Nick Stephenson - Panic

Mary scowled and made the call.

Leopold was excited. He’d heard many rumours about the tunnels under Columbia and had read extensively on the subject, although he had never had the chance to explore them personally. Until now. The oldest tunnels predated the existence of the University campus, when Morningside Heights was home to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. Since the University was granted permission to block itself off from the main thoroughfares, the tunnels had fallen largely into disuse, although Leopold knew that a small minority of students still devoted much of their energy to exploring the now-forbidden underground network.

Leopold, Mary, and Jerome arrived at the Columbia University campus just after lunch, as the crowds of students began to disperse. The consultant once again accessed the University’s wireless network through his cell phone and ran a search as he led them back toward the Low Memorial Library.

“According to records, the first cabled network with Internet access was installed in the basement of Pupin Hall during the early nineties,” said Leopold. “Since then, the whole area was closed off, so that’s a good place to start looking.”

“Won’t they have sealed off the basement from the tunnel entrance as well?” asked Mary.

“We’ll have to hope not. Most of the tunnels are unmapped and potentially unstable, so carrying out any construction work down there would be a bad idea. My guess is they just locked up the classrooms and forgot about the place.”

“You’re making this sound like a really great idea, Leopold,” said Mary. “How do we know this particular tunnel even exists?”

“We don’t. But we have to at least assume some entrance exists; otherwise how would Cupid have access? We need to find someone who can get us into the tunnels and guide us through to the basement at Pupin.”

“Where do we find someone like that?”

“I can make some calls,” said Jerome “I know a good place to start looking.”

The bodyguard dropped behind, talking quickly into his cell phone. The three of them made their way across the courtyard toward the Business School, an ugly stone-fronted building that loomed high over an otherwise pleasant garden area to the rear of the Low Library rotunda. The area was mostly deserted, despite the pleasant early afternoon sun, as most people had gone back inside for afternoon classes.

“Looks like I’ve found us a lead,” said Jerome, “a guy by the name of Renard who runs unofficial tours of the Columbia tunnels. Apparently he’s a former student and lives pretty close by.”

“Did you get a telephone number?” asked Leopold.

“Yes, I’ll give him a call now.”

“Good. Ask him to meet us here at the Uris Hall Business School as soon as possible, and tell him we can pay cash.”

Jerome dialed the number and waited for the call to go though. A few moments later, he hung up the phone and gave a thumbs-up.

“He’ll be here in thirty minutes.”

“Good. In the meantime, I’ve had some more information sent through about Hank,” said Leopold, pulling out his own cell phone and scrolling through his long list of emails. “I got a hit on the bank account records we found. My contact sent through a summary of transactions for the last twelve months. Nothing out of the ordinary until just a few weeks ago.”

“Let me guess,” said Mary. “An unusually large cash deposit?”

“Correct. Twenty thousand dollars, to be precise. Paid to him in one instalment by a company called Greenway Investments.”

“Greenway? Never heard of them.”

“Neither had my contact. He tried to find some data, but all he could track down was a registered business address in The Bahamas.”

“That’s it?” asked Mary.

“For now. He’s going to keep digging, but it sounds like a phantom to me. A business entity set up for the sole purpose of hiding money.”

“Looks like we’ve hit a road block on this one.”

“Not necessarily,” said Leopold, punching a text message into his cell as he spoke. “It at least tells us something useful.”

“And that is?”

Leopold slipped the smart phone back into his jacket pocket and looked Mary in the eye. “It tells us whoever made that payment didn’t want to be found.”

Christina wanted to move, but her body wouldn’t respond. The room hung hazily in front of her disjointed eyes, a blur of gray and white. There had been a bright light. There had been a man with silver eyes, and then there had been pain. But Christina couldn’t remember why.

She remembered that the pain would stop when the kind man came in. The man with the silver eyes was afraid of him. The kind man had told her everything would be all right and had given her something to make the pain go away.

She forced her lazy eyes to focus and she saw the knife again. Cutting her flesh. Sliding the skin and muscle apart like butter. Christina smiled. All just a dream, floating through her mind like a wayward cloud.

The kind man would close up the wounds with silk, and he would smile when she didn’t make a sound. She liked making him happy. He kept the man with silver eyes away when he was happy.

When he wasn’t happy, she didn’t get to dream anymore.

Jerome caught Leopold’s attention and motioned toward the small, dark silhouette approaching from the distance across South Lawn. As the figure grew closer Leopold could make out a short man dressed in crumpled clothes with unkempt and curly hair, a nervous and worried expression on his face. The man glanced about him and pulled up the collar on his jacket to obscure the bottom half of his face. The shabby figure approached and held out his hand.

“You the ones who called?” he said, his voice low.

“Who are you?” asked Jerome, ignoring the hand stretched out in front of him.

“Renard, of course. You can call me Albert.”

“So now we know exactly who you are and why you’re here. Rookie move. How do you know what we’d do with that information?” demanded the bodyguard.

Albert looked away sheepishly and thrust his hands into his pockets.

“Look,” he said, “I’m a busy guy. What do you guys need?”

“We want a tour of the tunnels,” said Leopold, “especially the network that runs underneath Pupin.”

“What’s so special about Pupin?”

“We’re history nuts,” the consultant lied. “Pupin used to be the headquarters for some top-secret weapons research during the second world war. We heard there might be some of the original equipment sealed in the basement and we want to go take a look. Your name came up as a guy who might be able to help.”

“No chance you’re getting into Pupin,” said Albert. “The lower floors were locked up years ago. No one gets in.”

“So I guess you won’t be wanting the two thousand dollars, then?” Leopold pulled a roll of hundred dollar bills out of his pocket and held them up.

Albert paused for a few moments, then glanced quickly from side to side and took the roll of notes.

“Okay, okay,” he sighed, “there might be a way in. Only hypothetical, mind you. I still keep in touch with some of the students here that continue the work I started before I got kicked out. There was talk of a possible way through, but it’s not something I’ve had chance to check out. It could be a dead end.”

“We’ll risk it,” said Leopold. “Where do we start?”

“The easiest access point is inside here.” Their tour guide pointed toward Uris Hall. “As long as we can get into the building, we should be able to access the tunnels. Then we can follow the network through to the area underneath Pupin, and hopefully get lucky.”