Pendergast 05 - Brimstone

by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Preston and Child - Brimstone

Brim­stone

BY DOU­GLAS PRE­STON AND LIN­COLN CHILD

{ 1 }

Agnes Tor­res parked her white Ford Es­cort in the lit­tle parkingarea out­side the hedge and

stepped in­to the cool dawn air. The hedges were twelve feet high and as im­pen­etra­ble as a brick wall; on­ly the shin­gled peak of the big house could be seen from the street. But she could hear the surf thun­der­ing and smell the salt air of the in­vis­ible ocean be­yond.

Agnes care­ful­ly locked the car-​it paid to be care­ful, even in this neigh­bor­hood-​and, fum­bling with the mas­sive set of keys, found the right one and stuck it in­to the lock. The heavy sheet-​met­al gate swung in­ward, ex­pos­ing a broad ex­panse of green lawn that swept three hun­dred yards down to the beach, flanked by two dunes. A red light on a key­pad just in­side the gate be­gan blink­ing, and she en­tered the code with ner­vous fin­gers. She had thir­ty sec­onds be­fore the sirens went off. Once, she had dropped her keys and couldn’t punch in the code in time, and the thing had awak­ened prac­ti­cal­ly the whole town and brought three po­lice cars. Mr. Jere­my had been so an­gry she thought he would breathe fire. It had been aw­ful.

Agnes punched the last but­ton and the light turned green. She breathed a sigh of re­lief, locked the gate, and paused to cross her­self. Then she drew out her rosary, held the first bead rev­er­ent­ly be­tween her fin­gers. Ful­ly armed now, she turned and be­gan wad­dling across the lawn on short, thick legs, walk­ing slow­ly to al­low her­self time to in­tone the Our Fa­thers, the Hail Marys, and the Glo­ry Bes in qui­et Span­ish. She al­ways said a decade on her rosary when en­ter­ing the Grove Es­tate.

The vast gray house loomed in front of her, a sin­gle eye­brow win­dow in the roof peak frown­ing like the eye of a Cy­clops, yel­low against the steel gray of the house and sky. Seag­ulls cir­cled above, cry­ing rest­less­ly.

Agnes was sur­prised. She nev­er re­mem­bered that light on be­fore. What was Mr. Jere­my do­ing in the at­tic at sev­en o’clock in the morn­ing? Nor­mal­ly he didn’t get out of bed un­til noon.

Fin­ish­ing her prayers, she re­placed the rosary and crossed her­self again: a swift, au­to­mat­ic ges­ture, made with a rough hand that had seen decades of do­mes­tic work. She hoped Mr. Jere­my wasn’t still awake. She liked to work in an emp­ty house, and when he was up, ev­ery­thing was so un­pleas­ant: the cigarette ash­es he dropped just be­hind her mop, the dish­es he heaped in the sink just af­ter she had washed, the com­ments and the end­less swear­ing to him­self, in­to the phone or at the news­pa­per, al­ways fol­lowed by a harsh laugh. His voice was like a rusty knife-​it cut and slashed the air. He was thin and mean and stank of cigarettes and drank brandy at lunch and en­ter­tained sodomites at all hours of the day and night. Once he had tried to speak Span­ish with her but she had quick­ly put an end to that. No­body spoke Span­ish to her ex­cept fam­ily and friends, and Agnes Tor­res spoke En­glish per­fect­ly well enough.

On the oth­er hand, Agnes had worked for many peo­ple in her life, and Mr. Jere­my was very cor­rect with her em­ploy­ment. He paid her well, al­ways on time, he nev­er asked her to stay late, nev­er changed her sched­ule, and nev­er ac­cused her of steal­ing. Once, ear­ly on, he had blas­phemed against the Lord in her pres­ence, and she had spo­ken to him about it, and he had apol­ogized quite civil­ly and had nev­er done it again.

She came up the curv­ing flag­stone path to the back door, in­sert­ed a sec­ond key, and once again fum­bled ner­vous­ly with the key­pad, turn­ing off the in­ter­nal alarm.

The house was gloomy and gray, the mul­lioned win­dows in front look­ing out on a long sea­weed-​strewn beach to an an­gry ocean. The sound of the surf was muf­fled here and the house was hot. Un­usu­al­ly hot.

She sniffed. There was a strange smell in the air, like a greasy roast left too long in the oven. She wad­dled in­to the kitchen but it was emp­ty. The dish­es were heaped up, and the place was a mess as usu­al, stale food ev­ery­where, and yet the smell wasn’t com­ing from here. It looked like Mr. Jere­my had cooked fish the night be­fore. She didn’t usu­al­ly clean his house on Tues­days, but he’d had one of his count­less din­ner par­ties the pri­or evening. La­bor Day had come and gone a month be­fore, but Mr. Jere­my’s week­end par­ties wouldn’t end un­til Novem­ber.

She went in­to the liv­ing room and sniffed the air again. Some­thing was def­inite­ly cook­ing some­where. And there was an­oth­er smell on top of it, as if some­body had been play­ing with match­es.

Agnes Tor­res felt a vague sense of alarm. Ev­ery­thing was more or less as she had left it when she went away yes­ter­day, at two in the af­ter­noon, ex­cept that the ash­trays were over­flow­ing with butts and the usu­al emp­ty wine bot­tles stood on the side­board, dirty dish­es were piled in the sink, and some­one had dropped soft cheese on the rug and stepped in it.

She raised her plump face and sniffed again. The smell came from above.

She mount­ed the sweep of stairs, tread­ing soft­ly, and paused to sniff at the land­ing. She tip­toed past Grove’s study, past his bed­room door, con­tin­ued down the hall, turned the dog­leg, and came to the door to the third floor. The smell was stronger here and the air was heav­ier, warmer. She tried to open the door but found it locked.

She took out her bunch of keys, clinked through them, and un­locked the door.Madre de Dios -the smell was much worse. She mount­ed the steep un­fin­ished stairs, one, two, three, rest­ing her arthrit­ic legs for a mo­ment on each tread. She rest­ed again at the top, breath­ing heav­ily.

The at­tic was vast, with one long hall off which were half a dozen un­used chil­dren’s bed­rooms, a play­room, sev­er­al bath­rooms, and an un­fin­ished at­tic space jammed with fur­ni­ture and box­es and hor­ri­ble mod­ern paint­ings.

At the far end of the hall, she saw a bar of yel­low light un­der the door to the last bed­room.

She took a few ten­ta­tive steps for­ward, paused, crossed her­self again. Her heart was ham­mer­ing, but with her hand clutch­ing the rosary she knew she was safe. As she ap­proached the door, the smell grew steadi­ly worse.

She tapped light­ly on it, just in case some guest of Mr. Jere­my was sleep­ing in there, hun­gover or sick. But there was no re­sponse. She grasped the door­knob and was sur­prised to find it slight­ly warm to the touch. Was there a fire? Had some­body fall­en asleep, cigarette in hand? There was def­inite­ly a faint smell of smoke, but it wasn’t just smoke some­how: it was some­thing stronger. Some­thing foul.

She tried the door­knob, found it locked. It re­mind­ed her of the time, when she was a lit­tle girl at the con­vent school, when crazy old Sis­ter Ana had died and they had to force open her door.

Some­body on the oth­er side might need her as­sis­tance; might be sick or in­ca­pac­itat­ed. Once again she fum­bled with the keys. She had no idea which one went to the door, so it wasn’t un­til per­haps the tenth try that the key turned. Hold­ing her breath, she opened the door, but it moved on­ly an inch be­fore stop­ping, blocked by some­thing. She pushed, pushed hard­er, heard a crash on the oth­er side.

San­ta María, it was go­ing to wake up Mr. Jere­my. She wait­ed, but there was no sound of his tread, no slam­ming bath­room door or flush­ing toi­let, none of the sounds that sig­naled his iras­ci­ble ris­ing.

She pushed at the door and was able to get her head in­side, hold­ing her breath against the smell. A thin screen of haze drift­ed in the room, and it was as hot as an oven. The room had been shut up for years-​Mr. Jere­my de­spised chil­dren-​and dirty spi­der­webs hung from the peel­ing bead­board walls. The crash had been caused by the top­pling of an old ar­moire that had been pushed up against the door. In fact, all the fur­ni­ture in the room seemed to have been piled against the door, ex­cept for the bed. The bed, she could see, was on the far side of the room. Mr. Jere­my lay on it, ful­ly clothed.

“Mr. Jere­my?”

But Agnes Tor­res knew there would be no an­swer. Mr. Jere­my wasn’t sleep­ing, not with his charred eyes burned per­ma­nent­ly open, the ashy cone of his mouth frozen in a scream and his black­ened tongue-​swelled to the size of a chori­zo sausage-​stick­ing straight up from it like a flag­pole. A sleep­ing man wouldn’t be ly­ing with his el­bows raised above the bed, fists clenched so hard that blood had leaked be­tween the fin­gers. A sleep­ing man wouldn’t have his tor­so scorched and caved in up­on it­self like a burned log. She had seen many dead peo­ple dur­ing her child­hood in Colom­bia, and Mr. Jere­my looked dead­er than any of them. He was as dead as they come.

She heard some­one speak­ing and re­al­ized it was her­self, mur­murin­gEn el nom­bre del Padre, y del Hi­jo, y del Es­píritu San­to . She crossed her­self yet again, fum­bling out her rosary, un­able to move her feet or take her eyes from the scene in the room. There was a scorched mark on the floor, right at the foot of the bed: a mark which Agnes rec­og­nized.

In that mo­ment, she un­der­stood ex­act­ly what had hap­pened to Mr. Jere­my Grove.

A muf­fled cry es­caped her throat and she sud­den­ly had the en­er­gy to back out of the room and shut the door. She fum­bled with the keys and re­locked it, all the while mur­mur­ingCreo en Dios, Padre todopoderoso, creador del cielo y de la tier­ra She crossed her­self again and again and again, clutch­ing the rosary and hold­ing it up to her chest as she backed down the hall, step by step, sobs min­gling with her mum­bled prayers.

The cloven hoof­print burned in­to the floor told her ev­ery­thing she need­ed to know. The dev­il had fi­nal­ly come for Jere­my Grove.

{ 2 }

The sergeant paused from stretch­ing the yel­low po­lice tape to­take in the scene with a jaun­diced eye. It was a mess that was about to be­come a fuck­ing mess. The bar­ri­cades had been set up too late, and rub­ber­neck­ers had over­run the beach and dunes, ru­in­ing any clues the sand might have held. Then the bar­ri­cades had been set up in the wrong places and had to be moved, trap­ping a matched set of his-​and-​hers Range Rovers, and the two peo­ple were now out of their cars, yelling about im­por­tant ap­point­ments (hair­dress­er, ten­nis) and bran­dish­ing their cell phones, threat­en­ing to call their lawyers.

That wet sound over his shoul­der was the shit al­ready hit­ting the fan. It was the six­teenth of Oc­to­ber in Southamp­ton, Long Is­land, and the town’s most no­to­ri­ous res­ident had just been found mur­dered in bed.

He heard Lieu­tenant Brask­ie’s voice. “Sergeant, you haven’t done these hedges! Didn’t I tell you I want­ed the­whole crime scene taped?”

With­out both­er­ing to re­spond, the sergeant be­gan hang­ing the yel­low tape along the hedge sur­round­ing the Grove Es­tate. As if the twelve-​foot hedge with the con­certi­na wire hid­den with­in wasn’t enough to stop a re­porter, but the plas­tic tape was. He could see the TV trucks al­ready ar­riv­ing, vans with satel­lite up­links, and could hear the dis­tant dull thud of a chop­per. The lo­cal press were pil­ing up against the Dune Road bar­ri­cade, ar­gu­ing with the cops. Mean­while, back­up squad cars were ar­riv­ing from Sag Har­bor and East Hamp­ton along with the South Fork homi­cide squad. The lieu­tenant was de­ploy­ing these new­com­ers along the beach­es and dunes in a fail­ing at­tempt to keep the pub­lic at bay. The SOC boys were ar­riv­ing, and the sergeant watched them en­ter­ing the house, car­ry­ing their met­al crime lab suit­cas­es. There was a time when he would have been with them, even di­rect­ing them-​but that was a long time ago, in an­oth­er place.

He con­tin­ued hang­ing tape on the hedges un­til he reached the dunes along the beach. A few cops were al­ready there, keep­ing back the cu­ri­ous. They were pret­ty much a docile crowd, star­ing like dumb an­imals to­ward the shin­gled man­sion with its peaks and tur­rets and fun­ny-​look­ing win­dows. It was al­ready turn­ing in­to a par­ty. Some­one had fired up a boom box and some buffed-​up guys were crack­ing beers. It was an un­usu­al­ly hot In­di­an sum­mer day and they were all in shorts or swim­ming trunks, as if in de­nial over the end of sum­mer. The sergeant scoffed, imag­ined what those cut bod­ies would look like af­ter twen­ty years of beer and chips. Prob­ably a lot like his.

He glanced back at the house and saw the SOC boys crawl­ing across the lawn on hands and knees, the lieu­tenant strid­ing along­side. The guy didn’t have a clue. He felt an­oth­er pang. Here he was, pulling crowd con­trol, his train­ing and tal­ent wast­ed while the re­al po­lice work went on some­where else.

No use think­ing about that now.

Now the TV trucks had un­packed, and their cam­eras were set up in a clus­ter, with a good an­gle on the man­sion, while the glam­our-​boy cor­re­spon­dents yam­mered in­to their mi­cro­phones. And wouldn’t you know it: Lieu­tenant Brask­ie had left the SOC boys and was head­ing over to the cam­eras like a fly to a fresh pile.

The sergeant shook his head. Un­be­liev­able.

He saw a man run­ning low through the dunes, zigzag­ging this way and that, and he took off af­ter him, cut­ting him off at the edge of the lawn. It was a pho­tog­ra­pher. By the time the sergeant reached him, he’d al­ready dropped to his knee and was shoot­ing with a tele­pho­to as long as an ele­phant’s dick to­ward one of the homi­cide de­tec­tives from East Hamp­ton, who was in­ter­view­ing a maid on the ve­ran­da.

The sergeant laid a hand on the lens, gen­tly turn­ing it aside.

“Out.”

“Of­fi­cer, come on, please-“

“You don’t want me to con­fis­cate your film, do you?” He spoke kind­ly. He’d al­ways had a soft spot for peo­ple who were just try­ing to do their job, even if they were press.

The man got up, walked a few paces, turned for one fi­nal quick shot, and then scur­ried off. The sergeant walked back up to­ward the house. He was down­wind of the ram­bling old place, and there was a fun­ny smell in the air, like fire­works or some­thing. He no­ticed the lieu­tenant was now stand­ing in the mid­dle of the semi­cir­cle of TV cam­eras, hav­ing the time of his life. Brask­ie was plan­ning to run for chief in the next elec­tion, and with the cur­rent chief on va­ca­tion, he couldn’t have got­ten a bet­ter break than if he’d com­mit­ted the mur­der him­self.

The sergeant took a de­tour around the lawn and cut be­hind a small duck pond and foun­tain, keep­ing out of the way of the SOC team. As he came around some hedges he saw a man in the dis­tance, stand­ing by the duck pond, throw­ing pieces of bread to the ducks. He was dressed in the gaud­iest day-​trip­per style imag­in­able, com­plete with Hawai­ian shirt, Oak­ley Eye Jack­et shades, and gi­ant bag­gy shorts. Even though sum­mer had end­ed over a month ago, it looked like this was the man’s first day in the sun af­ter a long, cold win­ter. Maybe a dozen win­ters. While the sergeant had some sym­pa­thy for a pho­tog­ra­pher or re­porter try­ing to do his job, he had ab­so­lute­ly no tol­er­ance for tourists. They were the scum of the earth.

“Hey. You.”

The man looked up.

“What do you think you’re do­ing? Don’t you know this is a crime scene?”

“Yes, Of­fi­cer, and I do apol­ogize-“

“Get the hell out.”

“But, Sergeant, it’s im­por­tant the ducks be fed. They’re hun­gry. I imag­ine that some­one feeds them ev­ery morn­ing, but this morn­ing, as you know-” He smiled and shrugged.

The sergeant could hard­ly be­lieve it. A guy gets mur­dered, and this id­iot is wor­ried about ducks?

“Let’s see some ID.”

“Of course, of course.” The man start­ed fish­ing in his pock­et, fished in an­oth­er, then looked up sheep­ish­ly. “Sor­ry about that, Of­fi­cer. I threw on these shorts as soon as I heard the ter­ri­ble news, but it ap­pears my wal­let is still in the pock­et of the jack­et I was wear­ing last night.” His New York ac­cent grat­ed on the sergeant’s nerves.

The sergeant looked at the guy. Nor­mal­ly he would just chase him back be­hind the bar­ri­ers. But there was some­thing about him that didn’t quite wash. For one thing, the clothes he was wear­ing were so new they still smelled of a menswear shop. For an­oth­er thing, they were such a hideous mix­ture of col­ors and pat­terns that it looked like he’d plucked them ran­dom­ly from a rack in the vil­lage bou­tique. This was more than just bad taste-​this was a dis­guise.

“I’ll be go­ing-“

“No, you won’t.” The sergeant took out his note­book, flipped back a wad of pages, licked his pen­cil. “You live around here?”

“I’ve tak­en a house in Am­agansett for a week.”

“Ad­dress?”

“The Brick­man House, Wind­mill Lane.”

An­oth­er rich ass­hole. “And your per­ma­nent ad­dress?”

“That would be the Dako­ta, Cen­tral Park West.”

The sergeant paused.Now, that’s a co­in­ci­dence. Aloud, he said, “Name?” “Look, Sergeant, hon­est­ly, if it’s a prob­lem, I’ll just go on back-“

“Your first name,sir ?” he said more sharply.

“Is that re­al­ly nec­es­sary? It’s dif­fi­cult to spell, even more dif­fi­cult to pro­nounce. I of­ten won­der what my moth­er was think­ing-“

The sergeant gave him a look that shut him up quick. One more quip from this ass­hole, and it would be the cuffs.

“Let’s try again. First name?”

“Aloy­sius.”

“Spell it.”

The man spelled it.

“Last?”

“Pen­der­gast.”

The pen­cil in the sergeant’s hand be­gan writ­ing this down, too. Then it paused. Slow­ly the sergeant looked up. The Oak­leys had come off, and he found him­self star­ing in­to that face he knew so well, with the blond-​white hair, gray eyes, fine­ly chis­eled fea­tures, skin as pale and translu­cent as Car­rara mar­ble.

“Pen­der­gast?”

“In the very flesh, my dear Vin­cent.” The New York ac­cent was gone, re­placed by the cul­tured south­ern drawl he re­mem­bered vivid­ly.

“What are you do­ing here?”

“The same might be asked of you.”

Vin­cent D’Agos­ta felt him­self col­or­ing. The last time he had seen Pen­der­gast he had been a proud New York City po­lice lieu­tenant. And now here he was in Shithamp­ton, a low­ly sergeant dec­orat­ing hedges with po­lice tape.

“I was in Am­agansett when the news ar­rived that Jere­my Grove had met an un­time­ly end. How could I re­sist? I apol­ogize for the out­fit, but I was hard-​pressed to get here as soon as pos­si­ble.”

“You’re on the case?”

“Un­til I’m of­fi­ciallyas­signed to the case, I can do noth­ing but feed the ducks. I worked on my last case with­out full au­tho­riza­tion, and it, shall we say, strained some high-​lev­el nerves. I must say, Vin­cent, run­ning in­to you is a most wel­come sur­prise.”

“For me, too,” said D’Agos­ta, col­or­ing again. “Sor­ry, I’m re­al­ly not at my best here-“

Pen­der­gast laid a hand on his arm. “We shall have plen­ty of time to talk lat­er. For now, I see a large in­di­vid­ual ap­proach­ing who ap­pears to be suf­fer­ing from em­phrax­is.”

A low-​pitched, men­ac­ing voice in­trud­ed from be­hind. “I hate to break up this lit­tle con­ver­sa­tion.” D’Agos­ta turned to see Lieu­tenant Brask­ie.

Brask­ie stopped, stared at Pen­der­gast, then turned back to D’Agos­ta. “Per­haps I’m a lit­tle con­fused here, Sergeant, but isn’t this in­di­vid­ual­tres­pass­ing at the scene of a crime ?”

“Well, uh, Lieu­tenant, we were-” D’Agos­ta looked at Pen­der­gast.

“This man isn’t afriend of yours, now, is he?”

“As a mat­ter of fact-“

“The sergeant was just telling me to leave,” in­ter­ject­ed Pen­der­gast smooth­ly.

“Oh, he was, was he? And if I may be so bold as to in­quire what you were do­ing here in the first place, sir?”

“Feed­ing the ducks.”

“Feed­ing the ducks.” D’Agos­ta could see Brask­ie’s face flush­ing. He wished Pen­der­gast would hur­ry up and pull out his shield.

“Well, sir,” Brask­ie went on, “that’s a beau­ti­ful thing to do. Let’s see some ID.”

D’Agos­ta wait­ed smug­ly. This was go­ing to be good.

“As I was just ex­plain­ing to the of­fi­cer here, I left my wal­let back at the house-“

Brask­ie turned on D’Agos­ta, saw the note­book in his hand. “You got this man’s in­for­ma­tion?”

“Yes.” D’Agos­ta looked at Pen­der­gast al­most plead­ing­ly, but the FBI agent’s face had shut down com­plete­ly.

“Did you ask him how he got through the po­lice cor­don?”

“No-“

“Don’t you think maybe you should?”

“I came through the side gate in Lit­tle Dune Road,” Pen­der­gast said.

“Not pos­si­ble. It’s locked. I checked it my­self.”

“Per­haps the lock is de­fec­tive. At least, it seemed to fall open in my hands.”

Brask­ie turned to D’Agos­ta. “Now, at last, there’s some­thing use­ful you can do. Go plug that hole, Sergeant. And re­port back to me at eleven o’clock­sharp . We need to talk. And as for you, sir, I will es­cort you off the premis­es.”

“Thank you, Lieu­tenant.”

D’Agos­ta looked with dis­may at the re­treat­ing form of Lieu­tenant Brask­ie, with Pen­der­gast strolling along be­hind him, hands in the pock­ets of his bag­gy surfer shorts, head tilt­ed back as if tak­ing the air.

{ 3 }

Lieu­tenant L. P. Brask­ie Jr. of the Southamp­ton Po­liceDe­part­ment stood be­neath the trel­lis of the man­sion’s grape ar­bor, watch­ing the SOC team comb the end­less acreage of lawn for clues. His face wore a stol­id mask of pro­fes­sion­al­ism as he thought of Chief Mac­Cready play­ing golf in the High­lands of Scot­land. He pic­tured in his mind the links of St. An­drews in au­tumn: the nar­row doglegs of greensward, the grim cas­tle, the bar­ren moors be­yond. He’d wait un­til to­mor­row to give the chief a call, let him know what was go­ing on. Mac­Cready had been chief for twen­ty years, and this golf trip was one more rea­son why Southamp­ton need­ed fresh blood. Brask­ie was a lo­cal boy with roots in the town and friends in City Hall, and he’d al­so man­aged to build up some pow­er­ful re­la­tion­ships among the sum­mer peo­ple. A fa­vor here and a fa­vor there worked won­ders. A foot in both worlds. He’d played his cards well.

And now this. They’d have the perp in the bag in a week or two, and come Novem­ber and the elec­tions, he’d be a shoo-​in. Maybe he’d call Mac­Cready the dayafter to­mor­row:Gee, Chief, I re­al­ly hes­itat­ed to in­ter­rupt your hard-​earned va­ca­tion . …

Brask­ie knew, from long ex­pe­ri­ence in South Fork homi­cide, that the first twen­ty-​four hours of a mur­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion were of­ten the most cru­cial. Fact was, if you didn’t get on the trail and fol­low it right away, you might as well hang up your hat. Find ingress and egress, and ev­ery­thing that fol­lowed-​foren­sic ev­idence, mur­der weapon, wit­ness­es, mo­tive-​would form a chain lead­ing to the perp. Brask­ie’s job wasn’t to do the work him­self but to make sure ev­ery­one else did theirs. And there was lit­tle ques­tion in his mind that the weak link in this chain was Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta. He didn’t do what he was told. He knew bet­ter. Sto­ry was, D’Agos­ta had once been a homi­cide lieu­tenant him­self in the NYPD, and a good one. Quit to write mys­tery nov­els, moved to Cana­da, went broke, and had to come back with his tail tucked firm­ly be­tween his butt cheeks. Couldn’t get a job in the city and end­ed up out here. If Brask­ie were chief, he’d nev­er have hired some­one like that in the first place-​the guy might know his stuff, but he was guar­an­teed trou­ble. Not a team play­er. Had a chip on his shoul­der the size of Man­hat­tan.

Brask­ie checked his watch. Eleven o’clock, and speak of the dev­il. He watched D’Agos­ta ap­proach the trel­lis-​a re­al type, fringe of black hair hang­ing over his col­lar, grow­ing gut, at­ti­tude ooz­ing from his pores like B.O. Here in Southamp­ton, he stuck out like a bunion. No great sur­prise the man’s wife had de­cid­ed to stay be­hind in Cana­da with their on­ly kid.

“Sir,” said D’Agos­ta, able to make even that sin­gle word a tri­fle in­so­lent.

Brask­ie shift­ed his gaze back to the SOC team comb­ing the lawn. “We’ve got an im­por­tant case here, Sergeant.”

The man nod­ded.

Brask­ie nar­rowed his eyes, looked to­ward the man­sion, to­ward the sea. “We don’t have the lux­ury of screw­ing it up.”

“No, sir.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that. I have to tell you, D’Agos­ta, that ev­er since you came on the force, you’ve made it pret­ty clear that Southamp­ton isn’t where you want to be.”

D’Agos­ta said noth­ing.

He sighed and looked straight at D’Agos­ta, on­ly to find the pug­na­cious face star­ing back at him. His “go ahead, make my day” face. “Sergeant D’Agos­ta, do I re­al­ly need to spell it out? You’re­here . You’re a sergeant in the Southamp­ton Po­lice De­part­ment. Get over it.”

“I don’t un­der­stand what you mean, sir.”

This was get­ting ir­ri­tat­ing. “D’Agos­ta, I can read your mind like a book. I don’t give a shit what hap­pened be­fore in your life. What I need is for you to get with the pro­gram.”

D’Agos­ta didn’t an­swer.

“Take this morn­ing. I saw you talk­ing to that in­trud­er for a good five min­utes, which is why I had to in­ter­vene. I don’twant to be rid­ing your ass, but I can’t have one of my sergeants eat­ing up his time ex­plain­ing to some shit­cake why he has to leave. That man should’ve been eject­ed im­me­di­ate­ly, no dis­cus­sion. You think you can do things your way. I can’t have that.”

He paused, scru­ti­niz­ing Sergeant D’Agos­ta care­ful­ly, think­ing he might have de­tect­ed a smirk. This guy re­al­ly had a prob­lem.

The lieu­tenant caught the glimpse of a loud­ly dressed pres­ence to his right. It was that same scum­bag in the Hawai­ian shirt, bag­gy shorts, and ex­pen­sive sculpt­ed shades, ap­proach­ing the grape ar­bor as cool as could be, once again­in­side the po­lice cor­don.

Brask­ie turned to D’Agos­ta, speak­ing calm­ly. “Sergeant, ar­rest that man and read him his rights.”

“Wait, Lieu­tenant-“

He couldn’t be­lieve it: D’Agos­ta was go­ing to ar­gue with him. Af­ter ev­ery­thing he’d just told him. His voice be­came even qui­eter. “Sergeant, I be­lieve I just gave you an or­der.” He turned to the man. “I hope you brought your wal­let with you this time.”

“As a mat­ter of fact, I did.” The man reached in­to his pock­et.

“No, I don’t want to see it, for chris­sakes. Save it for the book­ing sergeant down at the sta­tion.”

But the man had al­ready ex­tract­ed the wal­let in one smooth move­ment, and as it fell open, Brask­ie caught the flash of gold.

“What the-?” The lieu­tenant stared.

“Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

The lieu­tenant felt the blood rush to his face. The man had set him up. And there was no rea­son, none, for the FBI to jus­ti­fy their in­volve­ment. Or was there? He swal­lowed. This need­ed to be dealt with care­ful­ly. “I see.”

The wal­let shut with a slap and dis­ap­peared.

“Any par­tic­ular rea­son for the fed­er­al in­ter­est?” asked Brask­ie, try­ing to con­trol his voice. “We’ve been treat­ing it as a sim­ple mur­der.”

“There’s a pos­si­bil­ity that the killer or killers might have come and left by boat from across the sound. Per­haps Con­necti­cut.”

“And?”

“In­ter­state flight.”

“That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it?”

“It’s a rea­son.”

Yeah, right.Grove had prob­ably been laun­der­ing mon­ey or deal­ing drugs. Or maybe he was even in­volved in ter­ror­ism. These days, with all the shit go­ing down in the world, you couldn’t break wind with­out a pha­lanx of feds drop­ping down on you like a ton of ma­nure. What­ev­er the case, this put a whole new spin on things, and he had to make the best of it.

The lieu­tenant swal­lowed, held out his hand. “Wel­come to Southamp­ton, Agent Pen­der­gast. If there’s any­thing I or the Southamp­ton P.D. can do for you, just let me know. While the chief is on va­ca­tion, I’m act­ing chief, so you just come to me for any­thing. We’re here to serve.”

The man’s hand­shake was cool and dry. Just like the man him­self. Brask­ie hadn’t seen a fed quite like him be­fore. He looked even paler than that artist who used to come out herewhat was his name?-the weird blond guy who did the Mar­ilyn Mon­roes. Au­tumn or not, by the end of the day, this guy was go­ing to need a quart of So­lar­caine and a pitch­er of mar­ti­nis be­fore he could even sit down.

“And now that we’ve straight­ened things out,” the man named Pen­der­gast said pleas­ant­ly, “may I ask you for the cour­tesy of a tour? I trust the im­me­di­ate workups have been com­plet­ed, clear­ing the way for us.” He looked at D’Agos­ta. “You will ac­com­pa­ny us, Sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

Brask­ie sighed. When the FBI ar­rived, it was like get­ting the flu: noth­ing you could do about it but wait for the headache, fever, and di­ar­rhea to go away.

{ 4 }

Vin­cent D’Agos­ta fol­lowed Pen­der­gast and Brask­ie across thelawn. Over in the shade of a vast pa­tio, the South Fork homi­cide squad had set up an im­promp­tu in­ter­ro­ga­tion cen­ter with a video cam­era. There weren’t too many peo­ple to in­ter­view be­yond the do­mes­tic who’d found the body, but it was to­ward this shady spot that Pen­der­gast di­rect­ed his foot­steps, walk­ing so swift­ly that D’Agos­ta and Brask­ie al­most had to jog to keep up.

The chief de­tec­tive from East Hamp­ton rose. He was a guy D’Agos­ta had nev­er seen be­fore, small and dark, with large black eyes and long lash­es.

“De­tec­tive Tony In­no­cente,” said Brask­ie. “Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, FBI.”

In­no­cente rose, held out his hand.

The do­mes­tic sat at the ta­ble, a short, stol­id-​look­ing wom­an. For some­one who had just dis­cov­ered a stiff, she looked pret­ty com­posed, ex­cept for a cer­tain un­set­tled gleam in the eyes.

Pen­der­gast bowed to her, held out his hand. “Agent Pen­der­gast.”

“Agnes Tor­res,” she said.

“May I?” Pen­der­gast looked in­quis­itive­ly at In­no­cente.

“Be my guest. Video­tape’s rolling, FYI.”

“Mrs. Tor­res-“

“Miss.”

“Thank you. Miss Tor­res, do you be­lieve in God?”

In­no­cente ex­changed a glance with the oth­er de­tec­tives. There was an awk­ward si­lence.

“Yes,” she said.

“You are a de­vout Catholic?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Do you be­lieve in the dev­il?”

An­oth­er long pause.

“Yes, I do.”

“And you have drawn your own con­clu­sions from what you saw up­stairs in the house, have you not?”

“Yes, I have,” said the wom­an, so mat­ter-​of-​fact­ly it sent an odd shud­der through D’Agos­ta.

“Do you re­al­ly think the la­dy’s be­liefs are rel­evant?” Brask­ie in­ter­ject­ed.

Pen­der­gast turned his pale eyes on the man. “What we be­lieve, Lieu­tenant, shapes what we see.” He turned back to her. “Thank you, Miss Tor­res.”

They con­tin­ued to the side door of the house. A po­lice­man opened it for them, nod­ding at the lieu­tenant. They gath­ered in the foy­er, where Brask­ie paused.

“We’re still try­ing to get a han­dle on ingress and egress,” he said. “The gate was locked and the grounds were alarmed. Cir­cuit break­ers and mo­tion sen­sors, ac­ti­vat­ed by key­pad. We’re check­ing out who had the codes. The doors and win­dows to the house were al­so locked and alarmed. There are mo­tion de­tec­tors through­out the house as well as in­frared sen­sors and lasers. We’ve test­ed the alarm sys­tem and it’s work­ing per­fect­ly. As you can see, Mr. Grove had a rather valu­able col­lec­tion of art, but noth­ing seems to be miss­ing.”

Pen­der­gast cast an ad­mir­ing glance to­ward one of the near­by paint­ings. To D’Agos­ta, it looked like a cross be­tween a pig, a pair of dice, and a naked wom­an.

“Mr. Grove had a par­ty last night. It was a small par­ty, five in all.”

“Do you have the guest list?”

Brask­ie turned to D’Agos­ta. “Get the list from In­no­cente.”

Pen­der­gast stayed D’Agos­ta with a hand. “I should pre­fer that the sergeant stay here and lis­ten, Lieu­tenant, if you could spare an­oth­er of­fi­cer.”

Brask­ie paused long enough to cast a sus­pi­cious glance at D’Agos­ta, then ges­tured to an­oth­er cop in the room.

“Pray con­tin­ue.”

“By all ac­counts, the last guest was gone by 12:30. They all pret­ty much left to­geth­er. From that point un­til 7:30 this morn­ing, Grove was alone.”

“Do you have a time of death?”

“Not yet. The M.E. is still up­stairs. We know he was alive at 3:10A.M. be­cause that’s when he called a Fa­ther Cap­pi.”

“Grove called a priest?” Pen­der­gast seemed sur­prised.

“It seems Cap­pi had been an old friend, but he hadn’t seen Grove in thir­ty, forty years. They had some kind of falling-​out. Any­way, it didn’t mat­ter: all Grove got was the an­swer­ing ma­chine.”

“I’ll need a copy of the mes­sage.”

“Cer­tain­ly. Grove was hys­ter­ical. He want­ed Fa­ther Cap­pi to come over right away.”

“With a Bible, cross, and holy wa­ter, by chance?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“I see you’ve al­ready heard about the call.”

“No, it was just a guess.”

“Fa­ther Cap­pi ar­rived at eight this morn­ing. He came straight af­ter get­ting the mes­sage. But, of course, by then it was too late, and all he could do was give the body the last rites.”

“Have the guests been ques­tioned?”

“Pre­lim­inary state­ments. That’s how we know when the par­ty broke up. It seems Grove was not in good form last night. He was ex­cit­ed, gar­ru­lous, some say fright­ened.”

“Could any­one have stayed be­hind, or per­haps slipped back in­side af­ter the guests had left?”

“That’s a the­ory we’re work­ing on. Mr. Grove had, ah, per­verse sex­ual tastes.”

Pen­der­gast raised his eye­brows. “How so?”

“He liked men and wom­en.”

“And the per­verse sex­ual tastes?”

“Just what I said. Men and wom­en.”

“You mean he was bi­sex­ual? As I un­der­stand it, thir­ty per­cent of all men have such ten­den­cies.”

“Not in Southamp­ton they don’t.”

D’Agos­ta sti­fled a laugh with a burst of cough­ing.

“Ex­cel­lent work so far, Lieu­tenant. Shall we move on to the scene of the crime?”

Brask­ie turned, and they fol­lowed him through the house. The pe­cu­liar smell that D’Agos­ta had caught a whiff of out on the lawn was much stronger here. Match­es, fire­works, gun­pow­der-​what ex­act­ly was that? It min­gled with a smell of burned wood and a gamy roast of some kind. It re­mind­ed D’Agos­ta of the bear meat he had once tried roast­ing at his house out­side In­ver­mere, British Columbia, brought to him by a friend. His wife had walked out in dis­gust. They’d end­ed up or­der­ing piz­za.

They mount­ed one set of stairs, thread­ed a wind­ing hall­way, came to a sec­ond stair­case.

“This door was locked,” said Brask­ie. “The house­keep­er opened it.”

They climbed the nar­row, creak­ing stair­case to the at­tic floor. At the top was a long hall with doors left and right. At the far end, one door was open and a bright light shone out. D’Agos­ta breathed through his mouth.

“The door to that far room and its win­dow were al­so locked,” Brask­ie con­tin­ued. “The de­ceased, it ap­pears, piled fur­ni­ture up against it from the in­side.” He stepped across the thresh­old, Pen­der­gast and D’Agos­ta fol­low­ing. The stench was now over­pow­er­ing.

It was a small bed­room tucked be­neath the eaves of the house, with a sin­gle dormer win­dow look­ing out to­ward Dune Road. Jere­my Grove lay on the bed at the far side of the room. He was ful­ly dressed, al­though the clothes had been slit in places to ac­com­mo­date the M.E.’s in­ves­ti­ga­tions. The M.E. was stand­ing be­side the bed, back turned, writ­ing on a clip­board.

D’Agos­ta dabbed his brow. Maybe it was the sun on the roof, maybe the bright lights in the room, but it was sti­fling. The smell of bad­ly baked meat clung to him like greasy per­spi­ra­tion. He wait­ed near the door while Pen­der­gast cir­cled the corpse, his body tensed like an ea­gle, ex­am­in­ing it from ev­ery an­gle, the look on his face so ea­ger it was un­set­tling.

The dead man lay on the bed, eyes gog­gled with blood, his hands clenched. The flesh was a strange tal­low col­or, and its tex­ture seemed off some­how. But it was the ex­pres­sion on the man’s face, the ric­tus of hor­ror and pain, that forced D’Agos­ta to look away. In his long years as a New York cop, D’Agos­ta had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed a small, un­wel­come li­brary of im­ages stored in his mind that he’d nev­er for­get as long as he lived. This added one more.

The M.E. was putting away his tools, and two new­ly ar­rived as­sis­tants were get­ting ready to bag the body and load it on­to a stretch­er. An­oth­er cop was kneel­ing on the floor, cut­ting out a piece of floor­board that had a mark burned in­to it.

“Doc­tor?” Pen­der­gast said. The M.E. turned and D’Agos­ta was sur­prised to see it was a wom­an, hair hid­den un­der her cap, a young and very at­trac­tive blonde. “Yes?”

Pen­der­gast swept open his shield. “FBI. May I trou­ble you with a few ques­tions?”

The wom­an nod­ded.

“Have you es­tab­lished the time of death?”

“No, and I can tell you that’s go­ing to be a prob­lem.”

Pen­der­gast raised his eye­brows. “How so?”

“We knew we were in trou­ble when the anal probe came back at one hun­dred eight de­grees.”

“That’s what I was go­ing to tell you,” said Brask­ie. “The body’s been heat­ed some­how.”

“Cor­rect,” said the doc­tor. “The heat­ing took place most strong­ly on the in­side.”

“The in­side?” Pen­der­gast asked.

D’Agos­ta could have sworn he’d heard a note of dis­be­lief in the voice.

“Yes. It was as if-​as if the body was cooked from the in­side out.”

Pen­der­gast looked close­ly at the doc­tor. “Was there any ev­idence of burn­ing, sur­face le­sions, on the skin?”

“No. Ex­ter­nal­ly, the body is vir­tu­al­ly un­marked. Ful­ly dressed. Aside from a sin­gle, rather un­usu­al burn on the chest, the skin ap­pears un­bro­ken and un­bruised.”

Pen­der­gast paused a mo­ment. “How could that be? A fever spike?”

“No. The body had al­ready cooled from a tem­per­ature greater than one hun­dred twen­ty de­grees-​far too high to be bi­olog­ical. At that tem­per­ature, the flesh par­tial­ly cooks. All the usu­al things you use to es­tab­lish time of death were com­plete­ly dis­rupt­ed by this heat­ing pro­cess. The blood’s cooked sol­id in the veins. Sol­id. At those tem­per­atures, the mus­cle pro­teins be­gin to de­na­ture, so there’s no rig­or-​and the tem­per­ature killed most bac­te­ria, so there’s been no de­com­po­si­tion to speak of. And with­out the usu­al spon­ta­neous en­zy­mat­ic di­ges­tion, there’s no au­tol­ysis, ei­ther. All I can say now is he died be­tween 3:10A.M. , when he ap­par­ent­ly made a tele­phone call, and 7:30, when he was dis­cov­ered dead. But, of course, that’s a non­med­ical judg­ment.”

“That, I as­sume, is the burn you re­ferred to ear­li­er?” Pen­der­gast point­ed at the man’s chest. There, burned and charred in­to the sal­low skin like a brand, was the un­mis­tak­able im­print of a cross.

“He was found wear­ing a cross around his neck, very ex­pen­sive by all ap­pear­ances. But the met­al had par­tial­ly melt­ed and the wood burned away. It seemed to have been set with di­amonds and ru­bies; they were found among the ash­es.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded slow­ly. Af­ter a mo­ment, he thanked the doc­tor and turned his at­ten­tion to the man work­ing on the floor. “May I?”

The of­fi­cer stepped back and Pen­der­gast knelt be­side him.

“Sergeant?”

D’Agos­ta came over and Brask­ie has­tened to fol­low.

“What do you make of that?”

D’Agos­ta looked at the im­age burned in­to the floor. The fin­ish around it was blis­tered and cracked, but there was no mis­tak­ing the mark of a huge cloven hoof, deeply brand­ed in­to the wood.

“Looks like the mur­der­er had a sense of hu­mor,” D’Agos­ta mut­tered.

“My dear Vin­cent, do you re­al­ly think it’s a joke?”

“Youdon’t?”

“No.”

D’Agos­ta found Brask­ie star­ing at him. The “my dear Vin­cent” hadn’t gone down well at all. Mean­while, Pen­der­gast had got­ten down on his hands and knees and was sniff­ing around the floor al­most like a dog. Sud­den­ly a test tube and tweez­ers ap­peared out of his bag­gy shorts. The FBI agent picked up a brown­ish par­ti­cle, held it to his nose a mo­ment; then, sniff­ing, stretched it out to­ward the lieu­tenant.

Brask­ie frowned. “What’s that?”

“Brim­stone, Lieu­tenant,” said Pen­der­gast. “Good Old Tes­ta­ment brim­stone.”

{ 5 }

The Chaunti­cleer was a tiny six-​ta­ble restau­rant, tucked in­to anA­ma­gansett side street be­tween Bluff Road and Main. From his nar­row wood­en seat, D’Agos­ta looked around, blink­ing. Ev­ery­thing seemed to be yel­low: the yel­low daf­fodils in the win­dow box­es; the yel­low taffe­ta cur­tains on the yel­low-​paint­ed win­dows; the yel­low linen table­cloths. And what wasn’t yel­low was an ac­cent of green or red. The whole place looked like one of those oc­tag­onal French din­ner plates ev­ery­body paid so much mon­ey for. D’Agos­ta closed his eyes for a mo­ment. Af­ter the musty dark of Jere­my Grove’s at­tic, this place seemed al­most un­bear­ably cheer­ful.

The pro­pri­etress, a short, red-​faced, mid­dle-​aged wom­an, bus­tled up. “Ah, Mon­sieur Pen­der­gast,” she said.”Com­ment ça va?”

“Bi­en, madame.”

“The usu­al,mon­sieur ?”

“Oui, mer­ci.”

The wom­an turned her gaze on D’Agos­ta. “And you, Of­fi­cer?”

D’Agos­ta glanced at the menu-​scrawled in white chalk on a slate near the door-​but half the dish­es he didn’t rec­og­nize, and the oth­er half held no in­ter­est for him. The reek of Jere­my Grove’s flesh was still strong in his nos­trils. “Noth­ing for me, thanks.”

“Any­thing to drink?”

“A Bud. Frosty.”

“So sor­ry,mon­sieur , but we have no liquor li­cense.”

D’Agos­ta licked his lips. “Then bring me an iced tea, please.”

He watched the wom­an de­part, then glanced across the ta­ble at Pen­der­gast, now dressed in his usu­al black suit. He still couldn’t get over the shock of run­ning in­to him like this. The man looked no dif­fer­ent than the last time he’d seen him, years be­fore. D’Agos­ta, em­bar­rassed, knew the same couldn’t be said for him­self. He was five years old­er, ten years heav­ier, and two stripes lighter. What a life.

“How’d you find this place?” he asked.

“Quite by ac­ci­dent. It’s just a few blocks from where I’m stay­ing. It may well be the on­ly de­cent restau­rant in the Hamp­tons undis­cov­ered by the beau­ti­ful peo­ple. Sure you won’t change your mind about lunch? I re­al­ly do rec­om­mend the eggs Bene­dict. Madame Mer­le makes the best hol­landaise sauce I’ve tast­ed out­side Paris: light yet silky, with the mer­est hint of tar­ragon.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head quick­ly. “You still haven’t told me why you’re out here.”

“As I men­tioned, I’ve tak­en a house here for the week. I’m-​what is that phrase?-lo­ca­tion scout­ing.”

“Lo­ca­tion scout­ing? For what?”

“For the, shall we say,con­va­les­cence of a friend. You’ll meet her in due course. And now I’d like to hear your sto­ry. The last I knew, you were in British Columbia, writ­ing nov­els. I have to say, I foun­dAn­gels of Pur­ga­to­ry to be read­able.”

“Read­able?”

Pen­der­gast waved his hand. “I’m not much of a judge when it comes to po­lice pro­ce­du­rals. My taste for sen­sa­tion­al fic­tion ends with M. R. James.”

D’Agos­ta thought he prob­ably meant P. D. James but let it pass. The last thing he want­ed to do was have a “lit­er­ary con­ver­sa­tion.” He’d had more than enough of those the last few years.

The drinks ar­rived. D’Agos­ta took a big gulp of iced tea, found it was unsweet­ened, tore open a pack­et of sug­ar. “My sto­ry’s soon told, Pen­der­gast. I couldn’t make a liv­ing at writ­ing, so I came home. Couldn’t get my old place back on the NYPD. The new may­or’s down­siz­ing the force, and be­sides, I’d made more than my share of en­emies on the job. I was get­ting des­per­ate. Heard about the open­ing in Southamp­ton and took it.”

“I imag­ine there are worse places to work.”

“Yeah, you’d think so. But af­ter spend­ing a sum­mer chas­ing peo­ple whose dogs have just left a steam­ing load on the beach, you’d think dif­fer­ent. And the peo­ple out here-​you give a guy a speed­ing tick­et, and the next thing you know, some high-​priced lawyer’s down at the sta­tion with writs and sub­poe­nas, rais­ing hell. You should see our le­gal bills.”

Pen­der­gast took a sip of what ap­peared to be tea. “And how is work­ing with Lieu­tenant Brask­ie?”

“He’s an ass­hole. To­tal­ly po­lit­ical. Gonna run for chief.”

“He seemed com­pe­tent enough.”

“A com­pe­tent ass­hole, then.”

He found Pen­der­gast’s cool gaze on him, and he fid­get­ed. He’d for­got­ten about those eyes. They made you feel like you had just been stripped of your se­crets.

“There’s a part of your sto­ry you left out. Back when we last worked to­geth­er, you had a wife and son. Vin­cent Ju­nior, I be­lieve.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. “Still got a son. He’s back in Cana­da, liv­ing with my wife. Well, my wife on pa­per, any­way.”

Pen­der­gast said noth­ing. Af­ter a mo­ment, D’Agos­ta fetched a sigh.

“Ly­dia and I weren’t that close any­more. You know how it is: be­ing on the force, work­ing long hours. She didn’t want to move to Cana­da to be­gin with, es­pe­cial­ly a place as re­mote as In­ver­mere. When we got there, hav­ing me in the house all day long, try­ing to write . well, we got on each oth­er’s nerves. And that’s putting it mild­ly.” He shrugged, shook his head. “Fun­ny thing was, she grew to like it up there. Seems my mov­ing back here was just about the fi­nal straw.”

Madame Mer­le re­turned with Pen­der­gast’s or­der, and D’Agos­ta de­cid­ed it was time to change the sub­ject. “What about you?” he asked al­most ag­gres­sive­ly. “What have you been up to? New York keep­ing you busy?”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, I’ve re­cent­ly re­turned from the Mid­west. Kansas, to be pre­cise, where I was han­dling a case-​a small case, but not with­out its, ah, in­ter­est­ing fea­tures.”

“And Grove?”

“As you know, Vin­cent, I have an in­ter­est-​some might call it an un­healthy in­ter­est-​in un­usu­al homi­cides. I’ve trav­eled to places far more dis­tant than Long Is­land in pur­suit of them. A bad habit, but very hard to break.” Pen­der­gast pierced an egg with his knife, and yolk flood­ed out over the plate. More yel­low.

“So, are you of­fi­cial?”

“My free­lanc­ing days are over. The FBI is a dif­fer­ent place. Yes, I’m of­fi­cial.” And he pat­ted the cell phone in his pock­et.

“What’s the hook? I mean, for the feds. Drugs? Ter­ror­ism?”

“Just what I told Lieu­tenant Brask­ie-​pos­si­bil­ity of in­ter­state flight. It’s weak, but it will have to serve.” Pen­der­gast leaned for­ward, low­er­ing his voice slight­ly. “I need your help, Vin­cent.”

D’Agos­ta looked over. Was he kid­ding?

“We made a good team once.”

“But I’m . ” He hes­itat­ed. “You don’t need my help.” He said it more an­gri­ly than he meant. He found those damn eyes on him again.

“Not as much as you need my help, per­haps.”

“What do you mean? I don’t need any­body’s help. I’m do­ing fine.”

“For­give the lib­er­ty, but you are not do­ing fine.”

“What the hell are you talk­ing about?”

“You’re work­ing far be­low your ca­pac­ity. Not on­ly is that a waste of your tal­ents, but it’s all too clear in your at­ti­tude. Lieu­tenant Brask­ie seems to be ba­si­cal­ly de­cent, and he may be some­what in­tel­li­gent, but you do not be­long un­der his su­per­vi­sion. Once he’s chief, your re­la­tion­ship will on­ly grow worse.”

“You think that ass­hole is in­tel­li­gent and de­cent? Christ, if you could spend a day work­ing for him, you’d change your tune.”

“It’s you, Vin­cent, who needs to change your tune. There are far worse po­lice­men than Lieu­tenant Brask­ie, and we’ve worked with them.”

“So you’re go­ing to save me, is that it?”

“No, Vin­cent. It’s the case that will save you. From your­self.”

D’Agos­ta stood up. “I don’t have to take this shit from you or any­one ” He pulled out his wal­let, dropped a crum­pled five on the ta­ble, and stalked out.

Ten min­utes lat­er D’Agos­ta found Pen­der­gast in the same place he’d left him, the crum­pled bill still sit­ting there. He pulled out the chair, sat down, and or­dered an­oth­er iced tea, his face burn­ing. Pen­der­gast mere­ly nod­ded as he fin­ished the last bite of his lunch. Then he re­moved a piece of pa­per from his jack­et pock­et and laid it gen­tly on the ta­ble.

“This is a list of the four peo­ple who at­tend­ed Jere­my Grove’s last par­ty, and the name and num­ber of the priest who re­ceived his fi­nal phone call. It’s as good a place to start as any. Con­sid­er­ing how short the list is, there are some rather in­ter­est­ing names on it.” He pushed the pa­per across the ta­ble.

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. The burn­ing sen­sa­tion be­gan to ebb as he looked at the names and ad­dress­es. Some­thing be­gan to stir in him: the old ex­cite­ment of work­ing a case. A good case.

“How’s this go­ing to work, with me be­ing on the Southamp­ton P.D. and all?”

“I will ar­range with Lieu­tenant Brask­ie to get you as­signed as the lo­cal FBI li­ai­son of­fi­cer.” “He’ll nev­er go for it.”

“On the con­trary, he will be on­ly too hap­py to get rid of you. And in any case, it won’t be pre­sent­ed as a re­quest. Brask­ie, as you point­ed out, is a po­lit­ical an­imal, and he will do as he is told.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

Pen­der­gast checked his watch. “Al­most two. Come on, Vin­cent, we’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Priests dine ear­ly, but we might just catch Fa­ther Cap­pi if we hur­ry.”

{ 6 }

D’Agos­ta felt like he’d been swal­lowed by Ahab’s white whale,cush­ioned as he was in the white leather in­te­ri­or of a ‘59 Rolls-​Royce Sil­ver Wraith. Chauf­feured, no less. Pen­der­gast had cer­tain­ly come up in the world since the bad old days of the mu­se­um mur­ders, when he drove a late-​mod­el Buick from the Bu­reau pool. Maybe a rel­ative died and left him a few bil­lion. He glanced over. Or maybe the time for dis­sem­bling had sim­ply passed.

The car was cruis­ing up Route 9, along a beau­ti­ful stretch of the mid­dle Hud­son Val­ley north of Pough­keep­sie. Af­ter months spent among low sand dunes and beach scrub, D’Agos­ta found the lush green­ery and rolling hills a re­lief to the eyes. Here and there, old man­sions could be seen: set far back from the road, over­look­ing the riv­er or tucked in among copses of trees. Some had signs iden­ti­fy­ing them as monas­ter­ies or re­treats; oth­ers still seemed to be in pri­vate own­er­ship. De­spite the warmth of the day, there were al­ready strong traces of fall col­or­ing in the trees that marched up the gen­tle slopes.

The car slowed, then slid in­to a long cob­bled drive­way, com­ing at last to a noise­less stop be­neath a red-​brick porte-​cochère. As he stepped out of the car, D’Agos­ta found him­self be­fore a ram­bling, Flem­ish-​style man­sion. A nar­row bell tow­er at the flank of the build­ing ap­peared to be a lat­er ad­di­tion. Be­yond, well-​tend­ed greensward swept down to­ward the Hud­son. A plaque screwed in­to the fa­cade an­nounced that the struc­ture was built in 1874 and was now des­ig­nat­ed a his­toric site on the Na­tion­al Reg­is­ter of His­toric Places.

Their knock was an­swered by a cowled monk in brown robes, a silken rope tied around his waist. With­out a word, he ush­ered them in­to an el­egant in­te­ri­or smelling of time and wax pol­ish. Pen­der­gast bowed and pre­sent­ed the monk with a card; in turn, the monk nod­ded and beck­oned. They fol­lowed him through sev­er­al turn­ings and twist­ings of cor­ri­dors to a spar­tan room, white­washed and bare save for a sin­gle cru­ci­fix and two rows of hard wood­en chairs along op­po­site walls. A sin­gle win­dow near the ex­posed rafters let in a bar of light.

The monk bowed and with­drew. Mo­ments lat­er, an­oth­er fig­ure ap­peared in the door. He, too, was dressed in a monk’s habit, but when he drew back the col­lar, D’Agos­ta was sur­prised to find a man well over six feet, broad-​shoul­dered, square-​jawed, with black eyes that sparkled with vig­or. In the back­ground, he could hear the faint peal of bells as the changes be­gan to ring in the tow­er. Some­how it gave him the shiv­ers.

“I’m Fa­ther Bernard Cap­pi,” the man said. “Wel­come to the Hyde Park Carthagini­an Monastery. Here we’re un­der a vow of si­lence, but we meet in this par­tic­ular room once a week to talk. We call it the Dis­pu­ta­tion Cham­ber, be­cause this is where we piss and moan. You build up a lot of re­sent­ments in a week of si­lence.” He swept his robes back, tak­ing a seat.

“This is my as­so­ciate, Sergeant D’Agos­ta,” Pen­der­gast said, fol­low­ing the monk’s lead. “He may want to ask ques­tions as well.”

“Pleased to make your ac­quain­tance.” The priest crushed his hand in greet­ing.This is no gen­tle lamb of God, thought D’Agos­ta. He eased down in the chair, shift­ing, try­ing hard to get com­fort­able. He failed. The room, de­spite the sun­ny day out­side, felt cold and damp. God, he would nev­er make a good monk.

“I sin­cere­ly apol­ogize for this in­tru­sion,” said Pen­der­gast.

“Quite all right. I just hope I can be of help. This is a trag­ic busi­ness.”

“We’ll take as lit­tle of your time as pos­si­ble. Per­haps we should be­gin with the tele­phone call.”

“As I told the po­lice, the call came to my home at 3:10 in the morn­ing-​the an­swer­ing ma­chine reg­is­tered the time-​but ev­ery year I take a two-​week re­treat here, and so I wasn’t home to re­ceive it. I check my mes­sages up­on ris­ing-​it’s a vi­ola­tion of the rules, but I’ve got an el­der­ly moth­er. I im­me­di­ate­ly head­ed out to Long Is­land, but, of course, it was too late.”

“Why did he call you?”

“That’s a com­pli­cat­ed ques­tion re­quir­ing a long an­swer.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded at him to pro­ceed.

“Jere­my Grove and I go way back. We met at Columbia as stu­dents many years ago. I went on to the priest­hood, and he went to Flo­rence to study art. In those days, we were both­well, I wouldn’t call us re­li­gious in the usu­al sense of the word. We were both spir­itu­al­ly­in­trigued . We used to ar­gue to all hours of the morn­ing about ques­tions of faith, epis­te­mol­ogy, the na­ture of good and evil, and so forth. I went on to study the­ol­ogy at Mount St. Mary’s. We con­tin­ued our friend­ship, and a few years lat­er I of­fi­ci­at­ed over Grove’s mar­riage.”

“I see,” mur­mured Pen­der­gast.

“Grove stayed in Flo­rence and I vis­it­ed him sev­er­al times. He was liv­ing in a beau­ti­ful vil­la in the hills south of the city.”

D’Agos­ta cleared his throat. “Where’d he get his mon­ey?”

“An in­ter­est­ing sto­ry, Sergeant. He bought a paint­ing at an auc­tion at Sothe­by’s that was billed as be­ing by a late fol­low­er of Raphael. Grove was able to prove it as the hand of the mas­ter him­self, turned around and sold it for thir­ty mil­lion dol­lars to the Met.” “Nice.”

“In­deed. Any­way, while liv­ing in Flo­rence, Grove had be­come quite de­vout. In an in­tel­lec­tu­al kind of way, as some peo­ple do. He loved to en­gage me in dis­cus­sion. There is, Mr. Pen­der­gast, such a thing as a Catholic in­tel­lec­tu­al, and that was Grove.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“He was very hap­pi­ly mar­ried. He adored his wife. And then, quite abrupt­ly, she left him, ran off with an­oth­er man. To say that Grove was dev­as­tat­ed is not say­ing enough. He was de­stroyed. And he fo­cused his anger on God.”

“I see,” Pen­der­gast replied.

“Grove felt be­trayed by God. He be­came . well, you cer­tain­ly couldn’t call him an athe­ist or an ag­nos­tic. Rather, he picked a fight with God. He de­lib­er­ate­ly em­barked on a life of sin and vi­olence against God, which in re­al­ity was a life of vi­olence against his own high­er self. He be­came an art crit­ic. Crit­icism is a pro­fes­sion which al­lows one a cer­tain li­cense to be vi­cious out­side the bounds of nor­mal civ­ilized be­hav­ior. One would nev­er tell an­oth­er per­son in pri­vate that his paint­ing was a re­volt­ing piece of trash, but the crit­ic thinks noth­ing of mak­ing the same pro­nounce­ment to the world as if he were per­form­ing a high moral du­ty. There is no pro­fes­sion more ig­no­ble than that of the crit­ic-​ex­cept per­haps that of the physi­cian pre­sid­ing at an ex­ecu­tion.”

“You’re right there,” said D’Agos­ta with feel­ing. “Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, cri­tique.”

Fa­ther Cap­pi laughed. “Very true, Sergeant D’Agos­ta.”

“Sergeant D’Agos­ta is a writ­er of mys­ter­ies,” ex­plained Pen­der­gast.

“Is that so! I love de­tec­tive sto­ries. Give me a ti­tle.”

“An­gels of Pur­ga­to­ryis his lat­est.”

“I’ll buy it im­me­di­ate­ly.”

D’Agos­ta mum­bled his thanks. For the sec­ond time that day, he found him­self feel­ing em­bar­rassed. He would have to talk to Pen­der­gast about sound­ing off about his abortive writ­ing ca­reer.

“Suf­fice to say,” the priest con­tin­ued, “Grove made a splen­did crit­ic. He sur­round­ed him­self with the most de­grad­ed, self­ish, and cru­el peo­ple he could find. Ev­ery­thing he did was ex­ces­sive-​drink­ing, eat­ing, sex, mon­ey, gos­sip. He gave din­ner par­ties like a Ro­man em­per­or, and he was of­ten on tele­vi­sion, sav­aging this per­son or that-​in the most charm­ing way, of course. His ar­ti­cles in the­New York Re­view of Books were avid­ly read. Nat­ural­ly he was a huge hit in New York City so­ci­ety.”

“And your re­la­tion­ship to him?”

“He couldn’t for­give me for what I rep­re­sent­ed. Our re­la­tion­ship sim­ply couldn’t con­tin­ue.” “When was this?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“Grove’s wife ran off in 1974, and we had our falling-​out short­ly there­after. I haven’t heard from him since. Not un­til this morn­ing, that is.”

“The mes­sage?”

The priest re­moved a mi­cro­cas­sette recorder from his pock­et. “I made a copy be­fore turn­ing it over to the po­lice.”

Hold­ing it up in one hand, he pressed the play but­ton. There was a beep. Then:

Bernard? Bernard! It’s Jere­my Grove. Are you there? Pick up the phone, for God’s sake!

The voice was high, strained, tin­ny.

Lis­ten, Bernard, I need you here, now. You’ve got to come. Southamp­ton, 3001 Dune Road. Come im­me­di­ate­ly. It’s . it’s hor­ri­ble. Bring a cross, Bible, holy wa­ter. My God, Bernard, he’s com­ing for me. Do you hear? He’s com­ing for me! I need to con­fess, I need for­give­ness, ab­so­lu­tion . For the love of God, Bernard, pick up the phone

His voice was cut off by the mes­sage ma­chine us­ing up its al­lot­ted time. The harsh voice echoed in­to si­lence in the bare, white­washed room. D’Agos­ta felt a shiv­er of hor­ror.

“Well,” said Pen­der­gast af­ter a mo­ment. “I’d be cu­ri­ous to hear your thoughts on that, Fa­ther.”

Fa­ther Cap­pi’s face was grim. “I be­lieve he felt damna­tion was up­on him.”

“Damna­tion? Or the dev­il?”

Cap­pi shift­ed un­com­fort­ably. “For what­ev­er rea­son, Jere­my Grove knew his death was im­mi­nent. He want­ed to ob­tain for­give­ness be­fore the end. That was even more im­por­tant to him than call­ing the po­lice. Grove, you see, nev­er stopped be­liev­ing.”

“Are you fa­mil­iar with the phys­ical ev­idence at the scene of the crime: the burned hoof­print, the traces of sul­fur and brim­stone, the pe­cu­liar heat­ing of the body?”

“I was told, yes.”

“How do you ex­plain it?”

“The work of a mor­tal man. Grove’s killer wished to make a state­ment about what kind of man Grove was. Hence the hoof­print, brim­stone, and all the rest.” Fa­ther Cap­pi slid the tape recorder back in­to his cas­sock. “There’s noth­ing mys­te­ri­ous about evil, Mr. Pen­der­gast. It’s here all around us, I see it ev­ery day. And I some­how doubt the re­al dev­il, what­ev­er form he might take, would wish to draw such un­wel­come at­ten­tion to his way of do­ing busi­ness.”

{ 7 }

In the first dark­ness fol­low­ing sun­set, the man known on­ly asWren walked up the broad, trash-​strewn thor­ough­fare of up­per River­side Drive. To his left lay the black out­lines of River­side Park and the Hud­son Riv­er be­yond; to his right, the vast hulks of once-​great man­sions, now emp­ty and de­cay­ing. Wren’s shad­ow flit­ted from street­lamp to street­lamp as the last touch of red left the in­car­na­dine sky. De­spite the gen­tri­fi­ca­tion creep­ing up from south­ern Man­hat­tan, this re­mained a dan­ger­ous neigh­bor­hood, one in which few would wish to be caught af­ter dark. But there was some­thing about Wren-​the ca­dav­er­ous­ness of his fea­tures, per­haps; or his quick, stealthy scut­tle of a walk; or the wild shock of white hair, un­nat­ural­ly thick for a man of his years-​that kept preda­tors at bay.

Now Wren stopped be­fore a large Beaux Arts man­sion that front­ed River­side Drive from 137th to 138th Streets. The four-​sto­ry pile was sur­round­ed by a tall spiked-​iron fence, furred in rust. Be­yond the fence, the lawn was over­grown with weeds and an­cient ailan­thus bush­es. The man­sion it­self seemed in de­crepi­tude: win­dows se­cure­ly board­ed up with tin, slate roof tiles chipped, wid­ow’s walk miss­ing half its met­al posts.

The iron gate block­ing the en­trance was ajar. With­out paus­ing, Wren slipped through the open­ing and down the cob­bled drive to the porte-​cochère. Here, trash had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed in the cor­ners, blown by the wind in­to fan­tas­tic shapes. In the black­ness be­neath the car­riage­way en­trance was set a lone oak­en door, fes­tooned with graf­fi­ti but sol­id-​look­ing nonethe­less. Wren raised his bony hand, rapped once, then again.

The echo of his knock was lost in the vast spaces with­in. For a minute, per­haps two, all re­mained still. Then there was the rasp of a heavy lock be­ing turned, and the door slow­ly creaked open. Yel­low light fil­tered out. Pen­der­gast stood in the door­way, one hand on the knob, the pale­ness of his fea­tures en­hanced by the in­can­des­cent glow of the hall­way. With­out a word, he ush­ered Wren in, then closed and locked the door be­hind them.

Wren fol­lowed the FBI agent through the mar­bled en­trance­way and in­to a long, wood­pan­eled gallery. Then he stopped abrupt­ly. The last time he had seen this house was dur­ing the sum­mer, when he’d spent sev­er­al weeks cat­aloging the man­sion’s vast col­lec­tions while Pen­der­gast was tak­ing his va­ca­tion in Kansas. At the time, the in­side of the house had been as much a ru­in as the out­side: pan­el­ing torn away, floor­boards ripped up, plas­ter and lath ex­posed, the by-​prod­ucts of an in­tense search. Along with Pen­der­gast, Wren was one of on­ly four-​no, that would be five-​liv­ing be­ings who knew the re­sults of that search, and what those re­sults meant.

But now the chest­nut wain­scot­ing shone with fresh pol­ish; the walls had been re­plas­tered and cov­ered in mut­ed Vic­to­ri­an wall­pa­per; and ev­ery­where, brass and cop­per fit­tings glowed in the dim light. In dozens of in­laid nooks and on mar­ble plinths sat spec­imens from a mag­nif­icent col­lec­tion: me­te­orites, gem­stones, rare but­ter­flies, fos­sils of long-​ex­tinct species. With­in this house, a cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties un­matched by any oth­er had been re­stored to a mag­nif­icence it had not en­joyed in a hun­dred years. Yet it was a cab­inet des­tined to re­main hid­den from the world.

“I love what you’ve done with the place,” Wren said, wav­ing his hand around the room. Pen­der­gast in­clined his head.

“I’m amazed you ac­com­plished it so quick­ly. Just two months ago the house was a sham­bles.”

Pen­der­gast be­gan lead­ing the way down the gallery. “Ca­jun crafts­men and car­pen­ters from south of the Bay­ou Têche served my fam­ily well in ear­li­er years. They proved them­selves in­valu­able once again. Though they did not ap­prove of the-​shall we say-​en­vi­rons?”

Wren chuck­led faint­ly, tune­less­ly. “I have to agree with them. It seems odd, you tak­ing up res­idence here, when you have such a de­light­ful place down at the Dako­ta that’s-” He stopped in mid­sen­tence, eyes widen­ing in un­der­stand­ing. “Un­less . ?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Yes, Wren. That is the rea­son. One of them, any­way.”

They were now pass­ing in­to a vast re­cep­tion hall, its domed ceil­ing re­paint­ed a Wedg­wood blue. Rip­pled glass cab­inets lined the walls, full of more ar­ti­facts, beau­ti­ful­ly dis­played. Small mount­ed di­nosaur skele­tons and taxi­der­mied an­imals were ar­rayed around the par­quet floor. Wren plucked at Pen­der­gast’s sleeve. “How is she?”

Pen­der­gast stopped. “She is well. Phys­ical­ly. Emo­tion­al­ly, as well as could be ex­pect­ed. We’re mak­ing slow progress. It’s been so long, you see.”

