Dantes' Inferno (42 page)

It was Molly Redding who smiled at Sylvia from the dream world. She held out one hand, beckoning. Her mouth didn't move, but she spoke:
Is it revenge that counts at the end?

As Sylvia surfaced to consciousness, the question echoed. She made her way to the window, opening pale yellow
blinds. The night was dark, and fog shrouded the streets and the ocean beyond. There were nine circles in Dante Alighieri's
Inferno
. M had taken them through eight. Why would he stop there?

She picked up the copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
. Thumbing through, she missed it the first time. But the key was there—a half dozen words, almost invisible—traced between the margins.

The world is filled with such joyous noise when one is deaf to the sound of pain.

Mole's Manifesto

Monday—4:12
A.M
.
Sylvia slammed both fists on Sweetheart's front door.

Molly Redding's message from the dream ran through her head:
Is it revenge that counts at the end?

She raised her fists to knock again—

The door opened and she stumbled forward, connecting with Luke's chest. Recovering her balance, she caught a quick glimpse of day-old beard and bleary blue eyes.

“Where is he?” She pushed past him, stepping into the foyer. “Where's Sweetheart?”

“Dr. Strange—Sylvia—we're all exhausted,” Luke began. He followed the psychologist, watching her nervously, not trusting her manic energy. “Listen, we've all been through—”

He broke off, looking past her toward the private wing of the house.

“You shouldn't have come.”

Sylvia swung around at the sound of the deep voice. She found herself within inches of Sweetheart. The sight of him—face blanched ashen, gray circles, disheveled clothes—was frightening. He shook his head, turning to leave.

“I have the coordinates.” Sylvia held up the book—
The Count of Monte Cristo
.

Sweetheart stopped.

“The
true
coordinates for Babylon,” she said softly. “We were wrong. Ishtar's Gate isn't MTA. I don't believe M was even near the tower when it blew.”

“Molly?” Sweetheart whispered. No one said anything for several seconds. Slowly, he held out his hand for the book. His fingers were trembling.

She opened to the page to find the words carved in paper:
brdwy = euphrtes/e wall = 110/pro wy = la st/neb pal = pueb
.

4:25 A.M
. Topographic images flashed across the monitor. Magenta, turquoise, ebony, onyx, peach, violet—a blinding swirl of colors delineating contour feet, rivers, zones, erosion and flow patterns, counties, roads, municipalities.

To center on urban Los Angeles.

And Babylon.

The images jumped as the skeleton of the twenty-first-century megalopolis filled the ghostly skin of Babylon, encompassing more than three thousand years of urban history.

Shifting one way—then the other at lightning speed.

Perched restlessly in front of the monitor, Luke spoke
in the clipped sentences of someone short on time. “Four correlation points—should be enough to rubber-sheet—to overlay. Say your prayers—I'm switching overhead.”

Sylvia blinked, shielding her eyes. Light from the projecting system illuminated the floral patterns of the antique rug. She saw Sweetheart watching her; she offered him a weak smile. She felt afraid—they were a day late, a dollar short.

This was one last game dreamed up by Dantes, the master manipulator.

Overhead, red, yellow, and pink stars were exploding in infinite space. The lost world of Babylon. Los Angeles, a dying civilization.

“All right,” Luke murmured tightly. “I can zero in on the coordinates now. Hollywood-Babylon, here we come.” His fingers flew over the keyboard.

Turning away from the light, she looked up. On the dome of the ceiling lost galaxies glowed. Shadows erased the stars and brought the maps into stark relief. Overlapping points burned red.

Suddenly the screen image froze—coordinates aligned and locked in three-dimensional space. She was staring at a web of intersecting lines—at its locus stood the Tower of Babel and LA's ziggurat; north to south the Euphrates melded with Broadway, each a river of transport through an urban center.

North wall of Babylon—the 101 freeway.

East wall of Babylon—the Harbor Freeway.

Euphrates—Broadway.

Processional Way—Los Angeles Street.

Nebuchadnezzar's palace—the historic pueblo Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles—Our Lady Queen of the Angels.

Sylvia paced nervously. She needed to be in motion. Tension was a palpable presence in the room.

All civilizations come to an end.
Dantes' world
.

Mole's hell
. Excavation of the past.

The two had finally met, overlapping to create one doomed city.

“The traitors of the ninth circle,” she whispered.

“The deepest level of hell.” Sweetheart's delivery was sharp. “Luke—take the picture
down;
show me the lowest level of the grid.”

The images began to shift, moving through the city's topography in an ever deepening pattern until infrastructure covered the screen: an intricate web of gas, telephone, cable, electrical conduits, water, sewage, storm drains, subways, manholes, transmitting stations, and subterranean utility vaults.

A subterranean world where a person could get lost.

