Shock (4 page)

GAIA HAD NEVER BEEN TO CALCUTTA,
but she had heard about the wall-to-wall throngs on the sidewalks, the makeshift bazaars where people sold fruit, the crowds that slowed foot traffic to a crawl. Midtown Manhattan on a week-day—especially here, in the part of town called the Garment District—had to be a lot like it, she thought. There were just so many people going to their jobs, from their jobs, delivering things from one job to another. Entire racks of clothes bumped down the sidewalk, bright colors standing out against the gray and grayer buildings, sleeves billowing out as if they were being strutted down a catwalk instead of being wheeled by poverty-income dudes who barely noticed the fabulousness they transported. If she'd wanted to, she could have bought batteries (
Energizer!
) or a watch (
Bolex!
) or pirated DVDs of the top ten movies playing in the theaters that week. Or she could have ducked into Macy's and joined the tourists going up and down the building's ancient wooden escalators to buy Charter Club ties and sweaters. Or she could've gotten on a train bound for suburban New Jersey heading out of Penn Station. But she had no interest in any of this. She was headed for the travel agency.

The avenues in this part of the city seemed impossibly long, probably because they were sandwiched between tall, looming buildings that barely left a wedge of street between them. In some places the sunshine barely hit the pavement; the sunniest day could feel like an overcast mess if you never walked west. The address she was looking for was here, right in the middle of the block, in a storefront that seemed almost abandoned among the bustling wholesale clothing stores and office buildings whose revolving doors never stopped turning.

The travel agency's storefront was grimy, and the only decoration was a once cheerful cardboard sign in the shape of a chubby airplane announcing new low fares to Yugoslavia. It took a few moments for Gaia to even find the door, which gave a desultory jingle when she opened it. Inside, the gloom was interrupted only by the dust that seemed to have collected in every corner. The dropped ceiling featured broken asbestos tiles and fluorescent tube lights, most of which were either completely dim or flickering faintly. Four industrial-size desks sat facing the center of the room, like a clover-leaf, and Gaia noted that the file cabinets were exactly where they were supposed to be according to Dmitri's e-mail. She was able to match the room around her to the map in her head perfectly.

Only one of the desks was occupied, by a woman who seemed to be the exact color of the grayish linoleum. “Can I help you?” she asked uncertainly, as if a customer were a rare bird she hadn't sighted in several years.

“Yeah, I go to NYU, and I intern down the street,” Gaia told her, using her well-crafted cover story. “I was on my way to work when I noticed you're a travel agency. I wanted to know if you had any ideas for where I could go on my winter break.”

“Oh…I don't know,” the woman said, staring down at the brochures piled on her desk as if they would crumble to dust if she tried to open them. “We mostly do corporate travel.”

“But look right here!” Gaia pressed a finger onto the top brochure. “It says ‘student travel specials.' Those look good—can I find out more about them?”

“Oh,” the woman said. “I forgot about that. Well, you can look through it if you want. But you know, I'm not sure if we can help you. I'm not used to booking individual trips.”

“I have to go home, anyway, and check out the choices with my suite mates,” Gaia told her. “Will you be open late tonight?”

“We stay open till seven,” she said.

The phone on her desk gave a bleating ring, and the woman stared at it in alarm.

“Excuse me,” she said to Gaia, who was pretending to leaf through the brochure as she took in the rest of the office.

“Yes. Yes. No, not really. Yes. No. Okay,” she said into the phone. “Not now. I am! Okay. Yes. Sure.” Then she hung up and peered at Gaia.

“I'm sorry, I have to close up the shop right now,” the woman told Gaia.

“I thought you said you were open till seven!” Gaia said in her best complainy-student voice. Inside, she was beaming: Dmitri was right. This place was such a front, it might as well have NOT A TRAVEL AGENCY, KEEP WALKING emblazoned on its sign outside.

“Normally we are, but that was my boss, and he said he wants the place closed up for some reason.”

