Ingrams & Assoc 4: Beneath the Surface Ch. 01

OK, this is, for me, a departure. It's intended as an out and out love story, with the usual intrigue and action bits mixed in. I just did it to see if I could do it, really. It's a lot slower in the middle than the other Ingrams stuff, so be warned.

It was supposed to be 10k words, but, as usual, it all started to get away from me and I thought it needed the extra words to do it justice. And not at all because I'm a wordy bastard who doesn't know when to stop. No sirree!

It was also supposed to be called Life after Death, but my editor, NonetheWiser, suggested "Beneath the Surface" and it just fit a lot more. Thanks J. Your work, as ever, makes this a far better read than I can do on my own.

Note, I did crib a little part of the approach used from Neal Stephenson's awesome "Zodiac" book. What do they say? Good artists copy while great artists steal.

Make of it what you will.

Chapter 1

I sat there, in shock, wondering what the hell I was mixed up in. Had she just asked me...?

My little office - with its tiled walls, fan in the ceiling and no natural light, - was my cocoon, safe and secure. And I'd just been asked to abandon it, and fight for my life. Well, their lives. Everyone's lives.

April Carlisle and her blond - and very chesty, I couldn't help noticing - companion stared at me both pleadingly and defiantly at the same time. I don't know how you can actually mix those two, but they managed it. I guess I'd just not seen it on any of the TV shows I watch, which is most of my exposure to the world above. I still can't quite believe I managed to get a web connection working down here. Took two weeks of wheedling and whining with the cable company, but in the end, they caved (pun intended) and installed it.

"Look, they are going to be here any minute, will you help? Please. If you won't, we need to know right now so we can be on our way."

The funny thing was that in the past six weeks, the only person I'd actually seen in person besides Mike, my supervisor ,was April,. And Mike only came once a week or so. Even he can't tolerate it down here very much, and he's been doing this for over twenty-five years.

We were thirty feet below the surface of Boston, sitting in my little office/apartment, which has a small en-suite bathroom, a bedroom, a kitchen unit and a sitting area. All windowless - obviously - and accompanied by the constant quiet hum of the air conditioning system.

Why this space existed at all was a mystery to me. But I'd been living there for the past eight years, alone, removed from society. I was just fine with that. Prior to being converted to the little apartment, it had been storage rooms. I never knew why it had been changed. Bear in mind that we were sitting on top of a major connection of sewage and utility tunnels under Boston, so it was not complicated for it to have a bathroom and shower system - it's not like the water had far to go, though I was always amazed that we got fresh water down here. What made it tolerable was air conditioning. Let's face it, the stench from the sewage system that was just below us could be overwhelming - even unhealthy. But with the really good HVAC, it didn't bother me at all.

There were stairs that took you up to street level, plus there were a couple of rooms which acted as storage for sewage suits, air cylinders and all the rest of the equipment required to keep the system working properly, plus excess storage for other users of the sewer system. There was even a board on the wall in my office, with a map of the tunnels within a ten-mile radius that had little indicator lights on it. It looked like something out of 1964. Then, under that, there was an up-to-date Macbook pro laptop, tapped into everything I was allowed to see. There is a lot I wasn't allowed to be connected to. This is Boston, and there are lots of things going on that were classified above my clearance. To be honest, I wasn't much interested in it. I had access to whatever I needed for my job, and I was no hacker. I couldn't even play one on TV.

Right, so now you've got the set up. This is where we were. And there were these two women. I knew one of them, very slightly. April Carlisle had come to find me about two weeks earlier - she was looking for a briefcase that might have found it's way into the sewer system, and was wondering where it might have ended up, and if I might be able to 'procure' it for her. That was the word she used, 'procure'. She even offered me a lot of money to find it.

She explained it had gone in the system through the street grate on Massachusetts Avenue, around Cameron - about a mile from Tufts University. I pulled up the tunneling system on my laptop - just to confirm where my memory said this would probably end up, you understand - and found that yeah, it probably be in the filters at the processing filters near the Mystic River. There were lots of filters along the Boston sewage system - one of the oldest sewage systems in the US. April fluttered her eye lashes at me, and tried lots of patronizing verbiage attempting to get me to find this briefcase, which must have had something pretty damn important in it.

