D'Agosta followed Pendergast into Penn Station, which-disgracefully-consisted of little more than an escalator entrance in the shadow of Madison Square Garden. It was a quiet evening, a Tuesday of no consequence, and at such a late hour, the area was almost deserted, save for a few homeless people and a man passing out sheets of his poetry. The two rode the escalator down to the waiting area, then took another that descended still farther, to the track level.
They were headed, D'Agosta noted with a certain grimness, for track 13.
Pendergast had barely spoken a word in the last half hour. As the appointed time drew nearer-as they came closer to seeing Viola and, inevitably, Diogenes-the agent had grown more and more tight-lipped and withdrawn.
The tracks were almost deserted, just a few maintenance men sweeping up trash and two uniformed cops at a security station, chatting and blowing on cups of coffee. Pendergast led the way to the far end of the platform, where the tracks disappeared into a dark tunnel.
'Be ready,' Pendergast murmured as his pale eyes roved the tracks.
They waited for a moment. The two cops turned and walked into the security station.
They jumped lightly off the platform onto the tracks and jogged away into the dimness. D'Agosta glanced back at the receding platform, ensuring nobody had noticed.
It was warmer belowground, hovering just around freezing, but it was a much damper cold, and it seemed to cut effortlessly through D'Agosta's purloined sports jacket. After another minute of jogging, Pendergast stopped, fished in his pocket, and pulled out a flashlight.
'We have some way to go,' he said, shining the light down the long, dark tunnel. Several pairs of eyes-rat's eyes-gleamed out of the darkness ahead.
The agent set off again at a fast walk, his long legs striding down the middle of the tracks. D'Agosta followed, listening a little nervously for any sound of an approaching train. But all he could hear were their hollow footsteps, his own breathing, and the sound of water dripping from icicles in the ancient brick roof.
'So the Iron Clock is a railroad turntable?' he asked after a moment. He spoke more to break the strained silence than anything else.
'Yes. A very old one.'
'I didn't know there were any turntables under Manhattan.'
'It was built to manage the flow of train traffic in and out of the old Pennsylvania Station. In fact, it's the only remaining artifact from the original architecture.'
'And you know how to find it?'
'Remember the subway murders we worked on some years back? I spent quite a bit of time then, studying the underground landscape of New York City. I still recall much of the layout beneath Manhattan, at least the more common routes.'
'How do you think Diogenes knows about it?'
'That is an interesting fact, Vincent, and it has not escaped my attention.'
They came to a metal door, set into an alcove in the tunnel wall, fastened with a rust-covered padlock. Pendergast stooped to examine the lock, tracing the heavy lines of rust with his finger. Then he stepped back, nodding to D'Agosta to do the same. Pulling his Wilson Combat 1911 from its holster, Pendergast fired it into the lock. A deafening roar cracked down the tunnel, and the broken lock fell to the ground in a cloud of rust. He leaned to the side and kicked open the door.
A stone staircase led down, exhaling a smell of mold and rot.
'How far down is it?'
'Actually, we're already at the grade of the Iron Clock. This is merely a shortcut.'
The staircase was slippery, and as they descended, the air grew warmer still. After a long descent, the steps leveled out, broadening into an old brick tunnel with Gothic arches. Locked work sheds lined the tunnel.
D'Agosta paused. 'Lights ahead. And voices.'
'Homeless,' Pendergast replied.
As they continued, D'Agosta began to smell woodsmoke. Shortly, they came across a group of ragged men and women sitting around a rudely built fire, passing around a bottle of wine.
'What's this?' one of them called out. 'You fellows miss your train?'
The laughter subsided as they passed. From the darkness behind the group came the sudden crying of a baby.
'Jeez,' D'Agosta muttered. 'You hear that?'
Pendergast merely nodded.
They came to another metal door, from which someone had already cut away the lock. Opening the door, they climbed back up a long, wet staircase, dodging streams of water, and emerged onto a new set of tracks.
Pendergast paused, checking his watch. 'Eleven-thirty.'
More rats scurried away as they walked wordlessly down the tunnel for what seemed miles. No amount of walking seemed to warm D'Agosta against the damp chill. At one point, they passed a siding holding several wrecked train cars. Later, passing a series of stone alcoves, D'Agosta saw an ancient metal gear more than eight feet in diameter. Once in a while, he heard the distant rumble of trains, but nothing seemed to be running on the tracks they were walking on.
At last, Pendergast halted, switched off his flashlight, and nodded ahead. Peering into the darkness, D'Agosta saw that the tunnel ended in an archway of dim yellow light.
'That's the Iron Clock up ahead,' Pendergast said in a low voice.
D'Agosta removed his Glock 29, slid open the magazine, checked it, and slipped it back into place.
'You know what to do?'
D'Agosta nodded.
They moved forward slowly and silently, Pendergast in front, D'Agosta close behind. He checked his watch, holding it mere inches from his nose: twelve minutes to midnight.
'Remember,' Pendergast whispered. 'Cover me from here.'
D'Agosta flattened himself against the wall. From this vantage point, he had a good view into the enormous space ahead. What he saw almost took his breath away. It was a huge circular vault built of granite blocks streaked with limestone and grime, an incredible Romanesque underground massing. The floor of the vault was spanned by a railroad turntable: a single length of track stretching from one wall to another, set into a vast iron circle. Twelve arched tunnels, spaced equally apart, entered the vault. Each bore a small, grime-covered light above its mouth, along with a carved Roman numeral, I through XII.
His dad had been a railroad buff, and D'Agosta knew something about railroad turntables. The revolving carousels were usually found at a railroad's terminus: a single track led into the turntable, and lying beyond would be a semicircular roundhouse with bays for locomotive storage. Here, however, hard by Penn Station and within one of the world's busiest networks of railroad tracks, the turntable clearly had a different purpose: it was simply a nexus, a way to allow trains to go from one series of tracks and tunnels to another.
The sound of dripping water echoed in the vast space, and he could see, far above, icicles on the upper vaulting. The drops came spinning down through a dirty circle of lights to land in black puddles below.
He wondered if-out there somewhere, in the darkness of one of the other eleven railroad tunnels-Diogenes was waiting.
Just then he heard a faint rumble, followed by a growing rush of air. Pendergast retreated back into the tunnel, motioning D'Agosta to do the same. A moment later, a commuter train burst out of one of the tunnel mouths and went thundering over the turntable, windows flashing by as it shot through the space, then rocketed back into darkness. The roar died to a rumble, then a murmur. And then, with a loud clanking noise, the single section of track in the center of the Iron Clock began to rotate, halting with a clang as it connected two other tunnels, preparing for the next train.
The tunnels it now connected were tunnel XII and the tunnel they themselves were in: tunnel VI.
All fell silent again. D'Agosta saw the dark shapes of rats-some the size of small dogs-scurrying along the shadows at the far edge of the roundhouse. Water dripped steadily. The place smelled of rot and decay.
Pendergast stirred, gestured toward his watch. Six minutes to midnight. Time to act. He grasped D'Agosta's
