“It was too big for me, it got away from me,” she said. “I should have known it would. I should have learned more from all this history.” She reached up to the back of her neck. “Here,” she said. “I want you to have this.” She flinched as she fumbled with the clasp, and whimpered, and this whimper — unlike the whimper of desire I’d once heard from her — was excruciating. She lifted the silver pendant from within her shirt and held it out, suspended between us. “It’s the Japanese symbol for ‘remembrance,’” she said. “I had it made ten years ago,” she said, “when I decided to kill Leonard Novak for my grandmother’s sake. In ten years, I’ve never taken it off except for the night I was with you. I take it off forever now.” Her tears were falling faster now, and I felt answering tears on my own face, too. “My mother died long ago. My father is dead now, too. And I am a walking ghost.”
She stretched her arm toward me, offering the pendant. I reached to take it, but just before my fingers closed around it, it fell. I lunged to catch it, and in that instant she darted past me, over the ridge of crumbled glass, out into the main reading room. I turned in time to see her duck into the darkened stacks of books. I followed, racing from stack to stack, aisle after aisle, without a glimpse of her. Then I heard footsteps racing through the lobby, and the thud of a distant door banging. I sprinted after her, out into the twilight, splashing through the puddles and pools accumulating on the sidewalk and the parking lot.
By the time she reached the Prius I was gaining on her. Fifty yards, now forty, now thirty. She struggled with her keys; I thought I heard another cry of pain, and I saw the keys splash at her feet. She hesitated, then spun and began running again — out of the parking lot and across the wet grass of the park behind the library. Half scurrying, half sliding, she flung herself down an embankment and into the small stream that bisected the park.
As I watched in astonishment Isabella disappeared, leaving only a black, empty circle and rushing water where she had been. She had scrambled into the end of an immense pipe, which could only have been the outlet of the city’s storm-sewer system.
Isabella had vanished into a subterranean maze — a labyrinth constructed beneath the very foundations of the Secret City in the year 1943.
CHAPTER 43
I slid down the bank and into the icy water of the creek, which swirled around my thighs. The tunnel was a tube of concrete six or eight feet in diameter. The water pouring from it looked to be knee-deep; the blackness appeared infinitely deep.
I flipped open my cell phone and hit the call button; the phone automatically dialed the last number in its memory, which was Thornton’s. The call went immediately to his voice mail, which meant he was on another call. “It’s Brockton,” I said. “Isabella killed Novak. She knows we know. She’s in the storm sewers under Oak Ridge. Between the library and the police station. I’m going after her. Tell Emert.”
I snapped the phone shut and stepped up into the pipe. The water was shallower than in the creek, but it was moving more swiftly. I dug into my pocket and fished out my key ring, which had a tiny flashlight on it — one miniature bulb, about the size of the iridium pellet that had killed Leonard Novak. I squeezed the switch on the side of the case and the bulb glowed blue-white against the darkness. It wasn’t much light, but then again I didn’t need much light: the sides and top of the tunnel were only a foot or two away, and the bottom was hidden by the swirling water. I could see, faintly, twenty or thirty feet before the gray-white tube faded into darkness. I hoped that would be enough.
I started slogging up the pipe, upstream against the current, which resisted every step I took, shoving each foot backward as I lifted it. It was like running into the surf at the beach, except the wave never broke and every step was work. I found myself lifting my knees higher and higher, and eventually I settled into an awkward high-stepping jog, which I knew I wouldn’t be able to maintain for long.
I hadn’t gone far — a hundred yards? two hundred? There was no way to tell how far I’d struggled against the blackness and the current — when I came to a side tunnel angling off to the right. This one was smaller, perhaps four feet in diameter, but still large enough for a person — large enough for Isabella, and large enough for me — though it would require stooping. Which would she have taken?
I kept to the main tunnel — if I were fleeing, I’d want as much distance and as much room as I could get, and the main tunnel seemed to offer more of those. Here and there, I passed small pipes, ranging from six inches to eighteen or twenty inches in diameter. I was grateful I didn’t have to decide whether she might have taken one of those, but they posed a different sort of problem: water shot from them into the main tunnel with enough force to strike the opposite wall. I had to force my way through them, and each one battered at me icily, sapping my strength and my body heat. Desperate though she was, I was amazed Isabella could force her way through this. Was she moving in utter darkness and blind panic, or did she have some small glimmer of light, too?
I came to another side tunnel; again I chose the main line. The current was running faster now, or maybe I was just giving out. I could no longer lift my knees clear of the water; it was getting deeper and flowing faster, and I was exhausted. My teeth began to chatter. My tiny light seemed to be dimming as well, though perhaps it was an optical illusion, a trick played by the darker concrete in this section of pipe, or played by my own fatigue and despair.
And then I came to a harder choice: a Y-shaped intersection, two four-foot tunnels angling to the right and left. No main line to make the decision easy for me anymore; two choices, with no way to know what I’d find in the one I chose — and no way to know what I’d miss in the one I didn’t.
As I reached the intersection, the concrete walls around me gave way to a wider chamber made of brick. Iron bars jutted from the bricks — the rungs of a ladder set into the wall. Overhead was a large black disk; water poured down on me through a dozen or more holes spaced evenly inside its circumference. I was directly beneath a manhole, and I was confronted by not two alternatives but three.
I shone my faint light on each. I didn’t much like the tunnel branching to the right; it seemed to be carrying more water than the one to the left, so between the current and the stooping, the going would be extremely difficult. Of the two, I’d be inclined to take the left fork.
But there was also the manhole. A world of freedom, an infinite number of paths to freedom, lay just beyond that barrier of iron. I made my choice. I grasped a rung and began to climb.
As I neared the top, some ten rungs up, doubts and questions set in. Would she have seen the manhole, if she didn’t have a light? Would she be able to raise the heavy disk? Would I be able to raise it? Well, if you can’t, she probably didn’t, I realized. Might as well try it.
Gripping the topmost rung with my left hand, I leaned back slightly into the vertical shaft and pushed upward at one edge of the manhole cover. It did not move. I tightened my grip and pushed harder, and the disk lifted slightly. I shifted my feet on the iron rung and put more force behind the push. The cover tilted upward — six inches, a foot, more — and then the iron rung in my right hand tore from the mortar between the bricks, and I was falling. When I hit the water, the shock of the fall and the chill of the water nearly claimed my consciousness. I struggled to regain my footing but the current was too swift, the walls were too smooth, and I was too weak. I felt myself swept along, down the dark passage, down toward icy oblivion. And then, just as I felt myself slipping into inner darkness, I shot out into a deeper pool of water, into a world lit by strobing blue lights, and unseen hands were bearing me up to safety.