Wren nod­ded his un­der­stand­ing. Then he reached in­to his pock­et and with­drew a DVD.

“Here it is,” he said, pass­ing it to Pen­der­gast. “A com­plete in­ven­to­ry of the col­lec­tions with­in this house, cat­aloged and in­dexed to the best of my abil­ity.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“It still amazes me that the world’s pre­em­inent cab­inet of cu­riosi­ties is housed un­der this roof.”

“In­deed. And I trust you found the pieces I gave you from it pay­ment enough for your ser­vices?”

“Oh, yes,” Wren whis­pered. “Yes, yes, they were def­inite­ly pay­ment enough.”

“As I re­call, you were so long on restor­ing a cer­tain In­di­an ledger book I was afraid the right­ful own­er would get restive.”

“One can’t hur­ry art,” Wren sniffed. “And it was such abeau­ti­ful ledger book. It’s just that . it’s just­time , you know. Time bears away all things, as Vir­gil said. It’s bear­ing away my books right now, my love­ly books, faster than I can re­store them.” Wren’s domi­cile was the sev­enth and deep­est sub-​base­ment of the New York Pub­lic Li­brary, where he held court over un­cat­aloged le­gions of de­cay­ing books, their end­less stacks nav­iga­ble by no one but him­self.

“In­deed. Then it must be a re­lief to know that your work here is done.”

“I’d have in­ven­to­ried the li­brary as well, but­she seems to re­tain ev­ery­thing about it in her head.” And Wren al­lowed him­self a bit­ter laugh.

“Her knowl­edge of this house is re­mark­able, and I’ve found us­es for it al­ready.” Wren glanced at him in­quir­ing­ly.

“I’m plan­ning to ask her to ex­am­ine the li­brary’s hold­ings on Sa­tan.”

“Sa­tan? That’s a broad top­ic,hyp­ocrite lecteur .”

“As it hap­pens, I’m in­ter­est­ed in just one as­pect. The death of hu­man be­ings at the hand of the dev­il.”

“You mean, as in sell­ing one’s soul? Pay­ment for ser­vices ren­dered, that kind of thing?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“It’sstill a broad top­ic.”

“I’m not in­ter­est­ed in lit­er­ature, Wren. I’m in­ter­est­ed sole­ly in non­fic­tion sources. Pri­ma­ry sources. Prefer­ably first-​per­son and eye­wit­ness ac­counts.”

“You’ve been in this house too long.”

“I find it’s ben­efi­cial to keep her oc­cu­pied. And, as you said your­self, she knows the li­brary’s hold­ings so well.”

“I see.” And Wren let his gaze stray to­ward a set of doors in the far wall.

Pen­der­gast fol­lowed his gaze. “You wish to see her?”

“Are you sur­prised? I’m prac­ti­cal­ly her god­fa­ther, af­ter what hap­pened here this sum­mer. You for­get my role.”

“I for­get noth­ing, and will al­ways be in your debt for that, if noth­ing else.” And with­out an­oth­er word, Pen­der­gast stepped for­ward and noise­less­ly opened the doors.

Wren peered through them. His yel­low eyes grew bright. On the far side lay a large and sump­tu­ous­ly ap­point­ed li­brary. Case af­ter case of rich­ly bound books rose to the ceil­ing, fire­light warm­ing their leather spines. A dozen small so­fas and wing chairs were ar­ranged across a thick Per­sian car­pet. In one of the chairs, sit­ting be­fore the fire, was a young wom­an, pag­ing through an over­size book of lithographs. She was wear­ing a pinafore over a white dress and black stock­ings, and as she turned an­oth­er page, the fire­light shone on her slen­der limbs, her dark hair and eyes. On a low ta­ble near­by sat a tea ser­vice, laid out for two.

Pen­der­gast cleared his throat gen­tly and the girl looked up. Her eyes went from the FBI agent to Wren, and for a mo­ment, fear flashed through them. But then recog­ni­tion spread across her fea­tures. She put the book aside, stood up, smoothed her pinafore, and wait­ed for the two men to ap­proach.

“How are you, Con­stance?” Wren asked in as sooth­ing a croak as he could man­age.

“Very well, Mr. Wren, thank you.” Con­stance gave a small curt­sy. “And your­self?”

“Busy, very busy. My books take up all my time.”

“I shouldn’t think one would speak grudg­ing­ly of such a no­ble oc­cu­pa­tion.” Con­stance’s tone was grave, but the faintest of smiles touched her lips-​in amuse­ment? con­de­scen­sion?-and was gone again be­fore Wren could be sure.

“No, no, of course not.” Wren tried not to stare. How, in such a short time, could he have for­got­ten that stud­ied voice with its quaint con­struc­tions? How could he for­get those eyes, so very an­cient, yet set in such a young and beau­ti­ful face? He cleared his throat. “So tell me, Con­stance, how you pass your days.”

“Rather tran­quil­ly. In the morn­ings, I read Latin and Greek, un­der the di­rec­tion of Aloy­sius. My af­ter­noons are my own, and I gen­er­al­ly spend them brows­ing the col­lec­tions, cor­rect­ing the oc­ca­sion­al in­ac­cu­rate la­bel I hap­pen to come across.”

Wren dart­ed a quick look at Pen­der­gast.

“We have a late tea, dur­ing which Aloy­sius gen­er­al­ly reads to me from the news­pa­pers. Af­ter din­ner, I prac­tice the vi­olin. Wretched­ly. Aloy­sius suf­fers me to be­lieve he finds my play­ing bear­able.”

“Dr. Pen­der­gast is the most hon­est of peo­ple.”

“Let us say Dr. Pen­der­gast is the most tact­ful of peo­ple.”

“Be that as it may, I’d love to hear you play some­time.”

“I would be de­light­ed.” And Con­stance curt­sied again.

Wren nod­ded, turned to leave.

“Mr. Wren?” Con­stance called af­ter him.

Wren turned, bee­tled eye­brows raised in query.

She looked back at him. “Thank you again. For ev­ery­thing.”

Pen­der­gast qui­et­ly shut the doors to the li­brary and ac­com­pa­nied Wren back down the echo­ing gal­leries.

“You read her the­news­pa­pers ?” Wren asked.

“Just se­lect­ed ar­ti­cles, of course. It seemed the eas­iest form of-​how best to put it?-so­cial de­com­pres­sion. We’re now up to the 1960s.”

“And her noc­tur­nal, ah, ram­bles?”

“Now that she’s un­der my care, there’s no need for for­ag­ing. And I’ve de­cid­ed on the site of her re­cu­per­ation: my great-​aunt’s es­tate on the Hud­son. It’s de­sert­ed these days. It should be a good rein­tro­duc­tion to sun­light, if han­dled gen­tly enough.”

“Sun­light.” Wren re­peat­ed the word slow­ly, as if tast­ing it. “It still seems im­pos­si­ble she was there all that time, af­ter what hap­pened, in those tun­nels down by the riv­er ac­cess. I keep won­der­ing why she re­vealed her­self to me.”

“Per­haps she’d grown to trust you. She’d watched you at work long enough, over the sum­mer. You clear­ly loved the col­lec­tions, which are pre­cious to her as well. Or per­haps she had just reached the point where hu­man con­tact was nec­es­sary, no mat­ter what the risk.” Wren shook his head. “Are you sure, re­al­ly sure, she’s on­ly nine­teen years old?” “That ques­tion is more dif­fi­cult than it sounds. Phys­ical­ly, her body is that of a nine­teen-​year-​old.”

They had reached the front door, and Wren wait­ed for Pen­der­gast to un­lock it. “Thank you, Wren,” the FBI agent said, open­ing the door. Night air rushed in, car­ry­ing with it the faint sounds of traf­fic.

Wren stepped through the door, paused, turned back. “Have you de­cid­ed what you’re go­ing to do about her?”

For a mo­ment, Pen­der­gast did not re­ply. Then he nod­ded silent­ly.

{ 8 }

The Re­nais­sance Sa­lon of the Metropoli­tan Mu­se­um of Art­was one of the mu­se­um’s most re­mark­able spaces. Tak­en piece by piece, stone by stone, from the an­cient Palaz­zo Dati of Flo­rence and re­assem­bled in Man­hat­tan, it re-​cre­at­ed in per­fect de­tail a late Re­nais­sance­sa­lone. It was the most im­pos­ing and aus­tere of all the grand gal­leries in the mu­se­um, and for this rea­son, it was cho­sen for the memo­ri­al ser­vice of Jere­my Grove.

D’Agos­ta felt like an id­iot in his cop’s uni­form, with its Southamp­ton P.D. patch in gold and blue and its low­ly sergeant’s stripes. Peo­ple turned to­ward him quick­ly, stared as if he was some kind of freak, and then just as quick­ly dis­missed him as hired help and turned away.

As he fol­lowed Pen­der­gast in­to the hall, D’Agos­ta was sur­prised to see a long ta­ble groan­ing with food, and an­oth­er sport­ing enough bot­tles of wine and liquor to lay low a herd of rhi­nos. Some memo­ri­al ser­vice. More like an Irish wake. D’Agos­ta had been to a few of those dur­ing his NYPD days and felt lucky to have sur­vived them. They’d ob­vi­ous­ly set this whole thing up with re­mark­able speed-​Grove had been dead on­ly two days.

The room was crowd­ed. There were no chairs: peo­ple were meant to min­gle, not sit rev­er­en­tial­ly. Sev­er­al tele­vi­sion crews had set up their gear near a car­pet-​cov­ered stage, which was bare save for a small podi­um. A harp­si­chord stood in a far cor­ner of the sa­lon, but it was bare­ly au­di­ble over the noise of the crowd. If there was any­body shed­ding tears over Grove, they were hid­ing it pret­ty well.

Pen­der­gast leaned over. “Vin­cent, if you are in­ter­est­ed in any co­mestibles, now is the time to act. With a crowd like this, they won’t last long.”

“Co­mestibles? You mean that food on the ta­ble? No, thanks.” His dal­liance with the lit­er­ary world had taught him that events like these served things like fish eggs and cheese that smelled so bad it en­cour­aged you to check the bot­tom of your shoes.

“Then shall we cir­cu­late?” Pen­der­gast be­gan mov­ing sylph­like through the crowd. Now a lone man mount­ed the stage: im­pec­ca­bly dressed, tall, hair care­ful­ly groomed back, face glis­ten­ing with a pro­fes­sion­al make­up job. The crowd hushed even be­fore he reached the mi­cro­phone.

Pen­der­gast took D’Agos­ta’s el­bow. “Sir Ger­vase de Vache, di­rec­tor of the mu­se­um.”

The man plucked the mi­cro­phone from the podi­um, his el­egant fig­ure straight and dig­ni­fied.

“I wel­come you all,” he said, ap­par­ent­ly feel­ing it un­nec­es­sary to in­tro­duce him­self. “We are here to memo­ri­al­ize our friend and col­league Jere­my Grove-​but as he would have want­ed it: with food, drink, mu­sic, and good cheer, not long faces and lugubri­ous speech­es.” He spoke with a trace of a French ac­cent.

Al­though Pen­der­gast had stopped the mo­ment the di­rec­tor gained the stage, D’Agos­ta no­ticed that the FBI agent was still scour­ing the room with his rest­less eyes.

“I first met Jere­my Grove some twen­ty years ago, when he re­viewed our Mon­et ex­hi­bi­tion for­Down­town . It was-​how shall I say it?-a clas­sic Grove re­view.”

There was a rip­ple of know­ing laugh­ter.

“Jere­my Grove was, above all else, a man who told the truth as he saw it, un­flinch­ing­ly and with style. His rapi­er wit and ir­rev­er­ent sal­lies en­livened many a din­ner par­ty . “

D’Agos­ta tuned out. Pen­der­gast was still cease­less­ly scan­ning the room, and now he be­gan mov­ing again, slow­ly, like a shark that has just scent­ed blood in the wa­ter. D’Agos­ta fol­lowed. He liked to watch Pen­der­gast in ac­tion. There, at the liquor ta­ble, pour­ing him­self a stiff drink, was a strik­ing young man dressed en­tire­ly in black, with a neat goa­tee. He had ex­cep­tion­al­ly large, deep, liq­uid eyes, and fin­gers that were even more spi­dery than Pen­der­gast’s.

“Mau­rice Vil­nius, the ab­stract ex­pres­sion­ist painter,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured. “One of many ben­efi­cia­ries of Grove’s min­is­tra­tions.”

“What’s that sup­posed to mean?”

“I re­call a re­view Grove wrote of Vil­nius’s paint­ings some years back. The phrase that best sticks in my mind is:These paint­ings are so bad they in­spire re­spect, even awe. It takes a spe­cial kind of tal­ent to pro­duce medi­ocrity at this lev­el. Vil­nius has such tal­ent in abun­dance. “

D’Agos­ta swal­lowed a laugh. “That’s worth killing over.” He hasti­ly put his face in or­der; Vil­nius had turned to see them ap­proach.

“Ah, Mau­rice, how are you?” Pen­der­gast asked.

The painter raised two very black eye­brows. As a fel­low suf­fer­er of bad re­views, D’Agos­ta had ex­pect­ed to see anger, or at least re­sent­ment, on the flushed face. In­stead, it wore a broad smile.

“Have we met?”

“My name’s Pen­der­gast. We met briefly at your open­ing at Ga­lerie Del­litte last year. Beau­ti­ful work. I’ve been con­sid­er­ing ac­quir­ing a piece for my apart­ment in the Dako­ta.”

Vil­nius’s smile grew broad­er. “De­light­ed.” He spoke with a Rus­sian ac­cent. “Come by any­time. Come by to­day. It would make my fifth sale this week.”

“In­deed?” D’Agos­ta no­ticed Pen­der­gast was care­ful to keep sur­prise from his voice. In the back­ground, the di­rec­tor’s voice droned on:”. a man of courage and de­ter­mi­na­tion, who did not go gen­tly in­to that good night . “

“Mau­rice,” Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued, “I’d like to speak with you about Grove’s last-“

Sud­den­ly, a mid­dle-​aged wom­an came up to Vil­nius, her ca­dav­er­ous fig­ure draped in a se­quined dress. In tow was a tall man in a black tuxe­do, his bald head pol­ished to gem­stone bril­liance.

The wom­an tugged at Vil­nius’s sleeve. “Mau­rice, dar­ling, I justhad to con­grat­ulate you in per­son. That new re­view is sim­ply won­der­ful. And­so long over­due.”

“You’ve seen it al­ready?” Vil­nius replied, turn­ing to­ward these new ar­rivals.

“Just this af­ter­noon,” the tall man replied. “A proof copy was faxed to my gallery.”

“. and now, one of Jere­my’s beloved sonatas by Haydn . “

Peo­ple con­tin­ued talk­ing, ig­nor­ing the man at the podi­um. Vil­nius glanced back to­ward Pen­der­gast for a mo­ment. “Nice to have met you again, Mr. Pen­der­gast,” he said, draw­ing a card from his pock­et and hand­ing it to the FBI agent. “Please drop by the stu­dio any­time.” Then he turned back to the wom­an and her es­cort. As they walked away, D’Agos­ta could hear Vil­nius say­ing, “It’s re­mark­able to me how quick­ly news spreads. The re­view isn’t even due to be pub­lished for an­oth­er day.”

D’Agos­ta looked at Pen­der­gast. He, too, was watch­ing Vil­nius walk away. “In­ter­est­ing,” he mur­mured un­der his breath.

They drift­ed back in­to the crowd. De Vache had con­clud­ed his speech, and the noise lev­el had risen once again. The harpischord had re­sumed but was now com­plete­ly in­audi­ble over the drink­ing, eat­ing, and gos­sip­ing.

Sud­den­ly, Pen­der­gast took off at high speed, ar­row­ing through the crowd. D’Agos­ta re­al­ized his aim was the di­rec­tor of the Met, step­ping down from the stage.

De Vache paused at their ap­proach. “Ah, Pen­der­gast. Don’t tell mey­ou’re on the case “

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

The French­man pursed his lips. “Is this of­fi­cial? Or were you per­haps a friend of his?”

“Did Grove­have any friends?”

De Vache chuck­led. “True, very true. Friend­ship was a stranger to Jere­my, some­thing he kept at arm’s length. The last time I met him was-​let me see-​at a din­ner par­ty. I re­call he asked the man across from him-​a per­fect­ly harm­less old gen­tle­man with den­tures-​to stop clack­ing his front in­cisors while he ate; that he was a man, not a rat. Some­one lat­er dripped sauce on his tie, and Jere­my in­quired if per­chance he was re­lat­ed to Jack­son Pol­lock.” Sir Ger­vase chuck­led. “And that was just one din­ner par­ty. Can a man who rou­tine­ly talks this way have friends?”

Sir Ger­vase was called away by a group of jew­el­ry-​laden ma­trons. He apol­ogized to Pen­der­gast, nod­ded at D’Agos­ta, then turned away. Pen­der­gast’s eyes went back to roam­ing the room, fi­nal­ly lock­ing on a group of peo­ple near the harp­si­chord. “Voilà,” he said. “The moth­er lode.”

“Who?”

“Those three talk­ing to­geth­er. Along with Vil­nius, whom you just met, they were the guests at Grove’s last din­ner par­ty. And our rea­son for be­ing here.”

D’Agos­ta’s eye land­ed first on an un­ex­cep­tion­al-​look­ing man in a gray suit. Be­side him stood a wraith­like el­der­ly wom­an, cov­ered with pow­der and rouge, dressed to the nines, man­icured, coiffed, and no doubt Botoxed in an ul­ti­mate­ly failed at­tempt to look less than six­ty. She wore a neck­lace of emer­alds so big D’Agos­ta feared her scrawny shoul­ders would tire car­ry­ing their weight. But the stand­out among the group was the fig­ure at her oth­er el­bow: an enor­mous­ly fat man in a gor­geous, dove-​gray suit, re­plete with silk waist­coat, white gloves, and gold chain.

“The wom­an,” mur­mured Pen­der­gast, “is La­dy Mil­banke, wid­ow of the sev­enth Baron Mil­banke. She is said to be a poi­sonous gos­sip, a drinker of ab­sinthe, and an in­de­fati­ga­ble séance or­ga­niz­er and rais­er of the dead.”

“She looks like she needs a lit­tle rais­ing from the dead her­self.”

“Vin­cent, I have missed your tren­chant sense of hu­mor. The heavy­set gen­tle­man is un­doubt­ed­ly Count Fos­co. I have long heard of him, but this is the first time I’ve seen him.”

“He must weigh three hun­dred pounds if he weighs an ounce.”

“And yet ob­serve how light­ly he car­ries him­self. And the tall gen­tle­man in the gray suit is Jonathan Fred­er­ick, the art crit­ic forArt & An­tiques .”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

“Shall we ven­ture in­to the li­on’s den?”

“You’re the boss.”

Im­me­di­ate­ly, Pen­der­gast strode over, smooth­ly and shame­less­ly in­sin­uat­ed him­self in­to the group, and, seiz­ing La­dy Mil­banke’s hand, raised it to­ward his lips.

The old wom­an blushed be­neath her make­up. “Have we had the plea­sure-?”

“No,” said Pen­der­gast. “More’s the pity. My name is Pen­der­gast.”

“Pen­der­gast. And who is your friend? A body­guard?” This elicit­ed a round of tit­ters from the group.

Pen­der­gast chuck­led along with them. “In a man­ner of speak­ing.”

“If he’s moon­light­ing,” the tall man named Fred­er­ick said, “he should do so out of uni­form. This is, af­ter all, a memo­ri­al ser­vice.”

D’Agos­ta not­ed that Pen­der­gast did not both­er to cor­rect the man about the moon­light­ing. In­stead, he shook his head sad­ly, ig­nor­ing the com­ment. “Ter­ri­bly sad about Grove, don’t you think?”

Nods all around.

“I heard a ru­mor he gave a din­ner par­ty the night of his death.”

There was a sud­den si­lence.

“Well now, Mr. Pen­der­gast,” said La­dy Mil­banke. “What an ex­traor­di­nary com­ment. You see, we were all at that din­ner par­ty.”

“In­deed. They say the mur­der­er might have been a guest at the par­ty.”

“How ex­cit­ing!” cried La­dy Mil­banke. “It’s just like an Agatha Christie nov­el. As a mat­ter of fact, we each had our own mo­tives to do away with Grove. At least, weused to.” She ex­changed brief glances with the oth­ers. “But then, we weren’t the on­ly ones. Isn’t that so, Ja­son?” And, rais­ing her voice, she beck­oned a young man who was pass­ing by, cham­pagne flute in one hand. An or­chid drooped from the but­ton­hole of his fawn jack­et, and his hair was the col­or of mar­malade.

The youth stopped, frowned. “What are you talk­ing about?”

“This is Ja­son Prince.” She laughed teas­ing­ly. “Ja­son, I was just telling Mr. Pen­der­gast here how many peo­ple in this room had cause to mur­der Jere­my Grove. And you’re known to be a jeal­ous lad.”

“She’s full of crap, as usu­al,” said Prince, his face flush­ing. Turn­ing on his heels, he strode away.

La­dy Mil­banke is­sued an­oth­er tin­kle of laugh­ter. “And Jonathan here had been skew­ered by Grove more than once in his time. Right, Jonathan?”

The gray-​haired man smiled iron­ical­ly. “I joined a rather large club.”

“He called you the in­flat­able love doll of art crit­ics, didn’t he?”

The man didn’t bat an eye. “Grove did have a turn of phrase. But I thought we agreed this was all be­hind us, Eve­lyn. That was more than five years ago.”

“And then there’s the count. A prime sus­pect. Look at him! Ob­vi­ous­ly a man of dark se­crets. He’s Ital­ian, and you knowthem .”

The count smiled. “We Ital­ians are de­vi­ous crea­tures.”

D’Agos­ta looked at the count with cu­rios­ity. He was struck by the man’s eyes, which were a dark gray col­or, with the unique clear­ness of deep wa­ter. The man had long gray hair, swept back, and skin as pink as a ba­by’s, de­spite his age, which had to ap­proach six­ty.

“And then there’sme ,” La­dy Mil­banke con­tin­ued. “You might think I had the best mo­tive of all to mur­der him. We were once lovers.Cherchez la dame. “

D’Agos­ta shud­dered and won­dered if such a thing was phys­ical­ly pos­si­ble.

The crit­ic, Fred­er­ick, seemed to be equal­ly put off by this im­age, be­cause he be­gan back­ing off. “Ex­cuse me, there’s some­one I need to speak with.”

La­dy Mil­banke smiled. “About your new ap­point­ment, I sup­pose?”

“As a mat­ter of fact, yes. Mr. Pen­der­gast, a plea­sure to have met you.”

There was a brief pause in the con­ver­sa­tion. D’Agos­ta found that the count’s gray eyes had set­tled on Pen­der­gast and that a small smile was play­ing about his lips. “Pray tell, Mr. Pen­der­gast,” said the count. “Whatis your of­fi­cial in­ter­est in this case?”

Pen­der­gast didn’t re­act. By way of re­sponse, he slipped a hand in­to his jack­et and re­moved his wal­let, open­ing it slow­ly and rev­er­ent­ly, as if it was a case of jew­els. The gold badge flashed in the lights of the great hall.

“Ec­ce signum!”the count cried de­light­ed­ly.

The old la­dy took a step back. “You? Po­lice?”

“Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

La­dy Mil­banke round­ed on the count. “You knew and didn’ttell me? And here I’ve made all of us in­to sus­pects!” Her voice had lost its un­der­tone of amuse­ment.

The count smiled. “I knew the minute he ap­proached that he was of the con­stab­ulary.”

“He doesn’t look like an FBI agent tome .”

The count turned to Pen­der­gast. “I hope Eve­lyn’s in­for­ma­tion will be use­ful to you, sir?”

“Very,” said Pen­der­gast. “I have heard much about you, Count Fos­co.”

The count smiled.

“I be­lieve you and Grove have been friends a long time?”

“We shared a love of mu­sic and art, and that high­est mar­riage of the two: opera. Are you by chance a lover of opera?”

“I am not.”

“No?” The count arched his eye­brows. “And why not?”

“Opera has al­ways struck me as vul­gar and in­fan­tile. I pre­fer the sym­phon­ic form: pure mu­sic, with­out such props as sets, cos­tumes, melo­dra­ma, sex, and vi­olence.”

It seemed to D’Agos­ta the count had gone stock-​still. But then he re­al­ized Fos­co was laugh­ing silent­ly, vis­ible on­ly from an in­ter­nal con­vul­sion. The laugh went on for quite a long time. Then he wiped the cor­ners of his eyes with a hand­ker­chief and pat­ted his plump hands to­geth­er light­ly, in ap­pre­ci­ation. “Well, well. I see you are a gen­tle­man with firm opin­ions.” He paused, leaned to­ward Pen­der­gast, and be­gan to sing in a low tone, his deep bass voice bare­ly keep­ing above the noise of the room.

Braveg­gia, urla! T’af­fret­ta

a pale­sar­mi il fon­do dell’al­ma ria!

He paused, leaned back, beam­ing around. “Tosca, one of my fa­vorites.”

D’Agos­ta saw Pen­der­gast’s lips tight­en a lit­tle. “Shout, brag­gart,” he trans­lat­ed. “What a rush you’re in to show me the last dregs of your vile soul!”

The group be­came still at what ap­peared to be an in­sult di­rect­ed at the count. But the count on­ly broke in­to a smile him­self. “Bra­vo. You speak Ital­ian.”

“Ci pro­vo,”said Pen­der­gast.

“My dear fel­low, if you can trans­late Puc­ci­ni that well, I should say you do much bet­ter than mere­ly try­ing. So you dis­like opera. I can on­ly hope you are less of a philis­tine when it comes to art. Have you had a chance to ad­mire that Ghirlandaio over there? Sub­lime.”

“Get­ting to the case,” said Pen­der­gast, “I won­der, Count, if you could an­swer a few ques­tions?”

The count nod­ded.

“What was Grove’s mood on the night of his death? Was he up­set? Fright­ened?”

“Yes, he was. But come, shall we take a clos­er look?” The count moved to­ward the paint­ing. The oth­ers fol­lowed.

“Count Fos­co, you were one of the last peo­ple to see Jere­my Grove alive. I would ap­pre­ci­ate your help.”

The count pat­ted his hands to­geth­er again. “For­give me if I seem flip­pant. I want to help. As it hap­pens, your line of work has al­ways fas­ci­nat­ed me. I’m an ar­dent read­er of En­glish mys­ter­ies; they are per­haps the on­ly thing the En­glish are good for. But I must con­fess my­self un­used to be­ing the­sub­ject of de­tec­tion. Not an al­to­geth­er agree­able feel­ing.”

“It is nev­er agree­able. What makes you think Grove was up­set that night?”

“Over the course of the evening, he couldn’t sit still for more than a few min­utes. He hard­ly drank at all, a strik­ing de­par­ture from his usu­al habits. At times, he spoke loud­ly, al­most gid­di­ly. Oth­er times he wept.”

“Do you know why he was up­set?”

“Yes. He was in fear of the dev­il.”

La­dy Mil­banke clapped her hands in an ex­cess of ex­cite­ment.

Pen­der­gast peered at Fos­co in­tent­ly. “And what makes you think that?”

“As I was leav­ing, he asked me a most pe­cu­liar ques­tion. Know­ing I was Catholic, he begged to bor­row my cross.”

“And?”

“I loaned it to him. And I must ad­mit to be­ing a tri­fle alarmed about its safe­ty since read­ing the morn­ing pa­pers. How may I re­trieve it?”

“You can’t.”

“And why not?”

“It’s been en­tered in­to ev­idence.”

“Ah!” the count said, re­lieved. “But in time I may re­trieve it, yes?”

“I don’t see why you’d want to, save per­haps the jew­els it held.”

“And why is that?”

“It’s been burned and melt­ed be­yond all recog­ni­tion.”

“No!” the count cried. “A price­less fam­ily rel­ic, passed down for a dozen gen­er­ations. And it was a present to me from my non­no, on my con­fir­ma­tion!” He mas­tered him­self quick­ly. “Fate is a capri­cious thing, Mr. Pen­der­gast. Not on­ly did Grove die a day too soon to do me an im­por­tant ser­vice, but he took my prized heir­loom as part­ner to his de­struc­tion. So goes life.” He dust­ed his hands. “And now an ex­change of in­for­ma­tion, per­haps? I have sat­is­fied your cu­rios­ity, you sat­is­fy mine.”

“I re­gret I can’t talk about the case.”

“My dear sir, I don’t speak of the case. I speak of this paint­ing! I would val­ue your opin­ion.”

Pen­der­gast turned to the paint­ing and said, in an off­hand way, “I de­tect the in­flu­ence of the Porti­nari Trip­tych in those peas­ants’ faces.”

Count Fos­co smiled. “What ge­nius! What fore­sight!”

Pen­der­gast in­clined his head slight­ly.

“I speak not of you, my friend, but of the artist. You see, that must have been quite a feat, since Ghirlandaio paint­ed this lit­tle pan­elthree years­be­fore the Porti­nari Trip­tych ar­rived in Flo­rence from Flan­ders.” He beamed, look­ing around at his au­di­ence.

Pen­der­gast cool­ly re­turned the gaze. “Ghirlandaio saw the stud­ies for the paint­ing which were sent to the Porti­nari fam­ily five years be­fore the al­tar­piece ar­rived. I’m sur­prised, Count, to find you not in pos­ses­sion of that fact.”

The count lost his smile for on­ly a mo­ment. Then he clapped with gen­uine ad­mi­ra­tion. “Well done, well done! It seems you have best­ed me on my home turf. I re­al­ly must get to know you bet­ter, Mr. Pen­der­gast: for a mem­ber of the cara­binieri, you are ex­cep­tion­al­ly cul­ti­vat­ed.”

{ 9 }

D’Agos­ta lis­tened to the dis­tant ring­ing from the ear­piece, so­faint the oth­er phone could have been ring­ing on the moon. If on­ly his son, Vin­cent, would an­swer. He re­al­ly didn’t want to talk to his wife.

There was a click and that fa­mil­iar voice came on. “Yes?” She nev­er said­hel­lo , she al­ways saidyes , as if his call was al­ready an im­po­si­tion.

“It’s me.”

“Yes?” she re­peat­ed.

Je­sus Christ. “Me, Vin­nie.”

“I know who it is.”

“I’d like to talk to my son, please.”

There was a pause. “You can’t.”

D’Agos­ta felt a flare of anger. “Why not?”

“Here in Cana­da we have some­thing called­school .”

D’Agos­ta felt stu­pe­fied. Of course. It was Fri­day, close to noon. “I for­got.” “I know you for­got. Just like you for­got to call on his birth­day.”

“You left the phone off the hook.”

“The dog must’ve knocked it off the hook. But you could have sent a card, a present.” “Idid send a card and a present.”

“It ar­rived the day af­ter.”

“I sent it ten days be­fore his birth­day, for chris­sakes. You can’t blame me for slow mail.” This was in­sane. Once again he was let­ting him­self get dragged in­to a sense­less ar­gu­ment. Why did they feel this des­per­ate need to fight? The best thing to do was just not re­spond.

“Look, Ly­dia, I’ll call lat­er tonight, okay?”

“Vin­cent’s go­ing out with friends.”

“I’ll call to­mor­row morn­ing.”

“You’ll prob­ably miss him. He’s got base­ball prac­tice all day-“

“Have him callme , then.”

“You think we can af­ford to make long-​dis­tance calls on what you’re pay­ing?”

“You know I’m do­ing the best I can. No one’s stop­ping you from mov­ing back here, you know.”

“Vin­nie, you dragged us kick­ing and scream­ing up here. We didn’t want to go. It was tough at first. But then some­thing amaz­ing hap­pened. I made a life here. Ilike it here. And so does Vin­cent. We have­friends , Vin­nie. We’ve got al­ife . And now, just when we’re on our feet again, you want us to go back to Queens. Let me tell you, I’mn­ev­er go­ing back to Queens.”

D’Agos­ta said noth­ing. It was just the kind of dec­la­ra­tion he hadn’t want­ed to pro­voke. Je­sus, he had re­al­ly blown it with this phone call. And all he want­ed to do was talk to his son.

“Ly­dia, noth­ing’s en­graved in stone. We can work some­thing out.”

“Work some­thin­gout ? It’s time we faced-“

“Don’t say it, Ly­dia.”

“Iam go­ing to say it. It’s time we faced the facts. It’s time-“

“Don’t.”

“-time we got di­vorced.”

D’Agos­ta slow­ly hung up the phone. Twen­ty-​five years, just like that. He felt short of breath; al­most sick. He wouldn’t think about it. He had work to do.

The Southamp­ton po­lice head­quar­ters was lo­cat­ed in a charm­ing, if di­lap­idat­ed, old wood­en build­ing that had once been the club­house of the Slate Rock Coun­try Club. The po­lice force must have la­bored hard, D’Agos­ta re­flect­ed bleak­ly, to turn its in­sides in­to a typ­ical charm­less linoleum, cin­der-​block, and puke-​col­ored po­lice sta­tion. It even had that uni­ver­sal head­quar­ters smell: that com­bi­na­tion of sweat, over­heat­ed pho­to­copy ma­chines, dirty met­al, and chlo­rine clean­ing agents.

D’Agos­ta felt a knot in his gut. He’d been out of the place for three days now, run­ning around with Pen­der­gast, re­port­ing to the lieu­tenant by phone. Now he had to face the lieu­tenant in per­son. The phone call to his wife had left him a wreck. He re­al­ly should have wait­ed and called her lat­er.

He walked through the out­er of­fices, nod­ding this way and that. No­body looked par­tic­ular­ly glad to see him; he wasn’t pop­ular with the reg­ular guys. He hadn’t joined the bowl­ing club or hung out with them at Tiny’s, toss­ing darts. He’d al­ways fig­ured he was just pass­ing through on his way back to NYC, hadn’t thought it worth the time to make friends. Per­haps that had been a mis­take.

Shak­ing such thoughts away, he rapped on the frost­ed-​glass door that led to the lieu­tenant’s small of­fice. Fad­ed gold let­ters, edged in black, spelled out­BRASK­IE .

“Yeah?” came the voice.

In­side, Brask­ie sat be­hind an old met­al desk. To one side was a stack of news­pa­pers, from the­Post and theTimes to theEast Hamp­ton Record, all with front-​page sto­ries about the case. The lieu­tenant looked ter­ri­ble: dark cir­cles un­der the eyes, face lined. D’Agos­ta al­most felt sor­ry for him.

Brask­ie nod­ded him in­to a seat. “News?”

D’Agos­ta ran through ev­ery­thing while Brask­ie lis­tened. When he was done, Brask­ie wiped his hand over his pre­ma­ture­ly thin­ning scalp and sighed. “The chief gets back to­mor­row, and ba­si­cal­ly all we’ve got so far is jack. No en­try or egress, no la­tents, no hair or fiber, no eye­wit­ness­es, no noth­ing. When’s Pen­der­gast com­ing?”

He sound­ed al­most hope­ful, he was that des­per­ate.

“Half an hour. He want­ed me to make sure it was all ready.”

“It’s ready.” The lieu­tenant rose with a sigh. “Fol­low me.”

The ev­idence room was housed in a se­ries of portable, con­tain­er-​type struc­tures, fit­ted end-​to-​end be­hind the po­lice sta­tion, at the edge of one of Southamp­ton’s last re­main­ing pota­to fields. The lieu­tenant swiped his card through the door scan­ner and en­tered. With­in, D’Agos­ta saw that Joe Lil­lian, a fel­low sergeant, was lay­ing out the last of the ev­idence on a ta­ble in the mid­dle of the long, nar­row space. On both sides, shelves and lock­ers stretched back in­to the gloom, crammed with ev­idence go­ing back God knew how many years.

D’Agos­ta eyed the ta­ble. Sergeant Lil­lian had done a nice job. Pa­pers, glas­sine en­velopes, sam­ple tubes-​ev­ery­thing was tagged and laid out neat as a pin.

“Think this’ll meet with your spe­cial agent’s ap­proval?” Brask­ie asked.

D’Agos­ta wasn’t sure if it was sar­casm or des­per­ation he de­tect­ed in Brask­ie’s voice. But be­fore he could con­tem­plate a re­ply, he heard a fa­mil­iar hon­eyed voice be­hind them.

“In­deed it does, Lieu­tenant Brask­ie; in­deed it does.”

Brask­ie fair­ly jumped. Pen­der­gast stood in­side the door­way, hands be­hind his back; he must’ve some­how slipped in be­hind them.

Pen­der­gast strolled up to the ta­ble, hands still clasped be­hind his back, lips pursed, ex­am­in­ing the ev­idence as keen­ly as a con­nois­seur ad­mir­ing a ta­ble laden with pre­cious art.

“Help your­self to any­thing,” said Brask­ie. “I’ve no doubt your foren­sics lab is bet­ter than ours.”

“And I doubt the killer left any foren­sic ev­idence be­yond that which hewant­ed to leave. No, for the mo­ment I’m mere­ly brows­ing. But what’s this? The melt­ed cross. May I?”

Sergeant Lil­lian picked up the en­ve­lope hold­ing the cross and hand­ed it to Pen­der­gast. The agent held it gin­ger­ly, turn­ing it slow­ly this way and that. “I’d like to send this to a lab in New York.”

“No prob­lem.” Lil­lian took it back and laid it in a plas­tic ev­idence con­tain­er.

“And this charred ma­te­ri­al.” Pen­der­gast next picked up a test tube with some burned chunks of sul­fur. He un­stop­pered it, waved it un­der his nose, restop­pered it.

“Done.”

Pen­der­gast glanced at D’Agos­ta. “Any­thing that in­ter­ests you, Sergeant?”

D’Agos­ta stepped for­ward. “Maybe.” He swept an eye over the ta­ble, nod­ded to­ward a pack­et of let­ters.

“Ev­ery­thing’s been gone over by foren­sics,” said Lil­lian. “Go ahead and han­dle it.”

D’Agos­ta picked up the let­ters and slipped one out. It was from the boy, Ja­son Prince, to Grove. Out of the cor­ner of his eye, he saw a smirk grow­ing on Lil­lian’s face. What the hell did he think was so fun­ny? D’Agos­ta be­gan to read.

Je­sus. Oh, Je­sus.Red­den­ing, D’Agos­ta put the let­ters down.

“Learn some­thing new ev­ery day, huh, D’Agos­ta?” Lil­lian asked, grin­ning.

D’Agos­ta turned back to the ta­ble. There was a small stack of books:Dr. Faus­tus by Christo­pher Mar­lowe;The New Book of Chris­tian Prayers ;Malleus Malefi­carum.

“The Witch­es Ham­mer,” Pen­der­gast said, nod­ding at the last ti­tle. “The pro­fes­sion­al witch­hunt­ing man­ual of the In­qui­si­tion. A font of in­for­ma­tion on the black arts.”

Be­side the books was a stack of Web print­outs. D’Agos­ta picked up the top sheet. The site was called Maled­icat Domi­nus; this par­tic­ular page ap­peared to be de­vot­ed to charms or prayers for ward­ing off the dev­il.

“He vis­it­ed a bunch of sites like that in the last twen­ty-​four hours of his life,” said Brask­ie. “Those were the pages he print­ed out.”

Pen­der­gast was now ex­am­in­ing a wine cork with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass. “What was the menu?” he asked.

Brask­ie turned to a note­book, flipped open some pages, and passed it to Pen­der­gast.

Pen­der­gast read aloud. “Dover sole, grilled medal­lions of beef in a bur­gundy and mush­room re­duc­tion, juli­enned car­rots, sal­ad, lemon sher­bet. Served with a ‘90 Petrus. Ex­cel­lent taste in wine.”

Hand­ing back the note­book, Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued his prowl. He bent for­ward, picked up a wrin­kled piece of pa­per.

“We found that balled up in the waste­bas­ket. Ap­pears to be a proof sheet of some kind.”

“It’s an ad­vance print of an ar­ti­cle for the next is­sue ofArt Re­view . Due on the news­stands to­mor­row, if I’m not mis­tak­en.” Pen­der­gast smoothed the pa­per, once again be­gan to read out loud. “‘Art his­to­ry, like any oth­er great dis­ci­pline, has its own sa­cred tem­ples: places and mo­ments any self-​re­spect­ing crit­ic would give his eye­teeth to have at­tend­ed. The first im­pres­sion­ist ex­hi­bi­tion on the Boule­vard des Ca­pucines in 1874 was one; the day Braque first saw Pi­cas­so’sLes Demoi­selles d’Avi­gnon is an­oth­er. I am here now to tell you that the Gol­go­tha se­ries of Mau­rice Vil­nius-​now on dis­play in his East Vil­lage stu­dio-​will be an­oth­er such wa­ter­shed mo­ment in the his­to­ry of art.’”

“At the memo­ri­al ser­vice yes­ter­day, I thought you said Grove hat­ed Vil­nius’s stuff,” D’Agos­ta said.

“And so he did-​in years past. But he seems to have suf­fered a change of heart.” Pen­der­gast re­placed the pa­per on the desk with a thought­ful ex­pres­sion. “It cer­tain­ly ex­plains why Vil­nius was in such a good mood last night.”

“We found an­oth­er, sim­ilar ar­ti­cle sit­ting be­side his com­put­er,” Brask­ie said, point­ing to an­oth­er sheet on the ta­ble. “Print­ed out but not signed. Ap­pears to be by Grove, how­ev­er.”

Pen­der­gast picked up the in­di­cat­ed sheet. “It’s an ar­ti­cle to­Burling­ton Mag­azine , ti­tled ‘A Reap­praisal of Georges de la Tour’sThe Ed­uca­tion of the Vir­gin .’” He glanced over it quick­ly. “It’s a short ar­ti­cle by Grove re­tract­ing his own ear­li­er re­view, where he la­beled the de la Tour paint­ing a forgery.” He re­placed the sheet. “He ap­pears to have changed his mind about a lot of things in his fi­nal hours.”

Pen­der­gast glid­ed along the ta­ble, then stopped once again, this time be­fore a sheaf of tele­phone records. “Now, these will be help­ful, don’t you think, Vin­cent?” he said, hand­ing them to D’Agos­ta.

“Just got the war­rant for their re­lease this morn­ing,” said Brask­ie. “Clipped to the back are names and ad­dress­es and a short iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of each per­son he called.”

“Looks like he made a lot of calls on his last day,” said D’Agos­ta, flip­ping through.

“He did,” said Brask­ie. “To a lot of strange peo­ple.”

D’Agos­ta turned over the records and looked at the list. It­was strange: An in­ter­na­tion­al call to Pro­fes­sor Iain Mont­calm, New Col­lege, Ox­ford, Me­dieval Stud­ies De­part­ment. Oth­er, lo­cal calls to Eve­lyn Mil­banke; Jonathan Fred­er­ick. A va­ri­ety of calls to di­rec­to­ry in­for­ma­tion. Af­ter mid­night, calls to Locke Bullard, the in­dus­tri­al­ist; one Nigel Cut­forth; and then-​even lat­er-​the call to Fa­ther Cap­pi.

“We plan to in­ter­view them all. Mont­calm, by the way, is one of the world’s ex­perts on me­dieval sa­tan­ic prac­tices.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“Mil­banke and Fred­er­ick were at the last din­ner par­ty, and the calls were prob­ably about or­ga­niz­ing it. We have no idea why he called Bullard. We don’t have any ev­idence that he ev­er met the guy. Cut­forth is al­so a ci­pher. He’s some kind of record pro­duc­er, again no in­di­ca­tion that he and Grove ev­er crossed paths. Yet in both cas­es, Grove had their pri­vate num­bers.”

“What about all these calls to di­rec­to­ry in­for­ma­tion?” D’Agos­ta asked. “He must have called at least a dozen dif­fer­ent cities.”

“As far as we can tell, he was try­ing to track down some­body by the name of Beck­mann. Ranier Beck­mann. His In­ter­net search ac­tiv­ity bears this out, too.”

Pen­der­gast laid down a dirty nap­kin he had been ex­am­in­ing. “Ex­cel­lent work, Lieu­tenant. Do you mind if we in­ter­view some of these peo­ple as well?”

“Be my guest.”

D’Agos­ta and Pen­der­gast climbed in­to the agent’s Rolls, idling os­ten­ta­tious­ly in front of the po­lice sta­tion, the driv­er in full liv­ery. As the pow­er­ful ve­hi­cle ac­cel­er­at­ed away from the sta­tion, Pen­der­gast slipped a leather note­book from his pock­et, opened it to a fresh page, and be­gan mak­ing no­ta­tions with a gold pen. “We seem to have an em­bar­rass­ment of sus­pects.”

“Yeah. Like about ev­ery­one Grove ev­er knew.”

“With the pos­si­ble ex­cep­tion of Mau­rice Vil­nius. Even so, I sus­pect the list will short­en it­self rather quick­ly. Mean­while, we have our work cut out for us to­mor­row.” He hand­ed the list to D’Agos­ta. “You speak with Mil­banke, Bullard, and Cut­forth. I’ll take Vil­nius, Fos­co, and Mont­calm. And here are some iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards from the FBI South­ern Dis­trict of Man­hat­tan Field Of­fice. If any­body ob­jects to the ques­tions, give them one of these.”

“Any­thing in par­tic­ular I should be look­ing for?”

“Strict­ly rou­tine po­lice work. We’ve reached the point in the case where we must re­gret­tably put on those old-​fash­ioned gumshoes. Isn’t that how they say it in those de­tec­tive nov­els you used to write?”

D’Agos­ta man­aged a wry smile. “Not ex­act­ly.”

{ 10 }

Nigel Cut­forth, sit­ting in his Bauhaus-​style break­fast nook1,052 feet above Fifth Av­enue, low­ered the lat­est is­sue of­Bill­board and sniffed the air. What was it with the ven­ti­la­tion in his apart­ment these past few days? This was the third time that sul­furous stink had come up in­to his apart­ment. Twice those ya­hoos from build­ing main­te­nance had come up, and twice they’d found noth­ing.

Cut­forth slapped down the pa­per. “Eliza!”

Eliza was Cut­forth’s sec­ond wife-​he’d fi­nal­ly dumped the old bag who had worn her­self out bear­ing him chil­dren and found some­thing fresh­er-​and there she stood in the door­way, in her ex­er­cise tights, brush­ing her long blonde hair with her head tilt­ed to one side. Cut­forth could hear the crack­le of stat­ic.

“There’s that smell again,” he said.

“I’ve got a nose, too,” she said, swing­ing one mass of hair back and pulling an­oth­er for­ward.

There was a time not so long be­fore when Cut­forth liked watch­ing her mess with her hair. Now it was be­gin­ning to get on his nerves. She wast­ed half an hour a day on it, at least.

As she con­tin­ued brush­ing, Cut­forth felt his ir­ri­ta­tion rise. “I paid five and a half mil for this apart­ment, and it smells like a god­damn sci­ence ex­per­iment. Why don’t you call main­te­nance?”

“The phone’s right there, next to your el­bow.”

Cut­forth didn’t care for the tone she was tak­ing with him.

She swung the last part of her hair back, shook it out, straight­ened. “I’ve got my spin work­out in fif­teen min­utes. I’m al­ready late.”

With that, she van­ished from the door­way. Cut­forth could hear her bang­ing the hall clos­et, get­ting on her ten­nis shoes. A mo­ment lat­er there was the hum of the el­eva­tor in the hall be­yond, and she was gone.

He stared at the closed door, try­ing to re­mind him­self that he’d want­ed some­thing fresh­er; that he’d got­ten some­thing fresh­er. Too fuck­ing fresh, in fact.

He sniffed again. If any­thing, the smell was worse. It would be a bitch get­ting main­te­nance up here a third time. Build­ing man­age­ment was use­less; they did some­thing on­ly if you yelled loud enough. But there were on­ly two apart­ments on this floor-​the oth­er had been pur­chased but not yet oc­cu­pied-​and no­body on the oth­er floors had seemed to smell any­thing. So Cut­forth was the on­ly one yelling.

He stood up, feel­ing a prick­le of dis­qui­et. Grove had com­plained of a bad smell in that bizarre call of his-​that, and about a hun­dred oth­er strange things. He shook his head, try­ing to clear the clouds of ap­pre­hen­sion that were slow­ly gath­er­ing. He was let­ting that old pil­low-​biter and his crazy wor­ries get to him.

Was it com­ing from the vents? He moved around, test­ing the air. It was stronger in the liv­ing room, even stronger in the li­brary. He fol­lowed it to the door of the con­trol room, sniff­ing like a dog. Stronger, ev­er stronger. He un­locked the door, en­tered the room, flicked on the light, and looked around. There was his beau­ti­ful 64-chan­nel Stud­er, his RAID-​striped hard disk record­ing sys­tem, and his racks of au­dio pro­cess­ing gear. On the far wall were sev­er­al glass cas­es con­tain­ing his trea­sured col­lec­tions. The gui­tar Mick Jag­ger had smashed at Al­ta­mont: Kei­th Richards’s prized 1950 Tele­cast­er, dat­ing from the first year of mass pro­duc­tion, still sport­ing its orig­inal pick­ups. The scrib­bled mu­sic sheets to “Imag­ine,” with the cof­fee stains and ob­scene doo­dles in the mar­gins. His wife said the con­trol room looked like Plan­et Hol­ly­wood. That re­al­ly pissed him off. This space was one of the great­est col­lec­tions of rock mem­ora­bil­ia any­where. The place where he’d dis­cov­ered the Sub­ur­ban Lawn­mow­ers from an over-​the-​tran­som four-​track de­mo mailed from Cincin­nati. This is where he’d first heard the sounds of Rap­pah Jow­ly and felt that spe­cial creep­ing sen­sa­tion go up his spine. Cut­forth had an ear. He had a knack of rec­og­niz­ing a big-​mon­ey sound. He didn’t know where the ear came from, and he didn’t care. It worked, and that’s all that mat­tered.

Plan­et Hol­ly­wood, my ass. Where the hell is that smell com­ing from?

Cut­forth fol­lowed his nose to­ward the plate-​glass win­dow look­ing in­to the stu­dio. It was def­inite­ly in there. Some piece of equip­ment fry­ing, per­haps.

He opened the heavy sound­proofed door. As he did so, the smell washed over him like an oily fog. He hadn’t no­ticed through the glass, but there was a light haze in the air here. And it wasn’t just that sul­furous smell; there was some­thing a lot worse now. It re­mind­ed him of a pig wal­low on a hot sum­mer day.

He glanced around the stu­dio quick­ly, at the Bösendor­fer pi­ano and his beloved Neu­mann mi­cro­phones, at the iso­la­tion cham­bers, the acous­ti­cal­ly tiled walls.

Had some moth­er­fuck­er been mess­ing with his stu­dio?

Cut­forth searched the room with his eyes, anger vy­ing with fear. It was im­pos­si­ble any­one had got­ten in­to his apart­ment. It had state-​of-​the-​art se­cu­ri­ty. When you dealt with gangstas and oth­ers who set­tled busi­ness dif­fer­ences with lead in­stead of lawyers, you had to have good se­cu­ri­ty.

He glanced around. Ev­ery­thing seemed to be in its place. The record­ing equip­ment was off. He laid his hand on the row of mic preamps: cool, the rows of LEDs all dark. But what was this? Over in the far cor­ner there was some­thing ly­ing on the floor.

He stepped over, bent close to the blond wood, picked it up. It was a tooth. Or more like a tusk. Like a boar’s tusk. With blood on it, still wet. And a knot of bloody gris­tle at one end.

He dropped it in vi­olent dis­gust.

Some fuck­er has been in here.

Cut­forth swal­lowed, backed away. It was im­pos­si­ble. No one could get in. Hadn’t he just un­locked the door him­self? Maybe it had hap­pened yes­ter­day, when he’d shown that pro­mot­er around, a guy he re­al­ly didn’t know. You dealt with a lot of weird peo­ple in this busi­ness. He quick­ly got a cloth, picked up the tooth with it, prac­ti­cal­ly ran to the kitchen, dropped it down the garbage dis­pos­al, and turned it on, lis­ten­ing to the raw grind­ing noise. The thing ex­haled a bad smell and he avert­ed his face.

A shrill buzzer sound­ed, and he just about jumped through the wall. Tak­ing deep breaths, he went to the in­ter­com, pressed the buzzer.

“Mr. Cut­forth? There’s a po­lice of­fi­cer to see you.”

Cut­forth peered in­to the tiny video screen be­side the in­ter­com and saw a forty-​some­thing cop stand­ing in the lob­by, shift­ing from foot to foot.

“On a Sat­ur­day? What does he want?”

“He won’t say, sir.”

Cut­forth fi­nal­ly got his breath­ing un­der con­trol. The thought of a cop in his apart­ment right now was al­most invit­ing. “Send him up.”

On clos­er in­spec­tion, the of­fi­cer looked just like any Ital­ian-​Amer­ican cop, with the work­ing-​class Queens ac­cent to boot. Cut­forth set­tled the cop on the liv­ing room so­fa and took a chair op­po­site. The guy had Southamp­ton on his patch, which con­firmed what Cut­forth al­ready sus­pect­ed. This was about Grove. He had caller ID; he should nev­er have an­swered that crazy son of a bitch’s phone call.

The cop took out a note­book and pen, dis­played a mi­cro­cas­sette recorder.

“No tap­ing,” said Cut­forth.

The cop shrugged, re­turned it to his pock­et. “Fun­ny smell in here.”

“Ven­ti­la­tion prob­lems.”

The cop turned the pages of his note­book, got him­self all po­si­tioned and ready to go. Cut­forth set­tled back in the chair, cross­ing his arms. “Okay, Of­fi­cer Dee-​Agus­ta, what can I do for you?”

“Did you know Jere­my Grove?”

“No.”

“He called you very ear­ly on the morn­ing of Oc­to­ber 16.”

“Did he?”

“That’s what I’m ask­ing you.”

Cut­forth un­crossed his arms, crossed and re­crossed his legs, al­ready re­gret­ting hav­ing let the cop up. The on­ly re­deem­ing thing was, the cop didn’t look too bright.

“The an­swer’s yes, he did call me.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Do I have to an­swer these ques­tions?”

“No-​at least not at this mo­ment. If you wish, we could ar­range some­thing more for­mal.”

Cut­forth didn’t like the sound of that. He thought quick­ly. “There’s noth­ing to hide. I have a col­lec­tion of mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, rock mem­ora­bil­ia, that sort of thing. He was in­ter­est­ed in buy­ing some­thing.”

“What?”

“Just a let­ter.”

“Show it to me.”

Cut­forth man­aged to sup­press any look of sur­prise. He stood up. “Fol­low me.”

They went back in­to the con­trol room. Cut­forth cast his eyes around. “That.”

The cop went over, looked, frown­ing.

“A let­ter Ja­nis Joplin wrote to Jim Mor­ri­son, but nev­er mailed. Just two lines. Called him the worst lay of her life.” Cut­forth mus­tered a chuck­le.

The cop took out his note­book and be­gan copy­ing the let­ter. Cut­forth rolled his eyes.

“And the price?”

“I told him it wasn’t for sale.”

“Did he give a rea­son why he was in­ter­est­ed?”

“He just said he col­lect­ed Doors para­pher­na­lia. That’s all.”

“And you didn’t mind get­ting a call in the wee hours of the morn­ing?”

“In the mu­sic busi­ness, we keep late hours.” Cut­forth walked to­ward the con­trol room door, held it open, giv­ing the cop a big hint about leav­ing. But the man didn’t budge. In­stead, he seemed to be sniff­ing the air again.

“That smell, it’s re­al­ly pe­cu­liar.”

“I’m about to call main­te­nance.”

“There was ex­act­ly this smell at the site of Jere­my Grove’s homi­cide.”

Cut­forth swal­lowed. What was it Grove had said?The smell is the worst part of it. I can hard­ly think straight. In his call, Grove said he’d found some­thing-​a lump of fur-​cov­ered meat the size of a golf ball. It had seemed to be alive . at least un­til Grove stomped on it and flushed it down the toi­let. Cut­forth felt his heart pound­ing in his rib cage, and he took a cou­ple of breaths, let them out slow­ly, the way he’d been taught in those anx­iety man­age­ment class­es. This was ridicu­lous. This was the twen­ty-​first fuck­ing cen­tu­ry.Cool it, Nigel.

“Do you know a Locke Bullard, Mr. Cut­forth? Or one Ranier Beck­mann?”

These ques­tions, com­ing on the heels of each oth­er, al­most phys­ical­ly stag­gered Cut­forth. He shook his head, hop­ing his ex­pres­sion wasn’t be­tray­ing him.

“You been in touch with Beck­mann?” he pressed.

“No.” Hell, he nev­er should have let the cop in here.

“What about Bullard? You been in touch with him? You know, just a friend­ly chat about old times?”

“No. I don’t know the man. I don’t know ei­ther one of them.”

The cop made a long no­ta­tion in his note­book. Cut­forth won­dered what it was that took so long to write down. He felt the sweat trick­ling down his sides. He swal­lowed, but there was noth­ing to swal­low. His mouth was dry.

“Sure you don’t want to tell me more about that tele­phone call? Be­cause ev­ery­body else who spoke to him that night said Grove was up­set. Ter­ri­bly up­set. Not ex­act­ly in the mood to buy rock mem­ora­bil­ia.”

“I al­ready told you ev­ery­thing.”

Now at last they re­turned to the liv­ing room. Cut­forth didn’t sit down or of­fer a seat to the cop. He just want­ed him out.

“Do you al­ways keep the apart­ment this hot, Mr. Cut­forth?”

It­was hot, Cut­forth no­ticed; hot even for him. He didn’t an­swer.

“It was al­so ex­ces­sive­ly warm at the site of the Grove homi­cide, de­spite the fact that the heat was off in the house.” The cop looked at him in­quir­ing­ly, but still Cut­forth said noth­ing.

The cop grunt­ed, slapped shut his note­book, re­turned the pen to its leather loop. “If I were you, Mr. Cut­forth, next time I’d de­cline to an­swer a po­lice of­fi­cer’s ques­tions with­out a lawyer present.”

“Why?”

“Be­cause a lawyer would ad­vise you that keep­ing your mouth shut is bet­ter than ly­ing.”

Cut­forth stared at the cop. “What makes you think I’m ly­ing?”

“Grove hat­ed rock mu­sic.”

Cut­forth sti­fled his re­sponse. This cop wasn’t as dumb as he looked. In fact, he was about as dumb as a fox.

“I’ll be back, Mr. Cut­forth. And next time it will be on tape and un­der oath. Keep in mind that per­jury is a se­ri­ous crime. One way or the oth­er, wewill find out what you dis­cussed with Grove. Thank you for your time.”

As soon as the el­eva­tor had hummed its way down, Cut­forth picked up the phone with a shak­ing hand and di­aled. What he need­ed was a hump­ing va­ca­tion on the beach. A beach on the oth­er side of the earth. He knew a girl in Phuket who did amaz­ing things. He couldn’t leave to­mor­row-​Jow­ly, his biggest client, was com­ing in for an over­dub ses­sion-​but af­ter that he’d be clean gone, fuck the rest of the clients. He was go­ing to get the hell out of town. Away from his wife. Away from this cop and his ques­tions. And, most es­pe­cial­ly, away from this apart­ment and its stench .

“Doris? Nigel here. I want to book a flight to Bangkok. To­mor­row night if pos­si­ble, oth­er­wise first thing Mon­day. No, just me. With a limo and driv­er for Phuket. And find me a nice big house on the beach, some­thing re­al­ly se­cure, with a cook, maid, per­son­al train­er, body­guard, the works. Don’t tell any­one where I’ve gone, okay, Doris dar­ling? Yeah,Thai land . I know it’s hot this time of year, you let me wor­ry about the heat.”

Do you al­ways keep the apart­ment this hot, Mr. Cut­forth?

He slammed the phone down and went in­to the bed­room, threw a suit­case on the bed, and be­gan haul­ing things out of his clos­et: bathing suits, shark­skin jack­et and slacks, shades, san­dals, mon­ey, watch, pass­port, satel­lite phone.

They couldn’t nail him for per­jury if they couldn’t frig­gingfind him.

{ 11 }

By the time Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta en­tered the back doo­rof the New York Ath­let­ic Club, he was a very pissed-​off cop. The door­man had stopped him at the Cen­tral Park South en­trance-​even though he was wear­ing a tie as part of his full dress uni­form-​and up­on hear­ing his in­quiry sent him around to the back door be­cause he wasn’t a mem­ber. That meant walk­ing all the way to Sixth Av­enue, down the block, and com­ing back around on 58th Stree­tal­most a quar­ter of a mile.

D’Agos­ta cursed un­der his breath as he walked. Cut­forth was ly­ing, that much he was sure of. He’d tak­en a gam­ble, with that wild guess about Grove hat­ing rock mu­sic, and Cut­forth’s eyes had giv­en him away. Still, for all his tough talk, D’Agos­ta knew there was an en­tire le­gal sys­tem be­tween him and a rich bas­tard like Cut­forth. Mil­banke had been a to­tal wash: all she’d want­ed to do was bab­ble about her new emer­ald neck­lace. The nut­case hadn’t giv­en him a sin­gle de­cent lead, not one. And now here he was, tak­ing an un­ex­pect­ed con­sti­tu­tion­al around one of Man­hat­tan’s long crosstown blocks.Shit.

Fi­nal­ly ar­riv­ing at the back door of the Ath­let­ic Club, D’Agos­ta punched the but­ton for the ser­vice el­eva­tor-​the on­ly el­eva­tor there-​and when it opened at last, creak­ing and groan­ing af­ter a good three-​minute wait, he punched 9. The el­eva­tor as­cend­ed slow­ly, piss­ing and moan­ing the whole way, at long last open­ing its doors again with a wheeze. D’Agos­ta stepped out in­to a dim cor­ri­dor-​for a fan­cy club, this one was pret­ty dark-​and fol­lowed a lit­tle wood­en sign with a gold hand point­ing a fin­ger to­ward­Bil­liards. There was a faint smell of cigar smoke in the air that made him crave a good Cuban. His wife had nagged him in­to giv­ing up the habit be­fore they moved to Cana­da. But maybe he’d take it up again. Hell, no rea­son not to any­more.

As he walked down the cor­ri­dor, the smell grew stronger.

He came through a door in­to a spa­cious room, its far wall stud­ded with grand win­dows. As he en­tered, an­oth­er guardian of the or­der sprang up from a lit­tle desk with a “Sir!” Ig­nor­ing the man, D’Agos­ta peered around the room. His eye fi­nal­ly dis­cerned a lone, dark fig­ure, wreathed in smoke, hunched over the far­thest bil­liard ta­ble.

“If I may in­quire your busi­ness, sir-?”

“You may not.” D’Agos­ta brushed by the at­ten­dant and strode past the bil­liard ta­bles, lowhang­ing lamps cast­ing pools of light over their emer­ald sur­faces. It was six o’clock in the evening, and through the win­dows, the rect­an­gle of Cen­tral Park was a grave­yard of dark­ness. New York was at that mag­ical twi­light mo­ment, nei­ther light nor dark, where the glow of the city matched the glow of the sky be­hind it.

D’Agos­ta paused about ten feet from the man and pulled out his note­book. He flipped it open and wrote,Bullard. Oc­to­ber 20. Then he wait­ed.

He ex­pect­ed Bullard to look up and ac­knowl­edge him, but he didn’t. In­stead, the man leaned far­ther over the green baize, his face in shad­ow, and tapped an­oth­er ball. He chalked his cue with a swift twist of the wrist, came around the ta­ble, hit again. The ta­ble was like no pool ta­ble D’Agos­ta had ev­er seen: much larg­er, with small­er pock­ets and small­er balls in just two col­ors, red and white.

“Mr. Bullard?”

The man ig­nored him, mov­ing to make yet an­oth­er shot. His back was huge, his shoul­ders broad, and the silk fab­ric of his suit strained taut across them. All D’Agos­ta could clear­ly dis­cern was the glow­ing stump of a huge cigar and two great knot­ted hands that were thrust in­to the cir­cle of light, the veins on their backs as thick and rolled as blue earth­worms. One of the hands sport­ed two im­mense gold rings. The man tapped, moved around, tapped again.

Just as D’Agos­ta was about to say some­thing, the man abrupt­ly straight­ened, turned, pulled the cigar from his mouth, and said:

“What do you want?”

D’Agos­ta didn’t an­swer right away. In­stead, he took a minute to ob­serve the man’s face. Quite pos­si­bly there wasn’t an ugli­er man on God’s earth. His head was huge and swarthy, and though the body it was perched on seemed as mas­sive and thick as a griz­zly’s, the head still ap­peared over­size. A lantern jaw, an­chored by pop­ping mus­cles, rose to­ward a pair of un­du­lant ear­lobes. Cen­tered be­tween them were dry fleshy lips white against the dark skin: a par­tic­ular­ly un­pleas­ant com­bi­na­tion. Above stuck out a thick, pit­ted nose. Mas­sive, beetling brows jut­ted far over a pair of sunken eyes. From the bushy eye­brows above, a squat fore­head led up­ward to a bald dome, its skin cov­ered with freck­les and liv­er spots. The im­pres­sion the man gave was of enor­mous brute strength and self-​as­sur­ance in both mind and body. When he moved, the blue silk that clad his frame rus­tled, and his move­ments were as heavy and de­lib­er­ate as those of a well-​mus­cled draft horse.

D’Agos­ta licked his lips. “I have a few ques­tions for you.”

Bullard looked at him for a mo­ment, then shift­ed the cigar back in­to his mouth, leaned over the ta­ble, and gave one of the balls a lit­tle tap.

“If it’s too dis­tract­ing in here, we can al­ways do this down­town.”

“Just a minute.”

D’Agos­ta checked his watch. He glanced back, saw the minc­ing at­ten­dant watch­ing them from the far side of the room, his hands clasped in front of him as if he was an ush­er in church, smirk­ing faint­ly.

Bullard now put his back to D’Agos­ta, lean­ing far over the ta­ble, the silk stretch­ing and hik­ing up, ex­pos­ing a crisp ex­panse of white cot­ton shirt and a pair of red sus­penders. An­oth­er faint tap, more rustling silk.

“Bullard, your minute’s up.”

Bullard jerked his cue up, whisked some chalk on the tip, bent back down. The moth­er­fuck­er was ac­tu­al­ly go­ing to take a few more shots.

“You’re piss­ing me off, you know that?”

Bullard took the shot, round­ed the ta­ble for an­oth­er. “Then maybe what you need is a course in anger man­age­ment.” He eased the cue back and forth and then, with the soft­est lit­tle push, sent the ball all of three inch­es so that it kissed an­oth­er.

That did it. “Bullard, one more shot and I’m cuff­ing you and lead­ing you out the front door, past the porter and any­one else who hap­pens to come by. I’m go­ing to march you down along Cen­tral Park South to Colum­bus Cir­cle where I parked my squad car. And then I’m go­ing to ra­dio for back­up and keep you stand­ing at the curb at Colum­bus Cir­cle, hands cuffed be­hind your back, through the ass end of a Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon, un­til that back­up ar­rives.”

Bullard’s hand paused on the cue stick. Then he straight­ened up, jaw mus­cles tight. He slipped his hand in­to his suit coat and be­gan punch­ing a call on his cell. “I think I’ll just tell the may­or how one of his finest has just threat­ened me with four-​let­ter ex­ple­tives.”

“You do that. In case you hadn’t no­ticed, I’m Southamp­ton P.D. and could give a fly­ing fuck about your may­or.”

Bullard raised the phone to his ear and in­sert­ed the cigar in his mouth. “Then you’re out of your ju­ris­dic­tion, and threat­en­ing me with ar­rest is mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion.”

“I’m an as­signed li­ai­son with the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion, South­ern Dis­trict of Man­hat­tan Field Of­fice.” D’Agos­ta opened his wal­let, pulled out one of the cards Pen­der­gast had giv­en him, tossed it on­to the pool ta­ble. “If you want to com­plain to the su­per­vi­sor, he’s Spe­cial Agent Carl­ton and his num­ber’s right there.”

That fi­nal­ly pen­etrat­ed. Bullard slow­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly snapped the phone shut. Then he dropped the cigar in­to a sand-​filled spit­toon in the cor­ner, where it con­tin­ued to smoke. “All right. You’ve man­aged to at­tract my at­ten­tion.”

D’Agos­ta flipped out his note­book. He wasn’t go­ing to waste any more time.

“On Oc­to­ber 16, at 2:02A.M. , Jere­my Grove placed a call to your un­list­ed pri­vate num­ber. On your yacht, I be­lieve. The call last­ed forty-​two min­utes. Is this cor­rect?”

“I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of such a call.”

“Yeah?” D’Agos­ta slipped a pho­to­copy of the phone record out of his note­book and held it out. “Tele­phone com­pa­ny records say dif­fer­ent.”

“I don’t need to see that.”

“Who else was there at that time who might have tak­en the call? I’d like the names. Girl­friend, cook, babysit­ter, what­ev­er.” He poised his pen.

A long si­lence. “I was alone on my yacht at the time.”

