Douglas Preston - Reliquary

The ladder fell into shadow as he approached the underside of the observation chamber. Looking up, Pendergast noticed a hatch set into the chamber’s underside. It had a circular handle, like the watertight door of a submarine, and the words PORT OF NEW YORK AUTHORITY had been stamped into it. The roar of the vent stack was like the shriek of a jet engine, and Pendergast had to bang several times on the hatch before it was raised by the person inside.

Pendergast climbed into the tiny metal room and straightened his suit while the occupant—a small, wiry man dressed in a plaid shut and coveralls—closed the hatch. Three sides of the observation chamber looked down over the Hudson, the approaches to the Lincoln Tunnel, and the massive power plant that sucked foul air out of the tunnel and channeled it up the vent stacks. Craning his neck, Pendergast could make out the spinning turbines of the tunnel’s filtration system rumbling directly beneath them.

The man stepped away from the hatch and moved to a stool behind a small draftsman’s table. There was no other chair in the tiny, cramped chamber. Pendergast watched as the man looked at him and moved his mouth as if speaking. But no sound was audible over the shriek of the huge stack vent beside them.

“What?” Pendergast shouted, moving closer. The floor hatch did little to keep out either the noise or the traffic fumes wafting up from below.

“ID,” the man replied. “They said you’d have some ID.”

Pendergast reached into his jacket pocket and showed his FBI identification to the man, who examined it carefully.

“Mr. Albert Diamond, correct?” Pendergast said.

“Al,” the man said with a careless gesture. “What ya need?”

“I hear you’re the authority on underground New York,” Pendergast said. “You’re the engineer who’s consulted on everything from the building of a new subway tunnel to the repair of a gas main.”

Diamond stared at Pendergast. One cheek began to bulge as his tongue made a slow traverse of his lower molars. “Guess that’s true,” he replied at last.

“When were you last underground?”

Diamond raised one fist, opened it wide once, twice, closed it again.

“Ten?” Pendergast said. “Ten months?”

Diamond shook his head.

“Years?”

Diamond nodded.

“Why so long?”

“Got tired. Requested this instead.”

“Requested? Interesting choice of assignment. About as far away from the underground as one could get without actually being airborne. Intentional?”

Diamond shrugged, neither agreeing nor contradicting.

“I need some information,” Pendergast shouted. It was simply too loud in the observation chamber for any kind of small talk.

Diamond nodded, the bulge in his cheek slowly rising as the investigation moved to the upper molars.

“Tell me about the Devil’s Attic.”

The bulge froze in position. After a few moments, Diamond shifted on the stool, but said nothing.

Pendergast continued. “I’m told there’s a level of tunnels underneath Central Park. Unusually deep tunnels. I’ve heard the region referred to as the Devil’s Attic. But there are no records of such a place in existence, at least by that name.”

After a long moment, Diamond looked down. “Devil’s Attic?” he repeated, as if with great reluctance.

“Do you know of such a place?”

Diamond reached into his coveralls and drew out a small flask of something that was not water. He took a long pull, then returned the flask without offering it to Pendergast. He said something that was inaudible over the shriek of the exhaust stack.

“What?” Pendergast cried, moving still closer.

“I said, yeah, I know of it.”

“Tell me about it, please.”

Diamond looked away from Pendergast, his eyes gazing over the river toward the New Jersey shore.

“Those rich bastards,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Those rich bastards. Didn’t want to rub shoulders with the working class.”

“Rich bastards?” Pendergast asked.

“You know. Astor. Rockefeller. Morgan. And the rest. Built those tunnels over a century ago.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Railroad tunnels,” Diamond burst out irritably. “They were building a private railcar line. Came down from Pelham, under the Park, beneath the Knickerbocker Hotel, the Fifth Avenue parkfront mansions. Fancy private stations and waiting rooms. The whole nine yards.”

“But why so deep?”

For the first time, Diamond grinned. “Geology. Had to go deeper than the existing train lines and early subway tunnels, of course. But right below was a layer of shitstone.”

“I beg your pardon?” Pendergast yelled.

“Rotten Precambrian siltstone. We call it shitstone. You can run water and sewer lines through shitstone, but not a railroad tunnel. So they had to go deeper. Your Devil’s Attic is thirty stories underground.”

“But why?”

Diamond looked at the FBI agent in disbelief. “Why? Why do you think? Those fancy pants didn’t want to share any sidings or signals with regular train lines. With those deep tunnels, they could go straight out of the city, come up around Croton, and be on their way. No delays, no mixing with the common folk.”

“That doesn’t explain why there is no record of their existence.”

“Cost a fortune to build. And not all of it came from the pockets of the oil barons. They called in favors from City Hall.” Diamond tapped the side of his nose. “That kind of construction you don’t document.”

“Why were they abandoned?”

“Impossible to maintain. Beneath most of the sewer and storm drains like they were, you could never keep them dry. Then there was methane buildup, carbon monoxide buildup, you name it.”

Pendergast nodded. “Heavy gases, seeking the lowest level.”

“They spent millions on those damn tunnels. Never finished the line. They were only open for two years before the flood of ninety-eight overwhelmed the pumps and half-filled everything with sewage. So they bricked everything up. Didn’t even pull out the machinery or nothing.”

Diamond fell silent, and the chamber filled once again with the roar of the vent stack.

“Are there any maps of these tunnels?” Pendergast asked after a moment.

Diamond rolled his eyes. “Maps? I looked for maps for twenty years. Those maps don’t exist. I learned what I learned by talking to a few old-timers.”

“Have you been down there?” Pendergast asked.

Diamond twitched noticeably. Then, after a long moment, he nodded silently.

“Could you diagram them for me?”

Diamond was silent.

Pendergast moved closer. “Any little thing you could do would be appreciated.” His hand seemed merely to smooth the lapel of his jacket, but suddenly a hundred-dollar bill flared between two of the slender fingers, arching in the engineer’s direction.

Diamond stared at the bill, as if deliberating. Finally, he took it, rolled it into a ball, and crammed it into a pocket. Then, turning to the drafting table, he began sketching deftly on a piece of yellow graph paper. An intricate system of tunnels began to take shape.

“Best I can do,” he said, straightening up after a few minutes. “That’s the approach I used to get inside. A lot of the stuff south of the Park has been filled with concrete, and the tunnels to the north collapsed years ago. You’ll have to find your way down to the Bottleneck first. Take Feeder Tunnel 18 down from where it intersects the old ’Twenty-four water main.”

“The Bottleneck?” Pendergast asked.

Diamond nodded, scratching his nose with a dirty finger. “There’s a vein of granite running through the bedrock deep beneath the Park. Super hard stuff. To save time and dynamite, the old pipe jockeys just blasted one massive hole in it and funneled everything through. The Astor Tunnels are directly below. As far as I know, that’s the only way to get inside them from the south—unless you got a wet suit, of course.”