Theo sifted through his conversations with Grandpa Ben. Did a man come to see him to ask about 354 W. 73rd Street? It was possible. Grandpa Ben had lived in this building longer than anyone else they knew, and had had family that had lived there long before him. Grandpa Ben would be the person to ask, if a man had questions.
A man so tall Grandpa’s neck hurt looking up at him.
Mr. Stoop.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Jaime
The funny thing about time was that when you were running out of it, it only seemed to go faster. Not that long ago, it had felt like they had weeks to figure out the Cipher, and now Jaime felt the ticking of the clock in his bones. Even Edgar Wellington seemed to feel it. After they’d read everything they could find about the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, even found an old engineering survey of the tunnel, Edgar decided that they were as prepared as they could be, and they’d just have to take a chance, especially if Mr. Stoop was desperate enough to go to Long Island to pump the twins’ poor, sick grandfather for information, as the twins had claimed.
“We need to stay ahead of these people,” said Edgar, jaw set. “They will not win.”
He convinced Mr. and Mrs. Biedermann and Mima that a sleepover at the archives would be great for the kids and a nice break for the grown-ups. Since they needed to wait till at least midnight before going to Brooklyn, they passed the time telling more stories of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. It was filled with poisonous gas! (Not true.) It was filled with albino alligators! (Maybe one or two but that was a long time ago.) It was filled with ghosts! (Please.) It was filled with rats! (Likely.) After the stories, they packed up some equipment: flashlights; water; a screwdriver; a crowbar; a set of lock picks; a ladder that collapsed into the size of a serving tray; a whole bunch of other tools that not even Theo could identify. Uncle Edgar said that the tunnel should be safe enough, but that you couldn’t be too careful.
A little after midnight, they headed out. No cabs this time; the society had its own van. Twenty minutes later, they were parking. The streets of Brooklyn were busy enough. As Jaime had said, this was New York City, and there were always people around. But it was also true that the people of New York were good at minding their own business and excellent at refusing to be surprised. Want to perform Shakespeare on the Underway in your bathing suit? Eh. Want to dress up like a toucan and tap-dance in the park? Whatever. Roller-skate through the department store? Don’t let the security guards catch you. Want to hold a philosophical debate with a piece of Swiss cheese, make a mask out of peach pits, stick raisins up your nose? Looks pointless/painful/ugly, but it’s your cheese/face/nose.
Sure enough, when Edgar went to the middle of the street and set up a bunch of traffic cones around the manhole, the cabs and cars simply swerved around him, the people on the sidewalks barely sparing a glance. Edgar waved the kids over. They ran across the street, barely avoiding a man on a unicycle flying a flag that said, WHAT GOOD IS A STORY YOU ONLY WANT TO READ ONCE? Edgar levered up the manhole cover. He pressed a button on the side of the ladder and it shot down into the darkness with a snap.
“Wow,” said Jaime. “That’s some Batman stuff right there.”
“Let’s hope it all works,” Uncle Edgar said. “Now, who wants to go first?”
They all wanted to go first. Three games of rock-paper-scissors later, Jaime went in.
He hit the floor and then stepped through an opening that had been broken into the concrete wall. Another dusty, ladderlike stairwell—this one not as steep—led into the tunnel. The tunnel itself looked like, well, a 2,500-foot-long tunnel that had been built in 1844. Back at the archives, they had read Walt Whitman aloud:
The Tunnel, dark as the grave, cold, damp, silent. How beautiful look earth and heaven again, as we emerge from the gloom! It might not be unprofitable, now and then, to send us mortals—the dissatisfied ones, at least, and that’s a large proportion—into some tunnel of several days’ journey. We’d perhaps grumble less, afterward.
Jaime wouldn’t grumble at all if they found something. He’d seen Slant’s workers setting up wire fences, cordoning off 354 W. 73rd Street, getting it ready for the wrecking ball, whenever that would come. He hoped they could stop it in time. But he wasn’t sure he could stop anything else: Mima’s sadness; the fact that they had to leave 354 W. 73rd Street. They were too far gone now, one foot out of the door, a deposit on the apartment in Hoboken, a new job for Mima, a new school for Jaime. But maybe saving their own homes wasn’t the point anymore. Maybe the point was to save a piece of history. At least, that was what he told himself.