Or be found.

Luke clicked a mouse and a red light shimmered on the overhead projection.

“Ishtar's Gate,” Sweetheart whispered.

“Aligned with the corner of Cesar Chavez and North Vignes,” Sylvia said.

As Sweetheart crossed the room, he said, “Allowing a half-kilometer radius for error.”

“When I spoke to Pete Carson with county flood control, he said there are condemned utility vaults in that area,” Luke said. “And some underground storage areas that belong to the railroad.”

“So . . .” Sweetheart glanced away from the screen, closing his almond eyes. Behind him, the first light of dawn leaked through louver shades, outlining his body with a faint golden glow. “John Dantes sends us west from
the LA River in an underground drainpipe for three quarters of a mile, to turn north at the lesser drain and head for Sunset, now Cesar Chavez, to keep an eye out for Ishtar's Gate along the way.”

“You'll be following the street grid, only
lower
,” Luke said, ignoring the professor's caustic tone. “Because that's how the utilities are laid out, although there are exceptions.” When he saw their questioning expressions, he said, “We can't plan for all the possibilities: condemned tunnels, old locks, abandoned sewers, oil pipes from the boom days, or train tunnels.”

Luke leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers like a drummer. “Pete Carson says he'll guarantee us old railroad and subway tunnels run through this entire area from Union Station to Roundout Street, which is traversed by tracks.”

“Adjust the image to the east.”

“Roger that.” Luke guided the mouse with his thumb; the subterranean world slid across the ceiling.

“Looks like this flood drain runs just north of Union Station all the way to the old pueblo.” He stopped, as if he was registering the immensity of the search, the odds against finding anything at all—alive or dead.

“Purcell says LAPD will send officers along with county maintenance, if we tell them where to go in,” Sylvia interjected, trying to pull her mood out of its downward spiral; they couldn't afford to crash, not now. “And you said this guy from county flood control—Pete—will take us in? That gives us two teams.”

“Pete's ready to meet you both at the two forty-one maintenance station,” Luke said.

“Purcell's contacted LA Detention,” Sylvia added. “They're moving Dantes out within the next hour.”

“Let's go
down
,” Sweetheart said bluntly.

Sylvia stopped in her tracks. “You said Ben Black had a master plan—he was going to destroy New York.”

“Detailed plans to attack major infrastructure—water, power, shipping, air transportation.” Sweetheart's voice faded, but he recovered. “We found the blueprints after the missile strike. Among other things, Black knew which vault and transformer to blow in order to knock out Wall Street.”

“Blow it to hell,” Luke said softly, a stricken look on his face.

Sylvia took a quick breath.
How much damage could one man do?

When I was a young boy I knew right from wrong, somewhere ‘cross the years I lost my way.

Jai Uttal, “Conductor”

Monday—4:28
A.M
.
In darkness, John Dantes lay on the jail bed, fingers laced behind his head.

It was time.

He stood carefully, stretched, and walked across the small cell to the door. When he angled his neck to get a view through the window, he could just see the back of Officer Jones' head. Tight dark curls bobbed gently. Dantes smiled. His faithful watchdog was asleep at the door.

He walked to the toilet, where he unzipped his pants, slid them down, and sat.

Prisons took away the privilege of privacy. He was used to performing almost every bodily function in front of witnesses. But this time, there were no obvious witnesses, and he wasn't responding to physical demands.

He let his right hand brush the wall. In his palm, he possessed an ordinary penny. He gripped it tightly between close-cut fingernails.

He tapped the penny against the metal pipe of the toilet. Metal was an advantage of an old facility.

None of this had happened by chance. He was pleased with that fact.

Tap, tap, tap
.

The sound echoed, then it was still again.

Two young men bound together by idealism, by brotherhood, by loneliness, and finally, by hatred.

Tap, tap, tap
.

At the age of eighteen, they had made a pact; they had taken a vow of blood: “If either one of us is ever imprisoned, the other will set him free.”

Deliverance. Salvation. The ideals of love before love turned to hate.

Dantes had broken the vow.

Simon Mole had not.

Tap, tap . . 
.

Finally, at 5
A.M
., Dantes heard what he'd been waiting for.

His own signal coming back at him from below.

Tap, tap, tap . . 
.

Good.

Very soon now it would be time to face his friend, his enemy.

Pausing in his savage meal, the sinner raised

His mouth and wiped it clean along the hair

Left on the head whose back he had laid waste.

The Inferno of Dante
, canto XXXIII, translated by Robert Pinsky

5:01
A.M
.
Think of a labyrinth, a dark cloister laid beneath a city of light and air, a conglomeration of cells, a network of arteries, veins, a pathway of neurons, which are the messengers of everything utilitarian in the body of Los Angeles.