In the end I said, "Sure, I'd go look", just to shut her up - and because she was very nice looking. And it's nice to have a pretty girl be nice to me rather than just staring at me or laughing behind my back.

Yeah, I should talk a little about that, so you have the complete background. I'm Thomas. Thomas David Avaline. The second, apparently. I think I'm supposed to put a 'II' after the name or something. The name, really, is the only thing I have from my parents. That and a violin.

They were killed when I was four, and since I was an only child of two only children, there was no one to take me. Into the system I went.

The thing is, I was in the car when it got crushed. Somehow even though my parents were instantly killed, I was "just" injured. Just. My whole head was partially crushed - the skull cracked and broken, a cheekbone smashed and more. But I lived. The surgeons did their best, and while they managed to push the bones of the skull back together, there was a lot of surface damage that, I was later told, was too much to fix at the time. I could 'get plastic surgery' when I was older. I guess they were just pleased I could still use my jaw and didn't loose an eye or an ear. Easy for them to be content. They weren't a little kid in the Boston public system, shuttled from foster house to foster house, orphanage to orphanage, clutching only the violin that was in the car with us. They couldn't find where we had been living - both my parents were somewhat 'unconventional' so I was told later. I don't know what that means. Whether it means they were homeless, or just didn't keep up the paper work with the authorities I don't know. Add it to the list of things I'll never know

Anyway, I have a nice scar down one side of my face, and a patch at the scalp line on the left side of my face where hair won't grow. There's scaring over one cheek, and down the left side of my face, plus my ear is messed up. It functions well enough, but it looks like I've been in one prizefight too many.

Anyway, so the face stuff, that was a black mark against ever really being adopted. Then add to that the fact that I shot up in height, around when I hit puberty, and you've got a real winner on your hands. The fact is, I was six foot when I was fourteen. I was six foot four by the time I was eighteen. I stopped growing at six foot six, thankfully.

I tower over people. And what's worse, it's not like I'm built like a brick shit house. I'm tall and slender, and it sucks. If I was built like the Jason Momoa guy from Game of Thrones, I might have stood a chance, but I'm not. So I have all the Tall Guy issues - two collapsed lungs in my life (it's a common aliment for tall willowy people, so I'm told), lots of pulled muscles, and I cannot for the life of me find a bed that'll fit me. I had to have one made. Getting it down into the small living space where I reside was a nightmare.

And that's when I can sleep. I've never been able to sleep well. The nightmares are still there. The repeating one, in a car, being chased and never being able to get away, trying desperately to dodge other cars coming at me, like some demented video game. I get that one at least once a week. I wake up bathed in sweat and I'm a miserable dick for the rest of the day. I figure it's something to do with the accident, but beyond that, I just endure it.

So that was my life. I was a kid; damaged; traumatized; disfigured; freakishly tall; poor; alone. Not the stuff that dreams are made of.

So, it should be no surprise that I am a loner. First by necessity and now by choice. I honestly don't know any other way to be.

I tried to live differently. To fit in as best I could. I didn't just give up and feel sorry for myself, well not entirely. I did well in school. I was accepted to a fine college here in Boston. But it became painfully obvious by the second semester that I was a figure of...not fun, so much as an oddity. I did get asked to be on the basketball team, and at the time I thought, "Why not?" I had thought it would give me exercise and -more importantly -companionship. I couldn't have been more wrong. Everyone just expected me to be great at it because I was tall. And I wasn't great at all. I tried working out, but that got really awkward when I couldn't do all the things the littler guys did. I thought some humor might help, but calling people "little guy" isn't funny, apparently. After the third time I was laid out in practice, I gave it up.

As for women, forget it. There was another tall women the year ahead of me. She was six foot four, and mutual acquaintances wanted to push us together because, well, two tall people belong together, that's the way it's meant to be, right? Like two old people or two fat people.

