Reliquary (44 page)

Mephisto pulled the gun from Pendergast and pumped the magazine, saying nothing.

Margo had begun to notice a troublesome pattern: Pendergast had been removing plenty of equipment, but none of it was finding its way to her. “Hold on a minute,” she said. “What about me? Where’s my gear?”

“I’m afraid you’re not coming,” Pendergast said, dragging bulletproof vests from the locker and checking their sizes.

“Who the hell says I’m not?” Margo said. “Because I’m a woman?”

“Dr. Green, please. You know very well it has nothing to do with that. You’re not experienced in this kind of police action.” Pendergast began digging into another locker. “Here, Vincent, take charge of these, will you?”

“M-26 fragmentation grenades,” D’Agosta said, handling them gingerly. “You’ve got enough firepower in here to invade China, pal.”

“Not experienced?” Margo echoed, ignoring D’Agosta. “I was the one who saved your ass back there in the Museum, remember? If it wasn’t for me, you’d have been Mbwun droppings long ago.”

“I would be the first to admit it, Dr. Green,” Pendergast replied as he shrugged into a backpack equipped with a long hose and a strange hooded nozzle.

“Don’t tell me that’s a flamethrower,” D’Agosta asked. “ABT FastFire, if I’m not mistaken,” Mephisto said. “When I was a grunt, we called the jelly they sprayed purple haze. The sadistic weapon of a morally bankrupt republic.” He looked speculatively into one of the open lockers.

“I’m an anthropologist,” Margo said. “I know these creatures better than
anyone.
You’re going to need my expertise.” “Not enough to endanger your life,” said Pendergast. “Dr. Frock’s an anthropologist, too. Shall we wheel him down with us and get his learned opinion on the matter?”

“I was the one who discovered all this. Remember?” Margo realized she was raising her voice.

“She’s right,” said D’Agosta. “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.”

“That still doesn’t give us the right to involve her further,” Pendergast replied. “Besides, she’s never been belowground, and she’s not a police officer.”

“Look!” Margo shouted. “Forget my expertise. Forget the help I’ve given you in the past. I’m an expert shot. D’Agosta here can testify. And I’m not going to slow you down, either. If anything, you’ll be panting to keep up with
me.
It comes down to this: if you get in trouble down there, every extra body you’ve got is going to count.”

Pendergast turned his pale eyes toward her, and Margo could feel the keen force of his stare as it almost seemed to probe her thoughts. “Why exactly do you need this, Dr. Green?” he asked.

“Because--” Margo stopped suddenly, wondering why, in fact, she wanted to descend to that netherworld. It would be so much easier to wish them well, step out of the building, walk home, order dinner from the Thai restaurant on the corner, and crack open that Thackeray novel she’d been meaning to start for the last month.

Then she realized it was not a question of wanting. Eighteen months before, she had stared into the face of Mbwun, seen her reflection in its feral red eyes. Together, she and Pendergast had killed the beast. And she’d thought it was over. They all did. Now she knew better.

“A couple of months ago,” she said, “Greg Kawakita tried to contact me. I never bothered to follow up. If I had, maybe all of this could have been avoided.” She paused. “I need to see this thing finished.”

Pendergast continued to gaze at her appraisingly.

“You brought me back into this, goddammit!” Margo said, rounding on D’Agosta. “It’s the last thing I wanted. But now that I’m here, I need to see it through.”

“She’s right about that, too,” D’Agosta said. “I did bring her into the investigation.”

Pendergast put his hands on Margo’s shoulders in an uncharacteristically physical gesture. “Margo, please,” he said quietly. “Try to understand. Back at the Museum, there was no choice. We were already trapped inside with Mbwun. This is different. We’re walking knowingly
into
danger. You’re a civilian. I’m sorry, but there it is.”

“For once, I agree with Mayor Whitey.” Mephisto looked at Margo. “You seem like a person of integrity. That means you’re out of place in company like this. So let them get their own official asses killed.”

Pendergast looked at Margo a moment longer. Then, dropping his hands, he turned toward Mephisto. “What’s our route?” he asked.

“The Lexington line, under Bloomingdale’s,” came the response. “There’s an abandoned shaft, about a quarter mile north on the express track. Heads straight into the Park, then angles down toward the Bottleneck.”

