The Merchant’s War

"I'm on it." He slid the van into gear and pulled away. "How long are you going to be?"

"A couple of hours." She picked up her briefcase and zipped it shut to stop her hands trembling with nervous anticipation. "I'll make my own way back."

The train ride to Downtown Crossing went fast, as did her connection to Government Center. Early afternoon meant that there was plenty of space in the subway trains, but the offices in the center of town would be packed. Herz tried not to think about it. She'd had months to come to terms with the idea that there might be a ticking bomb in the heart of her city-or not, that it might simply be a vicious hoax perpetrated by a desperate criminal- and now was not the time to have second thoughts about it. Still. "Our man has a thing about trip wires and claymore mines," Mike Fleming had told her. Right. Booby traps. She resolved to keep it in mind. Not that it wasn't in the orchestral score everyone was fiddling along to, but if it slipped some other player's mind at the wrong moment...

On her way out of the station Herz had time to reflect on the location. The JFK Federal Building loomed on one side, a hulking great lump of concrete: around the corner in the opposite direction was the tourist district, Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market and a bunch of other attractions. The whole area was densely populated-not quite as bad as downtown Manhattan, but getting there. A small backpack nuke would cause far more devastation and more loss of life than a ten-megaton H-bomb out in the suburbs. But the search teams had already combed this district-it was one of the first places they'd looked. So what's come up now?

Rich was waiting just inside the station exit, tapping his toes impatiently. "Glad you could make it," he said, leading her out onto the plaza. "We're ready to go."

Judith froze for a moment. There was an entire flying circus drawn up on the concrete: police cars with lights Hashing, two huge trucks with an inflatable tent between them, Lucius Rand and his team wandering around in bright orange suits, hoods thrown back, chatting to each other, the police. There was even a mobile burger van- someone's idea of lunch, it seemed. "What's this?" She asked quietly.

"This is Operation Defend Our Rails," Rich announced portentiously. "In which we simulate a terrorist attack on a T station with weapons of mass destruction, and how we'd respond to it. Except," his voice dropped a dozen decibels, "it's not a simulation. But don't tell them." He nodded in the direction of a couple of bored-looking reporters with a TV camera who were filming the orange-suited team.

"What do the cops know?"

"They know nothing." Rich suddenly looked serious.

"Okay." Judith steered him towards what looked to be the control vehicle. "Tell me why we're here, then."

"Team Green rescanned the area with the new gamma spectroscope they just got hold of from Lockheed. The idea was to calibrate it against our old readings, but what they found-they thought it was an instrument error at first. Turns out that MBTA's civil engineers recently removed the false walls at the ends of the Blue Line platforms so they could run longer trains. That's when we began getting the emission spectra. More sensitive detectors, less concrete and junk in the way-that's how it works. There's an older platform behind the false walls, and it looks like there's something down there."

Down? "How far down?" she asked.

"Below the surface? Not far. This lot is all built up on reclaimed land-if that's what you're thinking."

She nodded. "Suppose it's not deep at all, in fairyland. Suppose it's on the surface. They could just waltz in and plant a bomb. Nobody would notice?"

"It's not that simple," said Dr. Rand, taking her by surprise. "Let's get you a hard hat and jacket and head down to the site."

"You've already opened it up?" she demanded.

"Not yet, we were waiting for you." He grinned unnerv-ingly. "Step this way."

All railway stations-like all public buildings-have two faces. One face, the one Herz was familiar with, was the one that welcomed commuters every day: down the stairs into the MBTA station, through the ticket hall and the steps or ramps down to the platforms where the Blue Line trains and Green Line streetcars thundered and squealed. The other face was the one familiar to the MBTA workers who kept the system running. Narrow corridors and cramped offices up top, anonymous doors leading into dusty, ill-lit engineering spaces down below, and then the tracksidc access, past warning signs and notices informing the public that they endangered both their lives and their wallets if they ventured past them. "Follow me, sir, ma'am," said the MBTA transit cop Rand was using as an escort. "It's this way."