Except she was a bitch. No, she was a Bitch. With a capital B. While my face and height had caused me to just be quiet and withdrawn, she'd declared the world at fault for her being tall, and the world had better look out. To start with, it was ok, since she assumed I felt the same way, and none of her vitriol was directed at me. But that soon changed when I didn't join her in making the world feel my wrath. So, that ended badly.

I finished my degree online. Easier by far.

Oh, I can play that violin, by the way. I made myself learn. Interestingly, once you've got the basic finger positions learned, you can do lessons all via Skype, since it's all listening anyway. I have three Violins now - a really nice Karl Willhelm Model 64, an electric Yamaha SV 200, and my parents', which sounds like shit, but I'll never part with.

So I watch TV - I have a penchant for 60's and 70's TV shows, particularly spy shows. I love Man from UNCLE, Mission Impossible and I Spy. And I play Violin and I sometimes try to write, both music and stories. Neither are very good, though.

I write music. Well, I don't write it, per se. I have lots of tunes rattling around my head, and I carry a small digital recorder, and record little rifts as they come to me when I'm wandering the tunnels. I know all the best natural echo spots in the tunnel system. Not that that is particularly useful information, but you pick up what you pick up.

Sorry, I'm rambling a bit, but it's important if you are going to have any understanding of why I live the life I do, beneath the streets of Boston, only coming out when I have to. I know I'm viewed as some kind of freak by the other people who work for the same agency as I do, but I don't really care any more. I keep to myself, get the job done and just hope that's enough.

My degree is in water management. Weird, right? I still, to this day, have no idea why I chose that. But it is a vocation that has jobs. Not necessarily glamorous jobs, but jobs that are steady and pay okay. Once I graduated, I started as a roving water tester, and then when this job came up - the old guy who was the Tunnel Treatment Manager retired - I jumped at it. I was never really part of society anyway - all I did was go to work, test water, write up reports, go to the movies (it's dark in the movies) and go home. I was more and more withdrawn anyway, so I just ...left.

But back to these two women. I did find the brief case that April had asked about, - in her breathless way, - although it took me two days of sloshing around in a hazmat suit through the filters - which it turned out needed a cleaning and removal of some of larger items caught in them anyway. I called her, and she came right away, giddy as a schoolgirl. It was one hell of a briefcase too. Someone had had to force it through the grate, because it was just slightly larger than the grate gaps. Very slightly. What was even more interesting was that the case itself was actually made of steel. Even though it was covered in leather, like a normal briefcase, it had a steel frame. And the locked looked like a normal number tumbler lock, but was anything but. Normal tumbler locks are easy to open, but this one - this was the real deal. No one was getting into this brief case unless the owner wanted them to.

This wasn't the first time I'd had people request stuff like that. It happens several times a year. I have had the Secret Service ask me to find a box for them, and the FBI had been in the tunnels with me, looking for both corpses and backpacks. They even had me examine maps and mark up where, if I were looking to bomb Boston, I'd put charges. I think they were just covering themselves, but still, it was interesting thinking like a criminal. It got me thinking about all sorts of possibilities - how I would make a getaway if I robbed a bank (I knew where all the bank vaults were, that had tunnels going past them), how I'd be able to bring Boston to a halt if I wanted to bomb the sewage tunnels (I did idly wonder what the Boston city council would pay for blackmail), or, most insidiously, where I'd drop a chemical weapon to have the most effect, before being flushed into the harbor. I read a book about that once, by Neal Stephenson, called Zodiac. He got a lot of it right, although there were the minor niggles that any professional has, when an amateur writes about his business. And, when those brothers bombed the Boston Marathon, well you'd have thought I was suddenly popular, I had so many cops, federal agents and soldiers going through the tunnels with me looking for anything that might have been shoved into the sewer, or anybody who might be hiding.

Anyway, April picked up the briefcase, and was all pleased and even sat and had coffee with me. Well, she invited me out to have one, and I said no, and so we did it in my little bijou palace. She was pleasant enough - nice to look at, tall-ish. Red hair. Well spoken. Well dressed. Seemed like a together woman in todays world. I assumed I'd never see here again.

