close on their heels. Cavendish was grinning like a wolf; Karlosky, smiling grimly, pistol in hand; Sullivan, pale and grave. Bill started to move past Cavendish.
“Hang back, McDonagh,” Cavendish said. “Leave this to the real officers. We’ll call you to the front line if we need to.”
Bill had a mind to hand Cavendish his badge and tell him where to shove it, but he silently dropped back to the rear. He wasn’t eager to pull the trigger on anyone.
They ran across a bank of carved-out rock into a great, echoing metal room with its own ocean-water lake. The room smelled of diesel and ocean brine. A converted 312-foot Balao-class submarine, without the deck guns, rocked in a flat calm. Lit by electric lights on steel rafters, the hangarlike room was just big enough to contain the submarine and enough water for it to submerge in. To the left, through the translucent water, Bill saw underwater steel doors that led into the air lock and the open sea. Purportedly there was another, smaller side channel, along the way, for the bathysphere to take to Smuggler’s Hideout. A big yellow fishing net was folded up on the afterdeck of the floating submarine. A pontoon gangway ran from the stony verge just inside the door out to the rust-streaked vessel. On the side of the conning tower was stenciled:
The constables were already running along the gangway. Bill was at the rear, looking nervously around. There was no sign of life, not much noise—maybe a slight purr of an idling motor from the sub. Then Bill caught a flicker of movement up in the rafters, beyond the glare of the lights. He leaned back, craning his neck to look, shading his eyes with a hand. He just made out a face up there, someone on a catwalk near the ceiling. Bill had seen the man with Fontaine before. Reggie, his name was, and he seemed to be speaking into a handheld radio.
“Sullivan, Cavendish—wait!” Bill shouted, stopping on the gangway. “There’s something wrong—someone’s up there.”
Sullivan hesitated just before the sub, looking around as if he suspected something himself. Cavendish and Karlosky stopped to look back at him in puzzlement.
Grogan was already on the submarine’s top deck with two other men. Others were scrambling onto the metal grating, rushing toward the hatch.
“Get that hatch open!” Grogan yelled.
“In the rafters, up there, Sullivan!” Bill shouted. But there was a groaning, a churning at the submarine’s aft. Vapor bubbled up, reeking of diesel; the water moiled and seethed…
The submarine began to descend. It eased forward as it sank, heading toward the underwater doors opening in the submerged wall. The unattached gangway rocked in the waves of the submarine’s descent. Water surged up over the vessel’s bow, rushing over the shouting men on the deck. The submarine picked up speed, suddenly spurting forward and down, as the conning tower dipped under the surface. The men on the deck were swept into the water, then sucked downward in the vessel’s wake, their screams quickly drowned out. The submarine angled sharply down, completely submerged now, sailing swiftly through the opened steel doors into the shadowy undersea tunnel. Several men struggled in the sub’s wake, deep underwater, silhouettes seen dimly in the water. They were like children’s toys going down a drain, drawn by the suction of the closing doors.
Bill squinted up at the ceiling again, raising his tommy gun for a shot at Reggie, but he was gone.
They fished the survivors from the water. Grogan hadn’t made it. He had drowned, in that tunnel somewhere.
Standing together on the stone verge just inside the door to the now strangely empty room—the sodden Sullivan, Bill, Karlosky, and Cavendish stared at the water, now calm, the gangway rocking gently on its pontoons.
“They had ’er ready to go,” Bill observed. “Just threw a switch, and she’s off. The bastards went out of their way to take the bloody sub down fast. They wanted to drown as many of us as they could.”
“We’re lucky more didn’t go down with it,” Sullivan said. “Goddammit… Grogan was a good man.”
“I reckon I saw Fontaine’s man Reggie, up in the rafters,” Bill said. “Didn’t have a chance to tell you. It was him. Whoever it was, they were using a radio.”
Sullivan looked up. “Yeah? Giving the signal to submerge…”
“That’s what I figure. They were waiting for us. Hard to keep this raid a secret—hard to keep anything a secret long in Rapture, Chief. We’re too crowded and becoming too bloody incestuous.”
“Of course, you know what the bastards will say,” Sullivan growled. “Fontaine will say that the sub was about to depart to do a job—and we just picked a bad time to go aboard. They’ll claim they had no idea we were there. But there’s one thing. I’ve still got a witness. Herve Manuela. He can point us to more evidence.”
Bill nodded. He looked toward the closed, submerged steel doors. And wondered where Grogan’s body was floating now…
“Andrew?”
Annoyed, Ryan looked up from his paperwork to see Diane in the doorway of his office. She had a you’ll- never-guess-what expression on her face. “Well?”
“Frank Fontaine is here to see you!”
Ryan sat back in his chair. He picked up a pencil and flipped it through his fingers thoughtfully. “Is he now? He has no appointment.”
“So should I tell him to go away?”
“No. Is Karlosky out there?”
“He’s the one who stopped Fontaine coming in. They’re kind of having a big-boy pissing contest of some kind—I mean, Karlosky and that man Reggie. He’s here with Fontaine.”
“Tell Karlosky to come in—and then bring Fontaine and his man in. This is overdue. It may prove interesting…”
“Very well. Can I—”
“No. You’ll wait outside.”
She pouted but went out to the entry room. Ryan wished he hadn’t given Elaine the day off. He was seriously tired of Diane’s airs, her possessiveness. He felt less and less like spending time with Diane; he needed one of his little intervals with Jasmine Jolene. A womanly woman, that Jasmine. A childbearer, with beauty and talent.
Karlosky came in, taking a pistol from a shoulder holster. He held it down by his side and stood to Ryan’s left, watching the door as Reggie came in. Reggie didn’t show a gun—but Ryan knew he had one.
Reggie glanced at Karlosky. “Tell him to put that heat away, Mr. Ryan.”
Ryan shrugged. “Holster the gun, if you please.”
Karlosky glared at Reggie before he holstered the pistol. Reggie looked like that wasn’t going to be good enough—but Frank Fontaine himself walked in then, long overcoat unbuttoned, hands in his pants pockets. He looked like a guy out for a walk on Broadway. His three-piece, light-blue suit was exquisitely tailored and pressed. Immaculate spats adorned his shoes, and a watch fob gleamed at his vest.
Fontaine looked relaxed, pleased with himself.
“Normally,” Ryan said, “I require an appointment. But I’ve been wanting to talk to you in person. We lost a good man trying to inspect your sub.”
Fontaine grinned. “You wanted to inspect the subs, Mr. Ryan, well,
Ryan leaned forward, letting the anger show on his face. “You knew damn well we were coming!”
“You did another inspection the very next day, and one after that. You found nothing. I’m not smuggling anything, Ryan. That’s why I’ve come here. To set the record straight.”