“So who picked up the phone? The cat?”

“I won’t an­swer any more ques­tions with­out my lawyer present.”

The guy had a voice to match the face, deep and scarred, and when he spoke it was as if he was scratch­ing a match along D’Agos­ta’s spinal cord. “Let me tell you some­thing, Mr. Bullard: you just lied to me. You lied to a po­lice of­fi­cer. That’s ob­struc­tion of jus­tice. You can call your lawyer if you like, but it’ll be from down­town and I’ll be es­cort­ing you out of here now. Is that how you want it? Or should we try it again?”

“This is a gen­tle­men’s club, and I’ll thank you not to raise your voice.”

“I’m a lit­tle hard of hear­ing, see, and any­way, I’m not a gen­tle­man.”

He wait­ed.

Bullard’s white lips curled in what might have been a smile. “Now that you men­tion it, I do re­mem­ber that call from Grove. We hadn’t talked in a long time.”

“What did you talk about?”

“This and that.”

“This and that.” D’Agos­ta wrote it down.This and that . “For forty-​two min­utes?”

“Catch­ing up, that sort of thing.”

“How well did you know Grove?”

“We’d run in­to each oth­er a few times. We weren’t friends.”

“When did you first meet him?”

“Years ago. I don’t re­mem­ber.”

“I ask again, what did you talk about?”

“He told me what he’d been up to late­ly-“

“Which was?”

“I can’t re­mem­ber specif­ical­ly. Writ­ing ar­ti­cles, din­ner par­ties, that sort of thing.”

It was just like Cut­forth: the moth­er­fuck­er was ly­ing, ll­ll­ll­ll­ll­ng. “And you? What did you talk about with him?”

“Much of the same. My work, my com­pa­ny.”

“What was the rea­son for the phone call?”

“You’ll have to ask him. We were just catch­ing up.”

“He called you af­ter mid­night just to catch up?”

“That’s right.”

“How did he hap­pen to know your num­ber? It’s un­list­ed.”

“I sup­pose I must’ve giv­en it to him once.”

“I thought he wasn’t your friend.”

Bullard shrugged. “Maybe he got it from some­one else.”

D’Agos­ta paused to look at Bullard. He was stand­ing off to one side, half in shad­ow, half in light. He still couldn’t see the man’s eyes.

“Did Grove seem fright­ened or ap­pre­hen­sive to you?”

“Not that I could tell. I re­al­ly can’t re­mem­ber.”

“Do you know a Nigel Cut­forth?”

There was a slight beat be­fore Bullard’s re­sponse. “No.”

“What about a Ranier Beck­mann?”

“No.” No pause this time.

“A Count Isidor Fos­co?”

“The name’s fa­mil­iar. I think I’ve seen it in the so­ci­ety pages once or twice.”

“La­dy Mil­banke? Jonathan Fred­er­ick?”

“No and no.”

This was hope­less. D’Agos­ta knew when he was beat­en. He slapped the note­book shut. “We’re not done with you, Mr. Bullard.”

Bullard had al­ready turned back to his pool ta­ble. “But I am most cer­tain­ly done with you, Sergeant.”

D’Agos­ta turned on his heel, and then paused. He turned back. “I hope you’re not plan­ning any trips out of the coun­try, Mr. Bullard.”

Si­lence. En­cour­aged, D’Agos­ta pur­sued the line. “I could get you de­clared a ma­te­ri­al wit­ness, re­strict your move­ments.” D’Agos­ta knew he could do no such thing, but his sixth sense told him he had fi­nal­ly struck a vein. “How’d you like that?”

It seemed as if Bullard hadn’t heard, but D’Agos­ta knew he had. He turned and walked to­ward the ex­it, past the huge green ta­bles with their tiny lit­tle pock­ets. At the door he paused, glar­ing at the at­ten­dant. The smirk van­ished, and his face be­came sud­den­ly and com­plete­ly neu­tral.

“What’s this game here? Bil­liards?”

“Snook­er, sir.”

“Snook­er?” D’Agos­ta stared at the man. Was he mak­ing fun of him? It sound­ed like some­thing a pros­ti­tute might charge ex­tra for. But the man’s face be­trayed noth­ing.

D’Agos­ta left the room, lo­cat­ed the front el­eva­tor, and took it down. To hell with the porter and his rules.

The last of the evening light was slow­ly dy­ing in the great bil­liard room of the New York Ath­let­ic Club. Locke Bullard stood over the ta­ble, cue in hand, no longer see­ing the ta­ble or the balls. Six­ty sec­onds passed. And then he placed the cue on the ta­ble, walked to­ward the bar, and picked up the phone. Some­thing had to be done, and right now. He had im­por­tant busi­ness to at­tend to in Italy, and no­body-​es­pe­cial­ly this up­start sergeant-​was go­ing to cause him to miss it.

{ 12 }

D’Agos­ta paused on the steps of the New York Ath­let­ic Cluband checked his watch. On­ly 6:30. Pen­der­gast had asked him to come to what he called his “up­town res­idence” at nine so they could com­pare notes on the day’s in­ter­views. He checked his pock­et, found the key Pen­der­gast had giv­en him. Nine. He had time to kill. If mem­ory served, there was a dim lit­tle Irish pub called Mullin’s on Broad­way and 61st that served a de­cent burg­er. He could catch din­ner and a cold one.

He glanced back in­to the lob­by, caught the eye of the snooty door­man who’d made him walk around back ear­li­er, and made a point of lin­ger­ing a lit­tle longer on the steps. The man was at his kiosk, hang­ing up the house phone and look­ing back at him, a pinched ex­pres­sion on his mum­mi­fied face. Damn, some­times it seemed that be­ing a fos­silized old turd was the main job qual­ifi­ca­tion of a Man­hat­tan door­man.

Now, as he saun­tered down the steps and turned left on Cen­tral Park South, his thoughts re­turned to Pen­der­gast. Why the hell did he need a house up­town? From what he’d heard, Pen­der­gast’s apart­ment in the Dako­ta was big­ger than most hous­es, any­way. He pulled the card from his pock­et: 891 River­side Drive. What cross street was that? Prob­ably one of those el­egant old build­ings along River­side Park up around 96th. He’d been out of New York too long. In years past, he could take any av­enue ad­dress and cal­cu­late the cross street in his head.

Mullin’s Pub was still where he re­mem­bered it, lit­tle more than a dim store­front with a long bar and old wood­en ta­bles along the op­po­site wall. D’Agos­ta en­tered, his heart warmed by the thought of a re­al New York cheese­burg­er, cooked rare, not one of those fussy av­oca­do-​arugu­la-​Camem­bert-​and-​pancetta things they sold in Southamp­ton for fif­teen dol­lars.

An hour lat­er, well fed, D’Agos­ta emerged, then head­ed north to the sub­way sta­tion at 66th. Even at 7:30, there were a mil­lion cars rush­ing, vy­ing, and honk­ing, a fum­ing chaos of steel and chrome, in­clud­ing one shit­box eight­ies-​era gold Im­pala with smoked win­dows that near­ly clipped off his toes. Lay­ing a suit­able string of curs­es in the car’s wake, D’Agos­ta ducked down in­to the sub­way. He fum­bled with the mag­net­ic card, swiped it through the ma­chine, then head­ed down the stairs for the plat­form of the up­town IRT lo­cal. Even hav­ing killed an hour, he was go­ing to be ear­ly. Maybe he should have stayed in Mullin’s for an­oth­er brew.

In less than a minute a grow­ing roar, along with a bal­loon of stale air that forced its way out of the dark tun­nel, sig­naled the ar­rival of a train. He board­ed, man­aged to find a seat, set­tled on­to the hard plas­tic, and closed his eyes. Al­most in­stinc­tu­al­ly he count­ed the stops: 72nd, 79th, 86th. When the train slowed for 96th, he opened his eyes again, rose, and ex­it­ed at the south­ern end of the sta­tion.

He crossed Broad­way and walked west down 94th Street, past West End Av­enue to River­side Drive. On the far side of the leafy drive, past the thin green sliv­er of River­side Park, he could make out the West Side High­way and the riv­er be­yond. It was a pleas­ant enough evening, but the sky was dark­en­ing and there was a smell of mois­ture in the air. The slug­gish wa­ters of the Hud­son roiled along like black ink, and the lights of New Jer­sey speck­led the far shore. There was a faint flick­er of light­ning.

He turned and scanned the ad­dress of the build­ing on the near­est cor­ner. Num­ber 214.

Two four­teen? D’Agos­ta swore. He re­al­ly had lost it in those few years in Cana­da. Eight nine­ty-​one was a lot far­ther up­town than he re­al­ized, maybe close to Harlem. What the hell was Pen­der­gast do­ing liv­ing up there?

He could go back to the sub­way, but that meant a long up­hill walk back to Broad­way, and per­haps a long wait in the sta­tion, then the lo­cal crawl far­ther up­town. He could grab a cab, but that still meant walk­ing back to Broad­way, and up­town cabs were al­most im­pos­si­ble to find at that time of night.

Or he could hoof it.

D’Agos­ta turned north and be­gan walk­ing up the drive. It was prob­ably on­ly ten or fif­teen short blocks. He slapped his gut. It would do him good, work off some of that greasy burg­er. Be­sides, he still had more than an hour to kill.

He set a brisk pace for him­self, his cuffs and keys jan­gling. The wind was sigh­ing through the trees along the edge of River­side Park, and the fa­cades of the el­egant apart­ment build­ings that faced the riv­er were bright­ly lit, most sport­ing door­men or se­cu­ri­ty guards. Even though it was al­most eight, a lot of peo­ple were still com­ing home from work: men and wom­en in suits, a mu­si­cian car­ry­ing a cel­lo, a cou­ple of col­lege pro­fes­sor types in tweedy jack­ets ar­gu­ing loud­ly about some­body named Hegel. Once in a while some­one glanced at him, smiled, nod­ded, glad that he was there. Septem­ber 11 had changed a lot of things in New York City, and one of them was the way peo­ple looked at cops. An­oth­er rea­son to get him­self re­hired at the first op­por­tu­ni­ty.

D’Agos­ta hummed as he walked along, fill­ing his lungs with the heady fra­grance, that West Side per­fume of salt air, car fumes, garbage, and as­phalt. He caught a brief whiff of roast­ing cof­fee from some all-​night del­icatessen. New York City. Once it got in­to your blood, you could nev­er get it out again. When the econ­omy turned around and the city be­gan hir­ing again, D’Agos­ta would be first in line. Christ, he’d start off as a tire-​kick­er in Far Rock­away if it meant work­ing again for the NYPD.

He crossed 110th Street. The num­bers were still on­ly in the 400s, ris­ing but not fast enough. What the hell was the cross-​street rule for River­side? Some­thing di­vid­ed by some­thing mi­nus 59 . He couldn’t even guess any­more-​all he knew was it was go­ing to be far­ther up­town than he thought.

At least he had plen­ty of time. Maybe Pen­der­gast lived in one of those pro­fes­so­ri­al brown­stones up by Columbia. That must be it: Pen­der­gast, slum­ming with the aca­demics. He quick­ened his pace. Now the build­ings were less el­egant, plain­er, but still neat and trim. He was get­ting in­to the Columbia Uni­ver­si­ty neigh­bor­hood, with its stu­dents and their bag­gy clothes, a kid shout­ing down from a win­dow to some oth­er kid on the side­walk, toss­ing down a book. D’Agos­ta won­dered what his life would have been like if he’d come from a fam­ily that had sent him to col­lege. He might be a big-​time writ­er by now. Maybe the crit­ics would have liked his books more. You made a lot of con­tacts in the right col­lege, and a hell of a lot of tho­se­New York Times crit­ics seemed to come from Columbia. And they all re­viewed each oth­er’s books. The damn­Times Book Re­view was like a pri­vate club.

He shook his head. As his old Ital­ian grand­fa­ther used to say, it wasac­qua pas­sa­ta.

He paused at 122nd Street to catch his breath. He had reached the north­ern fringe of Columbia. Ahead was In­ter­na­tion­al House, stand­ing like the last out­post on the edge of the fron­tier. Be­yond was no-​man’s-​land.

And the num­bers were on­ly up to 550.

Shit.He checked his watch. Ten past eight. He’d hiked a mile. He’d done his du­ty for the day. He still had plen­ty of time, but he was no longer en­joy­ing him­self. And this far up­town, there was ze­ro chance of get­ting a cab. There were still one or two stu­dents in view, but there were al­so crowds of kids loi­ter­ing on stoops, watch­ing him pass, some­times giv­ing a lit­tle hiss or mut­ter­ing some­thing. He now re­al­ized that 891 River­side would be some­where around 135th Street, if not a lit­tle far­ther. He could make it in an­oth­er ten min­utes-​and he would still be ear­ly-​but it meant walk­ing in­to the heart of Harlem.

Once again he pulled the card from his pock­et. There was the ad­dress, in Pen­der­gast’s el­egant script. It seemed im­pos­si­ble. But there could be no mis­take.

He left the bright oa­sis of In­ter­na­tion­al House be­hind, nei­ther hur­ry­ing nor loi­ter­ing. There was no rea­son for him to be ner­vous: not in uni­form and pack­ing his Glock 9mm.

As he walked on, the neigh­bor­hood changed abrupt­ly. Gone now were the stu­dents, the bus­tle of ac­tiv­ity. The street­lights were bro­ken, the apart­ment fa­cades dim. It be­came qui­et, al­most de­sert­ed. At 130th Street, D’Agos­ta passed an emp­ty man­sion, one of the re­al­ly old ones: the tin ripped off the emp­ty win­dow frames, the very frame of the build­ing ex­hal­ing a smell of mold and urine in­to the street. A junkie palace. The next block con­tained a sin­gle­room-​oc­cu­pan­cy “ho­tel,” the in­hab­itants sit­ting on the stoop and drink­ing beer. They fell silent and watched him go by with bleary eyes. A dog barked in­ces­sant­ly.

Though plen­ty of an­ti­quat­ed cars lined the curb-​bat­tered, win­dow­less, some­times even wheel­less-​there were few­er cars on the road now. An an­cient, mi­cro­scop­ic Hon­da Ac­cord CVCC passed by, so rust­ed its orig­inal col­or was im­pos­si­ble to dis­cern. A minute or so lat­er it was fol­lowed by a gold Im­pala with smoked win­dows. It seemed to D’Agos­ta that it slowed as it went past. He watched as it took the next right.

A gold Im­pala. There must be a mil­lion of them in the city. Hell, he was start­ing to get para­noid. All that soft liv­ing in Southamp­ton .

He con­tin­ued steadi­ly on, pass­ing rows of aban­doned build­ings, old man­sions bro­ken in­to apart­ments and SROs. Dogshit lit­tered the side­walk now, along with garbage and bro­ken bot­tles. Most of the street­lights were out-​shoot­ing at them was a fa­vorite gang pas­time-​and with the city’s gen­er­al ne­glect of this area, it took for­ev­er to get them re­paired.

He was now ap­proach­ing the hard-​core cen­ter of west­ern Harlem. It seemed in­cred­ible that Pen­der­gast had a place here: the guy was ec­cen­tric, but not­that ec­cen­tric. The next block, 132nd, was com­plete­ly dark, ev­ery street­light out, the two re­main­ing build­ings on the block aban­doned and board­ed up. Even the lights on the park side had been blown away. It was a per­fect mug­gers’ block-​ex­cept no one in his right mind would ev­er walk there at night.

D’Agos­ta re­mind­ed him­self he was pack­ing, in full uni­form, with a ra­dio. He shook his head. What a wimp he’d be­come. He strode res­olute­ly for­ward, down the dark block.

That was when he no­ticed a car be­hind him, mov­ing slow­ly. Way­too slow­ly. As it passed un­der the last street­light, D’Agos­ta saw the gleam of gold-​the same Chevy Im­pala that had near­ly tak­en off his toes on West 61st Street.

D’Agos­ta may have for­got­ten the street ad­dress for­mu­la, but his NYPD cop radar re­mained in per­fect work­ing or­der, and now it went off loud­ly. The car was mov­ing at pre­cise­ly the speed that would bring it next to D’Agos­ta at the mid­dle of the dark block.

It was an am­bush.

D’Agos­ta made an in­stant de­ci­sion. Break­ing in­to a sud­den run, he cut left and sprint­ed across the street in front of the ap­proach­ing car. He heard the screech­ing ac­cel­er­ation of the tires, but he had moved too quick­ly and was al­ready head­ing in­to River­side Park by the time the car squealed to a stop along the curb.

As he sprint­ed in­to the dark­ness of the trees, he saw both doors open si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

{ 13 }

The door to the tenth-​floor suite at the Sher­ry Nether­land­Ho­tel was opened by an En­glish but­ler so im­pec­ca­bly out­fit­ted he seemed to have stepped from the pages of a Wode­house nov­el. He bowed to Pen­der­gast, stand­ing to one side. The man’s dou­ble-​breast­ed Prince Al­bert frock coat was im­mac­ulate­ly brushed, and when he moved, his starched white shirt­front rus­tled faint­ly. One white-​gloved hand took Pen­der­gast’s coat; the oth­er held out a sil­ver tray. With­out hes­ita­tion, Pen­der­gast reached in­to his pock­et, re­moved a slim gold card case, and placed his card on the tray.

“If the gen­tle­man would kind­ly wait.” The but­ler gave an­oth­er slight bow and dis­ap­peared in­to a long hall­way, car­ry­ing the tray be­fore him. There was the soft open­ing of a door, the faint sound of click­ing and ham­mer­ing. An­oth­er, far­ther door was opened. Min­utes lat­er the but­ler re­turned.

“If the gen­tle­man will fol­low me,” he said.

Pen­der­gast fol­lowed the but­ler in­to a wood-​pan­eled sit­ting room, where he was greet­ed by a birch fire, flick­er­ing mer­ri­ly with­in a large fire­place.

“The gen­tle­man is wel­come to seat him­self where he pleas­es,” the but­ler said.

Pen­der­gast, al­ways at­tract­ed to heat, chose the red leather chair near­est the fire.

“The count will be avail­able mo­men­tar­ily. Would the gen­tle­man care for amon­til­la­do?”

“Thank you.”

The but­ler re­treat­ed noise­less­ly and reap­peared less than thir­ty sec­onds lat­er, bear­ing a tray on which re­posed a sin­gle crys­tal glass half filled with a pale am­ber liq­uid. He set it on the near­by ta­ble and, just as noise­less­ly, was gone.

Pen­der­gast sipped the dry, del­icate liq­uid and gazed about the room with grow­ing in­ter­est. It had been fur­nished in exquisite and yet un­der­stat­ed taste, man­ag­ing to be both com­fort­able and beau­ti­ful at the same time. The floor was cov­ered with a rare Safavid car­pet of Shah Ab­bassid de­sign. The fire­place was old, carved from gray Flo­ren­tinepi­etra ser­ena , and it bore the crest of an an­cient and no­ble fam­ily. The ta­ble that held his glass al­so bore an in­ter­est­ing ar­ray of items: sev­er­al pieces of old sil­ver, an an­tique gaso­gene, some love­ly Ro­man glass per­fume bot­tles, and a small Etr­uscan bronze.

It was the paint­ing above the man­tel­piece, how­ev­er, that star­tled Pen­der­gast. It ap­peared to be a Ver­meer, de­pict­ing a la­dy at a lead­ed-​glass win­dow ex­am­in­ing a piece of lace; the cool Flem­ish light from the win­dow shone through the lace, which cast a faint shad­ow across the wom­an’s dress. Pen­der­gast was fa­mil­iar with all thir­ty-​five of Ver­meer’s known paint­ings. This was not one of them. And yet it could not be a forgery: no forg­er had been able to du­pli­cate Ver­meer’s light.

His eye roamed far­ther. On the op­po­site wall was an un­fin­ished paint­ing in the Car­avaggesque style, show­ing the con­ver­sion of Paul on the road to Dam­as­cus. It was a small­er and even more in­tense ver­sion of Car­avag­gio’s fa­mous paint­ing in San­ta Maria del Popo­lo in Rome. The more Pen­der­gast looked at it, the more he doubt­ed it was a copy or a “school of” ren­der­ing. In fact, it looked like a study in the mas­ter’s own hand.

Pen­der­gast now turned his at­ten­tion to the right-​hand wall, where a third paint­ing hung: a lit­tle girl in a dark room, read­ing a book by can­dle­light. Pen­der­gast rec­og­nized it as very sim­ilar to-​yet not a copy of-​a se­ries of paint­ings on the same sub­ject,The Ed­uca­tion of the Vir­gin by the mys­te­ri­ous French painter Georges de la Tour. Could it pos­si­bly be re­al?

They were the on­ly three paint­ings in the room: three breath­tak­ing gems. But they weren’t dis­played with pomp and pre­tense; in­stead, they seemed to be part of the en­vi­ron­ment of the room, placed for pri­vate en­joy­ment rather than pub­lic en­vy. None of the paint­ings even bore a la­bel.

His cu­rios­ity about Fos­co in­creased.

More faint sounds em­anat­ed from cham­bers be­yond. Im­me­di­ate­ly, the agent’s preter­nat­ural hear­ing fo­cused on them. A dis­tant door had opened, and Pen­der­gast could hear the whistling of a bird, the light pat­ter of foot­steps, and a deep, gen­tle voice.

Pen­der­gast lis­tened in­tent­ly.

“Come out and hop up­stairs! One, two, three, and up! Three, two, one-​and down!”

A burst of chirp­ing and twit­ter­ing, com­bined with an­oth­er sound-​clack­ing and whirring-​float­ed in­to the room from be­yond, min­gled with cheer­ful ex­hor­ta­tions. Then, soft­ly, a beau­ti­ful tenor voice sound­ed, singing the notes of a bel can­to aria. The bird-​if that’s what it was-​fell silent, as if un­der a spell. The voice rose in pitch and vol­ume, then fad­ed slow­ly away, and as it did, the but­ler re­turned.

“The count will see you now.”

Pen­der­gast rose and fol­lowed him down a long, broad cor­ri­dor, lined with books, to a stu­dio be­yond.

The count stood in all his cor­pu­lent majesty in a ca­pa­cious stu­dio, one end with floor-​to­ceil­ing glass, his back turned, look­ing out on a small bal­cony framed with rose­bush­es, sink­ing in­to twi­light. He was wear­ing slacks and a crisp white shirt, open at the col­lar. Be­side him was an im­mac­ulate work­table. At least a hun­dred tools were lined up on the ta­ble in ge­omet­ric pre­ci­sion: tiny screw­drivers, pin­point sol­der­ing irons, tiny jew­el­er’s saws, watch­mak­er’s vis­es and files. Laid out next to them was an ar­ray of exquisite­ly small gears, ratch­ets, springs, levers, and oth­er fine­ly ma­chined met­al parts, along with chips, small cir­cuit boards, bun­dles of fiber-​op­tic ca­bling, LEDs, bits of rub­ber and plas­tic, and oth­er elec­tron­ic ob­jects of mys­te­ri­ous func­tion.

In the cen­ter of the work­table stood a wood­en T-​bar stand, and on the stand stood a strange ob­ject that at first glance looked like a Tri­ton cock­atoo, bril­liant white with a lemon-​col­ored crest, but which on clos­er in­spec­tion proved to be a me­chan­ical de­vice: a robot­ic bird.

The but­ler in­di­cat­ed po­lite­ly for Pen­der­gast to seat him­self on a near­by stool. As if by mag­ic, his half-​drunk­en glass of amon­til­la­do ap­peared; then the but­ler van­ished like a ghost.

Pen­der­gast watched the count. With his free hand, he plucked a ca­sua­ri­na nut from a tray, placed it be­tween his fat lips, then pro­trud­ed it. With a whis­tle of ex­cite­ment, the robot cock­atoo climbed to Fos­co’s shoul­der, then to his ear, and-​lean­ing for­ward with a whirring of gear­splucked the seed from the pro­ject­ing lips, cracked it with its me­chan­ical bill, and made ev­ery ap­pear­ance of eat­ing it.

“Ah! My pret­ty, play­time is over!” cooed the count. “Back to your perch.” He gave his gloved hand a lit­tle wave. The cock­atoo gave a screech of dis­plea­sure and flared his me­chan­ical crest, but made no fur­ther move­ment.

“Ah, stub­born to­day, I see.” The count spoke loud­er, more firm­ly. “Back to your perch, my pret­ty, or you will be eat­ing mil­let in­stead of nuts the rest of the day.”

With an­oth­er screech, the cock­atoo hopped off his shoul­der on­to the ta­ble, wad­dled over to the stand, climbed it with met­al claws, and re­sumed its place, cast­ing its beady LED eyes on Pen­der­gast.

And now at last, the count turned with a smile and bow, of­fer­ing Pen­der­gast his hand. “I am so sor­ry to keep you wait­ing. My friend-​as you see-​re­quires his ex­er­cise.”

“Most in­ter­est­ing,” said Pen­der­gast dry­ly.

“No doubt it is! It is true, I cut a ridicu­lous fig­ure with my pets.”

“Pets?”

“Yes. And you see how they love me! My cock­atoo and-” He in­clined his sue­ty head to­ward the oth­er side of the room, where what looked like a pack of mice were dis­port­ing them­selves with­in an elab­orate wire pago­da with var­ious clicks and whirs and dig­ital squeaks. “And my dear lit­tle white mice! But, of course, of all my pret­ties, Bu­cephalus here is my pride and joy.” And Fos­co turned to­ward the cock­atoo. “Are you not, my pret­ty?”

The bird’s on­ly re­sponse was to bury its mas­sive black bill with­in a fluff of fake beak feath­ers, as if ren­dered timid by the com­pli­ment.

“You must for­give Bu­cephalus!” Fos­co said, tut-​tut­ting. “He is not par­tial to strangers. He is slow to make friends and screams when dis­pleased-​ah, my friend, such screams as you would not be­lieve! I have been forced to take the two apart­ments ad­join­ing this and keep them un­oc­cu­pied, at great per­son­al ex­pense. Mere walls, you see, are no de­fense against the lungs of this mag­nif­icent crea­ture!”

The robot­ic cock­atoo gave no ac­knowl­edg­ment of this pan­egyric, con­tin­uing to eye Pen­der­gast mo­tion­less­ly.

“But they are all quite fond of opera. As Con­greve said, mu­sic hath charms et cetera. Per­haps you heard my poor singing. Did you rec­og­nize the piece?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Pol­lione’s aria from­Nor­ma , ‘Ab­ban­don­ar­mi così potresti.’”

“Ah! Then you liked it.”

“I said I rec­og­nized it. Tell me, Count, did you build these robots your­self?”

“Yes. I am a lover of an­imals and gad­gets. Would you like to see my ca­naries? The re­al ones, I mean: I rarely dis­tin­guish be­tween my own chil­dren and those of na­ture.”

“Thank you, no.”

“I should have been born an Amer­ican, a Thomas Edi­son, where my in­ven­tive­ness would have been en­cour­aged. But in­stead I was born in­to the sti­fling, de­cay­ing Flo­ren­tine aris­toc­ra­cy, where skills such as mine are use­less. Where I come from, counts are sup­posed to keep both feet firm­ly in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, if not ear­li­er.”

Pen­der­gast stirred. “May I trou­ble you with some ques­tions, Count Fos­co?”

The count waved his hand. “Let us do away with this ‘Count’ busi­ness. We are in Amer­ica, and here I am Isidor. May I call you Aloy­sius?”

There was a short si­lence be­fore Pen­der­gast spoke again, voice cool. “If it’s all the same to you, Count, I would pre­fer to keep this in­ter­view on a for­mal lev­el.”

“As you like. I see the good Pin­ketts sup­plied you with re­fresh­ment. He’s a trea­sure, don’t you think? The En­glish lord­ed it over the Ital­ians for so many cen­turies that it gives me plea­sure to have at least one En­glish­man un­der my thumb. You’re not En­glish, are you?” “No.”

“Well then, we can speak freely of the En­glish. Bah! Imag­ine, the on­ly com­pos­er of note they ev­er pro­duced was a man named Byrd.” The count set­tled him­self in­to a wing chair op­po­site, and as he did so, Pen­der­gast not­ed again how light­ly and eas­ily the enor­mous man seemed to move, how del­icate­ly he seat­ed him­self.

“My first ques­tion, Count Fos­co, in­volves the din­ner par­ty. When did you ar­rive?”

The count placed his white hands to­geth­er rev­er­ent­ly, as if about to pray, and sighed. “Grove want­ed us at sev­en. And on a Mon­day night, too-​very un­like him. We came strag­gling in, fash­ion­ably late, be­tween sev­en-​thir­ty and eight. I was the first to ar­rive.”

“What was Grove’s men­tal state?”

“Very poor, I should say. As I told you, he seemed ner­vous, high-​strung. No so much that he couldn’t en­ter­tain. He had a cook, but he pre­pared the main dish­es him­self. He was quite a good chef. He pre­pared an exquisite sole, light­ly grilled over the fire, with lemon. Noth­ing more, noth­ing less. Per­fec­tion. Then he fol­lowed with-“

“I al­ready have the menu, thank you. Did he give any in­di­ca­tion why he was ner­vous?”

“No. In fact, he seemed to be at great pains to hide it. His eyes dart­ed ev­ery­where. He locked the door af­ter each guest was let in. He hard­ly drank, which was quite out of char­ac­ter. He was a man who nor­mal­ly liked a good claret, and even on this oc­ca­sion, he served some ex­cel­lent wines, start­ing with To­cai from Friuli and then a ‘90 Petrus, tru­ly mag­nif­icent.”

Château Petrus 1990, con­sid­ered the best since the fa­bled ‘61, was one of Pen­der­gast’s own most prized wines; he had a dozen bot­tles of the $2,000 Pomerol laid down in his cel­lar in the Dako­ta. He chose not to men­tion this fact.

The count con­tin­ued his de­scrip­tion with great good hu­mor and vol­ubil­ity. “Grove al­so opened, quite spon­ta­neous­ly, a wine from the Castel­lo di Ver­raz­zano, their so-​called­bot­tiglia par­ti­co­lare , the one with the silk la­bel. Ex­cep­tion­al.”

“Did you know the oth­er guests?”

The count smiled. “La­dy Mil­banke I know quite well. Vil­nius I’d met a few times. Jonathan Fred­er­ick I knew on­ly from his writ­ings.”

“What did you talk about at din­ner?”

The smile widened. “It was most pe­cu­liar.”

“Yes?”

“The first part of the din­ner was tak­en up with a con­ver­sa­tion about the Georges de la Tour paint­ing you saw in my sit­ting room. What do you think of it, Agent Pen­der­gast?”

“Shall we stay on the sub­ject, Count Fos­co?”

“Thi­sis the sub­ject. Bear with me. Do you think it’s a de la Tour?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“The brush­work on the lace is very char­ac­ter­is­tic, and the glow of the can­dle through the fin­gers is han­dled in pure de la Tour fash­ion.”

The count looked at Pen­der­gast cu­ri­ous­ly, a faint gleam of some­thing in­de­fin­able in his eyes. Af­ter a long si­lence, he said very qui­et­ly and se­ri­ous­ly, “You sur­prise me very much, Pen­der­gast. I am tru­ly im­pressed.” The joc­ular, fa­mil­iar note had van­ished from his voice. He paused, then con­tin­ued. “Twen­ty years ago I found my­self in a lit­tle fi­nan­cial em­bar­rass­ment. I put that very paint­ing up for sale at Sothe­by’s. The day be­fore the auc­tion, Grove wrote a lit­tle piece in theTimes call­ing it one of the De­lo­bre fakes, done around the turn of the cen­tu­ry. It was pulled from the auc­tion, and de­spite my hav­ing the prove­nance in hand, I lost fif­teen mil­lion dol­lars.”

Pen­der­gast con­sid­ered this. “And that’s what you talked about? His brand­ing your de la Tour a forgery?”

“Yes, in the be­gin­ning. Then the con­ver­sa­tion moved to Vil­nius and his paint­ings. Grove re­mind­ed us of Vil­nius’s first big show, in So­Ho in the ear­ly eight­ies. At the time, Grove wrote a leg­en­dar­ily scathing re­view. Suf­fice to say, Vil­nius’s ca­reer nev­er re­cov­ered.”

“An odd top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion.”

“In­deed. And then Grove brought up the sub­ject of La­dy Mil­banke and the af­fair he’d had with her some years back.”

“I imag­ine this was quite a live­ly din­ner par­ty.”

“I have rarely seen its equal.”

“And how did La­dy Mil­banke re­act?”

“How would you ex­pect a la­dy to re­act? The af­fair broke up her mar­riage. And then Grove treat­ed her abom­inably, left her for aboy .”

“It sounds as if each of you had rea­son to be mor­tal en­emies of Grove.”

Fos­co sighed. “We were. We all hat­ed him, in­clud­ing Fred­er­ick. I don’t know the man at all, but I un­der­stand that some years ago, when he was ed­itor ofArt and Style , he had the temer­ity to write some­thing nasty about Grove. Grove had friends in high places, and the next thing Fred­er­ick knew he’d been fired. The poor fel­low couldn’t find a job foryears .”

“When did the din­ner par­ty break up?”

“Af­ter mid­night.”

“Who left first?”

“I was the first to stand aaaaaa­nounce my de­par­ture. I have al­ways re­quired a great deal of sleep. The oth­ers rose at the same time. Grove was most re­luc­tant to see us go. He kept press­ing af­ter-​din­ner drinks on us, cof­fee. He was most anx­ious that we stay.” “Do you know why?”

“He seemed fright­ened of be­ing alone.”

“Do you re­call his pre­cise words?”

“To a cer­tain ex­tent.” Fos­co broke out in­to a high-​pitched, up­per-​class drawl that was startling in its re­al­ism. “My friends! You’re not go­ing al­ready? Why, it’s just mid­night! Come, let’s toast our rec­on­cil­ia­tion and bid good rid­dance to my years of mis­guid­ed pride. I have an ex­cel­lent port that you must try, Fos­co-​and he plucked my sleeve-​a Gra­ham’s Tawny, 1972 vin­tage.” Fos­co gave a sniff. “I was al­most tempt­ed to stay when I heard that.”

“Did you all leave to­geth­er?”

“More or less. We said our good-​byes and strag­gled out across the lawn.”

“And that was when? I’d like to know as pre­cise­ly as pos­si­ble, if you please.”

“Twelve twen­ty-​five.” He looked at Pen­der­gast for a mo­ment and then said, “Mr. Pen­der­gast, for­give me if I ob­serve that, among all these ques­tions, you haven’t asked the most im­por­tant one of all.”

“And what ques­tion would that be, Count Fos­co?”

“Why did Jere­my Grove ask us, his four mor­tal en­emies, to be with him on the fi­nal night of his life?”

For a long time, Pen­der­gast did not an­swer. He was care­ful­ly con­sid­er­ing both the ques­tion and the man who had just posed it. Fi­nal­ly he said sim­ply, “A good ques­tion. Con­sid­er it posed.”

“It was the very ques­tion Grove him­self asked when he gath­ered us around his ta­ble at the be­gin­ning of the din­ner par­ty. He re­peat­ed what his in­vi­ta­tion said: that he in­vit­ed us to his house that night be­cause we were the four peo­ple he had most wronged. He wished to make amends.”

“Do you have a copy of the in­vi­ta­tion?”

With a smile, Fos­co re­moved it from his shirt pock­et and hand­ed it over-​a short, hand­writ­ten note.

“And he’d al­ready be­gun to make amends. As with his reap­praisal of Vil­nius’s work.”

“A splen­did re­view, don’t you think? I un­der­stand Vil­nius has just land­ed Gallery 10 to show his work, and they’ve dou­bled his prices.”

“And La­dy Mil­banke? Jonathan Fred­er­ick? How did he make amends to them?”

“While Grove couldn’t put La­dy Mil­banke’s mar­riage back to­geth­er, he did give her some­thing in com­pen­sa­tion. He passed her an exquisite emer­ald neck­lace across the ta­ble, more than enough to re­place that dried-​up old husk of a baron she lost. Forty carats of flaw­less Sri Lankan emer­alds, worth a mil­lion dol­lars if a pen­ny. She prac­ti­cal­ly swooned. And Fred­er­ick? He was a long shot for the po­si­tion of pres­ident of the Ed­sel Foun­da­tion, but Grove ar­ranged the job for him.”

“Ex­traor­di­nary. And what did he do for you?”

“Sure­ly you al­ready know the an­swer to that.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “The ar­ti­cle he was writ­ing for­Burling­ton Mag­azine. ‘A Reap­praisal of Georges de la Tour’sThe Ed­uca­tion of the Vir­gin .’”

“Pre­cise­ly. Pro­claim­ing him­self in er­ror, mak­ing ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ab­ject apolo­gies, beat­ing his breast and af­firm­ing the glo­ri­ous au­then­tic­ity of the paint­ing. He read the ar­ti­cle aloud to us over the din­ner ta­ble.”

“It re­mained be­side his com­put­er. Un­signed and un­mailed.”

“On­ly too true, Mr. Pen­der­gast. Of the four of us, I was the on­ly one cheat­ed by his death.” He spread his hands. “If the mur­der­er had wait­ed a day, I would be forty mil­lion rich­er.”

“Forty mil­lion? I thought it had been put up for sale at fif­teen.”

“That was Sothe­by’s es­ti­mate twen­ty years ago. That paint­ing would go for at least forty mil­lion to­day. But with Grove on record that it’s one of the De­lo­bre fakes . ” Fos­co shrugged. “An un­signed ar­ti­cle be­side a dead man’s com­put­er means noth­ing. There is one good thing: I’ll have the love­ly paint­ing to look at for the rest of my life.I know it’s re­al, andy­ou know it’s re­al, even if no one else does.”

“Yes,” Pen­der­gast said. “Ul­ti­mate­ly that’s all that mat­ters.”

“Well put.”

“And the Ver­meer that hangs be­side it?”

“Re­al.”

“In­deed?”

“It has been dat­ed to 1671, be­tween the pe­ri­od ofLa­dy Writ­ing a Let­ter with Her Maid andThe Al­le­go­ry of Faith “

“Where did it come from?”

“It’s been in my fam­ily for sev­er­al hun­dred years. The counts of Fos­co nev­er felt the need to trum­pet their pos­ses­sions.”

“I’m tru­ly as­ton­ished.”

The count smiled, bowed. “Do you have time to see the rest of my col­lec­tion?”

Pen­der­gast hes­itat­ed for on­ly a sec­ond. “As a mat­ter of fact, I do.”

The count rose and went to the door. Just be­fore they ex­it­ed, he turned to the me­chan­ical cock­atoo, still on his perch.

“Keep an eye on the place, Bu­cephalus, my pret­ty.”

The bird gave a dig­itized squawk in re­ply.

{ 14 }

D’Agos­ta moved fast through the trees, seek­ing the dark­estarea of the park-​a dense growth of trees and shrubs along an em­bank­ment lead­ing down to the West Side High­way. He paused just long enough to glance back. Two fig­ures were run­ning af­ter him, guns gleam­ing in their fists.

Stay­ing low, weav­ing be­tween the trees, D’Agos­ta un­snapped the hol­ster of his Glock. He with­drew the weapon, racked the slide. It was the cho­sen weapon of most mod­ern po­lice de­part­ments, and D’Agos­ta hadn’t been giv­en a choice about car­ry­ing it, on du­ty or off. It didn’t have the punch of his per­son­al .45, but it was light and re­li­able, and best of all, it held fif­teen rounds. He’d left his ex­tra clip in his desk draw­er that morn­ing-​who need­ed an ex­tra clip for a day of in­ter­views?

The men were al­ready in­to the woods, mov­ing fast. D’Agos­ta ran on, heed­less of the noise he was mak­ing-​the brush wasn’t heavy enough to con­ceal him for more than a minute or two, at best. He head­ed south, twigs crack­ling un­der­foot. If he could lose them, even tem­porar­ily, maybe he could get back on­to River­side Drive and head to­ward Broad­way. They wouldn’t dare fol­low on­to such a busy street. He quick­ly checked off his op­tions. The near­est precinct house was lo­cat­ed at 95th be­tween Broad­way and Am­ster­dam-​that’s where he’d head for.

He could hear the men run­ning be­hind him. One shout­ed out to the oth­er, and a fainter re­sponse came back. D’Agos­ta im­me­di­ate­ly un­der­stood what had hap­pened: they had di­vid­ed and were still pur­su­ing, one on ei­ther side of the nar­row strip of park.

Shit.

Keep­ing low, he ran through the woods, gun in hand. No time to stop and strate­gize; no time to use his ra­dio; no time for any­thing but a flat-​out run. The faint lights of River­side Drive flick­ered through the trees on his left; to his right lay the long, brush-​filled slope run­ning steeply down to­ward the West Side High­way. He could hear the dron­ing rush of cars far be­low him. He briefly con­sid­ered run­ning down the em­bank­ment and try­ing to get out on the high­way, but it would be easy to get hung up in the nasty brack­en that clogged the slope.

If that hap­pened, he’d be a sit­ting duck, fired on from above.

The stretch of woods end­ed abrupt­ly, and he burst out in­to a moon­lit scene of par­al­lel walk­ways over­look­ing the riv­er, gar­dens and trees be­tween them. It was ex­posed, but he had no choice but to keep mov­ing.

Who the fuck’s chas­ing me? Mug­gers? Cop haters?It didn’t make sense. He was no longer just a tar­get of op­por­tu­ni­ty. These killers were de­ter­mined. They had fol­lowed him up­town. They were af­ter him for a rea­son.

He ran past the first for­mal gar­den, be­hind rows of iron bench­es, keep­ing low. Sud­den­ly he saw some­thing off to his left: a red spot of light chas­ing him, danc­ing around like an ag­itat­ed fire­fly.

Laser sight.

He threw him­self to the right as the shot came. It hit the met­al bench with a sick­en­ing ric­ochet and hummed off in­to the dark­ness. D’Agos­ta fell in­to the flow­er bed, rolled clum­si­ly, and rose on his knees in fir­ing po­si­tion. He saw a dark shape mov­ing fast against the dim­ness of the open grass and fired-​once, twice-​rolled to the side, rose to his feet, and took off run­ning again, curs­ing him­self for not hav­ing kept up with his shoot­ing prac­tice. But even missed shots had a good ef­fect-​mak­ing them care­ful, slow­ing them down. At least that was the the­ory. He passed the far side of the gar­den and ducked in among the trees.

An­oth­er jig­gling red dot. He threw him­self to the as­phalt as the shot came, rolled, tear­ing his knee open against the pave­ment, and was up again and run­ning. The shoot­ers were us­ing some big-​cal­iber sidearms and knew what they were do­ing. His own shots hadn’t slowed them down at all.

These guys were pro­fes­sion­al as­sas­sins.

He ran through a play­ground, des­per­ate­ly leap­ing first the teeter-​tot­ter, then the sand­box, and across a small square with a foun­tain, gasp­ing with the ef­fort. Jeez, he was out of shape, gone to seed. Long gone were the days in the po­lice gym, keep­ing trim and fit.

He cut across a small square with a foun­tain, jumped a stone para­pet, and was back on the steep, woodsy em­bank­ment lead­ing down to the high­way. He crouched be­hind the stone wall, wait­ing. They would have to cross the open walk­way. That’s when he’d have a shot at them. He held the weapon tight­ly in a two-​hand com­bat grip, stead­ied him­self, tried to get con­trol of his wild breath­ing.Don’t squeeze the trig­ger. When it goes off, it should al­most be a sur­prise. Make ev­ery shot count.

Now!The dark shapes emerged from the trees, mov­ing fast. He fired: once, twice, thrice.

The red lights were danc­ing around the branch­es over his head, and he screamed an ob­scen­ity as he for­got his own care­ful ad­vice and fired again and again at the dim shapes. He could hear noth­ing over the bark of his firearm, but he could feel the slap of bul­lets hit­ting the stone right be­fore his face. These bas­tards didn’t miss a beat.

He, on the oth­er hand, had missed by a mile, and no won­der. He hadn’t tak­en a turn at the range in three damn years, and his shoot­ing was as old and stale as all those shoot­ing awards that hung on his wall.

He scram­bled back from the stone wall, run­ning along it in a low crouch, pray­ing his back wasn’t ex­posed. As he ran, he popped the clip from the gun, peer­ing at it in the dim light. Emp­ty. That left him on­ly two shots in the cham­ber . thir­teen rounds wast­ed.

Sud­den­ly he saw some­thing come in­to view through the trees up ahead: the bridge over the 110th Street off-​ramp. The whole thing was chain-​linked like a cage. If he got caught in there, he’d be the prover­bial fish in a bar­rel.

But turn­ing back-​jump­ing back over the stone wall and cross­ing the open walk­way-​meant run­ning right in­to the arms of his pur­suers. And that would be sui­cide.

He glanced down to his right. There was on­ly one oth­er choice. It was the high­way or noth­ing. Get out on the West Side High­way, stop traf­fic, cre­ate a snarl, ra­dio for help. They wouldn’t pur­sue him or shoot at him out there.

With­out wait­ing to re­con­sid­er, he charged down the steep em­bank­ment, claw­ing through the bram­bles and sumac and poi­son ivy, half falling, half rolling. The branch­es tore cru­el­ly through the fab­ric of his uni­form, and the sharp rocks of the em­bank­ment bruised his shoul­ders and knees.

Whang!sound­ed the shot.

Ahead, the em­bank­ment dropped away steeply. He fell, rolled as far as he could, forced him­self back on­to his feet, and be­gan run­ning again, cast­ing one brief look back. He could hear them crash­ing through the brush not thir­ty feet above him. In des­per­ation, he wheeled, squeezed off a shot at the clos­est fig­ure. It ducked to the side, then charged for­ward again. D’Agos­ta turned and ran with all his might. His heart was rac­ing dan­ger­ous­ly. The rush of cars was sud­den­ly loud­er, the lights flash­ing through the trees, flash­ing on him for a mo­ment.

Whang! Whang!

He ducked, zigzagged. The high­way was just fifty feet ahead. The head­lights were now flash­ing across him, mak­ing a clear tar­get.

Thir­ty more feet. The trees were thin­ning, giv­ing way to garbage and weeds.

Whang!

The em­bank­ment lev­eled out. Twen­ty more feet to the edge of the trees and the high­way. He ran flat out, mak­ing a bee­line

Boom.And he was thrown back.

D’Agos­ta lay there for a mo­ment, stunned, think­ing he’d been hit, that it was over. Then he re­al­ized he’d run full tilt in­to the chain-​link fence that ran just above the high­way. His eyes took it in with­in the space of a heart­beat: the con­certi­na wire at the top, the crap­py fence all man­gled and twist­ed by junkies, the skele­tons of cars ly­ing on the verge be­low the far side.Of course. In the old days, he had driv­en that high­way a mil­lion times, seen that fence lean­ing dan­ger­ous­ly above him, stuffed with trash and de­cay­ing leaves. One more thing he’d for­got­ten in those years in British Columbia. He was trapped.

This was it. He rose on one knee and turned to make his stand.One round, two men.

The math wasn’t good.

{ 15 }

A low fire burned in the grate, cast­ing a rud­dy light on the wall­sof books and chas­ing the damp chill from the air. Two wing chairs oc­cu­pied the space on ei­ther side of the fire. In one sat Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, and in the oth­er Con­stance Greene, pale and slen­der in a beau­ti­ful­ly pressed and pleat­ed dress. To one side sat the re­mains of an evening tea ser­vice: cups and saucers, strain­er, cream­er, di­ges­tive bis­cuits. The still air smelled of wood pol­ish and buck­ram, and on all sides the book­shelves climbed, row af­ter row, to­ward the high ceil­ing, the old leather-​bound books that lined them gleam­ing with gold stamp­ing in the fire­light.

Pen­der­gast’s sil­very eyes glanced to­ward a clock above the man­tel­piece, then flick­ered back to the old news­pa­per he was read­ing. His mur­mured voice picked up where it had left off.

“‘Au­gust 7, 1964. Wash­ing­ton-​In an 88-4 vote to­day, the U.S. Sen­ate au­tho­rized Pres­ident John­son the use of “all nec­es­sary mea­sures” to re­pel armed at­tacks against U.S. forces in Viet­nam. The vote was in re­sponse to the shelling of two U.S. Navy ships by North Viet­nam in the Gulf of Tonkin’ . “

Con­stance lis­tened in­tent­ly as he went on. There was a rus­tle as Pen­der­gast gen­tly turned the frag­ile, yel­lowed page.

The girl held up her hand, and Pen­der­gast paused.

“I’m not sure I can bear an­oth­er war. Will it be a bad one?”

“One of the worst. It will tear apart the coun­try “

“Let us save this war for to­mor­row, then “

Pen­der­gast nod­ded, care­ful­ly fold­ing up the news­pa­per and putting it aside.

“I can scarce­ly be­lieve the cru­el­ty of the last cen­tu­ry. It stag­gers the soul.”

Pen­der­gast in­clined his head in agree­ment.

She shook her head slow­ly, and the glow of the flames re­flect­ed in her dark eyes and straight black hair. “Do you think this new cen­tu­ry will be as bar­barous?”

“The twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry showed us the evil face of physics. This cen­tu­ry will show us the evil face of bi­ol­ogy. This will be hu­man­ity’s last cen­tu­ry, Con­stance.”

“So cyn­ical?”

“May God prove me wrong.”

A bank of em­bers col­lapsed, open­ing a glow­ing wound in the fire. Pen­der­gast stirred. “And now, per­haps, shall we move on to the re­sults of your search?”

“Cer­tain­ly.” Con­stance rose and walked to­ward one wall of book­shelves, re­turn­ing with sev­er­al oc­ta­vo vol­umes. “The ab­bot Trithemius, the­Liber de An­ge­lis , the Mc­Mas­ter text,The Sworn Book of Hon­orius , theS­ecre­tum Philosopho­rum , and, of course,Ars No­to­ri­um . Trea­tis­es on sell­ing one’s soul, rais­ing the dev­il, and the like.” She placed the vol­umes on a side ta­ble. “All al­leged eye­wit­ness ac­counts. Latin, An­cient Greek, Ara­ma­ic, Old French, Old Norse, and Mid­dle En­glish. Then there are the gri­moires.”

“Text­books of mag­ic,” Pen­der­gast said, nod­ding.

“The Key of Solomo­nis the best known. Many of these doc­uments be­longed to se­cret so­ci­eties and or­ders, which were com­mon among the no­bil­ity of the Mid­dle Ages. Ap­par­ent­ly, these so­ci­eties were of­ten ac­tive in sa­tan­ic prac­tices.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded again. “I am par­tic­ular­ly in­ter­est­ed in ac­counts of the dev­il claim­ing his due.”

“There are many. For ex­am­ple”-she in­di­cat­ed the wormy cov­er of theArs No­to­ri­um with a faint look of dis­taste-“the Tale of Ge­of­frey, mag­is­ter of Kent.”

“Go on.”

“The tales don’t vary great­ly from the Faus­tian theme, ex­cept in the de­tails. A high­ly learned man, rest­less and dis­sat­is­fied; a manuscript; rais­ing the dev­il; promis­es made, promis­es bro­ken; a warm end. In this case, Mag­is­ter Ge­of­frey was a doc­tor of phi­los­ophy at Ox­ford in the ear­ly 1400s, a chemist and math­emati­cian. His great pas­sion was the mys­tery of the prime num­bers. He spent years in his stu­dio, cal­cu­lat­ing the primes out to five dig­its. Some of the cal­cu­la­tions in­volved more than a year of work, and they say he need­ed a lit­tle help to fin­ish them. Hence, the pact with Lu­cifer. There was talk in Oriel Col­lege of chant­ing, ug­ly smells, un­ex­plained nois­es, and strange lights burn­ing in the schol­ar’s cham­bers long af­ter mid­night. The mag­is­ter con­tin­ued to teach and do his al­chem­ical ex­per­iments. His fame spread far and wide. He was said to have dis­cov­ered the ar­canum for trans­form­ing lead in­to gold, and he was ad­mit­ted in­to the Or­der of the Gold­en Chal­ice by King Hen­ry VI him­self. He pub­lished his great work­The Nyne Num­bers of God and was known across Eu­rope for his wis­dom and learn­ing.

“But then things be­gan to change. At the height of his fame, he be­came ner­vous, sus­pi­cious, strange. He was of­ten ill, con­fined to his cham­bers. He jumped at ev­ery noise. He seemed to grow thin, his eyes star­ing ‘like the great hol­low eyes of a calf in the slaugh­ter.’ He or­dered brass locks and had his doors clad and band­ed in iron.

“And then one day his stu­dents missed him at break­fast. They went to his cham­bers. The door was locked, the iron hot to the touch. There was a smell of phos­pho­rus and sul­fur. On­ly with great ef­fort could they break it down.

“They be­held a ter­ri­ble sight. Ge­of­frey, mag­is­ter of Kent, lay on his wood­en pal­let, ful­ly dressed, as if laid out for buri­al. There were no cuts on his skin, no breaks, no bruis­ing. And yet his heart lay next to the body, par­tial­ly burned and still smok­ing. They said it wouldn’t stop beat­ing un­til it had been sprin­kled with holy wa­ter. Then it burst. The de­tails are rather . un­pleas­ant.”

Pen­der­gast glanced at the girl. She leaned for­ward, took a sip of tea, re­placed the cup, smiled.

“And do the texts de­scribe just how the Prince of Dark­ness was con­jured?”

“They drew cir­cles around them­selves. Gen­er­al­ly, nine feet in di­am­eter. They were usu­al­ly drawn with anarthame , or cer­emo­ni­al knife. Fre­quent­ly, there were small­er cir­cles or pen­ta­cles with­in the larg­er one. Above all, it was crit­ical that the cir­cle not be bro­ken dur­ing the cer­emo­ny-​as long as he re­mained with­in the cir­cle, the con­jur­er was safe from the demons he sum­moned.”

“And once the demons were sum­moned?”

“A con­tract was made. The usu­al: wealth, pow­er, knowl­edge, in re­turn for one’s im­mor­tal soul. Faust, of course, is the pro­to­typ­ical sto­ry-​par­tic­ular­ly in the way it ends.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded en­cour­ag­ing­ly.

“Af­ter mak­ing his per­son­al deal with the dev­il, Faust had all the pow­er, earth­ly and un­earth­ly, he had al­ways craved. But he had oth­er things as well. He com­plained of nev­er be­ing alone: of eyes in the walls watch­ing him, of nois­es, strange nois­es like the click­ing of teeth. De­spite hav­ing ev­ery­thing mor­tal be­ings can pos­sess, he grew rest­less. Even­tu­al­ly, as the days of his con­tract grew short, he took to read­ing the Bible, loud­ly pro­claim­ing his re­pen­tance. He spent his last evening in the com­pa­ny of his drink­ing com­pan­ions, weep­ing bit­ter­ly, be­wail­ing his sins, beg­ging heav­en to slow the pas­sage of hours.”

“‘O lente, lente, cur­rite noc­tis equi,’”Pen­der­gast in­toned qui­et­ly.

“Dr. Faus­tus, Act 5, scene 2,” Con­stance said im­me­di­ate­ly.

” The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The dev­il will come, and Faus­tus must be damned.”

A small smile broke across Pen­der­gast’s fea­tures.

“Ac­cord­ing to leg­end, ter­ri­ble screams were heard is­su­ing from his rooms af­ter mid­night. None of his guests dared in­ves­ti­gate. In the morn­ing, they found his bed­cham­ber turned in­to an abat­toir. The walls were paint­ed in blood. Some­body found a lone eye­ball in a cor­ner of the room. The crushed, limp re­mains of his skull clung to one wall. The rest of his body was found in the al­ley be­low, thrown over a pile of horse ma­nure. They said-“

She was in­ter­rupt­ed by a knock at the li­brary door.

“That would be Sergeant D’Agos­ta,” Pen­der­gast said, glanc­ing up at the clock. “Come in,” he called in a loud­er voice.

The door opened slow­ly and Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta stepped in­to the li­brary: dirty, clothes torn, scratched, bleed­ing.

Pen­der­gast rose abrupt­ly from his chair. “Vin­cent!”

{ 16 }

D’Agos­ta slumped in a chair, feel­ing dazed and in shock. It­seemed one-​half of his body was numb, and the half that wasn’t was throb­bing in pain. The old man­sion gave him the creeps, so damp, cold, and dark. Was this re­al­ly where Pen­der­gast was now liv­ing? Here the guy had a beau­ti­ful place on Cen­tral Park West, but chose in­stead to live in deep­est Harlem, in a spook­house of a mu­se­um no less, all stuffed an­imals and skele­tons and shelves cov­ered with weird crap. At least this li­brary was like an oa­sis: soft chairs, a roar­ing fire. Pen­der­gast had a guest, it seemed, but for the mo­ment D’Agos­ta felt too scratched, bruised, and wiped out to care.

“You look like you just es­caped from the dev­il,” Pen­der­gast said.

“I did.”

“Sher­ry?”

“You wouldn’t hap­pen to have a cold Bud?”

Pen­der­gast looked pained. “Would a Pil­sner Urquell do?”

“If it’s beer, it’ll do.”

The oth­er oc­cu­pant of the li­brary-​a young wom­an in a long salmon-​col­ored dress-​rose and left the room. With­in a few min­utes, she was back, bear­ing a glass of beer on a salver. D’Agos­ta took it and drank grate­ful­ly. “Thanks, uh . “

“Con­stance,” came the soft re­ply.

“Con­stance Greene,” said Pen­der­gast. “My ward. This is Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta, a trust­ed as­so­ciate of mine. He’s as­sist­ing in this case.”

D’Agos­ta glanced at Pen­der­gast. His ward? What the hell did that mean? He looked back more cu­ri­ous­ly at the girl. She was beau­ti­ful, in a pale, del­icate kind of way. Her dress was very prop­er and de­mure, but the breasts that swelled the lace-​front brought a mostun de­mure stir­ring to D’Agos­ta’s loins. De­spite the old-​fash­ioned clothes, she looked no old­er than twen­ty. But those vi­olet eyes of hers, so alert and in­tel­li­gent, some­how didn’t look like the eyes of a young girl at all. Not at all.

“Glad to meet you,” said D’Agos­ta, straight­en­ing up in his chair and winc­ing.

“Are you hurt?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“Just about ev­ery­where.” D’Agos­ta took an­oth­er long pull.

“Tell us what hap­pened.”

D’Agos­ta set down the glass. “I’ll start at the be­gin­ning. I vis­it­ed La­dy Mil­banke first. She was a com­plete wash. All she want­ed to do was talk about her new emer­ald neck­lace. Cut­forth wasn’t much bet­ter: lied about the rea­son Grove called him, an­swered ques­tions eva­sive­ly if at all. Last was Bullard, at the New York Ath­let­ic Club. Claims he hard­ly knew Grove, doesn’t know why he called, can’t re­al­ly re­mem­ber what they chat­ted about, doesn’t know how Grove got his num­ber. A liar through and through, and didn’t even both­er to hide it.”

“In­ter­est­ing.”

“Yeah, a re­al piece of work. Big, ug­ly, ar­ro­gant moth­erf-” D’Agos­ta glanced at the girl. “Man. Ba­si­cal­ly, he blew me off. I left, ate din­ner at Mullin’s Pub over on Broad­way. Caught sight of a gold Im­pala more than once. Took the sub­way to 96th and walked over to River­side. Hoofed it from there. The Im­pala reap­peared again around 130th.”

“Head­ing north or south?”

D’Agos­ta won­dered why that was im­por­tant. “North.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“I saw some­thing was about to come down, so I ran in­to River­side Park. Two guys jumped out and chased me, shoot­ing laser-​sight­ed hand­guns: ac­cu­rate, large-​cal­iber. Chased me through the park. I ran down to­ward the West Side High­way and came up against a chain-​link fence. I re­al­ly thought it was over. Then I no­ticed a re­cent car wreck fifty yards on. Some shit­box had gone through the fence, mak­ing a gap. Just left the car rot­ting there. I dove through the gap, lost them on the high­way, flagged down a car. It let me off at the next ex­it, but I couldn’t get a cab and had to walk the thir­ty blocks back down. Stick­ing to the shad­ows the whole way, watch­ing out for that Im­pala-​it took quite some time.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded again. “So one of the men fol­lowed you on­to the sub­way, the oth­er drove the car. They re­con­nect­ed and tried to cut you off.”

“That’s how I fig­ured it. An old trick.”

“Did you re­turn fire?”

“Lot of good it did me.”

“Ah! And your vaunt­ed shoot­ing abil­ity?”

D’Agos­ta looked down. “Lit­tle rusty.”

“The ques­tion is, who sent them?”

“It seemed to hap­pen aw­ful damn fast af­ter I got Bullard stirred up.”

“Per­haps too fast.”

“Bullard didn’t look like the kind of guy who would wait. He’s the de­ci­sive type.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

Through­out this recita­tion, the young wom­an had lis­tened po­lite­ly. Now she rose from the couch. “With your per­mis­sion, I’ll leave you to dis­cuss this mat­ter amongst your­selves.” She had a pre­cise, man­nered way of speak­ing, and a faint ac­cent that for some rea­son re­mind­ed D’Agos­ta of old black-​and-​white movies. She came over and kissed Pen­der­gast light­ly on the cheek. “Good night, Aloy­sius.” Then she turned to­ward D’Agos­ta and nod­ded. “A plea­sure to make your ac­quain­tance, Sergeant.”

A mo­ment lat­er the door to the li­brary closed, and si­lence fell.

“Ward, huh?” said D’Agos­ta.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“Where’d she come from?”

“I in­her­it­ed her with the house.”

“How the heck do you ‘in­her­it’ some­one? She a rel­ative?”

“Not a rel­ative. It’s rather com­pli­cat­ed. This house and its col­lec­tions were passed down to me from my great-​un­cle An­toine. She was dis­cov­ered in the house by an ac­quain­tance of mine who cat­aloged the man­sion’s col­lec­tions dur­ing the sum­mer. She’d been hid­ing here.”

“For how long?”

There was a pause. “A good while.”

“What is she, a run­away? Doesn’t she have fam­ily?”

“She’s an or­phan. My great-​un­cle had tak­en her in, looked af­ter her wel­fare, ed­ucat­ed her.”

“Yeah? He sounds like a saint.”

“Hard­ly. As it hap­pens, Con­stance was the on­ly per­son he ev­er cared for. In fact, he con­tin­ued car­ing for her long af­ter he’d stopped car­ing even about him­self. He was a mis­an­thrope, but she was the ex­cep­tion that proved his rule. In any case, it seems I’m her on­ly fam­ily now. But I must ask you not to men­tion any of this in her pres­ence. The last six months have been ex­cep­tion­al­ly . try­ing for her.”

“How so?”

“That is some­thing bet­ter left in the past. Suf­fice it to say, Vin­cent, that Con­stance is the in­no­cent ben­efi­cia­ry of a set of di­abol­ical ex­per­iments con­duct­ed long ago. See­ing how her own fam­ily was vic­tim­ized ear­ly on by those ex­per­iments, I feel bound to look af­ter her well­be­ing. It’s a com­pli­ca­tion I cer­tain­ly did not an­tic­ipate. How­ev­er, her knowl­edge of this house and its li­brary is prov­ing in­valu­able. She will make an ex­cel­lent re­search as­sis­tant and cu­ra­tor.”

“At least she’s not hard to look at.” When he felt Pen­der­gast’s un-​amused gaze on him D’Agos­ta cleared his throat and added hasti­ly, “How did your own in­ter­views go?”

“Mont­calm could add lit­tle to what we al­ready know. He was away un­til yes­ter­day, trav­el­ing. It seems that Grove left a fran­tic mes­sage with his as­sis­tant:How does one break a con­tract with the dev­il? The as­sis­tant threw the note away-​ap­par­ent­ly Mont­calm is a mag­net for cranks and gets many such mes­sages. He could add noth­ing else. Fos­co, on the oth­er hand, proved to be most in­ter­est­ing.”

“I hope you re­al­ly sweat­ed him.”

“I’m not sure who sweat­ed who.”

D’Agos­ta could not imag­ine any­one sweat­ing Pen­der­gast. “Is he in­volved?” “That de­pends on what you mean by in­volved. He is a re­mark­able man, and his rec­ol­lec­tions proved to be in­valu­able.”

“Well, the ju­ry’s still out on both Cut­forth and Bullard.”

“You said Cut­forth was a liar, as well as Bullard. How do you know?”

“He told me Grove had called him in the mid­dle of the night, wish­ing to buy some piece of rock mem­ora­bil­ia. I bluffed him by say­ing Grove hat­ed rock mu­sic. His look gave him away im­me­di­ate­ly.”

“A crude lie.”

“He’s a crude man, and pret­ty stupid to boot. I imag­ine he’s good at what he does, though, giv­en all the dough he’s made.”

“In­tel­li­gence, cul­ture, and ed­uca­tion are not qual­ities gen­er­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the pop­ular mu­sic busi­ness.”

“Well, Bullard’s on an­oth­er lev­el. He’s crude, too, but high­ly in­tel­li­gent. I wouldn’t un­der­es­ti­mate him. The fact is they both know a lot more about Grove’s death than they’re telling. We can crack Cut­forth, I’m pret­ty sure-​he’s a wuss-​but Bullard’s go­ing to be a tough nut.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “The foren­sic re­port on Grove’s body should be ready to­mor­row. That may give us bad­ly need­ed in­for­ma­tion. The crit­ical thing now is to find the con­nec­tion be­tween Bullard, Cut­forth, and Grove. If we find that con­nec­tion, Vin­cent, we’ll have the key to this en­tire mys­tery.”

{ 17 }

Dr. Jack Di­en­phong cast his eye about his lab­ora­to­ry: ex­am­in­ingthe met­al ta­bles, the chem­ical hoods and glove box­es, mi­cro­scopes, SEMs, mi­cro­tomes, and titra­tion se­tups. It wasn’t pret­ty, but it was or­ga­nized and func­tion­al. Di­en­phong was chief of the FBI’s Foren­sic Sci­ence Di­vi­sion on Congress Street, and he was very cu­ri­ous to meet-​at last-​this Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast he had heard so much about.

He glanced down at the scrib­bled in­dex card in his hand, run­ning through his notes one more time. Most of it was in his head: the in­dex card was more for com­fort than any­thing else. He felt a dis­qui­et­ing sense of ap­pre­hen­sion. He didn’t like what he was go­ing to have to re­port, and he just hoped the fa­mous-​some said in­fa­mous-​agent would un­der­stand. In Di­en­phong’s opin­ion, the worst mis­take one could make in foren­sic chem­istry was to over­in­ter­pret re­sults. Do that enough times, and even­tu­al­ly you’d send an in­no­cent man to prison. It was Di­en­phong’s great­est fear. He wouldn’t stretch re­sults for any­one, not even some­one as formidable as Pen­der­gast.

There was a stir at the door, and Di­en­phong glanced at his watch. On time al­most to the sec­ond, al­ready con­firm­ing one thing he’d heard Pen­der­gast was fa­mous for. A mo­ment lat­er the door opened, and a slen­der man in a black suit en­tered, fol­lowed by Spe­cial Agent in Charge Carl­ton, chief of the South­ern Dis­trict Field Of­fice, and a hushed group of ju­nior agents and as­sis­tants. There was an al­most pal­pa­ble ex­cite­ment in the air, the kind of ex­cite­ment high-​pro­file cas­es al­ways gen­er­at­ed. And on­ly a high-​pro­file case like this would bring some­body like Carl­ton in on a Sun­day. All the per­ti­nent ev­idence had been for­ward­ed to the FBI by lo­cal po­lice for in-​depth anal­ysis. And now it was up to Di­en­phong to piece ev­ery­thing to­geth­er for them. His feel­ing of ap­pre­hen­sion did not di­min­ish.

Di­en­phong ob­served the stranger care­ful­ly. Pen­der­gast was just as peo­ple had de­scribed him, mov­ing with the ef­fi­cien­cy and grace of a cat. His hair was so blond it was al­most white, his face cool and pa­tri­cian, his pale eyes rest­less­ly tak­ing in ev­ery­thing. Di­en­phong had met many FBI agents in his time, but this one was in an­oth­er cat­ego­ry al­to­geth­er.

Those ice cool eyes alight­ed on Di­en­phong, and the agent came strid­ing over. “Dr. Di­en­phong,” the man said in the but­tery tones of the Deep South.

“A plea­sure.” Di­en­phong took the dry hand.

“I thought your piece in the­Jour­nal of Foren­sics on the mat­ura­tion rate of blowfly lar­vae in the hu­man ca­dav­er to be fine read­ing.”

“Thank you.” He hadn’t quite thought of the ar­ti­cle as “fine read­ing” him­self, but then each to his own. Di­en­phong’s idea of fine read­ing was John­son’sRam­bler es­says.

“The pre­sen­ta­tion is all ready,” he said, ges­tur­ing to­ward a dou­ble row of met­al chairs set up be­fore a pro­jec­tion screen. “We’re go­ing to be­gin with a brief vi­su­al pre­sen­ta­tion.”

“Ex­cel­lent.”

