Beneath

by Roland Smith

  His bad leg did not slow him down.

  Nor did the darkness.

  He had an old flashlight that he had to bang once in a while to keep lit, but I don’t think he needed it.

  He was better at negotiating the labyrinth than Kate.

  And quicker.

  We made a final turn and came to a solid rock wall.

  He looked at Kate. “Did you ever get this far?”

  “I think so,” she answered.

  “And you thought it was a dead end.”

  Kate nodded.

  “That’s the problem with the Pod. You’re always looking straight ahead or down. You rarely look up.”

  He pointed his dim flashlight up a narrow shaft.

  Just above his head was an iron rung.

  Three feet above the first was a second.

  One hundred and two altogether.

  At the top was a metal trapdoor locked with a padlock.

  He unlocked it with a key hanging around his neck and pushed the door open.

  When we were through he closed the door, flipped the hasp over the staple, slipped the padlock through, and locked it.

  “That’ll hold ’em … for a while.”

  “You think they’re going to find this place?” Coop asked. “Kate couldn’t.”

  “She wasn’t looking hard enough. Lod won’t stop looking until he does find it. That’s guaranteed.” He looked at Kate. “We’re in a forgotten subbasement below the library. I’m going to turn the lights on so these boys don’t fall all over themselves. You might want to put on your shades.”

  Kate slipped them on.

  The lights weren’t very bright, but even I was blinking and squinting.

  Our boots echoed down the long concrete hallway.

  I glanced at Coop.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  Idiotic grin.

  “It would be a good place to tap,” he admitted.

  or rooms, were in another forgotten subbasement, three levels above the forgotten basement we emerged from.

  He slid back a steel door.

  I expected his room to be lined with books.

  It was lined with video monitors, computers, and radio scanners.

  “Welcome to Shadow Pod central,” he said.

  Kate took off her shades and stared at the screens.

  I recognized one of the screens.

  It was the camera over the compound entrance.

  People were coming and going.

  They looked panicked.

  “You’ve hacked into the Pod surveillance system,” she said.

  “Not all the cameras, but most of them. And the motion detectors. But what’s been the most useful over the years are the radio communications. You kind of messed that up for me today when you tore that antenna out. I managed to fix it, but —”

  “You fixed the antenna!” Kate said.

  “How else was I going to monitor things? You probably know that Lod has tracking chips in those radios.”

  Kate nodded.

  “I’ve hacked into those too. How do you think I knew you were coming to the reservoir all these years? I’m not a psychic.”

  “Or a ghost,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Kate said.

  “Without the radios I wouldn’t have known that the monster man and his dog were going to show up at the reservoir. He got down there just after me. I had to slip into one of my hidey-holes.”

  “Hidey-holes?” Kate said.

  “I have ’em all over the place. And I always know where the closest one is in case I run into someone. How else could I survive down here all these years?”

  Kate turned to me and smiled. “Poof,” she said.

  “Something like that. Anyway, when you put the radios on the dog, I knew you’d come to the reservoir. I still feel bad about that Rott but …”

  He opened a drawer and pulled out two radios.

  Kate grabbed them. “Enji is here?”

  “Down the street. No dogs allowed in the library. They must have seen her run by with the radios on her collar but couldn’t grab her.”

  “How did you catch her?” Coop asked.

  “I had a friend pick her up when she got above, but we’ll get to that in a minute.”

  He motioned us into another room, which turned out to be a kitchen.

  Sitting on the table next to the oven were three well-used backpacks.

  “Lod is going to come after you. You need to get out of the city tonight. I’ve put together a kit for each of you. Clothes, food, and toiletry items.” He looked at me. “You can’t return to your hotel. There are a couple of Shadows waiting there for you.” He looked at Coop. “You can’t go home and neither can Pat. Lod knows where you live. He knows everything about you.”

  He unzipped a side pocket and pulled out an iPhone.

  “There’s one for each of you, set up under bogus names, and you have unlimited everything on them. There are four numbers in the address book. Each other’s” — he pulled an iPhone out of his back pocket — “and mine. Do not, and I mean do not under any circumstances call anyone else you’ve ever known, or any governmental organization, on these phones. Ever. That little room the Originals and Lod go into is filled with the most sophisticated computer equipment money can buy. In the old days he broke into buildings by picking locks and breaking windows. He does it electronically now, and he and the Originals are masters at this. If you call your home and talk to your parents from a landline, he’ll have your number and know where you are in seconds. The same thing for their cell phones.”

  He looked at his watch.

  “I’m going to have to hurry through the rest of this. When you get a chance you need to change your appearance. Cut your hair … dye it. Maybe buy some fake eyeglasses. You can figure that out when you get someplace safe. My point is that all of you need to stay off the grid until I tell you that you’re safe. Lod has people everywhere.”

  “Where should we go?” Coop asked.