He rubbed his arms to warm them, and then his nose. Sneezed. Said, “I thought this place would be spookier.”
“It would be if the stories were true,” Theo said. “Ghosts. Pirates. The pirates were supposed to have an entrance to the tunnel from a bar nearby, guarded by a pair of seven-foot-tall Turks with scimitars.”
Jaime said, “Turks with scimitars would be awesome.”
Edgar said, “So, according to the survey we found, there are a few things buried down here. A twenty-foot-long metallic structure between the middle and the south side of Atlantic Avenue, which the engineer thought was a steam engine or some sort of digging machine. There’s a smaller geophysical anomaly on the northern side.”
“What do they think the smaller anomaly is?” Theo said.
Edgar shrugged. “No idea. They didn’t dig because the government pulled the funds and permission. Closed everything up indefinitely.”
“I wonder if that’s what we’re looking for,” Tess said.
“We won’t know till we get there,” Edgar said. “Come on. Let’s head to the other end. Keep your eyes open.”
They walked. The floor of the tunnel was dirt, with large rocks here and there. The lights bounced off the stone walls, illuminating writing that had been carved into the surface:
Lynch put first electric light in this subway.
“Subway? Not Underway?” said Tess.
“Weird,” said Jaime, and scribbled it in his sketchbook, right next to an imaginary seven-foot-tall Turk. It was hard to sketch in the dark, but he did it anyway, quick lines that limned his thoughts.
They found the remnants of an old phone, with a long coiled cord and a rotary dial. Jaime picked up the handle and pretended to talk to John Wilkes Booth. Tess took the phone and pretended to talk to the ghosts until Edgar told them to quit fooling around.
They reached the end of the tunnel, a pile of debris in front of a wall. “This is where the locomotive is supposed to be hidden. And over there”—he pointed the beam of his light—“is where the other anomaly is located.”
He took the pack off his back and unzipped it, removing various tools. He pulled out a silver cylinder the size of a drinking glass and popped off the cap, exposing a bit an inch in diameter.
“A drill?” said Theo.
“Not just any drill. The Morningstarrs designed it. This little darling could drill through cobalt plates if we needed it to.” He put the tip of the drill against the wall and started up the machine. A high-pitched whine echoed through the tunnel, dust puffing in the air like a cloud. After about five minutes, Edgar turned off the drill, blew on the new hole.
“Theo, could you shine your light over here?”
Theo moved to stand next to Edgar. The tiny drill had made a hole big enough to see through. Behind the rock was suitcase.
A shiver chased up Jaime’s spine. “Can you make this hole bigger?”
“What’s in there? What is it?” Tess said.
They took turns peeking into the hole, Tess nearly jumping up and down.
“Okay, okay,” said Edgar. “Let me work on this wall for a while longer, and then we’ll open that case.”
He drilled new holes at intervals, which took so long that Jaime, Tess, and Theo sat down in the dirt to wait. Then Edgar tried to kick down the weakened wall. Even as big and strong as he was, the wall didn’t budge.
“Now
what?” said Tess.
“We’re going to have to get a little more dramatic,” said Edgar. He dug around in the pack again and came up with a flat disk that sort of looked like a doorbell.
Theo’s eyes widened. “Is that . . . ?”
“An explosive. But a very small one. Won’t be louder than a passing Underway car. That said, you should probably move back.”
They got to their feet and moved to the other side of the tunnel. Edgar put the device in the middle hole and pressed the button. Then he jogged to where Theo and the others were standing.
“Turn your faces away,” he said. “One . . . two . . . THREE!”
Behind them, a dull boom, and then a shower of falling rock. When the dust cleared, the hole was now a doorway to a hidden chamber. They tossed and kicked the stones out of the way and dragged the suitcase out of the chamber.
“Heavy,” said Edgar.
They brushed it off. Some kind of bright metal skin, welded in patchwork. Finding this here felt almost magical, like some robot wizard or alien left it just for them. Even through the dust, it gleamed like it was made of stars.
