“They were never built,” he said, looking up when he was done.
“Why not?”
He pointed to the roll of blueprints I’d leaned against his desk. “Set those up here and I’ll show you.”
I put the roll on his desk, site plan on top. With a pencil, he drew five evenly spaced square hubs along Chanticleer Circle, centered within the edges of the street. “There were to be five bomb shelters, built under the road for additional protection,” he said.
Next, he connected each house to a shelter with double lines, in clusters of five or six houses for each shelter. “These were to be the tunnels, running from each basement to the shared shelter.” The tunnels fanned out from each shelter to a rough circle of individual houses. “I think some of the tunnels might have spurred off of one another, depending on the layouts of the houses, but this was the general idea.” He studied the clusters he’d drawn. They looked like five rimless wagon wheels running along Chanticleer Circle.
“That was the plan, anyway.” He picked up his cup of cottage cheese. “Narrow escape tunnels leading from the houses to central shared shelters under Chanticleer Circle, capable of withstanding a massive blast.”
“You say they were never built.”
“The first buyers weren’t comfortable with the idea of shared underground vaults. One who objected was your former father-in-law, Wendell Phelps.”
“Better to die than sweat together in fear?”
A tiny smile flitted across his face. “Perhaps, but by the time Crystal Waters was built, the big fear wasn’t nuclear war. It was the riots, the fires, the uprisings of the students and the poor, storming the citadels of the rich. Bomb shelters couldn’t protect against that. In fact, the shelters planned for Crystal Waters could be a threat. As Wendell, among others, pointed out, those tunnels were a way into the homes. Someone could break into one home, go through its tunnel to a shelter, and from there break into other homes. Wendell was right. The developers reconsidered and filled them in.”
“You just said they weren’t built. How could they be filled in?”
He tossed the cottage cheese cup in his wastebasket, picked up a pencil, and tapped the eraser on one of the hubs he had drawn along Chanticleer Circle. “The shelter vaults under Chanticleer Circle had to be built before the road was laid. I guess it would have been the tunnels that had to be filled in.”
“So the shelters are still there, under the road?”
He shrugged. “I would presume so.”
“And the tunnels going to them?”
“As I said, Vlodek, the idea was scrapped.”
“And the tunnels were filled in? Filled in, or never built?”
“Filled in-” He stopped when he saw the look on my face.
“For sure?”
He started to shake his head, then froze as the impact of what I was asking hit him.
“Where were the entrances to the tunnels?”
“Small openings, maybe three feet square, through the basement walls.”
“How about air shafts? Other ways in?”
“I don’t know. Shit, I don’t know.”
I looked down at the rimless wagon wheel he’d drawn in the northwest quadrant of the development. I grabbed a fountain pen from a tray on his desk, unscrewed the cap, and started darkening the blueprint lines with black ink. From the hub under the road, one spoke went to the site of the Farraday house. A second led to the house that had just exploded. I darkened the lines of a third tunnel and looked at him.
His mouth worked for a minute before the words came out. “Amanda’s house,” he said. He looked up from what I had drawn. “Did you ever see an entrance in the basement?”
“There was none. But I only lived there a few months. I never had reason to examine the basement wall.”
“I don’t think the entrances to the tunnels were ever cut in.”
“You don’t think, or you don’t know?”
He started to say something, but I already had my cell phone out, punching in Till’s number. I got his machine. I clicked off, called Stanley, got his voice mail, too. All of Gateville could be blown to the moon with the flip of one switch, and nobody had time to answer the damned phone. I told Stanley’s machine to tell Till to comb the grounds looking for air shafts leading down to tunnels and to begin in the northwest quadrant, where the two exploded houses had been. I said to check every basement for ways into the tunnels, starting with Amanda’s house.
I said that was where the bombs were.
Twenty-five
I was leading my two-car parade home on the Eisenhower, the Crown Victoria tight behind, when Stanley called. “It’s a mess here, Mr. Elstrom,” he yelled into the phone, trying to be heard above what sounded like large truck engines. “The Members won’t leave without their furniture and clothes. Everybody has hired moving trucks, and now Chanticleer Circle looks like rush hour downtown. Gridlock. Agent Till is bringing in tow trucks to clear the street so he can get his own equipment in, but I don’t know how long that will take.”
I took the next exit off the expressway, swung into the corner of a gas station, and cut the engine so I could hear. The Crown Victoria screeched to a stop behind me.
“Stanley,” I shouted into the phone, “do you know anything about underground tunnels and bomb shelters at Crystal Waters?”
The sound of diesel motors at his end was deafening. I didn’t think he heard me. “I said, do you know anything-”
“Tunnels?” he shouted back. “I never heard that, except from your message. There are no tunnels here.”
“I think you’re wrong. Get Till to comb every lawn, every foundation,every basement, looking for ways into those tunnels. I think the D.X.12 is hidden there.”
The sound of truck engines got louder.
“Stanley?” I yelled into the mouthpiece.
“Got it, Mr. Elstrom. Tunnels. I’ll tell Agent Till.”
“Start with Amanda’s house.”
“You don’t think Miss Phelps-”
“Of course not,” I shouted. I took a breath, trying to slow down so I could be precise. “It’s because her house is so close to the two that have been blown up and because it’s been unoccupied. Tell Till to start there.”
“I’ll tell him, Mr. Elstrom. Wait at home until you hear from us.” He clicked off.
I drove to the turret. Before getting out of the Jeep, I picked up the cell phone, toying with the idea of calling Amanda. I could use the pretext that I was making sure she’d gotten her artwork out of Gateville, but it would be pointless. She knew about the bombs and knew about the link between them and me. It was why she hadn’t been taking any of my calls.
I put the phone in my pocket. I couldn’t repair anything over the phone.
I got out of the Jeep. I didn’t recognize the two young agents back in the Crown Victoria, trying to appear to be looking everywhere but at me, but they looked the same as the others: dark suits, white shirts, close haircuts. Till must have had dozens of them. I gave them a nod, which they ignored, and walked up to the turret, scanning the ground around the base for small packages, containers, anything big enough to hold an explosive. It was my habit now, since the shed had gone up. I did the circle, unlocked the heavy door, and went in.
It was only eleven thirty in the morning but I had a hundred pounds of fatigue clamped to the base of my neck. From too many nights on the roof, I supposed, watching the sky over Gateville. Butthings were ending. Till was up to his knees in Gateville now. He was taking things apart; he’d find the tunnels. Then he would find the D.X.12, or at least the wiring, and no one else would die.
I went upstairs to the third floor and lay on the cot and checked out.
A cold gust of wind blew in from the river, arcing the metal slats of the window blinds into a crazed kind of St. Vitus’ dance. It was dark, the only light in the room a gauzy, narrow beam from the moon outside the slit window. I pulled the blanket over my ears to shut out the clatter and tried to will myself back to sleep, but images of what must be going on at Gateville, of diesel searchlights and teams of men in bomb suits, probing the grounds, going into tunnels to rip things out, popped me all the way awake. I squinted at the clock. It was twelve thirty in the morning. I’d slept for thirteen hours.