Fringe 03 - Sins of the Father

by Christa Faust

  He wrapped another towel around his waist and left the steam of the bathroom to find Julia lying on the bed wrapped in a bathrobe. Though they had checked into separate rooms, neither of them wanted to be alone just now. They were both wired and exhausted after the Ambassador.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She was idly flipping through the hotel’s magazine, one of those touristy garbage publications that showed ads for local restaurants and boutiques that most of the hotel’s patrons would either ignore or couldn’t afford.

  “I’m just trying to figure out what I’m going to do next.” She put the magazine down and looked at Peter. “I’ve spent years on this cure. And now it’s gone.”

  “I know it can’t be easy,” Peter said. “To have it stolen, to get duped, to see it used in a terrorist attack. That’s not what you created it for. People died today, and I know that’s not easy to think about.”

  She shrugged.

  “That’s not it,” she said. “Yes, that’s part of it, I suppose, but really, I just want to get back on track. I’m going to have to start over. God, Peter, what am I going to do?”

  “Exactly that,” he said. “Hey, the virus is gone, but they didn’t take away what you know. You still have that. You can rebuild.”

  It was easy for him to say that. It wasn’t his life’s work. And he had more pressing concerns to address. He still had to figure out how he was going to get Big Eddie’s money. One thing at a time, he thought, and he lay down on the bed next to her.

  He touched her hair and she curled into him, her fingers running along his jawline. Since that night at Doctor Westerson’s house, neither of them had made a move on each other. There were still some lingering doubts in Peter’s mind about why she had decided to run out on him that morning, but they had been through so much today, and it had been so intense, that he just wanted a break for a bit.

  A little time to forget himself.

  He bent his head to kiss her, and his phone rang.

  The sudden noise startled them both and they jerked away from each other. Peter grabbed the phone off his nightstand and looked at it. He didn’t recognize the number, but didn’t expect to. The phone was a burner he had picked up that morning, and supposedly no one had the number.

  Tentatively, he answered.

  “Peter, thank God you’re all right,” Bernard Stokes said the moment Peter put the phone to his ear. “I heard there was quite the kerfuffle at the Ambassador this afternoon.”

  “Stokes?” he said. “How’d you get this number? And why are you calling? This isn’t exactly a secure line.”

  “A magician never reveals his secrets,” Stokes replied, sounding pleased with himself. “Whatever you did, bravo. Considering that you’re still alive, I’m assuming it all went well. However, you have another, much larger problem.”

  A pit started to form in his stomach. Was it Big Eddie? Had he tracked him to New York?

  “How so?”

  “The Englishman isn’t finished. Once I heard about what happened at the Ambassador I assumed—rightly as it turns out—that there would be some online chatter. The same people have been talking all day, about another buy.”

  “Another buy, like today was a buy?”

  “Sounds like,” Stokes acknowledged. “It’s couched in some ridiculously obtuse wording, but I think they’re looking at another attack. Only much larger.”

  “How much larger?” Peter said.

  “The last time they were talking about individual doses. This time there’s talk about liters.”

  Peter’s blood turned to ice.

  “Do they say where?”

  “Somewhere in the subway.”

  “That doesn’t narrow it down much.”

  “Look, it’s all very cryptic, so I’m doing what I can,” Stokes said. “Do you know anything about”—he paused, tapping away at keys—“a tunnel at Atlantic Avenue?”

  “The Atlantic Avenue station? That’s down in Brooklyn.”

  “No, I don’t think that’s what they’re talking about. They’re saying something about unused track. That station’s still used, isn’t it?”

  “As far as I know it is,” Peter said.

  He hadn’t been down in Brooklyn in a long time, but that was a heavily trafficked area. They had taken the subway earlier that day, and with all the garbled messages about station and track closures being piped over the PA system, he would have expected to hear something if the station had been shut down.

  “Could it be a different station?”

  “Some of the messages are actually encrypted,” Stokes said. “I’m trying to get into one of them to see if there’s anything more concrete…” He went silent for a moment, and Peter could hear the clacking of a keyboard. “Here we go. ‘Atlantic Avenue Tunnel.’ No mention of a station, though.”

