With maps and measuring Phil quickly found the spot he was after. At his direction, his men set to work tearing up a chunk of Shore Road.

It took more digging than Phil expected. They found the cable buried deep. The braided steel line ran in from Long Island Sound, past Glen Island. It stopped dead at Phil's feet. Coiled in the hole like an insulated copper snake was another line that ran through an abandoned sewer line from a point inland. Phil had spent the previous day snaking the second line in from two streets over. The new line ended near the capped one.

"That it?" Phil asked.

The shadowed man stepped to the edge of the hole. Looking in, he nodded sharply.

That was all. Couldn't even be bothered to grunt a yes.

"Yeah, that's the one," Phil instructed his men. The fact that this was an underwater cable didn't matter to Phil. To Phil and the rest of the men it was just another tedious day on the job. Made all the more annoying by the presence of the humorless, silent supervisor.

Phil didn't know who the man was or why he had showed up for this specific job. He was just some faceless higher-up in the corporate monolith that was American Telephone and Telegraph. One thing was sure. The man's eager, virtually unblinking gaze gave Phil a case of the heebie-jeebies.

Men climbed down into the hole.

"This from Columbia Island?" Phil asked the silent supervisor as his men worked to connect the cable.

"I really cannot say," the supervisor replied. His voice was tart and nasal.

Although day had long broken, the gaunt man still kept to the shadows. Only when the sun had risen fully did Phil realize it was the other way around. The supervisor didn't keep to the shadows; the shadows clung to him.

The man was gray faced and dour. He looked more like an undertaker than a telephone company employee.

It took five full hours to complete the work. The bright red rubber tubing that protected the strands of the copper analogue line were spliced carefully together.