“Man, this sucks,” Gaia said, still in her college-girl persona. “How am I going to book my trip?”

“Try Orbitz,” the woman told her.

Gaia gave an exasperated sigh and left the agency. Just before she exited the door, she looked back: The woman, who just moments before had been so distracted she couldn't even focus on Gaia's request was suddenly going through the contents of her desk with well-organized speed. The soft bafflement of her features had been replaced with a razor-sharp grimace of concentration. Oh, man, was this place a front! In essence, a file bank for the Organization. Gaia couldn't wait to come back. All she had to do was wait for this weird chick to clear out and the place was all hers. Better than a playground. And educational, too.

In the meantime Gaia was glad to take a breather from the place. Something about it gave her the willies. The travel posters were all too enthusiastic—and about places where nobody in their right mind would really go on vacation. Clearly they had been fashioned by people with nothing but disdain for the common sense of the average customer. It was as if the Organization were subtly making fun of every unsuspecting civilian who walked through the door. Like they were playing games with people's lives and it was all the more fun for them that those people didn't know about it.

She couldn't wait to rip these jackasses off.

 

The pungent odor of gasoline hit her nostrils just as she realized what was happening.

IT TOOK EXACTLY TWENTY MINUTES
for Gaia to walk across the street, order one of the best falafels she'd ever had, and chew it slowly at a window table. The whole time, she kept her eyes on the travel-agency-slash-Organization-front. The woman from the desk left almost immediately, but Gaia knew not to count on that. She wanted to make sure the woman didn't come back—either to catch her or to get something she'd forgotten. But as Gaia wadded up the aluminum foil and wiped the last of the tahini sauce from the corners of her lips, the coast seemed as clear as it was going to get. It was time to make her move.

The first thing she noticed when she walked into the building next door was that the elevator shaft connected the two buildings. That was good news: If she could get in there, she'd have a strong chance of breaking through to the travel agency without alerting anyone on the street.

The trouble was, she had to get into that elevator shaft.

“Can I help you?” a voice came from behind her. Gaia turned to see a tall, hefty guy in coveralls. Earl, his name tag read in embroidered script. Standing between her and the elevator.

“Is this where Casa del Carpets is?” she asked, putting a hand on her hip and letting Earl get a good long look at her. She was wearing a tank top—it was almost guaranteed Earl wasn't going to remember her face.

“No, it's not,” he said to her chest. “Casa del Carpets is down the street.”

“Ohmigod, sorry to bother you. Thanks,” Gaia said, and left the building.

Oh, great. That was one of the dumbest moves she'd ever made. Walked right into a security guard, or elevator operator, or whatever he was. She had to get past that guy and into the elevator—and there was no guaranteeing she'd get through the shaft even if she did get in there. Damn it, Gaia could
feel
time slipping away.

As if on cue, a huge dump truck, trundling down the street, stopped a few feet away. The driver got out and ran into a deli. Gaia could see him directing the guy behind the counter to pour him some coffee. This was her shot, and she took it.

In a flash she was up in the cab of the truck, faced with the dashboard. Mostly it looked like the usual car controls, but below the stereo, on the floor, there was a huge black box with an extra set of buttons. If she could just figure out which one…

CLANG!

That was it! The back of the truck began rising, lifted by the huge hydraulic cylinders that unfolded from its belly. Gaia pulled back on the lever that made it rise faster. If she was right about her calculations, the pile of garbage in the dump bed was too heavy to stand for much of a—

THUD!

Gaia felt the truck pitch backward as its dump bed hit the asphalt behind it, pulling the front wheels right off the ground. She gave a nervous laugh: It felt like an earthquake, the way the concrete buckled under the truck, and the huge load of ash created a choking cloud that gave Gaia just the cover she needed. She whisked out of the passenger door of the truck before the driver could get out of the deli and was safely in a crowd on the sidewalk by the time he ran up to the cab of his truck, frantically tugged at the controls, and waved his arms, as though that were going to undo what Gaia had done. The truck was a mess and would be completely unmovable until all the ash was cleared away. More important, everyone on the street was awestruck by the colossal mess.