  There was something about the name that was triggering a memory.

  “Hang on,” he said. “I need to check something.”

  “Is there something I can do?” Julia asked, getting off of the bed.

  “Yeah,” Peter said. “Look up Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. Wait. No. Make it ‘historic Atlantic Avenue Tunnel’.”

  She opened up the laptop they had brought with them from the lab, and typed it in.

  “Here it is,” she said, her eyes scanning a web page.

  “World’s oldest subway tunnel. Built in 1844. Abandoned. Rediscovered in 1980. Goes under Atlantic from Boerum Place to Columbia Street. They do tours.”

  “Tours?”

  “Looks like the next one isn’t scheduled for another couple of weeks. The entrance is a manhole in the middle of the intersection at Atlantic and Court Street.”

  “A manhole?”

  “That’s what it says,” Julia said.

  “Did you find it?” Stokes asked.

  “Yeah,” Peter said. At least he hoped they had found it. “It’s an abandoned historical tunnel under Atlantic.” Yet it seemed odd that the Englishman would try something so out of the way, in order to infect a lot of people. A subway station he could understand, but an abandoned tunnel? There was something here he wasn’t seeing.

  “When is this happening?” he asked.

  “Tonight,” Stokes said. “Nine o’clock.”

  Peter looked at his watch. Less than an hour. Not a lot of time to get over to Brooklyn, find this manhole, and stop the Englishman. And who knew what they might run into when they got there.

  He weighed his options.

  His first instinct was to leave. Take off and figure out what to do about Big Eddie. Call the police, maybe. Leave an anonymous tip. Yet he knew that wouldn’t work. Even in a post-9/11 world, nobody would believe him—that there was a terrorist attack about to go down in an abandoned subway tunnel in Brooklyn. And even if they did, by the time they got anybody over there it might be too late.

  No, if he didn’t do this, nobody was going to do it.

  “Anything else you can tell us?” Peter said.

  “Be careful?”

  “Thanks.”

  Peter bent down and reached under the bed, where he’d stashed a compact Sig-Sauer P228 that he had picked up in Bridgeport from a guy who owed him a favor. They had stopped on their way down from Hartford, and dropped a couple hundred dollars on it. It was probably stolen, even more likely used in a crime, but he hadn’t had many options.

  “I intend to,” he added.

  Julia and Peter got off the subway in Brooklyn at the modern Atlantic Avenue station, a few blocks from the old tunnel entrance. Though it had been years since he had been down this way, Peter remembered the streets well enough that a map wasn’t necessary. It was a good six or seven blocks of tree-lined streets with red-brick and brownstone buildings.

  Even though he didn’t need a map, Peter had brought along the laptop. He might know his way around above the ground, but he needed to get a better picture of what awaited them below the surface.

  They didn’t have a lot of time, so as soon as they
hit the street, he flagged down a taxi.

  “Atlantic and Boerum,” he said. “Quick as you can.”

  He wanted to get out a block before their destination, to give him an opportunity to scan the area and see if anyone stood out. Even if the Englishman was already down in the tunnels, he might have positioned someone outside as a sentry. If that was the case, Peter wanted to know it before he was spotted.

  As requested, the cabbie stepped on it, weaving through traffic like a Formula 1 driver, narrowly making it through several yellow lights. Within a matter of moments, however, they arrived at the requested intersection, only slightly the worse for wear.

  Peter tipped the driver handsomely and they briskly covered the rest of the block. He scanned the street for anyone who looked out of place—a bum who seemed a little too clean, a cop who might be a little too attentive. He kept his hand in his jacket pocket and firmly on the pistol.

  “Have you ever been down in the tunnel?” Julia said.

  “I didn’t even know it was there.” He’d heard of lost subway tunnels in New York, many of them urban legends that didn’t hold up to scrutiny. There were supposed to be dozens of them—some abandoned, others caved in, and some never even completed, but he hadn’t heard of this particular one.

