Night of the Black Moth, Chapter VI: Infiltration, Shadow and Honour

A Tale by Mark Craig, set in New York City, September 1954. 

Chapter VI: Infiltration, Shadow and Honour

The sight of the warehouse was long gone, the dockside left cold, purged of any trace of the earlier criminal operation save for splintered crates and broken bodies. The Black Moth had vanished deeper into the city’s underworld, but Richard Wentworth was never without his eyes.

And tonight, his eyes were none other than his faithful companion, Ram Singh.

Draped in a worn leather coat and battered cap, Ram Singh stood silently in the line of day labourers outside Clarke’s Freight & Salvage, a grimy shipping depot near the edge of the Hell Gate Industrial Corridor. The building squatted like a discarded tin can beside the rust-scarred steel of Hell Gate Power Station, itself a towering ruin of smokestacks and crackling substations. The site was semi-retired, but not completely, and power still flowed through it’s aging walls — and men still often went missing in its shadow.

Someone new had begun scooping up muscle — desperate men, half-crooks, ex-cons, and many wounded veterans. These were the whispers: “Work over at Hell Gate. Dangerous work. Shady. But it pays.”

Ram Singh had made himself appear weathered, obedient, and unsavoury enough to cause trouble when needed, yet friendly enough not to cause a problem. Following in the Spider’s footsteps, Ram thought it better to observe and see without being seen for who he truly was.

A broad-faced man with a crooked nose came down the line, eyeing the workers like meat on hooks. He stopped before Ram Singh eventually, eying him up before giving him a particular offer.

“You. What did you say your name was?”

“Ravi,” Ram Singh answered plainly, lowering his gaze.

“Ever haul copper?”

“Yes.”

“Ever shot a gun?”

Ram Singh hesitated, yet gave a nod. The man’s lip curled into a grin.

“Good. You can start tonight for a test. We’ve been looking for extra security that can handle themselves. Hope you ain’t squeamish.”

Soon enough, he was inside Hell Gate power plant, which  reeked of old soot and oil. The deeper they ventured, the more the station revealed its true self — a wheezing labyrinth of half-operational machinery, forgotten corridors and dusty rooms, dark and caked with neglect. Steel walkways loomed over vast turbine rooms where ancient generators still pulsed like sleeping giants. The sound was constant, a low mechanical throb that echoed in the bones. Ram Singh moved among the other laborers with studied precision. He hefted cable, hauled boxes, did what was required of him, and said little, keeping his head down. He learned quickly who gave instructions, and who passed them down. He watched the rhythm of their patterns — two-hour shifts, always armed guards near the south annex, and a man in a dark coat who inspected the outer wall at midnight like clockwork. Every man inside Hell Gate was either ignorant of what was truly going on, or were simply being paid enough not to care. Yet truly, it wasn’t the fear or apathy that haunted the corridors. It was the silence. Orders came in short grunts, and conversations ended when footsteps came closer. More than once, Ram Singh glimpsed a man disappearing down a hall which they would not take back..

He spent the first day surveying the layout. Next, he mapped the wiring patterns in his mind — what went where, which panels surged with power and which ones were dead, and which ones had been rewired by clumsy, unfamiliar hands. Someone had designed a failsafe to trigger a blackout, but it was not amateur work. Whoever planned it was an engineer, possibly military. Someone methodical — someone who expected interference.

He found signs of demolition cord in the wall vents. He found rubber gloves and lye hidden in a fusebox. He overheard a man speak of “The Lamp Room,” where the new boss broadcast his messages and watched over them from.

And always, there were the whispers of the Black Moth.

They never knew his real name. He merely watched, unseen, yet his presence always felt. There was a reverence borne of dread, with men telling stories of the enigmatic figure like wild campfire stories. One man, half-drunk on a flask he shouldn’t have, murmured that the Black Moth had once worked for the government, until he turned on his handlers and decided to judge the world himself. Ram Singh remained impassive, yet curious, watching and waiting to learn more.

One day, Ram was sent to unbox wiring reels in the north relay tunnel, where few dared linger. The air there was thick with dust and mold, and the tunnels trembled from the river above. The man sent with him, a wiry redhead with a nervous tick, refused to speak at first, but couldn’t keep his mouth shut long.

“They say he's planning something… big,” the man muttered. 

“Real big. Blackouts, riots, the whole grid dead for days. Cops won't know what hit 'em.”

Ram Singh nodded once, quietly committing the details to memory

“Where did you hear it?” Ram Singh asked curiously.

“Heard the Moth talking to a few guys around the spot we’re heading, actually. Keep a close eye out there, you never know what might jump out!”.

Despite the anticlimactic journey to the destitute part of the facility, when alone later on, Ram Singh doubled back through the tunnels and picked the lock of a fuse access panel he had noted. Inside was a schematic of the entire power district. Hell Gate was no isolated threat — if they tripped the right switch here, they could bring down four substations and half the East River grid. 

That night, he slipped out through a side gate during the shift change. Down a storm drain, beneath a rusted valve marked for demolition, he unwrapped a wax-sealed paper he had hidden in his boot sole. On the reverse, he sketched the fuse network. Then he penned a single line, almost too light to read:

    “The spider must move now. The web is nearly set.”

To be continued…