Parallel Lies (40 page)

There was loud applause from the other side of the train. A jazz trio started into “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”

The three stopped in front of the second dining car. Coopersmith pointed out small metal plaques attached to the cars indicating data connection points, manual overrides, and emergency controls, written in both French and English. “If there’s one problem with this whole setup,” Coopersmith said, “it’s that this damn train is bilingual.”

“You got that right,” DeWulf agreed. “It should all be in French,” he teased.

Tyler remained concerned that one of the security guards might confront them and identify him. He kept constant watch for approaching trouble. Amid the litter and debris, he saw a rat the size of a raccoon scamper out from under the bullet train and cross to the Amtrak. Behind them, he also saw a line of tracks left by the three of them—shoe prints in the dirt and dust. These ran from the locomotive down to where they stood.

Coopersmith slipped an oddly shaped key into a hole in the frame of the car and released an air-locked door that opened. “Fredo,” he said to the Frenchman, “check for ice or a small puddle.”

“How about our new friend here?” DeWulf suggested, believing Tyler was a new maintenance man, which was how Coopersmith had introduced him.

“You gotta go under there,” Coopersmith informed him.

“They have us chasing ice in winter,” DeWulf complained.

“I gotta sign off on this now that dispatch is involved. Yes, they have us chasing ice.”

DeWulf said, “Whoever catches that rat gets to eat him.” He dropped to his knees and crawled underneath.

Tyler heard the opposite doors, those accessed from the platform, spit air as the supertrain was opened for preview. Not all of the guests would make the trip to Washington. Like a departing cruise ship of yesteryear, the train was taking on guests for a brief visit—in this case a champagne cocktail party in advance of the actual departure. All cars were opened for viewing, including the dining car where Tyler’s maintenance team was currently working. Looking up at the trailing passenger cars, Tyler saw the static faces of the many crash-test dummies and mannequins, erected in eerie fashion to resemble passengers.

With this aisle-side door open, he could see up and into the area where the two dining cars connected, to the legs, male and female, of the boarding guests. He caught a glimpse of Nell Priest in profile, wearing a long black pantsuit and a gray overcoat, and his pulse quickened. He didn’t want her on this train.

“What the hell?” he heard DeWulf call out from under the dining car. The man crawled out holding a backpacker’s headlamp in his gloved hand. It was clean—no dust or dirt on it.

“One of yours?” Tyler asked the leader.

Coopersmith shook his head, his mood suddenly sour. “We use goosenecks that clip to a pocket. Everyone’s issued the same gear.”

Tyler snatched DeWulf’s flashlight from the man, quickly opened his own coveralls, and reached in, producing his handgun—a Beretta 9mm semiautomatic.

Keeping in mind that guests were swarming the train, Tyler bootlegged the weapon. He then squatted, edged toward the darkness beneath the car, lowered his voice, and aimed the weapon and flashlight below the undercarriage. “Whoever is hiding under here, I’m a federal agent, I’m armed, and I’m coming under this car! If you do not make yourself known to me this instant, I will shoot on sight. So make yourself known to me.”

He felt his body rush with heat, almost as if he were kicking in the door and seeing Chester Washington beating that crying baby’s head against the wall. The indignation. The rage. It all came rushing back to him. Tyler had called out a warning then too, only to have the gun knocked from his hand a moment later by an arm that somehow reached inhumanly across the distance of the room.

Coopersmith stared at him.

DeWulf proclaimed, “Federal agent?” in astonishment.

Tyler felt sweat drip down his rib cage. Fear of the unknown parched his throat. He needed Alvarez alive.

“No person is under there,” DeWulf advised.

“Notify security. You two spread out and cover this immediate area,” he indicated the aisle between the two cars.

Coopersmith got on the radio and told of the headlamp and that “one of his men” was going under to take a closer look.

Tyler appreciated Coopersmith protecting his identity. He ducked and, gun extended in his right hand, flashlight in his left, slipped beneath the train.

Tyler trained the flashlight’s powerful beam left, right, up, and down. The barrel of his handgun followed that light, his index finger outside the trigger guard but ready. He knew something no one else did: Alvarez had dropped that headlamp. He believed it absolutely.

From behind him, DeWulf called under the train, “If there was anyone under there, he would have already taken off. Yes?”

Tyler instructed the man to move farther down the train—DeWulf seemed to play by his own rules. Tyler then aimed the flashlight’s beacon up at the car’s undercarriage.

“Fredo!” he called out, stopping the man. “I need you under here.”

“Moi!?”

“I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at,” Tyler said. “Get under here and help me, would you?”

DeWulf reluctantly crawled under. Accepting the flashlight from Tyler, DeWulf waved the beam and said, “That’s part of the backup system for the brakes. This is the sewage collection tank… fresh water… mechanicals…. Wait just one second!” The wide circle of light reversed direction, and
DeWulf scampered backward, away from where the headlamp had fallen. He thumped the back of his head against the undercarriage and dropped the flashlight.

Tyler picked it up and immediately spotted the false floor of the extended window shade. “I’m armed,” he repeated sharply.

The jazz trio started into a rendition of “New York, New York,” up on platform seven. Champagne bottles popped, and in a nervous reaction Tyler nearly pulled the trigger. There was a surreal quality to the juxtaposition of the caviar-and-champagne party overhead and the litter-strewn filth and feeling of danger here below.

Tyler signaled for DeWulf to hold the light while he moved forward and reached overhead. He took hold of the camouflaged shade and, in one motion, tore it loose. It ruffled like a flag and fell to the concrete floor. The space above held nylon webbing, like a hammock.

