, hiding something he could not see. Was it the Minotaur, latched on to Adam? The image vanished.
Then came a long-stemmed rose, on a misty night many years ago in Cambridge, as he knocked at the door of a Miss Katherine Rota at the start of a blind date.
Then, destroying the rose, came the swirling, pulsing eye of death, staring at them all. A voice came into his head, unheard but understood, and he spoke the words as he received them, like a radio. Turn the flint into a jewel.
It made no rational sense, but he understood. Passing the trials would give him that strength. The power to turn the black flint into diamond. To convert fear into love, and make it enough.
‘Boo.’
Hands covered his eyes softly as the word registered in his mind. He turned around and pulled her against him, kissing her long and hard. Waves of lust broke over him. The world fell silent, and there were just her lips, her touch, her taste, her heat against his body.
Then she stopped kissing him back and pulled away.
‘What’s wrong?’
Terri looked up at him quizzically. ‘That was Friday. This is today. Different trial, Mr Reckliss.’
He was still flushed with desire, with the heat of her.
‘Katherine has left me. I told her what happened.’
‘You took a very courageous step.’
‘I don’t know what I did.’
‘You did what you had to.’
Now he stepped back from her, his hands on her shoulders, taking her in, absorbing her. She stood motionless, unseeing yet seeing, supremely confident in her stance, perfectly poised. His sudden access of lust was fading. Something was wrong with her.
‘A different trial now. I understand. No more sex.’
‘Not with me.’
‘It was –’
‘Be quiet.’
The Malice Box Page 22