The Web (28 page)

The wax thing slipped out of reach and I fell back, kept
my balance, and crouched, eye to eye with the centipede.

Separated from its maniacal thrusts by a quarter inch of
glass that trembled with each impact.

Its primitive face dead as rock. Then an infusion of
rage turned it nearly human.

Human like a death-row resident.

The tank rocked.

I found the corner of the wax thing again, pinched, clawed,
scraped
.   .   . crack .   .   .
missed, tried again—it moved, then
resisted.

Stuck to the tabletop? Taped. The
bastard.

Hooking a nail under the tape, I tugged upward, felt it
give.

One more yank and the damned thing came out.

Thick wad of waxy paper, the edges crumbling between my
fingers as I stepped away as fast as I could.

Robin followed me. So did Emma’s black eyes.

Crack, crack .   .   .
the beast reared up
against the lid, trying to force it off. Noble in its own way, I
supposed. A hundred-legged Atlas, fighting for liberation. I could
smell
its fury, bitter, steaming, hormonally charged.

Another push. The slate atop the lid bounced and I
worried it would break the glass.

Spotting a flowerpot at the end of the aisle, filled
with dirt, I used it for ballast.

The centipede continued lunging. The entire front of
the aquarium was filmy with slime.

Crack.

“Nighty-night, you prick.”

Taking Robin by the hand, I hurried back to the front of
the insectarium, stopping at a spot where the light through
one of the broken windows was strongest. Then I realized
Emma was still with us—why had I ever worried about
her
?

Everything’s relative .   .   . time,
too.

Moreland’s point: nothing was what it
seemed. .   .   . I unfolded the wax paper. More pieces flaked
off.

Dry. Old. Dark paper—black or deep blue, oversized,
scored with light lines.

Blueprints.

Squares and circles, semicircles and rectangles. Symbols
I couldn’t understand.

Lines tipped with arrow points. Directional angles?

An aerial layout. The rectangles and squares were probably
buildings.

The largest structure on the south side. Nearby a round
thing—water waves within.

The front fountain.

The main house.

Oriented, I located the insectarium with its thirteen
steps and central spine, lots of small rectangles angling off
like vertebrae.

The baths   .   .   .

I found my office, Moreland’s, the other outbuildings.

To the east, a mass of overlapping amorphous shapes that
had to be treetops. The edges of the banyan forest.

A map of the estate’s center.

But what did he want me to
see
?

The longer I studied the sheet, the more confusing it
got. Networks of lines, as dense as the streets on an urban
map. Shapes that had no meaning.

Words.

In Japanese.

Chapter

34

“The original construction plans,” said Robin.

“Can you make any sense of it?”

She took the blueprints and studied them. All those
months at the jobsite in L.A. reading plans   .   .   .

She traced lines, came to a stop.

“Maybe this?”

Guiding my hand to a rough spot—a pimpling of the
paper, like Braille.

“Pinhole,” I said.

“Right in the center of this building here—his office.
And look at this leading out of the office.” She ran her
finger along a solid line that continued off the paper.

Due east. Out of his bungalow, through the neighboring
buildings, past the border of the property, straight into the
banyans.

“A tunnel?” I said.

“Or some kind of underground power cable,” she said,
flipping the sheet and examining the back. “This
has
to be
it.”

A circle had been drawn around the pinhole.

“A tunnel under his office,” I said. “That explains the
night I saw him go in there and turn the lights off. He went
underground.”

She nodded. “He’s got a secret hiding place, and
he’s inviting us to see it.”

She lifted Emma from her shoulder, talked soothingly to
the spider, and stroked its belly. Eight limbs relaxed and
stayed that way as the animal was returned to its home.
Pausing a moment, Robin smiled.

“Nothing like new friends,” I said.

“Careful or I’ll take her home with us.”

I folded the blueprints, tucked them in my waistband
under my jacket, and we edged out of the insectarium.

The rain had lightened a bit and I
could make out the shapes of shrubs and trees.

Nothing two-legged .   .   . then I heard something
from behind and froze. Scraping—a tree branch rubbing against
something.

We pressed ourselves against the wall and waited.

No human movement.

Moreland’s bungalow was just a short walk under swaying
trees. Off in the distance the main house was visible—lights
on. Pam and Jo back?

We made a run for it.

The door was unlocked, probably from Pam’s initial
search. Or had Moreland left it that way for us?

