The tunnel was seven feet high and not much wider, tubular walls of reinforced concrete, trowel seams marked by steel studs. The light I'd seen from above came from a caged mining fixture wired to the ceiling forty paces in the distance.
The astroturf lay over dirt, ending at a railroad track that bisected the tube.
Narrow track with polished pine ties. Too small for a train. Probably designed for a handcar, but none was in sight.
No rain sounds. I touched the ground. The soil was hardpacked and dry. Perfect seal.
Rapping the walls produced no tone either. The concrete had to be yards thick.
I told Robin to wait and returned to the tunnel's mouth. The slab loomed like a gigantic stiff lip. From down here the lab was a black hole.
I climbed the stairs, tested the slab a second time. Just as immobile- set into place by a mass of gears and counterweights, responsive to a special series of pressures.
Probably a safety feature installed by the Japanese army to prevent crushed fingers or accidental imprisonment. Probably some way to close it safely from below, but I didn't know it and we had no choice but to leave the entry exposed.
Maybe the best thing was to get out of here and wait till morning.
I climbed back down to Robin and offered her the choice.
'We've come this far, Alex. Let's at least follow it for a while and see where it leads.'
'If it extends past the property line, we'll be under the banyans. Land mines.'
'If there are mines.'
'You have doubts?' I said.
'If you wanted to hide something, what better way to discourage intruders than a rumor like that?'
'You want to test that hypothesis?'
'He's down here.' She gazed into the tunnel. 'He clearly wants us there, too. Why would he want to hurt us?'
'He wants
'Whatever, it's important to him. Look at all the precautions he took.'
'Cryptic messages. Voices of wise ones… bugs- he's like a big kid playing games.'
'Hide-and-seek,' she said. 'Maybe I'm way off but I don't think he's a bad man, Alex. Just a secretive one.'
I thought of Moreland and Hoffman and their wives playing bridge on the terrace. Hoffman cheating. Moreland never letting on.
'All right,' I said. 'Let's play.'
We walked along the track, passing under the glow of the caged light and slipping into darkness. A hundred paces later, the glint of an identical fixture came into view. Then another.
The monotony became pleasant- the
'What do you think it was, originally?' said Robin. 'An escape route for the Japanese?'
'Or some kind of supply channel.'
We reached the second light and were nearly out of its glow when we saw something against the wall.
Cardboard boxes. Scores of them, piled neatly in columns. Just like the case files in the storeroom.
Confidential files? Was this what Moreland wanted me to see?
I pulled down a box. The flaps were folded closed but unsealed.
Inside, zip-locked plastic bags.
Dried fruit and vegetables.
I tried another carton. More food.
A third contained pharmaceutical samples and bottles of pills- antibiotics, antifungals, vitamins, minerals, dietary supplements. Then bottles of something clear- tonic water. The antimalarial properties of quinine.
Another carton. More dried fruit. Gatorade.
'Dr. Bill's secret stash,' I said. 'He grows stuff in his garden, preserves it, and brings it down here. Maybe we're dealing with a survivalist. The question is, what's his Armageddon?'
Robin shook her head and fished out canned goods from another box. Beef stew, chicken and rice.
'So much for vegetarianism,' I said.
She looked sad. 'Maybe Armageddon's the destruction of the island. Could be he's planning to stay underground.'
'Under the forest,' I said. 'Protected by those mines, real or phony. It's pretty nuts, but there are bunkers full of folks just like that all over the States. The problem is, they also tend toward hair-trigger paranoia. A lust for the big battle.'
'That doesn't seem like Bill.'
'Why? Because he says he despises weapons? Everything the man's said or done is suspect- including his altruism. Aruk imports food at two, three times the usual cost. Bill helps out with occasional handouts but stockpiles all this stuff for himself. If he's been planning to go under for a while, that would explain why he hasn't been more aggressive promoting business for the island. Maybe he's given up on Aruk- on reality. Maybe he's concentrating on creating his own little subterranean world. Came up with the idea after finding the blueprints somewhere in the house. Eventually, he discovered the tunnel: instant caveman.'
She took something else out of the box. A foil packet with a white label.
' 'Freeze-Dried Combat Meal,' ' she read aloud. ' 'Segment B: reconstituted carrots, beets, peas, lima and string beans, soya protein'… then a whole bunch of vitamins… United States Navy issue… oh, boy.'
'What?'
'The date.'
Tiny numbers at the bottom of the label. February 1963.
'Sixty-three was his last year in the Navy,' I said. 'He bought the estate that year- he's been doing this for thirty years!'
'Poor man,' she said.
'He's obviously quite content. Damned proud of what he's accomplished.'
'Why do you say that?'
'Because now he wants to show it off.'
Six more ceiling lights, two more large caches of food and medicine.
We kept walking, automatically, like soldiers, drained of further conjecture, track and ties slipping past hypnotically.
My watch said we'd been underground nearly half an hour, but it felt both longer and briefer.
Another caged bulb.
Then a patch of green just beyond.
Another AstroTurf strip.
Another flight of stairs, fifty yards ahead.
Thirteen steps up to a metal door.
No handles or locks. I pushed, expecting ponderous weight, another tricky leverage system. It opened so easily I had to stop myself from falling forward.
On the other side was an upsloping concrete ramp lit by a weak bulb.
We climbed till we came to yet another door.
Metal grillwork- radiating circles of iron crisscrossed by spokes. Beyond it total darkness.
I knocked and pushed but this one didn't give. Then my brain put the grill design in context.