“Christ,” D’Agosta said. “Maybe that’s how the Wrinklers ambushed that train.”

“Maybe.” Pendergast fell silent a moment, as if lost in thought. “We’ll need to draw the explosives from C section,” he continued abruptly, moving toward the door. “Let’s go. We’ve got less than two hours.”

“Come on, Margo,” D’Agosta said over his shoulder as he jogged after Pendergast. “We’ll see you out.”

Margo stood motionless, watching the three move quickly toward the outer door of the armory. “Shit!” she cried in a frustrated rage, throwing her carryall to the floor and giving the nearest locker a vicious kick. Then she sank to the floor and put her head in her hands.

= 52 =

Snow checked the oversized wall clock. The narrow hands behind the protective metal cage read 10:15
P.M.
His eyes traveled across the empty squad room, past the extra tanks and regulators, the torn flippers and oversized masks. His gaze came to rest at last on the mountain of paperwork atop the desk in front of him, and he winced inwardly. Here he was, supposedly recovering from a bacterial infection of the lungs. But he, and the rest of the NYPD dive team, knew that he was actually in the doghouse. The Dive Sergeant had taken him aside, told him what a great job he’d done, but Snow hadn’t believed it. Even the fact that the skeletons he’d discovered had been the start of a big police investigation didn’t make any real difference. The fact was he’d lost it, lost it on his first dive. Even Fernandez didn’t bother to tease him anymore.

He sighed, looking out the grimy window at the long-deserted dock and the dark oily water beyond, glittering in the restless night. The rest of the squad was out after a helicopter crash in the East River earlier in the evening. And there was something big going on in the city, too: his police radio had been squawking nonstop with talk of marches, riots, mobilizations, crowd-control measures. Seemed like the action was everywhere except in his own quiet little corner of the Brooklyn docks. And here he was, filling out reports.

He sighed, stapled some papers into a folder, closed it, and tossed it in the outgoing tray. Dead dog, removed from the Gowanus canal. Cause of death: gunshot wound; ownership unknown; case closed. He slid another folder off the pile: Randolf Rowell, jumper, Triborough Bridge, age 22. Suicide note found in pocket. Cause of death: drowning. Case closed.

As he dropped the file into the bin, he heard the diesel rumble of the launch as it nosed its way into the dock. Back early. The engine sounded different somehow, throatier, he thought. Maybe it needed a tune-up or something.

He heard running footfalls on the wooden dock and suddenly the door burst open: men in black wet suits, no insignia, faces black and green with greasepaint. Twin haversacks of rubber and latex dangled around their necks.

“Where’s the dive team?” barked the forward man, a hulking figure with a Texas accent.

“East River chopper crash,” Snow said. “You the second squad?” He glanced out the window and was surprised to see, not a familiar blue-and-white police boat, but a powerful inboard V-bottom launch, lying low in the water and painted as dark as the men.

“All of them?” the man asked.

“All except me. Who are you?”

“We ain’t your mother’s long-lost nephews, darlin’,” the man said. “We need someone who knows the shortest route into the West Side Lateral, and we need him now.”

Snow felt an involuntary twinge. “Let me radio the Dive Sergeant--”

“No time. What about you?”

“Well, I know the flow grid around the Manhattan shoreline. That’s part of Basic, every police driver has to--”

“Can you bring us in?” the man said brusquely, cutting him off.

“You want to get
in
the West Side Lateral? Most of the pipes are grilled, or too narrow for a--”

“Just answer the question: yes or no?”

“I think so,” Snow said, his voice faltering a little.

“Your name?”

“Snow. Officer Snow.”

“Get in the boat.”

“But my tanks and suit--”

“We got everything you need. You can suit up on the launch.”

Snow scrambled from his chair, following the men out onto the dock. It didn’t seem to be an invitation he could refuse. “You still haven’t told me who--”

The man paused, one foot on the gunwale of the launch. “Commander Rachlin, Patrol Leader, SEAL Team Blue Seven. Now get a wiggle on.”

The helmsman gunned the launch out of the slip. “Mind your rudder,” the Commander said, then gestured Snow closer. “Here’s the op,” he said, lifting a matted seat and pulling out a sheaf of waterproof maps from the storage space beneath. “There’ll be four teams, two to each team.” He glanced around. “Donovan!”

