I came to another side tunnel; again I chose the main line. The current was running faster now, or maybe I was just giving out. I could no longer lift my knees clear of the water; it was getting deeper and flowing faster, and I was exhausted. My teeth began to chatter. My tiny light seemed to be dimming as well, though perhaps it was an optical illusion, a trick played by the darker concrete in this section of pipe, or played by my own fatigue and despair.
And then I came to a harder choice: a Y-shaped intersection, two four-foot tunnels angling to the right and left. No main line to make the decision easy for me anymore; two choices, with no way to know what I’d find in the one I chose—and no way to know what I’d miss in the one I didn’t.
As I reached the intersection, the concrete walls around me gave way to a wider chamber made of brick. Iron bars jutted from the bricks—the rungs of a ladder set into the wall. Overhead was a large black disk; water poured down on me through a dozen or more holes spaced evenly inside its circumference. I was directly beneath a manhole, and I was confronted by not two alternatives but three.
I shone my faint light on each. I didn’t much like the tunnel branching to the right; it seemed to be carrying more water than the one to the left, so between the current and the stooping, the going would be extremely difficult. Of the two, I’d be inclined to take the left fork.
But there was also the manhole. A world of freedom, an infinite number of paths to freedom, lay just beyond that barrier of iron. I made my choice. I grasped a rung and began to climb.
As I neared the top, some ten rungs up, doubts and questions set in. Would she have seen the manhole, if she didn’t have a light? Would she be able to raise the heavy disk? Would I be able to raise it? Well, if you can’t, she probably didn’t, I realized. Might as well try it.
Gripping the topmost rung with my left hand, I leaned back slightly into the vertical shaft and pushed upward at one edge of the manhole cover. It did not move. I tightened my grip and pushed harder, and the disk lifted slightly. I shifted my feet on the iron rung and put more force behind the push. The cover tilted upward—six inches, a foot, more—and then the iron rung in my right hand tore from the mortar between the bricks, and I was falling. When I hit the water, the shock of the fall and the chill of the water nearly claimed my consciousness. I struggled to regain my footing but the current was too swift, the walls were too smooth, and I was too weak. I felt myself swept along, down the dark passage, down toward icy oblivion. And then, just as I felt myself slipping into inner darkness, I shot out into a deeper pool of water, into a world lit by strobing blue lights, and unseen hands were bearing me up to safety.
CHAPTER 44
OKAY, HERE’S WHAT WE’VE BEEN ABLE TO PIECE together so far,” said Thornton. “Alvin and Theresa Morgan were young American missionaries who went to Japan in 1935, right after their marriage. By virtue of some incredibly bad luck, they settled in Nagasaki. In August 1945, Theresa was eight months pregnant. She was badly injured by the bomb. The doctors couldn’t save her, but they did manage to save the baby. Newspaper stories in Japan called him ‘the Nagasaki miracle.’ That baby was Isabella’s father, Jacob Morgan.”
“That’s a hell of a beginning,” I said. “What next?”
“He was adopted by another missionary couple. Raised in Japan. Married another Nagasaki survivor—a young woman who was the daughter of a Japanese nurse and an Italian physician. He took his wife’s family name, which was Arakawa.”
“So Isabella was only one-quarter Asian,” I said. That was why, despite her dark, exotic beauty, she didn’t look Japanese. “But why turn killer? Lots of people lost parents or grandparents in the bombings without becoming murderous.”
“Isabella’s mother died of bone cancer when Isabella was ten. Her father was treated for prostate cancer in his fifties. I’m sure she blamed the bomb for their cancer as well as her grandmother’s death. I suppose, for someone looking to avenge a Nagasaki family’s suffering, the guy responsible for the success of the plutonium reactors seemed a logical target.”
Miranda shook her head sadly. “Three generations of fallout from Nagasaki,” she said. “Gives a sad twist to the term ‘radioactive daughter product,’ doesn’t it?” Nobody smiled at the grim pun. “But if Isabella’s Japanese heritage mattered so much, why’d she change her name from Arakawa—that was the name on her master’s-degree thesis—to Morgan?”
“Two reasons, I suspect,” said Thornton. “First, in memory of her grandmother, the one who was killed by the Nagasaki bomb. Second, to make her connection to her father and to Japan harder to trace, once she set the wheels in motion.”
“Say some more about her father’s part in all this,” I said.