The agents seat­ed them­selves with mur­murs, cough­ing, and scrap­ing of chairs. Spe­cial Agent in Charge Carl­ton took up po­si­tion in the front row cen­ter, his thick thighs spilling off the edges of the seat.

Di­en­phong nod­ded to­ward his as­sis­tant and the lights dimmed. He switched on the com­put­er pro­jec­tor.

“Please feel free to in­ter­rupt with ques­tions at any time.” He called up the first im­age. “We’ll go from sim­plest to most com­plex. This is a 50x sam­ple of the sul­fur re­cov­ered at the site. Our chem­ical anal­ysis showed it to be nat­ural, with trace el­ements that in­di­cate a vol­canic ori­gin. It had been rapid­ly heat­ed and burned by un­known means. When sul­fur burns, it com­bines with oxy­gen to make sul­fur diox­ide gas, SO2, which has a very strong odor-​the smell of burned match­es. If it then comes in con­tact with wa­ter, it cre­ates H2SO4, al­so known as sul­fu­ric acid.

“These fibers here” -the next im­age came up-“are from the vic­tim’s cloth­ing. Note the pit­ting and curl­ing: clear ef­fects of sul­fu­ric acid on the vic­tim’s clothes.”

Three more im­ages in quick suc­ces­sion. “As you can see, there was even mi­cro­scop­ic pit­ting on the vic­tim’s plas­tic glass­es, and in the var­nish on the walls and floor, from the in­tense re­lease of sul­fur com­pounds.”

“Any idea of the spe­cif­ic vol­canic source?” It was Pen­der­gast who spoke.

“That’s al­most im­pos­si­ble to an­swer. We’d have to an­alyze and com­pare this with thou­sands of known vol­canic sources, an over­whelm­ing job even if we could get the sam­ples. What I can tell you is that the high pro­por­tion of sil­icon in­di­cates a con­ti­nen­tal, as op­posed to an ocean­ic, source. In oth­er words, this sul­fur didn’t come from Hawaii or, say, the seafloor.”

Pen­der­gast set­tled back, his ex­pres­sion un­read­able in the dark room.

“This next im­age shows some mi­cro­sec­tions of the burned wood of the floor from the so­called hoof­print.” Sev­er­al more im­ages flashed across the screen. Di­en­phong cleared his throat. Here is where the dif­fi­cul­ties be­gan.

“You will note the very deep pen­etra­tion of the burn in­to the wood. You can see it bet­ter at 200x.”

An­oth­er slide. “This was not caused by a ‘brand­ing iron’ ef­fect.” He paused, swal­lowed. “That is to say, this mark was not burned in­to the floor by a red-​hot ob­ject be­ing im­pressed in­to the wood. It was caused by an in­tense burst of non­ion­iz­ing ra­di­ation, prob­ably in the very short in­frared wave­length range, which deeply pen­etrat­ed the wood.”

Carl­ton spoke up, as Di­en­phong knew he would. “You mean, the perp didn’t heat some­thing up and press it on the wood?”

“Ex­act­ly. Noth­ing ac­tu­al­ly­touched the wood. The burn was made by a short blast of pure ra­di­ation.”

Carl­ton shift­ed, the chair ut­ter­ing a dan­ger­ous groan. “Wait a minute. How can that be?”

“My job is to de­scribe, not in­ter­pret,” said Di­en­phong, flick­ing up the next slide.

But the chief hadn’t fin­ished. “Are you say­ing the mark was made with some kind ofray gun ?”

“I can’t say what the source of the ra­di­ation was.”

Carl­ton set­tled back with a du­bi­ous grunt.

“This brings us to the cross.” The next slide came up. “Our art ex­pert has iden­ti­fied this as a rare ex­am­ple of a sev­en­teenth-​cen­tu­ry Tus­can cross, com­mon­ly worn by the no­ble class­es. It is made of gold and sil­ver, lay­ered, fused, and hand-​chased to pro­duce a rather in­ter­est­ing ef­fect known aslamel­lés fines . It was then set in wood, which has large­ly burned away.”

“How much’s it worth?” Carl­ton said, ask­ing an in­tel­li­gent ques­tion for a change.

“Giv­en the pre­cious stones, eighty, per­haps one hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars. Un­dam­aged, that is.”

Carl­ton whis­tled.

“The cross was found around the neck of the vic­tim, touch­ing his skin. Here is a pho­to­graph of it at the scene of the crime, still around the vic­tim’s neck.”

The next slide came up, prompt­ing nois­es of dis­gust and dis­be­lief.

“As you can see, the cross heat­ed to the point of melt­ing, deeply burn­ing the skin where it lay. But ob­serve that the sur­round­ing flesh is not scorched or even red­dened. Some­thing-​and I re­al­ly can’t say what-​se­lec­tive­ly heat­ed the cross­with­out heat­ing the sur­round­ing skin. The cross then par­tial­ly melt­ed and burned it­self in­to the vic­tim’s flesh in situ.

“And here”-he brought up the next im­age-“is an elec­tron mi­cro­graph at 3,000x, show­ing this ex­traor­di­nary pit­ting along the sil­ver-​but­not the gold-​sur­face of the cross. I can’t ac­count for this, ei­ther. I sus­pect it might have been caused by an in­tense and pro­longed dose of ra­di­ation that seems to have stripped off the top lay­ers of elec­trons and va­por­ized part of the met­al. It acts much more strong­ly on sil­ver than on gold. Again, I have no idea why.”

Carl­ton was on his feet. “Can we have this in plain En­glish?”

“Of course,” Di­en­phong said dry­ly. “Some­thing heat­ed up and melt­ed the cross with­out heat­ing up any­thing around it. I guess it must have been some kind of ra­di­ation that was tak­en up by met­al more strong­ly than flesh.”

“Like maybe the same ra­di­ation that burned the hoof­print?”

Carl­ton, Di­en­phong had to ad­mit, was not as stupid as he pre­tend­ed to be.

“A good pos­si­bil­ity.”

Pen­der­gast raised a fin­ger.

“Agent Pen­der­gast?”

“Were there any signs of ra­di­ation burns or heat­ing in any oth­er sur­faces in the room?”

An even bet­ter ques­tion. “Yes, in fact, there were. The bed­posts, which were var­nished pine, showed signs of heat stress, as did the wall be­hind the bed, which was paint­ed pine. In some ar­eas, the paint had soft­ened and bub­bled.”

He moused his way through the on-​screen menu and pulled up an­oth­er im­age. “Here’s a cross sec­tion of the wall, show­ing four lay­ers of paint. Now here’s yet an­oth­er small mys­tery: on­ly th­elow­est lay­er of paint seems to have heat­ed up and bub­bled. The oth­ers were undis­turbed and re­mained chem­ical­ly un­al­tered.”

“Did you an­alyze all four lay­ers of paint?” Pen­der­gast asked.

Di­en­phong nod­ded.

“Was the bot­tom lay­er a lead-​based paint?”

Di­en­phong felt a sud­den sur­prise. He quick­ly saw where the line of ques­tion­ing would lead, and it was some­thing that he had not thought of. “Let me check the book.” He flipped through the lab re­ports, or­ga­nized and cat­ego­rized in a three-​ring binder la­beled­Brim­stone . All FBI in­ves­ti­ga­tions get a nick­name, and this was the one he had giv­en this case. Melo­dra­mat­ic, per­haps, but ap­pro­pri­ate.

He looked up from the binder. “Yes, as a mat­ter of fact it was lead-​based.”

“And the rest were not?”

“That’s cor­rect.”

“Fur­ther proof that we are deal­ing with some kind of ra­di­ation.”

“Very good, Agent Pen­der­gast.” It was the first time in his ca­reer that an FBI agent had beat­en him to a con­clu­sion. This Pen­der­gast was liv­ing up to his rep­uta­tion. Di­en­phong cleared his throat. “Any oth­er ques­tions or com­ments?”

Carl­ton sat down again, raised a weary hand.

“Yes?”

“I’m miss­ing some­thing. How could some­thing af­fect the­bot­tom lay­er of paint and not the up­per ones?”

Pen­der­gast turned. “It was the­lead in the paint that re­act­ed, like the met­al in the cross. It ab­sorbed the ra­di­ation more strong­ly. Was there any ra­dioac­tiv­ity present at the site, Doc­tor, dur­ing fol­low-​up in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“None what­so­ev­er.”

Carl­ton nod­ded. “Check in­to that, Sam, will you?”

“Of course, sir,” one of the ju­nior agents replied.

Di­en­phong went to the next im­age. “Here’s the fi­nal im­age: a close-​up of a sec­tion of the cross. Note the very lo­cal­ized melt­ing, com­plete­ly in­con­sis­tent with a con­vec­tive source of heat. Again an in­di­ca­tion that ra­di­ation played a role.”

“What type of ra­di­ation would se­lec­tive­ly heat met­al more than flesh?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“X-​rays, gam­ma rays, mi­crowave, far in­frared, cer­tain wave­lengths in the ra­dio spec­trum, not to men­tion al­pha ra­di­ation and a flux of fast neu­trons. This is not very un­usu­al. What is un­usu­al is thein­ten­si­ty .”

Di­en­phong wait­ed for the in­evitable ex­pos­tu­la­tion from Carl­ton, but this time the agent in charge said noth­ing.

“The pit­ting on the cross,” Pen­der­gast said, “might sug­gest to you some­thing?”

“Not so far.”

“Spec­ula­tions?”

“I nev­er spec­ulate, Mr. Pen­der­gast.”

“An in­tense elec­tron beam could cause it, don’t you think?”

“Yes, but an elec­tron beam would have to prop­agate through a vac­uum. Air would dis­perse it in, say, a mil­lime­ter or two. As I said, it might have been in the in­frared, mi­crowave, or X-​ray spec­trum, ex­cept that it would take a trans­mit­ter of sev­er­al tons to gen­er­ate a beam that in­tense.”

“Quite so. What do you think, Doc­tor, of the the­ory be­ing pushed by the­New York Post ?”

Di­en­phong paused briefly at this sud­den change of tack. “I am not in the habit of tak­ing my the­ories from the pages of the­Post .”

“They’ve pub­lished spec­ula­tion that the dev­il took his soul.”

There was a brief si­lence, and then there was a smat­ter­ing of ner­vous chuck­les. Pen­der­gast was ev­ident­ly mak­ing a joke. Or was he? He didn’t seem to be laugh­ing.

“Mr. Pen­der­gast, that’s a the­ory I don’t sub­scribe to.”

“No?”

Di­en­phong smiled. “I am a Bud­dhist. The on­ly dev­il we be­lieve in is the one in­side the hu­man heart.”

{ 18 }

Not much scan­ning of the crowd stream­ing in­to the Metropoli­tan Opera House­was need­ed to lo­cate Count Isidor Fos­co: his huge pres­ence, strik­ing a dra­mat­ic pose be­side the Lin­coln Cen­ter foun­tain, was un­mis­tak­able. Pen­der­gast drift­ed to­ward him with the crowd. All around, men in tuxe­dos and wom­en in pearl neck­laces were bab­bling ex­cit­ed­ly. It was open­ing night at the Metropoli­tan Opera, and the pro­gram was Donizetti’sLu­crezia Bor­gia. The count was wear­ing white tie and tails, beau­ti­ful­ly tai­lored to his enor­mous­ly fat fig­ure. The cut was old­fash­ioned, and in place of the usu­al white waist­coat, Fos­co was sport­ing one in gor­geous Hong Kong silk bro­cad­ed in white and dove gray. A gar­de­nia was stuck in his but­ton­hole, his hand­some face was pat­ted and shaved and pow­dered to pink per­fec­tion, and his thick mane of gray hair was brushed back in­to leo­nine curls. His small, plump hands were per­fect­ly fit­ted in gray kid gloves.

“My dear Pen­der­gast, I washop­ing you’d come in white tie!” Fos­co said, re­joic­ing. “I can­not un­der­stand why peo­ple dress down so bar­barous­ly on a night such as this.” He waved a dis­mis­sive hand at the tuxe­doed pa­trons stream­ing past them in­to the hall. “There are on­ly three oc­ca­sions left to tru­ly dress up in these dark days: at one’s nup­tials, at one’s fu­ner­al, and at open­ing night at the opera. By far the hap­pi­est of these three is the last.”

“That de­pends on your point of view,” said Pen­der­gast dry­ly.

“You are hap­pi­ly mar­ried, then?”

“I was re­fer­ring to the oth­er oc­ca­sion.”

“Ah!” Fos­co laughed silent­ly. “You are right, Pen­der­gast. I’ve nev­er seen a more con­tent­ed smile on some peo­ple than at their own wake.”

“I was re­fer­ring to the de­ceased’s heirs.”

“You wicked fel­low. Shall we go in­side? I hope you don’t mind sit­ting in the pit-​I avoid the box­es be­cause the acous­tics are mud­dy. We have tick­ets for row N, cen­ter right, which I have found from ex­per­imen­ta­tion to be the acous­ti­cal sweet spot in this hall, par­tic­ular­ly seats twen­ty-​three through thir­ty-​one. But look, there go the house­lights: we had bet­ter sit down.” And with his gi­ant head held erect, chin raised, Fos­co moved swift­ly through the milling crowd, which part­ed in­stinc­tive­ly. For his part, Fos­co looked nei­ther to the right nor to the left as they moved through the cen­tral doors, brush­ing past sev­er­al ush­ers of­fer­ing pro­grams and sweep­ing down the cen­tral aisle to row N. Fos­co wait­ed at the end of the row, ges­tur­ing a dozen peo­ple out of their seats and in­to the far aisle so he could make his way undis­turbed. The count had pur­chased three seats for him­self, and he seat­ed him­self in the cen­ter one, stretch­ing his arms on the up­turned seats on ei­ther side.

“For­give me if we don’t sit jowl-​to-​jowl, my dear Pen­der­gast. My cor­pu­lence de­mands its space and will not be reined in.” He slipped a small pair of be­jew­eled, pearl-​in­laid opera glass­es out of his waist­coat and placed them on the emp­ty seat next to him. A more pow­er­ful brass spy­glass al­so made an ap­pear­ance and was ar­ranged on the oth­er seat.

The great house was fill­ing up, and there was an air of ex­cite­ment. From the or­ches­tra pit came the mur­mur of in­stru­ments tun­ing, play­ing snatch­es of the opera to come.

Fos­co leaned to­ward Pen­der­gast, plac­ing a neat gloved hand on his arm. “No one who loves mu­sic can fail to be moved by­Lu­crezia Bor­gia . But wait-​what is this?” He peered more close­ly at Pen­der­gast. “You are not wear­ing earplugs, are you, sir?”

“Not plugs, no. These mere­ly at­ten­uate the sound-​my hear­ing is ex­cep­tion­al­ly acute, and any vol­ume above a nor­mal con­ver­sa­tion is quite painful to me. Fear not, the mu­sic will get through all too well, I as­sure you.”

“All too well, you say!”

“Count Fos­co, I thank you for this in­vi­ta­tion. But as I warned you once, I have yet to meet an opera I liked. Pure mu­sic and vul­gar spec­ta­cle are fun­da­men­tal­ly in­com­pat­ible. Beethoven’s string quar­tets are by far my pref­er­ence-​and even those, to be hon­est, I en­joy for their in­tel­lec­tu­al con­tent more than their mu­si­cal.”

Fos­co winced. “What, may I ask, is wrong with spec­ta­cle?” He spread his hands. “Isn’t life it­self a spec­ta­cle?”

“All the col­or, noise, flash, the em­bon­point di­va prowl­ing the stage, shriek­ing and howl­ing and throw­ing her­self from the ram­parts of some cas­tle-​it dis­tracts the mind from the mu­sic.”

“But that is ex­act­ly what opera is! A feast of sigh­tand sound. There is hu­mor! There is tragedy! There are soar­ing heights of pas­sion and depths of cru­el­ty! There is love and be­tray­al!”

“You are mak­ing my points even bet­ter than I could, Count.”

“Your mis­take, Pen­der­gast, is to think of opera as sole­ly­mu­sic . It is more than mu­sic. It is­life ! You must aban­don your­self to it, throw your­self at its mer­cy.”

Pen­der­gast smiled. “I am afraid, Count, I nev­er aban­don my­self to any­thing.”

Fos­co pat­ted his arm. “You may have a French name, but you have an En­glish heart. The En­glish can nev­er step out­side them­selves. Wher­ev­er they go they feel self-​con­scious. That is why the En­glish make ex­cel­lent an­thro­pol­ogists but dread­ful com­posers.” Fos­co snort­ed. “Pur­cell.Brit­ten. “

“You’re for­get­ting Han­del.”

“A trans­plant­ed Ger­man.” Fos­co chuck­led. “I am glad to have you here, Pen­der­gast, and Ishall show you the er­ror of your ways.”

“Speak­ing of that, how did you know where to de­liv­er the in­vi­ta­tion?”

The count turned a tri­umphant smile on Pen­der­gast. “It was quite sim­ple. I went to the Dako­ta and made in­quiries there.”

“They are un­der strict or­ders not to di­vulge my oth­er ad­dress­es.”

“But they were no match for Fos­co! I’ve al­ways been in­ter­est­ed in this pro­fes­sion of yours. I read all of Sir Arthur Co­nan Doyle in my youth. Dick­ens, Poe. And the sub­lime Wilkie Collins! Have you readThe Wom­an in White ?”

“Nat­ural­ly.”

“A tour de force! In my next life, per­haps, I’ll choose to be a de­tec­tive. Be­ing a count from an an­cient fam­ily is rather bor­ing.”

“The two are not mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive.”

“Well put! We have all kinds of de­tec­tives these days, ev­ery­one from En­glish lords to Nava­jo po­lice­men. Why not a count from the lin­eage of Dante and Beat­rice? I must con­fess, this case with Grove fas­ci­nates me, and not on­ly be­cause I was a guest at the-​dare I say?last sup­per. One week ago tonight, alas. I feel for the poor man, nat­ural­ly, but it is a rather de­li­cious mys­tery. I am at your as­sis­tance in the mat­ter.”

“I thank you, but I must con­fess it’s un­like­ly I’ll need your as­sis­tance.”

“Quite right! I am speak­ing now-​if I may-​as a friend. I on­ly wish to of­fer you my ser­vices as some­one with a par­tic­ular knowl­edge of art and mu­sic, and per­haps so­ci­ety. And in that last re­gard, I’d like to think I’ve al­ready been help­ful with the ques­tion of the din­ner par­ty.”

“You were.”

“Thank you.” The count pat­ted his gloved hands to­geth­er, as ex­cit­ed as a small boy.

The lights dark­ened. A hush fell on the house. Fos­co turned his at­ten­tion to the stage, prac­ti­cal­ly wrig­gling with ex­cite­ment. The con­cert­mas­ter ap­peared and sound­ed the A; the or­ches­tra tuned to it; then all fell silent. The con­duc­tor came out to a thun­der­ous burst of ap­plause. Tak­ing his po­si­tion at the podi­um, he raised his ba­ton, brought it sharply down, and the over­ture be­gan.

Fos­co lis­tened with rapt at­ten­tion, smil­ing and nod­ding his head from time to time, not a note of Donizetti’s lux­uri­ous mu­sic lost on him. When the cur­tain rose on the first act, a mur­mur and scat­tered ap­plause filled the hall; a look of an­noy­ance dark­ened Fos­co’s face as he cast a dis­ap­prov­ing glance at his neigh­bors.

There he sat, like a gi­ant in the dark­ened hall, from time to time rais­ing the opera glass­es or spy­glass to ob­serve the scene. When the peo­ple near him ap­plaud­ed the close of an aria with­out any re­gard for the mu­sic to fol­low, Fos­co raked them with a look of re­proof and even held up his hands in for­bear­ance, with a sad but com­pas­sion­ate shake of his head. Af­ter the more com­plex and dif­fi­cult pas­sages of mu­sic, which went un­no­ticed by his neigh­bors, he held up his gloved hands and pat­ted them light­ly to­geth­er with rel­ish, some­times mur­mur­ing “Bra­va!” Af­ter a while, Fos­co’s enor­mous pres­ence, his deep en­thu­si­asm, and his ev­ident con­nois­seur­ship be­gan to com­mu­ni­cate it­self to the peo­ple seat­ed around them. Many an erup­tion of ap­plause in ap­pre­ci­ation for some par­tic­ular turn of the mu­sic orig­inat­ed in row N, right cen­ter, with the soft pat­ting of Fos­co’s plump, kid-​gloved hands.

The first act drew to a close with huge huz­zahs, a storm of ap­plause, and shouts of “Bravi!” led by Fos­co, so vo­cif­er­ous that even the con­duc­tor’s at­ten­tion was drawn to him. When the up­roar had at last died down, Fos­co turned to Pen­der­gast, wip­ing the sweat from his brow with an over­size hand­ker­chief. He was breath­ing hard, blow­ing, damp with per­spi­ra­tion.

“You see, you see!” he cried, point­ing with a cry of self-​vin­di­ca­tion. “Youare en­joy­ing your­self.”

“And what gave rise to that de­duc­tion?”

“You can­not hide from Fos­co! I saw you nod­ding in time just now to ‘Vieni! La mia vendet­ta.’”

But Pen­der­gast said noth­ing, mere­ly in­clin­ing his head slight­ly as the house­lights came up and the in­ter­mis­sion be­gan.

{ 19 }

Nigel Cut­forth threw back the cov­ers and sat up in an emp­tybed. Eliza had tak­en ex­cep­tion to his lit­tle trip to Thai­land and had gone off to stay with a girl­friend in the Vil­lage. Good fuck­ing rid­dance.

He looked around. The bed­side clock glowed 10:34 in red let­ters.Je­sus, on­ly 10:30? His plane left at six in the morn­ing, and around eight he’d knocked back two fin­gers of gin and crawled in­to bed, des­per­ate for a lit­tle sleep. But sleep had been slow to come. And now here he was, sud­den­ly wide awake, sit­ting up in bed, heart beat­ing hard. Christ, it was hot. He flapped the cov­ers, try­ing to stir up the dead air of the room, but it seemed on­ly to draw the heat clos­er around him. With an­oth­er curse, he flicked on the light, swung his legs over the bed, and put his feet on the floor. At the rate he was go­ing, the jet lag to Bangkok would be so bad he might just have to ex­tend his va­ca­tion an­oth­er week. But that would be hard to pull off: the fall was a big time in the cut­throat mu­sic busi­ness, and you had to stay vig­ilant.

He stood up, padded across the floor, and checked the ther­mo­stat. It was off, as he knew it would be, but the ther­mome­ter it­self reg­is­tered eighty-​five de­grees. He put his hand over the forced-​air grat­ing, but it felt cool to the touch. No heat there.

Heat. It was just what Grove had com­plained about.

He re­mind­ed him­self again that this was the twen­ty-​first cen­tu­ry and that Grove had been in­sane in the clos­ing days of his sor­ry life. He walked over to the bal­cony, ran back the heavy cur­tains, un­locked and slid open the glass door. A wel­come stream of cool Oc­to­ber air washed over him, and the faint sounds of traf­fic rose from be­low. Cut­forth breathed deeply and stepped out on­to the bal­cony, feel­ing san­ity re­turn. There was New York: sol­id, mod­ern, ra­tio­nal New York. The build­ings of Mid­town stood like glow­ing ram­parts against the night sky, and Fifth Av­enue was like a bril­liant stripe of mov­ing light, chang­ing from white to red as it passed be­low his win­dow. He breathed again and, feel­ing the sweat chill on his skin, stepped back in­side. The heat with­in seemed worse than ev­er, and now he felt a prick­ling sen­sa­tion be­gin­ning to creep over his scalp and face and move down his limbs. It was very odd, like noth­ing he’d ev­er felt be­fore, this sen­sa­tion of heat and cold at the same time.

He was get­ting sick. That’s what was hap­pen­ing. An ear­ly case of the flu.

He put on his slip­pers and walked out the bed­room, across the liv­ing room, to the wet bar. He jerked open the cab­inet doors, pulled out the bot­tle of Bom­bay Sap­phire, some ice, and a jar of olives, and mixed him­self an­oth­er drink. A Xanax, three Tylenol cap­sules, five vi­ta­min C tablets, two fish-​liv­er-​oil pills, a se­le­ni­um tablet, and three tabs of coral cal­ci­um fol­lowed, each washed down with a gen­er­ous gulp of gin. Af­ter fin­ish­ing the glass, he mixed him­self an­oth­er and went to the floor-​to-​ceil­ing win­dows of the liv­ing room. These win­dows looked east, past Madi­son and Park to the 59th Street Bridge and Roo­sevelt Is­land. Be­yond lay the dark waste­land of Queens.

Cut­forth was find­ing it hard to think. His skin was crawl­ing with un­pleas­ant sen­sa­tions, as if he was cov­ered with spi­ders that were scut­tling around and nip­ping at him. Or bees, maybe: he felt like he was wear­ing one of those hu­man bee cloaks, and the bees were mov­ing around, not ex­act­ly sting­ing him, but prick­ling him with their dry hairy legs.

Grove had been crazy, he had to re­mind him­self. Grove lost it com­plete­ly, he’d suc­cumbed to his own fan­tasies. Not sur­pris­ing, giv­en the kind of life he’d led. And then there was that oth­er thing: the thing Cut­forth nev­er,ev­er want­ed to think about again .

He shook this thought away fu­ri­ous­ly and took an­oth­er slug of gin, feel­ing the liquor and the seda­tive start­ing to kick in. Un­der any oth­er cir­cum­stance, it would be de­light­ful, re­lax­ing, a sen­sa­tion of slow­ly drift­ing down. But it didn’t seem to be do­ing any­thing about that itchy, hot, crawl­ing sen­sa­tion on his skin. He rubbed a hand on his arm. Dry and hot: his skin felt like sand­pa­per.

Grove had com­plained about a strange sen­sa­tion of heat, too. That and the smell.

He tossed back the drink with a shak­ing hand.Don’t get para­noid, Nigel dear. He was get­ting sick, that was all. He hadn’t had his flu shot, and it was hit­ting him ear­ly this year. Great tim­ing, on the eve of his de­par­ture for Thai­land.

“Fuck,” he said out loud. The drink was gone. Should he mix him­self yet an­oth­er? Why the hell not? He reached for the bot­tle, grasped it, filled the glass, and set it back down on the bar.

I am com­ing.

Cut­forth spun around. The apart­ment was emp­ty.

Who the fuck had spo­ken? It was a low voice, low­er than a whis­per; more like a vi­bra­tion, sensed rather than heard.

He swal­lowed, licked dry lips. “Who’s there?” His tongue felt thick and for­eign, and he could bare­ly get out the words.

No an­swer.

He turned, his full drink slop­ping over the sides of the glass and run­ning down his hand. He raised the glass and sucked at it greed­ily. It couldn’t be. He’d nev­er be­lieved in any­thing and wasn’t about to start now. God didn’t ex­ist, the dev­il didn’t ex­ist, life was just some ran­dom shit­storm, and when you were dead, you were dead.

Maled­icat domi­nus.

He jerked his head up, drink slosh­ing wild­ly. What was that, Latin? Was this some kind of joke? Where was it com­ing from? One of his crazy rap clients, be­ing an ass­hole? Or, more like­ly, for­mer client? There was one Haitian rap­per in par­tic­ular who had threat­ened re­venge. This was prob­ably him or his boys, try­ing to goad him in­to a pre­ma­ture heart at­tack with some voodoo non­sense.

“All right!” he called out. “That’s enough with the bull­shit.”

Si­lence.

His skin crawled, un­nat­ural­ly hot and dry. Sud­den­ly, it didn’t feel like non­sense any­more. It felt re­al.

It was hap­pen­ing to him. It­was hap­pen­ing, like Grove had said.

He raised the shak­ing glass to his lips, swal­low­ing, tast­ing noth­ing.

But it couldn’t re­al­ly be hap­pen­ing, could it? This was the twen­ty-​first cen­tu­ry. Grove must have been crazy, hemust have. But, oh dear Je­sus, those things the news­pa­pers had hint­ed at . The cops weren’t re­al­ly say­ing much about how Grove had died, but the tabloids had been full of gos­sip about the body, burned from the in­side, the marks of Lu­cifer on the walls.

Was it re­al­ly pos­si­ble, af­ter all this time?

He let the half-​fin­ished drink fall to the floor and be­gan cast­ing des­per­ate­ly about. His late moth­er had giv­en him a cru­ci­fix, which he’d kept around more as a me­men­to than any­thing else. He’d seen it just last month. Where? He rushed back in­to his bed­room, to the walk-​in clos­et, drew out a draw­er with sav­age tugs, felt in the back. Cuff links, but­tons, tiepins, coins rained to the floor.

No cru­ci­fix. Where was it?

He jerked open an­oth­er draw­er, then an­oth­er, paw­ing rough­ly through watch­es, jew­el­ry, gold. A sob es­caped him.

The cru­ci­fix!He grasped it tight­ly, sob­bing with re­lief, held it to his breast, cross­ing him­self.

The sen­sa­tion of be­ing cov­ered with crawl­ing bees be­gan to grow worse. Now it felt as if the bees were re­al­ly sting­ing him, bil­lions of ag­oniz­ing lit­tle pricks.

“Go away! Get away!” He sobbed.”Our Fa­ther, who art in heav­en-” God, how did it go?

The cru­ci­fix felt hot in his hands. Now his ears were buzzing. His throat felt as if it was caked with ash, as if he was chok­ing on the hot air.

I am com­ing now.

He held out the cru­ci­fix in his shak­ing arms, this way and that, as if ward­ing off some­thing in­vis­ible. “Get thee be­hind me, Sa­tan!” he shrieked.

The cru­ci­fix felt very hot now. It was burn­ing his fin­gers. Ev­ery­thing was hot: his night­clothes, even his eye­brows and the hairs on his arms, felt as if they were crisp­ing.

“Get away!”

He dropped the cru­ci­fix with a cry. To his ut­ter ter­ror, smoke be­gan curl­ing from it, burn­ing a mark in­to the rug. He gasped for breath, hands scrab­bling at his throat, gag­ging in the sul­furous air.

He had to get out. He had to find sanc­tu­ary. If he could get to a chapel, a church, any­thing, maybe he’d be safe .

He rushed for the door, but just be­fore he put his hand on the door­knob, there came a knock­ing.

Cut­forth froze, sus­pend­ed be­tween re­lief and fear. Who was it?

Maybe there was a fire? Yes, of course, that was it: the build­ing was on fire, and an evac­ua­tion was un­der way. Some­thing must have gone wrong with the sprin­kler sys­tem. “I’m in here!” He sobbed, half in pain and half in re­lief. “In here!”

He grasped the door­knob, felt the sear­ing pain of red-​hot met­al, jerked his hand away.”Fuck!”

He looked at his hand in dis­be­lief. His palm was burned, smok­ing, and it cracked as he opened it, blood and clear mat­ter welling from the fis­sure and run­ning down his wrist. Left on the door­knob was a large piece of his skin, curl­ing and fry­ing in the heat like pork crack­lings.

The knock came again: slow, steady, like the tolling of a bell.

“Help me!” Cut­forth cried at the door. “There’s a fire!Fire! “

He felt a sud­den wave of pain along his skin, as if it was be­ing peeled away, and then a grotesque feel­ing deep in his bel­ly, as if some­one had just stirred his guts for him. He lurched back.He was at the door. The feel­ing came again, a strange in­ter­nal pres­sure, a ter­ri­ble writhing of the in­testines. He screamed, grip­ping his stom­ach, dou­bling over. He man­aged to stag­ger back in­to the bed­room. As he moved, lit­tle darts of pain raced across his skin and his eyes cloud­ed with red mist. He could feel the ter­ri­ble pres­sure mount­ing with­in him, and then all went black and the pres­sure be­came un­bear­able, and there was a sound like fry­ing eggs and sud­den­ly the pres­sure was gone and a hot wet­ness was run­ning down his face.

He screamed, writhing on the floor, his legs beat­ing a fren­zied tat­too on the rug, his hands tear­ing at his night­clothes, his hair, try­ing to claw the skin from his own body be­cause it was sear­ing­ly hot, so un­bear­ably hot .

Here I am here I am here.

{ 20 }

Leti­tia Dall­bridge lay awake, mo­tion­less, rigid in her bed. At­last, she arose in cool fury, slipped in­to a satin robe, flicked open her glass­es, and put them on. Then she checked the time: 11:15. She com­pressed her lips. This was in­tol­er­able. In­tol­er­able.

She picked up the build­ing tele­phone and buzzed the desk; in­stant­ly a voice was on the line.

“May I help you, Mrs. Dall­bridge?”

“You cer­tain­ly may, Ja­son. The gen­tle­man in the apart­ment di­rect­ly above me, num­ber 17B, has been thump­ing in­ces­sant­ly on the floor. Shout­ing as well. It’s been go­ing on and on, and I don’t mind telling you, this is the sec­ond time this month I’ve had to com­plain. I am an old wom­an, and I sim­ply­can­not tol­er­ate this kind of noise in the mid­dle of the night.”

“Yes, Mrs. Dall­bridge, we’ll take care of it im­me­di­ate­ly.”

“I shall speak to the con­do­mini­um board about this at the next meet­ing.” “I don’t blame you, Mrs. Dall­bridge.”

“Thank you, Ja­son.”

She laid down the phone and lis­tened. True, the thump­ing was fainter now; more ir­reg­ular. In fact, it seemed to have stopped, along with the shout­ing. But it would pick up again soon-​it al­ways did. That dread­ful­ly coarse mu­sic pro­duc­er was hav­ing an­oth­er par­ty, no doubt. With drink­ing, danc­ing, drugs, all kinds of car­ry­ing-​on. And on a weeknight, no less. She pulled her robe tighter around her nar­row frame. There was no point try­ing to go back to sleep now-​at her age, it would be an ex­er­cise in fu­til­ity.

She crossed the liv­ing room in­to the kitchen, put a ket­tle of wa­ter on to boil. She re­moved a sil­ver teapot, put three bags of chamomile in­side, and wait­ed for the whis­tle. When it came, she re­moved the ket­tle from the heat, poured the wa­ter in­to the teapot, and slipped a tea cozy over the pot to keep it hot. A sil­ver tea­spoon and two slices of but­tered toast com­plet­ed her­petit dé­je­uner . She lift­ed the tray and re­turned to the bed­room. She glanced up dark­ly at the ceil­ing. Then she propped up her satin pil­lows and poured her tea.

The flow­ery aro­ma and the warmth of the liq­uid soon calmed her. Life was too short to al­low one­self to be dis­turbed longer than nec­es­sary. It was now qui­et as a tomb in the apart­ment above. No mat­ter: she would take strong mea­sures to en­sure she wasn’t awak­ened like this again.

She heard a faint noise and lis­tened. A faint pat­ter­ing. Rain­ing again, it seemed. She would have to re­mem­ber the Burber­ry when she went out that morn­ing to .

The pat­ter­ing grew loud­er. And now there was a smell like fry­ing ba­con in the air, faint but dis­tinct. Like the rain, it grew steadi­ly stronger. It was not a pleas­ant smell, ei­ther: it was re­pel­lent, like burnt meat. She sniffed, look­ing around. Had she left the stove on? Im­pos­si­ble, she hadn’t even

Plop!A huge greasy drop land­ed in the mid­dle of her tea, splash­ing her. Then an­oth­er fat drop, and an­oth­er, splat­ter­ing tea all over her face, her dress­ing gown, her beau­ti­ful satin puff.

She looked up in hor­ror to see a stain on her bed­room ceil­ing. It was spread­ing fast. It glis­tened, oleagi­nous, in the dim light of her read­ing lamp.

Leti­tia Dall­bridge snatched the phone out of its cra­dle, buzzed down­stairs again.

“Yes, Mrs. Dall­bridge?”

“Now there’s a leak from the apart­ment above! It’s com­ing right through the ceil­ing of my bed­room!”

“We’re send­ing some­one up im­me­di­ate­ly. We’ll turn the wa­ter off in that apart­ment now.”

“This is an out­rage! My beau­ti­ful En­glish puff is ru­ined!Ru­ined! “

Now the liq­uid was pat­ter­ing down from the ceil­ing in sev­er­al places, ac­cu­mu­lat­ing in the cor­ners of the crown mold­ing, even stream­ing down the Vene­tian chan­de­lier in the mid­dle of the ceil­ing. It was rain­ing on her Louis Quinze chairs, the Chip­pen­dale high­boy. Against her bet­ter judg­ment, she leaned for­ward and touched one of the brown splat­ters on the chi­na cup with her fin­ger. It was warm and greasy, like tal­low or can­dle wax. She shrank in hor­ror.

“It’s not wa­ter,” she cried. “It’s some kind of­grease !”

“Grease?”

“Yes! Grease! From the apart­ment above!”

There was some con­fused talk in the back­ground, then the voice came back on, a lit­tle breath­less. “We’re get­ting some alarms down here. It seems there may be a fire in the apart­ment above you, Mrs. Dall­bridge. Lis­ten care­ful­ly. Don’t leave your apart­ment. If smoke be­gins to come un­der your front door, place a damp tow­el against it. Wait for in­struc­tions-“

The voice was cut off by the un­bear­ably shrill sound of the fire alarm in the hall, fol­lowed by the even loud­er blare of the siren with­in her apart­ment. She dropped the phone, cov­er­ing her ears. A mo­ment lat­er there was a snap­ping noise as the sprin­klers went off, and sud­den­ly the room was full of wa­ter, stream­ing ev­ery­where.

Mrs. Dall­bridge was in such a state of shock that she re­mained frozen as a stat­ue, un­com­pre­hend­ing, while the spray slow­ly dark­ened her gown and her love­ly bed­spread and re­filled the teacup on her tray with gray, chill wa­ter.

{ 21 }

The stench hang­ing in the apart­ment en­trance helped warnD’Agos­ta what was in store. It on­ly grew worse as he walked through the dwelling on his way to the mas­ter bed­room. He’d been half asleep when he en­tered the build­ing’s lob­by-​fill­ing out the in­ci­dent re­port on the gun­fire he’d ex­changed in River­side Park had tak­en longer than ex­pect­ed-​but he sure as hell wasn’t asleep now. It was amaz­ing the way that stench just cut through ev­ery­thing: took away the 2A.M. grog­gi­ness, took away the aches in his joints, the pain of the skinned knees, the itch of the poi­son ivy he’d man­aged to roll through while evad­ing the thugs.

He had seen a lot of un­pleas­ant homi­cides in his day, but noth­ing could have pre­pared him for what lay on the floor be­side the bed. It was a corpse, that much at least was clear: it had rup­tured in a way he’d nev­er seen be­fore, the corpse un­zip­ping it­self from pu­bis to ster­num, vom­it­ing a shrunk­en tan­gle of burned and black­ened or­gans. In an al­most un­con­scious ges­ture, he reached up and touched the cross un­der­neath his shirt, feel­ing its re­as­sur­ing pres­ence. If there was a dev­il, this was how he’d do it. This was def­inite­ly how he’d do it.

He glanced over at Pen­der­gast and felt faint­ly grat­ified to see that even the great de­tec­tive was look­ing whiter than usu­al. Pen­der­gast’s nor­mal im­puls­es to poke, pry, and sniff seemed to have de­sert­ed him. He stood there, dressed in white tie and tails, some­thing al­most like shock on his face.

The last of the SOC boys-​the fin­ger­nail pick­er-​came back around the corpse on his hands and knees, bristling with test tubes and tweez­ers and swabs. He looked pret­ty green, too, and those guys were a tough bunch. They were the ones who had to find the fibers and hairs, swab stains, pick up all the bits and pieces. Close-​in work, re­al close.

The M.E. ducked in. “Fin­ished?”

“I sure hope so.”

Pen­der­gast held out his shield. “Mind if I ask a few ques­tions, Doc­tor?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you have a cause of death?”

“Not yet. Heat­ing,burn­ing , is clear. But as for the cause . I have no idea.”

“Ac­cel­er­ants?”

“Neg­ative, at least pre­lim,” the SOC man an­swered. “There are oth­er anoma­lies. Note the lack of the pugilis­tic ef­fect-​there’s none of the con­trac­tion of the arm mus­cles one usu­al­ly sees in such se­vere burn cas­es. Note al­so the heat frac­tur­ing in the bones of the ex­trem­ities. Near­er the cen­ter of the body, the bones have ac­tu­al­ly been cal­cined. Do you have any idea how hot a fire would have to be to cause this kind of dam­age? Well over the com­bus­tion thresh­old. And yet there was no room flashover. In fact, from the look of things, the fire nev­er eve­nap­proached flashover. The heat was lo­cal­ized to the body, and the body on­ly.”

“What kind of heat was ap­plied?”

The doc­tor shook his head. “No idea yet.”

“Spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion?”

The doc­tor looked up sharply. “You mean, like Mary Reeser?”

“You know of that case, Doc­tor?”

“It’s kind of a leg­end in med­ical school. A joke, re­al­ly. I seem to re­call the FBI han­dled it.”

“Yes. And if the case file can be be­lieved, SHC-​spon­ta­neous hu­man com­bus­tion, as it’s re­ferred to-​is far from be­ing a joke.”

The doc­tor gave a low, cyn­ical laugh. “You FBI fel­lows and your acronyms. I don’t be­lieve you’ll find ‘SHC’ in the­Mer­ck Man­ual , Mr. Pen­der­gast.”

“There is more in the world than is dreamt of in your phi­los­ophy, Doc­tor-​or in the­Mer­ck Man­ual . I will send over the case file for your pe­rusal.”

“As you wish.” The doc­tor de­part­ed with the SOC man, leav­ing them alone with the body.

D’Agos­ta re­moved his note­book and pen. Noth­ing was com­ing in­to his head, but he need­ed a way to take his eyes off the scene, and this was it. He roused him­self and wrote,Oc­to­ber 23, 2:20 a.m., 842 Fifth Av­enue, Apt. 17B, Cut­forth. The pen fal­tered as he tried to breathe on­ly through his mouth. From now on, he was go­ing to car­ry a jar of Vicks Va­poRub with him al­ways. On dates. On va­ca­tion. Out for bowl­ing. Al­ways.

He heard mur­mured voic­es in the liv­ing room: de­tec­tives from Homi­cide. They’d been in­ter­view­ing a main­te­nance work­er out­side the hall-​away from the stench-​and D’Agos­ta had been thank­ful to duck past them on en­ter­ing the apart­ment. He didn’t want any of his old pals see­ing him with the Southamp­ton P.D. patch and sergeant stripes on his shoul­der.

His gaze fo­cused back on the page of his note­book. His mind wasn’t work­ing. He gave up and raised his eyes.

Pen­der­gast seemed to have over­come his re­vul­sion and was now on his hands and knees, ex­am­in­ing the corpse. Like the SOC guy, he had a glass test tube and a pair of tweez­ers in his hands-​where did he keep all that stuff in such a nar­row-​tai­lored suit?-and was putting some­thing in­to it, mov­ing around with great care. Then he moved to­ward a wall, where he stopped to ex­am­ine a scorched area with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass. He spent so much time star­ing at it that D’Agos­ta be­gan to stare, too. The paint of the scorched patch was browned and bub­bled. There was no hoof­print that he could see, but as he stared a creep­ing sen­sa­tion be­gan to tick­le its way up his spine and dig in­to his scalp. It was blur­ry, in­dis­tinct, but-​damn­was it just like those inkblot tests, all in his mind?

Pen­der­gast sud­den­ly turned and caught his eye. “You see it, too?”

“I think so.”

“What ex­act­ly do you see?”

“A face.”

“What kind?”

“Ug­ly as shit, thick lips, big eyes, with a mouth open as if to bite.”

“Or swal­low?”

“Yeah, more like swal­low.”

“It’s un­can­ni­ly rem­inis­cent of Vasari’s fres­co of the dev­il swal­low­ing sin­ners. The one in­side of the cupo­la of the Duo­mo.”

“Yeah? I mean, yeah.”

Pen­der­gast stepped back thought­ful­ly. “Are you fa­mil­iar with the sto­ry of Dr. Faus­tus?”

“Faus­tus? You mean, Faust? The guy who sold his soul to the dev­il?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “There are any num­ber of vari­ants of the sto­ry. Most come down to us in manuscript ac­counts writ­ten in the Mid­dle Ages. While each ac­count has its unique char­ac­ter­is­tics, they all in­volve a death sim­ilar to that of Mrs. Mary Reeser.”

“The case you men­tioned to the M.E. just now.”

“Ex­act­ly. Spon­ta­neous hu­man com­bus­tion. The me­dievals called it­the fire with­in .”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. His brain felt like lead.

“Here, with Nigel Cut­forth, we seem to have a clas­sic ex­am­ple. Even more so than with Grove.”

“Are you telling me you think the dev­il claimed this guy?”

“I of­fer the ob­ser­va­tion with­out at­tach­ing any hy­poth­esis.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head. The whole thing was creepy. Se­ri­ous­ly creepy. He felt his hand steal­ing to­ward his cross again. It­couldn’t be the work of the dev­il . could it?

“Good evening, gen­tle­men.” The voice came from be­hind: fe­male, a rich con­tral­to, calm, ef­fi­cient.

D’Agos­ta turned to see a wom­an framed in the door­way, dressed in a gray pin­stripe suit with cap­tain’s bars on the col­lar of her white shirt. Sev­er­al de­tec­tives were vis­ible be­hind her. He took in the fea­tures: pe­tite, thin, large breasts, glossy black hair fram­ing a pale, al­most del­icate face. Her eyes were a rich blue. She looked no more than thir­ty-​five: amaz­ing­ly young for a full cap­tain in the Homi­cide Di­vi­sion. She looked fa­mil­iar. He knew her. The sick feel­ing re­turned. Maybe he’d been a lit­tle pre­ma­ture in con­grat­ulat­ing him­self that he wouldn’t run in­to any of his old bud­dies.

“I’m Cap­tain Hay­ward,” she said briskly, look­ing at D’Agos­ta a lit­tle too in­tent­ly for com­fort-​rec­og­niz­ing him too, it seemed. “I know you al­ready pre­sent­ed cre­den­tials at the door, but may I see them again?”

“Cer­tain­ly, Cap­tain.” Pen­der­gast had his badge out in one el­egant move­ment.

Hay­ward took it, ex­am­ined it, looked up. “Mr. Pen­der­gast.”

Pen­der­gast bowed. “It’s a plea­sure to see you again, Cap­tain Hay­ward. May I con­grat­ulate you on your re­turn to the force, and most par­tic­ular­ly on mak­ing cap­tain?”

Hay­ward let that pass with­out com­ment and turned back to D’Agos­ta. He had re­moved his shield for her, but she wasn’t look­ing at it. She was look­ing at him.

The name brought it all back: Lau­ra Hay­ward, who’d been a tran­sit cop back in his for­mer life, go­ing to school at the time, writ­ing some book on the un­der­ground home­less in Man­hat­tan, work­ing to­ward a grad­uate de­gree or some­thing. They had worked to­geth­er briefly on the Pamela Wish­er case. That was when she was the sergeant and he a lieu­tenant. He felt his gut sink.

“And you must be Lieu­tenant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta.”

“Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta these days.” He felt him­self col­or­ing. He re­al­ly didn’t feel like mak­ing more ex­pla­na­tions. It was a frig­ging dis­grace and there was no way around it.

“SergeantD’Agos­ta? No longer NYPD?”

“Southamp­ton P.D. You know, as in Long Is­land. I’m the FBI li­ai­son on the Grove case.”

He looked up to find her hand out. He took it, gave it a desul­to­ry shake. The hand was warm, a lit­tle damp. It gave D’Agos­ta a se­cret sat­is­fac­tion to note she wasn’t quite as cool as she seemed.

“Glad to be work­ing with you again.” The voice was crisp, de­void of mor­bid cu­rios­ity. D’Agos­ta felt re­lieved. There would be no chitchat, no pry­ing ques­tions. To­tal­ly pro­fes­sion­al.

“I, for one, am hap­py to see the case in such ca­pa­ble hands,” Pen­der­gast said.

“Thank you.”

“You al­ways struck me as an of­fi­cer who could be re­lied on to con­duct a vig­or­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Thanks again. And if I can be frank, you al­ways struck me as some­body who nev­er wor­ried much about the chain of com­mand or who let the for­mal­ities of stan­dard po­lice pro­ce­dure get in your way.”

If Pen­der­gast was sur­prised by this, he gave no sign. “True.”

“Well then, let’s get this chain of com­mand clear at the out­set-​shall we?”

“Ex­cel­lent idea.”

“This is­my case. Bench war­rants, sub­poe­nas, what­ev­er must be cleared through my of­fice first, un­less we’re deal­ing with an emer­gen­cy. Any com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the press will be co­or­di­nat­ed through my of­fice. Per­haps that’s not how you op­er­ate, but that’s howI op­er­ate.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Un­der­stood.”

“Peo­ple talk about how the FBI some­times has trou­ble get­ting along with lo­cal law en­force­ment. That’s not go­ing to hap­pen here. For one thing, we’re not ‘lo­cal law en­force­ment.’ We’re the New York Po­lice De­part­ment, Homi­cide Di­vi­sion. We will work with the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion as full equals and in no oth­er way.”

“Cer­tain­ly, Cap­tain.”

“We will, nat­ural­ly, re­turn the cour­tesy.”

“I should ex­pect no less.”

“I do things by the book, even when the book is stupid. You know why? That’s how we get the con­vic­tion. Any fun­ny busi­ness at all, and a New York ju­ry will ac­quit.”

“True, very true,” Pen­der­gast said.

“To­mor­row morn­ing, 8A.M. sharp, and ev­ery Tues­day there­after for the du­ra­tion of the case, we’ll be meet­ing at One Po­lice Plaza, sev­en­teenth-​floor sit­ua­tion room, you, me, and Lieu­tenant-​I mean Sergeant-​D’Agos­ta. All cards on the ta­ble.”

“Eigh­tA.M. ,” Pen­der­gast re­peat­ed.

“Cof­fee and Dan­ish on us.”

A look of dis­taste set­tled on Pen­der­gast’s fea­tures. “I shall have al­ready break­fast­ed, thank you.”

Hay­ward looked at her watch. “How much more time do you gen­tle­men need?”

“I be­lieve five more min­utes should do it,” said Pen­der­gast. “Any in­for­ma­tion you can share with us now?”

“An el­der­ly wom­an in the apart­ment be­low was the wit­ness, or as close as we have to a wit­ness. The mur­der oc­curred short­ly af­ter eleven. She seems to have heard the de­ceased hav­ing con­vul­sions and scream­ing. She as­sumed he was hav­ing a par­ty.” A dry smile flick­ered across her face. “It grew qui­et. And then, at 11:22, a sub­stance be­gan leak­ing through her ceil­ing: melt­ed adi­pose tis­sue from the de­ceased.”

Melt­ed adi­pose tis­sue.D’Agos­ta be­gan to write this down, then stopped. It didn’t seem like­ly he’d for­get it.

“About the same time, the smoke alarms and sprin­klers went off-​that would be at 11:24 and 11:25 re­spec­tive­ly. Main­te­nance went up to check, found the door locked, no an­swer, and a foul smell em­anat­ing from the apart­ment. They opened the door with a mas­ter key at 11:29 and found the de­ceased as you see him now. The tem­per­ature in the apart­ment was al­most one hun­dred de­grees when we ar­rived, fif­teen min­utes lat­er.”

D’Agos­ta ex­changed a glance with Pen­der­gast. “Tell me about the ad­ja­cent neigh­bors.”

“The man above heard noth­ing un­til the alarms went off but com­plained of a bad smell. There are on­ly two apart­ments on this floor: the oth­er one has been pur­chased but is still emp­ty. The new own­er is an En­glish­man, a Mr. As­pern.” She pulled a pad from her breast pock­et, scrib­bled some­thing on it, and hand­ed it to Pen­der­gast. “Here are their names. As­pern is cur­rent­ly in Eng­land. Mr. Roland Beard is in the apart­ment above, and Leti­tia Dall­bridge is in the apart­ment be­low. Do you wish to in­ter­view ei­ther of them now?”

“Not nec­es­sary.” Pen­der­gast glanced at her, then looked at the burn mark on the wall.

Hay­ward’s lip curled, whether in amuse­ment or some­thing else D’Agos­ta wasn’t sure. “You no­ticed it, I see.”

“I did. Any thoughts?”

“Wasn’t it you, Mr. Pen­der­gast, who once cau­tioned me against form­ing pre­ma­ture hy­pothe­ses?”

Pen­der­gast re­turned the smile. “You learned well.”

“I learned from a mas­ter.” She looked at D’Agos­ta as she spoke.

There was a brief si­lence.

“I’ll leave you to it, gen­tle­men.” She nod­ded to her men, who fol­lowed her out the door.

Pen­der­gast turned to D’Agos­ta. “It seems our Lau­ra Hay­ward has grown up, don’t you think?”

D’Agos­ta sim­ply nod­ded.

{ 22 }

Bryce Har­ri­man stood on the cor­ner of Fifth Av­enue and 67thStreet, star­ing up at one of those anony­mous white-​brick high-​ris­es that in­fest­ed the Up­per East Side. It was a gray Tues­day af­ter­noon, and Har­ri­man had the dull ache of an old hang­over puls­ing some­where be­hind his eye­balls. His ed­itor, Ritts, had chewed him out for not cov­er­ing the sto­ry the night be­fore. Well, he wasn’t on call, like a doc­tor, was he? He sure as hell wasn’t be­ing paid enough to go out sniff­ing up copy at three o’clock in the morn­ing. And be­sides, he’d been in no con­di­tion to cov­er a mur­der. It was all he could do to find his way home on the sub­way.

He thought there might be some strag­glers, but what he’d found in­stead was a crowd, gen­er­at­ed by morn­ing tele­vi­sion news and the In­ter­net. Here it was, past two in the af­ter­noon, but at least a hun­dred peo­ple had con­verged on the block-​rub­ber­neck­ers, Goths, white witch­es, East Vil­lage weirdos, even a few Hare Kr­ish­nas, which he hadn’t seen in New York in at least half a dozen years. Didn’t any of these peo­ple have jobs? To his right, a bunch of sa­tanists wear­ing what looked like me­dieval robes were draw­ing pen­ta­grams on the side­walk and chant­ing. To his left, a group of nuns were pray­ing on their rosaries. A bunch of teeny­bop­pers were hold­ing a vig­il, can­dles burn­ing de­spite the time of day, singing to the ac­com­pa­ni­ment of a strummed gui­tar. It was un­be­liev­able, some­thing out of a Felli­ni film.

As he looked around, Har­ri­man felt a swelling of ex­cite­ment. He’d scored a mild suc­cess the week be­fore with his piece about the Grove mur­der. Yet there had been lit­tle ev­idence to go on, and his sto­ry had been long on lurid spec­ula­tion. But now he was here on the heels of a sec­ond mur­der-​a mur­der that, from the whis­pered ru­mors that surged through the crowd like elec­tric­ity, was even worse. Maybe his ed­itor was right. Maybe he should have been here in the wee hours of the morn­ing, de­spite all the sin­gle-​malt Scotch he had un­wise­ly im­bibed at the Al­go­nquin with his bud­dies the night be­fore.

An­oth­er thought oc­curred to Har­ri­man. This was his chance to stick it to his old neme­sis Bill Smith­back, busy dip­ping his wick on his hon­ey­moon. Angkor Wat, of all places. Smith­back, that bas­tard, who now had his old spot at theTimes -not through bril­liant jour­nal­ism, or even just plain old pave­ment-​pound­ing, but through sheer dumb luck. He’d hap­pened to be at the right place at the right time, not once, but sev­er­al times: dur­ing the sub­way mur­ders a cou­ple years back, and then again just last fall, with the Sur­geon mur­ders. That last was par­tic­ular­ly bit­ter: Har­ri­man owned the sto­ry-​he’d al­ready beat­en Smith­back to the punch-​but then that stupid po­lice cap­tain, Custer, had stuffed him with false leads .

It wasn’t fair. It was Har­ri­man’s con­nec­tions that had got­ten him the job at theTimes , that and his dis­tin­guished last name. Har­ri­man was the one-​with his care­ful­ly pressed Brooks Broth­ers suits and his repp ties-​who be­longed in the rar­efied and el­evat­ed at­mo­sphere of theTimes . Not rum­pled, sloven­ly Smith­back, who had been quite at home among the bot­tom-​feed­ers at the­Post .

Wa­ter un­der the bridge. Now this was hot and Smith­back was ten thou­sand miles away. If the killings went on-​and Har­ri­man fer­vent­ly hoped they would-​the sto­ry would on­ly get big­ger. There might be tele­vi­sion op­por­tu­ni­ties, mag­azine ar­ti­cles, a big book con­tract. Maybe even a Pulitzer. With any luck, theTimes would be on­ly too hap­py to get him back.

He was jos­tled by an old man in a wiz­ard cos­tume, gave a hard shove back. There was an al­most hys­ter­ical fren­zy to the crowd Har­ri­man had nev­er seen be­fore, a po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous mix­ture if you stopped to think about it: volatile, like a tin­der­box.

There was a sud­den noise off to one side, and Har­ri­man looked over. Some Elvis im­per­son­ator in gold lamé-​a halfway-​de­cent-​look­ing one, for a change-​was blar­ing “Burn­ing Love” with the aid of a portable karaoke ma­chine:

“I feel my tem­per­ature ris­ing.”

The crowd was grow­ing nois­ier, more rest­less. Now and then Har­ri­man could hear the dis­tant shriek of a po­lice siren.

“Lord Almighty, I’m burn­ing a hole where I lay.”

He had his tape recorder ready; he could pick up some col­or to add to what he al­ready had on the mur­der it­self. He looked around. There was a guy at his el­bow, in leather boots and a Stet­son, car­ry­ing a crys­tal wand in one hand and a live ham­ster in the oth­er. Nah: too weird. Some­one more rep­re­sen­ta­tive. Like that kid with the Mo­hawk not far away, in black. A pim­ply mid­dle-​class sub­ur­ban kid try­ing to be dif­fer­ent.

“Ex­cuse me!” He el­bowed his way to­ward the youth. “Ex­cuse me!New York Post . Can I ask a few ques­tions?”

The kid looked to­ward him, eyes light­ing up. They were all so ea­ger for their fif­teen nanosec­onds of fame.

“Why are you here?”

“Haven’t you heard? The dev­il has come!” The kid’s face pos­itive­ly shone. “Some guy up there. He’s just like the one out on Long Is­land. The dev­il took his soul, fried him to a crisp! Dragged him down to hell, kick­ing and scream­ing.”

“How’d you hear about this?”

“It’s all over the Web.”

“By why arey­ou , per­son­al­ly, here?”

The kid looked at him as if the ques­tion was id­iot­ic. “Why do you think? To pay my re­spects to the Man in Red.”

Now a group of ag­ing hip­pies start­ed to sing “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il” in cracked falset­tos. The smell of pot waft­ed to­ward him. Har­ri­man strug­gled to hear, to think, amidst the hub­bub. “Where are you from?”

“Me and my bud­dies came over from Fort Lee.” Some of his “bud­dies” were now crowd­ing around, all dressed ex­act­ly like he was. “Who’s this guy?” one asked.

“Re­porter from the­Post .”

“No kid­ding.”

“Take my pic­ture!”

To pay my re­spects to the Man in Red.There was his quote. Time to wrap it up. “Name? Spell it.”

“Shawn O’Con­nor.”

“Age?”

“Four­teen.”

Un­be­liev­able.”Okay, Shawn, one last ques­tion. Why the dev­il? What’s so im­por­tant about the dev­il?”

“He’s the­man !” he whooped, and his friends took up the cry, high-​fiv­ing each oth­er. “The­man !”

Har­ri­man moved off. God, the world was full of mo­rons; they were breed­ing like rab­bits, es­pe­cial­ly in New Jer­sey. Now he need­ed a con­trast, some­one who took all this se­ri­ous­ly. A priest-​he need­ed a priest. Just his luck: there were two men with col­lars, qui­et, stand­ing not far away.

“Ex­cuse me!” he called out, forc­ing his way to­ward them through the grow­ing crowd. As the two turned to him, Har­ri­man was tak­en aback by the ex­pres­sions on their faces. Fear, re­al fear, min­gled with the sor­row and pain.

“Har­ri­man with the­Post . May I ask what you’re do­ing here?”

The old­er of the two men stepped for­ward. He had a lot of dig­ni­ty; he re­al­ly seemed out of place in this hys­te­ria. “We’re bear­ing wit­ness.”

“Wit­ness to what?”

“The last earth­ly days.” The way the man said it sent a flur­ry of goose bumps along Har­ri­man’s spine.

“You re­al­ly think the world’s com­ing to an end?”

The man quot­ed solemn­ly: “‘Baby­lon the great is fall­en, is fall­en, and is be­come the habi­ta­tion of dev­ils, and the hold of ev­ery foul spir­it.’”

The oth­er, younger man nod­ded. “‘She shall be ut­ter­ly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who jud­geth her. And the kings of the earth, who have com­mit­ted for­ni­ca­tion and lived de­li­cious­ly with her, shall be­wail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burn­ing.’”

“‘Alas, alas, that great city Baby­lon, that mighty city!’” the first priest went on. “‘For in one hour is thy judg­ment come.’”

Har­ri­man had drawn out his pad and was scrib­bling to get this down, but the first priest laid a gen­tle hand over his. “Rev­ela­tion, chap­ter 18.”

“Right, thanks. What church are you from?”

“Our La­dy of Long Is­land City.”

“Thanks.” Har­ri­man got their names and backed away hasti­ly, tuck­ing his note­book in­to his pock­et. Their calm­ness, their cer­ti­tude, spooked him more than all the hys­te­ria around him.

There was a stir­ring along one edge of the crowd. A small con­voy of po­lice cars was ap­proach­ing, lights flash­ing. There was a sud­den erup­tion of flash­es and tele­vi­sion lights. He pushed for­ward, bru­tal­ly shov­ing his way through a group of sound­men: he was Har­ri­man of the­Post , he wasn’t go­ing to sit at the back of the class. But the crowd it­self was now surg­ing for­ward, des­per­ate for news.

A wom­an had stepped out of an un­marked cruis­er at the rear of the con­voy, dressed in a suit but with a shield rid­ing shot­gun on what looked like an amaz­ing set of knock­ers: a re­al­ly good-​look­ing young wom­an, with a bunch of men now falling in­to place be­hind her. Young, but clear­ly in charge. It looked to Har­ri­man like she didn’t want to talk to the crowd at all, but need­ed to take charge be­fore things grew any ugli­er.

She po­si­tioned her­self be­hind a bar­ri­cade of uni­formed cops and held up her hand against the clam­or of the press.

“Five min­utes for ques­tions. Then this crowd is go­ing to have to dis­band.”

More in­co­her­ent yelling as a thick­et of boom mi­cro­phones was thrust for­ward.

She wait­ed, sur­vey­ing the crowd, while the shout­ing con­tin­ued. Fi­nal­ly she checked her watch and spoke again. “Four min­utes.”

That shut up the rows of press. The rest-​the par­ty peo­ple, the witch­es and sa­tanists, the weirdos with crys­tals or per­fumes-​re­al­ized some­thing in­ter­est­ing was about to hap­pen and qui­et­ed down a lit­tle as well.

“I’m Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward of NYPD Homi­cide.” She spoke in a clear but soft voice, which forced the crowd to qui­et fur­ther, strain­ing to lis­ten. “The de­ceased is Nigel Cut­forth, who died at ap­prox­imate­ly 11:15 last night. Cause of death is un­known at this point, but homi­cide is sus­pect­ed.”

Tell me some­thing new, Har­ri­man said to him­self.

“I’ll take a few ques­tions now,” she said. There was an erup­tion of shout­ing, and she point­ed at one fran­ti­cal­ly wav­ing jour­nal­ist.

The ques­tions tum­bled out. “Have the po­lice not­ed con­nec­tions be­tween this and the death of Jere­my Grove? Are there sim­ilar­ities? Dif­fer­ences?”

A wry smile ap­peared on her lips. “We have. Yes and yes. Next?”

“Any sus­pects?”

“Not at this point.”

“Was there a burned hoof­print or any oth­er sign of the dev­il?”

“No hoof­print.”

“We heard there was a face scorched in­to the wall?”

The smile left the wom­an’s face briefly. “It was an ir­reg­ular blotch that sug­gest­ed a face to some.”

“What kind of face?”

The wry smile. “Those who’ve claimed to see the face have la­beled it ug­ly.”

This caused a re­newed clam­or.

“Is it the face of the dev­il? Horns? Did it have horns?” These ques­tions were shout­ed si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly by a dozen peo­ple. The mikes boomed in clos­er, knock­ing against each oth­er.

“Not hav­ing seen the dev­il,” Hay­ward an­swered, “I can’t say. There were no horns I’m aware of.”

Har­ri­man scrib­bled fran­ti­cal­ly in his note­book. A bunch of re­porters were now ask­ing if she thought it was the dev­il, but she was ig­nor­ing this. Oh my God, was that Ger­al­do shout­ing over there? He def­inite­ly should’ve been here last night.

“Was it the dev­il? What’s your opin­ion?” was cried from sev­er­al quar­ters at once.

She held up a hand. “I’d like to an­swer that ques­tion.”

That re­al­ly shut them up.

“We have enough flesh-​and-​blood dev­ils in this town, thank you, that we don’t need to con­jure up any su­per­nat­ural ones.”

“So how did he die?” a re­porter shout­ed. “What were the in­juries caused by? Was he cooked, like the oth­er one?”

“An au­top­sy is cur­rent­ly un­der way. We’ll be able to tell you more when it’s com­plet­ed.” She was talk­ing calm­ly and ra­tio­nal­ly, but Har­ri­man wasn’t fooled. The NYPD didn’t even be­gin to have a han­dle on the case-​and he’d be say­ing as much in his sto­ry.

“Thank you,” she was say­ing, “and good af­ter­noon. Now, let’s break it up, peo­ple.”

More clam­or. More po­lice were ar­riv­ing and work­ing to con­trol the crowd at last, push­ing them back, set­ting up bar­ri­cades, di­rect­ing traf­fic.

Har­ri­man turned away, al­ready writ­ing the lead in his head. This was one hell of a sto­ry. At last-​at long, long last-​he was go­ing to get a run for his mon­ey.

{ 23 }

As the vin­tage Rolls-​Royce ap­proached the gates of the East­Cove Yacht Har­bor, D’Agos­ta shift­ed in the back­seat, star­ing out the win­dow, try­ing to for­get just how stiff and sore he felt. What with Cut­forth’s mur­der and all the at­ten­dant crime-​scene busi­ness, he couldn’t have got­ten more than two hours’ sleep.

For this par­tic­ular er­rand, Pen­der­gast had left his chauf­feur, Proc­tor, be­hind, pre­fer­ring to drive the big car him­self. It was a beau­ti­ful fall day, and the morn­ing sun shim­mered on the bay like sil­ver coins tossed on the waves. The Stat­en Is­land fer­ry was lum­ber­ing out of its berth, churn­ing the wa­ter be­hind, flags snap­ping, trailed by a scream­ing flock of seag­ulls. The blue hump of Stat­en Is­land rose on the hori­zon, grad­ing im­per­cep­ti­bly in­to the low out­line of New Jer­sey. The smell of salt air flowed in the open win­dows.

D’Agos­ta turned his gaze to­ward the ma­ri­na. A wall kept the gaze of the vul­gar from the ranks of gleam­ing yachts, but from the top of Co­en­ties Slip you could still see them lined up in their berths, splen­did and sparkling in the bright sun.

“You’re nev­er go­ing to get in with­out a war­rant,” said D’Agos­ta. “I talked to Bullard. I know what the guy’s like.”

“We shall see,” said Pen­der­gast. “I al­ways pre­fer to start with a gen­tle ap­proach.”

“And if the gen­tle ap­proach doesn’t work?”

“Firmer mea­sures might be in or­der.”

D’Agos­ta won­dered what Pen­der­gast’s idea of “firmer” was.

Pen­der­gast slowed the Rolls and, turn­ing to a cus­tom-​built cher­ry­wood bay be­side the driv­er’s seat, tapped on the keys of the lap­top set with­in it. They were ap­proach­ing the chain­link gate lead­ing in­to the ma­ri­na’s gen­er­al park­ing area, but the man in the guard­house had seen the Rolls ap­proach­ing and was al­ready open­ing the gate. Pen­der­gast stopped the car just in­side the lot, where they had a good view of the Up­per Bay. On the screen of the lap­top, the im­age of a mag­nif­icent yacht had ap­peared.

It didn’t take long to lo­cate the re­al thing among the for­est of masts and spars rid­ing at an­chor just be­yond the lot.

D’Agos­ta whis­tled. “That’s some boat.”

“In­deed. A 2003 Fead­ship mo­tor yacht with a de Voogt cus­tom-​de­signed hull. Fifty-​two me­ters in length, with a dis­place­ment of sev­en hun­dred and forty met­ric tons. Twin Cater­pil­lar 2,500-horse­pow­er diesels, cruis­ing speed thir­ty knots. It’s got enor­mous range and it’s ex­treme­ly com­fort­able.”