And yet, here she is. Dressed up for an evening on the town, with this other woman - Megan? - in tow.

And they both seem to be in distress.

I was just microwaving some dinner, and the door bell pinged, and so I checked the hidden camera that shows who is at the door, and there they were, Megan looking around and April smiling at a camera that she should not have known was there.

And so here they are,, Megan looking around checking out my abode, and April smiling beseechingly at me.

"So, let me get this straight. There are 'bad guys' chasing you," I said, using the air quotes around the 'bad guys' phrase, "and you need to get away because if they catch you, they'll do unspeakable things to you. Do I have this right?"

April nodded impatiently.

"Yes. That's the gist of it. There's a lot more to it than that, obviously, but the bottom line is that these guys are looking for us, and if and when they find us, well, I'm not sure we'd survive the experience. I'm being honest with you. I really didn't know where else to go - Boston is not really my stomping ground. I figured we could hide out here for a bit. No disrespect, but I don't think anyone knows this place exists."

"And you. You agree on this?" I directed the question at April's companion.

She nodded, eyes wide.

"Absolutely. We are...involved, in this thing, well, it's something. Something bigger than we expected and it's...coming back to bite us. We underestimated the people we were...dealing with, and this is seriously bad for us. We just need a little time. Please? If you don't help, I don't know what we are going to do. They know us, they were following us and they are actively looking. They know Boston and we...well, we don't."

She was very carefully choosing her words. Being specific and vague at the same time.

"So, are you with an agency? One that uses a lot of letters, I presume? Look, I have some clearance, not a lot, but I have worked with law enforcement. I can call people."

"Sort of. Look, we don't really have time for this, and you don't have enough clearance at all and you certainly can't call anybody. I am getting worried that they know we are here. They could well be trying to follow us. It may not even be safe here."

At that, I sighed. "What the hell have you got me into? I didn't ask for this. I just wanted to eat dinner and watch TV. Now there are people looking for you, intending you harm, and I'm in the middle of it? Way to go. Thanks a lot."

Megan smiled apologetically.

"I'm sorry. I really am. But...can you help? Please, Tom, can you?"

"How do you know my name?" I asked at this Megan chick, still in a belligerent mood.

"It's on your desk plaque," replied April, nodding at my desk.

Oops. I deflated a bit.

"The thing is, how do I know you are on the up and up? How do I know you aren't the bad guys here, and the people following you aren't federal agents? Or men in black, for all I know?"

Megan actually got the reference. "We aren't aliens Tom. You can pull my nose and see if it's a mask."

I smirked. April said, "Here, Tom. Use the phone on the desk. Call this number, and say 'Field Agents Carlisle and Bromley are out of play.' Then just listen. You can then decide if we are bad guys or not."

She gave me the number, and I looked at her suspiciously - no doubt whomever I was calling would be in on this mess. But what the hell. I didn't have anything to lose.

So I called, and I got someone on the other end saying, "Good evening, this is the Field Institutes answering service. Can I take a message?"

Even more suspiciously, I said, "Hi. Um, so I'm supposed to say that Field Agents Carlisle and..." I looked at April again, who hissed, 'Bromley!' back at me, "Bromley, are out of play? Does that mean anything to you?"

There was silence for a second, and then the voice said, "Please stay on the line. I am connecting you."

I seriously expected someone to say "Opening channel D" at this point. Extra points if you get the reference, but I doubt most of you will. Most people who would are almost dead these days.

Seconds later a male voice, with a Scottish brogue, answered and said, "Hello? You are calling about some field agents?"

"Yes, Carlisle and Bromley?"

"Where are they? Are they safe? Who are you? What's your connection to them?" asked the voice, in quick succession.

"Um, they are here with me. They say they are being followed, and they want my help. I'm just trying to figure out if they are the good guys here?"

"Sir, all I can tell you is that you would be doing your country a service by aiding these ladies. They are involved in something I cannot discuss with you - I'm sure you understand - but anything you can do to help here will be gratefully received. And when I say grateful, I mean grateful. Can I speak to either one of the ladies?"