  Peter was still trying to figure out how they were going to get the manhole open without attracting attention, when they came onto the intersection—and stopped dead. The Englishman had beaten them to it, all right, and he’d done it the right way. A power company truck was parked next to the open manhole, lights blinking, orange cones warding away traffic.

  “Looks like we’re late to the party,” he said.

  He took Julia’s arm and pulled her into the shadows of the nearest apartment building. Then he glanced around, spotted a coffee shop, and pulled her toward it. Once inside, they ordered coffee and took two seats in the back. He pulled the laptop out of his knapsack, booted it up, and did some digging.

  On the power company site he found some photos of the tunnel, along with a schematic showing the layout beneath the street. The truck was parked over the main entrance, but he spotted a small emergency exit, just a block or so away. Doing his best to memorize the map, he closed the laptop, put it back into the knapsack, and shrugged it onto his shoulders.

  * * *

  The ladder took them a long way down—the tunnel was deep beneath the street. It dropped them into a small chamber with a doorway at the far end. There were a couple of lights hung loosely on the wall, and Peter could see a dim glow coming from beneath the doorway that led to the tunnel. He kept Julia behind him, drew the Sig, and racked the slide as quietly as he could.

  Cracking open the door, he peered through. A rickety set of stairs led down into an uneven tunnel with rough-hewn rock sides and an arched tile roof.

  About twenty yards in, a lone man was stooped over the controls of a machine about the size of an industrial air-compressor, tweaking knobs, checking fittings. A series of wide hoses snaked out of its sides toward vents in the ceiling. He attached a propane tank to another hose in the side, and turned the valve.

  “I think you can stop now,” Peter said, stepping through the doorway and down the wooden steps, the Sig gripped in both hands.

  “Oh, my dear boy, why would I want to do that?” the man said in an English accent. He didn’t bother to turn. In answer, Peter fired a warning shot that echoed through the tunnel.

  The man froze, stood slowly, and turned to face Peter and Julia.

  “McCoy, right?” Peter said, motioning upward with the pistol. “Richard McCoy. Or is that just an alias?”

  “One of many, I’m afraid,” McCoy said, lifting his hands above his head. “And you’re Peter Bishop.”

  “Bangkok,” Peter said, coming off the final stair, Julia close behind him. Even in the poor light he was sure this was the same man he saw shot in Bangkok. His hair was different—cut short instead of the salt-and-pepper ponytail he was wearing in Thailand. The obnoxious Hawaiian shirt had been replaced with a sweater, peacoat, and jeans.

  “You remember,” McCoy said. “I’m flattered.”

  Now that he was closer Peter could make out more details of the device. The similarity to an air-compressor wasn’t coincidental—that was part of it. But where he would have expected an intake filter, there was a hose leading to the propane tank, which didn’t make sense, unless—

  “That’s the virus,” Peter said.

  “I put it into a nutrient suspension,” McCoy said, sounding very pleased with himself. “Besides allowing it to be aerosolized, it helps the virus survive outside a host for up to six hours by reinforcing the viral shell with a protein polymer. One push of the button, and it all goes spewing out through those hoses.”

  “And you’re going to spread it from here? A subway tunnel that hasn’t seen a passenger in a hundred years?”

  “I don’t need passengers. This tunnel has ventilation shafts that lead out to the existing lines. Imagine all of the people who ride through Brooklyn on a daily basis. It only takes one infection. This will guarantee thousands. And do you know what the best thing is?” He opened one hand, showing a vial with a familiar-looking liquid inside. “I can make so much more.”

  “It won’t take them long to trace it back here,” Peter said. “Once that stuff hits people, you won’t be able to move your equipment out of this tunnel. Everyone’s going to be looking for anything even the least bit suspicious. They’ll find the device. And then they’ll find you.”

  “I don’t think so. You see, I’ve taken steps,” McCoy answered. “The base is packed with thermite. Once the machine has done its job, I’ll activate the timer and run. Everything here will burn into slag. I’ll go on my merry way, and do it all over again.”

