Parallel Lies

by Ridley Pearson

  Tyler, a purple ribbon pinned to his coveralls, worked the train from the rear car forward, head low, moving through the rows of dummies and milling guests. He studied the shoes of the guests, believing this might be the one piece of clothing to set Alvarez apart: he watched for scuffed or dirty shoes or boots. He inspected faces from a distance while not allowing these guests to get a good look at him, assuming that some guests were NUS guards working in suits.

  Suddenly a number of guests craned toward the starboard windows, stretching and bending to see out. Tyler got a look as well: William Goheen had daughter Gretchen by the shoulders, leaning into her, his face flushed with anger. She pressed back, clearly trying to work past him and onto the train, but Goheen blocked her entrance. This was not a skirmish but a pitched battle, and neither father nor daughter seemed about to yield. The cars were too soundproofed for Tyler to hear what was being said, but it wasn’t pretty, not by any stretch of the imagination. Again it became obvious that Gretchen wanted to board the train and that Goheen would not permit it. Tyler caught the signal from Goheen, and a moment later security stepped in, Nell among them. Gretchen screamed at her father, this time her voice carrying into the train through an opened door. “If it’s so damn safe, if you’re so damn innocent, then why the hell can’t I join you?”

  Goheen stepped back, wounded. He motioned to Nell and the others, and Gretchen, literally kicking and screaming, was led away from the train and off the platform. Tyler saw Nell go and felt a wave of relief. Perhaps the same degree of relief Goheen must have experienced, confirming his daughter was to remain behind.

  He’d lost track of O’Malley, who was busy with his troops assessing the potential danger represented by the discovery of Alvarez’s lair. Tyler believed now that without a doubt Alvarez intended to derail the train. He’d gotten closer than anyone had believed possible. Failure to take him seriously now could prove to be fatal.

  Some guests departed the rear cars onto the platform, electing to remain behind. Tyler found the presence of the crash-test dummies disturbing. They had been dressed to resemble passengers. With their eerily realistic faces, and positioned as they were in a frozen tableau meant to mimic the living, the effect was surreal.

  The crush of guests slowly moved forward, settling mostly in the dining and beverage cars. Tyler held back, assuming if Alvarez were aboard, he, too, would stay behind and seek out a hiding place. He checked the lavatories of each rear car but found them unoccupied. Tyler sagged in disappointment. Alvarez was not going to make it easy.

  Despite Coopersmith’s claim that the mechanical closets could not be opened, Tyler now wanted a look inside them.

  If Alvarez was not found, then, as far as Tyler was concerned, the only explanation was that he’d already carried out his sabotage. Despite the thorough security checks, despite the bomb-sniffing dogs, despite O’Malley’s switching the train’s location, Tyler gave Alvarez the benefit of the doubt. In a minority of one—not even Nell seemed ready to accept that their security might have failed—he decided he’d better learn as much about this train’s operation as he could, and do so as quickly as possible.

  Standing amid a group of guests in the vestibule between cars, Tyler turned to see dark suits—obviously security personnel—methodically inspecting the adjacent car. Guest ribbon or not, maintenance coveralls or not, he would be asked to provide a name to be checked against the master list. And he’d be discovered. He thought he might buy himself time by showing his fed credentials, but more likely he would invite O’Malley down on him. He felt cornered—and once again likened his own situation to that of Alvarez.

  He tried to push his way into the next car, but the crowd was too thick. When he glanced back a second time, he saw the adjacent car’s mechanical closet open and a guard clutching a crash-test mannequin. The man spun around as if dancing and set the dummy into a seat.

  This time Tyler moved some guests out of his way and pushed through the mobbed dining car. In the next vestibule a door and stairway to the tracks remained open, allowing maintenance and security quicker access between cars. Tyler stepped down.

  “Name, please,” called a guard’s voice from behind him. Tyler looked up the track toward the locomotive and saw Coopersmith with several of his maintenance crew. He wondered if Coopersmith could save him.

  “Chief!” Tyler called out. But the maintenance boss didn’t hear him.