“Silver?” said Theo.
“I don’t know,” said Edgar. He ran his hands over the top and then tried to lift the lid. Nothing.
Thud.
They shone the light on the back wall of the chamber, where the sound had come from. Nothing.
“The explosion must have loosened some rocks,” said Edgar. “It’s fine.”
“Are you sure?” said Tess.
“Tess, this tunnel has been sitting here since 1844. I don’t think one little explosion is going to hurt it.”
“‘Little explosion’ is an oxymoron,” said Theo.
“Can I have more light here?” Edgar said.
They all shone their beams on the suitcase.
“How do you open it?” said Jaime. He knelt and felt for the latch. He pressed it, but pressing did nothing. When he looked closer, he saw there was a keyhole next to the latch, a heart etched around it.
Edgar took the suitcase, prodded it, tugged it, smacked the top of it to try to get it to pop open.
“What about the hinges in the back? The case might be more vulnerable there,” Tess suggested.
“Good idea.” Edgar grabbed the drill, flipped the case, and placed the bit on one of the hinges. The drill squealed, caught, and sparked in Edgar’s hands. He dropped it to the dirt.
“What the . . .” He picked it up, examined it. “It . . . broke the drill.”
“There’s got to be a way to open it,” said Tess. “Maybe we should take it back to the archives, where we can see it better.”
“Maybe you already have the key,” said Edgar.
“What do you mean?” Theo asked.
“Well, you’ve been helping pack up your grandfather’s things. Does he own any kind of artifact or key or mechanism shaped like this heart on the front?”
“I don’t remember anything like that,” said Theo. He turned to Tess. “Do you?”
She shook her head. “No. But you have most of Grandpa’s stuff now. Let’s go back and look.”
“He said you’d have it,” Edgar muttered. “He said you had everything you needed.”
“What?” said Tess.
“Are you sure you’ve never seen any kind of key that would open this? Maybe it doesn’t look like a key.”
Crack.
Again they turned their lights on the back wall. Dust snaked up from a small pile of stones.
Jaime said, “I think we broke the tunnel.”
“This is all very exciting and mysterious, but maybe we could get out of here now?” Tess said.
Theo ignored his sister and the not-awesome rumbling sounds echoing through the tunnel. “Who said we’d have the key with us? Who said we’d have everything we needed? Wait.” He stuck his hand in his ginormous hair, took a step back. “It was you who went to see my grandfather?”
Jaime had a bad feeling. A very bad feeling. Dust was raining down from the ceiling of the tunnel. Edgar Wellington packed up his tools and picked up the silver suitcase. When he straightened, his face was drawn and white. But he didn’t look angry. He looked resigned and a little sad.
And that’s when Jaime saw it, when they all saw it. Another disc shaped like a doorbell in Edgar’s free hand.
“Uncle Edgar,” said Theo, his voice careful and slow, “what are you going to do with that?”
“Nothing drastic,” Edgar said. “I just need you to stay down here for a while.”
“What?” said Jaime.
“Stay down here?” said Tess.
Theo said, “What’s a while?”
“That’s not drastic at all,” said Jaime.
Thud. Thud.
Behind them, a bit more of the wall crumbled to the ground. Jaime’s stomach dropped along with the rocks.
Theo said, “What are you doing?
Tess said, “Why are you doing this?”
The flashlight cast an eerie glow onto Edgar’s face, shadowing his eyes. “You know why. For the Cipher. For the most amazing treasure known to man. Cipherists have been going in circles for more than a hundred and fifty years. And to find out that it was because they were working a false Cipher? A whole line of red herrings? The Morningstarrs were more amazing than anyone ever imagined.”
Theo said, “What if there’s a third line of clues? A fourth or a fifth or a dozen? What if my grandpa was right and the Cipher was designed with no solution? What if the search is the treasure?”
“Your grandfather is a brilliant man way too satisfied with his own brilliance,” said Edgar. “No, the Cipher has a solution. And I’m going to find it. Please understand. I’ve been searching for this my whole life.”
