Still, I wavered for a few seconds, debating my options. Part of me wanted to find Chase. If Hartek’s gold bars did reside on the other end of the corridor, Chase deserved to be there to see them. The other part of me felt compelled to gather evidence…and satisfy my curiosity.
That other part won easily.
I leapt off the ledge. Landing lightly in the passageway, I heard another click and swung around.
The wall slammed shut behind me.
My body tensed.
I’m trapped.
I lifted my light and examined the wall. Then I tried to shove it. But it didn’t move an inch. After a few attempts, I turned to the side to search for a lever or another button.
In the process, my beam illuminated the dark abyss. All thoughts of my predicament instantly vanished.
A sizeable room, shrouded in dust, lay on the other side of a short passageway. In the dull glow provided by my flashlight, I could see large tables, chairs, beakers, tubes, and strange-looking apparatuses.
I twisted my light, examining every inch of the room.
Then I froze.
A sense of horror arose within me.
A corpse lay on the floor, positioned partially in front of the tunnel. I could see the rotting flesh…the dried blood…the holes.
It was the body of a dead man.
A man riddled with bullet holes.
A man who’d been murdered.
PART III
THE BELL
Chapter 24
Questions bounced through my mind like ping-pong balls. The room looked like an old laboratory. But what was a laboratory doing buried under the city streets, behind a false wall? Who was the dead person in the lab? Who killed him?
And why?
I didn’t have a single answer. But I knew one thing for certain. I wasn’t going to find any standing in that passageway.
I studied the area around me. The passageway consisted of smooth concrete walls. The laboratory itself appeared to be constructed from bricks, painted grey. No matter where I looked, I didn’t see any cracks or signs of disrepair. Whoever built the lab and connecting tunnel had built them to last.
I strode into the laboratory. A cloud of thick dust burst from the floor. It swiftly devoured my flashlight beam. Coughing, I waved my arms, brushing away the annoying particles. The edges of a nearby desk, covered with a heap of unorganized papers, came into view.
Secluded from society? Check.
Messy beyond belief? Check.
Yup, these people were definitely scientists.
I saw scattered equipment among the papers, including test tubes, rubber stoppers, pipettes, and clamps. Three framed pictures sat at the back of the desk. Toward the front, I noticed a small calendar.
The date read March 6,1976.
It hit me like a bombshell. Had the laboratory really sat untouched all of this time?
More questions poured into my brain. Who built the lab? What was its purpose? And why was it connected to the subway system?
I walked toward the west wall and pointed my beam at the ground, illuminating the corpse of a young man. He wore a lab coat and pants, punctuated with bloody bullet holes. What remained of his mouth lolled open, revealing a blackish interior. His eyes stared at me, seeing everything and nothing at the same time.
Carefully, I stepped around him. At the corner, I noticed a small hole at the bottom of the wall. A pile of bricks lay in a heap next to it. It looked like someone had started a repair job but never got a chance to finish it.
The dust seemed to gather around me as I walked past the corner. My flashlight dimmed.
On the south wall, I saw a metallic door built into the concrete. I tried the knob. It creaked open, revealing a neat, manmade corridor behind it. I entered and stopped next to a pile of rubble.
The corridor seemed long enough to stretch across the street to the buildings that faced Grand Central Terminal. Perhaps the laboratory was originally connected to the basement of one of those buildings. At some point, the corridor collapsed, sealing the laboratory behind a wall of crushed rock and concrete.
But why did no one come to recover the dead body?
The answer hit me immediately. Most likely, the lab was built and maintained in absolute secrecy. After the man was killed, no one alive would’ve known where to look for him.
No one except the killer.
I headed back into the laboratory and closed the door. As I turned around, I tripped on something and stumbled.
Rotating my head, I saw what I’d tripped over.
I grimaced.
Another corpse.
This one belonged to a young woman, or what was left of her anyway. Her head had been ripped in half as if someone shot off her skull at close range. Her body, covered in a bloodstained lab coat, lay awkwardly on the ground. A pair of glasses, attached to her shriveled neck by a thin chain, lay smashed at her side.
My chest tied itself in knots as I stared at her pathetic form. I wondered about her friends and family. What happened to them? Were they still looking for their lost loved one? It angered me just to think about it.
I started walking again, this time at a slower pace. I swung my flashlight in wide arcs to avoid another stumble.
After I finished trekking around the room, I returned to the desk and looked at the photos. One face stood out in particular. It belonged to a lopsided man, attired in a cheap suit. His nose was too big for his wrinkled face. His eyes looked large and baggy. Yet for all his imperfections, he carried a certain aura about him that caused him to stand out above the other faces.
I recognized him instantly.
Karl Hartek.
I tried to fit the information into place. I knew that Hartek worked as a Nazi physicist during World War II. After coming to America, he could’ve used the gold bars supplied by ODESSA to build the laboratory and continue his work. Maybe Jenson stumbled onto the lab, found a leftover gold bar, and tried to pawn it.
The story explained everything and nothing at the same time. More questions came to mind.
What was Hartek working on? Why had he hidden it deep underground? Who had invaded his lab and murdered the other scientists? And what happened to him? Why wasn’t his body in the lab along with the others?
I shifted the flashlight to my other hand. In the process, my beam lit up a strange contraption.
I walked over and studied it. Several metal bars were secured to the concrete ceiling. Other bars led straight down to the floor, forming a sort of metal cage. Every couple of inches, I saw metallic struts attached to the bars, providing ample reinforcement. Thick chains hung loosely from the structure.
As I followed the bars to the ceiling, I spotted something odd. I leaned into the structure and looked up. Without exception, every single one of the reinforcement bolts had been completely sheared off. It was awe-inspiring. Nothing less than an abrupt, extremely powerful force could’ve caused such damage.
The longer I stood in the structure’s presence, the edgier I felt. I’d never seen anything like it before. It looked like some sort of rigging designed to support a massive object. However, the object was missing. Did that explain the murders? Did someone kill the scientists to steal the object? Or was it still in the lab?
I looked around, searching for something that would fit into the rigging. Near the northwest corner, close to where I spotted the bricks, I noticed a humongous, black cylinder. It lay tipped on its side, as if someone had knocked it over.
I walked over to the heavy cylinder and knelt down. It had crashed to the ground with a ton of force, cracking the cement in the process.