  “Name, please,” the guard repeated, this time closer. Tyler didn’t want to turn around and show his face for fear he’d be recognized. He faked a French accent and said, “DeWulf. F. DeWulf. Maintenance, under Coopersmith.” His accent was horrible. He held himself motionless, unable to breathe.

  “Got it,” the man said.

  The duplication would likely be caught soon enough. Tyler would now have to remain one step ahead of O’Malley’s guys. He headed up the line of cars toward Coopersmith, waving to catch the chief’s attention.

  Departure was stalled seven minutes to allow additional inspection. Guests were told that the train was delayed because some guests had been caught in traffic and had yet to arrive. O’Malley was clearly a busy man, working quickly to complete the search.

  Tyler reached the locomotive. “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Coopersmith confirmed. “Our guys checked everything: brakes, guidance computers, data flow, communications. All intact. Nothing’s been tampered with.”

  “Not yet,” Tyler said.

  “The only incident we heard about was that one of the security goons maced a dummy when it fell out of the mechanical closet in car seven.”

  DeWulf laughed. His presence again alerted Tyler to the security check only moments before.

  Coopersmith handed him a set of bright orange plastic earplugs, and together they entered the engine room where DeWulf had already found a seat. Tyler held Coopersmith back and leaned out of earshot of the locomotive’s driver. “I gave DeWulf’s name in a security check just now.”

  “Did you?”

  “They’ll work their way forward. Everyone gets compared to a list.”

  “You’re fine,” Coopersmith said. “I’ll sit by the door. They’ll check with me. I’ll okay it.”

  “One more maintenance man than on their list? That’ll send up a red flag, whether or not they check with you.”

  Coopersmith nodded, seeing the logic in this. “Okay. So Fredo steps into the power supply for a minute or two. He’ll go along. And believe me, even security isn’t stupid enough to open a power supply closet.”

  “I appreciate this,” Tyler said, feeling vastly relieved.

  “A leak in security makes sense to me. And the feds trying to sting them also makes sense. Believe me, if you were even one-sixteenth Latino, I’d have turned you in. But as it happens, I believe you. And I don’t want anyone messing with my train.”

  They stepped inside the warm space. DeWulf was told by Coopersmith that he’d have to hide for a minute in the power supply closet and that the fewer questions asked, the better. DeWulf had overheard enough about Tyler to catch on. He agreed without complaint.

  Five minutes later, the same security man paid the locomotive a visit, and Tyler passed as DeWulf for the second time. The man left, and DeWulf joined Coopersmith and Tyler on the jump seats. He was sweating profusely.

  The huge train shuddered, lumbered, and eased forward. Now, with the train moving, there would be no more passenger checks, although security was no doubt on alert to watch for Alvarez. If Tyler could reach the passenger section, he’d be free to continue his search for Alvarez or for the man’s sabotage.

  “Your first time in an engine room?” DeWulf asked Tyler, shouting to be heard. It broke Tyler’s thought—that discovery of a crash-test mannequin in the mechanical closet weighed on him.

  Tyler answered, “My first time in a locomotive.”

  “Yes? Well, you’re in for the ride of your life.”

  Tyler grimaced, hoping not to take the man literally.

 
; Believing that Alvarez was on board, Tyler reconsidered all that had gone on prior to departure. Finally he understood what they had overlooked. “I need to get back there,” he called out to Coopersmith. “He’s on the train. And I think I know where he’s hiding.”

  This won both Coopersmith’s and DeWulf’s attentions.

  The crew chief checked his watch and shouted back, “We’ll go together. I need five minutes for us to cross-check all systems. Then we go!”

  “The sooner, the better!” Tyler hollered back.

  Minutes later Coopersmith handed Tyler DeWulf’s set of keys and led him the length of the locomotive, past rectifiers, oil cooling systems, and electrical controls. Again, it reminded him of the space shuttle. They cleared the rear door and entered the vestibule that fronted the first passenger car.

  Two smokers, a man and a woman, leaned around the edge of the oversized baggage bin in the area just before the door to this forward car. Coopersmith shouted at them, “Unscheduled maintenance inspection. Nothing to worry about.”