  “Peter, don’t let him distract you,” Julia said, stepping up to his side. “Shoot him!” Peter frowned at that.

  “Doctor Lachaux, it’s wonderful to see you again,” McCoy said. “Do you really want Peter to undo all of your hard work?”

  “You’re not trying to cure epilepsy,” Peter said.

  “Neither is she,” McCoy countered. “Oh, peripherally, I suppose, but all of this? No, this is part of a master plan.” He paused, and then continued. “You did know this was all her idea, didn’t you? This, Bangkok, the chase in Hartford. All of it. She’s been planning it for years.”

  “Like I’m going to believe anything you say,” Peter replied.

  “Look at her,” McCoy said. “Doesn’t she look familiar? Think back a few years. Your father’s laboratory. A young woman who was interested in virology. The day your father’s assistant died.”

  “Stop it! Peter, you need to stop him,” Julia said, a note of panic appearing in her voice. “Shoot him now.”

  “What was the assistant’s name?” the Englishman said. “Carla, wasn’t it, Julia?”

  “I said stop it!”

  “Oh, how she burned.”

  Peter stood there, stunned. How could this man know what had happened in Walter’s lab? Surely he couldn’t have been there. And Julia… Peter turned to look at her. He imagined her younger, with glasses, different hair.

  It all clicked.

  “You were there,” Peter said.

  Julia grabbed the Sig from Peter’s hand, shoving him to aside. She pointed the gun at McCoy, holding it in shaking hands.

  “I’m sorry, Peter,” she said. “You don’t understand. You can’t…”

  “Julia, what the hell is going on?”

  “It’s complicated, Peter,” she said, her eyes fixed straight ahead. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Oh, my,” McCoy said. “Isn’t this a pickle?”

  “You shut up,” Julia said. “You know what I want. Just put the vial on the ground, and back away from it.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” McCoy said. “If I move, they might shoot me.” He nodded his head toward the main stairs leading into the tunnel. Peter hazarded a glance over his shoulder, and
froze.

  Big Eddie stepped down the stairs, carrying a nasty-looking .357. It was pointed at Peter’s head. Little Eddie came close at his heels, a Benelli M4 semi-automatic shotgun gripped in his enormous hands. The wooden steps bowed under his weight.

  “Skulking in sewers now, are you Bishop?” Big Eddie said. “It suits you.”

  “Listen, Eddie, you don’t want to be here,” Peter said. For a moment he thought about grabbing the gun and turning it on the Scotsman, but quickly discarded the idea. If he did, there was no way he or Julia would survive. So he didn’t fight when Little Eddie shoved the barrel of his Benelli into his stomach. Big Eddie took the Sig out of Julia’s hand and stuffed it into his waistband.

  “Maybe I don’t, maybe I do,” he replied, and he turned toward the Englishman. “You the ponce that called me?”

  “I am indeed,” McCoy said, turning toward Peter. “He was becoming a thorn in my side, and I thought the two of you might want to catch up, perhaps revisit some past adventures.” Big Eddie nodded at him, and McCoy lowered his hands. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

  He placed the vial onto the control panel of the device, and went back to flipping switches.

  “You’ve got to listen to me, Eddie,” Peter said. “He’s about to release a disease into the subway system, and it’s going to kill a lot of people. We’re all going to die.”

  “What, you think I’m gonna fall for that shite?” Big Eddie replied. “You’re a great spinner of tales, Peter Bishop. Why don’t you tell me the one I want to hear? Like the one that goes, ‘Eddie, here’s all that money I owe you, plus interest.’ You know that one, don’t you, Bishop? You’ve told it to me enough times, I figure you know it by heart.”

  “Look, Eddie, I’m not—”

  “Shut it,” Eddie said, pistol-whipping him with the .357. A white-hot flash of pain shot through the left side of his skull.

  Peter knew Big Eddie wasn’t going to let him walk out of this, so he didn’t have much to lose—but he had everything to gain. He let his legs go out from under him, pitched toward the mobster, and made a grab for the Sig sticking out of his waistband. The two of them toppled to the ground.