Douglas Preston - Reliquary

He sighed, stapled some papers into a folder, closed it, and tossed it in the outgoing tray. Dead dog, removed from the Gowanus canal. Cause of death: gunshot wound; ownership unknown; case closed. He slid another folder off the pile: Randolf Rowell, jumper, Triborough Bridge, age 22. Suicide note found in pocket. Cause of death: drowning. Case closed.

As he dropped the file into the bin, he heard the diesel rumble of the launch as it nosed its way into the dock. Back early. The engine sounded different somehow, throatier, he thought. Maybe it needed a tune-up or something.

He heard running footfalls on the wooden dock and suddenly the door burst open: men in black wet suits, no insignia, faces black and green with greasepaint. Twin haversacks of rubber and latex dangled around their necks.

“Where’s the dive team?” barked the forward man, a hulking figure with a Texas accent.

“East River chopper crash,” Snow said. “You the second squad?” He glanced out the window and was surprised to see, not a familiar blue-and-white police boat, but a powerful inboard V-bottom launch, lying low in the water and painted as dark as the men.

“All of them?” the man asked.

“All except me. Who are you?”

“We ain’t your mother’s long-lost nephews, darlin’,” the man said. “We need someone who knows the shortest route into the West Side Lateral, and we need him now.”

Snow felt an involuntary twinge. “Let me radio the Dive Sergeant—”

“No time. What about you?”

“Well, I know the flow grid around the Manhattan shoreline. That’s part of Basic, every police driver has to—”

“Can you bring us in?” the man said brusquely, cutting him off.

“You want to get in the West Side Lateral? Most of the pipes are grilled, or too narrow for a—”

“Just answer the question: yes or no?”

“I think so,” Snow said, his voice faltering a little.

“Your name?”

“Snow. Officer Snow.”

“Get in the boat.”

“But my tanks and suit—”

“We got everything you need. You can suit up on the launch.”

Snow scrambled from his chair, following the men out onto the dock. It didn’t seem to be an invitation he could refuse. “You still haven’t told me who—”

The man paused, one foot on the gunwale of the launch. “Commander Rachlin, Patrol Leader, SEAL Team Blue Seven. Now get a wiggle on.”

The helmsman gunned the launch out of the slip. “Mind your rudder,” the Commander said, then gestured Snow closer. “Here’s the op,” he said, lifting a matted seat and pulling out a sheaf of waterproof maps from the storage space beneath. “There’ll be four teams, two to each team.” He glanced around. “Donovan!”

“Sir!” a man said, coming over. Even in the bulky suit, he looked thin and wiry. Snow could see nothing of his facial features behind the neoprene and greasepaint.

“Donovan, you and Snow here are buddying up.”

There was a silence that Snow interpreted as disgust. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“It’s a UD job,” Rachlin said.

“A what?”

The Commander looked at him sharply. “Underwater demolition. That’s all you need to know.”

“Is this connected with the headless murders?” Snow asked.

The Commander stared. “For a dumb-ass, tit-suckin’, bath-tub-divin’ tadpole of a po -lice diver, you ask a whole lot of questions, darlin’.”

Snow said nothing. He didn’t dare look at Donovan.

“We can chart our way in from this point,” Rachlin said, unrolling one of the maps and tamping his thumb on a blue dot. “But the new treatment plant made these insertion areas here obsolete. So you’re gonna get us in to that point.”

Snow bent over the laminated map. At the top, in chiseled copperplate script, a legend read WEST SIDE STORM AND SEWER SURVEY, LOWER QUADRANT. Below was a labyrinth of faint intersecting lines. Somebody had placed three sets of dots beneath the western side of Central Park. He stared at the complex traceries, his mind racing. The Humboldt Kill was the easiest insertion point, but it was a hell of a long way in to the Lateral from there, with many twists and turns. Besides, he didn’t want to go back there, ever, if he could help it. He tried to remember their training sessions, the long days on boats nosing up muddy canals. Where else did the West Side Lateral drain into?

“This isn’t an essay question,” Rachlin said quietly. “Hurry it up. We’re on a tight schedule here.”

Snow looked up. There was one route he knew of, a very direct route. Well, he thought, they asked for it. “The Lower Hudson Sewage Treatment Plant itself,” he said. “We can go in through the main settling tank.”

There was a silence, and Snow glanced around.

“Dive in goddamn sewage ?” a very deep voice said.

The Commander turned. “You heard the man.” He tossed a wet suit toward Snow. “Now get your lovely little behind below and suit up. We’ve got to be clear and at the extraction point by six minutes to midnight.”

= 53 =

MARGO SAT ON the cold tile floor of the armory, inwardly fuming. She wasn’t sure who she was more angry at: D’Agosta, for roping her into this mess to begin with; Pendergast, for refusing to take her along; or herself, for being unable just to let the whole thing drop. But that was something she simply couldn’t do. It was clear to her now just how long a shadow the Museum murders—the terrifying final struggle in the Museum basement—had cast over her. It had robbed her of sleep, fractured her peace of mind. And now this shit, on top of everything else …

She knew Pendergast had been thinking of her safety, but she still could not contain the frustration of being left behind. If it wasn’t for me, they’d still be in the dark, she thought. I made the connection between Mbwun and Whittlesey. I figured out what really happened. With a little more time, she might have even tied up the nagging, perplexing loose ends that still remained: what the rest of Kawakita’s cryptic journal fragments meant, what he’d been doing with the thyoxin, why he’d been synthesizing Vitamin D at his final laboratory.

Actually, the thyoxin made sense. The journal entries implied that, near the end, Kawakita had had a change of heart. Apparently, he’d realized his latest strains of glaze no longer twisted the body, but instead twisted the mind. Maybe he’d even learned of the environmental dangers posed by saltwater coming in contact with the plants. In any case, it seemed clear he’d decided to undo what he’d done, and rid the reservoir of Liliceae Mbwunensis. Perhaps the creatures themselves had learned of his intention. That could explain his death: obviously, the last thing they wanted was somebody meddling with their supply. But that still didn’t explain what the hell he’d been doing with vitamin D. Could it have been necessary for the genetic sequencing? No, that wasn’t possible…

Suddenly, Margo sat up, drawing in her breath sharply. He was planning to kill off the plants, I’m sure of it , she thought. And he knew that put him in terrible danger. So the vitamin D wasn’t for glaze production. It was for …

Suddenly, she understood.

In an instant, she scrambled to her feet. There wasn’t a moment to lose. Galvanized into action, she began yanking open locker drawers, spilling the contents into the narrow corridor, hastily grabbing at the items she needed, stuffing them into her carryall: oxygen mask, night-vision goggles, boxes of 9-millimeter hollow-point rounds for her semiautomatic pistol.

Breathing heavily, she ran to the door of the armory and looked out into the larger storage area. It’s got to be around here somewhere, she thought. She began running along the rows of wooden cabinets, quickly scanning their Formica labels. Stopping abruptly, she opened one of the cabinets and took out three empty one-liter bottles equipped with sports-style squeeze caps. Placing them on the floor along with her carryall, she opened another cabinet and pulled out several gallon containers of distilled water. Then she ran down the rows, searching once again, muttering under her breath. Finally, she stopped and yanked open another cabinet door. It was filled with rows of jars containing pills and tablets. She feverishly scanned the labels, found what she wanted, and raced back to her carryall.