“How much?”

“Bullard paid forty-​eight mil­lion for it.”

“Je­sus. What does he need a boat like that for?”

“Per­haps he doesn’t care for fly­ing. Or per­haps he likes to op­er­ate away from pry­ing ears and eyes. A boat like that makes keep­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters easy in­deed.”

“Fun­ny, in the last in­ter­view with Bullard, I had the im­pres­sion that he was anx­ious not to be de­tained in the coun­try. That maybe he was plan­ning an in­ter­na­tion­al trip.”

Pen­der­gast looked at him sharply. “In­deed?” He eased the car to­ward the sec­ond lay­er of se­cu­ri­ty: the gate in­to VIP park­ing, manned by a pug­na­cious lit­tle red­head­ed se­cu­ri­ty guard with a jut­ting chin. D’Agos­ta im­me­di­ate­ly knew the type. He was the kind who made it a point not to be im­pressed by any­one or any­thing: not even a ‘59 Rolls-​Royce Sil­ver Wraith.

“Yeah?”

Pen­der­gast hung his shield out the win­dow. “We’re here to see Mr. Locke Bullard.”

The man looked at the badge, looked back at Pen­der­gast. His face was creased with sus­pi­cion. “And him?”

D’Agos­ta passed his own badge to the man.

“What’s it about?”

“Po­lice busi­ness.”

“I got­ta call.”

The man took the shields back in­to his cu­bi­cle, got on the horn, spoke for a few min­utes, came back with the badges and a cord­less phone.

“He wants to talk to some­body named D’Agos­ta.”

“That’s me.”

The man hand­ed him the phone.

“D’Agos­ta here.”

Bullard’s deep voice filled the wire. “I fig­ured you’d be back.”

At the sound of the voice, D’Agos­ta im­me­di­ate­ly felt him­self bris­tle. This was the man who had tried to hu­mil­iate him at the Ath­let­ic Club; who, just per­haps, had very near­ly got­ten him shot. Nev­er­the­less, he tried hard to check his tem­per. “We can ei­ther do this nice­ly,” he said as even­ly as pos­si­ble, “or it can get un­pleas­ant. Up to you, Bullard.”

A burst of laugh­ter sound­ed at the oth­er end. “You tried that same stale line on me back at the club. Let me tell you some­thing. Since we had that pleas­ant lit­tle chat, I’ve had my peo­ple check in­to you. And now I know all about you. I got ev­ery sor­did de­tail of your ex­is­tence. For ex­am­ple, I know all about that wife of yours in Cana­da, the one who’s been play­ing hide the sala­mi be­hind your back these past six months. The guy’s name is Chester Do­minic, and he sells Win­neba­gos out of Edge­wa­ter-​and hey, maybe she’s do­ing him right now. Think about­that , huh?”

D’Agos­ta’s hand tight­ened around the phone.

“I al­so got the sales fig­ures on your nov­els. Last one sold 6,215 copies. Hard­coverand pa­per­back. And that’s count­ing all the copies your moth­er bought. Watch your back, Stephen King!” More harsh laugh­ter. “Then I got your per­son­nel files from your stint with the NYPD, in­clud­ing your dis­ci­plinary records. In­ter­est­ing read­ing. And I got your med­ical and psy­chi­atric records, too, even the ones from Cana­da. Too bad about those hard-​on prob­lems. Maybe that’s why your wife’s spread­ing her charms for old Chet. And de­pres­sion, gee, that’s tough. Did you take your Zoloft this morn­ing? Amaz­ing what you can find out when you own an HMO, isn’t it? Read­ing all this over, a cou­ple of phras­es come to mind. Phras­es like bro­kendown. Washed-​up. Los­er.”

A thin cur­tain of red seemed to drop be­fore D’Agos­ta’s eyes. “You’ve just made the mis­take of your life, Bullard.”

More laugh­ter and the line went dead.

D’Agos­ta hand­ed the phone back to the at­ten­dant. His face was on fire. The son of a bitch. The son of abitch . It was il­le­gal-​wasn’t it? Dig­ging up that kind of per­son­al in­for­ma­tion. Bullard had been speak­ing loud­ly, and D’Agos­ta won­dered if his voice had car­ried as far as Pen­der­gast. He swal­lowed, fought hard to mas­ter his ris­ing rage.

“You’re block­ing the gate,” said the man in the booth. Then, as an af­terthought, he added, “Sir.”

“We’ll drive around the block,” Pen­der­gast told the at­ten­dant, “and give Mr. Bullard time to change his mind.”

“He’s not go­ing to change his mind.”

Pen­der­gast gave the at­ten­dant a long, sym­pa­thet­ic look. “You’ll know when to step aside, I hope? For your own sake, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

With­out wait­ing for an an­swer, Pen­der­gast put the Rolls in re­verse and hit the gas, leav­ing a sat­is­fy­ing patch of rub­ber. He turned around in the park­ing lot, then nosed out on­to State Street. He glanced over at D’Agos­ta. “Are you all right, Vin­cent?”

“I’m fine,” D’Agos­ta said through grit­ted teeth.

Pen­der­gast turned right and be­gan cir­cling the block. “Mr. Bullard, it seems, needs a firmer hand.”

“Yeah.”

Pen­der­gast reached down with one hand and punched in a num­ber on the in-​dash cell phone.

A ring sound­ed over the speak­er, then the phone was an­swered by a fa­mil­iar voice. “Cap­tain Hay­ward.”

“Cap­tain? It’s Pen­der­gast. We’re go­ing to need that sub­poe­na and war­rant I called you about this morn­ing.”

“On what grounds?”

“Re­fusal to co­op­er­ate. Im­mi­nent flight risk.”

“Come on. Bullard’s not some Colom­bian drug deal­er or Mid­dle East­ern ter­ror­ist. He’s a lead­ing Amer­ican in­dus­tri­al­ist.”

“Yes, with over­seas ac­counts and over­seas fac­to­ries, who hap­pens to be on his yacht, fu­eled to its max­imum ca­pac­ity and ful­ly stocked for a transat­lantic voy­age. He can reach Cana­da, Mex­ico, South Amer­ica, or Eu­rope on one tank-​take your pick.”

There was a sigh. “He’s an Amer­ican. He’s got a pass­port. He’s free to leave.”

“He’s an un­co­op­er­ative wit­ness. He won’t an­swer ques­tions.”

“A lot of peo­ple won’t an­swer ques­tions.”

“Both Grove and Cut­forth called him just be­fore they were mur­dered. There’s a con­nec­tion, and we need to find it.”

An­oth­er ir­ri­tat­ed sigh. “This is just the kind of ir­reg­ular op­er­ation that looks bad in court.”

“He threat­ened Sergeant D’Agos­ta.”

“He did?” Her voice sound­ed a lit­tle sharp­er.

“An im­plied black­mail threat over per­son­al in­for­ma­tion he col­lect­ed through North­ern HealthAt­lantic Man­age­ment, the HMO he owns.”

So he did hear, D’Agos­ta thought.

“That right?” There was a pause. “All right, then, go ahead. The pa­pers are all ready and just need to be signed.”

“Ex­cel­lent.” Pen­der­gast gave a fax num­ber.

“Agent Pen­der­gast?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t make a hash of this. I care about my ca­reer.”

“I care about it, too.”

The fax peeled out of the tiny im­pact print­er just as they round­ed Pearl Street and head­ed back to­ward the yacht har­bor. Driv­ing slow­ly through the out­er lot, Pen­der­gast tore it from the print­er and hand­ed it to the VIP at­ten­dant.

“You again?” the man said as he took the fax.

Pen­der­gast smiled, put his fin­gers to his lips. “Not a word to Bullard.”

The man read the fax, hand­ed it back. There was some­thing in his face that, per­haps, didn’t look en­tire­ly dis­pleased at the turn of events.

“Time to step aside,” said Pen­der­gast qui­et­ly.

“Yes, sir.”

They parked in the VIP lot, and Pen­der­gast opened the trunk. He ges­tured to D’Agos­ta. “For you.”

D’Agos­ta peered in. A fed­er­al-​is­sue bat­ter­ing ram lay in­side, black and ug­ly and about three feet long, the kind DEA agents used in drug busts.

“You got to be kid­ding.”

“Firm­ness, my dear Vin­cent,” said Pen­der­gast, smil­ing faint­ly.

D’Agos­ta grabbed the ram by its two han­dles and heft­ed it out. They head­ed down the walk­way to the cen­tral dock. Ahead and to one side, teth­ered in its own pri­vate slip, the yacht loomed big­ger than life: white with three en­closed decks, dozens of smoked win­dows, and a con­ning tow­er bristling with elec­tron­ics. The nameStorm­cloud was sten­ciled on the stern.

“What about crew?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“My in­for­ma­tion is that Bullard’s alone.”

The pri­vate slip had its own dock be­hind a locked gate. Pen­der­gast knelt be­fore it, rais­ing his hands to the lock. It looked to D’Agos­ta as if the FBI agent was just test­ing the lock to see if it might be ajar. Per­haps it was, be­cause the gate swung open obe­di­ent­ly in his hands.

“We need to be­brisk ,” said Pen­der­gast as he rose.

D’Agos­ta humped him­self for­ward, lug­ging the ram. De­spite re­newed ses­sions in the gym since the gun­fight in the park, he was still out of shape, the ram weighed at least forty pounds, and his bruised limbs protest­ed with each thud­ding step. The gang­plank of theStorm­cloud was up, but in the rear, a locked board­ing hatch lay just at dock lev­el. Pen­der­gast stopped, plucked his cus­tom Les Baer .45 from his jack­et, and stepped back, ges­tur­ing to­ward the hatch.

“Af­ter you, Vin­cent,” he said.

D’Agos­ta reached deep down in his mem­ory. What had they taught him at the Acade­my?Don’t run at the door, swing it in­to the door. He took a deep breath, gripped the han­dles as tight­ly as he could, and heaved the ram for­ward. The door flew in­ward with a sat­is­fy­ing smack. Pen­der­gast ducked in­side, gun ready, and D’Agos­ta clam­bered in be­hind.

They were in a nar­row cor­ri­dor, with paint­ed bulk­heads along one side and smoked-​glass win­dows along the oth­er. Pen­der­gast threw open a door set in­to the bulk­heads, and sud­den­ly they were in the grand sa­lon of the boat, co­cooned in plush cream car­pet­ing with black lac­quered ta­bles piped in gold trim.

“FBI!” Pen­der­gast barked. “Freeze!”

Bullard stood in the cen­ter of the room, wear­ing a pale blue warm-​up suit, cigar in hand, with a look of com­plete as­ton­ish­ment and-​it seemed to D’Agos­ta-​mo­men­tary ter­ror.

“Don’t move!”

Bullard re­cov­ered im­me­di­ate­ly, his face red­den­ing, the veins puls­ing in his neck. Sur­prise gave way to ill-​con­cealed rage. He raised the cigar to his thick lips, sucked in a lung­ful, ex­haled. “So. The sor­ry fuck brought back­up.”

“Keep your hands in view,” Pen­der­gast warned as he ad­vanced, gun aimed.

Bullard spread his hands. “Here’s a scene for your next nov­el, D’Agos­ta. Bet you nev­er saw any­thing like this boat in that slum you grew up in on Carmine Street, with a cheap, pool­room-​hus­tling cop for a fa­ther and a moth­er who-“

D’Agos­ta rushed at the man but Pen­der­gast was even quick­er, in­ter­pos­ing him­self with light­ning speed. “Sergeant, don’t give him what he wants.”

D’Agos­ta took a stran­gled breath. He could hard­ly breathe.

“Come on,” Bullard sneered. “Let’s see if there’s any­thing at all hang­ing un­der that bel­ly of yours. I’m six­ty, and I could take your fat ass with one hand.”

Pen­der­gast held D’Agos­ta’s gaze, shak­ing his head slow­ly. D’Agos­ta swal­lowed, stepped back.

Pen­der­gast turned and fas­tened his sil­very eyes on Bullard.

“And look at this, an un­der­tak­er play­ing FBI. White trash from the Deep South.Very white, it seems.”

“At your ser­vice,” Pen­der­gast said qui­et­ly.

Bullard laughed and swelled like a black mam­ba, stretch­ing the fab­ric of the warm-​up suit. He still had his cigar tucked be­tween two huge spat­ulate fin­gers, and now he stop­pered the laugh by in­sert­ing it be­tween his lips again and blow­ing a cloud of smoke in their di­rec­tion.

Pen­der­gast dropped the fax on an ebony ta­ble. Then he point­ed to a large lac­quered pan­el in the far wall. “Sergeant, open that pan­el, please.”

“Just one god­damn minute, you need a war­rant-“

Pen­der­gast point­ed a slen­der fin­ger at the fax. “Read.”

“I want my lawyer.”

“First, we will se­cure the premis­es and ob­tain the ev­idence out­lined in the war­rant. One mis­step will mean cuffs and an ob­struc­tion-​of-​jus­tice charge. Is there any­one else on the boat with you?”

“Fuck you.”

D’Agos­ta went to the pan­el that Pen­der­gast point­ed to, pressed the lone but­ton. The pan­el slid back to re­veal a wall of elec­tron­ics, a mon­itor, and a key­board.

“Seize the CPU.”

D’Agos­ta pushed the mon­itor to one side, fol­lowed its ca­bling, and found the box tucked in­to a niche be­neath.

“Don’t you touch my com­put­er.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded to­ward the ta­ble. “It’s list­ed in the war­rant, Mr. Bullard.”

D’Agos­ta yanked the ca­bling free with a sat­is­fy­ing jerk and hauled out the CPU. He dug in­to his pock­et, past­ed ev­idence la­bels over the drive bays and the plugs for the mouse and key­board, set down the box, crossed his arms.

“Are you armed?” Pen­der­gast asked Bullard.

“Of course not.”

Pen­der­gast tucked his Les Baer back in­to his suit. “All right,” he said, voice low and sud­den­ly pleas­ant, the south­ern ac­cent ris­ing like cream. “In ad­di­tion to the war­rant, there’s a sub­poe­na, Mr. Bullard, which I sug­gest you read.”

“I want my lawyer.”

“Nat­ural­ly. We’re go­ing to take you to One Po­lice Plaza and ques­tion you un­der oath. You may have a lawyer present at that time.”

“I’m call­ing my lawyer now.”

“You will­re­main in the cen­ter of the room with your hands in view at all times. You do not have a right to call a lawyer just be­cause you feel like it. When ap­pro­pri­ate, you will beper­mit­ted to call.”

“My ass. You have no ju­ris­dic­tion. I’ll pull your badge and eat you for lunch, you al­bi­no prick. You have no idea who you’re deal­ing with.”

“I am sure your lawyer would ad­vise you to dis­pense with the small talk.”

“I’m not go­ing to One Po­lice Plaza.”

Pen­der­gast un­clipped his po­lice ra­dio. “Man­hat­tan South? To whom am I speak­ing, please? Shirley? This is Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast of the Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion. I’m at the East Cove Yacht Har­bor, on the yacht of Mr. Locke Bullard-“

“You shut that ra­dio off right now.”

Pen­der­gast’s smooth voice con­tin­ued. “That’s right, Locke Bullard, on his yacht, theStorm­cloud . We’re tak­ing him in for ques­tion­ing in the Grove and Cut­forth mur­der in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

D’Agos­ta watched Bullard go white. No doubt he knew that ev­ery news or­ga­ni­za­tion in New York mon­itored the po­lice fre­quen­cies.

“No, he’s not a sus­pect. I re­peat:not a sus­pect.”

The very em­pha­sis Pen­der­gast placed on the word had the cu­ri­ous ef­fect of giv­ing pre­cise­ly the op­po­site im­pres­sion.

Bullard glow­ered at them from be­neath his bee­tled, Cro-​Magnon brow, swal­lowed, made an ef­fort to seem rea­son­able. “Look, Pen­der­gast, there’s no rea­son to play tough cop.”

“Shirley, we’re go­ing to need back­up, crowd con­trol, and a squad car with es­cort to take Mr. Bullard down­town. That’s right. Three should do it. On sec­ond thought, make it four. We’re deal­ing with a well-​known per­son­al­ity. It’s like­ly to get busy.”

Pen­der­gast slipped the ra­dio back in­to his suit, re­moved his cell phone, and tossed it to Bullard. “Now you may call your lawyer. One Po­lice Plaza, in­ter­ro­ga­tion sec­tion, base­ment floor, in forty min­utes. We’ll sup­ply the cof­fee.”

“You prick.” Bullard di­aled, spoke in low tones. When he was done, he hand­ed the phone back to Pen­der­gast.

“I imag­ine he just told you what I al­ready ad­vised: to keep your mouth firm­ly closed.” Pen­der­gast smiled.

Bullard said noth­ing.

Now Pen­der­gast be­gan pok­ing around the grand sa­lon, in a desul­to­ry kind of way, peek­ing here and there, ad­mir­ing the sport­ing prints on the walls. It was al­most as if he was killing time.

“Are we go­ing?” Bullard fi­nal­ly burst out.

“He’s talk­ing again,” said D’Agos­ta.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded ab­sent­ly. “It seems our Mr. Bullard is a man who doesn’t lis­ten to his min­ders.”

Bullard fell silent, his body shak­ing with malev­olence.

“I think we need more time in here, Sergeant. Just to check things over, you un­der­stand.”

“Right.” Though he was still steam­ing, D’Agos­ta found he had to con­ceal a smile. Now he re­al­ized what Pen­der­gast was up to.

Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued strolling about the room, ad­just­ing a news­pa­per here, look­ing at a framed litho­graph there. Ten more min­utes passed as Bullard grew in­creas­ing­ly restive. Now D’Agos­ta be­gan to hear faint sirens, the dis­tant squawk of a bull­horn. Pen­der­gast picked up a copy of­For­tune , flipped through it, laid it back down. He checked his watch. “Do you see any­thing of in­ter­est I might have missed, Sergeant D’Agos­ta?”

“Have you checked the pho­to al­bum?”

“An ex­cel­lent idea.” Pen­der­gast opened the al­bum, flipped through it. At a cou­ple of pages, his hand paused and an in­tent look came in­to his face. He seemed to be mem­oriz­ing faces; at least, it seemed so to D’Agos­ta.

He shut it with a sigh. “Shall we, Mr. Bullard?”

The man turned and shrugged in­to a wind­break­er, his face dark. Pen­der­gast led the way, fol­lowed by Bullard. D’Agos­ta brought up the rear, bat­ter­ing ram over his shoul­der. As they stepped out of the hatch on­to the dock, the crowd noise in­creased dra­mat­ical­ly. There was shout­ing, the whoops of po­lice sirens, the mega­phoned voice of an of­fi­cial. Be­yond the gates, pho­tog­ra­phers were jock­ey­ing for po­si­tion. The po­lice were strug­gling to clear a lane for their ve­hi­cles to pass.

See­ing this, Bullard stopped short. “You bas­tard.” He al­most spat the words at Pen­der­gast. “You de­layed de­lib­er­ate­ly, let­ting this build.”

“Why hide your light un­der a bushel, Mr. Bullard?”

“Yeah,” said D’Agos­ta. “And you’re go­ing to look great on the cov­er of theDai­ly News with your wind­break­er draped over your head.”

{ 24 }

Bryce Har­ri­man head­ed back up­town be­hind the wheel of aPost­press ve­hi­cle. The scene at the low­er Man­hat­tan ma­ri­na had been a dis­as­ter. Ex­cept for a few rub­ber­neck­ers, it was New York City press at their finest-​swear­ing, push­ing, shov­ing. It re­mind­ed Har­ri­man of the run­ning of the bulls at Pam­plona. What a waste of time. No­body had an­swered ques­tions, no­body knew any­thing, noth­ing but chaos and shout­ing. He should have gone straight back to his of­fice to write up the scene of Cut­forth’s mur­der rather than wast­ing time chas­ing this ra­dio call.

Ahead, the traf­fic com­ing in from West Street be­gan to bunch up. He cursed, leaned on his horn. He should’ve tak­en the sub­way. At this rate, he wouldn’t reach the of­fice un­til af­ter five, and he had to file by ten to make the morn­ing edi­tion.

He wrote and rewrote the lead, tear­ing it up again and again in his head. He thought back to the mob scene in front of Cut­forth’s apart­ment build­ing ear­li­er that af­ter­noon. Those were the peo­ple he was writ­ing for: peo­ple des­per­ate for the sto­ry, hun­gry for it. And he had an open field, with Smith­back gone and theTimes treat­ing the sto­ry as a kind of lo­cal em­bar­rass­ment.

Cut­forth’s mur­der would be good for one head­line, maybe two. But still, he was bound by the whim of the mur­der­er, and there was no way of telling when-​or if-​the mur­der­er would strike again. Hehad to have some­thing new.

The traf­fic part­ed slight­ly and he switched lanes, flip­ping a bird at the blar­ing horn be­hind him, switched back, risk­ing his life and those of half a dozen oth­ers to get one car length ahead. Flipped an­oth­er bird. Peo­ple were such ass­holes .

. And then it came to him. The fresh an­gle. What he need­ed was an ex­pert to ex­plain, to put it all in per­spec­tive. But who? Just as quick­ly the an­swer, the sec­ond stroke of ge­nius, came as well.

He picked up his cell, di­aled his of­fice. “Iris, what’s up?”

“What’s up your­self?” his as­sis­tant re­tort­ed. “I’ve been as busy as a one-​legged man at an ass-​kick­ing con­test an­swer­ing the phones around here.”

Har­ri­man winced at the jokey, fa­mil­iar tone she had tak­en with him. He was sup­posed to be the boss, not the sec­re­tary in the next cu­bi­cle.

“You want your mes­sages?” she asked.

“No. Lis­ten, I want you to get ahold of some­body for me, that re­searcher in­to the para­nor­mal, what’s his name, Monk, or Munch, some­thing Ger­man. He had that Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel spe­cial on ex­or­cism, re­mem­ber? Yes, that’s the one. No, I don’tcare how long it takes. Just get him for me.”

He punched the call off and tossed the phone on the pas­sen­ger seat, sat back, and smiled, let­ting the ca­copho­ny of honks, toots, and beeps that sur­round­ed his car wash over him like a sym­pho­ny.

{ 25 }

D’Agos­ta had to ad­mire the ge­nius that went in­to main­tain­ingthe in­ter­ro­ga­tion sec­tion of One Po­lice Plaza. It was per­haps the last place you could smoke in New York City with­out be­ing ar­rest­ed, and as a re­sult, the paint­ed cin­der-​block walls sport­ed a tar­ry, brown­ish sheen. They made a point of keep­ing them grimy. The air was so dead and stale it felt like there must be a corpse hid­den some­where. And the linoleum floor was so old it could have been peeled up and put in a glass case in the Smith­so­ni­an.

D’Agos­ta felt a cer­tain sat­is­fac­tion in the sur­round­ings. Locke Bullard, still dressed in blue warm-​ups and deck shoes, sat in a chair at the greasy met­al ta­ble, his eyes blood­shot with anger. Pen­der­gast sat across from him, and D’Agos­ta stood be­hind, near the door. The civil­ian in­ter­ro­ga­tions ad­min­is­tra­tor-​a manda­to­ry pres­ence these days-​stood by the video cam­era, suck­ing in his bel­ly and try­ing to look of­fi­cious. They were all wait­ing on Bullard’s lawyer, stuck some­where in the traf­fic of their own mak­ing.

The door opened and Cap­tain Hay­ward stepped in. As she did so, D’Agos­ta felt the tem­per­ature in the room go down by about twen­ty de­grees. She fas­tened cold eyes on Pen­der­gast, then on D’Agos­ta, and mo­tioned them to fol­low her in­to the hall.

She led the way to a dis­used of­fice, ush­ered them in, closed the door. “Whose idea was the me­dia cir­cus?” she de­mand­ed.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly it was the on­ly way,” Pen­der­gast an­swered.

“Don’t give me that. This was staged, and you were both pro­duc­er and di­rec­tor. There must be fifty press out­side, ev­ery last one fol­low­ing you over from the ma­ri­na. This isex­act­ly what I didn’t want to hap­pen, the kind of hul­la­baloo I warned you against cre­at­ing.”

Pen­der­gast spoke calm­ly. “Cap­tain, I can as­sure you that Bullard left us no choice. For a mo­ment, I thought I would have to hand­cuff him.”

“You should’ve sched­uled a meet­ing on the boat with his lawyer, so he wouldn’t feel am­bushed and de­fen­sive.”

“There’s a good chance that more ad­vance warn­ing would have caused him to flee the coun­try.”

Hay­ward ex­pelled an ir­ri­tat­ed stream of air. “I’m a cap­tain of de­tec­tives in the New York City po­lice force. This is my case. Bullard’s not a sus­pect and will­not be treat­ed as such.” She swiveled to face D’Agos­ta. “You’re go­ing to man­age the ques­tion­ing, Sergeant. I want Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast to re­main well in the back­ground with his mouth shut. He’s caused enough trou­ble as it is.”

“As you wish,” Pen­der­gast said po­lite­ly to Hay­ward’s turned back.

When they stepped back in­to the in­ter­ro­ga­tion room, Bullard rose to his feet, point­ing to Pen­der­gast. “You’re go­ing to pay for this, both you and your fat fuck gofer here.”

“Did you get that on video­tape?” Hay­ward calm­ly asked the civil­ian ad­min­is­tra­tor.

“Yes, ma’am. Tape’s been rolling since he ar­rived.”

She nod­ded. Bullard’s pupils were pin­points of ha­tred.

Si­lence fell, bro­ken at last by a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Hay­ward called.

The door opened, and a uni­formed po­lice­man ad­mit­ted a man dressed in a char­coal suit. He had short-​cropped gray hair, gray eyes, and a pleas­ant, friend­ly face. D’Agos­ta no­ticed the glint of a half-​hid­den cross be­neath the of­fi­cer’s blue shirt as he turned and closed the door.Hay­ward may not be­lieve in the dev­il , he thought,but not all her min­ions have got­ten the mes­sage.

“Fi­nal­ly!” Bullard roared out, star­ing at the lawyer. “Je­sus Christ, George, I called you forty min­utes ago. Get me the hell out of here.”

The lawyer, un­ruf­fled, greet­ed Bullard as if they were all at a cock­tail par­ty. Then he turned and shook Pen­der­gast’s hand. “George Marc­hand of Marc­hand & Quis­ling. I rep­re­sent Mr. Bullard.” His voice was al­most mu­si­cal in its pleas­ant­ness, but his eyes lin­gered first over Hay­ward’s badge, then D’Agos­ta’s.

“This is my col­league Sergeant D’Agos­ta.”

“How do you do?”

There was a si­lence as Marc­hand turned his cool eyes around the room. “The sub­poe­na?”

Pen­der­gast slipped a copy from his black suit and hand­ed it to the lawyer. The man scru­ti­nized it.

“That’s your copy,” said Hay­ward. Her voice was dead­pan, neu­tral.

“Thank you. May I ask why this ques­tion­ing could not be done at Mr. Bullard’s con­ve­nience in his of­fices or on his yacht?” He ad­dressed the ques­tion in gen­er­al, to all of them. Hay­ward nod­ded to­ward D’Agos­ta.

“On an ear­li­er oc­ca­sion at Mr. Bullard’s club, he re­fused to an­swer ques­tions. On this par­tic­ular oc­ca­sion, he threat­ened me with what I think a rea­son­able per­son might con­sid­er im­plied black­mail. He gave ev­ery sign of im­mi­nent de­par­ture from the coun­try. His in­for­ma­tion is cru­cial in our in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“Is he a sus­pect?”

“No. But he’s an im­por­tant wit­ness.”

“I see. And this im­plied threat of black­mail-​what’s that all about?”

“It’s a god­damned-,” Bullard be­gan.

The lawyer cut Bullard off with a wave of his hand.

“The threat was made in my pres­ence,” Pen­der­gast spoke up. “Mr. Bullard made a sec­ond threat, just be­fore you ar­rived, for the ben­efit of the video recorder.”

“You’re a damned liar-“

“Not one more word, Mr. Bullard. I be­lieve you’ve said more than enough as it is.”

“For Christ’s sake, George, these men are-“

“Qui­et.”The lawyer spoke pleas­ant­ly, but there was a cu­ri­ous em­pha­sis in his tone.

Bullard fell silent.

“My client,” the lawyer said, “is anx­ious to co­op­er­ate. Here’s how it will work. First, you will ask the ques­tion. Then, if nec­es­sary, I will con­fer pri­vate­ly with my client in the hall. And then he will give his re­sponse. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” said Hay­ward. “Swear him in.”

They went through the pro­cess, the civil­ian ad­min­is­tra­tor pre­sid­ing, Bullard grunt­ing his re­spons­es. At the con­clu­sion, he turned again to his lawyer. “Damn it, George, you’re sup­posed to be on my side!”

“My client and I need to con­fer pri­vate­ly.”

Marc­hand took Bullard out in­to the hall­way. A minute lat­er they were back.

“First ques­tion,” the lawyer said.

D’Agos­ta stepped for­ward, glanced down at his notes, and droned out, in his most stol­id cop voice: “Mr. Bullard, on Oc­to­ber 16, 2:02A.M. , Jere­my Grove called you. You spoke with him for forty-​two min­utes. What did you talk about? Start at the be­gin­ning and pro­ceed through the call.”

“I al­ready-” He stopped when Marc­hand laid a firm hand on his shoul­der. They went out in­to the hall again.

“You’re not go­ing to let him do this with ev­ery ques­tion, are you?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“Yes, I am,” said Hay­ward. “He has a right to a lawyer.”

The two men re­turned. “Grove called me to chat,” Bullard said. “A so­cial call.”

“That late?”

Bullard looked at his lawyer and the lawyer nod­ded.

“Yes.”

“What did you chat about?”

“Just like I told you be­fore. Pleas­antries. How he was do­ing, how I was do­ing, how the fam­ily was do­ing, how the dog was do­ing, that sort of thing.”

“What else?”

“I don’t re­call.”

Si­lence. “Mr. Bullard. You talked for forty-​two min­utes about your dogs, then with­in hours Grove is mur­dered.”

“That wasn’t a ques­tion,” said the lawyer crisply. “Next.”

D’Agos­ta found Hay­ward’s rather pen­etrat­ing gaze on him. He turned the page.

“Where were you dur­ing this call?”

“On my yacht. Cruis­ing the sound.”

“How many crew were on board with you?”

“I went out with­out a crew. The yacht’s com­put­er­ized, I do it all the time.”

There was a brief but sig­nif­icant si­lence.

“How did you meet Grove?”

“I don’t re­call.”

“Was he a close friend?”

“No.”

“Did you have any busi­ness deal­ings with him?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I don’t re­call.”

“So why would he call you then?”

“You’ll have to ask him.”

This was bull­shit. It was the same runaround as be­fore. D’Agos­ta moved on to the next call.

“On Oc­to­ber 22, at 7:54P.M. , Nigel Cut­forth placed a call to your home num­ber. Did you take the call?”

Bullard glanced at the lawyer, who nod­ded.

“Yes.”

“What did you talk about?”

“It was al­so a so­cial call. We talked about mu­tu­al friends, fam­ily, news, that sort of thing.”

“Dogs?” D’Agos­ta asked sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

“I don’t re­mem­ber if we talked about dogs.”

Pen­der­gast sud­den­ly broke in. “Do you, in fact, have a dog, Mr. Bullard?”

There was a short si­lence. Hay­ward cast Pen­der­gast a warn­ing glance.

“I was speak­ing metaphor­ical­ly. We talked about triv­ial so­cial things, is what I meant.”

D’Agos­ta re­sumed. “Cut­forth was mur­dered just a few hours af­ter you hung up the tele­phone. Did he seem ner­vous to you?”

“I don’t re­call.”

“Did he ex­press any sense to you that he was afraid?”

“Not that I re­call.”

“Did he ask for your help?”

“I don’t re­call.”

“What was your re­la­tion­ship to Mr. Cut­forth?”

“Su­per­fi­cial.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

A hes­ita­tion. “I don’t re­call.”

“Did you ev­er have any busi­ness or oth­er deal­ings with Mr. Cut­forth?”

“No.”

“How did you first meet?”

“I don’t re­call.”

“When­did you first meet?” Pen­der­gast smooth­ly in­ter­ject­ed.

“I don’t re­mem­ber.”

This was­worse than bull­shit. The lawyer, George Marc­hand, was look­ing more and more sat­is­fied. D’Agos­ta wasn’t go­ing to let it go at this.

“Af­ter Cut­forth’s call, you spent the rest of the night on your yacht?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have a pow­er launch?”

“Yes.”

“Was it stowed?”

“No. It was docked next to the yacht.”

“What kind of launch?”

“A Pic­nic Boat.”

Pen­der­gast broke in. “Are you re­fer­ring to the Hinck­ley Pic­nic Boat, the kind with the jet drive?”

“That’s right.”

“With the 350-horse­pow­er Yan­mar or the 420?”

“The 420.”

“With a top speed of over thir­ty knots, I be­lieve?”

“That’s about right.”

“And a draft of eigh­teen inch­es.”

“So they claim.”

Pen­der­gast set­tled back, ig­nor­ing Hay­ward’s look. He’d clear­ly snuck in some re­search while Bullard was be­ing pro­cessed.

D’Agos­ta picked up the line of ques­tion­ing. “So af­ter re­ceiv­ing the phone call, you could have got­ten in­to your Pic­nic Boat and head­ed up­town. You could’ve land­ed the boat just about any­where along the Man­hat­tan shore­line with a draft like that. And the jet drive would give you ma­neu­ver­abil­ity to go side­ways, re­verse, what­ev­er. Am I right?”

“My client has al­ready said he was on his yacht that night,” the lawyer said, equal­ly pleas­ant­ly. “Next ques­tion?”

“Were you alone all night, Mr. Bullard?”

This prompt­ed an­oth­er trip to the hall.

“Yes, I was alone,” Bullard said when they re­turned. “They keep track at the ma­ri­na; they can ver­ify I didn’t leave the yacht all night or take the Pic­nic Boat out of its berth.”

“We’ll check that,” said D’Agos­ta. “So you chitchat­ted with Cut­forth about the weath­er for thir­ty min­utes, just hours be­fore he was mur­dered?”

“I don’t be­lieve we talked about the weath­er, Sergeant.” There was a look of tri­umph in Bullard’s eyes. He was win­ning again.

Pen­der­gast asked, “Mr. Bullard, are you about to leave the coun­try?”

Bullard looked at Marc­hand. “Do I have to an­swer that?”

An­oth­er trip to the hall. When Bullard came back, he said, “Yes.”

“Where are you go­ing?”

“That ques­tion falls out­side the scope of the sub­poe­na,” said the lawyer. “My client wants to co­op­er­ate, but he al­so asks you to re­spect his pri­va­cy. You have al­ready stat­ed he is not a sus­pect.”

Pen­der­gast spoke to the lawyer. “Per­haps not a sus­pect. But your client may be a ma­te­ri­al wit­ness, and it would not be be­yond the bounds of prob­abil­ity he might be asked to sur­ren­der his pass­port-​tem­porar­ily, of course.”

D’Agos­ta had his eyes on Bullard’s face and-​even though he was ex­pect­ing a change-​he was star­tled by how dark it be­came. He seemed about to burst out again.

The lawyer smiled pleas­ant­ly. “An ut­ter­ly ab­surd state­ment, Mr. Pen­der­gast. Mr. Bullard will in no way be re­strained in his move­ments. I am sur­prised and con­sid­er it most im­prop­er that you have even men­tioned such a pos­si­bil­ity, which might be con­strued as a threat.”

Hay­ward cast a dark glance at Pen­der­gast. “Mr. Pen­der­gast-“

Pen­der­gast held up his hand. “Mr. Bullard, do you be­lieve in the ex­is­tence of the dev­il?”

Some­thing flick­ered across Bullard’s face, some swift and pow­er­ful emo­tion, but it went by too fast for D’Agos­ta to get a sense of what it was. Bullard took his time lean­ing back in the chair, cross­ing his legs, smil­ing. “Of course not. Do you?”

The lawyer stood up. “It seems we’ve reached the end of our ques­tions, gen­tle­men.” There was no con­tra­dic­tion. The lawyer hand­ed around his card with smiles and hand­shakes. “The next time you need to com­mu­ni­cate with Mr. Bullard,” he said, “do so through me. Mr. Bullard is go­ing abroad.” He gave Pen­der­gast a point­ed smile.

“That,” said Pen­der­gast very qui­et­ly, “re­mains to be seen.”

{ 26 }

Bullard and his lawyer had left, shov­ing their way through asec­ond throng of shout­ing re­porters. Pen­der­gast had dis­ap­peared, too, leav­ing D’Agos­ta alone with Hay­ward. They were now lin­ger­ing in the mud-​col­ored lob­by of Po­lice Plaza. He had some­thing he want­ed to say; and so, it seemed, did she.

“Did Bullard re­al­ly threat­en you, Sergeant?” she asked.

D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed.

“Just for my own in­for­ma­tion, off the record. I’m not ask­ing you to tell tales out of school.”

“In a way, yes.” They be­gan walk­ing side by side to­ward the build­ing’s ex­it. Out­side, the re­main­ing news teams were grudg­ing­ly pack­ing up. The sky in the west was smeared with red. As he walked, D’Agos­ta could al­most feel waves of heat ra­di­at­ing from Hay­ward. She was clear­ly still pissed off.

“What kind of threat?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”I know all about that wife of yours in Cana­da. The im­age of Chester Do­minic’s smooth-​shaven face came un­bid­den to his mind. It couldn’t be true. Well, on sec­ond thought, it­could be true-​they had been apart for a long time. The mar­riage was over-​who was he fool­ing? But not Chester Do­minic, with that cheesy shit-​eat­ing grin and the pho­ny car-​sales­man cheer. And the polyester suits. Je­sus. Any­body but him.

D’Agos­ta glanced over to see Hay­ward look­ing back at him. Her face showed con­cern min­gled with skep­ti­cism. This wasn’t easy for her, he thought. Pen­der­gast was one hell of a good FBI agent, but he was no good at team­work. It was his way or the high­way-​no com­pro­mise.

“You might have to talk about it if charges are brought.”

“Fine. But not now.” He took a deep breath. “Cap­tain Hay­ward, Pen­der­gast re­al­ly did have to get tough with Bullard.”

“I don’t be­lieve it. He could’ve got­ten a sub­poe­na, sched­uled the in­ter­view on the boat, and prob­ably got­ten more in­for­ma­tion out of the guy in the pro­cess. As it is, we didn’t get jack out of that in­ter­ro­ga­tion.”

“We went to the boat to ask ques­tions. I was threat­ened. I don’t see why you think schedul­ing it would have been more suc­cess­ful.”

“Okay, you’ve got a point, but it turned in­to a piss­ing con­test, and that’s nev­er suc­cess­ful.”

They passed through the doors and paused on the broad mar­ble steps. Hay­ward was still mad. More fence-​mend­ing was in or­der.

“You do­ing any­thing?” D’Agos­ta asked.

Hay­ward looked at him. “I was plan­ning on go­ing home.”

“How about a drink? Strict­ly pro­fes­sion­al. I know-​or at least I used to know-​a place over on Church Street.”

She gazed at him for a mo­ment, her pale face framed by glossy black hair, her eyes still flash­ing with resid­ual ir­ri­ta­tion. “All right.”

D’Agos­ta de­scend­ed the steps, Hay­ward by his side.

“Pen­der­gast’s got his own meth­ods,” said D’Agos­ta.

“That’s ex­act­ly what I’m afraid of. Look, Sergeant-“

“How about call­ing me Vin­nie?”

“Call me Lau­ra, then. Here’s what wor­ries me: how many times has Pen­der­gast had to tes­ti­fy against a perp in court?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you. Very few times. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Be­cause most of his perps wind up dead. That’s why.”

“That’s not his fault.”

“I didn’t say it was. It’s just an ob­ser­va­tion. Let’s say Bullard does be­come a sus­pect. This lit­tle shenani­gan is go­ing to look bad.”

They made a left at Park Row, then a right at Vesey. Ahead, D’Agos­ta saw the lit­tle place still there, ap­par­ent­ly un­changed. A cou­ple of dy­ing ferns hung from macramé in the base­ment win­dow, just the right touch to keep out oth­er cops. He liked it for that-​and for the Guin­ness on tap.

“I nev­er knew this place ex­ist­ed,” said Hay­ward as they de­scend­ed the steps and D’Agos­ta held open the door. He fol­lowed her in­to the cool, brew-​fra­grant in­te­ri­or. She took a ta­ble in the back and a man came up im­me­di­ate­ly.

“Guin­ness,” she said.

“Two.”

D’Agos­ta couldn’t shake the im­age of Do­minic with his wife. It was go­ing to drive him crazy, he re­al­ized, un­til he did some­thing about it. He got up. “Back in a mo­ment.”

He found the phone tucked in­to a nook in the back of the bar. It had been a long time since he used a pay phone, but this was one call he didn’t want to make with his cell. He called in­for­ma­tion, got the Cana­di­an op­er­ator, got the num­ber, made the call. It took two trips to the bar and twen­ty quar­ters. Je­sus.

“Koote­nay RV,” came a nasal voice.

“Chet Do­minic there?”

“He’s gone.”

“Damn, I was sup­posed to meet him for an ap­point­ment, and I’m late. You got his cell?” “Who’s this?”

“Jack Tor­rance. I’m the one in­ter­est­ed in the Itas­ca Sun­fly­er, you know, the one with the slide-​out bed­room and Co­ri­an coun­ter­tops? Chet’s a friend from the club.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Tor­rance, of course,” came the sud­den­ly fake-​friend­ly voice. “Just a mo­ment.” She gave him the num­ber.

D’Agos­ta glanced at his watch, col­lect­ed more quar­ters from the bar, di­aled.

“Hel­lo?”

It was Chester.

“This is Dr. Mor­gan at the hos­pi­tal. There’s been a ter­ri­ble ac­ci­dent.”

“What? Who?” The voice was in­stant­ly full of pan­ic. D’Agos­ta won­dered if Do­minic had a wife and kids. Prob­ably did, the scum­bag.

“I must speak to a Mrs. Ly­dia D’Agos­ta im­me­di­ate­ly.”

“Well, ah, wait-​yes, yes, of course.” There was a fum­bling sound, a muf­fled voice, and then his wife’s voice came on. “Yes? What is it? What’s hap­pened?”

D’Agos­ta care­ful­ly de­pressed the hang-​up bar, took a cou­ple of deep breaths, and made his way back to­ward the ta­ble. Even be­fore he got there, his cell phone was ring­ing. He an­swered.

“Vin­nie? It’s Ly­dia. Are you all right?”

“Sure. Why do you ask? You sound up­set.”

“No, no, I’m fine. I just heard . I don’t know, some­thing about the hos­pi­tal. I was wor­ried.” She was all flus­tered and con­fused.

“Wasn’t me.”

“You know how it is, be­ing out here like this, hear­ing ev­ery­thing sec­ond­hand . “

“You still at work?”

“I’m in the park­ing lot. Just pulling out now.”

“Right. See you.” D’Agos­ta snapped the phone shut and re­seat­ed him­self.You mean Chester Do­minic was just pulling out, don’t you? He felt a hor­ri­ble prick­ly heat crawl­ing over his skin. The Guin­ness had ar­rived, in a re­al im­pe­ri­al pint, with two inch­es of cream on the top. He raised it and took a long pull, then an­oth­er, feel­ing the cool liq­uid loos­en­ing the tight­ness in his throat. He put the pint down to find Lau­ra Hay­ward look­ing at him in­tent­ly.

“You were thirsty,” she said.

“Yeah.” To hide his face, he took an­oth­er pull. Who was he kid­ding? They’d been sep­arat­ed half a year now. He couldn’t re­al­ly blame her for that-​not too much, any­way. And Vin­nie Ju­nior, his son, didn’t want to move, ei­ther. Ly­dia wasn’t a bad per­son at heart, but this was a low blow. A re­al­ly low blow. He won­dered if lit­tle Vin­nie knew about it.

“Bad news?”

D’Agos­ta glanced at Hay­ward. “Sort of.”

“Any­thing I can do?”

“No, thanks.” He sat up. “I’m sor­ry. I’m lousy com­pa­ny tonight.”

“Don’t wor­ry. It’s not a date.”

There was a si­lence, then Hay­ward said, “I read your two nov­els.”

D’Agos­ta felt him­self red­den­ing. This was the last con­ver­sa­tion he want­ed to have.

“They were great. I just want­ed to tell you that.”

“Thanks.”

“I loved the dead­pan style. Grit­ty. Those books re­al­ly cap­tured what it’s like to be on the job. Not like most of the pho­ny po­lice fic­tion around.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. “So where’d you find them? On a re­main­der ta­ble?”

“I bought them when they were first pub­lished. As it hap­pens, I’ve been sort of fol­low­ing your ca­reer.”

“Re­al­ly?” D’Agos­ta was sur­prised. When they’d worked to­geth­er on the sub­way mur­ders years ago, he hadn’t thought he’d made much of an im­pres­sion on her. Not a good im­pres­sion, any­way. Then again, she’d al­ways played her cards close.

“Re­al­ly I-” She hes­itat­ed. “I was still fin­ish­ing up my mas­ter’s at NYU when we worked to­geth­er. That was my first big case. I was am­bi­tious as hell, and to me, just start­ing, you looked like just the kind of cop I want­ed to be. So I was re­al­ly cu­ri­ous when you went off to Cana­da to write nov­els. I won­dered why a cop as good as you would give it up.”

“I had a lot I want­ed to say-​about crime, crim­inals, the jus­tice sys­tem. And about peo­ple in gen­er­al.”

“You said it well.”

“Not well enough.”

Her pint was emp­ty and so was his.

“An­oth­er round?” he asked.

“Sure. Vin­nie, I’ve got to tell you, I couldn’t be­lieve it when I saw you in sergeant’s stripes with a Southamp­ton P.D. badge. I thought maybe I was deal­ing with a twin broth­er.”

D’Agos­ta tried to muster a laugh. “Life.”

“That was some case we worked on, those sub­way mur­ders.”

“Sure was. You re­mem­ber the ri­ot?”

She shook her head. “What a sight. Like some­thing in a movie. I still have night­mares about it some­times.”

“I missed it. I was about half a mile un­der­ground, fin­ish­ing what Cap­tain Wax­ie start­ed.”

“Old Wax­ie. You know, he was sucked down so deep in­to those tun­nels they nev­er did find his body. Prob­ably got eat­en by an al­li­ga­tor.”

“Or worse.”

She paused. “The force is dif­fer­ent now, re­al­ly dif­fer­ent. Thank God-​what a cast of char­ac­ters we had to deal with back then, when I was just a new jack.”

“You re­mem­ber Mc­Car­roll at the T.A.? They called him Mc­Car­rion be­cause of his breath?” He chuck­led.

“Do I. I had to work for that bas­tard for six months. It was tough to be a wom­an on the T.A. force back then. I had two strikes against me: not on­ly was I fe­male, but I was in grad­uate school. Make that three strikes: I wouldn’t sleep with Mc­Car­rion.”

“He made a pass at you?”

“His idea of a pass was to get re­al close, breathe all over me, tell me I had a nice body, and puck­er his lips.”

D’Agos­ta made a face. “Oh, my God. You re­port him?”

“And kiss my ca­reer good-​bye? He was just a harm­less cretin, any­way, not worth re­port­ing. Now the NYPD is like a dif­fer­ent plan­et-​to­tal­ly pro­fes­sion­al. And any­way, no­body would dare pull a stunt like that on a cap­tain.”

The sec­ond round came, and D’Agos­ta buried his mug in it and lis­tened to her rem­inisce, telling fun­ny sto­ries about Mc­Car­roll and an­oth­er long-​gone cap­tain, Al “Crisco” DuPrisco. It brought back a lot of mem­ories.

He shook his head. “Je­sus, there’s no bet­ter place to be a cop than in the Big Ap­ple.”

“You said it.”

“I got­ta get back on the job, Lau­ra. I’m rot­ting out there in Southamp­ton.”

She said noth­ing. D’Agos­ta looked up, his eyes meet­ing hers and see­ing what-​pity? “Sor­ry.” He looked away. Fun­ny how life had re­versed ev­ery­thing. Now here she was, prob­ably the youngest cap­tain on the force. And he . Well, if any­one de­served suc­cess, she did .

“Look,” he said, sud­den­ly pro­fes­sion­al again. “I re­al­ly asked you for a drink be­cause I want­ed to make sure you were okay with Pen­der­gast. I’ve worked with him on not just one big case, but two. Be­lieve me, his meth­ods may be un­ortho­dox, but they work. You couldn’t ask for a bet­ter fed on your side.”

“I ap­pre­ci­ate your loy­al­ty. But the fact is, he’s got a co­op­er­ation prob­lem. I went out on a limb to have that sub­poe­na and war­rant ready to go, and he em­bar­rassed me. I’m go­ing to give him the ben­efit of the doubt this time, but please, Vin­nie, keep the guy in line. He ob­vi­ous­ly re­spects you.”

“He re­spects you, too.”

There was a si­lence.

“So how come you gave up writ­ing?” Hay­ward asked, shift­ing the sub­ject back to him. “I thought you had a pret­ty good ca­reer go­ing.”

“Yeah, a ca­reer in bankrupt­cy court. I just couldn’t make it. Af­ter two nov­els, I didn’t have two nick­els to rub to­geth­er. Ly­dia-​that’s my wife-​she couldn’t take it any­more.”

“You’re mar­ried?” Her eyes rapid­ly glanced at his hand, but his wed­ding ring hadn’t fit for years.

“Yeah.”

“Why am I sur­prised? All the good guys are tak­en. Here’s to Ly­dia.”

She raised her pint. D’Agos­ta didn’t raise his glass; in­stead, he said, “We’re sep­arat­ed. She’s still liv­ing in Cana­da.”

“I’m sor­ry.” She low­ered her pint, but she did not look very sor­ry. Or was it just his imag­ina­tion?

“You know that threat Bullard made against me?” D’Agos­ta swal­lowed. He wasn’t sure why he was telling her this, but he sud­den­ly felt he couldn’t go an­oth­er minute with­out get­ting it off his chest. “He some­how found out my wife was hav­ing an af­fair and told me about it. Along with a lot of oth­er com­pro­mis­ing per­son­al in­for­ma­tion he dug up and threat­ened to make pub­lic.”

“Bas­tard. In that case, I’m glad Pen­der­gast stuck it to him.” She hes­itat­ed. “You want to talk about it?”

“We are talk­ing about it.”

“I’m sor­ry, Vin­cent. That’s tough. Is the mar­riage worth sav­ing?”

“It was over half a year ago. We’ve just been in de­nial stage.”

“Kids?”

“One. Lives with his mom. Go­ing to col­lege next year on schol­ar­ship. Great kid.”

“How long were you mar­ried?”

“Twen­ty-​five years. Mar­ried right out of high school.”

“God. You sure there isn’t some­thing there worth hold­ing on to?”

“Some good mem­ories. But noth­ing now. It’s over.”

“Well then, Bullard just did you a fa­vor.” She ex­tend­ed her hand and laid it on his, com­fort­ing­ly.

D’Agos­ta looked at her. She was right: in a way, Bullard had done him a fa­vor. Maybe a re­al­ly big fa­vor.

{ 27 }

Mid­night. The boat was still in its slip, the crew aboard, ev­ery­thin­gready for a de­par­ture at first light. Bullard stood on deck, breath­ing the night air, look­ing across the bay to­ward Stat­en Is­land. There was one last thing he had to take care of be­fore weigh­ing an­chor. He had made two se­ri­ous mis­takes, and they had to be cor­rect­ed. The first was im­pul­sive­ly hir­ing those goons to cap D’Agos­ta. Damn stupid thing: he knew bet­ter than that. If you were go­ing to kill a cop, you had to do it right. The bas­tard had mouthed off with a few emp­ty threats, and in his ner­vous state he’d al­lowed him­self to be spooked. Christ, he was jumpy these days. He wasn’t think­ing clear­ly. The fact was, that fat fuck was not his re­al en­emy. He was just a gumshoe. The re­al en­emy was the FBI agent, Pen­der­gast. That man was dan­ger­ous as an adder: coiled up, cool, smooth, ready to strike. Pen­der­gast played for keeps, and he was the brains in that team. Kill the brain and the body will die. Get Pen­der­gast and the in­ves­ti­ga­tion would go away.

The same rule about cops was even truer for FBI agents. You didn’t kill them un­less there was no oth­er way. It al­most nev­er made things bet­ter. But there were ex­cep­tions to ev­ery rule, and this was one of them. Bullard could al­low noth­ing-​noth­ing-​to in­ter­fere with what he had to do.

He went be­lowdecks. All was qui­et. He slipped in­to a sound­proofed room, locked the door be­hind him, checked his watch. Still a few min­utes. He pressed a few but­tons, and a video­con­fer­enc­ing screen came to life. Pen­der­gast had made off with one CPU and some of his files, but all his com­put­ers were net­worked, their busi­ness-​re­lat­ed da­ta fold­ers en­crypt­ed. He used pub­lic en­cryp­tion with 2,048-bit keys, un­break­able even by the most pow­er­ful com­put­ers in the world. He wasn’t wor­ried about what Pen­der­gast might find. He was wor­ried about the man him­self.

He pressed a few more keys, and a dim face ap­peared on the screen. It was a face as smooth and tight as a drum, so thin it looked as if the wet skin had been stretched over the bones and al­lowed to dry. His head was shaved so smooth there wasn’t even a five o’clock shad­ow on the scalp. It gave Bullard the creeps. But the man was good. More than good: he was the best there was. He called him­self Vasquez.

The man said noth­ing, of­fered no greet­ing, just stared, hands fold­ed, his face ex­pres­sion­less. Bullard eased back in his chair, smiled, al­though the smile made no dif­fer­ence. The im­age Vasquez was see­ing on-​screen was the com­put­er-​gen­er­at­ed face of a nonex­is­tent per­son.

Bullard spoke. “The tar­get is Pen­der­gast, first name un­known. Spe­cial Agent with the FBI. Lives at 891 River­side Drive. I want two in the brain­pan. I’ll give you a mil­lion per bul­let.” “I re­quire full pay­ment in ad­vance,” Vasquez said.

“What if you fail?”

“I don’t.”

“Bull­shit. Ev­ery­one fails.”

“The day I fail is the day I die. Now, do you agree?”

Bullard hes­itat­ed. Still, if you were go­ing to do some­thing, do it right.

“Very well,” he said curt­ly. “But time is of the essence here.” If Vasquez screwed him, there were oth­er Vasquezes out there, will­ing to fin­ish the job and re­duce the com­pe­ti­tion; two killings wouldn’t cost much more than one.

Vasquez held up a piece of pa­per with a num­ber on it. He wait­ed a mo­ment, giv­ing Bullard time to jot it down. “When the two mil­lion shows up in this ac­count, I will un­der­take the as­sign­ment. We need nev­er speak again.”

The screen went black. Bullard re­al­ized Vasquez must have cut the trans­mis­sion. He wasn’t used to peo­ple hang­ing up on him. He felt a mo­men­tary ir­ri­ta­tion, then took a deep breath. He had worked with artists be­fore, and they were all cut from the same cloth: ego­tis­ti­cal, flam­boy­ant, greedy.

And Vasquez was the best kind of artist: the kind that tru­ly loved his work.

{ 28 }

D’Agos­ta pulled his Ford Tau­rus up to the iron gates, then­stopped, won­der­ing if he might have got­ten the di­rec­tions wrong. He was at least an hour late-​the pa­per­work from the pre­vi­ous day’s blowup with Bullard had tak­en all morn­ing. Cops these days couldn’t fire their gun, couldn’t ques­tion a sus­pect, couldn’t even break wind with­out hav­ing to fill out re­ports af­ter the fact.

The rusty gates hung open, as if aban­doned, mount­ed on two crum­bling stone pil­lars. The grav­eled drive be­yond was car­pet­ed with sprout­ing rag­weed well over a foot high, re­cent­ly smashed down by the pas­sage of a ve­hi­cle. But no, this had to be the place: a stone plaque mortared in­to one of the pil­lars bore the name, abrad­ed by time and weath­er but still leg­ible:Raven­scry.

D’Agos­ta got out of the car and shoved the groan­ing gate open a lit­tle far­ther, then got be­hind the wheel again and head­ed down the drive. He could see where the oth­er car or cars had gone, flat­ten­ing the weeds in two vague stripes. The drive wan­dered through an an­cient beech­wood for­est, mas­sive warped tree trunks ris­ing on both sides, un­til at last it broke out in­to sun­light-​a mead­ow dot­ted with wild­flow­ers that had once ev­ident­ly been a lawn. At the far end of the mead­ow rose a gaunt stone man­sion: shad­ed by elms, shut­tered tight, its roofs topped by at least twen­ty chim­neys, a re­al haunt­ed pile if ev­er there was one. D’Agos­ta shook his head slow­ly. Then, glanc­ing at the di­rec­tions Pen­der­gast had giv­en him, he fol­lowed the car­riage­way around the mas­sive house and turned on­to an­oth­er road that led on through an­cient gar­dens to­ward a stone mill­house on the banks of a stream. Pen­der­gast’s Rolls was parked here and he pulled in be­side it. Pen­der­gast’s chauf­feur, Proc­tor, was ar­rang­ing some­thing in the car’s trunk; as D’Agos­ta got out of the car and ap­proached, he bowed po­lite­ly, then nod­ded in the di­rec­tion of the stream.

D’Agos­ta be­gan fol­low­ing a stone path that led down from the road. Far­ther ahead now, he could see two fig­ures strolling along the path, dap­pled in shade, in­tent in con­ver­sa­tion. One had to be Pen­der­gast-​the black suit and slim bear­ing gave him away. The oth­er, who was wear­ing a sun­bon­net and hold­ing a para­sol, could on­ly be the girl stay­ing in Pen­der­gast’s house. What was her name again? Con­stance.

As he ap­proached the stream, he could hear the purl­ing of wa­ter, hear the birds rustling in the beech­wood. Pen­der­gast turned and waved him over. “Vin­cent, you made it. Very good of you to come.”

Con­stance turned, too, smil­ing grave­ly and hold­ing out her hand. D’Agos­ta took it, mum­bling a greet­ing. For some rea­son she made him ea­ger to be on his best be­hav­ior, just the way his grand­moth­er had done when he was a child. Her un­usu­al eyes were con­cealed by a pair of very dark sun­glass­es.

He glanced down the shade-​dap­pled path. The mill was no longer turn­ing, but the shunt of wa­ter had been di­rect­ed in­to a cu­ri­ous se­ries of stone sluice tanks. “What is this place?”

“The es­tate be­longs to my great-​aunt Cor­nelia, who, alas, is not well and is con­fined to a home. I’ve be­gun bring­ing Con­stance up here to take the air.”

“To com­plete my re­ha­bil­ita­tion,” said Con­stance with a faint smile. “Mr. Pen­der­gast thinks I’m in del­icate health.”

“Quite a spread,” D’Agos­ta said.

“The mill here was con­vert­ed in­to a trout farm in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry,” Pen­der­gast replied. “Ev­ery year they stocked Dew­ing Brook with thou­sands of trout and kept the for­est full of wild turkey, deer, pheas­ant, grouse, quail, and bear. Come Sun­day there was quite a mas­sacre around these parts, as my re­la­tions and their sport­ing friends took to the field.”

“A hunt­ing pre­serve. I’ll bet the fish­ing was fan­tas­tic.” D’Agos­ta looked at the brook purl­ing over its cob­bled bed, with deep pools and holes no doubt still thick with trout. Even as he watched, sev­er­al fish, ris­ing to a hatch, dim­pled the sur­face.

“I nev­er cared for fish­ing,” Pen­der­gast said. “I pre­ferred blood sport.”

“What’s wrong with fish­ing?”

“I find it quo­tid­ian in the ex­treme.”

“Quo­tid­ian. Right.”

“Af­ter the sud­den death of Aunt Cor­nelia’s hus­band and chil­dren, most of the staff quit. Short­ly there­after, my aunt was obliged to leave. And now Raven­scry lies emp­ty, de­cay­ing. In any case,” Pen­der­gast went on more briskly, “I asked you to come so we may take stock of the case in sur­round­ings con­ducive to con­tem­pla­tion. Frankly, Vin­cent, the case is baf­fling. Nor­mal­ly by this stage I’d have found a piece of thread lead­ing in­to the tan­gle. But this is dif­fer­ent.”

“It’s a tough one,” D’Agos­ta said. He glanced at the girl, won­der­ing how much to say.

“We may speak freely in front of Con­stance.”

The girl smiled with mock grav­ity. They strolled back through the dap­pled shade in the di­rec­tion of the cars.

“Let us re­view what we know. We have two mur­ders, each with in­ex­pli­ca­ble fea­tures, in­clud­ing the heat­ing of the body and the var­ious Mephistophe­lean ap­pur­te­nances. We know that the two vic­tims must have been con­nect­ed with each oth­er and to Bullard in some way. But I have not been able to find that con­nec­tion.”

“Hay­ward’s been help­ing me with that end of things. We’ve pulled their tele­phone bills, cred­it card trans­ac­tions, T&E records go­ing back ten years. Na­da. It doesn’t look like they ev­er met. As for Bullard, most of the fold­ers on that com­put­er we seized are en­crypt­ed too strong­ly to break. I did get one nugget of in­ter­est­ing in­for­ma­tion from Hay­ward, though: they found a ref­er­ence to the name Ranier Beck­mann in a tem­po­rary In­ter­net di­rec­to­ry on the com­put­er. Seems Bullard was try­ing to lo­cate him, too.”

“And yet you said Bullard de­nied know­ing Beck­mann when you ques­tioned him at the Ath­let­ic Club. It’s ev­ident Bullard is con­ceal­ing a great deal. He’s an­gry, he’s de­fen­sive. I might even say he’s fright­ened. Of what?”

“Of ar­rest. As far as I’m con­cerned, Bullard is sus­pect num­ber one. He doesn’t have a good al­ibi for the Grove mur­der, ei­ther. He said he was on his yacht, cruis­ing the sound that night. With­out a crew. He could’ve been cruis­ing the At­lantic side in­stead, slipped up on the beach at Southamp­ton, done the job.”

“Pos­si­ble. But the fact that he has no al­ibi for ei­ther night, in my view, is ac­tu­al­ly a strike in his fa­vor. Be­sides, what’s Bullard’s mo­ti­va­tion? Why kill Grove and Cut­forth? And why make it look like the dev­il?”

“He’s got a macabre sense of hu­mor.”

“On the con­trary, the man ap­pears to have ab­so­lute­ly no sense of hu­mor at all, apart from a kind of gang­ster­ish schaden­freude. Some­body play­ing a mere joke would not take such a dan­ger­ous risk.”

“He wants to send a mes­sage, then.”

“Yes, but to whom? For what pur­pose?”

“I don’t know. If it isn’t Bullard, it might be some fun­da­men­tal­ist nut­case who wants to bring back the In­qui­si­tion. Some­body who thinks he’s do­ing God’s work.”

“A sec­ond pos­si­bil­ity.”

There was a short si­lence. Then Pen­der­gast added, “Vin­cent, you haven’t men­tioned theother pos­si­bil­ity.”

D’Agos­ta felt his gut tight­en. Pen­der­gast wasn’t se­ri­ous-​was he? He found him­self un­con­scious­ly fin­ger­ing his cross.

“Where’s Bullard now?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“He left on his yacht this morn­ing, head­ing to the open ocean.”

“Any idea where?”

“Looks like Eu­rope. At least he’s head­ing east, at full speed. Bet­ter than full speed, in fact­the yacht must have a spe­cial­ly mod­ified pow­er plant. In any case, Hay­ward’s got some­one on it. We’ll know where and when he lands-​un­less he evades cus­toms and im­mi­gra­tion, which seems im­prob­able with a yacht like that.”

“The ad­mirable Hay­ward. Is she still up­set?”

“You could say that.”

Pen­der­gast smiled thin­ly.

“So what’s your the­ory?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“I am do­ing my best not to­have a the­ory.”

D’Agos­ta heard the crunch­ing of tires on grav­el, the slam­ming of doors, the dis­tant chat­ter of voic­es. He glanced back across the mead­ows and spot­ted the new ar­rival: a long, old­fash­ioned limou­sine, its top down. A huge wick­er bas­ket was lashed across the rum­ble seat with leather straps.

“Who’s this?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“An­oth­er guest,” Pen­der­gast said sim­ply.

Now some­one came around the side of the car: an enor­mous fig­ure, gross­ly out of pro­por­tion to its sur­round­ings but mov­ing with a re­mark­able flu­id­ity and ease. It was Fos­co, who, it seemed, had some­how made the tran­si­tion from wit­ness to ac­quain­tance.

D’Agos­ta looked over. “What’s he do­ing here?”

“It seems he is in pos­ses­sion of some in­for­ma­tion of great val­ue that he’s most ea­ger to pass on. And since he’s ex­pressed an in­ter­est in view­ing what pass­es for an­tiq­ui­ty here in Amer­ica, I thought I’d in­vite him to Raven­scry. I owed him a re­turn for an in­ter­est­ing night at the opera.”

The fig­ure came strid­ing swift­ly down the path, wav­ing his arm in greet­ing long be­fore he ar­rived.

“Mar­velous place!” boomed the count, rub­bing his white-​gloved hands to­geth­er. He bowed to Pen­der­gast, then turned to D’Agos­ta. “The good sergeant. D’Agos­ta, is it not? Al­ways pleased to make the ac­quain­tance of a fel­low Ital­ian. How do you do?”

“Fine, thanks.” D’Agos­ta hadn’t liked the man and his flam­boy­ant ways at the memo­ri­al ser­vice, and he liked him even less now.

“And this is my ward, Con­stance Greene,” said Pen­der­gast.

“Your ward, you say? I am de­light­ed.” Fos­co bowed and brought her hand al­most, but not quite, to his lips.

Con­stance in­clined her head in ac­knowl­edg­ment. “I see you and Mr. Pen­der­gast share an in­ter­est in ex­ot­ic au­to­mo­biles.”

“In­deed we do; that and much more. Mr. Pen­der­gast and I have be­come­friends .” He beamed. “We are very dif­fer­ent in some ways. I am a lover of mu­sic and he is not. I am a lover of fine clothes, and he dress­es like an un­der­tak­er. I am vol­uble and open, he is silent and closed. I am di­rect, he is dif­fi­dent. But we do share a love of art, lit­er­ature, fine food, wine, and cul­ture-​as well as a fas­ci­na­tion with these dread­ful and in­ex­pli­ca­ble crimes.” He peered at Con­stance, smiled again.

“Crimes are in­ter­est­ing on­ly when they are in­ex­pli­ca­ble. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, few re­main so.”

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly?”

“I was speak­ing from an aes­thet­ic point of view.”

The count turned to Pen­der­gast. “This young la­dy is ex­cep­tion­al.”

“And what is your in­ter­est in the case, Count, be­sides mere fas­ci­na­tion?” Con­stance asked.

“I wish to help.”

“Count Fos­co has al­ready been help­ful,” said Pen­der­gast.

“And, as you shall see, I will be more help­ful still! But first I must tell you how en­chant­ed I am with this es­tate. Your great-​aunt’s, did you say? So pic­turesque! Falling in­to ru­in and ne­glect, mys­te­ri­ous, haunt­ed. It re­minds me of Pi­rane­si’s en­grav­ingVe­du­ta degli Avanzi delle Terme di Tito , the Ru­ins of the Baths of Ti­tus. I much pre­fer a build­ing in ne­glect and ru­in-​much of my own­castel­lo in Tus­cany is in a de­light­ful state of di­lap­ida­tion.”

D’Agos­ta won­dered what the cas­tle of a count looked like.

“As promised, I brought lunch,” the count boomed. “Pin­ketts!” He clapped his hands and his driv­er, who was about as En­glish as they come, un­strapped the huge wick­er trunk and heft­ed it down the path, then pro­ceed­ed to ar­range a linen table­cloth, bot­tles of wine, cheeses, prosci­ut­to, sala­mi, sil­ver­ware, and glass­es on a stone ta­ble be­neath the shade of an enor­mous cop­per beech.

“This is kind of you, Count,” said Pen­der­gast.

“Yes, Iam kind, es­pe­cial­ly when you see the Vil­la Cal­ci­na­ia ‘97 Chi­anti Clas­si­co Ris­er­va I’ve brought, made by my neigh­bor, the good count Cap­poni. But I have some­thing else for you. Some­thing even bet­ter than wine, caviar, and fois gras. If such a thing is pos­si­ble.” The black eyes in his smooth, hand­some face sparkled with plea­sure.

“And that is?”

“In good time, in good time.” The count be­gan ar­rang­ing, with fussy at­ten­tion, the things on the ta­ble, un­cork­ing and de­cant­ing a bot­tle of red wine, let­ting the an­tic­ipa­tion build. At last, he turned with a con­spir­ato­ri­al grin. “By chance, I have made a dis­cov­ery of the first im­por­tance.” He turned to D’Agos­ta. “Does the name Ranier Beck­mann mean any­thing to you, Sergeant?”