Including Earl.

With the elevator guy gaping openmouthed and watching as police cars sped onto the scene, Gaia had the opening she needed. She slipped into the building, stepped into the old-school elevator, and yanked a huge metal lever back so that the doors closed.

“Hmmm,” she said. The walls of the elevator enclosed her, but she wasn't moving. A huge old crank stood to her right. She turned it and the elevator lurched upward. She rode it too fast up two floors, then brought it gently down so that she was between one and two. Then she yanked open the doors again, exposing the dank shaft in all its concrete-and-metal glory.

Layers and layers of filth, going back half a century or so, caked the walls. The only things that looked well used were the gears and cables, slick with oil, that kept the thing in motion. Gaia peered down into the shaft. She thought she could shimmy through the narrow hole into the open area below her. But once down there, she had to hope there was some way out. Because if the elevator went into motion, she'd be crushed like a bloody, bony pancake.

Still, it was her best option. She thought she saw a ventilation shaft opening down there. There was only one way to find out if she was right: She squeezed her legs into the narrow opening between the door of the elevator and the wall of the shaft, then shifted her hips so they hitched through the tiny space.

“Ow,” she muttered, feeling the uneven edge of the elevator's lip scrape the button of her jeans. Then the cold metal grated against her chest, and for an awful moment she thought the life was being squeezed out of her as her lungs fought for air. Then she was through, hanging in the dim light of the elevator shaft, peering across to see if she was right about the way through to the other building—the one where the travel agency was.

There it was. A ventilation hole. She had to make it across the bottom of the elevator somehow. The ventilation system went along the ceiling of the room below, and if she plopped to the ground, she'd have a hell of a time getting back up.

She hoped the grease of the cables hadn't pervaded the metal bottom of the elevator car. It hadn't—but the grime was so thick, it was almost as slippery. She had one chance to get across, and it hinged on one metal pipe attached to the elevator. She reached out and grabbed for the pipe.

The dust made her hand slip right off. Her hand slid out into space, and she felt her left shoulder socket wrench with the effort of keeping her from falling.

“Huugh,” she gasped, more from the pain and surprise than from any real concern that she'd fall. She had this under control. She just had to make it happen. And fast.

“Hello? What the hell is going on in here?”

Uh-oh. Really fast. Earl was back on the scene, and if he started up that elevator…

Gaia wiped the thick layer of dust off her hand and onto her jeans and reached for the pipe again. Not a great grip, but it was all she had, and as she swung across the bottom of the elevator, she felt herself slipping slightly.

“Easy,” she told herself. No need to grab too hard.

Gaia swung her legs across and tested the metal door of the ventilation hole. It was as old as the building—older than her father, probably—and it didn't want to give.

Gaia heard Earl come out of the landing on the second floor. He'd obviously taken the stairs up and was looking down into the empty elevator.

“Hello? Damn kids! Who's down there?”

She heard him swear a blue streak as he kicked at the elevator. It shuddered above her, making her already tenuous grasp feel even less secure.

“Damn it,” she hissed.

“What? Is somebody down there?”

This was getting ridiculous. Gaia tightened her grip on the pipe. She heard Earl's feet hit the floor of the elevator just above her, and it shuddered again. Earl was not light. The elevator shifted at least two inches lower and began to rock. She had to get into that ventilation crawl space—
now
.

Gaia lifted her legs and kicked. Once. Twice. Three times. And then—“Jaah!” she yelled, feeling the metal door give as she gave it one last kick. The elevator shuddered again as she heard the machinery start up, high above her. With no time to waste she kicked the door out of the way and shoved her legs into the dark, musty tube. She pulled herself all the way in just as the elevator dropped past. A hunk of her hair got yanked along with it, and she grabbed at it, forcing it to break rather than pull her along its deadly track. Then she just breathed, feeling her racing heart, pumped full of adrenaline, try to return to normal.