  “Newark Airport in Jersey shut down tonight because of weather. There are about five thousand angry holiday travelers stranded there. They aren’t going to notice three more kids with backpacks. I want you to go there in separate taxis. Spend the night. In the morning get on a bus and go to the train station. You can’t fly because you’ll have to show ID, but you can always get on a train. When you’re on the train, or bus, or however you’re getting around … don’t get on them together. Don’t sit together. Don’t talk to each other. Don’t get off with each other. Lod’s people are going to be looking for three kids. If you check into a hotel, pay cash, and don’t check in together.”

  He looked at Coop.

  “There’s one stop I want you to make before you disappear.”

  “Where?”

  “The FBI. I understand you have a friend there.”

  I looked at Coop, expecting him to say that he didn’t have a friend in the FBI.

  “I do,” he said.

  “Lod is up to something big and that means bad. You need to write down everything that’s happened and give it to her … but not personally. In each pack is a laptop. Put the information on a flash drive.” He looked at me. “Do you still have that disposable cell phone you bought?”

  “How’d you know I bought a cell phone?”

  “Do you have it?”

  “Yeah.” The only way he could have known this is if he’d been following me up top.

  “When you get to DC, Coop’s going to make one call on it. Make it short. Then destroy the phone.”

  “Why don’t we just call her right now?” Coop said. “We can put an end to this. They’ll raid the Deep, find the mush rooms …”

  The Librarian shook his head. “This isn’t about growing mushrooms. And they aren’t going to do anything on Christmas, or Sunday. Even your friend is in holiday mode. You need to talk to her when she’s back at wo
rk. As soon as you do you need to get as far away from DC as you can. None of you will be safe until they have Lod and his people in custody. Even then you might not be safe.”

  “How did you know I knew someone in the FBI?”

  “I know all about you. I’ve been checking into your background since the moment I met you. Belated happy birthday, by the way. And if I can find out that much about you, you can bet that Lod knows even more. I’m a rank amateur compared to him.”

  “Why did you check me out?”

  The Librarian shrugged.

  “A hunch,” he said. “A strong feeling that you had something to do with this. That you were going to change everything. I can’t explain it better than that. I don’t understand it myself.”

  He looked at his watch again.

  he said.

  We picked up the packs and followed him out of the kitchen.

  He slid the metal door open, looked up and down the hallway, then waved us through.

  He locked the door behind us.

  “Do you remember where you picked up the shopping carts last night?” he asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s just a few blocks from here. How do you —”

  “Never mind,” he interrupted. “My friend is waiting there.” He looked at Kate and added, “With Enji. Get down there as quick as you can, then get over to Newark Airport.”

  “What about you?” Kate asked. “The mushroom man is going to tell Lod about what you did.”

  “I won’t be the Librarian anymore,” he said. “But I’ll be fine. I have to button up some things here, then I’ll be leaving town too.”

  We followed him down the hall to a stairway door.

  He held it open for us, but Kate refused to go through.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “Why have you been keeping track of the Pod all these years?”

  He sat down on the bottom step and looked up at her as if he had known the question was coming but hoped it wouldn’t.

  “Because of you, Kate,” he said quietly. “There were three bodies in that Dumpster. Not two. I was the third.”

  We waited.

  “I was a member of the Pod. An Original. I went with Lod up top to find your parents. I had no idea he was planning to murder them. I tried to stop him. But it was dark that night … very dark. He shot me in the leg. But the second bullet intended for my head missed. It grazed my skull and knocked me out. He thought I was dead. I got out of the alley, with some help, and got to a hospital.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “Because your parents were dead and I knew Lod wouldn’t hurt you. If I called the police, you would have ended up in some kind of foster home. The Pod would have been destroyed. Back then I believed in what they were doing. And there were other problems …”

  He looked up at Kate.

  “My real name is Alex Dane.”

  His eyes teared.

  “I’m your great-uncle. Lawrence Oliver Dane … Lod … is my older brother.”

  led us up the stairs to the front entrance of the library.

  He keyed in the alarm code and opened the front door.

  The sidewalks were covered in snow.

  “Follow my instructions and you’ll be okay. I’ll call you when I can.”

  We stepped outside into the brisk air. I breathed in deeply.

  “Merry Christmas,” Alex said, and closed the door behind us.

  No friggin’ this time.

  We walked down the street.

  The only sound was our boots squeaking on the powdery snow.

  We didn’t make it to the storage locker.

  The grocery cart came to us.

  Pushed by Santa Claus.

  Enji was sitting in the cart, shivering.

  “So you’re the girl,” Santa said.

  “Terry?” I said.

  “Posty?” Coop said.

  “Yeah.”

  He pulled his white beard down. Underneath was Terry Trueman, aka Posty, aka Saint Nick.

  “Got tired of waiting for you, so I came looking. The Librarian gave us the heads-up about the Pod. We’re spread out all over the city until this blows over. I thought the Santa suit would be a good disguise. And it’s warm.”

  “What do you mean I’m the girl?” Kate asked.

  “The girl whose parents were murdered.”