  Some smoke escaped the woman’s mouth as she smiled. Tyler smelled pot. The man offered him a wry smile.

  Coopersmith, oblivious, said, “We’ll be coming up to full speed now. Enjoy the ride.”

  “Oh, we will!” the woman coughed out, laughing.

  Coopersmith pushed the red plastic bar marked OUVERT/ OPEN.

  Tyler’s skin crawled. The coveralls were sure to draw attention. Any one of O’Malley’s people might spot him.

  Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played softly over the public address system. It was such an overplayed piece it sounded more like Muzak. This car, for VIPs, wasn’t terribly crowded. Most of the guests stood talking, a drink in hand.

  Coopersmith’s huge carriage led the way. Tyler followed, head down.

  The second car was media. It hummed with loud conversation. Some laptops were out, already testing Internet connections. It seemed a more cheery crowd than in the VIP car.

  Tyler felt a burning impatience. He believed not only that Alvarez was aboard but that sabotage was soon to follow. What would be the sense of derailing a bullet train prior to its reaching full speed? And yet waiting to derail it increased Alvarez’s risk. The longer the man waited, the more chance he might be caught or his sabotage outfoxed.

  “How soon until we cross the Delaware River?” Tyler asked. The earlier derailments had all occurred in remote areas, in or around a large curve or a switch. But there were few such remote areas in the northeast corridor. So Tyler thought Alvarez might target a bridge crossing—about as remote as this train was to get.

  “Twenty-five, thirty minutes,” the crew chief replied.

  “And what’s the river north of Baltimore?”

  “The Susquehanna?”

  “How far to that?”

  “Another fifteen. Make it forty-five, fifty from here.”

  In this brief time, Tyler needed to find Alvarez, uncover his plan, and abort the intended sabotage. He started feeling sick to his stomach. “This train is too fast,” he said.

  “It’s something, isn’t it?” Coopersmith stated proudly.

  They reached the first of the dining cars. It was mobbed. Nearly impossible to get through.

  Tyler stopped Coopersmith and pulled the man in toward him. He spoke carefully. “In which car was that dummy found?”

  “Seven.”

  Tyler considered explaining his theory to Coopersmith but then thought better of it, electing to wait. “We need to check out the maintenance closet in seven. A-S-A-P.”

  “Because?”

  “Would one of your guys have played that kind of trick on security?”

  “I’d never hear about it if they did,” Coopersmith replied.

  Pushing past a group of champagne-drinkers, nearly through the first of the dining cars now, Tyler said, “But would they play such a cheap trick on a trip like this? This important? The dummy. The closet? All that?”

  Coopersmith shrugged. “Not if that guy was hoping to keep his job. I find out who, and he’ll be buying a ticket home from Washington.”

  Tyler let slip, “I think I know who did it.” Coopersmith stopped. Tyler added, “And I think I know why.”

  He looked back through the vestibule connecting the cars, catching a distant glimpse of O’Malley conferring with a couple of his men.

  “We’d better hurry,” Tyler said.

  “You’re telling me they’re for show?” Tyler gasped. They had just cleared the second of the dining cars, entering the first of the four cars peopled with mannequins and dummies. Some of the guests had wandered back here. Two of Coopersmith’s men occupied the front row. It was the first chance Tyler and Coopersmith could speak to each other without shouting.

  “These mannequins, yes. Our safety department rents them from a place in Detroit. As you know, you—the NTSB—require us to put about a half dozen in each car, for the safety test. It was some publicity person’s bright idea to fill these cars with these things. Supposed to look impressive, I suppose. Looks stupid to me. But then, I’ve already been on all the other test runs.”

  “And this new F-A-S-T Track technology? What about it? I’ve heard rumors, but I need the dime tour,” Tyler said. He pointed to the far end and changed subjects on Coopersmith. “Seven is the next one?”

  Coopersmith nodded, sensing Tyler’s impatience. He let Tyler go first and talked over his shoulder. “We needed a system to account for the fact that we don’t have special tracks laid for high speed like they do in Europe. High speed has to have the railbed banked on even the smallest curves. And many of the curves have to be not only banked but laid out in a wider radius, or the high speeds will literally throw the train off the tracks. But we can’t get those changes in our track here. There’s no space. It’s what stymied us for nearly twenty years.”