While the twins argued with Edgar Wellington, Jaime figured their odds. There were three of them, but Wellington was a large man, and he had that doorbell thing in his hand and probably other Batman weapons in that backpack of his. Maybe a baton or a cattle prod or a gun. Maybe nets or ropes to tie them down. If he could just creep behind the man, maybe knock him down, take the pack and the suitcase.
Quietly, Edgar’s pale gaze lasered to Jaime. “Don’t,” he said.
Tess’s angry eye twitched in the same way it had that day in the elevator, the day in which they learned they would have to leave 354 W. 73rd Street. “You don’t even know what to do with that suitcase.”
“Are you saying that you do?”
“Maybe you’re right, maybe Grandpa does have the key. Maybe it’s with his other stuff, the stuff you didn’t take. If you leave us down here, you’ll never know,” Theo said.
Edgar said, “Technically, you’re not much of a poker player. Plus, I have more powerful tools at the archives.” He pulled a blanket and a smaller parcel from his pack, tossed them to the ground. “Some food and water. The blanket should cover the three of you.”
“But this makes no sense!” Tess shouted. “You’ll get in trouble! My mom will arrest you!”
Edgar Wellington said, “No one will get in trouble. You won’t remember what happened.”
“What are you talking about?” said Tess. “Of course we’ll remember!”
“There are certain drugs that can interfere with that. You’ll be fine.”
THUD, THUD, THUD.
Every brain cell in Jaime’s head screamed that they had to get out, all of them, now. He said, “Except for the fact that this tunnel is going to collapse. Look, let’s all go. You can use your drugs or whatever to erase our memories once we’re up there. But we need to go, we all need to go.”
Edgar took a few steps backward. A flicker of uncertainty passed over his face, then was gone. “The tunnel is solid. It’s stood since 1844, and it will stand another day or two. I’m going to seal it temporarily, but I’ll come back for you.”
“Wait!” yelled Tess.
And then the wall exploded behind them. They hit the ground and put their arms over their heads. Edgar stayed on his feet and grunted when
a stone hit him in the shoulder. He staggered. Coughing, waving away the clouds of grit, he turned toward the opening in the now-crumbling wall behind them. A giant metal machine looked right back them, black as a train, but not a train.
Because trains didn’t have mouths.
“Get up, get up,” Jaime bellowed, scrambling to his feet and shoving at Tess and Theo. Theo got up, but Tess didn’t move. The great black machine lurched forward, saw-toothed mandibles clanging, legs churning, a segmented body almost wide enough to fill the entire tunnel. A loud clanking filled Jaime’s ears and rang in his brain. He and Theo pulled at Tess’s arms, but she was heavy and limp. A trickle of blood traced across her brow where a rock or something must have hit her. They tried to push her, to roll her, but the machine was coming. It was coming.
Jaime wasn’t a superhero boy, but he flung Tess’s arm over his shoulder and hefted her off the ground. And she wasn’t a skinny little chicken wing at all—she was heavy as fourteen bags of cement, forty bags; but Theo took hold of her feet and they staggered over to the hole in the wall where they’d found the suitcase and ducked through it.
Edgar—stunned by the sight of the beast erupting from the back wall, the train that was not at all a train—ran for the stairs. And the beast undulated after him, nimble as a whale in the ocean. The black expanse of the beast’s carapace filled their view. They heard a scream. Jaime risked a peek through the opening and saw that there were jaws on the hind end, just as vicious as the ones on the front.
And then, and then, the beast stopped moving, its honed black plates rippling to a halt. It raised its mandibles, and Jaime could have sworn it was tasting the air. It scrabbled back from where it came, marching through the opening in the wall and plunging into the blackness and beyond.
They sat in the dark of the chamber, panting, feeling the reverberation of the beast as it tunneled under Brooklyn on its way to wherever such beasts went.
“The explosives must have woken that monster up,” said Jaime.
“A digging machine,” said Theo. “We always thought the Morningstarrs used the cut-and-cover method to dig the tunnels for the Underway but could never figure out how they completed the work so fast. There were stories, but . . .”