She assessed her surroundings. She could feel that she had just inches of steel through which she had to shimmy backward to reach anything close to the travel agency. Behind her she could hear the alarmed skittering steps of water bugs and maybe even a rat or two. Gross. Gross, but not life-threatening. She began her slow journey backward. “I must look really pretty right now,” she said to herself, feeling dust coat her skin as she pulled herself through it. But once she got started, she found herself making good progress—below her, through the slatted openings, she could see a hallway, and then, a few minutes later, the dim interior of the travel agency.

Bingo.

She held her face close to the thin opening, trying to see what was on the various desks below her. Ugh, it was no use. She jimmied her fingers under the edge of the covering and yanked it up. The place was empty; she didn't care about the noise. She remembered how dank the place had smelled when she'd walked in before—funny how after ten minutes in an elevator shaft, it smelled as fresh as a springtime meadow.

Now she could see. But she needed to be down there, going through the desks, finding the files that Dmitri needed.

Dropping to the floor, Gaia wasted no time. The gate covering the front window was down, so she had to work in near darkness. She had two things to find: the travel folder, which had an exact location, and the file on her father, which had only an approximate location. She knew that no matter what her emotional priorities were, she had to look for the one she was assured of finding first. She went to desk FF and yanked open the drawers on the right side until she found a yellow file folder labeled
Places of Interest.

Seeing that folder fired her impatience. Adrenaline shot through her veins, and some unholy combination of joy and vindication filled her heart—she had the right place; the directions were correct. Now all she had to do was find the Moorestown folder and she'd be on her way out.

She shoved the yellow folder down the back of her pants for safekeeping and turned to file cabinet A. A quick search of the drawers revealed a lot of cardboard accordion folders wrapped with thick brown string—but none of them had a red label marked with anything akin to
Moore, Moorestown,
or
Moore
—anything.

Okay. No problem. Gaia set her jaw and turned to the next file cabinet, moving systematically through the drawers in search of the Tom Moore folder. Then she moved to the next one. With each failure and each opening of a new drawer, her movements became slightly more agitated. In her experience, if something wasn't where it was supposed to be, the chances of finding it were pretty much nil. But she had to try. Dmitri had warned her that the location was approximate.

She had worked her way through most of the file cabinets, yanking and slamming through them like a secretary on steroids, when something made her freeze and stand in absolute silence. A sound. The sound of someone opening the door of the agency even though the gate was down. There was no time to wonder how the hell that could happen. With lightning speed she leapt up to the top of one of the file cabinets and climbed back into the ventilation system, peering out to see what would happen next.

The woman who'd been behind the desk came into the room, along with two men. All of the woman's spacey disorganization was completely gone. She even looked different—she moved with athletic agility as she went to her desk and cleared a few things out of the top drawer.

The two men with her were of average height but were also powerfully compact. One sported a mustache, the other wore a baseball cap, and all three moved silently to separate desks. They were almost choreographed, their moves were so organized, like they had trained for this moment.

“I don't know how this happened,” Gray Lady muttered in irritation. “This location has been under the radar for so long. I don't know how our secrecy got compromised.”

“It lasted longer than it was supposed to,” Mustache Guy said, moving a heavy object—Gaia couldn't see what—to the center of the room from just outside the door.

“It's just part of the deal,” Mr. Hat said. “I hate when this happens, though. It gives me the creeps. I feel like someone's watching me right now. Let's get the stuff we're supposed to save and get the hell out of here.”

“Keep your shirt on,” Gray Lady said. “Okay, I'm ready.”

Before she even completed the sentence, Gaia heard something being poured methodically around the room, and the pungent odor of gasoline hit her nostrils just as she realized what was happening. These Organization operatives were destroying this front as part of a random cleanup operation. In other words, the place was about to go up in smoke. She had to get out of there!

The agents left through the door, letting themselves out whichever way they had come, and Gaia heard the
whup
of the fire as the gasoline flamed under the match they dropped.