Rebecca Cantrell
The World Beneath
For my husband, my son, and my (non)psychiatric service cat
Prologue
Dr. Berger looked into the long dark mouth of the tunnel. This tunnel would lead to another and then another until they stopped at a secret platform under New York City’s Waldorf Astoria hotel. Only one train had permission to stop there. This one — the presidential train car. It hadn’t been used by the president since the war and, despite its original purpose, the car was surprisingly utilitarian — simple wooden cabinets, a stainless steel counter bearing four liquor decanters, and leather chairs bolted to the floor.
He clutched his precious briefcase with nervous fingers. The train had almost arrived at its destination, and nothing had gone wrong. Yet.
Darkness engulfed the train car as it pulled inside. The train slowed to a crawl. To see why, Dr. Berger adjusted his round spectacles and peered through bulletproof glass so thick that it had a green cast. Dim, electric lights hanging from the ceiling revealed a field of silver tracks merging together again and again as the tunnel narrowed. The engineer had slowed to switch tracks. The car was deep underneath the city now. Close.
He cast a sidelong glance at his sole traveling companion: the uniformed soldier who was tasked with protecting him and the secrets he carried. What did he know about the man?
What was there to know? The man sitting straight-backed and alert with a Thompson submachine gun flat across his lap was merely an ordinary American soldier. A soldier much like the one who’d taken Dr. Berger prisoner in Bavaria a few years before. Another square-jawed man with close-cropped hair whose narrow eyes told Dr. Berger how much he hated all Germans. Of course he did — because of the war. These American soldiers held him personally responsible for all the deaths caused by Hitler’s madness, as if these soldiers could have influenced Roosevelt’s decisions themselves, as if his adherence to orders was so different from theirs.
In the end, he had defied his superior’s orders when he’d packed up his notes and gone to meet his destiny on a train not unlike this one, fleeing west, praying only to surrender to the Americans and not the Russians. He’d been lucky. The troops who’d stopped his train were sturdy and well-fed, chewers of gum and crackers of jokes — American through and through. Their orders regarding high-level scientists were clear, and they hadn’t mistreated him.
They’d brought him to the United States, interrogated him respectfully, and paid him a good salary to continue his research. They’d even retrieved his yellow parakeet, Petey, and the upright piano he had inherited from his father. His specialized knowledge had put him in the president’s own train car on a special and secret mission that would change the future.
Funny how things turned out.
“Near now,” Dr. Berger said.
The soldier jerked his head. Almost a nod, but not quite. The man had probably been given instructions not to speak to him. As kind as they seemed, the doctor doubted his American colleagues trusted him. A mutual state. The wounds from the war had not had time to heal.
Dr. Berger’s fingers tapped out a song on his briefcase, but instead of helping him play music, the notes in its leather interior helped him to play the human mind. The trials were promising indeed, though protocols in the United States were more complex than they had been in Germany. Here he spent too much of his time talking about safeguards, about how to minimize risk and wondering if his funding would be canceled.
He hadn’t worried about such things in Germany.
The SS valued only results.
He tilted his head, certain that he had heard a familiar sound. The clacking of steel wheels against track filled his ears. The reassuring rhythm told him that every second brought them closer to their destination. He closed his eyes and relaxed.
The sound came again — like Petey’s soft warble when he tapped his mirror with his rounded beak. This sound wasn’t quite the same. Seeking its source, he scanned the front of the car. A small hand emerged from behind the door of a cupboard at the front of the car, and tiny brown fingers with dark nails groped the frame.
“Gott im Himmel!” The precious briefcase slid unnoticed to the floor as the doctor sprang to his feet and brushed past the startled soldier. The little hand vanished behind the wooden door as if it had never been there. But he had seen it.
Dr. Berger lurched toward the cupboard. It was impossible. It couldn’t be there. It must not be there.
“Come out, little one.” He eased the door to the side. Its nerves were probably on edge, too, and he had no wish to startle the creature.
The soldier stood behind him, gun trained on the half-open cupboard. “What’s in there, doc?”
So, he could speak.
Dr. Berger reached inside the cabinet with one cautious hand while speaking in a gentle singsong voice. “No one will hurt you. We are all friends here.”
Leathery fingers curled around his wrist, and a slight weight dropped onto his forearm. Slowly, he pulled the creature out.
“A monkey?” asked the soldier.
Not just any monkey. The animal on his arm was a female rhesus monkey. Short brown fur covered her plump body, except for the inverted pink triangle of her face. Huge brown eyes stared up into his.
“Do I know you?” Dr. Berger crooned.
He touched her soft ear and felt for a tag punched through the cartilage. His heart sped with fear, and the monkey tensed, too. He took a deep breath and hummed a few bars of Eine kleine Nachtmusik to calm them both. With one hand, he tilted her to the side to study the small piece of metal that would determine his fate.
The orange tag bore the number sixteen. The worst of all.
He wanted to throw her out the window, as far from him as possible, and pretend he’d never seen her. He could. The soldier didn’t know what the tag meant. She’d have a few days, perhaps weeks, of precious freedom before she succumbed, and he would be safe.
“How’d a monkey get in here?” The soldier seemed charmed by the little creature. “He’s a cute little guy.”
“It is a female monkey.” As if that mattered.
The thick bulletproof windows had a complicated latch, but the soldier would undo it for him, if he asked. He could not ask. He was a scientist first. This monkey must never be freed. Indeed, she must be contained at all costs.
Because she was infected.
She’d been infected only a few days before, but the infection ran its course quickly in primates. The danger already swam in her rich red blood. Incurable.
He remembered her now, recognized the distinctive shock of golden fur above her brows. She had been the most docile of animals, before. But she might not be docile now. He must not agitate her.
“Find a cage,” he said quietly.
He stroked a finger along her warm cheek, and she followed the movement with round eyes the same shade of brown as the soldier’s. Smiling, he hummed to her, while she relaxed in his arms. He drew her close to his chest and cradled her like a baby. She reached up and left an oily smudge across the right lens of his glasses.
The soldier looked blankly around the car. The doctor watched him go through the cupboards with methodical efficiency. The young man pulled out paper, pens, liquor, snacks, a towel, but nothing to contain the monkey.
If they could not imprison her, they would have to kill her. The doctor could have done it easily, but a deep wound ran along the palm of his hand where he had cut himself yesterday when slicing bread. If the monkey’s blood entered his cut, he might become infected, too.