The Queen's Jewels

Chapter 11: A Gascon and Cupid

Notes: Spoilers for the movie To Catch a Thief

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Columbia University. November 22, 2004. Monday morning.

Neal left Mozzie tending the duplicate signal emitter at Aidan's studio while he headed south to the main campus. A cold, raw wind whipped off the Hudson River, making his eyes water. Keeping his head down, he walked quickly and ducked into the first available tunnel on 120th Street. He hadn't spotted anyone tailing him but this wasn't the time to take unnecessary risks.

As he slipped into lightweight black coveralls, Neal reviewed his plan. He would stay in the tunnels for the length of the campus, exiting south of 114th Street from a branch tunnel he'd discovered last Thursday. Using the tunnels was much more time-consuming than walking above ground and he'd built a comfortable cushion into the schedule. Campus authorities continued to add locks, security cameras, and even magnetic strips on windows to prevent would-be explorers. Not that any of their measures would be effective against him, but they'd slow his progress.

In addition, Neal had made an allowance for a side trip. His destination was not far from where he'd entered the tunnel. In a rocky nook under the north campus was the shrine of tunnel explorers, the so-called Signature Room. Every serious tunneler had inscribed his tag in the nook. Mozzie had left his there on Saturday but Neal hadn't left one yet. After slipping underneath a pipe and squirming through the crawlspace, he entered the Signature Room. He first stopped to scan the north wall for a signature he'd discovered on a previous trip. Scrawled in a corner about six feet up was: E.C. The C had been written with a distinctive tail, and Neal was convinced that his grandfather, Edmund Caffrey, had made that tag. Once his name was cleared, Neal planned to ask him about it.

Mozzie's tag, a large dot surrounded by three roughly concentric circles, was on the west wall. Neal had asked him about its significance and he claimed it was an Australian shamanistic symbol for honey. Evidently, the shamans didn't have a symbol for wine. Neal took out a blue broad-tip marker from his backpack and added his tag in a blank area above Mozzie's. He'd designed a series of calligraphic flourishes representing a fast-moving cloud. He stepped back to admire it for a moment. He'd incorporated Edmund's stroke into one of the flourishes. That would be his good luck charm for the day.

Neal had already explored the route so well that he made fast progress through the tunnels. He was gratified that no additional security measures had been implemented since his last visit. The final tunnel, which led to 114th Street, was one of the lost tunnels and the oldest he'd ever encountered. The walls were made of brick, crumbling with age and coated with an accumulation of soot, mold, and other detritus. At its terminus, the wall was in extremely poor condition. Many of the bricks had disintegrated, revealing a blackened plaster surface beyond. During his initial exploration, he'd tapped on the plaster and it sounded tantalizingly hollow, perhaps indicative of an extension, but further exploration would require specialized equipment.

He slipped behind a beam and exited into an abandoned subway side tunnel. Once there, he removed his coveralls and placed them along with his headlamp in the backpack. The tunnel led to the entrance of the IRT local line. The rumbling clatter of subway cars was a welcome sound to his ears after the eerily quiet conditions in the tunnels. Flattening himself behind a beam, he waited till a passing train obscured his presence and then joined the crowd on the subway platform. Neal sprinted up the stairs to the street and hailed a taxi for the ride down to the Chelsea Fencing Club on the Lower West Side and his meeting with André Renard.

The taxi drove south along Riverside Drive. Once it passed June's mansion, Neal knew he was out of his legally allowed range. The marshals had restricted him to a tight area between Columbia and the mansion, and this was his first time to venture outside those boundaries. Slanting an eye at his anklet, he saw the LED sensor change, first to yellow and then red. Neal swallowed, his muscles tensing as if he were leaping across roofs. Was the jammer working? If it was performing correctly, the signal from the anklet was being canceled out. If not, well, he'd soon have the marshals on his tail.