“Empty,” DeWulf said. “Gone.”

“Wouldn’t be so sure,” Tyler replied, working the flashlight in all directions.

“What’s going on under there?” Coopersmith called out.

Tyler called out from underneath, “Can security seal the tunnel?”

“With all the trains coming and going? Not possible.”

“Besides, he is long gone,” DeWulf speculated, studying the arrangement left behind. “Clever bastard, this one.”

Tyler heard Coopersmith making the radio call. He said to DeWulf, “I need to get started right now. Your boss and I are going to start at the back of the train and work our way forward. You,” he said to the man, “are going to get a message to someone.”

By the time Priest had been located and escorted to the empty side of the bullet train, Tyler and DeWulf had searched beneath the four trailing cars while Coopersmith and one other of his men searched forward. At the same time, security guards worked the interior, randomly checking the IDs of some of the guests while still others searched the tunnel and the various converging tracks. All this was done with as little commotion as could be managed, the consensus being that Alvarez had fled the scene, and whatever threat he had represented had gone with him.

Tyler was not convinced. He and Coopersmith had already discussed how much time they’d need for a complete inspection of the train’s systems and mechanicals. He knew that O’Malley, who was leading his troops in the search of the train, would throw him out with the bathwater, so he kept his head and his profile low.

His coveralls filthy, Tyler crawled out from under the last car as Nell Priest called out for him. “We’ve got ourselves a situation,” he told her.

“So I’ve heard. O’Malley’s ordered every guest checked against the list.”

“He was suspended up under a dining car. Who knows for how long? He apparently avoided the security checks at Raritan.”

“That’s not possible,” she muttered. “I supervised most of that.”

“He camouflaged space beneath a car. They would have had to have practically reached up in there to find him.”

“He fled?”

“May have,” Tyler answered. “Or he may be somewhere inside. Up there in the party with the others.”

Priest lifted her head up toward the windows that were filled both with crash-test dummies and visitors.

“Everyone wears a visitor’s ribbon.” She pointed to the
purple one pinned to her chest. “Even Goheen. It was a lastminute decision by O’Malley. No matter what Alvarez knows about us, he couldn’t possibly know about these ribbons.”

“There are a lot of guests. At this point, he could be hiding anywhere up there.”

Again, she looked up. She shook her head. “No. He fled,” she said. Facing into the dark tunnel, she said, “He knew we’d blown his cover, and he took off.” She sounded almost convincing.

Tyler said, “I need one of those ribbons.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know that I can do that. One ribbon per name on the guest list. That’s how O’Malley is controlling it.”

“Then give me yours,” he pressed. “You tell them it must have fallen off. They’ll look for it, but it’ll buy me time.”

She promptly unpinned the ribbon and handed it to him. Concern creased her otherwise smooth skin. He said, “We’ve already done this underneath, but let’s do it again. You’ll work the train front to back. I’ll start in the last car and work forward.”

“Our people are already working the train, rechecking each guest against the guest list. And that’s not great for you. Most of them know your face by now,” she cautioned. “O’Malley will have you thrown off.”

“Technically, he can’t. The NTSB has every right to be here. What he can do is delay me, tie me up with conversation, keep an eye on me. But in this crowd?” he asked. “It’s a zoo up there. I’ll be fine. What’s the schedule?”

“Train rolls in ten minutes.”

“Will they delay it, now that this has happened?”

She shook her head. “O’Malley will probably try for that. Goheen won’t allow it. Trains leave on time. Company policy.”

Tyler looked into her dark eyes and felt his throat tighten. He would never have guessed that he might feel the way he
did about her. “I want to kiss you right now,” he said, “but I can’t.”

“You most certainly cannot.” She read his face.

“While you’re guarding Gretchen Goheen, guard your own backside as well,” he advised. “It’s a very nice backside.”

“Some things are better kept to yourself,” she said, allowing a smirk as she turned and hurried toward the train.

The train’s public address system announced, “Our guests wishing to remain in New York are invited to please depart onto platform seven at your convenience.” This was the first time Tyler realized that everyone in attendance was in fact invited to take the ride but that not everyone would. The crowd thinned, with passengers moving forward toward their assigned cars. Behind the locomotive came a VIP passenger car, followed by a second passenger car for press and media; next were two dining cars with open bars, then four cars of crash-test dummies and mannequins—required by the NTSB for the test run. In the first of these four mannequin cars were seats set aside for Coopersmith’s two maintenance men.

Tyler, a purple ribbon pinned to his coveralls, worked the train from the rear car forward, head low, moving through the rows of dummies and milling guests. He studied the shoes of the guests, believing this might be the one piece of clothing to set Alvarez apart: he watched for scuffed or dirty shoes or boots. He inspected faces from a distance while not allowing these guests to get a good look at him, assuming that some guests were NUS guards working in suits.

Suddenly a number of guests craned toward the starboard windows, stretching and bending to see out. Tyler got a look as well: William Goheen had daughter Gretchen by the shoulders, leaning into her, his face flushed with anger. She pressed back, clearly trying to work past him and onto the train, but Goheen blocked her entrance. This was not a
skirmish but a pitched battle, and neither father nor daughter seemed about to yield. The cars were too soundproofed for Tyler to hear what was being said, but it wasn’t pretty, not by any stretch of the imagination. Again it became obvious that Gretchen wanted to board the train and that Goheen would not permit it. Tyler caught the signal from Goheen, and a moment later security stepped in, Nell among them. Gretchen screamed at her father, this time her voice carrying into the train through an opened door. “If it’s so damn safe, if you’re so damn innocent, then why the hell can’t I join you?”