“We found that name on Bullard’s com­put­er. The guy he was try­ing to lo­cate.”

The count nod­ded as if he’d known it all along. “And?”

“Bullard had done an In­ter­net search for a Ranier Beck­mann, with­out suc­cess. Grove al­so seems to have been look­ing for Beck­mann. But we don’t know why.”

“I was at a lun­cheon par­ty yes­ter­day and was seat­ed be­side La­dy Mil­banke. She told me­be­tween fre­quent dis­plays of her new neck­lace-​that a few days be­fore Jere­my Grove was mur­dered, he had asked if she could rec­om­mend a pri­vate de­tec­tive. Turned out she could­scan­dalous peo­ple of­ten can. I then went to this gen­tle­man my­self and soon pried from him the fact that Grove hired him . to find a cer­tain Ranier Beck­mann .”

He paused dra­mat­ical­ly. “Grove was in a pan­ic to find this man. When the de­tec­tive asked him for de­tails, he could pro­vide none at all. None. The de­tec­tive stopped his in­ves­ti­ga­tion when he heard of Grove’s death.”

“In­ter­est­ing,” D’Agos­ta said.

“It would be in­ter­est­ing to see if the name Beck­mann turned up among Cut­forth’s ef­fects, as well,” Pen­der­gast said.

D’Agos­ta re­moved his cell, di­aled Hay­ward’s di­rect line.

“Hay­ward here,” came the cool voice.

“It’s Sergeant D’Agos­ta. Vin­nie. Have your peo­ple fin­ished in­ven­to­ry­ing Cut­forth’s apart­ment?”

“Yes.”

“The name Ranier Beck­mann turn up, by any chance?”

“As a mat­ter of fact, it did.” D’Agos­ta heard a rustling of pa­per. “We found a note­book with his name writ­ten on the first page, in Cut­forth’s hand.”

“The rest of the note­book?”

“Blank.”

“Thanks.” D’Agos­ta closed the phone and re­lat­ed what he’d heard.

Pen­der­gast’s face tensed with ex­cite­ment. “This is pre­cise­ly the thread we’ve been look­ing for. Grove, Cut­forth, Bullard. Why were all three look­ing for Beck­mann? Per­hap­swe should find this Beck­mann and see what he has to tell us.”

“You may find that a dif­fi­cult propo­si­tion, my friend,” said the count.

Pen­der­gast glanced at him. “And why is that?”

“Be­cause the pri­vate in­ves­ti­ga­tor told me some­thing else. That he was un­able to find any in­for­ma­tion­at all on this Ranier Beck­mann. No present or past ad­dress, no em­ploy­ment his­to­ry, no fam­ily in­for­ma­tion. Noth­ing. But I leave that to you.” The count, beam­ing with his suc­cess, ex­tend­ed his white hands. “And now, busi­ness con­clud­ed, let us be seat­ed and en­joy our lunch.” He turned and bowed to Con­stance. “May I be per­mit­ted to seat you here, on my right? I feel we have much to talk about.”

{ 29 }

Even be­fore en­ter­ing, Har­ri­man had formed a clear pic­ture ofVon Menck’s sit­ting room in his mind. He fig­ured he’d find it car­pet­ed in Per­sian rugs, decked out with as­tro­log­ical charts, an­cient pen­ta­cles, and per­haps Ti­betan dur­gas made of hu­man long bones. The room alone, he hoped, would make great copy. Thus he was crest­fall­en when the door drew back at his knock to re­veal a sim­ple, al­most spar­tan study. There was a small fire­place, com­fort­able leather chairs, lithographs of Egyp­tian ru­ins on the walls. There were, in fact, on­ly two clues that this room was not just an­oth­er mid­dle-​class par­lor: the wall of glass-​front­ed book­cas­es, bulging with books and manuscripts and pa­pers, and the Em­my for Best Doc­umen­tary that sat ne­glect­ed on the desk be­side the tele­phone and old-​fash­ioned Rolodex.

Har­ri­man took the prof­fered seat, hop­ing his hunch would prove cor­rect: that Von Menck would give shape and voice to the dev­il-​killings sto­ry. A typ­ical sci­en­tist would mere­ly de­bunk the busi­ness, while some crank sa­tanist would have no cred­ibil­ity. What made Friedrich Von Menck per­fect was that he strad­dled the gray area in be­tween. While Von Menck’s aca­dem­ic cre­den­tials were be­yond re­proach-​doc­tor of phi­los­ophy from Hei­del­berg, doc­tor of medicine from Har­vard, doc­tor of di­vin­ity from Can­ter­bury-​he had al­ways made a spe­cial­ty of mys­ti­cism, the para­nor­mal, the un­ex­plain­able. His doc­umen­tary on crop cir­cles had aired on PBS to great ac­claim, and it had been well done, salt­ed with both skep­ti­cism and just the right fris­son of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble. And, of course, his ear­li­er doc­umen­tary on the ex­or­cisms in Carta­ge­na, Spain, had won the Em­my. At the time, it had left even Har­ri­man won­der­ing-​if on­ly un­til the next com­mer­cial break-​if there wasn’t some­thing to the idea of de­mon­ic pos­ses­sion.

Von Menck would pro­vide more than just an opin­ion: he would pro­vide a foun­da­tion, a launch­ing pad, an en­gine. If Von Menck couldn’t get this sto­ry in­to or­bit, no­body could.

The doc­tor greet­ed him with cour­tesy, tak­ing a seat in the leather chair op­po­site. Har­ri­man liked him im­me­di­ate­ly. He was sur­prised to see that the com­pelling, al­most mag­net­ic per­son­al­ity pro­ject­ed on tele­vi­sion was, in fact, re­al. It had a lot to do with the man’s low, mel­liflu­ous voice and cool, as­cetic fea­tures, with the promi­nent cheek­bones and fine­ly mold­ed chin. On­ly one thing seemed to be miss­ing. On tele­vi­sion, Von Menck had fre­quent­ly smiled-​a raf­fish smile of wit and good hu­mor, of a man who didn’t take him­self too se­ri­ous­ly. It had the ef­fect of keep­ing his rather tech­ni­cal in­ves­ti­ga­tions from get­ting too heavy. Now, how­ev­er-​though Von Menck was po­lite to a fault-​the en­gag­ing smile was ab­sent.

Af­ter a brief ex­change of pleas­antries, the doc­tor got right to the point. “Your mes­sage stat­ed you wished to speak with me about the re­cent killings.”

“That’s right.” Har­ri­man reached in­to his pock­et for his dig­ital voice recorder.

“What your pa­per has re­ferred to as the dev­il killings.”

“Right.” Did he de­tect the slight­est hint of dis­dain, or dis­ap­proval, in the doc­tor’s po­lite in­flec­tions? “Dr. Von Menck, I’ve come to see if you’ve framed an opin­ion on these mur­ders.”

Dr. Von Menck leaned back in his chair, tent­ed his fin­gers, and looked care­ful­ly at Har­ri­man. When at last he spoke, it was in very slow and mea­sured tones. It al­most seemed to Har­ri­man the man had been con­sid­er­ing the ques­tion long be­fore he asked it. “Yes. As it hap­pens, I do have an opin­ion.”

Har­ri­man placed the recorder on the arm of his chair. “Do you mind if I record this?”

Von Menck gave a small wave of per­mis­sion. “I’ve been de­bat­ing the wis­dom of mak­ing my opin­ions pub­lic.”

Har­ri­man felt him­self go cold.Oh, no, he thought.The guy’s plan­ning to do his own doc­umen­tary on this. I’m about to get the roy­al shaft.

Then Von Menck sighed. “In the end, I de­cid­ed peo­ple had a right to know. In that way, your phone call was for­tu­itous.”

The chill was re­placed by re­lief. Har­ri­man leaned for­ward, snapped the recorder on. “Then per­haps you can tell me your thoughts, sir. Why these two men, why in such a man­ner, and why at this time?”

Von Menck sighed again. “The two men, and the man­ner, are of less­er im­por­tance. It’s thetim­ing that means ev­ery­thing.”

“Ex­plain.”

Von Menck stood, walked to­ward one of the book­cas­es, opened it, and re­moved some­thing. He placed it on the desk be­fore Har­ri­man. It was a cross sec­tion of a nau­tilus shell, its growth cham­bers spi­ral­ing out­ward from the cen­ter with beau­ti­ful reg­ular­ity.

“Do you know, Mr. Har­ri­man, what this shell has in com­mon with the build­ing of the Parthenon, the petals of a flow­er, and the paint­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci?” Har­ri­man shook his head.

“It em­bod­ies that most per­fect of na­ture’s pro­por­tions, the gold­en ra­tio.”

“I’m not sure I un­der­stand.”

“It’s the ra­tio ob­tained if you di­vide a line in such a way that the short­er seg­ment is to the longer seg­ment as the longer seg­ment is to the en­tire line.”

Har­ri­man wrote this all down, hop­ing that he could fig­ure it out lat­er.

“The longer seg­ment is 1.618054 times longer than the short­er seg­ment. The short­er seg­ment is 0.618054 per­cent of the longer. These two num­bers, more­over, are ex­act re­cip­ro­cals of each oth­er, dif­fer­ing on­ly in the first dig­it-​the on­ly two num­bers to demon­strate that prop­er­ty.”

“Right. Of course.” Math had nev­er been his strong suit.

“They have oth­er re­mark­able prop­er­ties. A rect­an­gle con­struct­ed with sides of these two lengths is be­lieved to be the most pleas­ing shape, called the gold­en rect­an­gle. The Parthenon was built in this shape. Cathe­drals and paint­ings were based on this shape. Such rect­an­gles al­so have a re­mark­able prop­er­ty: if you cut a square off one side, you are left with a small­er gold­en rect­an­gle ofex­act­ly the same pro­por­tions. You can keep cut­ting off squares and cre­at­ing small­er gold­en rect­an­gles ad in­fini­tum.”

“I see.”

“Now, if you start with a large gold­en rect­an­gle and re­duce it, square by square, in­to an in­fi­nite se­ries of small­er gold­en rect­an­gles, and then con­nect the cen­ter of all these, you end up with a per­fect nat­ural log­arith­mic spi­ral. This is the spi­ral you see in the nau­tilus shell; in the pack­ing of seeds in­to the head of the sun­flow­er; in mu­si­cal har­mo­ny; and in­deed through­out all of na­ture. The gold­en ra­tio is a fun­da­men­tal qual­ity of the nat­ural world.”

“Yeah.”

“This ra­tio is part of the ba­sic struc­ture of the uni­verse. No one knows why.”

Har­ri­man watched as the doc­tor care­ful­ly put the shell back in the case and closed the glass front. What­ev­er he’d been ex­pect­ing, this was not it. He was lost, and if he was lost, he knew that the­Post ’s read­ers would cer­tain­ly be lost. What a waste of time. He’d have to es­cape at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Von Menck stepped be­hind his desk and turned back to face the jour­nal­ist. “Are you a re­li­gious man, Mr. Har­ri­man?”

The ques­tion was so un­ex­pect­ed that, for a mo­ment, Har­ri­man did not know what to say.

“I don’t nec­es­sar­ily mean in any or­ga­nized sense: Catholic, Protes­tant, what­ev­er. But do you be­lieve there is a uni­fy­ing force un­der­ly­ing our uni­verse?”

“I’d nev­er re­al­ly thought about it,” Har­ri­man said. “I guess so.” He had been raised Epis­co­palian, though he hadn’t set foot in­side a church-​ex­cept for wed­dings and fu­ner­als-​for al­most twen­ty years.

“Then might you be­lieve, as I do, that there is a pur­pose to our lives?”

Har­ri­man shut off the tape recorder. Time to end this and get the hell out. If he want­ed a lec­ture on re­li­gion, he could al­ways call the Je­ho­vah’s Wit­ness­es. “With all due re­spect, Doc­tor, I don’t see what this has to do with the two re­cent deaths.”

“Pa­tience, Mr. Har­ri­man. My proof is com­plex, but the con­clu­sion will, to use a pop­ular ex­pres­sion, blow your mind.”

Har­ri­man wait­ed.

“Let me ex­plain. All my life, I have been a stu­dent of the mys­te­ri­ous, the un­ex­plained. Many of these mys­ter­ies I have solved to my own sat­is­fac­tion. Oth­ers-​of­ten­times the great­estremain dark to me.” Von Menck took a piece of pa­per from his desk, wrote on it briefly, then placed it be­fore Har­ri­man:

3243

1239

“Those two num­bers”-and he tapped the page-“have al­ways rep­re­sent­ed the biggest mys­ter­ies of all to me. Do you rec­og­nize them?”

Har­ri­man shook his head.

“They mark the sin­gle two great­est cat­aclysmic events ev­er to be­fall hu­man civ­iliza­tion. In 3243B.C. , the is­land of San­tori­ni ex­plodes, gen­er­at­ing tidal waves that wipe out the great Mi­noan civ­iliza­tion of Crete and dev­as­tate the en­tire Mediter­ranean world. This is the source of both the leg­end of At­lantis and the Great Flood. And 1239B.C. is when the twin cities of Sodom and Go­mor­rah were re­duced to ash by a rain of ru­in from the sky.”

“At­lantis? Sodom and Go­mor­rah?” This was get­ting worse.

Von Menck tapped the sheet again. “Pla­to de­scribed At­lantis in two of his di­alogues,Timaeus and­Critias . Some de­tails he got wrong: for ex­am­ple, the date, which he put at around 9000B.C. Re­cent ex­ten­sive ar­chae­olog­ical digs on Crete and Sar­dinia pro­vide a more ex­act date. The sto­ry of the lost city of At­lantis has been sen­sa­tion­al­ized to the point where most peo­ple wrong­ly as­sume it’s a myth. But le­git­imate ar­chae­ol­ogists are con­vinced there is a foun­da­tion of truth: the vol­canic ex­plo­sion of the is­land of San­tori­ni. Pla­to de­scribed At­lantis-​that is, the Mi­noan civ­iliza­tion on Crete-​as a pow­er­ful city-​state, ob­sessed with com­merce, mon­ey, self-​im­prove­ment, and knowl­edge, but bereft of spir­itu­al val­ues. Ar­chae­olog­ical ex­ca­va­tions of the Mi­noan palaces at Knos­sos con­firm this. The peo­ple of At­lantis, Pla­to said, had turned their backs on their god. They flaunt­ed their vices, they open­ly ques­tioned the ex­is­tence of a di­vine, and they wor­shiped tech­nol­ogy in­stead. Pla­to tells us they had canals and a so-​called fire­stone that pro­duced ar­ti­fi­cial pow­er.”

He paused. “Sounds like an­oth­er city we know, doesn’t it, Mr. Har­ri­man?” “New York.”

Von Menck nod­ded. “Ex­act­ly. At the very height of At­lantis’s pow­er, there were harbingers of some dread event. The weath­er was un­nat­ural­ly cold, and skies were dark for days. There were strange rum­blings in the ground. Peo­ple died sud­den­ly, un­ex­pect­ed­ly, out­ra­geous­ly. One was said to have been hit ‘by a bolt of light­ning that came from the sky and from the bow­els of the earth both to­geth­er.’ An­oth­er was abrupt­ly torn apart, as if by an ex­plo­sive de­vice, ‘his flesh and blood hang­ing in the air like a fine mist, while all around lay the most ap­palling stench.’ With­in a week came the ex­plo­sion and flood that de­stroyed the city for­ev­er.”

As Von Menck spoke, Har­ri­man snapped on his recorder again. There might be some­thing here, af­ter all.

“Ex­act­ly two thou­sand and four years lat­er, the area of the Dead Sea be­tween what is now Is­rael and Jor­dan-​the deep­est nat­ural­ly oc­cur­ring spot on the sur­face of the earth-​was breath­tak­ing­ly lush and fer­tile. It was the home of the cities of Sodom and Go­mor­rah. Pre­cise­ly how big these cities were re­mains un­known, al­though re­cent ar­chae­olog­ical digs in the val­ley have un­cov­ered mas­sive ceme­ter­ies con­tain­ing thou­sands of hu­man re­mains. Clear­ly, they were the two most pow­er­ful cities in the West­ern world at that time. As with At­lantis, these cities had fall­en in­to the last de­gree of sin, turn­ing away from the nat­ural or­der of things. Pride, sloth, the wor­ship of earth­ly goods, deca­dence and de­bauch­ery, re­jec­tion of God and de­struc­tion of na­ture. As it says in Gen­esis, there were not fifty, not twen­ty, not even ten righ­teous men to be found in Sodom. And so the cities were de­stroyed from above, by ‘brim­stone and fire . the smoke of the coun­try went up as the smoke of a fur­nace.’ Again, ar­chae­olog­ical ex­ca­va­tions in the Dead Sea area con­firm the bib­li­cal sto­ry to an amaz­ing de­gree. In the days be­fore this took place, there again were harbingers of the fate that was to come. One man burst in­to a pil­lar of yel­low flame. Oth­ers were found cal­ci­fied, not un­like Lot’s wife, who was turned to a pil­lar of salt.”

Von Menck came around the desk and sat on its edge, look­ing in­tent­ly at the re­porter. “Have you been to the Dead Sea, Mr. Har­ri­man?”

“I can’t say that I have.”

“I’ve been there. Sev­er­al times. The first time I went was right af­ter I dis­cov­ered a cer­tain nat­ural link in the tim­ing of the dis­as­ters that be­fell At­lantis and Go­mor­rah. The Dead Sea is now a parched waste­land. Fish can­not live in it: the wa­ter is many times salti­er than the ocean. Al­most noth­ing grows on its edges, and what does is glazed and caked with salt. But if you walk across the dead plains near Tell es-​Saidiyeh, where many schol­ars now place Sodom, you’ll find a vast num­ber of balls of pure, el­emen­tal sul­fur rid­dling the salt sur­face. This sul­fur is not rhom­bic, as found in nat­ural­ly oc­cur­ring geother­mic ar­eas. Rather, it is mon­oclin­ic: white, ex­cep­tion­al­ly pure, ex­posed to very high tem­per­atures for long pe­ri­ods of time. Ge­ol­ogists have found no oth­er pock­ets of such nat­ural­ly oc­cur­ring sul­fur any­where else on earth. Yet they are found in ri­otous abun­dance on the ru­ins of these two cities. What de­stroyed Sodom and Go­mor­rah was not some nor­mal ge­olog­ical pro­cess. It re­mains a mys­tery to this day.”

Von Menck reached for the scrap of pa­per, wrote an­oth­er num­ber be­neath the first two:

3243

1239

2004

“2004A.D ., Mr. Har­ri­man. It forms the end of the gold­en ra­tio. Do the math. The date 3243B.C. is ex­act­ly 5,247 years ago: gold­en ra­tio. The date 1239B.C. is ex­act­ly 3,243 years ago: gold­en ra­tio again. The next date in the se­ries is 2004A.D. , which al­so hap­pens to be the ex­act num­ber of years sep­arat­ing the ear­li­er dis­as­ters. Co­in­ci­dence?”

Har­ri­man stared at the pa­per.Is he say­ing what I think he’s say­ing? It seemed un­be­liev­able, crazy. And yet the qui­et eyes that looked back at him with some­thing like res­ig­na­tion did not look in the least bit crazy.

“I searched for years, Mr. Har­ri­man, for proof that I was wrong. I thought per­haps the dates were in­cor­rect, or that the ev­idence was flawed. But ev­ery dis­cov­ery I made sim­ply gave more cre­dence to the the­ory.” He walked to an­oth­er cab­inet and pulled out a sheet of white card­board. On it, a large spi­ral-​like that of the shell of a cham­bered nau­tilus-​had been drawn. At its out­er­most point, it was la­beled in red pen­cil:3243B.C.-San­tori­ni/At­lantis . Onethird of the way along its curve was an­oth­er red mark­ing:1239B.C.-Sodom/Go­mor­rah. At oth­er spots along the spi­ral, small­er tick­marks in black list­ed dozens of oth­er dates and places:

79A.D .-Erup­tion of Vesu­vius de­stroys Pom­peii/Her­cu­la­neum

426A.D. -Fall of Rome, sacked and de­stroyed by bar­bar­ians

1348A.D. -Plague strikes Venice, two-​thirds of the pop­ula­tion die

1666A.D. -The Great Fire of Lon­don

And at its very cen­ter, where the spi­ral closed in on it­self and end­ed in a large spot of black, was a third red la­bel:

2004A.D. -???

He bal­anced the chart on his desk. “As you can see, I’ve chart­ed many oth­er dis­as­ters. They all fall­pre­cise­ly along the nat­ural log­arith­mic spi­ral, all per­fect­ly aligned in gold­en ra­tios. No mat­ter how I cut the da­ta, the last date in the se­quence is al­ways 2004A.D.Al­ways. And what do these nat­ural dis­as­ters have in com­mon? They have al­ways struck an im­por­tant world city, a city no­table for its wealth, pow­er, tech­nol­ogy-​and ne­glect of the spir­itu­al.”

He reached across his desk, picked a red pen­cil from a pewter cup. “I’d hoped I was wrong, hoped it was a mere co­in­ci­dence. I wait­ed for the ar­rival of the year 2004, ex­pect­ing to be proved wrong. But I no longer think na­ture be­lieves in co­in­ci­dence. There is an or­der to all things, Mr. Har­ri­man. We have a moral niche on this earth, just as we have an eco­log­ical niche. When species ex­haust their eco­log­ical niche, there is a cor­rec­tion, a pu­rifi­ca­tion. Some­times even anex­tinc­tion . It’s the way of na­ture. But what hap­pens when a species ex­hausts its moral niche?”

He turned the pen­cil around, moved it to the cen­ter of the di­agram, and erased the ques­tion marks:

2004A.D .

“In ev­ery in­stance there were harbingers. Small events, of seem­ing­ly lim­it­ed sig­nif­icance. Many of these events have in­volved the death of moral­ly du­bi­ous per­sons by the same means as the up­com­ing dis­as­ter. This hap­pened in Pom­peii be­fore the erup­tion of Vesu­vius, in Lon­don be­fore the Great Fire, in Venice be­fore the plague. So now per­haps you see, Mr. Har­ri­man, why I say that Jere­my Grove and Nigel Cut­forth are in them­selves mean­ing­less. Oh, to be sure, both men are re­mark­able for their ha­tred of re­li­gion and morals, their re­pu­di­ation of de­cen­cy, their out­ra­geous ex­cess. As such, they are role mod­els for the greed, con­cu­pis­cence, ma­te­ri­al­ism, cru­el­ty of our times-​and par­tic­ular­ly of this place, New York. But they are still mere­ly harbingers-​the first, I fear, of many.”

Von Menck let the chart fall gen­tly to the desk. “Are you a read­er of po­et­ry, Mr. Har­ri­man?”

“No. Not since col­lege, any­way.”

“Per­haps you re­mem­ber W. B. Yeats’s po­em ‘The Sec­ond Com­ing’?

” Mere an­ar­chy is loosed up­on the world .

The best lack all con­vic­tion, while the worst

Are full of pas­sion­ate in­ten­si­ty.”

Von Menck leaned clos­er. “We live in a time of moral ni­hilism and a blind wor­ship of tech­nol­ogy, com­bined with a re­jec­tion of the spir­itu­al di­men­sion of life. Tele­vi­sion, movies, com­put­ers, video games, the In­ter­net, ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence. These are the gods of our times. Our lead­ers are moral­ly bankrupt, shame­less hyp­ocrites, feign­ing piety but de­void of re­al spir­itu­al­ity. We live in a time in which uni­ver­si­ty schol­ars be­lit­tle spir­itu­al­ity, scorn re­li­gion, and bow deeply to the al­tar of sci­ence. We live in a time when so many spurn the church and the syn­agogue, where ra­dio com­men­ta­tors are shock jocks spew­ing ha­tred and vul­gar­ity, where tele­vised en­ter­tain­ment con­sists of­Re­al Sex and­Celebri­ty Fear Fac­tor. We live in a time of sui­cide bomb­ing, ter­ror­ism run amok, and nu­cle­ar black­mail.”

The room fell silent, save for the faint beep of the recorder. At last, Von Menck stirred, spoke again.

“The an­cients be­lieved na­ture to be com­prised of four el­ements: earth, air, fire, and wa­ter. Some talked of floods; oth­ers of earth­quakes or mighty winds; oth­ers of the dev­il. When At­lantis had be­trayed its niche in the moral or­der of na­ture, it was con­sumed by wa­ter. The de­struc­tion of Sodom and Go­mor­rah came by fire. The plague that struck Venice came by air. Like the gold­en ra­tio, it fol­lows a cycli­cal pat­tern. I’ve chart­ed it here.”

He took out an­oth­er di­agram, very com­plex, cov­ered with lines, charts, and num­bers. All the lines seemed to con­verge on a cen­tral pen­ta­gram in which was writ­ten:

2004A.D .-New York City-​Fire

“So you think New York City will burn?”

“Not in any nor­mal way. It will be con­sumed by a fire­with­in , like Grove and Cut­forth.”

“You think this can be avoid­ed if peo­ple turn back to God?”

Von Menck shook his head. “It’s too late for that. And please note, Mr. Har­ri­man, I have not used the word­God . What I’m talk­ing about here is not nec­es­sar­ily God but a force of na­ture: a moral law of the uni­verse as fixed as any phys­ical law. We’ve cre­at­ed an im­bal­ance that needs to be cor­rect­ed. The year 2004.” He tapped the pile of charts. “It’s the big one. It’s the one Nos­tradamus pre­dict­ed, Edgar Cayce pre­dict­ed, Rev­ela­tion pre­dict­ed.”

Har­ri­man nod­ded. He felt a crawl­ing sen­sa­tion along his spine. This was pow­er­ful stuff. But was it all clap­trap? “Dr. Von Menck, you’ve de­vot­ed a great deal of time and re­search on this.”

“It has been my over­whelm­ing ob­ses­sion. For over fif­teen years, I’ve known the sig­nif­icance of the year 2004. I’ve been­wait­ing .”

“Are you re­al­ly con­vinced, or is this just a the­ory?”

“I will an­swer by telling you this: I am leav­ing New York to­mor­row.”

“Leav­ing?”

“For the Galá­pa­gos Is­lands.”

“Why the Galá­pa­gos?”

“As Dar­win could tell you, they are­fa­mous for their iso­la­tion.” Von Menck ges­tured at the recorder. “This time there will be no doc­umen­tary. The sto­ry is all yours, Mr. Har­ri­man.”

“No doc­umen­tary?” Har­ri­man re­peat­ed, stu­pe­fied.

“If I’m the least bit right in my sus­pi­cions, Mr. Har­ri­man, when this is over, there won’t be much of an au­di­ence for a doc­umen­tary-​will there?” And, for the first time since Har­ri­man had en­tered the room, Dr. Von Menck smiled-​a small, sad smile ut­ter­ly de­void of hu­mor.

{ 30 }

D’Agos­ta gazed at the mis­er­able-​look­ing thing on his plate-​long, thin, uniden­ti­fi­able, swim­ming in a pud­dle of sauce. It smelled vague­ly like fish. At least, he thought, it would help his di­et. It had been ten days since Grove’s death, and he’d lost five pounds al­ready, what with the new weight rou­tine and jog­ging reg­imens he’d in­sti­tut­ed, not to men­tion the hours he’d put in at the shoot­ing range, which were adding bulk and steadi­ness to his fore­arms and shoul­ders. An­oth­er two months, and he’d be back to his old NYPD con­di­tion.

Proc­tor flit­ted about in the back­ground, pre­sent­ing and whisk­ing away plates with the least amount of warn­ing gen­til­ity would al­low. Pen­der­gast sat at the head of the ta­ble, Con­stance to his left. She looked a lit­tle less pale than be­fore: some sun, per­haps, from yes­ter­day’s out­ing. But the din­ing room of the an­cient River­side Drive man­sion re­mained a drea­ry place, with its dark green wall­pa­per and equal­ly dark oil paint­ings. The win­dows that once must have looked out over the Hud­son had been board­ed up a long time ago, and it ap­peared Pen­der­gast was go­ing to leave them that way. No won­der the guy was so white, liv­ing in the dark like some cave crea­ture. D’Agos­ta de­cid­ed he’d trade the whole din­ner, and its pro­ces­sion of mys­te­ri­ous dish­es, for bar­be­cued ribs and a cool­er full of frosties in his sun­ny Suf­folk Coun­ty back­yard. Even Fos­co’s ex­ot­ic pic­nic bas­ket of the day be­fore had been prefer­able. He gave the dish an ex­plorato­ry poke.

“Don’t you like the cod roe?” Pen­der­gast asked him. “It’s an old Ital­ian recipe.”

“My grand­moth­er was from Naples, and she nev­er cooked any­thing like this in her life.”

“I be­lieve this dish comes from Lig­uria. But nev­er mind: cod roe is not to ev­ery­one’s taste.” He sig­naled to Proc­tor, who whisked the plate away and, a few mo­ments lat­er, re­turned with a steak and a small sil­ver beaker brim­ming with won­der­ful-​smelling sauce. In his oth­er hand was a can of Bud­weis­er, still drip­ping chips of ice.

D’Agos­ta tucked in, then glanced up to see Pen­der­gast smil­ing with amuse­ment. “Con­stance cooks a sub­lime­tourne­dos bor­de­laise . I had it wait­ing in the wings, just in case. Along with the, ah, iced beer.”

“That was de­cent of you.”

“Is the steak to your lik­ing?” Con­stance asked from across the ta­ble. “I pre­pared it­saig­nant , as the French pre­fer.”

“I don’t know about­saig­nant, but it’s rare, just the way I like it.”

Con­stance smiled, pleased.

D’Agos­ta speared an­oth­er fork­ful, washed it down with a swig. “So what’s next?” he asked Pen­der­gast.

“Af­ter din­ner, Con­stance will in­dulge us by play­ing a few of Bach’s par­ti­tas. She is a rather ac­com­plished vi­olin­ist, though I fear I’m a poor judge of such things. And I think you’ll find the vi­olin she plays in­ter­est­ing. It was part of my great-​un­cle’s col­lec­tions, an old Am­ati, in fair­ly de­cent shape, though its tone has gone off some­what.”

“Sounds great.” D’Agos­ta coughed del­icate­ly. “But what I meant was, what’s next for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion?”

“Ah! I see. Our next move, ac­tu­al­ly, has two fronts. We track down this Ranier Beck­mann, and we do more back­ground re­search on the strange na­ture of our two deaths. I have some­body al­ready at work on the for­mer. And Con­stance is about to fill us in on the lat­ter.”

Con­stance dabbed prim­ly at her mouth with a nap­kin. “Aloy­sius has asked me to look in­to his­tor­ical prece­dents for SHC.”

“Spon­ta­neous hu­man com­bus­tion,” said D’Agos­ta. “As in the Mary Reeser case you men­tioned to the M.E. at the Cut­forth homi­cide?”

“Ex­act­ly.”

“You don’t re­al­ly be­lieve in that, do you?”

“The case of Mary Reeser is on­ly the most fa­mous of many, and it is well doc­ument­ed. Isn’t that right, Con­stance?”

“Fa­mous, im­pec­ca­bly doc­ument­ed, and very cu­ri­ous.” She con­sult­ed some notes that lay at her el­bow. “On Ju­ly 1, 1951, Mrs. Reeser, a wid­ow, went to sleep in an easy chair in her apart­ment in St. Pe­ters­burg, Flori­da. She was found the next morn­ing by a friend who smelled smoke. When they broke down the door, they found that the chair Mary Reeser had sat in was now just a heap of charred coil springs. As for Mary Reeser her­self, her one hun­dred and sev­en­ty pounds had been re­duced to less than ten pounds of ash and bone. On­ly her left foot re­mained in­tact, still wear­ing a slip­per, burned off at the an­kle but oth­er­wise un­dam­aged. Al­so found were her liv­er and her skull, cracked and splin­tered by the in­tense heat. And yet the rest of the apart­ment was in­tact. The on­ly burn­ing oc­curred in the small cir­cu­lar area en­com­pass­ing the re­mains of Mrs. Reeser, her chair, and a plas­tic elec­tric wall out­let which had melt­ed, stop­ping her clock at 4:20A.M. When the clock was plugged in­to an­oth­er out­let, it worked per­fect­ly.”

“You got­ta be kid­ding.”

“The Bu­reau was called in im­me­di­ate­ly, and their doc­umen­ta­tion was im­pec­ca­ble,” said Pen­der­gast. “Pho­tographs, tests, anal­ysis-​it ran to more than a thou­sand pages. Our ex­perts de­ter­mined that a tem­per­ature of at least three thou­sand de­grees would be nec­es­sary to cre­mate a body that thor­ough­ly. A cigarette ig­nit­ing her cloth­ing would nev­er have pro­duced that tem­per­ature, and be­sides, Mary Reeser didn’t smoke. There were no traces of gaso­line or oth­er ac­cel­er­ants. No short cir­cuit. Even light­ning was ruled out. The case was nev­er of­fi­cial­ly closed.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head in dis­be­lief.

“And it’s not just a re­cent phe­nomenon,” Con­stance said. “Dick­ens wrote an ac­count of spon­ta­neous com­bus­tion in­to his nov­el­Bleak House . He was round­ly crit­icized by re­view­ers for it, so he lat­er de­fend­ed him­self by re­count­ing a re­al case of SHC in the pref­ace to the 1853 edi­tion.”

D’Agos­ta, who had been about to take an­oth­er bite of steak, put down his fork.

“On the evening of April 4, 1731, Dick­ens tells us, the count­ess Cor­nelia Zan­gari de’ Ban­di of Ce­se­na, in Italy, com­plained of feel­ing ‘dull and heavy.’ A maid helped her to bed, and they spent sev­er­al hours pray­ing and talk­ing to­geth­er. The next morn­ing, when the count­ess did not arise at her usu­al time, the maid called at the door. There was no an­swer-​just a foul smell.

“The maid opened the door to a scene of hor­ror. The air was full of bits of float­ing soot. The count­ess, or what re­mained of her, was ly­ing on the stone floor about four feet from the bed. Her en­tire tor­so had burned to ash­es, even the bones re­duced to crum­bled piles. On­ly her legs re­mained, from the knees down; a few frag­ments from her hands; and a piece of fore­head with a lock of blonde hair at­tached. The rest of the body was mere­ly an out­line in ash and crum­bled bone. It, and oth­er ear­ly cas­es such as Madame Nicole of Rheims, were in­vari­ably as­cribed to death by the ‘vis­ita­tion of God.’”

“Ex­cel­lent re­search, Con­stance,” Pen­der­gast said.

She smiled. “There are sev­er­al vol­umes de­vot­ed to spon­ta­neous hu­man com­bus­tion in the li­brary here. Your great-​un­cle was fas­ci­nat­ed by bizarre forms of death-​but of course, you know that al­ready. Un­for­tu­nate­ly there are no books here more re­cent than 1954, but there are still many dozens of ear­li­er ac­counts. SHC cas­es all have sev­er­al el­ements in com­mon. The tor­so is com­plete­ly in­cin­er­at­ed, but the ex­trem­ities are fre­quent­ly left in­tact. The blood is, quite lit­er­al­ly, va­por­ized from the body: nor­mal fires do not de­hy­drate body tis­sue to such a great de­gree. The in­fer­no is ex­treme­ly lo­cal­ized: near­by fur­ni­ture or oth­er items, even in­flammable ones, re­main un­touched. Of­fi­cials of­ten speak of a ‘cir­cle of death’: ev­ery­thing in­side is con­sumed, while ev­ery­thing out­side is spared.”

Slow­ly, D’Agos­ta pushed away his half-​eat­en steak. This all sound­ed pret­ty sim­ilar to what hap­pened to Grove and Cut­forth, with one cru­cial dif­fer­ence: the brand­ing of the cloven hoof and face, and the stench of brim­stone.

Just then came a low, hol­low knock at the dis­tant front door.

“Neigh­bor­hood kids, I imag­ine,” said Pen­der­gast af­ter a mo­ment of si­lence.

The hol­low knock came again-​de­lib­er­ate, in­sis­tent, echo­ing through the gal­leries and halls of the an­cient man­sion.

“That’s not the knock of a delin­quent,” Con­stance mur­mured.

Proc­tor cast an in­quir­ing glace at Pen­der­gast. “Shall I?”

“With the usu­al pre­cau­tions.”

With­in the space of a minute, the ser­vant had ush­ered a man in­to the room: a tall man with thin lips and thin­ner brown hair. He wore a gray suit, and the knot of his tie had been pulled down from the col­lar of his white shirt. His fea­tures were reg­ular, his face per­haps lined more than would be usu­al for a man his age, yet the lines spoke more of weari­ness than years. He was nei­ther hand­some nor ug­ly. In ev­ery way, the man was re­mark­able for his lack of ex­pres­sion and in­di­vid­ual­ity. It seemed to D’Agos­ta an al­most stud­ied anonymi­ty.

He paused in the door­way and his eyes roamed over the group, com­ing to rest on Pen­der­gast.

“Yes?” Pen­der­gast said.

“Come with me.”

“May I ask who you are, and on what er­rand you come?”

“No.”

A short si­lence greet­ed this.

“How did you know I lived here?”

The man con­tin­ued gaz­ing at Pen­der­gast with that ex­pres­sion­less face. It wasn’t nat­ural. It gave D’Agos­ta the creeps.

“Come, please. I’d rather not ask again.”

“Why should I go with you if you refuse to di­vulge your name or the na­ture of your busi­ness?”

“My name is not im­por­tant. I have in­for­ma­tion for you. In­for­ma­tion of a sen­si­tive na­ture.”

Pen­der­gast looked at the man a mo­ment longer. Then he ca­su­al­ly re­moved his Les Baer .45 from his suit coat, made sure a round was in the cham­ber, re­placed it in his suit. “Any ob­jec­tions?”

The ex­pres­sion nev­er changed. “Won’t make any dif­fer­ence ei­ther way.”

“Wait a minute.” D’Agos­ta rose. “I don’t like this. I’m com­ing, too.”

The man turned to him. “Not pos­si­ble.”

“Screw that.”

The man’s on­ly re­sponse was to stare at D’Agos­ta. His fea­tures, if any­thing, grew even dead­er.

Pen­der­gast laid an arm on D’Agos­ta’s. “I think I’d bet­ter go alone.”

“The hell with that. You don’t know who this guy is, what he wants, any­thing. I don’t like it.”

The stranger turned and walked swift­ly out of the room. A mo­ment lat­er, Pen­der­gast fol­lowed. D’Agos­ta watched him go with a mount­ing feel­ing of dis­may.

{ 31 }

The man drove north on the West Side High­way, say­ing noth­ing,and Pen­der­gast was con­tent to leave it that way. Rain be­gan to fall, splat­ter­ing the wind­shield. The car ap­proached the on-​ramp to the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge, its gleam­ing lights strung across the Hud­son. Just be­fore the ramp, the car veered off on a ser­vice road and bumped its way down the pit­ted, half-​paved sur­face to a turnaround, hid­den in a clus­ter of poi­son sumac at the foot of the bridge’s enor­mous east­ern tow­er.

On­ly now did the man speak. “Wired?”

“No.”

“I ask on­ly for your sake.”

“CIA?”

The man nod­ded at the wind­shield. “I know you could ID me in a minute. I want your word that you won’t.”

“You have it.”

The man tossed a blue fold­er in­to Pen­der­gast’s lap. Its la­bel tab bore a sin­gle word:BULLARD. It was stamped­Clas­si­fied: Top Se­cret.

“Where did this come from?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“I’ve been in­ves­ti­gat­ing Bullard for the past eigh­teen months.”

“On what grounds?”

“It’s all there. But I’ll sum­ma­rize it for you. Bullard’s the founder, CEO, and ma­jor­ity share­hold­er of Bullard Aerospace In­dus­tries. BAI is a medi­um-​sized, pri­vate­ly owned aerospace en­gi­neer­ing firm. Most­ly they de­sign and test com­po­nents for mil­itary air­craft, drones, and mis­siles. They’re al­so one of the sub­con­trac­tors for the space shut­tle. Among oth­er things, BAI was in­volved in de­vel­op­ing the an­ti­radar coat­ing for the stealth bomber and fight­er pro­grams. It’s a high­ly prof­itable com­pa­ny, and they’re very good at what they do. Bullard has some of the best en­gi­neers mon­ey can buy. He is a very, very ca­pa­ble man, if hot-​tem­pered and im­pul­sive. But he’s one of the re­al­ly bad ones. Know what I mean? He doesn’t hes­itate to hurt, or elim­inate, those who stand in his way. Civil­ianor of­fi­cial.”

“Un­der­stood.”

“Good. Now lis­ten. BAI al­so does re­search work for for­eign gov­ern­ments. Some aren’t so friend­ly. That work is sub­ject to strict ex­port con­trols and trans­fer of tech­nol­ogy pro­hi­bi­tions. It’s watched very close­ly. So far, BAI has kept with­in the law-​at least as far as its U.S. fa­cil­ities go. The prob­lem is with a small BAI plant in Italy, in an in­dus­tri­al sub­urb of Flo­rence called Las­tra a Signa. A few years ago, BAI bought a de­funct fac­to­ry there. It was once owned by Al­fred No­bel.” An iron­ic smile flick­ered across the man’s face. “It’s a sprawl­ing, de­cay­ing place. They’ve turned its core in­to a high­ly so­phis­ti­cat­ed R&D fa­cil­ity.”

Rain con­tin­ued to drum on the roof. There was the flick­er of light­ning over the riv­er, a faint roll of thun­der.

“We don’t re­al­ly know what BAI does in this Ital­ian plant, but we have some in­di­rect ev­idence that they may be work­ing on a project for the Chi­nese. Last year we mon­itored a string of bal­lis­tic mis­sile tests over the Lop Nur desert test­ing grounds. It seems the mis­sile in ques­tion is a new type, specif­ical­ly de­signed to pen­etrate Amer­ica’s planned an­timis­sile shield.” Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“What makes the mis­sile spe­cial is a new aero­dy­nam­ic form, com­bined with some spe­cial sur­face or coat­ing, which to­geth­er make it in­vis­ible to radar. It doesn’t even leave a heat trace or tur­bu­lence wake on Doppler. But here’s the rub: what­ev­er it is the Chi­nese have done, it isn’t work­ing. Up to now, all their mis­siles have bro­ken up on re-​en­try.

“That’s where BAI comes in. This is right up their al­ley. We think the Chi­nese hired BAI to solve the prob­lem. And we think they’re solv­ing it at the Flo­ren­tine plant.”

“How?”

“We don’t know. The breakups seem to have had some­thing to do with a res­onance spike that oc­curs at re-​en­try. The shape of the mis­sile is so con­strained by hav­ing to re­main in­vis­ible that it’s al­most un­fly­able. A sim­ilar prob­lem oc­curred with the stealth bomber, but it was solved with some heavy com­put­ing pow­er and wind-​tun­nel re­search. But here the mis­sile is mov­ing a hell of a lot faster, it’s bal­lis­tic, and it’s up against a much more so­phis­ti­cat­ed radar. The an­swer lies some­where in the field of eigen­val­ue math­emat­ics, Fouri­er trans­forms, that sort of thing. You know what I’m talk­ing about?”

“At a ba­sic lev­el.”

“The math­emat­ics of vi­bra­tions, res­onance, and damp­en­ing. It has to be per­fect­ly aero­dy­nam­ic while hav­ing a sur­face that’s black to radar. This mis­sile can’t have any curves, hard­ness, or smooth­ness-​those would cause re­flec­tion or tur­bu­lence you could see on the Doppler-​and yet it has to be aero­dy­nam­ic. If any­one can rise to the tech­ni­cal chal­lenge, BAI can.”

“Is this file for me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The agent looked at Pen­der­gast for the first time, and his mask of ex­pres­sion­less­ness fell away. What Pen­der­gast saw was the face of a very, very tired man. “It’s the same old sto­ry. The CIA is sub­ject to par­ti­san po­lit­ical pres­sure. Bullard has friends in Wash­ing­ton. I was told to deep-​six the Bullard in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Af­ter all, he’s raised mil­lions for the re­elec­tion cam­paigns of a half dozen key sen­ators and con­gress­men, as well as the pres­ident. Why, we’re asked, is the CIA ha­rass­ing a fine, up­stand­ing cit­izen when there are so many for­eign ter­ror­ists out there? You know the re­frain.”

Pen­der­gast sim­ply nod­ded.

“But screw it, this bas­tard is sell­ing Amer­ica down the riv­er. He’s a traitor, just like those good old Amer­ican com­pa­nies that sell du­al-​use tech­nol­ogy to Iran and Syr­ia. If Bullard gets away with this, the U.S. will have laid out a hun­dred bil­lion dol­lars de­vel­op­ing an an­timis­sile sys­tem that will be ob­so­lete on de­ploy­ment. And if that hap­pens, it’s the CIA that’s go­ing to get ham­mered. The ad­min­is­tra­tion will ex­pe­ri­ence sud­den and com­plete am­ne­sia as to how they de­lib­er­ate­ly shut down our in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The Congress is go­ing to de­mand an of­fi­cial in­quiry on the so-​called in­tel­li­gence fail­ure. We’ll be ev­ery­one’s whip­ping boy.”

“Some­thing we at the FBI know a lit­tle about.”

“I spent eigh­teen months in­ves­ti­gat­ing Bullard, and I’ll be god­damned if I’m go­ing to let it go. I’m a pa­tri­ot­ic Amer­ican. I want you to nail Bullard. I don’t want a nu­cle­ar mis­sile to take out New York be­cause some Amer­ican busi­ness­man paid off a few con­gress­men.”

Pen­der­gast put the fold­er to one side. “Why me?”

“I’ve heard you’re pret­ty good, even if you are FBI.” The man al­lowed him­self a cyn­ical smile. “And I liked the way you dragged Bullard down to head­quar­ters like a com­mon crim­inal. That took guts. You re­al­ly pissed some peo­ple off. Big time.”

“Re­gret­table. But I fear it is not the first time.”

“You bet­ter watch your ass.”

“I shall.”

“You won’t find any smok­ing guns in the file; Bullard’s cov­ered his tracks well. You’ve got your work cut out.”

He start­ed the en­gine, flicked on the head­lights, pulled through the turnaround, and head­ed back up to the traf­fic dron­ing south­ward in­to low­er Man­hat­tan. He said noth­ing else un­til turn­ing off the high­way at 145th Street, the skyscrap­ers of Mid­town like glow­ing crys­tals in the dis­tance.

“You nev­er heard of me, I nev­er heard of you, and this con­ver­sa­tion nev­er took place. That file has been cleaned of in­tel­li­gence mark­ers, so even if it gets back to the CIA, no one will know where it came from.”

“Won’t they sus­pect you, any­way? It was your case.”

“You wor­ry about your ass, I’ll wor­ry about mine.”

He left Pen­der­gast a few blocks north of his house. As Pen­der­gast was ex­it­ing the car, the man leaned to­ward him and spoke once again. “Agent Pen­der­gast?”

Pen­der­gast turned back.

“If you can’t nail the bas­tard, kill him.”

{ 32 }

The man call­ing him­self Vasquez looked care­ful­ly around the­lit­tle space where he would be spend­ing the next sev­er­al days of his life. A few min­utes ear­li­er he had tensed, prepar­ing for an un­ex­pect­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty, when the door of the porte-​cochère opened across the way. A quick check through the scope con­firmed the tar­get was leav­ing. How­ev­er, an­oth­er man had been with him. Vasquez had laid aside the ri­fle and made a note in his log:22:31.04 . The two men walked to a car parked a few yards down the street, an un­marked law en­force­ment Chevy, ob­vi­ous­ly a gov­ern­ment mod­el.

As the car had pulled away, there’d been a brief flash of white in the door­way of the porte­cochère; Vasquez saw the re­treat­ing fig­ure of a man in a tuxe­do, shut­ting the door again. But­ler, from the look of it. But who heard of a but­ler in this part of town?

Vasquez re­fused to al­low him­self any re­gret. Fin­ish­ing a job so pre­ma­ture­ly just nev­er hap­pened. Be­sides, it al­ways paid to be over­ly cau­tious. Putting his note­book away, he went back to prepar­ing his kill nest. The aban­doned room of the old wel­fare ho­tel was a wreck. There were used nee­dles and con­doms piled in a cor­ner; a torn mat­tress on the floor with a dark stain ii­iits mid­dle, as if some­body had died oi­iit. As his hood­ed light moved around the room, cock­roach­es fled in pan­ic, their greasy brown backs flash­ing dul­ly, count­less legs rustling like leaves. But Vasquez was used to such things, and he was well pleased with his ac­com­mo­da­tions. He had, in fact, rarely seen a set­up quite so ide­al. He re­placed the small piece of ply­wood from the board­ed-​up room’s lone win­dow and went back to his prepa­ra­tions.

Yes, this would do per­fect­ly. The win­dow faced north, look­ing out over the great dark bulk of the ru­ined man­sion at 891 River­side Drive. It was a crazy place for the tar­get to live, but each to his own. Three sto­ries down and across 137th Street was the porte-​cochère, its semi­cir­cu­lar drive­way run­ning un­der a brick and mar­ble arch. He could just see the edge of the door the tar­get used for ingress and egress: the one he had just come out of. So far he had used no oth­er door-​but then, Vasquez had been watch­ing for on­ly twelve hours.

Yes, this was a fine set­up. In this part of Harlem, there were no in­quis­itive door­men hang­ing out in front of their build­ings; no hid­den video cam­eras; no old ladies who would call the po­lice at the mere howl of an al­ley cat. Here, even gun­shots didn’t nec­es­sar­ily trig­ger a call to the po­lice. What’s more, Vasquez had found this aban­doned build­ing di­rect­ly across from the tar­get res­idence. It had a base­ment en­trance hid­den from the man­sion, lead­ing to an al­ley fronting 136th.

You couldn’t ask for bet­ter.

The tar­get, an FBI agent, seemed to be a man of reg­ular habits. In the com­ing days, Vasquez would as­cer­tain just how reg­ular those habits were. As with hunt­ing any an­imal, suc­cess lay in learn­ing the crea­ture’s pat­terns of be­hav­ior. Vasquez in­tend­ed to be­come an ex­pert in this par­tic­ular crea­ture. He would learn by what doors he came and left, and when; he would as­cer­tain who lived in the old man­sion, who vis­it­ed, what kind of se­cu­ri­ty was in place. By un­der­stand­ing the move­ments, he would gain an in­sight in­to the man’s psy­chol­ogy. Even peo­ple who var­ied their habits out of fear of as­sas­si­na­tion al­ways var­ied them in a pat­tern. From what lit­tle he’d ob­served, he al­ready re­al­ized he was deal­ing with an ex­cep­tion­al­ly cau­tious, in­tel­li­gent tar­get. But then, Vasquez al­ways as­sumed at the be­gin­ning that the tar­get was smarter, crafti­er, clev­er­er than he was. Vasquez had stalked and killed them all: fed­er­al agents, diplo­mats, mob­sters, mi­nor heads of state, even physi­cists. He’d been in the busi­ness twen­ty-​two years in as many coun­tries, and he had learned a trick or two. But it was wise to stay hum­ble.

With­out mov­ing any of the orig­inal con­tents of the room, Vasquez be­gan to un­roll thick can­vas tarps over the floor and part­way up the walls, fix­ing them in place with gaffing tape. The room filled with the strong, pleas­ant smell of wa­ter­proof duck. Next he laid out his tools, men­tal­ly run­ning through the check­list in his mind. They were all there, as he knew they would be, but he dou­ble-​checked just to make sure. He picked up his Rem­ing­ton M21 boltac­tion ri­fle, re­moved the box car­tridge, made sure its small mag­azine was filled with the sub­son­ic 7.62 by 51 mil­itary car­tridges he pre­ferred. The weapon was of an old de­sign, but Vasquez was not in­ter­est­ed in the lat­est frills or gim­micks: what mat­tered to him was sim­plic­ity, ac­cu­ra­cy, and re­li­abil­ity. He rammed the mag­azine home, cranked a round in­to the cham­ber, ex­am­ined the per­ma­nent­ly fixed tac­ti­cal tele­scop­ic sight. Sat­is­fied, he put the weapon aside and care­ful­ly laid out pack­ets of beef jerky and jugs of wa­ter suf­fi­cient for five days. Next, he set up his lap­top com­put­er, ar­rang­ing a dozen fresh­ly charged bat­tery packs be­side it. A pair of night-​vi­sion gog­gles was in­spect­ed and found to be in ex­cel­lent or­der. Then, mov­ing to a far cor­ner, the man set up his wash­stand and toi­let by the dim light of his torch. He would not be dis­turbed: the door had al­ready been locked, screwed shut in the jambs with a bat­tery-​op­er­at­ed screw­driv­er, and light-​sealed with the gaffing tape. A small bath­room win­dow in the back pro­vid­ed fresh air.

Re­turn­ing to the front of the room, he switched off the light and re­moved the piece of ply­wood from the shoot­ing hole: a hole just large enough for the bar­rel and scope. He snapped open a bi­pod as­sem­bly and mount­ed it to the fore end of the stock. He very care­ful­ly po­si­tioned the ri­fle on­to the porte-​cochère, at head height. Then he reached for a hand­held laser range find­er, point­ed it at the man­sion’s front door. It re­turned a dis­tance of 30.66 me­ters. With a ri­fle that was ac­cu­rate be­yond five hun­dred yards, 30 me­ters was noth­ing. He would be shoot­ing down through cool air with his tar­get out­side: the con­di­tions he fa­vored above all oth­ers. A few fi­nal ad­just­ments and the weapon was ready.

His kill nest was com­plete.

Vasquez peered out again through the sight. The house was still and dark, the win­dows board­ed up. This was not a nor­mal home. Some­thing il­lic­it must be go­ing on in­side. But since it didn’t make his tar­get in any way er­rat­ic, Vasquez didn’t re­al­ly care. He had a job to do, lim­it­ed in scope and re­strict­ed in time. He didn’t care who it was who had hired him, or why. He cared about on­ly one thing: the two mil­lion dol­lars that had ap­peared in his num­bered ac­count. That was all he need­ed to know.

He re­turned to his pa­tient ob­ser­va­tion. Some­times he liked to think of him­self as a kind of nat­ural­ist, study­ing the habits of shy wood­land crea­tures. He had the per­fect blend of in­tel­li­gence, dis­ci­pline, and dis­po­si­tion for sit­ting in a blind in the jun­gle for weeks at a time, ob­serv­ing, tak­ing notes, look­ing for pat­terns.

On­ly thing was, there was no mon­ey in that. And be­sides: noth­ing could com­pare with the thrill of the kill.

{ 33 }

It was al­most mid­night, D’Agos­ta saw from his watch, and­Hay­ward was still at her desk. The rest of the Homi­cide Di­vi­sion was qui­et as a tomb: just the night crew, work­ing in their cu­bi­cles on the floor be­low. Hay­ward was alone. The on­ly light, the on­ly sound, came from the open door of her of­fice. Fun­ny, con­sid­er­ing most New York City mur­ders hap­pened at night.Like any oth­er job, D’Agos­ta thought to him­self.The av­er­age Joe doesn’t want to log any more hours than nec­es­sary.

He crept up to Hay­ward’s door and lis­tened. He could hear the tap­ping of her com­put­er key­board. She had to be the most am­bi­tious cop he’d ev­er met. It was a lit­tle scary.

D’Agos­ta knocked.

“Come in.”

The place was a dis­as­ter area: pa­pers piled on ev­ery chair, the po­lice-​band ra­dio squawk­ing, a laser print­er in a cor­ner whin­ing out some job. It was re­mark­ably un­like the of­fices of most po­lice cap­tains, which were kept spot­less­ly clean and free of any re­al work.

She glanced up. “What brings you to brasstown so late?”

D’Agos­ta cleared his throat. This was go­ing to be dif­fi­cult. Pen­der­gast-​af­ter drop­ping off the face of the earth for more than an hour-​had just shown up in his ho­tel room thir­ty min­utes be­fore. Al­though he’d re­vealed pre­cious few de­tails of what hap­pened, he had seemed al­mostan­imat­ed , if such a thing was pos­si­ble. And then he’d prompt­ly sent D’Agos­ta off on an as­sign­ment-​thisas­sign­ment-​be­cause he’d known he had no chance at suc­ceed­ing him­self.

“It’s Bullard again,” he said.

Hay­ward sighed. “Move those pa­pers and take a seat.”

D’Agos­ta shift­ed a pile off one of the chairs and sat down. Hay­ward had un­but­toned her col­lar, tak­en off her hat, and let her hair down. It was sur­pris­ing­ly long, falling in big glossy waves be­low her shoul­ders. De­spite the clut­tered of­fice, she looked cool some­how; fresh. She eyed him with a mix­ture of amuse­ment and-​what else? Af­fec­tion? But no: that was his late-​night imag­ina­tion at work.

D’Agos­ta took out the fold­er and laid it on the desk. “Pen­der­gast got this, I don’t know how.”

Hay­ward picked it up, glanced at it, dropped it like it was a piece of hot iron. “Je­sus, Vin­nie. This is clas­si­fied!”

“No shit it’s clas­si­fied.”

“No way am I go­ing to read that. I nev­er even saw it. Put it away.”

“Let me just sum­ma­rize what’s in there-“

“God, no.”

D’Agos­ta sat, won­der­ing just how he was go­ing to do this. Might as well get it over with. “Pen­der­gast wants you to put a tap on Bullard’s phones.”

Hay­ward stared at him for at least ten sec­onds. “Why doesn’t he get it through the FBI?” “He can’t.”

“Can’t Pen­der­gast ev­er doany thing by the book?”

“Bullard’s too pow­er­ful. The FBI’s a po­lit­ical crea­ture, and not even Pen­der­gast can change that. But you could get the U.S. At­tor­ney’s Of­fice to is­sue a Ti­tle 3, no prob­lem.”

“I can’t use aclas­si­fied file to get Ti­tle 3 wire­tap au­thor­ity!” She was up from the desk, eyes flash­ing.

“No. But you could use the mur­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion as a hook.”

“Vin­cent, are younuts ? There’s no ev­idence against Bullard. No wit­ness to put him at the scene of the crime. No mo­tive, noth­ing to con­nect him with ei­ther the mur­ders or the vic­tims.”

“The phone calls.”

“Phone calls!” She paced be­hind the desk. “A lot of peo­ple make phone calls.”

“His com­put­er was stuffed with en­crypt­ed files. Hard en­cryp­tion, vir­tu­al­ly un­break­able.”

“I en­crypt e-​mails to my moth­er. Vin­cent, that is­not ev­idence. This is just the kind of thing that hits theTimes front page, makes us look like we’re blow­ing off peo­ple’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. Be­sides, you know what a pain in the ass it is to get a wire­tap au­thor­ity. You’ve got to prove it’s your last re­sort.”

“You should read the file. It seems Bullard’s been trans­fer­ring mil­itary tech­nol­ogy to the Chi­nese.”

“I told you not to tell me what’s in the file.”

“He’s got a com­pa­ny in Italy that’s help­ing the Chi­nese de­vel­op a mis­sile that can pen­etrate the U.S.’s planned mis­sile shield.”

“That’s as far out of my ju­ris­dic­tion as a pick­pock­et in Out­er Mon­go­lia.”

“Bullard has big-​time friends in Wash­ing­ton. He gives mon­ey to ev­ery­one’s cam­paign. So nei­ther the FBI nor the CIA wants to touch it.”

She was pac­ing the room, flushed, her jet hair sway­ing across her shoul­ders.

“Look, Lau­ra, we’re both Amer­icans. Bullard’s a bad guy. He’s sell­ing our coun­try down the riv­er, and no one’s do­ing a damn thing about it. All you need to do is come up with a good sto­ry for the judge. Okay, so maybe it’s not strict­ly by the book.”

“There’s a rea­son for the book, Vin­cent.”

“Yeah, but there al­so comes a time when you have to do what’sright .”

“What’s right is to fol­low the rules.”

“Not with some­thing like this. New York City is still ter­ror­ist tar­get nu­mero uno. God knows who Bullard might sell his ser­vices to. Once this tech­nol­ogy gets on the black mar­ket, we have no idea where it’ll end up.”

Hay­ward sighed. “Look. I’m a de­tec­tive cap­tain in New York City Homi­cide. The Unit­ed States has hun­dreds of thou­sands of tal­ent­ed peo­ple-​spooks, sci­en­tists, diplo­mats-​em­ployed to han­dle peo­ple like Bullard.”

“Yeah. But right now, you’re on the spot. The file hints that some­thing big is go­ing down. Lis­ten, Lau­ra, noth­ing could be sim­pler than this wire­tap. Bullard’s in the mid­dle of the At­lantic Ocean. We’ve got his satel­lite phone num­ber, we’ve got a pen reg­is­ter of the num­bers he’s call­ing. It’s all in the file.”

“You can’t tap a sat phone.”

“I know. We’d get the taps on the land-​based num­bers of his cronies, mon­itor the con­ver­sa­tions from their end.”

“That won’t help us if he calls a non­record­ed num­ber.”

“It’s bet­ter than noth­ing.”

Hay­ward took a few more turns around the room, then stopped in front of him. “This is not our prob­lem. The an­swer’s no.”

D’Agos­ta tried to smile, found he couldn’t. That was it, then. You didn’t be­come the youngest fe­male de­tec­tive cap­tain in New York City his­to­ry by break­ing the rules, be­ing a mav­er­ick. He should have known the an­swer even be­fore he asked the ques­tion.

He glanced up to find Hay­ward look­ing at him in­tent­ly. “I don’t like the ex­pres­sion on your face, Vin­cent.”

He shrugged. “I got­ta go.”

“I know what you’re think­ing.”

“Then I don’t need to tell you.”

Her face was col­or­ing with anger. “You think I’m a ca­reerist, don’t you?”

“You said it, not me.”

She stepped around the desk to­ward him. “You’re a son of a bitch, you know that? I had to take a lot of shit as a T.A. cop, a lot of ha­rass­ment from guys who thought I was work­ing too hard. I’m not go­ing to take that shit any­more. When a man’s am­bi­tious, it’s called drive. When a wom­an’s am­bi­tious, it’s ca­reerism and she’s a bitch.”

Now D’Agos­ta felt him­self flar­ing as well. Wom­en were al­ways broad­en­ing an ar­gu­ment in­to some kind of male-​fe­male thing. “That’s just a smoke screen. Look, you can ei­ther do the right thing, or you can do the safe thing. And you’re ob­vi­ous­ly on the side of safe. Fine. I won’t stand in your way of be­com­ing Com­mis­sion­er Hay­ward.” D’Agos­ta rose, picked up the bun­dle of pa­pers he had put on the floor, put them back on the chair. Then he re­trieved the clas­si­fied fold­er from the desk­top. When he turned, he found she was block­ing the door.

He stood calm­ly, wait­ing for her to step aside. She didn’t move.

He re­mained stand­ing.

“I’m leav­ing now.” He took a step for­ward but she still didn’t move. She was so close to him he could feel her warmth, smell the fra­grance of sham­poo in her hair.

“That was a shit­ty thing to say.” Her face re­mained flushed.

He tried to go around her, but she shift­ed and he al­most ran up against her.

“Lis­ten,” she said. “I love this coun­try as much as any­one. I al­so know I’ve done a lot of good work in this de­part­ment, solved a lot of cas­es, put a lot of bad peo­ple be­hind bars. I’m ef­fec­tive­be­cause I play by the rules. So don’t lay that bull­shit on me.”

D’Agos­ta said noth­ing. He stood where he was, mere inch­es from her, breath­ing hard, breath­ing in her anger, her per­fume, the smell of her. He was con­scious of her blue eyes, her ivory skin. He took a step to­ward her and their bod­ies touched. It was like a sud­den elec­tri­cal con­tact. They stood that way a mo­ment, both breath­ing hard, their anger mor­ph­ing in­to some­thing else. He leaned for­ward and their lips met and he could feel her breasts press­ing against him as they slow­ly kissed.

Her hand touched the back of his neck and she moved clos­er still, bring­ing their bod­ies in­to full con­tact, and then al­most with­out know­ing what he was do­ing he reached around with both arms, mold­ed his hands to her form, and pulled her in hard against him. He could bare­ly stand the rush of arousal that had en­gulfed him and he fought for breath as his lips slid light­ly to her chin, kiss­ing her, then down her neck, then over her shoul­der. She shift­ed in his grasp, sigh­ing; he could feel her hot breath move across his cheek as she took his ear­lobe be­tween her teeth, first gen­tly, then more sharply. She pulled him back to­ward her desk, leaned back, and he fol­lowed her down, keep­ing her hips locked against his. Now his hands fum­bled with the but­tons of her shirt, then the catch of her bra, and as he saw her breasts swing free he felt him­self grow even hard­er. Her hands dropped from his shoul­ders, trac­ing lines down his tor­so, his stom­ach, then to the waist­band of his pants, un­buck­ling his belt and loos­en­ing his zip­per and slow­ly eas­ing him free. Now the hand be­gan to stroke him, slow­ly, and he gasped in­vol­un­tar­ily as he reached for the hem of her skirt, slid his hand be­neath it, and teased her panties free. She stag­gered a lit­tle as he en­tered her, thrust­ing her hips for­ward while arch­ing her back, bring­ing him deep in­side her. For a mo­ment they re­mained like that, eyes locked. Hay­ward’s lips part­ed; then her head sank back­ward, ex­pos­ing her neck, and she let out a groan of de­sire. He wrapped his arms around her thighs and be­gan slid­ing in­to her, again and again and again, gen­tly, de­lib­er­ate­ly, the pa­pers spilling to the floor .

. And then, in a sud­den flood of plea­sure, it was over. She held him, her dark hair wild, breath­ing hard, her limbs around his, con­tract­ing and re­lax­ing in slow­ing spasms. They em­braced each oth­er for what seemed a very long time. And yet it was all too soon when she kissed him and gen­tly pulled away. On­ly then did D’Agos­ta re­al­ize he still didn’t un­der­stand what had just hap­pened. He cov­ered his con­fu­sion by turn­ing from her, putting his clothes in­to some sem­blance of or­der. As he did so, he re­al­ized he couldn’t even re­mem­ber what had led to their sud­den em­brace. They had just come to­geth­er like mag­nets. Noth­ing like this had ev­er hap­pened to him be­fore. He wasn’t sure if he should feel elat­ed, em­bar­rassed, or ner­vous.

Be­hind him, he could hear her slow laugh. “Not bad,” she said, her voice a lit­tle husky. “For a bro­ken-​down, washed-​up los­er, I mean. Next time, though, we should prob­ably shut the door.” She smiled at him from un­der a wild mop of black hair, a mot­tled flush fad­ing be­low her neck, her breasts ris­ing and falling heav­ily as she smoothed down her skirt. “You know what I like about you, Vin­cent?”

“No.”

“You re­al­ly care-​about your work, about the case, and most of all, about jus­tice. You­care. “

D’Agos­ta still felt out there, al­most dizzy with what had hap­pened. He ran his hand over his hair, ad­just­ed his pants. He wasn’t sure what she meant.

“I guess you earned that Ti­tle 3. With a lit­tle thought, I should be able to make some­thing up.”

He paused. “That wasn’t why-“

She sat up, laid a fin­ger on his lips. “Your­in­tegri­ty just earned you the Ti­tle 3. Not the-​the oth­er thing.” Then she smiled again. “I’ll tell you what. We kind of got things back­wards here. Do what you have to do. Then you can take me out for a nice, long, ro­man­tic, can­dle­light din­ner.”

{ 34 }

The wire room of the low­er Man­hat­tan Fed­er­al Build­ing was anon­de­script space on the tow­er’s four­teenth floor. To D’Agos­ta, it looked just like a typ­ical of­fice: flu­ores­cent ceil­ing, neu­tral car­pet­ing, count­less iden­ti­cal cu­bi­cles form­ing a hu­man ant farm. De­press­ing as shit.

He looked around guard­ed­ly, half hop­ing, half afraid he’d find Lau­ra Hay­ward wait­ing for him. But there was on­ly one of her de­tec­tives, Man­drell: the same guy who had called at lunchtime with news they’d ob­tained a Ti­tle 3 or­der from the U.S. At­tor­ney’s Of­fice. The FBI, with its su­pe­ri­or equip­ment, would ex­ecute the Ti­tle 3, in a joint op­er­ation with the NYPD. Com­ing through the NYPD had made it some­how po­lit­ical­ly ac­cept­able.

“Sergeant,” Man­drell said, shak­ing his hand. “Ev­ery­thing’s set up. Is Agent, ah, Pen­der­gast-“

“Here,” said Pen­der­gast, strid­ing in­to the room. His beau­ti­ful­ly cut black suit, pressed to per­fec­tion, shim­mered un­der the ar­ti­fi­cial light. D’Agos­ta won­dered just how many iden­ti­cal black suits the guy owned. Prob­ably had rooms at the Dako­ta and the River­side Drive man­sion de­vot­ed to them.