Double-sided key lock. Once inside, I tried to bolt it
with the key to my office and when that didn’t fit, the new
one. No go. We’d have to leave it open, too.

And the lights off.

The door to the lab was closed. Moreland’s desk was
clear as it had been this afternoon, except for a single
shiny object.

His penlight.

Robin took it and we crouched behind the desk and,
shielded by wood, spread the blueprints on the floor. She
shined the light on the plans. The ink had run. Our hands
were indigo.

“Yes,” she said, “definitely from behind there.”
Pointing to the lab door.

She gave an uneasy smile.

“What is it?”

“All of a sudden I have visions of something disgusting
on the other side.”

“I was just there, and there was nothing but test tubes
and food samples. Nutritional research.”

“Or,” she said, “he’s feeding something.”

The lab looked untouched.
Keeping the penlight low, Robin walked around,
pausing to consult the blueprints, then resuming.

Finally, she stopped in the center of the room and
stared, puzzled, at a black-topped lab table with a cabinet
below.

“Whatever’s down there would have to start here.”

A rack full of empty test tubes and an empty beaker sat
on the counter. I placed the glassware on a nearby bench, then
pushed the table. It didn’t budge.

Wheels at each corner, but they weren’t functional.

No sink, so no plumbing.

But attached, somehow, to the floor.

I opened the cabinet below as Robin aimed the penlight.
Nothing but boxes of paper towels. Removing them
revealed a metal rod running the height of the rear wall.

Springs, a handle.

I pulled down, encountered some resistance, then the rod
lowered into place with a click.

The table shifted, rolled, and Robin was able to push it
away easily.

Underneath was more concrete floor. A five-by-two
rectangle. Etched. Deep seams.

A concrete trapdoor?

But no handle.

I stepped down on a corner of the rectangle, pressed and
removed my foot, testing it. The slab rocked a fraction of an
inch, then popped back into place, giving off a deep resonant
sound, like a huge spinning top.

“Maybe it needs more weight,” said Robin. “Let’s do it
together.”

“No. If Moreland can move it by himself, I can, too. I
don’t want to trigger it too hard and have it slam up in our
faces.”

I toed another corner. A bit more give, the slab
bounced back again.

Pressure on the third corner caused it to yield further
and I caught a view of the slab’s side, at least half a foot
thick. More metal underneath—some kind of pulley system.

Moving to the fourth corner, I felt myself being lifted
and jumped off.

The slab rocked hard, stopped, then began rotating, very
slowly. Barely making a full arc before continuing until it
was perpendicular with the floor.

It came to a halt, shaking the floor. I tried to move
it; locked into place.

Rectangular opening, four feet by two.

Dark, but not black—distant illumination from below.

I got down on my belly and peered down. Concrete steps,
similar to those in the insectarium. Thirteen again, but
these were striped with green.

AstroTurf.

Leading to grayness.

“Guess this is why they call spies “moles,”’ I said.

Robin’s smile was a faint courtesy. She brushed wet
curls away from her face and took a deep breath.

Stepped toward the
opening.

I blocked her and went in first.

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
me,
” I said. “He brought me
over
for this.”

“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
tunnel
was
more pleasant than I’d imagined: warm, dry, silent. No bugs.

“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.

Time’s deceit.

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.

A web
—what had Moreland called webs—
a beautiful
deceit.

Enough.

I turned to head back down the ramp.

Saw the first door closing behind us, rushed to catch it
and failed.

It slammed shut, refused to yield.

Trapped in the ramp.

Ensnared.

Moreland’s thin face appeared in my head. Long, loose
limbs, fleshy snout, pouchy eyes, loping walk—arachnid
walk.

Not a camel or a flamingo.

Predators   .   .   .

Robin put her hand to her mouth. I stopped breathing;
panic became a tight necktie.

Then light appeared behind the web, letting in a draft
of very cool air.

The same chill I’d felt coming over the walls from the
banyan forest.

The webbed door swung open. I saw walls of hewn stone,
then blackness.

A cave.

The choice was to stay there and risk another entrapment or
step through and take our chances with whatever was on the
other end.

I stepped through.

A hand settled lightly on my shoulder.

I spun around. “Damn you, Bill!”

But the eyes that stared back weren’t Moreland’s.

Dark slits—at least, the left one was. Its mate was a
wide-open, milky-white crescent, drooping heavily, tugging at
a ragged lid.