  “Oh. I guess I am that girl.”

  “Well, I’m the guy who found your parents in the alley. I also found the Librarian. Don’t know his real name. Don’t want to know his real name. When I called the police I left out a little detail. He had a bullet in his leg. It was clear that he had nothing to do with the murders. He showed up at the wrong Dumpster at the wrong time. That could have just as easily been me. I wanted to call an ambulance, but he begged me not to. He said he was in trouble with the police. I got him to an outpatient clinic where they don’t ask a lot of questions … then I called the police.”

  He pulled a bag out of the cart.

  “The Librarian told me that you and these two discovered that Lod killed your parents.” He gave Kate the bag.

  “What’s in it?” Kate asked.

  “Cash,” Terry said. “The reward I posted after I found them. It’s quadrupled since I put the money up.” He looked at me. “I told you I was a pretty good banker.”

  “Thanks, Terry.”

  “No problem. I’m going to get off the street now and you better do the same.”

  The man in red turned the cart around and walked away.

  pulled up to the curb in front of his home in McLean in the back of a taxi.

  He was alone, badly sunburned, peeling, bitten, and …

  Bitter.

  At the airport, Denise had jumped into a taxi by herself, saying that she would call him in a few days, and told him to give Vincent a peck on the beak for her, neglecting to peck Bertrand on the cheek good-bye. Glancing in the taxi’s rearview mirror as he paid the fare, he could see why. His face was covered with inflamed red sores. He hoped none of them were nurturing insect larva.

  “Jilted,” he said under his breath.

  “What’s that?” the cabbie asked.

  “Nothing,” Bertrand said. “Keep the change.”

  He got out and yanked his heavy backpack from the trunk. The search for the elusive keel-billed motmot had been a complete disaster. It turned out that Denise was much better suited to the tropics than the Nobel laureate.

  Bertrand did not think that Denise would be taking him on another expedition anytime soon, and that was fine with him. He’d had an absolutely miserable time.

  He was lugging his mildewed pack up the walkway to his front door when two burly men wearing FBI Windbreakers appeared out of nowhere.

  “Mr. O’Toole?”

  “Dr. O’Toole,” Bertrand corrected.

  “Fine, Bert. You need to come with us.”

  “Why? And my name is Bertrand, not Bert.”

  The agents smiled at his annoyance. They knew some things he didn’t know they knew.

  “It’s a matter of national security.”

  “There must be some mistake. You obviously have the wrong O’Toole.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Can I put my things inside? Take a shower? Change clothes?”

  “No, sir, you can’t. And by standing out here we are compromising our operation.”

  “What operation?”

  “You’ll be fully briefed when you get to the WFO.”

  “WFO?”

  “Washington Field Office.”

  “This is ridiculous. Do you know who I am?”

  “Mr. Bert … sorry … Dr. Bertrand O’Toole, Nobel laureate, professor at Georgetown University, and you need to come with us … now.”

  The briefing actually started in the backseat of the agents’ black SUV.

  One of the agents passed Bertrand a document. The cover was stamped: CLASSIFIED. Below the red stamp were the words: BENEATH BY PAT AND COOP O’TOOLE.

&
nbsp; holiday had not gone much better than her husband’s.

  The position at the Kennedy Space Center had fallen through at the last minute. (In fact, at the very moment her youngest son, Patrick, had pulled into Penn Station in New York City.)

  In order to take her mind off losing the job, her boyfriend, Wayne, purchased a two-week Caribbean cruise for the family — five tickets at a ridiculously low fare. Because it was a last-minute deal they barely had time to pack and catch the ship before it sailed. The only person who knew where they were was their nanny, who took advantage of the unexpected time off by driving to California with her boyfriend.

  Ariel actually loathed cruising but did not tell Wayne this. The only reason she had tolerated it when the boys were young was because of Patrick’s claustrophobia. She was a lot more comfortable hurtling through the outer atmosphere than she was churning across the undulating sea.

  She learned very quickly that sailing with Cooper and Patrick, as strange as they both were, was a breeze compared to cruising with three girls under the age of five without a nanny. It was like herding a troop of suicidal baboons on a dangerous island. When she wasn’t changing dirty diapers and Pull-Ups, she was stopping the girls from jumping overboard. They climbed everything they could wrap their little fingers around.

  Wayne was absolutely useless. He had spent the entire cruise trolling the ship for potential clients. After two weeks, Ariel was more exhausted than she’d been after her two-month stint aboard the International Space Station.

  Her reaction to the two FBI agents waiting for her at the bottom of the gangplank was completely different than Bertrand’s …

  “Ariel O’Toole?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re with the FBI.”

  “Good for you.”

  “We’re here to escort you to the Washington Field Office in DC.”

  “What for?” Wayne asked.

  “I’ll go,” Ariel said.

  “What!” Wayne shouted.

  Ariel handed Wayne his youngest daughter, hoping that when they arrived at the WFO they would lock her in a cell for a month by herself.