“Agent Pen­der­gast,” D’Agos­ta said, “this is De­tec­tive Sergeant Man­drell of the Twen­ty-​first Precinct.”

“De­light­ed.” Pen­der­gast briefly shook the prof­fered hand. “For­give me for not ar­riv­ing ear­li­er. I fear I took a wrong turn. This build­ing is most con­fus­ing.”

The Fed­er­al Build­ing? Most con­fus­ing?Pen­der­gast was a fed him­self, he had to have an of­fice in here some­where. Didn’t he? It oc­curred to D’Agos­ta that he’d nev­er once seen, or been asked to vis­it, Pen­der­gast’s of­fice.

“It’s this way,” Man­drell said, lead­ing the way through a maze of cu­bi­cles.

“Ex­cel­lent,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured to D’Agos­ta as they fell in­to step be­hind the de­tec­tive. “I’ll have to thank Cap­tain Hay­ward per­son­al­ly. She re­al­ly came through for us.”

She came through, all right,D’Agos­ta thought with a pri­vate smile. The whole of the night be­fore-​Pen­der­gast spir­it­ed away by the mys­te­ri­ous caller, his own to­tal­ly un­ex­pect­ed en­counter with Lau­ra Hay­ward-​seemed dream­like, un­re­al. He had fought the temp­ta­tion to call her all morn­ing. He hoped she’d still want that long, can­dle­light din­ner. He won­dered if this would com­pli­cate their work­ing re­la­tion­ship, de­cid­ed it would, re­al­ized he didn’t much care.

“Here we are,” Man­drell said, step­ping in­to one of the cu­bi­cles. It looked just like all the oth­ers: a desk with an over­hang­ing cre­den­za, a com­put­er work­sta­tion with at­tached speak­ers, a few chairs. A young wom­an with short blonde hair sat at the work­sta­tion, typ­ing.

“This is Agent San­borne,” Man­drell said. “She’s mon­itor­ing the phone of Jim­my Chait, Bullard’s right-​hand boy here in the States. We have agents in ad­join­ing cu­bi­cles log­ging the phones of an­oth­er half dozen of Bullard’s as­so­ciates. Agent San­borne, this is Sergeant D’Agos­ta of the Southamp­ton P.D. and Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.”

San­borne nod­ded at them in turn, her eyes widen­ing at the name of Pen­der­gast.

“Any­thing?” Man­drell asked her.

“Noth­ing im­por­tant,” she replied. “There was some traf­fic a few min­utes ago be­tween Chait and an­oth­er as­so­ciate. Seems they’re ex­pect­ing a call from Bullard any time now.”

Man­drell nod­ded, turned back to D’Agos­ta. “When was your last tap, Sergeant?”

“It’s been a while.”

“Then let me get you up to speed. Ev­ery­thing’s done by com­put­er these days, one work­sta­tion per phone num­ber be­ing mon­itored. The phone line goes right through this in­ter­face, and the con­ver­sa­tion’s record­ed dig­ital­ly. No more tapes. Agent San­borne, who’ll be tran­scrib­ing the line sheets, can work the trans­port con­trols ei­ther by key­board or foot ped­al.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head. It was a far cry from the low-​tech se­tups he’d worked as a new jack cop in the mid-​eight­ies.

“You men­tioned Chi­nese?” Man­drell said. “Are we go­ing to need a trans­la­tor?”

“Un­like­ly,” Pen­der­gast replied.

“Well, we’ve got a man stand­ing by, just in case.”

The cu­bi­cle fell silent as Man­drell and San­borne hov­ered over the screen.

“Vin­cent,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured, tak­ing him aside. “I’ve been want­ing to tell you. We’ve made a very im­por­tant dis­cov­ery.”

“What’s that?”

“Beck­mann.”

D’Agos­ta looked at him sharply.”Beck­mann?”

“His present where­abouts.”

“No shit. When did you find out?”

“Late last night. Af­ter I called you to re­quest this wire­tap.”

“Why didn’t you tell me be­fore?”

“I tried call­ing you as soon as I heard. There was no an­swer at your ho­tel. And your cell phone ap­peared to have been turned off.”

“Oh. Yes, it was. Sor­ry about that.” D’Agos­ta turned away, feel­ing a flush be­gin to spread over his face.

He was spared fur­ther ques­tion­ing by a sud­den beep­ing from the work­sta­tion.

“Call’s com­ing in,” said Agent San­borne.

A small win­dow ap­peared on her screen, filled with lines of da­ta. “Chait’s get­ting an in­com­ing,” she said, point­ing at the win­dow. “See?”

“Who’s it from?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“The num­ber’s com­ing up now. I’ll put it on vox.”

“Jim­my?” came a high-​pitched voice over the com­put­er speak­er. “Jim­my, you there?”

San­borne be­gan typ­ing quick­ly, tran­scrib­ing the call ver­ba­tim. “It’s his home num­ber,” she said. “Prob­ably his wife.”

“Yeah,” an­swered a deep voice with a thick New Jer­sey ac­cent. “What you want?”

“When you com­ing home?”

“Some­thing’s come up.” There was a faint roar in the back­ground, like the rush of wind.

“No, Jim­my-​not again to­day. We’ve got the Fin­ger­mans com­ing by this af­ter­noon, re­mem­ber? About the win­ter rental in Kissim­mee?”

“Fuck that. You don’t need me for that shit.”

“Go ahead, take that tone with me. You’re right, Idon’t need you for that­shit . What In­eed is for you to stop by De­Pasquale’s and pick up a few trays of sausage and pep­pers. I don’t have a thing to serve.”

“Then get your ass in the kitchen and cook some­thing.”

“Look, you-“

“I’ll be home when I get home. Now get the fuck off, I’m ex­pect­ing a call.” And the line went dead.

There was a brief si­lence bro­ken on­ly by the click of keys as Agent San­borne com­plet­ed the tran­scrip­tion.

“De­light­ful cou­ple,” said D’Agos­ta. He mo­tioned Pen­der­gast aside. “How’d you find Beck­mann, any­way?”

“With the help of an ac­quain­tance of mine-​an in­valid, ac­tu­al­ly-​who hap­pens to be ex­treme­ly good at track­ing down trou­ble­some nuggets of in­for­ma­tion.”

“‘Ex­treme­ly good’ sounds like an un­der­state­ment. No­body’s been able to lo­cate this guy. So where’s this Beck­mann at?”

But they were again in­ter­rupt­ed by an­oth­er beep from the com­put­er. “We’ve got an­oth­er one,” said San­borne.

“In­com­ing or out­go­ing?” asked Man­drell.

“In­com­ing. But the num­ber must be blocked, I’m not get­ting any da­ta on it.”

There was a brief squeal over the speak­er. “Yeah?” said Chait.

“Chait,” a voice re­spond­ed.

D’Agos­ta im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the gruff tone: it sent a thrill of ha­tred cours­ing through him.

Chait rec­og­nized it, too. “Yes, Mr. Bullard, sir,” he said, his tone abrupt­ly grow­ing servile.

“Bullard will be us­ing a satel­lite phone,” D’Agos­ta said. “That’s why you can’t get a fix.”

“Doesn’t mat­ter.” Man­drell point­ed to a string of num­bers on the screen. “See that? It’s the cell site of Chait’s phone. It’s the cel­lu­lar node his phone sig­nal’s com­ing from, lets us de­ter­mine his present lo­ca­tion.” He reached in­to the cre­den­za, pulled out a thick man­ual, be­gan leaf­ing through it.

“Ev­ery­thing set?” Bullard asked.

“Yes, sir. The men have all been briefed.”

“Re­mem­ber what I said. I don’t want any apol­ogiz­ing. Just do as I say. Walk it through, by the num­bers.”

“You got it, Mr. Bullard.”

Man­drell looked up from the cell site man­ual. “Chait’s in Hobo­ken, New Jer­sey.” “Ev­ery­thing’s go,” Bullard said. “The Chi­nese will be there on time.”

“Lo­ca­tion?” Chait asked.

“The pri­ma­ry, as dis­cussed. The park.”

Man­drell grasped D’Agos­ta by the arm. “Chait just changed cell sites,” he said. “What’s that mean?”

“He’s mov­ing.” Man­drell thumbed through the man­ual, look­ing up the new site. “Now he’s in the mid­dle of Union City.”

“Mass tran­sit wouldn’t move that quick­ly,” said Pen­der­gast. “He must be in a car.”

Bullard was speak­ing again. “Re­mem­ber. They’ll be ex­pect­ing a progress re­port in ex­change for the pay­ment. You know what to give them, right?”

“Right.”

Pen­der­gast pulled out his own phone, di­al­ing quick­ly. “Chait’s on his way to a meet­ing. We’ve got to get a unit dis­patched, tri­an­gu­late on his lo­ca­tion.”

“I’ll be ex­pect­ing a re­port im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the meet­ing,” said Bullard.

“I’ll be back to you with­in nine­ty min­utes.”

“And Chait? No fuck­ups, you hear?”

“No, sir.”

There was a click; a hiss of stat­ic; and the com­put­er beeped once again to sig­nal the con­nec­tion had been bro­ken.

“Cell site’s changed again,” Man­drell said, look­ing at the screen.

D’Agos­ta turned to Pen­der­gast. “With­in nine­ty min­utes, he said? What the hell does that mean?”

Pen­der­gast closed his phone, slipped it back in­to his pock­et. “It means their meet­ing will take place be­fore then. Come on, Vin­cent-​we haven’t a mo­ment to lose.”

{ 35 }

D’Agos­ta blew past the ex­it he­lix­es of the George Wash­ing­ton­Bridge and merged on­to the ex­press lanes, driv­ing like hell. As the New Jer­sey Turn­pike di­vid­ed and the traf­fic be­gan to thin a lit­tle, he seat­ed the emer­gen­cy bub­ble on­to the dash, turned on its flash­er, and be­gan crank­ing the siren. Veer­ing west on­to I-80, he stomped hard on the ped­al. The big en­gine of the pool sedan re­spond­ed and they were soon rock­et­ing along at a hun­dred miles an hour.

“Re­fresh­ing,” mur­mured Pen­der­gast.

The se­cure car-​to-​car fre­quen­cy crack­led in­to life. “This is 602. We’ve got a vi­su­al on the tar­get. It’s a TV van with a satel­lite dish, call let­ters WPMP, Hack­en­sack, mov­ing west on 80 near ex­it 65.”

D’Agos­ta pushed his speed to one twen­ty.

Pen­der­gast un­hooked the mike. “We’re just a few miles be­hind you. Hang back in an­oth­er lane and keep out of sight. Over.”

Ev­ery­thing had come to­geth­er with re­mark­able speed. Pen­der­gast had ini­ti­at­ed a fed­er­al tail on Chait’s cell sig­nal, req­ui­si­tioned a gov­ern­ment ve­hi­cle, and put D’Agos­ta be­hind its wheel. The West Side High­way had been mer­ci­ful­ly free of traf­fic, and it had tak­en them on­ly ten min­utes to clear Man­hat­tan.

“Where do you think we’re head­ed?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“Bullard men­tioned a park. For now, that’s all we know.”

Out of the cor­ner of his eye, D’Agos­ta no­ticed that, de­spite the speed, Pen­der­gast had un­buck­led his seat belt and was crouch­ing for­ward. Now the agent was scratch­ing his nails on the floor mat, rub­bing his palms rapid­ly against it. D’Agos­ta had seen the man do strange things be­fore, but this beat all. He won­dered if he should ask, de­cid­ed against it.

“Tar­get leav­ing free­way at ex­it 60,” the ra­dio squawked. “Fol­low­ing.”

D’Agos­ta slowed. An­oth­er minute, and he peeled off at the same ex­it.

“Tar­get pro­ceed­ing north on McLean.”

“They’re head­ing in­to Pa­ter­son,” D’Agos­ta said. He’d nev­er ac­tu­al­ly set foot in the city, though he’d passed it on the free­way count­less times: a red-​brick work­ing town whose best days were prob­ably about a hun­dred years gone. It seemed like a strange des­ti­na­tion.

“Pa­ter­son,” Pen­der­gast re­peat­ed spec­ula­tive­ly, wip­ing his dirty hands on his face and neck. “Birth­place of the Amer­ican In­dus­tri­al Rev­olu­tion.”

“Birth­place? Looks more like death’s door to me.”

“It’s a city with a vig­or­ous his­to­ry, Vin­cent. Some of the his­tor­ical neigh­bor­hoods are still quite beau­ti­ful. How­ev­er, I’m bank­ing on the fact that those are not where we’re head­ed.”

“Tar­get leav­ing McLean,” the voice on the ra­dio said. “Head­ing left on­to Broad­way.”

D’Agos­ta tore up McLean High­way, us­ing the siren to punch his way through two red lights. To their right lay the Pas­sa­ic Riv­er, brown and sullen in the au­tumn light. As he turned on­to Broad­way, shab­by-​look­ing and de­crepit, he killed the siren and snapped off the flash­er. They were close now: very close.

“Sergeant,” Pen­der­gast said abrupt­ly, “head in­to this strip mall on our right, please. We need to make a quick stop.”

D’Agos­ta glanced at him in sur­prise. “We don’t have time.”

“Trust me, we do.”

D’Agos­ta shrugged. The op­er­ation was nom­inal­ly FBI and Pen­der­gast was in charge: Hay­ward had made sure of that. The lead car was FBI and he him­self was Southamp­ton P.D., which would of­fend no­body. In­ter­state po­lice ri­val­ries would be kept at a min­imum. At the ap­pro­pri­ate mo­ment-​when it was too late for a bunch of un­briefed town cops to screw things up­Pen­der­gast would call in the lo­cals.

The mall was a col­lec­tion of dingy, glass-​front­ed stores set back from a park­ing lot heaved and cracked by time. It was half aban­doned, and D’Agos­ta won­dered just what the hell Pen­der­gast was up to. Here he’d made good time, and now the agent was squan­der­ing it.

“There,” Pen­der­gast said. “At the far end.”

D’Agos­ta sped up to the last store­front. A yel­low Dump­ster stood out front, pit­ted and scarred with age. Even be­fore the car had stopped, Pen­der­gast was out, run­ning in­to the store. D’Agos­ta swore, punched the steer­ing wheel. They were go­ing to lose five min­utes at least. He was used to Pen­der­gast’s in­ex­pli­ca­ble be­hav­ior, but this was too much.

“Tar­get head­ing in­to East Side Park,” came the cool voice from the lead car. “There’s some kind of event go­ing on. Looks like mod­el rock­ets or some­thing.”

D’Agos­ta heard shout­ing and saw Pen­der­gast trot­ting out of the shop, a bun­dle of clothes slung over one arm and a cou­ple of pairs of shoes clutched in the oth­er. Mo­ments lat­er a fat wom­an came burst­ing out.

“Help!” she bel­lowed. “Po­lice! I hope you’re proud of your­self, rob­bing the Sal­va­tion Army. Shit­head!”

“Obliged, ma’am,” Pen­der­gast said, crum­pling a hun­dred-​dol­lar bill and toss­ing it over his shoul­der as he jumped in­to the back­seat. D’Agos­ta laid on the gas, leav­ing a streak of rub­ber and a cloud of smoke.

“I dare­say that was no more than a two-​minute de­tour,” Pen­der­gast said from the rear of the car. Look­ing in­to the mir­ror, D’Agos­ta saw he was peel­ing off his jack­et and tie.

“Two min­utes is a long time in this busi­ness.”

“I’ll have to send the Sal­va­tion Army peo­ple a lit­tle some­thing to make up for my lack of man­ners.”

“They’re head­ing in­to East Side Park.”

“Very good. Drive around the park, if you please, and en­ter from the south. I need a few more mo­ments.”

D’Agos­ta drove past the park-​a wall of green­ery to his left, ris­ing above a con­crete re­tain­ing wall-​and made a left on­to Der­rom Av­enue. De­spite their prox­im­ity to seedy, sor­ry-​look­ing Broad­way, the hous­es here were re­mark­ably large and well tend­ed, relics of the days when Pa­ter­son had been a mod­el city of in­dus­try.

Pen­der­gast in­toned from the back:

“Eter­nal­ly asleep,

his dreams walk about the city where he per­sists

incog­ni­to.”

D’Agos­ta glanced again in the rearview mir­ror, al­most jam­ming on the brakes in sur­prise when he saw a stranger star­ing back at him. But, of course, it was no stranger: it was Pen­der­gast, trans­formed by some al­most mirac­ulous pro­cess of dis­guise.

“Have you ev­er read­Pa­ter­son by William Car­los Williams?” the va­grant in the back­seat asked.

“Nev­er heard of it.”

“Pity:

” Im­mor­tal he nei­ther moves nor rous­es and is sel­dom

seen, though he breathes and the sub­tleties of his

machi­na­tions

draw­ing their sub­stance from the noise of the pour­ing

riv­er

an­imate a thou­sand au­toma­tons.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head and mut­tered to him­self. He drove a few blocks, made an­oth­er left, and en­tered the park be­side a stat­ue of Christo­pher Colum­bus.

East Side Park was an over­grown hillock of grass and the oc­ca­sion­al shade tree, close­ly hemmed in on all four sides by hous­es. A lane wan­dered around its pe­riph­ery, and D’Agos­ta eased the car on­to it, pass­ing a va­ri­ety of pud­ding-​stone out­build­ings in var­ious stages of dis­re­pair. Con­crete bench­es with green-​paint­ed wood­en slats lined the road­way. Far­ther along, the lane veered in to­ward a height of land, which was crowned by a foun­tain sur­round­ed by a black wrought-​iron fence. Sev­er­al cars were parked along the curb here, in­clud­ing their own lead ve­hi­cle, mak­ing the al­ready nar­row road al­most im­pass­able. Ahead, D’Agos­ta could see the TV van. It had pulled on­to the grass be­tween a brace of ten­nis courts and a base­ball field. On the field it­self, a small knot of kids was shoot­ing off mod­el rock­ets, su­per­vised by half a dozen par­ents. A man with a tele­vi­sion cam­era was stand­ing by the van, film­ing the event.

“This is an ex­cep­tion­al­ly well planned meet­ing, Vin­cent,” Pen­der­gast said as they drove slow­ly past. “They’re meet­ing in the mid­dle of a park. No chance of be­ing am­bushed. And they’re sur­round­ed by noisy chil­dren and the roar of rock­ets, which will de­feat any long-​range elec­tron­ic surveil­lance. That man with the cam­era is their look­out, with a per­fect rea­son to be star­ing ev­ery which way through a tele­pho­to lens. Bullard has clear­ly trained his men well. Ah, pull over a minute, please, Vin­cent: here come the Chi­nese.”

In the rearview mir­ror, D’Agos­ta could make out a long black Mer­cedes, ab­surd­ly out of place, cruis­ing slow­ly up the park drive be­hind them. It pulled on­to the grass across the ten­nis courts from the van. Two big men with shaved heads and dark glass­es got out, look­ing around care­ful­ly. Then a third, small­er man ex­it­ed and be­gan walk­ing across the grass to­ward the van.

“What dread­ful lack of sub­tle­ty,” said Pen­der­gast. “It ap­pears these gen­tle­men have been watch­ing too much tele­vi­sion.”

D’Agos­ta eased the car for­ward, com­ing to a stop near the ex­it back on­to Broad­way. The hill fell away here and the trees were more nu­mer­ous, block­ing their car from view.

“Too bad I’m in uni­form,” he said.

“On the con­trary: be­ing in uni­form, you will be the last one they sus­pect. I’m go­ing to get as close as I can, see if I can learn more par­tic­ulars about the meet­ing. You buy a donut and cof­fee over there”-he nod­ded to a dingy cof­fee shop across Broad­way-“then wan­der in­to the park. Take a seat on one of the bench­es by the base­ball di­amond, where you’ll have a clear line of fire should any­thing un­to­ward oc­cur. Let us hope, with these chil­dren around, that noth­ing of the sort oc­curs-​but be ready for ac­tion re­gard­less.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

Pen­der­gast gave his eyes a vig­or­ous rub­bing. When his grub­by hands fell away again, his eyes had lost their clear, sil­very hue. Now they be­longed to a tip­pler: un­cer­tain, wa­tery, redrimmed.

D’Agos­ta watched Pen­der­gast get out of the car and am­ble back up the rise. The agent was wear­ing a brown sport coat of du­bi­ous ma­te­ri­al, a fad­ed stain be­tween the shoul­ders; dou­ble-​knit slacks a size too large; a pair of shab­by Hush Pup­pies. His hair was sev­er­al shades dark­er than usu­al-​just how the hell had he man­aged that?-and his face was in need of a wash. He looked ex­act­ly like a man who was down but not quite out, cling­ing to a few shreds of re­spectabil­ity. And it wasn’t just the clothes: his very gait had changed to a vague shuf­fle, his body lan­guage ten­ta­tive, his eyes dart­ing this way and that, as if pre­pared to ward off an un­ex­pect­ed blow.

D’Agos­ta stared an­oth­er mo­ment, mar­veling. Then he ex­it­ed the car, bought a cof­fee and a glazed donut in the cof­fee shop across the street, and head­ed back in­to the park. As he crest­ed the lit­tle rise and ap­proached the di­amond, he could see the short­er Chi­nese man get­ting in­to the back of the tele­vi­sion van. His large com­pan­ions were hang­ing back about forty paces, arms crossed.

There was awhooosh as a mod­el rock­et went off to scat­tered cheers and clap­ping. All eyes turned sky­ward; there was a pop and the rock­et came drift­ing back, float­ing be­neath a red-​and-​white-​striped minia­ture parachute.

D’Agos­ta eased him­self on­to a bench across the di­amond from the van. He slipped the lid off his cof­fee, pre­tend­ing to watch the rock­ets go off. This was strange: the would-​be cam­era­man was now call­ing the kids to­geth­er, ap­par­ent­ly to film them. D’Agos­ta won­dered if the cam­era­man was Chait, Bullard’s main man in New York. He de­cid­ed oth­er­wise: Chait was no doubt in­side the van with the Chi­nese hon­cho.

He turned his at­ten­tion back to Pen­der­gast. The agent was strolling along the walk­way near the van. He paused, fished a rac­ing form out of the trash, shook it clear of de­bris, then stopped to chat with the cam­era­man. It looked like he might be ask­ing him for mon­ey. The man scowled and shook his head, mo­tion­ing Pen­der­gast to move on. Then the man turned back to­ward the chil­dren, ges­tur­ing for them to line up with their rock­ets.

D’Agos­ta felt a knot tight­en in his stom­ach. Why the hell was the man or­ga­niz­ing the kids like that, any­way? Some­thing did not feel right at all.

Mean­while, Pen­der­gast had seat­ed him­self on the bench next to the van, so close he could al­most touch it, and was go­ing through the rac­ing form with a pen­cil stub, cir­cling var­ious hors­es and mak­ing notes.

Then-​in­ex­pli­ca­bly-​Pen­der­gast stood up, went to the back door of the van, and knocked.

The cam­era­man came strid­ing over im­me­di­ate­ly, ges­tic­ulat­ing fu­ri­ous­ly, shov­ing Pen­der­gast aside. D’Agos­ta re­sist­ed the im­pulse to reach for his gun. The back doors of the van opened; there was some loud talk; the doors slammed shut. The cam­era­man ges­tured an­gri­ly for Pen­der­gast to move off, but in­stead, the agent shrugged and seat­ed him­self back down on the bench, re­turn­ing to his study of the rac­ing form, pe­rus­ing it with lan­guid ease, just as if he had all the mon­ey in the world to blow on the hors­es.

D’Agos­ta looked around. The two plain­clothes FBI agents were strolling along the far side of the base­ball di­amond, talk­ing. The Chi­nese goons didn’t seem to have no­ticed them. Their at­ten­tion was riv­et­ed on the van and what was go­ing on in­side. They seemed ready for some­thing.Too ready. And there was the cam­era­man, still lin­ing up the kids, as if he, too, was ex­pect­ing some­thing to hap­pen at any mo­ment.

D’Agos­ta felt an al­most un­bear­able sense of ap­pre­hen­sion. He asked him­self why Bullard’s men had gone to such trou­ble to place them­selves in the midst of these kids. They had no inkling they were un­der surveil­lance. The ten­sion was be­tween them and their cus­tomers, the Chi­nese. He’d gath­ered as much from the wire­tap, and now it was play­ing out here.

He start­ed to cal­cu­late what would hap­pen if the Chi­nese thugs pulled out weapons and opened fire on the van. The kids would be caught in cross fire. That’s what it was all about: the kids were pro­tec­tion. Bullard’s men were­ex­pect­ing a fire­fight: the cam­era­man was lin­ing up the kids as a hu­man shield.

D’Agos­ta dropped his cof­fee and donut and rose from the bench, hand on his piece. At the same mo­ment, the back doors of the van flew open, and the lit­tle Chi­nese man got out as quick­ly and light­ly as a bird. He be­gan strid­ing across the base­ball di­amond. He flicked his hand to­ward the two thugs-​just the barest ges­ture-​and broke in­to a run.

D’Agos­ta saw the two reach for their weapons.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, he dropped to one knee, stead­ied his grip on his hand­gun, and aimed. As soon as a weapon ap­peared-​an Uzi, by the look of it-​he squeezed off a round, and just missed.

Abrupt­ly, all hell broke loose. There was the­pop! ppppppppp­pof semi­au­to­mat­ic-​weapons fire. Kids scat­ter­ing, grown-​ups yelling, grab­bing their kids and run­ning in ter­ror or throw­ing them­selves to the ground. An Uzi ap­peared in the cam­era­man’s hand, too, but be­fore he could fire, he was struck in the chest by a hail of gun­fire and flew back­ward, slam­ming against the side of the van.

D’Agos­ta fired a sec­ond time at the goon he’d missed, stop­ping him with a well-​placed round to the knee. The oth­er turned to­ward the un­ex­pect­ed fire, swing­ing his Uzi and spray­ing au­to­mat­ic fire across the out­field; Pen­der­gast, shield­ing two chil­dren with his own body, cool­ly dropped the man with a shot to the head. As the man went down, his Uzi swung wild­ly, still fir­ing; small clouds of dirt erupt­ed in the grass be­fore Pen­der­gast; then the agent fell sharply back, push­ing the chil­dren out of harm’s way as a spray of blood sud­den­ly dark­ened his arm.

“Pen­der­gast!” D’Agos­ta screamed.

The goon D’Agos­ta hit re­fused to stay down. Now the man had rolled over and was fir­ing on the van, the rounds whang­ing its side and send­ing chips of paint fly­ing. A burst of fire came from its front seat; the Chi­nese goon went down again; and the van pulled away with a squeal of tires.

“Stop them!” D’Agos­ta yelled at the two agents. They were al­ready up and run­ning, fir­ing fu­tile­ly, their shots ring­ing off the van’s ar­mored sides.

Now the head Chi­nese had reached the black Mer­cedes. As it roared to life, the two agents turned their fire to­ward it, blow­ing out the back tires as the car swerved in­to the lane. A round hit the gas tank, and the ve­hi­cle went up with a muf­fled thump, a ball of fire roil­ing sky­ward as the car left the lane and rolled gen­tly in­to a grove of trees. The door flew open and a burn­ing man got out, took a few halt­ing steps, paused, and slow­ly top­pled for­ward. In the dis­tance, the tele­vi­sion van was ca­reen­ing out of the park, van­ish­ing in­to the war­ren of streets to the west.

The park was bed­lam: kids and adults scat­tered across the ground, cow­er­ing and scream­ing. D’Agos­ta rushed to where Pen­der­gast had fall­en, re­lieved be­yond mea­sure when he saw the FBI agent was sit­ting up. The two Chi­nese were dead, and the cam­era­man, who’d prac­ti­cal­ly been torn in half, was ob­vi­ous­ly on his way out, too. But no civil­ians had been so much as scratched. It seemed a mir­acle.

D’Agos­ta knelt in the grass. “Pen­der­gast, you all right?”

Pen­der­gast waved, face ashen, tem­porar­ily un­able to speak.

One of the oth­er FBI agents came run­ning up. “Wound­ed? We got wound­ed?” “Agent Pen­der­gast. The cam­era­man’s be­yond help.”

“Back­up and med­ical are on the way.” And, in fact, D’Agos­ta could now hear sirens con­verg­ing on the park.

Pen­der­gast helped one of the chil­dren he’d pro­tect­ed-​a boy of about eight-​to a stand­ing po­si­tion. His fa­ther rushed over and clasped the child in his arms. “You saved his life,” he said. “You saved his life.”

D’Agos­ta helped Pen­der­gast up. Blood was soak­ing through one side of his dirty shirt.

“That fel­low winged me,” Pen­der­gast said. “It’s noth­ing, a flesh wound. I lost my wind, that’s all.”

Slow­ly, hes­itant­ly, peo­ple be­gan con­verg­ing on the park from the sur­round­ing hous­es, crowd­ing around the burn­ing hulk of the Mer­cedes and the near­by corpse. New­ly ar­rived cops were shout­ing, cov­er­ing the cor­ners, set­ting up a cor­don, yelling at the gath­er­ing crowd to keep back.

“Damn,” said D’Agos­ta. “Those fuck­ers from BAI were ex­pect­ing a fire­fight.”

“In­deed they were. And no won­der.”

“What do you mean?”

“I over­heard just enough to learn Bullard’s men were call­ing the deal off.”

“Call­ing the dealoff ?”

“On the very eve of suc­cess, ap­par­ent­ly. Now you can see the rea­son for the elab­orate set­up-​the park, the chil­dren. They knew the Chi­nese would not be pleased. This was their at­tempt to avoid be­ing shot to pieces.”

D’Agos­ta glanced around at the car­nage. “Hay­ward’s gonna love this.”

“She should. If we hadn’t run that wire­tap and been here to take down those shoot­ers, I hate to think what might have hap­pened.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head and looked at the burn­ing Mer­cedes, now be­ing hosed down by a fire truck. “You know what? This case just keeps get­ting weird­er and weird­er.”

{ 36 }

The Rev­erend Wayne P. Buck Jr. sat at the counter of the Last­Gasp truck stop in Yu­ma, Ari­zona, stir­ring skim milk in­to his cof­fee. Be­fore him lay the re­mains of his usu­al break­fast: white toast with a lit­tle mar­malade, oat­meal with­out milk or sug­ar. Out­side, be­yond the fly­specked win­dow, there was a grind­ing of gears: a large se­mi pulled off the apron, its steel tank flash­ing in the bril­liant sun, head­ing west to­ward Barstow.

Rev­erend Buck-​the ti­tle was hon­orary-​took a sip of the cof­fee. Then, me­thod­ical in ev­ery­thing he did, he fin­ished his break­fast, care­ful­ly clean­ing the bowl with the edge of his spoon be­fore set­ting it aside. He took an­oth­er sip of cof­fee, re­placed the cup gen­tly in its saucer. And then at last he turned to his morn­ing read­ing: the ten-​inch stack of pe­ri­od­icals that lay tied in heavy twine on the far end of the counter.

As Buck cut the twine with a pock­etknife, he was aware of a sense of an­tic­ipa­tion. His morn­ing read­ing was al­ways a high point of the day: a truck­er, whom he’d cured of fits at a camp re­vival sev­er­al months be­fore, al­ways left a bun­dle of out­dat­ed news­pa­pers for him out­side the truck stop ev­ery morn­ing. The pa­pers var­ied from day to day, and Buck nev­er knew what he’d find. Yes­ter­day there’d been a copy of the­New Or­leans Times-​Picayune in among the more com­mon­Phoenix Sun and­Los An­ge­les Times . But his tin­gle of an­tic­ipa­tion, he knew, ex­tend­ed be­yond the se­lec­tion of read­ing ma­te­ri­al.

Rev­erend Buck had been in the vicin­ity of Yu­ma al­most a year now, min­is­ter­ing to the truck­ers, the wait­ress­es and bus­boys, the mi­grant work­ers, the bro­ken and wan­der­ing and un­cer­tain souls that passed through on their way to some place and rarely lin­ger­ing long. The work was its own re­ward, and he nev­er com­plained. The rea­son there were so many sin­ners in the world, he knew, was that no­body had ev­er both­ered to sit down and talk to them. Buck did just that: he talked. Read to peo­ple from the Good Book, let them know how to pre­pare for what was com­ing, and com­ing soon. He’d talk to the drivers, one at a time here at the counter; long-​haul truck­ers just stop­ping in for a leak and a sand­wich. He’d talk to groups of two or three reg­ulars in the evenings, out back by the pic­nic ta­bles. On Sun­day morn­ings, fif­teen, maybe twen­ty, at the old Elks lodge. When he could get a ride to the reser­va­tion, he’d preach there. Most peo­ple were re­cep­tive. No­body had ex­plained the na­ture of sin to them, the ter­ri­fy­ing im­pla­ca­ble promise of the End Days. When peo­ple were sick, he’d pray over them; when peo­ple were griev­ing, he’d lis­ten to their prob­lems, re­cite a para­ble or some words of Je­sus. They paid him in pock­et change; a few hot meals; a bed for the night. It was enough.

But he’d been here in Yu­ma a long spell now. There were oth­er places, so many oth­ers, that need­ed to hear. Ev­ery day that went by meant there would be less time.For tru­ly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Is­rael be­fore the Son of Man comes.

Buck was a firm be­liev­er in signs. Noth­ing that hap­pened on this earth hap­pened by ac­ci­dent. It was a sign that car­ried him from Bro­ken Ar­row, Ok­la­homa, to Bor­rego Springs, Cal­ifor­nia, last year; an­oth­er sign that had brought him from Bor­rego Springs here to Yu­ma a few months lat­er. One of these days-​maybe next week, maybe next month-​there would be an­oth­er sign. He might find it here in these stacks of news­pa­pers. Or he might find it in the sto­ry of a pass­ing truck­er. But the sign would come, and he’d be gone, gone to some oth­er re­mote spot with its full share of those in need of the balm of sal­va­tion.

Rev­erend Buck plucked the first news­pa­per from the pile: the pre­vi­ous Sun­day’sSacra­men­to Bee . He leafed rather quick­ly through the na­tion­al and lo­cal pages-​big cities like Sacra­men­to could al­ways be count­ed on for sto­ries of mur­der, rape, cor­rup­tion, vice, cor­po­rate greed. Buck had read enough such sto­ries for a thou­sand cau­tion­ary ser­mons. He was more in­ter­est­ed in the squibs and side­bars, the news bites tak­en off the wire feeds and re­count­ed in odd cor­ners of the pa­per for read­er amuse­ment. The tiny town where two broth­ers hadn’t spo­ken to each oth­er in forty years. The trail­er park where ev­ery sin­gle child had left, a run­away. These were the sto­ries that spoke to him; these were the signs that im­pelled him and his mes­sage.

The­Bee com­plet­ed, Buck turned to the next:USA To­day. Lav­erne, the wait­ress, came over with cof­feepot in hand. “An­oth­er cup, Rev­erend?”

“Just one more, thank you kind­ly.” Buck prac­ticed mod­er­ation in all things. One cup of cof­fee was a bless­ing; two cups was an in­dul­gence; three cups, a sin. He pe­rused the pa­per, put it aside, and picked up a third: a day-​old copy of the­New York Post . Buck came across this tabloid on­ly rarely, and he had noth­ing but scorn for it: the brazen mouth­piece of the world’s most dis­si­pat­ed, sin-​rid­den city held no in­ter­est for him. He was about to put it aside when the head­line caught his at­ten­tion:

DE­STRUC­TION

Renowned Sci­en­tist Claims Re­cent Deaths Sig­nal End of Days

by Bryce Har­ri­man

More slow­ly, Buck turned the page and be­gan to read.

Oc­to­ber 25, 2004-A re­spect­ed sci­en­tist yes­ter­day pre­dict­ed im­mi­nent de­struc­tion for New York City and pos­si­bly much of the world.

Dr. Friedrich Von Menck, Har­vard sci­en­tist and Em­my Award-​win­ning doc­umen­tary film­mak­er, says the re­cent deaths of Jere­my Grove and Nigel Cut­forth are mere­ly the “harbingers” of the com­ing catas­tro­phe.

For fif­teen years Dr. Von Menck has been study­ing math­emat­ical pat­terns in the fa­mous dis­as­ters of the past. And no mat­ter how he cuts the da­ta, one num­ber shows up: the year 2004.

Von Menck’s the­ory is based on a fun­da­men­tal ra­tio known as the gold­en ra­tio-​a ra­tio that is found through­out na­ture, as well as in such clas­si­cal ar­chi­tec­ture as the Parthenon and the paint­ings of Leonar­do da Vin­ci. Von Menck is the first to ap­ply it to his­to­ry-​with sin­is­ter im­pli­ca­tions.

Von Menck’s re­search has re­vealed that many of the worst dis­as­ters that have be­fall­en mankind fit the same ra­tio:

79A.D. : Pom­peii

426A.D. : The sack of Rome

877A.D. : De­struc­tion of Bei­jing by the Mon­gols

1348A.D. : The Black Death

1666A.D. : The Great Fire of Lon­don

1906A.D. : The San Fran­cis­co Earth­quake

These and many more dates line up in ra­tios of un­can­ny pre­ci­sion.

And what do these nat­ural dis­as­ters have in com­mon? They have al­ways struck an im­por­tant world city, a city no­table for its wealth, pow­er, tech­nol­ogy-​and, Dr. Von Menck adds, ne­glect of the spir­itu­al. Each of these dis­as­ters was pre­ced­ed by small but spe­cif­ic signs. Von Menck sees the mys­te­ri­ous deaths of Grove and Cut­forth as pre­cise­ly the signs one would ex­pect pre­ced­ing the de­struc­tion of New York City by fire.

What kind of fire?

“Not any kind of nor­mal fire,” says Von Menck. “It will be some­thing sud­den and de­struc­tive. A fire from with­in.”

As fur­ther ev­idence he cites pas­sages from Rev­ela­tion, the prophet Nos­tradamus, and more re­cent clair­voy­ants such as Edgar Cayce and Madame Blavatsky.

Dr. Von Menck left to­day for the Galá­pa­gos Is­lands, tak­ing with him, he said, on­ly his manuscripts and a few books.

Buck low­ered the pa­per. The rest of the pile sat at his el­bow, for­got­ten. He felt a strange sen­sa­tion rise up his spine, spread down his arms and legs. If Von Menck was right, the man was a fool to be­lieve he could take refuge on some far­away is­land. It put in mind some lines from Rev­ela­tion, his fa­vorite book of the Bible, which Buck fre­quent­ly quot­ed to his flock:And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men . hid them­selves in the dens and in the rocks of the moun­tains . For the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

He raised his cup of cof­fee, but it no longer seemed to have any fla­vor, and he re­placed it in its saucer. Buck had long be­lieved he would see the End Days in his life­time. And he had al­ways be­lieved in signs. Per­haps this sign was just larg­er than the oth­ers.

Per­haps it was very large, in­deed.

Rev­ela­tion, chap­ter 22:Be­hold, I come quick­ly .

Could this be what he’d been wait­ing for all these years? Did it not al­so say in Rev­ela­tion that the wicked, the men with the mark of the beast on their fore­heads, were tak­en first, in suc­ces­sive waves of slaugh­ter? Just a few, here and there, would be tak­en. That’s how it would start.

He read the ar­ti­cle a sec­ond time. New York City. This was where it would be­gin. Of course, this was where it would be­gin. Two were tak­en. Just two. It was God’s way of get­ting the word out to his cho­sen peo­ple, so they in turn could spread the mes­sage of re­pen­tance and atone­ment while there was still time. The wrath of God would nev­er de­scend with­out warn­ing.Let he with ears hear .

Be­hold, I come quick­ly . Sure­ly I come quick­ly .

But New York City? Buck had nev­er set foot be­yond the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er, nev­er been in a town much larg­er than Tuc­son. To him, the East Coast was Baby­lon, a for­eign, dan­ger­ous, soul­less re­gion to be avoid­ed at all costs, no place more so than New York. Was it meant to be? Was it, in fact, a sign? And more to the point: washe be­ing called? Was this the great call from God he had been wait­ing for? And did he have the courage to fol­low it?

There was a chuff of air brakes out­side the din­er. Buck looked up in time to see the morn­ing Grey­hound cross-​coun­try ex­press, trav­el­ing on I-10, stop out­side. The sign above the driv­er’s win­dow read­New York City .

Buck walked up just as the bus driv­er was about to close the door. “Ex­cuse me!” he said.

The driv­er looked at him. “What is it, mis­ter?”

“How much for a one-​way tick­et to New York?”

“Three hun­dred and twen­ty dol­lars. Cash.”

Buck fished in his wal­let and pulled out all the mon­ey he had in the world. He count­ed it while the bus driv­er tapped his fin­ger on the wheel and frowned.

It amount­ed to pre­cise­ly three hun­dred and twen­ty dol­lars.

As the bus pulled away from Yu­ma, Rev­erend Buck was sit­ting in the back, his on­ly lug­gage the day-​old copy of the­New York Post .

{ 37 }

Vasquez eased away from the win­dow, snugged the piece of­wood back in place, turned on the hood­ed lantern, then stood and stretched. It was just past mid­night. He ro­tat­ed his head on his shoul­ders first one way, then an­oth­er, work­ing out the kinks. Then he took a long drink of wa­ter, wip­ing his mouth with the back of his hand. De­spite a few sur­pris­es, the op­er­ation was go­ing well. The tar­get kept ex­ceed­ing­ly ir­reg­ular hours, com­ing and go­ing at un­pre­dictable times-​ex­cept that ev­ery night, at one o’clock in the morn­ing, he ex­it­ed the house, crossed River­side Drive at 137th Street, and took a stroll through River­side Park. He al­ways re­turned with­in twen­ty min­utes. It seemed to be an evening con­sti­tu­tion­al; a turn around the block, so to speak, be­fore go­ing to bed.

Over the past forty-​eight hours, Vasquez had come to re­al­ize he was deal­ing with a man of in­tel­li­gence and abil­ity, and yet a man who was al­so in­ef­fa­bly strange. As usu­al, Vasquez wasn’t sure quite how he ar­rived at his con­clu­sions, but he was rarely wrong about peo­ple and trust­ed his in­stincts. This man was some­thing else. Even on the sur­face he was odd, with his black suit, mar­ble­like com­plex­ion, and his quick, noise­less walk more like that of a cat than a man. Some­thing about the way he moved spoke to Vasquez of ut­ter self-​con­fi­dence. Fur­ther, any­one who would go strolling in River­side Park in the mid­dle of the night had to be ei­ther crazy or pack­ing heat, and he had no doubt the man pos­sessed an ex­cel­lent weapon and knew how to use it. Twice he had seen gang mem­bers who’d staked out the block qui­et­ly dis­ap­pear when the tar­get emerged. They knew a bad deal when they saw it.

Vasquez wrenched off a piece of teriya­ki beef jerky and chewed it slow­ly, re­view­ing his notes. There seemed to be four in­hab­itants in the house: Pen­der­gast, a but­ler, an el­der­ly house­keep­er he’d viewed on­ly once, and a young wom­an who wore long, old-​fash­ioned dress­es. She wasn’t his daugh­ter or his squeeze-​they were too for­mal with each oth­er. Per­haps she was an as­sis­tant of some kind. The house had on­ly one reg­ular vis­itor: a bald­ing, slight­ly over­weight po­lice­man with a Southamp­ton P.D. patch on his arm. Us­ing his com­put­er and wire­less mo­dem, Vasquez had eas­ily dis­cov­ered the man was one Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta. He looked like a straight-​ahead, no-​bull­shit type, sol­id and de­pend­able, of­fer­ing few sur­pris­es.

Then there had been a very strange old man with a wild head of white hair who had come by on­ly once, late at night, scur­ry­ing along al­most like a crab, clutch­ing a book. Prob­ably some kind of func­tionary, an Ig­or, a man of no im­por­tance.

The one o’clock walk was, of course, the time to do it. Hit him as he emerged from the semi­cir­cu­lar drive. Vasquez had gone over it again and again, fig­ur­ing out the ge­om­etry of death. If the first round en­tered the man’s head oblique­ly, the round would be de­flect­ed slight­ly by the in­side curve of the skull and ex­it at an an­gle. The torque gen­er­at­ed by the of­fcen­ter hit would spin the tar­get. As a re­sult, the an­gle and pat­tern of the ex­it spray would sug­gest a shoot­er from a win­dow some­where down the street. The sec­ond round would strike him on the way down, spin­ning him fur­ther. The po­si­tion of the body would help throw off the ini­tial re­sponse, de­flect­ing it down the block. In any case, he him­self would be out the back and on­to 136th Street prac­ti­cal­ly be­fore the body hit the ground, five min­utes to the Broad­way IRT train and gone. No­body would no­tice him-​a seed­ily dressed Puer­to Ri­can run­ner head­ing home af­ter a day of du­bi­ous em­ploy­ment.

Vasquez bit off an­oth­er hunk of the dry meat. He wasn’t sure just what it was that brought on a feel­ing of readi­ness, but he al­ways knew when the time had come for the kill. It was now forty min­utes to one, and it felt to him like that time had come. For two nights run­ning, Pen­der­gast had emerged at ex­act­ly 1A.M. Vasquez felt cer­tain he would do it again. This would be the night.

He took off his clothes and put on his get­away cos­tume-​warm-​up suit open at the chest, heavy gold, puffy sneak­ers, thin mus­tache, cell phone-​turn­ing him­self in­to just an­oth­er cheap hus­tler from Span­ish Harlem.

Vasquez ex­tin­guished the light, re­moved the small piece of wood from the cor­ner of the board­ed-​up win­dow, and got in­to po­si­tion. Snug­ging his cheek against the com­pos­ite stock-​a stock that would nev­er warp or swell in ad­verse weath­er-​he care­ful­ly aligned the match grade bar­rel to the spot where the tar­get’s head would ap­pear, right be­yond the mar­ble and brick wall that sup­port­ed the porte-​cochère. There the tar­get al­ways paused to speak to the but­ler, wait­ing to make sure the man shut and locked the door. It was a ten- or twen­ty-​sec­ond pause: an eter­ni­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty for a shoot­er like Vasquez.

As he read­ied his equip­ment, Vasquez felt a faint twinge of un­easi­ness. Not for the first time, he won­dered if the whole set­up was just a lit­tle too easy. The one o’clock stroll, the lit­tle pause-​ev­ery­thing seemed a lit­tle too per­fect. Was he be­ing set up? Did the tar­get know he was there? Vasquez shook his head, smil­ing rue­ful­ly. He al­ways had an at­tack of para­noia just be­fore the kill. There was no way the sub­ject could have de­tect­ed his pres­ence. What’s more, the tar­get had al­ready ex­posed him­self on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions. If he had known a shoot­er was track­ing him, those de­lib­er­ate ex­po­sures would take a lev­el of sangfroid few hu­man be­ings pos­sessed. Vasquez had al­ready had half a dozen chances to kill him clean­ly. It was just that he’d nev­er felt ready.

Now he did.

Slow­ly and care­ful­ly, he fit­ted his eye to the scope. The scope had a built-​in com­pen­sator for bul­let drop and had al­ready been prop­er­ly ze­roed for windage. Ev­ery­thing was ready. He sight­ed through the crosshair grid. The cen­tral crosshairs were po­si­tioned just where the tar­get would pause. It would be quick and clean, as al­ways. The but­ler would wit­ness it and call the po­lice, but by then Vasquez would be gone. They would find his kill nest, of course, but it would do them no good. They al­ready had his DNA, for all the good it did them. Vasquez would be back home by then, sip­ping lemon­ade on the beach.

He wait­ed, gaz­ing at the door­way through the scope. The min­utes ticked off. Five min­utes to one. Three to one. One o’clock.

The door opened and the tar­get emerged, right on sched­ule. He took a few steps, turned, be­gan speak­ing with the but­ler.

The ri­fle was al­ready sight­ed in. Gen­tly and even­ly, Vasquez’s fin­ger be­gan to ap­ply in­creas­ing pres­sure to the trig­ger.

There was a sud­den faint pop and flash of light from down the block, fol­lowed by a tin­kle of glass. Vasquez hes­itat­ed, tak­ing his eye from the sight; but it was just a street­light fail­ing as they al­ways did in that neigh­bor­hood-​or per­haps some young hood­lum-​in-​train­ing with a BB gun.

But the mo­ment had passed, and the man was now walk­ing across the street, to­ward the park.

Vasquez leaned back from the ri­fle, feel­ing the ten­sion drain away. He had missed his op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Should he catch him com­ing back? No, the man walked so swift­ly back in­to the porte­cochère that he could not be sure of that per­fect, off-​cen­ter shot. No mat­ter: it just wasn’t in the cards. So much for his para­noia, for ev­ery­thing seem­ing a lit­tle too easy.

So he would be in his lit­tle nest for an­oth­er twen­ty-​four hours. But he wasn’t com­plain­ing: two mil­lion dol­lars was just as ac­cept­able for three days’ work as it was for two.

{ 38 }

D’Agos­ta rode in the back of the Rolls in si­lence. Proc­tor was­driv­ing, and Pen­der­gast sat be­side him in the front pas­sen­ger seat, chat­ting about the Boston Red Sox, which ap­peared to be the on­ly top­ic of in­ter­est to Proc­tor, and which Pen­der­gast in his mys­te­ri­ous way seemed to know all about. They were de­bat­ing some sta­tis­ti­cal nu­ance of the 1916 pen­nant race that stu­pe­fied even D’Agos­ta, who con­sid­ered him­self a base­ball fan.

“Where is it we’re meet­ing this Beck­mann again?” D’Agos­ta in­ter­rupt­ed.

Pen­der­gast glanced in­to the back­seat. “He’s in Yonkers.”

“You think he’ll talk to us? I mean, Cut­forth and Bullard weren’t ex­act­ly forth­com­ing.”

“I imag­ine he’ll be most elo­quent.”

Pen­der­gast re­sumed his dis­cus­sion, and D’Agos­ta turned his at­ten­tion to the pass­ing scenery, won­der­ing if he’d com­plet­ed all the nec­es­sary pa­per­work on yes­ter­day’s dust-​up with the Chi­nese. This case was gen­er­at­ing more pa­per­work than any he’d been in­volved with be­fore. Or was it just all the new bull­shit reg­ula­tions that were keep­ing him hogtied? Pen­der­gast nev­er seemed to do any pa­per­work; D’Agos­ta won­dered if the agent some­how still man­aged to keep above such mun­dane de­tails, or if he sim­ply worked all night fill­ing out forms.

The Rolls had left Man­hat­tan via the Willis Av­enue Bridge and was now head­ing north through late Sat­ur­day morn­ing traf­fic along the Ma­jor Dee­gan Ex­press­way. Soon it left the Dee­gan for the Mosholu Park­way and made its way in­to the hard-​core in­ner ring of sub­urbs that com­prised the low­er fringe of Westch­ester Coun­ty. Pen­der­gast had been his usu­al ret­icent self about where they were go­ing. Dun-​col­ored hous­ing projects, ag­ing in­dus­tri­al com­plex­es, and strings of gas sta­tions passed by in a blur. Af­ter a mile or two, they ex­it­ed on­to Yonkers Av­enue. D’Agos­ta sat back with a sigh. Yonkers, the city with the ugli­est name in Amer­ica. What was Beck­mann do­ing here? Maybe he had some nice place over­look­ing the Hud­son: D’Agos­ta had heard talk of the city’s wa­ter­front re­vi­tal­iza­tion.

But the wa­ter­front was not their des­ti­na­tion. In­stead, the Rolls turned east, to­ward No­dine Hill. D’Agos­ta watched the pass­ing road signs with lit­tle in­ter­est. Prescott Street. Elm Street. Ex­cept there didn’t seem to be any elms here, on­ly dy­ing gink­go trees that bare­ly soft­ened the dingy res­iden­tial lines. As they drove on, the neigh­bor­hood grew in­creas­ing­ly seedy. Drunks and ad­dicts now lounged on front stoops, watch­ing the Rolls pass with scant in­ter­est. Ev­ery square inch of space was cov­ered by il­leg­ible graf­fi­ti-​even the tree trunks. The sky was the col­or of lead, and the day was be­com­ing chilly. Here and there they passed va­cant lots, re­claimed by weeds or sumac, patch­es of jun­gle in the mid­dle of the city.

“Left here, please.”

Proc­tor turned in­to a dead-​end street and glid­ed to a stop in front of the last build­ing. D’Agos­ta stepped out, Proc­tor stay­ing with the car.

In­stead of en­ter­ing the ten­ement, Pen­der­gast head­ed for the end of the cul-​de-​sac: a twelve-​foot cin­der-​block wall cov­ered with still more graf­fi­ti. An iron door, stud­ded with old riv­ets, streaked and scaly with rust, was set in­to the wall.

Pen­der­gast tried the han­dle, then bent to ex­am­ine the lock. He re­moved a pen­cil-​thin flash­light from his pock­et and peered in­to the key­hole, prob­ing with a small met­al tool.

“Go­ing to pick it?” D’Agos­ta asked.

Pen­der­gast straight­ened. “Nat­ural­ly.” He re­moved his sidearm and shot in­to the lock once, twice, the deaf­en­ing re­ports rolling like thun­der up the al­ley­way.

“Je­sus, I thought you said you were go­ing to pick it!”

“I did. With my pick of last re­sort.” Pen­der­gast hol­stered the .45. “It’s the on­ly way to un­lock a sol­id block of rust. This door hasn’t been opened in years.” He raised his foot and gave the door a shove. It swung open with a groan of rust­ed met­al.

D’Agos­ta peered through the door­way, as­ton­ished. In­stead of a small weedy lot, the door opened on a vast over­grown mead­ow ris­ing up a hill, cov­er­ing at least ten acres, sur­round­ed by de­cay­ing ten­ements. At the top stood a clus­ter of dead trees cir­cling the ru­ins of what looked like a Greek tem­ple: four Doric columns still stand­ing, roof caved in, the whole struc­ture shroud­ed in ivy. Di­rect­ly be­fore them was what once had been a small road. Now it was thick with weeds and poi­son sumac, rows of dead trees lin­ing ei­ther side, their claw­like branch­es reach­ing in­to the gray sky.

D’Agos­ta shiv­ered. “What’s this, some kind of park?”

“Af­ter a fash­ion.”

Pen­der­gast be­gan as­cend­ing the bro­ken sur­face of the road, care­ful­ly step­ping over chunks of frost-​heaved as­phalt, skirt­ing four-​foot weeds and dodg­ing the poi­sonous sumac pis­tils. If he felt any lin­ger­ing pain from the bul­let graze of the day be­fore, it did not show. On ei­ther side, be­yond the dead trees, the weeds rose in­to a ri­ot of over­growth: ivy run ram­pant, bram­bles, and bush­es. Ev­ery­thing was in­tense­ly green, grow­ing with un­nat­ural vig­or and health.

Af­ter a few hun­dred feet, Pen­der­gast paused, re­moved a piece of pa­per from his pock­et, con­sult­ed it.

“This way.”

He start­ed down a path at right an­gles to the road. D’Agos­ta scram­bled to fol­low, push­ing through the chest-​high growth, his uni­form be­com­ing cov­ered with pollen dust. Pen­der­gast moved slow­ly, peer­ing left and right, once in a while con­sult­ing the di­agram in his hand. He seemed to be count­ing. D’Agos­ta grad­ual­ly be­came aware just what it was Pen­der­gast was count­ing: al­most in­vis­ible in the un­der­growth were rows of low, gray slabs of gran­ite set in­to the ground, each with a name and a pair of dates.

“Hell, we’re in a ceme­tery!” said D’Agos­ta.

“A pot­ter’s field, to be ex­act, where the in­di­gent, the friend­less, and the in­sane were buried. Pine cof­fin, six-​foot hole, gran­ite tomb­stone, and a two-​minute eu­lo­gy, all cour­tesy of the state of New York. It filled up close to ten years ago.”

D’Agos­ta gave a whis­tle. “And Ranier Beck­mann?”

Pen­der­gast said noth­ing. He was mov­ing through the rag­weed, still count­ing. Sud­den­ly he halt­ed be­fore a low gran­ite stone, no dif­fer­ent from any of the oth­ers. With a sweep of his foot, he knocked aside the weeds.

RANIER BECK­MAN

1952-1995

A chill wind swept down from the hill, rip­pling the weeds like a field of grain. There was a dis­tant rum­ble of thun­der.

“Dead!” D’Agos­ta ex­claimed.

“Ex­act­ly.” Pen­der­gast ex­tract­ed his cell phone and di­aled. “Sergeant Baskin? We have lo­cat­ed the grave in ques­tion and are ready for the ex­huma­tion. I have all the foren­sics pa­per­work here. We shall await you.”

D’Agos­ta laughed. “You’ve got quite a sense of the­ater, you know that, Pen­der­gast?”

Pen­der­gast shut the cell phone with a snap. “I didn’t want to tell you un­til I was sure my­self, and for that I need­ed to find the grave. There was a sad pauci­ty of records on Mr. Beck­mann. Those few that we man­aged to un­cov­er were sus­pect. As you can see, they even mis­spelled his name on the tomb­stone.”

“But you said Beck­mann would be ‘most elo­quent.’”

“And so he will. While dead men tell no tales, their corpses of­ten speak vol­umes. And I think Ranier Beck­mann’s corpse has quite a bit to tell us.”

{ 39 }

Locke Bullard stood on the fly­ing bridge of the Storm­cloud.The air was crisp and sharp, the ocean flat-​calm. It was a world re­duced to its es­sen­tials. The ship throbbed be­neath his feet; the cool breeze flowed past him as the ship plowed east­ward at flank speed to­ward Eu­rope.

Bullard low­ered his cigar and stared for­ward at the point where the sky met the knife edge of ocean, his knuck­les white on the rail. On this clear fall day, it re­al­ly did look like the edge of the world, from which a ship could sail off in­to weight­less obliv­ion. A part of him wished it would hap­pen: that he could just drop off the world and be done with it.

He could do it now, in fact; he could wan­der to the back of the ship and slip off in­to the wa­ter. On­ly his stew­ard would miss him and prob­ably not for some time: he had spent most of the voy­age locked in his cab­in, hav­ing his meals de­liv­ered, see­ing no one.

Bullard could feel him­self trem­bling, ev­ery mus­cle tense, his whole body in the grip of pow­er­ful emo­tion, a ter­ri­ble com­bi­na­tion of rage, re­gret, hor­ror, and as­ton­ish­ment. He could hard­ly be­lieve what had hap­pened, what had brought him to this point-​here, in the mid­dle of the At­lantic, head­ing east­ward on such fate­ful busi­ness. Nev­er in a mil­lion years of cor­po­rate schem­ing-​with all his plot­ting, coun­ter­plot­ting, and prepa­ra­tion for ev­ery even­tu­al­ity-​could he have ex­pect­ed it would come to this. At least he’d been able to re­move the wild card of that FBI agent, Pen­der­gast: if Vasquez hadn’t fin­ished the job yet, he would soon.

And yet this was slight con­so­la­tion.

He caught the glimpse of move­ment out of the cor­ner of his eye. It was the slim fig­ure of his stew­ard, bob­bing def­er­en­tial­ly at the hatch. “Sir? The video­con­fer­ence is in three min­utes.”

Bullard nod­ded, turned his eyes once more to­ward the hori­zon, hawked up a gob­bet of phlegm, and rock­et­ed it in­to the far blue. The cigar fol­lowed. Then he turned and de­scend­ed.

The video­con­fer­ence room was small, built just for him. The tech­ni­cian was there-​why were they all weasel­ly men with goa­tees?-hunched over the key­board. He rose when Bullard en­tered, bump­ing his head on a bulk­head in his haste. “Ev­ery­thing’s set, Mr. Bullard. Just press-“

“Get out.”

The man got out, leav­ing Bullard alone. He locked the door be­hind him, keyed in the passphrase, wait­ed for the prompt, keyed in an­oth­er. The screen flick­ered in­to life, split down the cen­ter in­to two im­ages: the COO of Bullard Aerospace In­dus­tries in Italy, Mar­tinet­ti; and Chait, his head man in the States.

“How’d it go yes­ter­day?” Bullard asked.

The hes­ita­tion told Bullard there’d been a fuck­up.

“The guests came with fire­crack­ers. There was a par­ty.”

Bullard nod­ded. He’d half ex­pect­ed it.

“When they learned there was no cake, the par­ty be­gan. Williams had to leave sud­den­ly. The guests all left with him.”

So the Chi­nese had killed Williams and got their ass­es shot off in re­turn.

“An­oth­er thing. The par­ty got crashed.”

Bullard felt a sud­den con­stric­tion in his gut. Now, who the hell had done that? Pen­der­gast? Christ, Vasquez was tak­ing his pre­cious time. Bullard had nev­er met a man quite so dan­ger­ous. But if it was Pen­der­gast, how had he learned about it? The files in the seized com­put­er were strong­ly en­crypt­ed, no way they could have been cracked.

“Ev­ery­body else got home safe­ly.”

Bullard bare­ly heard this. He was still think­ing. Ei­ther their phones had been tapped or the feds had an in­former in his top five. Prob­ably the for­mer. “There’s a bird in the tree, maybe,” Bullard said, speak­ing the pre­ar­ranged code that in­di­cat­ed a phone tap.

This was greet­ed with si­lence. Hell, he al­most didn’t care any­more. Bullard turned to the im­age of his Ital­ian COO. “You have the item ready and packed for trav­el­ing?”

“Yes, sir.” The man spoke with dif­fi­cul­ty. “May I ask why-?”

“No, god­damny­ou to hell, you may not!” Bullard felt rage abrupt­ly take him; it was like a seizure, be­yond his con­trol. He glanced over at the im­age of Chait. The man was lis­ten­ing, face ex­pres­sion­less.

“Sir-“

“Don’t ask meany ques­tions. I’ll get the item when I ar­rive, and that’ll be it. You’ll nev­er speak of it again, to me or any­one.”

The man went pale and swal­lowed, his Adam’s ap­ple bob­bing. “Mr. Bullard, af­ter all the work we’ve done and the risks we’ve tak­en, I have the right to know why you are killing the project. I speak to you re­spect­ful­ly as your chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer. I have on­ly the good of the com­pa­ny at heart-“

Bullard felt the rage grow in­side him like a heat, so in­tense it seemed to pow­der the very mar­row of his bones. “You son of a bitch, what did I just tell you?”

Mar­tinet­ti fell silent. Chait’s eyes flick­ered this way and that, ner­vous­ly. He was won­der­ing if maybe his boss wasn’t go­ing crazy. It seemed a fair enough ques­tion.

“Iam the com­pa­ny,” Bullard went on. “I know what’s for the good of the com­pa­ny and what isn’t. You men­tion this again andti fac­cio fuori, bas­tar­do. I’ll kill you, you bas­tard.”

He knew no self-​re­spect­ing Ital­ian would stand for such an in­sult. He was right. “Sir, I here­by ten­der my res­ig­na­tion-“

“Re­sign, moth­er­fuck­er, re­sign! And good rid­dance!” Bullard brought his fist down on the key­board, again and again. On the fifth blow, the screen fi­nal­ly winked off.

Bullard sat for a long time in the dark­ened room. So the feds had been ex­pect­ing them in Pa­ter­son. That meant they knew about the planned trans­fer of mis­sile tech­nol­ogy. Once, that would have been a dis­as­ter, but now it seemed al­most ir­rel­evant. At the last minute, the crime had been aban­doned. The feds had jack and it would stay that way. BAI was clean. Not that Bullard gave a shit; he had big­ger fish to fry at the mo­ment.

Fact was, the feds knew noth­ing about what was­re­al­ly go­ing on. He had got­ten away just in time. Grove and Cut­forth-​Grove and Cut­forth, and maybe Beck­mann, too. They had to die; it was in­evitable. But he was still alive and that’s what count­ed.

Bullard re­al­ized he was hy­per­ven­ti­lat­ing. Christ, he need­ed air. He stum­bled up from the con­sole, un­locked the door, mount­ed the stairs. In a mo­ment he was back on the fly­ing bridge, star­ing east­ward in­to blue noth­ing­ness.

If on­ly he could just sail off the edge of the world.

{ 40 }

D’Agos­ta heard the faint squawk­ing of a ra­dio and looked up­through the dense un­der­growth. At first, noth­ing could be seen through the ri­ot of veg­eta­tion. But with­in a few min­utes, he be­gan to catch dis­tant flash­es of sil­ver, glimpses of blue. Fi­nal­ly a cop came in­to view-​just a head and shoul­ders above the dense brush-​forc­ing his way through the brack­en. The cop spied him, turned. Be­hind him were two medics car­ry­ing a blue plas­tic re­mains lock­er. They were fol­lowed by two oth­er men in jump­suits, lug­ging a va­ri­ety of heavy tools. A pho­tog­ra­pher came last.

The cop shoul­dered his way through the last of the brush-​a lo­cal Yonkers sergeant, small and no-​non­sense-​and stopped be­fore them.

“You Pen­der­gast?”

“Yes. Pleased to meet you, Sergeant Baskin.”

“Right. This the grave?”

“It is.” Pen­der­gast re­moved some pa­pers from his jack­et. The cop scru­ti­nized them, ini­tialed them, stripped off the copies, and hand­ed the orig­inals back. “Sor­ry, I need to see ID.”

Pen­der­gast and D’Agos­ta showed their badges.

“Fine.” The po­lice­man turned to the two work­ers in jump­suits, who were busi­ly un­shoul­der­ing their equip­ment. “He’s all yours, guys.”

The dig­gers at­tacked the tomb­stone with vig­or, crow­bar­ring it up and rolling it aside. They cleared an area around the grave with brush hooks, then laid sev­er­al big, dirty tarps across the clear­ing. Next they be­gan cut­ting out the weedy turf with turf cut­ters, pop­ping out squares and stack­ing them like bricks on one of the tarps.

D’Agos­ta turned to Pen­der­gast. “So how did you find him?”

“I knew right away he had to be dead, and I as­sumed be­fore his death he must have been ei­ther home­less or men­tal­ly ill: there could be no oth­er rea­son why he’d prove so elu­sive in these days of the In­ter­net. But learn­ing more than that was a very dif­fi­cult task, even for my as­so­ciate, Mime, who as I men­tioned has a rare tal­ent for fer­ret­ing out ob­scure in­for­ma­tion. Ul­ti­mate­ly, we learned Beck­mann spent the last years of his life on the street, some­times un­der as­sumed names, cy­cling through var­ious flop­hous­es and home­less shel­ters in and around Yonkers.”

The turf was now stacked and the two work­ers be­gan dig­ging, their shov­els bit­ing al­ter­nate­ly in­to the soil. The medics stood to one side, talk­ing and smok­ing. There was an­oth­er faint roll of thun­der and light rain be­gan to fall, pat­ter­ing on­to the thick veg­eta­tion around them.

“It ap­pears our Mr. Beck­mann had a promis­ing start in life,” Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued. “Fa­ther a den­tist, moth­er a home­mak­er. He was ap­par­ent­ly quite bril­liant in col­lege. But both par­ents died dur­ing his ju­nior year. Af­ter grad­ua­tion, Beck­mann couldn’t seem to find out what it was he want­ed out of life. He knocked around Eu­rope for a while, then came back to the U.S. and sold ar­ti­facts on the flea mar­ket cir­cuit. He was a drinker who slid in­to al­co­holism, but his prob­lems were more men­tal than phys­ical-​a lost soul who just couldn’t find his way. That ten­ement was his last place of res­idence.” Pen­der­gast point­ed to­ward one of the de­cay­ing ten­ements ring­ing the grave­yard.

Chuff, chuff,went the shov­els. The dig­gers knew ex­act­ly what they were do­ing. Ev­ery move­ment was eco­nom­ical, al­most ma­chine­like in its pre­ci­sion. The brown hole deep­ened.

“How’d he die?”

“The death cer­tifi­cate list­ed metastat­ic lung can­cer. Gone un­treat­ed. We shall soon find out the truth.”

“You don’t think it was lung can­cer?”

Pen­der­gast smiled dry­ly. “I am skep­ti­cal.”

One of the shov­els thun­ked on rot­ten wood. The men knelt and, pick­ing up ma­son’s trow­els, be­gan clear­ing dirt from the lid of a plain wood­en cof­fin, find­ing its edges and trim­ming the sides of the pit. It seemed to D’Agos­ta the cof­fin couldn’t have been buried more than three feet deep. So much for the free six-​foot hole-​typ­ical gov­ern­ment, screw­ing ev­ery­one, even the dead.

“Pho­to op,” said the Yonkers sergeant.

The gravedig­gers climbed out, wait­ing while the pho­tog­ra­pher crouched at the edge and snapped a few shots from var­ious an­gles. Then they climbed back in, un­coiled a set of ny­lon straps, slipped them un­der the cof­fin, and gath­ered them to­geth­er on top.

“Okay. Lift.”

The medics pitched in. Soon the four had hoist­ed the cof­fin out of the hole and set it on the free tarp. There was a pow­er­ful smell of earth.

“Open it,” said the cop, a man of few words.

“Here?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“Those are the rules. Just to check and make sure.”

“Make sure of what?”

