“
“Personally,” Frock said, “I’m of the same opinion as D’Agosta. We shouldn’t be precipitous—”
“The decision’s made, Frock,” Horlocker snapped, returning his attention to the map.
Frock flushed a deep crimson. Then he spun his wheelchair away from the table and rolled toward the door. “I’m going to take a turn around the Museum,” he said to nobody in particular. “I can see my usefulness here has ended.”
Margo began to rise, but D’Agosta placed a restraining hand on her arm. She watched the door close with regret. Frock had been a visionary, the one person most instrumental in her own choice of careers. Yet now she could only feel pity for the great scientist who’d grown so set in his ways.
PENDERGAST STOOD ON a small metal catwalk, watching the mass of sewage moving sluggishly four feet below him. It glowed faintly green and surreal in the artificial phosphor of the VisnyTek night- vision goggles. The smell of methane gas was dangerously strong, and every few minutes he reached inside his jacket for a whiff of pure oxygen from a hidden mouthpiece.
The catwalk was bedecked with rotten strips of paper and other, less identifiable things that had caught in the metal slats during the last rainstorm. With every step, Pendergast’s feet sunk into puffy mounds of rust that coated the metal like fungus. He moved quickly, examining the slimy walls, looking for the thick metal door that signified the final descent to the Astor Tunnels. Every twenty steps, he removed a small canister from a pocket and sprayed two dots on the wall: markers for long-wavelength light. The dots, invisible to the human eye, glowed a ghostly white when the VisnyTeks were in infrared mode. This would help him to find his way back. Especially if—for whatever reason—he was in a hurry.
Ahead, Pendergast could now make out the faint outlines of the metal door, plated with rivets and heavy with a crust of calcite and oxides. A massive lock hung from its faceplate, frozen by time. Pendergast dug into his jacket, removed a small metal tool, and flicked it on. The high whine of a diamond blade sang down the sewer line, and a stream of sparks flickered into the darkness. In seconds the lock fell onto the catwalk. Pendergast examined the rusted hinges, then positioned the small blade and cut through the three sets of door pins.
He replaced the saw and gave the door a long, appraising glance. Then, grasping the faceplate with both hands, he jerked it toward him. There was a sudden shriek of metal and the door came away, falling off the catwalk and landing with a splash in the water below. On the far side of the door was a dark hole, leading down into unguessable depths. Pendergast switched on the goggles’ infrared LED and peered down the hole, wiping the dust from his latex gloves. Nothing.
He played a thin Kevlar rope down into the darkness, fixing the end to an iron bolt. Then, taking a nylon- webbed Swiss seat from his pack, he stepped gingerly into it, locked on a carabiner with a motorized brake bar, and stepped into the well, sliding quickly to the bottom.
His boots landed in a soft, yielding surface. Pendergast unhooked the Swiss seat and tucked his gear away, then did a slow scan with the VisnyTeks. The tunnel was so hot that everything was burned to white. He adjusted the amplitude and slowly the room swam into view, illuminated in a monochromatic landscape of pale green.
He was standing in a long, monotonous tunnel. The muck on the ground was about six inches deep and thick as axle grease. Completing the visual sweep, he pulled open his cammos and consulted the diagrams inside. If the map was correct, he was in a service tunnel, close to the main line. Perhaps a quarter of a mile down the passage lay the remains of the Crystal Pavilion, the private waiting area deep beneath the long-forgotten Knickerbocker Hotel, which once stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South. It was the largest of the waiting areas, larger than the platforms beneath the Waldorf and the great Fifth Avenue mansions. If there was a central hub of the Devil’s Attic, he would find it within the Crystal Pavilion.
Pendergast moved carefully down the tunnel. The smell of methane and the stench of decay were dizzying; nevertheless, he breathed deeply through his nose, aware of a certain goatish odor he remembered all too well from the darkened Museum subbasement eighteen months before.
The service tunnel merged with another and made a slow bend toward the main line. Pendergast glanced downwards and froze. There in the sludge was a trail of footprints. Bare footprints, apparently fresh. They headed down the track toward the main line.
Taking a long whiff of oxygen, Pendergast bent to examine the track more closely. Allowing for the elasticity of the sludge, the footprints looked normal, if a little broad and squat. Then he noticed the way the toes narrowed to thick points—more like talons than toenails. There were certain depressions in the muck between the toe imprints that suggested webbing.
Pendergast straightened up. It was all true, then. The Wrinklers were real.
He hesitated a moment, taking another hit from the mouthpiece. Then he moved down the service tube, following the tracks, keeping near the wall. When he reached the main junction, he paused for a moment, listened, then spun quickly around the corner into the Weaver stance, gun thrust forward.
Nothing.
The footprints now joined a second, well-traveled path down the center of the main line. Pendergast knelt and examined the trail. It was made of many tracks, mostly bare feet, a few shoes or boots. Some of the feet were extremely broad, almost spadelike. Others looked normal.
Many, many individuals had traveled this trail.
After another careful reconnaissance, he started forward again, passing several side tunnels as he went. Footpaths ran out of these tunnels, converging with the main path. It was almost, Pendergast thought, like the web of tracks one found when hunting in Botswana or Namibia: animals, converging on a watering hole—or a lair.
A large structure loomed ahead. If Al Diamond was correct, this was the remains of the Crystal Pavilion. As Pendergast moved closer, he could make out a long railway platform, its sides layered with the muck of innumerable floods. Carefully, he followed the herd path up onto the platform and looked around, making sure to keep his back against the nearest wall.