“Sir!” a man said, coming over. Even in the bulky suit, he looked thin and wiry. Snow could see nothing of his facial features behind the neoprene and greasepaint.

“Donovan, you and Snow here are buddying up.”

There was a silence that Snow interpreted as disgust. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s a UD job,” Rachlin said.

“A what?”

The Commander looked at him sharply. “Underwater demolition. That’s all you need to know.”

“Is this connected with the headless murders?” Snow asked.

The Commander stared. “For a dumb-ass, tit-suckin’, bath-tub-divin’ tadpole of a
po
-lice diver, you ask a whole lot of questions, darlin’.”

Snow said nothing. He didn’t dare look at Donovan.

“We can chart our way in from this point,” Rachlin said, unrolling one of the maps and tamping his thumb on a blue dot. “But the new treatment plant made these insertion areas here obsolete. So you’re gonna get us in to that point.”

Snow bent over the laminated map. At the top, in chiseled copperplate script, a legend read
1932 WEST SIDE STORM AND SEWER SURVEY, LOWER QUADRANT.
Below was a labyrinth of faint intersecting lines. Somebody had placed three sets of dots beneath the western side of Central Park. He stared at the complex traceries, his mind racing. The Humboldt Kill was the easiest insertion point, but it was a hell of a long way in to the Lateral from there, with many twists and turns. Besides, he didn’t want to go back there, ever, if he could help it. He tried to remember their training sessions, the long days on boats nosing up muddy canals. Where else did the West Side Lateral drain into?

“This isn’t an essay question,” Rachlin said quietly. “Hurry it up. We’re on a tight schedule here.”

Snow looked up. There was one route he knew of, a very direct route.
Well,
he thought,
they asked for it.
“The Lower Hudson Sewage Treatment Plant itself,” he said. “We can go in through the main settling tank.”

There was a silence, and Snow glanced around.

“Dive in goddamn
sewage
?”
a very deep voice said.

The Commander turned. “You heard the man.” He tossed a wet suit toward Snow. “Now get your lovely little behind below and suit up. We’ve got to be clear and at the extraction point by six minutes to midnight.”

= 53 =

Margo sat on the cold tile floor of the armory, inwardly fuming. She wasn’t sure who she was more angry at: D’Agosta, for roping her into this mess to begin with; Pendergast, for refusing to take her along; or herself, for being unable just to let the whole thing drop. But that was something she simply couldn’t do. It was clear to her now just how long a shadow the Museum murders--the terrifying final struggle in the Museum basement--had cast over her. It had robbed her of sleep, fractured her peace of mind.
And now this shit, on top of everything else
...

She knew Pendergast had been thinking of her safety, but she still could not contain the frustration of being left behind.
If it wasn’t for me, they’d still be in the dark,
she thought.
I
made the connection between Mbwun and Whittlesey. I figured out what really happened.
With a little more time, she might have even tied up the nagging, perplexing loose ends that still remained: what the rest of Kawakita’s cryptic journal fragments meant, what he’d been doing with the thyoxin, why he’d been synthesizing Vitamin D at his final laboratory.

Actually, the thyoxin made sense. The journal entries implied that, near the end, Kawakita had had a change of heart. Apparently, he’d realized his latest strains of glaze no longer twisted the body, but instead twisted the mind. Maybe he’d even learned of the environmental dangers posed by saltwater coming in contact with the plants. In any case, it seemed clear he’d decided to undo what he’d done, and rid the reservoir of
Liliceae Mbwunensis.
Perhaps the creatures themselves had learned of his intention. That could explain his death: obviously, the last thing they wanted was somebody meddling with their supply. But that still didn’t explain what the hell he’d been doing with vitamin D. Could it have been necessary for the genetic sequencing? No, that wasn’t possible ...

Suddenly, Margo sat up, drawing in her breath sharply.
He was planning to kill off the plants, I’m sure of it
, she thought.
And he knew that put him in terrible danger. So the vitamin D wasn’t for glaze production. It was for
...

Suddenly, she understood.

In an instant, she scrambled to her feet. There wasn’t a moment to lose. Galvanized into action, she began yanking open locker drawers, spilling the contents into the narrow corridor, hastily grabbing at the items she needed, stuffing them into her carryall: oxygen mask, night-vision goggles, boxes of 9-millimeter hollow-point rounds for her semiautomatic pistol.