  “And this new technology?”

  “So, Goheen worked with an existing system where the cars tilt to hold them down onto the tracks. Similar systems are in place in Japan and Europe, but Goheen refined it. A crude version of the technology was used in this country between Boston and New York in the sixties. Now, it’s all controlled by GPS technology. We don’t get the European or the Japanese speeds, even with the stabilizers—as we call them—but we can more than double what we used to get.”

  “These stabilizers,” Tyler said over his shoulder, reaching the end of the car. “They’re GPS?”

  “Synched to GPS, yes. The engine car, all the passenger cars, all clock-synched, one to the other. Pinpoint technology. Computers monitor the exact location of each car several times a second and send signals to the stabilizers that then compensate real time, physically tipping the cars. The change in the center of gravity drives the weight and the force down, instead of out, and the cars stay on track.”

  They passed into car seven, Tyler’s heart thumping painfully from adrenaline.

  He’d gotten Coopersmith started, and now he couldn’t shut the guy up. “Ten years ago, the GPS technology wasn’t accurate enough, not for commercial use. Military controlled it all. Even today most commercial GPS devices are manufactured for less accuracy, though the technology does exist to make them pinpoint perfect.”

  Tyler had heard enough. He thought he understood now what Alvarez had in mind. A science teacher, he reminded himself. “Here,” he said, stopping at the mechanical closet in seven. He groped for keys, but Coopersmith beat him to it, unlocking the door.

  The closet was empty, as he’d expected.

  Coopersmith snapped sarcastically, “So how was this worth our time?”

  Tyler asked him to open the interior wall, the one behind which Coopersmith had earlier suggested he hide.

  Coopersmith couldn’t stop lecturing. “There’s triple redundancy involved in the GPS tracking for each car—all the computers double-checking each other. As F-A-S-T Track approaches an area where excessive ground speeds would throw it offtrack, the stabilizers compensate, one after the other, car after car. And the pass
engers never even feel it.”

  Tyler stepped out of the way. Coopersmith unfastened and opened the panel, confirming the rear part, too, was empty. Tyler said, “And if you could corrupt the stabilizers?”

  “Forget about it. No way. Too many backups, too much redundancy. And if any one of them fails, the driver is signaled and the locomotive begins an automatic shutdown. If all of them fail, even the driver can’t override that shutdown.”

  “But if you could,” Tyler pressed, “somehow trick the system.”

  “I’m telling you: you can’t.”

  “Theoretically,” Tyler tried.

  Coopersmith locked the closet. Tyler was already scanning the lengthy array of mannequins. Coopersmith answered, “Then she would hit a turn and either roll or just keep on going.”

  “At a hundred and eighty miles an hour.”

  “I’m telling you: it can’t be done.”

  “And I’m telling you,” Tyler answered, “that it’s about to happen.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Alvarez sat still as the two men approached him down the aisle of car eight. For the past five minutes he had watched them from not twenty feet away, and yet they had no idea of his presence. The train rode so smoothly that at times it gave the illusion of not moving at all. A glance out the window dispelled that fantasy as the foreground blurred and even distant lights tracked past with alarming speed. Goheen had his prize.

  Alvarez was dressed, not as a maintenance man, nor as security, but in a crash-test dummy costume he’d bought a month earlier from a mail-order catalogue. He’d loaded this outfit into the duffel—the two halves of the plastic head being the largest pieces he’d had to carry. This costume had been the key to his invisibility. People had blithely walked right past him for the better part of the last thirty minutes.

  But panic filled him as these two men walked past, now only three feet away, and then continued on toward car nine, the last car. He clutched as he recognized one of them as being from the Amtrak—the fed who’d been able to delay that train so he could get aboard. Seeing that face set him wildly on edge. He had heard the two talking about the technology, including the GPS guidance. So he needed to act quickly now, before this agent—whoever he was—pieced it together. And they were heading back to car nine, where he’d hidden the duffel.