“Age, sex, gen­er­al con­di­tion . And most im­por­tant­ly, if there’s a body in there at all.”

“Right.”

One of the work­ers turned to D’Agos­ta. “It hap­pens. Last year we dug up a stiff over in Pel­ham, and you know what we found?”

“What?” D’Agos­ta was fair­ly sure he didn’t want to know.

“Twos­tiffs-​and a dead mon­key! We said it must’ve been an or­gan-​grinder who got mixed up with the Mafia.” He barked with laugh­ter and nudged his friend, who laughed in turn.

The work­ers now be­gan to at­tack the lid of the cof­fin, tap­ping around it with chis­els. The wood was so rot­ten it quick­ly broke loose As the lid was set aside, a stench of rot, mold, and formalde­hyde welled up. D’Agos­ta peered for­ward, mor­bid cu­rios­ity strug­gling with the queasi­ness he nev­er seemed ful­ly able to shake.

Gray light, soft­ened by the mist­ing rain, pen­etrat­ed the cof­fin and il­lu­mi­nat­ed the corpse

It lay, hands fold­ed on its chest, up­on a bed of rot­ting fab­ric, stuff­ing com­ing up, with a huge stain of con­gealed liq­uid, dark as old cof­fee, cov­er­ing the bot­tom. The body had col­lapsed from rot and had a de­flat­ed ap­pear­ance, as if all the air had es­caped along with life, leav­ing noth­ing but a skin ly­ing over bones. Var­ious bony pro­tu­ber­ances stuck through the rot­ting black suit: knees, el­bows, pelvis. The hands were brown and slimy, shed­ding their nails, the fin­ger bones pok­ing through the rot­ting ends. The eyes were sunken holes, the lips lop­sid­ed and drawn back in a kind of snarl. Beck­mann had been a wet corpse, and the rain was mak­ing him wet­ter.

The cop bent down, scan­ning the body. “Male Cau­casian, about fifty . ” He opened a tape mea­sure. “Six feet even, brown hair.” He straight­ened up again. “Gross match seems okay.”

Gross is right, D’Agos­ta thought as he looked at Pen­der­gast. De­spite the ap­palling de­cay, one thing was im­me­di­ate­ly clear: this corpse had not suf­fered the ghast­ly, vi­olent fate that met Grove and Cut­forth.

“Take him to the morgue,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured.

The cop looked at him.

“I want a com­plete au­top­sy,” Pen­der­gast said. “I want to know how this man­re­al­ly died.” { 41 }

Bryce Har­ri­man en­tered the of­fice of Ru­pert Ritts, man­agin­ged­itor of the­Post , to find the mean, ro­dent­like ed­itor stand­ing be­hind his enor­mous desk, a rare smile split­ting his blade­like face.

“Bryce, my man! Take a seat!”

Ritts nev­er talked qui­et­ly: his voice was high, and it cut right through a per­son. You might think he was deaf, ex­cept that his fer­ret­like ears seemed to pick up the faintest whis­per from the far­thest cor­ner, es­pe­cial­ly when it con­cerned him. More than one ed­itor had been fired for whis­per­ing Ritts’s nick­name from two hun­dred yards across a busy news­room. It was an ob­vi­ous nick­name, just the sub­sti­tu­tion of one vow­el for an­oth­er, but it re­al­ly got Ritts go­ing. Har­ri­man fig­ured it was be­cause he’d prob­ably been called that as a child on the play­ground ev­ery day and nev­er for­got it. Har­ri­man dis­liked Ritts, as he dis­liked al­most ev­ery­thing about the­New York Post . It was em­bar­rass­ing, phys­ical­ly em­bar­rass­ing, to be work­ing here.

He ad­just­ed his tie as he tried to make him­self com­fort­able in the hard wood­en chair Ritts tor­tured his re­porters with. The ed­itor came around and seat­ed him­self on the edge of the desk, light­ing up a Lucky Strike. He no doubt thought of him­self as a tough guy of the old school: hard-​drink­ing, tough-​talk­ing, cigarette-​hang­ing-​off-​the-​lip kind of guy. The fact that smok­ing on the job was now il­le­gal seemed to make him en­joy it all the more. Har­ri­man sus­pect­ed he al­so kept a cheap bot­tle of whiskey and a shot glass in a desk draw­er. Black polyester pants, scuffed brown shoes, blue socks, Flat­bush ac­cent. Ritts was ev­ery­thing that Har­ri­man’s fam­ily had trained him all his life, sent him to pri­vate school, giv­en him an Ivy League ed­uca­tion, nev­er to be.

And here he was. Har­ri­man’s boss.

“This Menck sto­ry is fab­ulous, Har­ri­man. Fuck­ing fab­ulous.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“It was a re­al stroke of ge­nius, Har­ri­man, find­ing this guy the day be­fore he left for the Vir­gin Is­lands.”

“Galá­pa­gos.”

“What­ev­er. I have to tell you, when I first read your piece, I had my doubts. It struck me as a lot of New Age bull­shit. But it re­al­ly hit a chord with our read­ers. News­stand circ’s up eight per­cent.”

“That’s great.” Here at the­Post, it was all about cir­cu­la­tion. In the news­room of theTimes , where he used to work, “cir­cu­la­tion” had been a dirty word.

“Great? It’s fuck­ing fab­ulous. That’s what re­port­ing is all about. Read­ers. I wish some of these oth­er jok­ers around here would re­al­ize that.”

The pierc­ing voice was cut­ting a wide swath across the news­room be­yond. Har­ri­man squirmed un­com­fort­ably in the wood­en seat.

“Just when the dev­il-​killings sto­ry was flag­ging, you find this guy Menck. I have to hand it to you. Ev­ery oth­er pa­per in town was sit­ting around with their thumbs up their ass­es, wait­ing for the next killing, but you-​you went out and­made the news.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Ritts sucked in a few quarts of smoke and dropped the cigarette on the floor of his of­fice, grind­ing it in with his toe, where about twen­ty oth­ers lay, all nice­ly flat­tened. He ex­haled with a noisy, em­phy­semic whis­tle. He lit an­oth­er, looked up at Har­ri­man, eyed him up and down.

Har­ri­man shift­ed again in his chair. Was there some­thing wrong with the way he was dressed? Of course not: it was one of those things he’d been schooled in from day one. He knew just when to break out the madras, when to put away the seer­suck­er, knew the ac­cept­able shade of cor­dovan for tas­seled loafers. And any­way, Ritts was the last per­son who could crit­icize any­one else’s taste in clothes.

“TheN­ation­al En­quir­er ’s picked up the sto­ry,USA To­day ,Reg­is,Good Day New York.I like the feel of this, Har­ri­man. You’ve done well. In fact, well enough to make you a spe­cial cor­re­spon­dent at the crime desk.”

Har­ri­man was as­ton­ished. He hadn’t ex­pect­ed this. He tried to con­trol his fa­cial mus­cles: he didn’t want to be seen grin­ning like an id­iot, es­pe­cial­ly to Ritts. He nod­ded his head. “Thank you very much, Mr. Ritts. I re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate it.”

“Any re­porter that push­es the circ up eight per­cent in a week is gonna get no­ticed. It comes with a ten-​thou­sand-​dol­lar raise, ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly.”

“Thank you again.”

The man­ag­ing ed­itor seemed to be ob­serv­ing Har­ri­man with ill-​con­cealed amuse­ment, look­ing him up and down again, eyes lin­ger­ing on his tie, his striped shirt, his shoes. “Lis­ten, Har­ri­man, as I said, your sto­ry touched a chord. Thanks to you, a bunch of New Agers and dooms­day freaks have start­ed con­gre­gat­ing in the park in front of Cut­forth’s build­ing.”

Har­ri­man nod­ded.

“It’s noth­ing much. Yet. They’re gath­er­ing spon­ta­neous­ly, light­ing can­dles, chant­ing. Fly­ing Nun kind of shit. What we need is fol­low-​up. First, a sto­ry about these guys, a se­ri­ous sto­ry, a re­spect­ful sto­ry. A sto­ry that’ll let all the oth­er freaks know there’s a dai­ly gath­er­ing they’re miss­ing out on. If we han­dle this right, we could build up quite a crowd up there. We could stim­ulate some TV cov­er­age. Who knows, there might even be demon­stra­tions. See what I’m get­ting at? Like I said: here at the­Post , we don’t sit around wait­ing for news to hap­pen, we go out and­make it hap­pen.”

“Yes, Mr. Ritts.”

Ritts lit up again. “Can I give you some friend­ly ad­vice? Just be­tween you and me.” “Sure.”

“Lose the repp ties and the pen­ny loafers. You look like a god­damn­Times re­porter. This is the­Post. This is where the ex­cite­ment is. You sure as hell don’t want to be back with those ass-​puck­ered types over there, do you? Now, go on out and talk to ev­ery nut who’s shak­ing a Bible. You’ve touched a nerve, now you’ve got to keep the pres­sure on, keep the sto­ry build­ing. And bring in a cou­ple of col­or­ful per­son­al­ities. Find the lead­er of this rab­ble.”

“What if there isn’t a lead­er?”

“Then­make one. Set him up on a pedestal, pin a damn medal on him. I smell some­thing big here. And you know what? In thir­ty years, I’ve nev­er called a bad one.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Ritts.” Har­ri­man tried to keep the con­tempt out of his voice. He would do what Ritts want­ed, but he would do it in his own way.

Ritts sucked deep on his cigarette, to­bac­co hiss­ing and spit­ting. Then he tossed the butt on­to the floor and ground it out again with his foot. He coughed and smiled, dis­play­ing a rack of un­even teeth as yel­lowed as the stem of a corn­cob pipe.

“Go get ‘em, Har­ri­man!” he cack­led.

{ 42 }

Vasquez worked off a piece of green chile beef jerky, chewed itmed­ita­tive­ly, swal­lowed, and took a swig of bot­tled wa­ter. He went back to the cryp­tic cross­word from theTimes of Lon­don, pon­dered, made an­oth­er en­try, erased an ear­li­er one, then set the puz­zle aside.

He sighed. He al­ways felt a lit­tle nos­tal­gic at the close of an op­er­ation: know­ing he would have to leave, that all his prepa­ra­tions and de­lib­er­ations and the cozy lit­tle world he had cre­at­ed would quick­ly be­come an­cient his­to­ry, pawed over by po­lice of­fi­cers and pho­tog­ra­phers. At the same time, he looked for­ward to see­ing sun­light again, breath­ing fresh air, and lis­ten­ing to the thun­der of surf. Fun­ny, though, how he nev­er felt quite so free and alive out­side as he did with­in a cramped kill nest, on the brink of a kill.

He checked his equip­ment yet again. He looked through the scope, made an in­finites­imal cor­rec­tion with the windage ad­juster, then raised his eye to ex­am­ine the flash hider. Just a few min­utes now. The box mag­azine held four rounds, with an­oth­er in the cham­ber. All he’d need was two. Once again he shed his clothes and put on his dis­guise.

Five min­utes to one. He glanced re­gret­ful­ly around his nest, at ev­ery­thing he would have to leave be­hind. How many times had he ac­tu­al­ly had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fin­ish aTimes cryp­tic? He rest­ed his eye against the scope and watched. The min­utes ticked past.

Once again the door to the porte-​cochère opened. Vasquez slowed his breath­ing, slowed his heart rate. Once again Pen­der­gast’s head and shoul­ders ap­peared in the ret­icle. This time Vasquez couldn’t make out the but­ler, who must have been stand­ing too far in­side the door to be seen, but he was clear­ly there, be­cause Pen­der­gast was faced back to­ward the door­way, ob­vi­ous­ly talk­ing to some­body. So much the bet­ter: an off-​cen­ter shot to the back of the head would be just as hard to an­alyze lat­er.

His breath sus­pend­ed, tim­ing his shots be­tween heart­beats, Vasquez pressed his cheek against the peb­bled stock and squeezed the trig­ger slow­ly. The weapon bucked in his hands; in a flash, he’d drawn the bolt, re­sight­ed, and fired again.

The first shot had been per­fect­ly placed. It spun the tar­get in ex­act­ly the right way, the next shot com­ing a split sec­ond lat­er, en­ter­ing just above the ear, the head ex­plod­ing in all di­rec­tions. Pen­der­gast fell back in­to the shad­ows of the door frame and dis­ap­peared.

Vasquez now moved with a swift­ness born of years of prac­tice. Leav­ing the lights out, he threw the gun and lap­top in­to a duf­fel, slung it over his shoul­der, and snugged on the nightvi­sion gog­gles that would help him to get out the back of the dark­ened build­ing. He plugged the shoot­ing hole, strode to the door, and with the bat­tery-​pow­ered screw­driv­er backed out the four screws that held the door shut. Then he stripped off the gaffing tape seal­ing the jambs and qui­et­ly opened the door, step­ping noise­less­ly in­to the hall.

A flash of light over­load­ed his gog­gles, blind­ing him; he tore them off, reach­ing down to pull out a sidearm, but a fig­ure in the hall­way moved too fast; he was slammed in­to the wall, still blind­ed, and the gun went skit­ter­ing down the pas­sage.

Vasquez swung wild­ly at his at­tack­er, bare­ly con­nect­ing, and re­ceived a tremen­dous blow to the ribs in re­turn. He swung again, this time con­nect­ing solid­ly, drop­ping his as­sailant. It was the Southamp­ton cop. In a fury, Vasquez yanked out his knife and leaped on him, aim­ing for the heart. A foot lashed out from one side; he felt it con­nect with his fore­arm, heard the snap, fell to the floor, and was im­me­di­ate­ly pinned.

The cop was on him. And there, be­yond the bril­liant glow of the lamp,he stood. Pen­der­gast. The man he had just killed.

Vasquez stared, his mind in­stant­ly re­ar­rang­ing the facts.

It had been a set­up. They must’ve known al­most from the start what was go­ing on. Pen­der­gast had played his part per­fect­ly. Vasquez had shot some dum­my, some spe­cial-​ef­fects dum­my. Moth­er of God.

He had failed. Failed.

Vasquez couldn’t quite be­lieve it.

Pen­der­gast was star­ing at him close­ly, frown­ing. Sud­den­ly his eyes widened, as if in un­der­stand­ing. “His mouth!” he said sharply.

D’Agos­ta shoved some­thing wood­en be­tween his teeth, as he would for a dog or an epilep­tic. But it wouldn’t do any good, Vasquez thought as the pain be­gan to build in his bro­ken arm. That wasn’t where he car­ried his cyanide. The nee­dle had been in the tip of his pinkie fin­ger, shot off many years ago and now har­nessed to an­oth­er pur­pose. He pressed the pros­thet­ic fin­ger­tip hard in­to his palm, felt the am­poule break, pressed the nee­dle in­to his skin. The pain died away as numb­ness be­gan steal­ing up his arm.

The day I fail is the day I die .

{ 43 }

The cab pulled up at the grand court­yard of the Helm­sley­Palace. D’Agos­ta has­tened around the cab and opened the door for Hay­ward, who got out, look­ing around at the fan­ci­ful top­iaries cov­ered with lights, the Baroque fa­cade of the Helm­sley Palace ris­ing around her.

“This is where we’re hav­ing din­ner?”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. “Le Cirque 2000.”

“Oh my God. When I said a nice din­ner, I didn’t mean this.”

D’Agos­ta took her arm and led her to the door. “Why not? If we’re go­ing to start some­thing, let’s start it right.”

Hay­ward knew that Le Cirque 2000 was pos­si­bly the most ex­pen­sive restau­rant in New York City. She had al­ways felt un­com­fort­able when men spent a pile on her, as if mon­ey was some­how the way to her heart. But this time it felt dif­fer­ent. It said some­thing about Vin­nie D’Agos­ta, about how he looked at their re­la­tion­ship, that bod­ed well for the fu­ture.

Fu­ture? She won­dered why that word had even en­tered her mind. This was a first date­sort of. D’Agos­ta wasn’t even di­vorced, had a wife and kid in Cana­da. True, he was in­ter­est­ing, and he was a damn good cop.Take it easy and see where it goes-​that’s all.

They en­tered the restau­rant-​jammed, even on a Sun­day night-​and were met by one of those maître d’s who man­aged to con­vey an out­ward ex­pres­sion of grov­el­ing sub­servience while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly pro­ject­ing in­ner con­tempt. He re­gret­ted to in­form them that, de­spite their reser­va­tion, the ta­ble wasn’t ready; if they would care to make them­selves com­fort­able in the bar, it shouldn’t be more than thir­ty min­utes, forty at the out­side.

“Ex­cuse me. Did you say forty min­utes?” D’Agos­ta spoke in a qui­et yet men­ac­ing way.

“There’s a large par­ty . I’ll see what I can do.”

“You’llsee what you can do?” D’Agos­ta smiled and took a step clos­er. “Or you’ll­do it?”

“I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“I have no doubt that what you­can do is get us a ta­ble in fif­teen min­utes, and that is what youwill do.”

“Of course. Nat­ural­ly, sir.” Now the maître d’ was in full re­treat. “And in the mean­time,” he went on, voice ar­ti­fi­cial­ly high and bright, “I’ll have a bot­tle of cham­pagne sent to your ta­ble, com­pli­ments of the house.”

D’Agos­ta took her arm and they went in­to the bar, which was dec­orat­ed with a con­fu­sion of neon lights Hay­ward fig­ured must some­how rep­re­sent the “cir­cus” theme of the restau­rant. It was fun-​if you didn’t have to spend too long in there.

They sat down at a ta­ble, and a wait­er soon ap­peared un­bid­den with menus, two glass­es, and a chilled bot­tle of Veuve Clic­quot.

She laughed. “That was pret­ty ef­fec­tive, the way you han­dled that maître d’.”

“If I can’t in­tim­idate a wait­er, what kind of a cop am I?”

“I think he was ex­pect­ing a tip.”

D’Agos­ta glanced at her quick­ly. “You do?”

“But you man­aged it all right and saved your­self some mon­ey.”

D’Agos­ta grunt­ed. “Next time I’ll give him a fiv­er.”

“That would be worse than noth­ing at all. The go­ing rate is at least twen­ty.”

“Je­sus. Life is com­pli­cat­ed at the top.” He raised his glass. “Toast?”

She raised hers.

“To . ” He hes­itat­ed. “To New York’s finest.”

She felt re­lieved he hadn’t said what she ex­pect­ed. They clinked glass­es. She sipped, look­ing at him while he stud­ied the menu the wait­er had left. It seemed he’d slimmed down a bit since she first ran in­to him at Cut­forth’s apart­ment. He’d men­tioned some­thing about work­ing out ev­ery day, and it was pret­ty ev­ident he wasn’t kid­ding. Work­ing out and shoot­ing at the 27th Precinct range. She took in his hard, clean jaw­line, jet-​black hair, soft brown eyes. He had a nice face, a re­al­ly nice face. He seemed to be that rarest of finds in New York: a gen­uine­ly de­cent guy. With strong, old-​fash­ioned val­ues, sol­id, kind, steady-​but no wimp, as proved by his sur­prise per­for­mance three nights be­fore in her of­fice .

She found her­self blush­ing and tin­gling at the same time, and she cov­ered it by rais­ing her own menu. She glanced over the list of main cours­es and was hor­ri­fied to see that the cheap­est, the paupi­ette of black sea bass, was thir­ty-​nine dol­lars. The cheap­est ap­pe­tiz­er was twen­ty-​three dol­lars, for the braised pigs’ feet and cheeks (no, thank you). Her eye looked in vain for any­thing un­der twen­ty dol­lars, fi­nal­ly com­ing to rest on the dessert menu, where the first item that caught her eye-​a donut!-was ten dol­lars. Well, there was no help for it. She swal­lowed and be­gan pick­ing out her dish­es, try­ing to avoid adding up the sums in her head.

Vin­cent was look­ing over the wine list, and she had to ad­mit he hadn’t lost any col­or, at least not yet. In fact, he seemed pos­itive­ly ex­pan­sive.

“Red or white?” he asked.

“I think I’m go­ing to have fish.”

“White, then. The Cake­bread Chardon­nay.” He shut the menu and smiled at her. “This is fun, don’t you think?”

“I’ve nev­er been in a restau­rant like this in my life.”

“Me nei­ther, to tell you the truth.”

By the time their ta­ble was ready, fif­teen min­utes lat­er, the bot­tle of cham­pagne was half gone and Hay­ward was feel­ing no pain. The maître d’ seat­ed them in the first din­ing room, a spa­cious cham­ber done in op­ulent Sec­ond Em­pire style with gild­ed mold­ings, high win­dows with silk bro­cade draperies, and crys­tal chan­de­liers, the ef­fect cu­ri­ous­ly en­hanced by sus­pend­ed neon light­ing and sev­er­al flo­ral ar­range­ments as large as small ele­phants. The on­ly draw­back was the large par­ty next to them, a ta­ble of loud peo­ple from one of the out­er bor­oughs-​Queens, by the ac­cent.Well, you can’t bar peo­ple at the door be­cause they have the wrong ac­cent, she thought.

D’Agos­ta or­dered for them, and Hay­ward was once again im­pressed with his self­as­sur­ance, which she hadn’t ex­pect­ed, es­pe­cial­ly in a place like this.

“Where’d you learn so much about haute cui­sine?” she asked.

“Are you kid­ding?” D’Agos­ta grinned. “I rec­og­nized about half the words on the menu. I was just wing­ing it.”

“Well, you could have fooled me.”

“Maybe it’s all the time I’m spend­ing with Pen­der­gast. He’s rub­bing off on me.”

She nudged him. “Isn’t that Michael Dou­glas in the cor­ner?”

He turned. “So it is.” Turned back, unim­pressed.

She nod­ded. “And look who’s over there.” A wom­an sat in a qui­et cor­ner by her­self, eat­ing a plate of french fries, dip­ping each one in a large dish of ketchup and push­ing them in­to her mouth with ev­ident sat­is­fac­tion.

D’Agos­ta stared. “She kin­da looks fa­mil­iar. Who is she?”

“You been liv­ing un­der a rock? Madon­na.”

“Re­al­ly? Must’ve dyed her hair or some­thing.”

“This would make a great scene in a nov­el. Maybe your next.”

“There won’t be a next.”

“Why not? I loved those two books you wrote. You’ve got re­al tal­ent.”

He shook his head. “Tal­ent-​maybe. My prob­lem is, I don’t have the touch.”

“What touch?”

He rubbed his fin­gers to­geth­er. “The mon­ey touch.”

“A lot of peo­ple nev­er get one nov­el pub­lished. You got two. And they were­good . You can’t give it up to­tal­ly, Vin­nie.”

He shook his head. “Did I ev­er tell you this isn’t my fa­vorite sub­ject?”

“I’ll drop it if you want. For now. I ac­tu­al­ly want­ed to ask you a ques­tion. I know we shouldn’t be talk­ing shop, but how in the world did Pen­der­gast know that guy-​what’s his name, Vasquez-​was gun­ning for him? In­ter­pol’s been chas­ing that killer for ten years, and he’s a pro if ev­er there was one.”

“I could hard­ly be­lieve it my­self. But when he ex­plained, it made per­fect sense. Bullard-​who was no doubt be­hind it-​felt threat­ened enough to set two goons on me af­ter our first in­ter­view. Pen­der­gast fig­ured Bullard was des­per­ate to leave the coun­try and wouldn’t let any­body stand in his way. He al­so fig­ured Bullard would try again, this time again­sthim . So he asked him­self how a pro­fes­sion­al killer would do it. The an­swer was ob­vi­ous: set your­self up in the va­cant build­ing across the street from his house. So right af­ter we took Bullard down­town, Pen­der­gast be­gan watch­ing the board­ed-​up win­dows of that build­ing with a tele­scope. Soon enough, he no­ticed a fresh hole cut in the ply­wood. Bin­go! That’s when he let me in on it, told me what he was plan­ning to do. Next, Pen­der­gast es­tab­lished a rou­tine so he could con­trol when the man would strike.”

“But how did he have the guts to walk in and out of his house, leav­ing him­self ex­posed?”

“When­ev­er he stepped out of the build­ing, he had Proc­tor train the tele­scope on the peep­hole. At one point, he had me shoot out a bulb on the street at a crit­ical mo­ment. That’s when he tagged the man’s weapon, knew the killer had missed his op­por­tu­ni­ty for the day. Fig­ured he’d there­fore act the next. So last night we had the dum­my all ready for him. Proc­tor han­dled it per­fect­ly, wheeled it out so just the up­per part was vis­ible.”

“But why not just go in and take the guy out be­fore­hand? Why run the risk?”

“No proof, for one thing. On top of that, the guy was bar­ri­cad­ed in there-​he might have slipped through our fin­gers. As you said, he was a re­al pro. And for sure he would have put up re­sis­tance. His vul­ner­able mo­ment was while­he was es­cap­ing. We just wait­ed for him to run in­to our trap.”

Hay­ward nod­ded. “That ex­plains a lot.”

“Too bad the guy took the sui­cide route.”

Their first cours­es ar­rived, whisked to their ta­ble by no less than three wait­ers, with the som­me­li­er hard on their heels to fill their wine­glass­es and an­oth­er func­tionary to top off their wa­ter glass­es.

“Now I’ve got a ques­tion fory­ou ,” said D’Agos­ta. “How’d you make cap­tain? So fast, I mean.”

“There’s no great mys­tery. I saw how things were go­ing, so I went and got my M.S. from NYU in foren­sic psy­chol­ogy. A de­gree re­al­ly helps these days-​and, of course, it didn’t hurt that I’m a wom­an.”

“Af­fir­ma­tive ac­tion?”

“More like be­lat­ed ac­tion. Once the lid of op­pres­sion was lift­ed off the force by Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er, nat­ural­ly some of us rose to the sur­face. They looked around in a pan­ic and re­al­ized there weren’t any high-​lev­el wom­en on the force-​be­cause they’d been dis­crim­inat­ing against us for­ev­er-​and be­gan pro­mot­ing. I was in the right place at the right time, with the right test scores and cre­den­tials.”

“Am­bi­tion and tal­ent had noth­ing to do with it?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” She smiled.

“Nei­ther would I.” Vin­cent sipped his wine. “Where’d you grow up?”

“Ma­con, Geor­gia. My dad was a welder, my mom a home­mak­er. I had an old­er broth­er, killed in Viet­nam. Friend­ly fire. I was eight.”

“I’m sor­ry.”

Hay­ward shook her head. “My par­ents nev­er re­cov­ered. Dad died a year lat­er, Mom the year af­ter that. Can­cer, both of them, but I think it was more from grief. He was their pride and joy.”

“That’s re­al­ly hard.”

“That was a long time ago, and I had a won­der­ful grand­moth­er in Is­lip who raised me. It helped me re­al­ize I was pret­ty much alone in this world and that no­body would kick ass for me. I’d have to do the kick­ing my­self.”

“You’ve done a good job of it.”

“It’s a game.”

He paused. “You re­al­ly shoot­ing for com­mis­sion­er?”

She smiled, say­ing noth­ing, then raised her glass. “Nice to have you back in the Big Ap­ple where you be­long, Vin­nie.”

“I’ll drink to that. You don’t know how I’ve missed this town.”

“Best place in the world to be a cop.”

“When I was a lieu­tenant, back dur­ing the mu­se­um mur­ders, I nev­er re­al­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed it. I thought it would be great to get out of the city, live in the coun­try, breathe fresh air for a change, lis­ten to the birds chirp­ing, watch the leaves turn col­or. I want­ed to go fish­ing ev­ery Sun­day. But you know what? Fish­ing is bor­ing, the birds wake you up in the morn­ing, and in­stead of Le Cirque, up in Ra­di­um Hot Springs you’ve got Bet­ty Daye’s Fam­ily-​Style Restau­rant.”

“Where you can feed a fam­ily of four for what it costs here to buy a donut.”

“Yeah, but who wants chick­en-​fried steak at four nine­ty-​nine when you can have duck ma­gret dust­ed with Es­pelette pi­men­to for on­ly forty-​one bucks?”

Hay­ward laughed. “That’s what I love about New York-​noth­ing’s nor­mal. Ev­ery­thing’s to­tal­ly over the top. Here we are hav­ing din­ner in the same room with Madon­na and Michael Dou­glas.”

“New York’ll drive you crazy, but it’s nev­er bor­ing.”

She took a sip of wine and the wait­er rushed over to re­fill her glass. “Is there re­al­ly a town called Ra­di­um Hot Springs up there? It sounds like a joke.”

“I’ve been there. I’m pret­ty sure it’s re­al.”

“What was it like?”

“I kid about it, but it wasn’t a bad place. Small town, good val­ues. Cana­di­ans are a friend­ly bunch. But it wasn’t home. I al­ways felt like an ex­ile, you know what I mean? And it was too damn qui­et. I thought I’d go crazy, I couldn’t con­cen­trate with all those chirp­ing birds. Give me the roar of rock-​sol­id Fri­day af­ter­noon Mid­town grid­lock, stretch­ing from riv­er to riv­er. Man, that’s the voice of life it­self.”

Hay­ward laughed as their main cours­es ar­rived with a flur­ry of white-​gloved wait­ers.

“I could def­inite­ly get used to this,” said D’Agos­ta, lean­ing back and tuck­ing in­to his duck ma­gret, fol­low­ing it with a swig of Chardon­nay.

Hay­ward placed a sea scal­lopé­tu­vée in her mouth and sa­vored it. She didn’t be­lieve she had ev­er tast­ed any­thing quite so good in her life. “You did well, Vin­nie,” she said with a smile. “You re­al­ly did well.”

{ 44 }

D’Agos­ta had nev­er been in the place be­fore, but ev­ery­thingabout it was dis­mal­ly fa­mil­iar. At least the sharp tang of al­co­hol and formalde­hyde and God on­ly knew what oth­er chem­icals helped chase away a lin­ger­ing hang­over. He and Lau­ra Hay­ward hadn’t left the restau­rant un­til 11:30 the night be­fore. At the som­me­li­er’s sug­ges­tion, he’d splurged on a de­mi bot­tle of dessert wine-​Château d’Yquem 1990, it had cost him a week’s pay at least-​and it had proved to be the most won­der­ful wine he’d ev­er tast­ed. The whole evening had proved won­der­ful, in fact.

What a tragedy that it had to be fol­lowed up by this.

The min­gled smell of for­ma­lin, bod­ily flu­ids, and de­com­po­si­tion; the over­ly clean stain­less-​steel sur­faces; the bank of re­frig­er­at­ing units; the sin­is­ter-​look­ing di­ener lurk­ing in the back­ground; the at­tend­ing pathol­ogist-​and of course the ca­dav­er, star of the show, ly­ing in the mid­dle of the room on an old mar­ble au­top­sy ta­ble, il­lu­mi­nat­ed by its very own spot­light. It had been au­top­sied-​dis­as­sem­bled was more like it-​and a bunch of with­ered, sliced-​and-​diced or­gans lay ar­rayed around the corpse, each in its own plas­tic con­tain­er: brain, heart, lungs, liv­er, kid­neys, and a bunch of oth­er dark lumps D’Agos­ta did not care to guess at.

Still, this wasn’t as bad as some. Maybe it was be­cause the pa­rade of in­sects had come and gone and the corpse had de­cayed to the point where it was as much skele­ton as flesh. Or per­haps it was be­cause the smell of sup­pu­ra­tion had al­most been re­placed by a smell of earth. Or maybe-​D’Agos­ta hoped-​maybe he was fi­nal­ly get­ting used to it. Or was he? He felt that fa­mil­iar tight­en­ing in his throat. At least he’d been smart enough to skip break­fast.

He watched the doc­tor stand­ing at the head of the corpse, round black glass­es pulled down on his nose, thumb­ing through a clip­board. He was a la­con­ic type, with salt-​and-​pep­per hair and a slow, eco­nom­ical way of talk­ing. He looked ir­ri­tat­ed. “Well, well,” he said, flip­ping over pa­pers. “Well, well.”

Pen­der­gast was rest­less­ly cir­cling the corpse. “The death cer­tifi­cate list­ed lung can­cer as the cause of death,” he said.

“I am aware of that,” the doc­tor replied. “I was the at­tend­ing physi­cianthen , and at your­re­quest , I have been hauled back here to be the at­tend­ing pathol­ogist­now .” The man’s voice was brit­tle with grievance.

“I thank you.”

The doc­tor nod­ded terse­ly, then went back to the clip­board. “I’ve per­formed a com­plete au­top­sy on the ca­dav­er, and the lab re­sults have come back. Now, what is it, ex­act­ly, that you would like to know?”

“First things first. I’m as­sum­ing you con­firmed this is in­deed the body of Ranier Beck­mann?”

“With­out ques­tion. I checked den­tal records.”

“Ex­cel­lent. Please pro­ceed.”

“I’ll sum­ma­rize my orig­inal records and di­ag­no­sis.” The doc­tor flipped over some pages. “On March 4, 1995, the pa­tient, Ranier Beck­mann, was brought to the E.R. by am­bu­lance. The symp­toms in­di­cat­ed ad­vanced stages of can­cer. Tests con­firmed an ex­ten­sive-​stage small-​cell lung car­ci­no­ma with dis­tant metas­tases. Es­sen­tial­ly a hope­less case. The can­cer had spread through­out the body, and gen­er­al or­gan fail­ure was im­mi­nent. Mr. Beck­mann nev­er left the hos­pi­tal and died two weeks lat­er.”

“You’re sure he died in the hos­pi­tal?”

“Yes. I saw him ev­ery day on my rounds un­til he died.”

“And your rec­ol­lec­tion, go­ing back over a decade, is still clear?”

“Ab­so­lute­ly.” The doc­tor stared at Pen­der­gast over the tops of his glass­es.

“Pro­ceed.”

“I con­duct­ed this au­top­sy in two stages. The first was to test my orig­inal de­ter­mi­na­tion of cause of death. There had been no au­top­sy. Stan­dard pro­ce­dure. The cause of death was ev­ident, there was no fam­ily re­quest, and no sus­pi­cion of foul play. The state ob­vi­ous­ly doesn’t pay for an au­top­sy just for the hell of it.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“The sec­ond stage of my au­top­sy, as per your re­quest, was to iden­ti­fy any un­usu­al patholo­gies, con­di­tions, wounds, tox­ins, or oth­er ir­reg­ular­ities as­so­ci­at­ed with the body.”

“And the re­sults?”

“I con­firmed Beck­mann died of gen­er­al or­gan fail­ure as­so­ci­at­ed with can­cer.”

Pen­der­gast quick­ly fixed his sil­very eyes again on the doc­tor. He said noth­ing: the skep­ti­cal look said it all.

The doc­tor re­turned the look steadi­ly. Then he con­tin­ued, voice calm. “The pri­ma­ry was a tu­mor in his left lung the size of a grape­fruit. There were gross sec­ondary metastat­ic tu­mors in the kid­neys, liv­er, and brain. The on­ly sur­pris­ing thing about this man’s death is that he hadn’t showed up in the emer­gen­cy room ear­li­er. He must have been in tremen­dous pain, bare­ly able to func­tion.”

“Go on,” Pen­der­gast said in a low voice.

“Aside from the can­cer, the pa­tient showed ad­vanced cir­rho­sis of the liv­er, heart dis­ease, and a suite of oth­er chron­ic, but not yet acute, symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with al­co­holism and poor nu­tri­tion.”

“And?”

“That’s all. No tox­ins or drugs present in the blood or tis­sues. No un­usu­al wounds or patholo­gies, at least none de­tectable af­ter em­balm­ing and al­most ten years in the ground.”

“No sign of heat?”

“Heat? What do you mean?”

“No in­di­ca­tion that the body had ex­pe­ri­enced the pe­ri­mortem ap­pli­ca­tion of heat?”

“Ab­so­lute­ly not. Heat would have caused a host of ob­vi­ous cell changes. I’ve looked at forty, maybe fifty sec­tions of tis­sue from this ca­dav­er, and not one showed changes as­so­ci­at­ed with heat. What an ex­traor­di­nary ques­tion, Mr. Pen­der­gast.”

Pen­der­gast spoke again, his voice still low. “Small-​cell lung can­cer is caused al­most ex­clu­sive­ly by smok­ing. Am I cor­rect, Doc­tor?”

“You are cor­rect.”

“That he died of can­cer is be­yond a rea­son­able doubt, then, Doc­tor?” Pen­der­gast al­lowed a skep­ti­cal tone to tinge his voice.

Ex­as­per­at­ed, the pathol­ogist reached down, grabbed two halves of a shriv­eled brown lump, and shoved them in Pen­der­gast’s face. “There it is, Mr. Pen­der­gast. If you don’t be­lieve me, be­lievethis . Take it. Feel the ma­lig­nan­cy of this tu­mor. As sure as I’m stand­ing here,that’s what killed Beck­mann.”

It was a long, silent walk back to the car. Pen­der­gast slipped be­hind the wheel-​to­day he’d driv­en him­self to Yonkers-​and they ex­it­ed the park­ing lot. As they left the gray hud­dle of down­town be­hind, Pen­der­gast spoke at last.

“Beck­mann spoke to us quite elo­quent­ly, wouldn’t you say, Vin­cent?”

“Yeah. And he stank, too.”

“What he said, how­ev­er, was-​I must con­fess-​some­thing of a sur­prise. I shall have to write the good doc­tor a let­ter of thanks.” He swung the wheel sharply, and the Rolls turned on­to Ex­ec­utive Boule­vard, pass­ing the on-​ramp for the Saw Mill Riv­er Park­way.

D’Agos­ta looked over in sur­prise. “Aren’t we head­ing back to New York City?”

Pen­der­gast shook his head. “Jere­my Grove died ex­act­ly two weeks ago. Cut­forth, one week ago. We came to Yonkers to get some an­swers. I’m not leav­ing un­til we have them.”

{ 45 }

The bus inched through a long, white-​tiled tun­nel in stop-​and-​go traf­fic and emerged from an un­der­pass, a long ramp amidst steel gird­ers in semi­dark­ness.

New York City,thought the Rev­erend Wayne P. Buck.

Be­yond the web of steel, he could see limpid sun­light, sooty ten­ements, a brief glimpse of skyscrap­ers. The bus lurched back in­to dark­ness, the brakes chuff­ing as the line of traf­fic stopped again.

Buck felt an in­de­scrib­able mix of emo­tions: ex­cite­ment, fear, des­tiny, a sense of con­fronting the un­known. It was the same thing he had felt a cou­ple of years ago, the day he’d been re­leased from prison af­ter serv­ing nine years for mur­der two. It had been a long, slow slide for Buck: delin­quen­cy, failed jobs, booze, steal­ing cars, bank rob­bery-​and then the fate­ful day when ev­ery­thing went wrong and he’d end­ed up shoot­ing a con­ve­nience store clerk. Killing a poor, in­no­cent man. As the bus crept for­ward again, his mind went back over the ar­rest, tri­al, sen­tence of twen­ty-​five to life, the man­acled walk in­to the bow­els of the prison. A pe­ri­od of dark­ness, best for­got­ten.

And then, con­ver­sion. Born again in prison. Just as Je­sus raised up the whore, Mary Mag­dalen, He raised up the al­co­holic, the mur­der­er, the man who had been cast away by all oth­ers, even his own fam­ily.

Af­ter his sal­va­tion, Buck be­gan read­ing the Bible: again and again, cov­er-​to-​cov­er, Old Tes­ta­ment and New. He start­ed preach­ing a lit­tle, a few words here, a help­ing hand there. He formed a study group. Grad­ual­ly, he’d built up the re­spect and trust of the pris­on­ers who had ears for the Good Word. He was soon spend­ing most of his time as­sist­ing in the sal­va­tion of oth­ers. That, and play­ing chess. There wasn’t much else to do: mag­azines were show­cas­es of ma­te­ri­al­ism, tele­vi­sion was worse, and books oth­er than the Bible seemed full of pro­fan­ity, vi­olence, and sex.

As pa­role grew near, Buck be­gan to feel that his min­istry in prison was prepa­ra­tion for some­thing else; that God had a greater pur­pose for him which would be re­vealed in time. Af­ter he got out, he drift­ed from one small town to an­oth­er, most­ly along the bor­der be­tween Cal­ifor­nia and Ari­zona, preach­ing the Word, let­ting God clothe and feed him. His read­ing be­gan to ex­pand: first Bun­yan, then St. Au­gus­tine, then Dante in trans­la­tion. And al­ways, he wait­ed for the call.

And now, when he least ex­pect­ed it, the call had come. God’s pur­pose for him stood re­vealed. Who would have thought that his call would take him to New York City, the great­est con­cen­tra­tion of spir­itu­al bankrupt­cy and evil in all Amer­ica? Ve­gas, L.A., nd oth­er such places were mere­ly sideshows to New York. But that was the beau­ty of do­ing God’s will. Just as God had sent St. Paul to Rome-​in­to the black heart of pa­gan­ism-​so had He sent Wayne P. Buck to New York.

The bus stopped, lurched again, ev­ery­one’s heads sway­ing in uni­son with the move­ments. They were now on some kind of con­crete ramp, climb­ing a ris­ing spi­ral be­tween criss­crossed gird­ers. It put Buck in mind of Dante’s cir­cles of hell. In a mo­ment, the bus plunged back in­to dark­ness and the stench of diesel, the sound of air brakes hiss­ing de­mon­ical­ly. It seemed they were at the de­pot-​but a de­pot such as Buck had nev­er seen or imag­ined in all his born days.

The bus ground to a halt. The driv­er said some­thing un­in­tel­li­gi­ble over the pub­lic ad­dress sys­tem, nd there was a great sigh of air as the door opened. Buck ex­it­ed. The oth­ers all had to wait for their bag­gage, but he was a free man, with­out pos­ses­sions or mon­ey, just as it had been six years ago when he walked out in­to the bright sun­light of Joli­et.

With­out know­ing where he was go­ing he fol­lowed a crush of peo­ple down a se­ries of es­ca­la­tors and through an im­mense ter­mi­nal. Mo­ments lat­er he found him­self out­doors, on the pave­ment of a great street. He stopped and looked around, feel­ing a rush of dread min­gling with the spir­itu­al vig­or.

As I walked through the wilder­ness of this world . Je­sus had spent forty days and nights in the desert tempt­ed by the dev­il, nd ver­ily this was the desert of the twen­ty-​first cen­tu­ry: this wastel nd of hu­man souls.

He be­gan walk­ing let­ting Je­sus take him where He would. De­spite the crowd­ed side­walks, no­body seemed to no­tice him: the streams of hu­man­ity part­ed around him, then flowed to­geth­er again be­hind him, like a riv­er em­brac­ing a rock. He crossed a broad thor­ough­fare, walked down a canyon­like street thrown in­to deep shad­ow by build­ings that rose on both sides. With­in a few min­utes he ar­rived at an­oth­er in­ter­sec­tion, even wider than be­fore, with roads com­ing in from all sides. Huge bill­boards nd gar­ish forty-​foot neon mar­quees an­nounced he was stand­ing in Times Square. He looked sky­ward. It was a heady ex­pe­ri­ence, sur­round­ed by the mighty works of man, the mod­ern-​day glass and steel Tow­ers of Ba­bel. It was all too easy to see how one could be se­duced by such a place; how quick­ly one could lose first one’s con­vic­tion, then one’s soul. He low­ered his eyes again to the traf­fic, the noise, the great rush and press of hu­man­ity. The words of John Bun­yan came to him again:You dwell in the City of De­struc­tion: I see it to be so; nd, dy­ing there, soon­er or lat­er, you will sink low­er than the grave, in­to a place that burns with fire and brim­stone: be con­tent, good neigh­bors, nd go along with me.

Lost, all lost.

But per­haps not all: here and there, Buck knew, walked those who could still be saved, the righ­teous peo­ple with the grace of God in their souls. He did not yet know who they were, and it was like­ly even they didn’t know.Be con­tent, good neigh­bors, nd go along with me. It was for them he had come to New York City: these were the ones he would pull back from the brink. The rest would be swept away in the blink of an eye.

For hours Buck walked. He could sense the siren-​like call of the city tug­ging at him: its ur­bane win­dow dis­plays, its un­be­liev­able op­ulence, its stretch limousines. Buck’s nos­trils filled with the stench of rot­ting garbage one mo­ment, and the next with the scent of ex­pen­sive per­fume from some lynx-​eyed temptress in a tight dress. He was in the bel­ly of the beast, for sure. God had en­trust­ed him with a mis­sion, God had giv­en him his own forty days in the desert, and he would not fail.

He had spent his last nick­el on the bus tick­et and had not eat­en at all dur­ing the ride. Some­how the hunger, the fast­ing, had sharp­ened his mind. But if he was to do God’s will, he had to seek nour­ish­ment for his body.

His wan­der­ings took him to a Sal­va­tion Army soup kitchen. He went in, wait­ed in line, sat silent­ly with the dere­licts, and ate a bowl of mac­aroni and cheese with a cou­ple slices of un­but­tered Won­der bread and a cup of cof­fee. As he ate, he slipped the shab­by pa­per out of his pock­et and pe­rused the soiled ar­ti­cle yet again. It was God’s mes­sage to him, and ev­ery time he read it he felt for­ti­fied, re­freshed, de­ter­mined. Af­ter his sim­ple meal, he left and be­gan walk­ing again, a new spring in his step. He passed a news­stand and paused, his eye catch­ing the head­line of the­New York Post .

THE END IS NIGH

Sa­tanists, Pen­ta­costals and Prophets of Doom Con­tin­ue to Con­verge at Site of Dev­il Killing

He in­stinc­tive­ly shoved his hand in his pock­et be­fore re­mem­ber­ing he had no mon­ey. He paused. What to do? This head­line was, with­out a doubt, an­oth­er mes­sage from God. Noth­ing hap­pened in this world with­out sig­nif­icance. Not even the slight­est spar­row could fall from the tree .

He need­ed mon­ey. He need­ed a bed for the night. He need­ed a change of clothes. God clothed the lilies of the field; would He not clothe him? That had al­ways been Buck’s phi­los­ophy.

But some­times God liked to see a lit­tle ini­tia­tive.

Buck looked up. He was in front of a huge build­ing, guard­ed by two mas­sive stone li­on­sthe New York Pub­lic Li­brary, the leg­end said. A tem­ple to Mam­mon, no doubt filled with pornog­ra­phy and im­moral books. He has­tened around the cor­ner. There, be­side a small but nice­ly man­icured park, were a num­ber of peo­ple with chess­boards set up and ready for play. They weren’t play­ing each oth­er; they seemed to be wait­ing for passers­by. He ap­proached, cu­ri­ous.

“Play?” one of them asked.

Buck paused.

“Five dol­lars,” the man said.

“For what?”

“Game of ten-​sec­ond chess. Five dol­lars.”

Buck al­most walked on. It might be con­sid­ered a form of gam­bling. But then he paused. Was this, too, a lit­tle help from God? Buck sensed these play­ers were good; they had to be. But what did he have to lose?

He sat down. The man im­me­di­ate­ly moved his queen’s pawn, and Buck coun­tered, ten sec­onds for each move.

Ten min­utes lat­er Buck was sit­ting on a bench in the park be­hind the li­brary, read­ing the­Post . The ar­ti­cle told of small gath­er­ings of peo­ple in front of the build­ing where the dev­il had tak­en the man named Cut­forth. It even gave the ad­dress: 842 Fifth Av­enue.

Fifth Av­enue. The leg­endary Fifth Av­enue. The Mephistophe­lean heart of New York City. It all fit to­geth­er. He tore out the ar­ti­cle and fold­ed it up with the oth­er, care­ful­ly slip­ping them in­to his shirt pock­et

He would not go there now; that could wait. Like David, he need­ed to gird his loins, pre­pare him­self spir­itu­al­ly. He had not come to preach: he had come to do bat­tle for the world

He checked his pock­et Four dol­lars and fifty cents. Not near­ly enough to find a bed for the night. He won­dered just how God might help him mul­ti­ply that mon­ey, as Je­sus had mul­ti­plied the loaves and the fish­es.

There were still a few hours be­fore sun­set. Je­sus would help him, Buck knew. Je­sus would sure­ly help him.

{ 46 }

Beck­mann’s last known place of res­idence, as list­ed on thedeath cer­tifi­cate, was not far from the pot­ter’s field in which he was buried. Pen­der­gast drove slow­ly past the de­crepit build­ing and parked be­fore a pack­age store a few doors down. Three old al­co­holics sat on the front stoop, watch­ing as they got out of the car.

“Nice neigh­bor­hood,” said D’Agos­ta, look­ing around at the six-​sto­ry brick ten­ements fes­tooned with rust­ing fire es­capes. Thread­bare laun­dry hung from dozens of clothes­lines strung be­tween the build­ings.

“In­deed.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded in the di­rec­tion of the three rum­mies, who had gone back to pass­ing around a bot­tle of Night Train. “Won­der if those three know any­thing.”

Pen­der­gast ges­tured for him to pro­ceed.

“What? Me?”

“Of course. You are a man of the street, you speak their lan­guage.”

“If you say so.” D’Agos­ta glanced around again, then head­ed in­to the pack­age store. He re­turned a few min­utes lat­er with a bot­tle in a brown pa­per bag.

“A gift for the na­tives, I see.”

“I’m just tak­ing a page from your book.”

Pen­der­gast raised his eye­brows.

“Re­mem­ber our lit­tle jour­ney un­der­ground dur­ing the sub­way mas­sacre case? You brought a bot­tle along as cur­ren­cy.”

“Ah, yes. Our tea par­ty with Mephis­to.”

Bot­tle in hand, D’Agos­ta am­bled up to the stoop, paus­ing be­fore the men. “How are you boys to­day?”

Si­lence.

“I’m Sergeant D’Agos­ta, and this is my as­so­ciate, Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast. FBI.”

Si­lence.

“We’re not here to bust any­one’s balls, gen­tle­men. I’m not even go­ing to ask your names. We’re just look­ing for any in­for­ma­tion onnnne Ranier Beck­mann, who lived here sev­er­al years back.”

Three pairs of rheumy eyes con­tin­ued star­ing at him. One of the men hawked up a gob­bet of phlegm and de­posit­ed it gen­tly be­tween his bad­ly scuffed shoes.

With a rus­tle, D’Agos­ta re­moved the bot­tle from the pa­per bag. He held it up. The light shone through it, il­lu­mi­nat­ing pieces of fruit float­ing in an am­ber-​col­ored liq­uid.

The old­est wino turned to the oth­ers. “Rock ‘n’ Rye. The cop has class.”

“Be­ware of cops bear­ing gifts.”

D’Agos­ta glanced at Pen­der­gast, who was look­ing on from a few paces back, hands in his pock­ets. He turned back. “Look, guys, don’t make a fool out of me in front of the feds, okay? Please.”

The old­est man shift­ed. “Now that you’ve said the mag­ic word, have a seat.”

D’Agos­ta perched gin­ger­ly on the sticky steps. The man reached out a hand for the bot­tle, took a swig, spat out a piece of fruit, passed it on. “You too, friend,” he said to Pen­der­gast.

“I would pre­fer to stand, thank you.”

There were some chuck­les.

“My name’s Jede­di­ah,” said the old­est drunk. “Call me Jed. You’re look­ing for who again?”

“Ranier Beck­mann,” said Pen­der­gast.

Two of the drunks shrugged, but af­ter a mo­ment, Jed nod­ded slow­ly. “Beck­mann. Name rings a bell.”

“He lived in room 4C. Died of can­cer al­most ten years ago.”

Jed thought an­oth­er mo­ment, took a swig of the Rock ‘n’ Rye to lu­bri­cate the brain cells. “I re­mem­ber now. He’s the guy who used to play gin rum­my with Willie. Willie’s gone, too. Man, did they ar­gue. Can­cer, you say?” He shook his head.

“Did you know any­thing about his life? Mar­riage, for­mer ad­dress­es, that sort of thing?”

“He was a col­lege-​ed­ucat­ed fel­low. Smart. No­body ev­er came to vis­it him, didn’t seem to have any kids or fam­ily. He might have been mar­ried, I sup­pose. For a while, I thought he had a girl named Kay.”

“Kay?”

“Yeah. He’d say her name now and then, usu­al­ly when he was mad at him­self. Like when he lost at rum­my. ‘Kay Biskerow!’ he’d say. As if he wouldn’t have been in such a fix if she were there to look af­ter him.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Any friends of his still here we could talk to?”

“Can’t think of any­body. Beck­mann most­ly kept to him­self. He was sort of de­pressed.”

“I see.”

D’Agos­ta shift­ed on the un­com­fort­able stoop. “When some­one dies here, what usu­al­ly hap­pens to his stuff?”

“They clean out his room and throw it away. Ex­cept that John some­times saves a few things.”

“John?”

“Yeah. He saves dead peo­ple’s shit. He’s a lit­tle strange.”

“Did John save any of Beck­mann’s pos­ses­sions?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“Maybe. His room’s full of junk. Why don’t you go on up there and ask? It’s 6A. Top floor, head of the stairs.”

Pen­der­gast thanked the man, then led the way in­to the dim lob­by and up the wood­en stair­case. The treads creaked alarm­ing­ly un­der their feet. As they reached the sixth floor, Pen­der­gast laid a hand on D’Agos­ta’s arm.

“I com­pli­ment you on your adroit­ness back there,” he said. “Think­ing to ask about his be­long­ings was a clever move. Care to han­dle John, too?”

“Sure thing.”

D’Agos­ta rapped on the door marked6A , but it was al­ready ajar and creaked in­ward at his knock. It opened a lit­tle, then stopped, blocked by a moun­tain of card­board box­es. The room was al­most com­plete­ly filled with ver­min-​gnawed car­tons, stacks of books, all man­ner of mem­ora­bil­ia. D’Agos­ta stepped in, thread­ing a nar­row path be­tween walls of as­sort­ed junk: old pic­tures, pho­to al­bums, a tri­cy­cle, a signed base­ball bat.

In the far cor­ner, be­neath a grimy win­dow, a space just big enough for a bed had been cleared. A white-​haired man lay on the filthy bed, ful­ly clothed. He looked at them but did not rise or move.

“John?” D’Agos­ta asked.

He gave a faint nod.

D’Agos­ta went over to the bed, showed his badge. The man’s face was creased and sunken, and his eyes were yel­low. “We just want a lit­tle bit of in­for­ma­tion, and then we’ll be gone.”

“Yes,” the man said. His voice was qui­et, slow, and sad.

“Jed, down­stairs, said you might have saved some per­son­al ef­fects be­long­ing to Ranier Beck­mann, who lived here sev­er­al years back.”

There was a long pause. The yel­lowed eyes glanced over to­ward one of the piles. “In the cor­ner. Sec­ond box from the bot­tom.Beck writ­ten on it.”

D’Agos­ta la­bo­ri­ous­ly made his way to the tot­ter­ing stack and found the box in ques­tion: stained, moldy, and half flat­tened from the weight of the box­es on top.

“May I take a look?”

The man nod­ded.

D’Agos­ta shift­ed the box­es and re­trieved Beck­mann’s. It was small; in­side were a few books and an old cigar box wrapped in rub­ber bands. Pen­der­gast came up and looked over his shoul­der.

“James,Let­ters from Flo­rence ,” he mur­mured, glanc­ing at the spines of the books. “Beren­son,Ital­ian Painters of the Re­nais­sance. Vasari,Lives of the Painters. Celli­ni,Au­to­bi­og­ra­phy . I see our Mr. Beck­mann was in­ter­est­ed in Re­nais­sance art his­to­ry.”

D’Agos­ta picked up the cigar box and be­gan to re­move the rub­ber bands, which were so old and rot­ten they snapped at his touch. He opened the lid. The box ex­ud­ed a per­fume of dust, old cigars, and pa­per. In­side, he could see a moth-​eat­en rab­bit’s foot, a gold cross, a pic­ture of Padre Pio, an old post­card of Moose­head Lake in Maine, a greasy pack of cards, a toy Cor­gi car, some coins, a cou­ple of match­books, and a few oth­er me­men­tos. “Looks like we found Beck­mann’s lit­tle chest of trea­sures,” he said.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. He reached over and picked up the match­book. “Trat­to­ria del Carmine,” he read aloud. His slen­der white fin­gers drift­ed over the coins and oth­er me­men­tos. Next he reached for the books, pluck­ing the Vasari from the box and leaf­ing through it. “Re­quired read­ing for any­one wish­ing to un­der­stand the Re­nais­sance,” he said. “And look at this.”

He hand­ed the book to D’Agos­ta. Scrawled on the fly­leaf was a ded­ica­tion:

To Ranier, my fa­vorite stu­dent,

Charles F. Pon­son­by Jr.

D’Agos­ta took out a book him­self. There was no in­scrip­tion in this one, but as he ri­fled through it, a pho­to­graph dropped from be­tween the pages. He picked it off the floor. It was a fad­ed col­or snap­shot of four youths, all male, arms draped around each oth­er’s necks, be­fore what looked like a blur­ry mar­ble foun­tain.

D’Agos­ta heard a sharp in­take of breath from Pen­der­gast. “May I?” the agent asked.

D’Agos­ta hand­ed him the pho­to­graph. He stared at it in­tent­ly, then hand­ed it back.

“The one on the far right, I be­lieve, is Beck­mann. And do you rec­og­nize his friends?”

D’Agos­ta looked. Al­most in­stant­ly he rec­og­nized the mas­sive head and jut­ting brows of Locke Bullard. The oth­ers took a mo­ment longer, but once rec­og­nized were un­mis­tak­able: Nigel Cut­forth and Jere­my Grove.

He glanced over at Pen­der­gast. The man’s sil­very eyes were pos­itive­ly glit­ter­ing. “There it is, Vin­cent: the con­nec­tion we’ve been look­ing for.”

He turned to the man ly­ing on the bed. D’Agos­ta had al­most for­got­ten him, he had been so silent. “John, may we take these items?”

“It’s what I’ve been sav­ing them for.”

“How so?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“That’s what I do. I keep the things they trea­sured, in trust for their fam­ilies.”

“Who’sthey ?”

“The ones that die.”

“Do the fam­ilies ev­er come?”

The ques­tion hung in the air. “Ev­ery­body has a fam­ily,” John fi­nal­ly said.

It looked to D’Agos­ta like some of the box­es were so rot­ten and dis­col­ored they’d been sit­ting around for twen­ty years. It was a long time to wait for a fam­ily mem­ber to come call­ing.

“Did you know Beck­mann well?”

The man shook his head. “He kept to him­self.”

“Did he ev­er have vis­itors?”

“No.” The man sighed. His hair was brit­tle and his eyes were wa­ter­ing. It seemed to D’Agos­ta that he was dy­ing, that he knew it, and that he wel­comed it.

Pen­der­gast picked up the small box of mem­ora­bil­ia and tucked it un­der his arm. “Is there any­thing we can do for you, John?” he asked qui­et­ly.

The man shook his head and turned to the wall.

They left the room with­out speak­ing. At the stoop, they passed the three drunks again.

“Find what you were look­ing for?” Jed asked.

“Yes,” said D’Agos­ta. “Thanks.”

The man touched his brow with his fin­ger. D’Agos­ta turned. “What will hap­pen to all the stuff in John’s room when­he dies?”

The drunk shrugged. “They’ll toss it.”

“That was a most valu­able vis­it,” Pen­der­gast said as they got in­to the car. “We now know that Ranier Beck­mann lived in Italy, prob­ably in 1974, that he spoke Ital­ian de­cent­ly, per­haps flu­ent­ly.”

D’Agos­ta looked at him, as­ton­ished. “How did you fig­ure that out?”

“It’s what he said when he lost at rum­my. ‘Kay Biskerow.’ It’s not a name, it’s an ex­pres­sion.Che bis­chero! It’s Ital­ian, a Flo­ren­tine di­alect ex­pos­tu­la­tion mean­ing ‘What a jerk!’ On­ly some­one who had lived in Flo­rence would know it. The coins in that cigar box are all Ital­ian lire, dat­ed 1974 and be­fore. The foun­tain be­hind the four friends, al­though I don’t rec­og­nize it, is clear­ly Ital­ianate.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head. “You fig­ured all that out just from that lit­tle box of things?”

“Some­times the small things speak the loud­est.” And as the Rolls shot from the curb and ac­cel­er­at­ed down the street, Pen­der­gast glanced over. “Would you slide my lap­top out of the dash there, Vin­cent? Let us find out what light Pro­fes­sor Charles F. Pon­son­by Jr. can shed on things.”

{ 47 }

As Pen­der­gast drove south, D’Agos­ta boot­ed the lap­top, ac­cessedthe In­ter­net via a wire­less cel­lu­lar con­nec­tion, and ini­ti­at­ed a search on Charles F. Pon­son­by Jr. With­in a few min­utes, he had more in­for­ma­tion than he knew what to do with, start­ing with the fact that Pon­son­by was Ly­man Pro­fes­sor of Art His­to­ry at Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.

“I thought the name was fa­mil­iar,” Pen­der­gast said. “A spe­cial­ist in the Ital­ian Re­nais­sance, I be­lieve. Lucky for us he’s still teach­ing-​no doubt as pro­fes­sor emer­itus by now. Bring up his cur­ricu­lum vi­tae, if you will, Vin­cent.”

As Pen­der­gast merged on­to the New Jer­sey Turn­pike and smooth­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed in­to the af­ter­noon traf­fic, D’Agos­ta read off the pro­fes­sor’s ap­point­ments, awards, and pub­li­ca­tions. It was a lengthy pro­cess, made length­ier by the nu­mer­ous ab­stracts Pen­der­gast in­sist­ed on hear­ing re­cit­ed ver­ba­tim.

At last, he was done. Pen­der­gast thanked him, then slipped out his cell phone, di­aled, spoke to di­rec­to­ry in­for­ma­tion, re­di­aled, spoke again briefly. “Pon­son­by will see us,” he said as he re­placed the phone. “Re­luc­tant­ly. We’re very close, Vin­cent. The pho­to­graph proves that all four of them were to­geth­er at least once. Now we need to know ex­act­ly where they met, and-​even more im­por­tant-​just what hap­pened dur­ing that fate­ful en­counter to some­how bind them to­geth­er for the rest of their lives.”

Pen­der­gast pushed the car still faster. D’Agos­ta shot a sur­rep­ti­tious glance in his di­rec­tion. The man looked pos­itive­ly ea­ger, like a hound on a scent.

Nine­ty min­utes lat­er the Rolls was cruis­ing down Nas­sau Street, quaint shops on the left and the Prince­ton cam­pus on the right, Goth­ic build­ings ris­ing from man­icured lawns. Pen­der­gast slid the Rolls in­to a park­ing space and fed the me­ter, nod­ding to a crowd of stu­dents who stopped to gawk. They crossed the street, passed through the great iron gates, and ap­proached the enor­mous fa­cade of Fire­stone Li­brary, the largest open-​stack li­brary in the world.

A small man with a thatch of un­tidy white hair stood be­fore the glass doors. He was ex­act­ly what D’Agos­ta imag­ined a Pro­fes­sor Pon­son­by would look like: fussy, tweedy, and pedan­tic. The on­ly thing miss­ing was a bri­ar pipe.

“Pro­fes­sor Pon­son­by?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“You’re the FBI agent?” the man replied in a reedy voice, mak­ing a show of ex­am­in­ing his watch.

Three min­utes late, D’Agos­ta thought.

Pen­der­gast shook his hand. “In­deed I am.”

“You didn’t say any­thing about bring­ing apo­lice­man .”

D’Agos­ta felt him­self bristling at the way he pro­nounced the word.

“May I present my as­so­ciate, Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta?”

The pro­fes­sor shook his hand with ob­vi­ous re­luc­tance. “I have to tell you, Agent Pen­der­gast, that I don’t much like be­ing ques­tioned by the FBI. I will not be bul­lied in­to giv­ing out in­for­ma­tion on for­mer stu­dents.”

“Of course. Now, Pro­fes­sor, where may we chat?”

“We can talk right there on that bench. I would rather not bring an FBI agent and a po­lice­man back to my of­fice, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.”

The pro­fes­sor marched stiffly over to a bench be­neath an­cient sycamores and sat down, fuss­ily cock­ing one knee over the oth­er. Pen­der­gast strolled over and took a seat be­side him. There wasn’t room for D’Agos­ta, so he stood to one side, arms fold­ed.

Pon­son­by re­moved a bri­ar pipe from his pock­et, knocked out the dot­tle, be­gan pack­ing it. Now it’s per­fect,thought D’Agos­ta.

“You aren’t the Charles Pon­son­by who just won the Beren­son Medal in Art His­to­ry, are you?” asked Pen­der­gast.

“I am.” He re­moved a box of wood­en match­es from his pock­et, ex­tract­ed one, and lit the pipe, suck­ing in the flame with a low gur­gle.

“Ah! Then you are the au­thor of that new cat­alogue raison­né of Pon­tor­mo.”

“Cor­rect.”

“A splen­did book.”

“Thank you.”

“I shall nev­er for­get see­ingThe Vis­ita­tion in the lit­tle church in Carmignano. The most per­fect or­ange in all of art his­to­ry. In your book-“

“May we get to the point, Mr. Pen­der­gast?”

There was a si­lence. Pon­son­by ap­par­ent­ly had no in­ter­est in dis­cussing aca­dem­ic sub­jects with gumshoes, no mat­ter how cul­ti­vat­ed. For once, Pen­der­gast’s usu­al charm of­fen­sive had failed.

“I be­lieve you had a stu­dent named Ranier Beck­mann,” Pen­der­gast went on.

“You men­tioned that on the phone. I was his the­sis ad­vis­er.”

“I won­der if I could ask you a few ques­tions.”

“Why don’t you ask him di­rect­ly? I have no in­ten­tion of be­com­ing an FBI in­for­mant, thank you.”

D’Agos­ta had run in­to this type be­fore. Deeply sus­pi­cious of law en­force­ment, treat­ing ev­ery ques­tion as a per­son­al chal­lenge. They re­fused to be flat­tered in­to com­pli­ance and fought you ev­ery step of the way, cit­ing all kinds of spu­ri­ous le­galisms about the right to pri­va­cy, the Fifth Amend­ment, the usu­al bull­shit.

“Oh, you didn’t know?” Pen­der­gast said, his voice smooth as hon­ey. “Mr. Beck­mann died. Trag­ical­ly.”

Si­lence. “No, I didn’t know.” More si­lence. “How?”

Now it was Pen­der­gast’s turn to be un­forth­com­ing. In­stead, he dropped an­oth­er tan­ta­liz­ing nugget. “I’ve just come from the ex­huma­tion of his body . But per­haps this isn’t an ap­pro­pri­ate top­ic of con­ver­sa­tion, see­ing as how you two weren’t close.”

“Who­ev­er told you that was mis­in­formed. Ranier was one of my best stu­dents.”

“Then how is it you didn’t hear about his death?”

The pro­fes­sor shift­ed un­easi­ly. “We lost touch af­ter he grad­uat­ed.”

“I see. Then per­haps you won’t be able to help us, af­ter all.” And Pen­der­gast made a show of prepar­ing to stand.

“He was a bril­liant stu­dent, one of the best I’ve ev­er had. I was-​I was very dis­ap­point­ed he didn’t want to go on to grad­uate school. He want­ed to go to Eu­rope, do a grand tour on his own, a sort of wan­der­ing jour­ney with­out any kind of aca­dem­ic struc­ture. I did not ap­prove.” Pon­son­by paused. “May I ask how he died and why the body was ex­humed?”

“I’m sor­ry, but that in­for­ma­tion can be dis­closed on­ly to Mr. Beck­mann’s fam­ily and friends.”

“I tell you, we were very close. I gave him a book at part­ing. I’ve on­ly done that with half a dozen stu­dents in my forty years of teach­ing.”

“And this was in 1976?”

“No, it was in 1974.” The pro­fes­sor was very glad to of­fer the cor­rec­tion. Then a new thought seemed to strike him. He looked at Pen­der­gast afresh. “It wasn’t homi­cide . was it?”

“Re­al­ly, Pro­fes­sor, un­less you can get the per­mis­sion of a fam­ily mem­ber to re­lease this in­for­ma­tion-​you­do know some­one in his fam­ily, I dare­say?”

The pro­fes­sor’s face fell. “No. No one.”

Pen­der­gast arched his eye­brows in sur­prise.

“He wasn’t close to his fam­ily. I can’t re­call him ev­er men­tion­ing them.”

“Pity. And so you say that Beck­mann left for Eu­rope in 1974, right af­ter grad­ua­tion, and that was the last you heard of him?”

“No. I got a note from Scot­land at the end of Au­gust of that year. He was prepar­ing to leave some farm­ing com­mune he’d joined and head to Italy. I felt it was just some stage he had to go through. To tell you the truth, these past dozen years I’d been half ex­pect­ing to see his name turn up in one of the jour­nals, or per­haps to hear of an art open­ing of his. I’ve of­ten thought of him over the years. Re­al­ly, Mr. Pen­der­gast, I would ap­pre­ci­ate hear­ing any­thing you might be able to tell me about him.”

Pen­der­gast paused. “It would be high­ly ir­reg­ular . ” He let his voice trail off.

D’Agos­ta had to smile. Flat­tery hadn’t worked, so Pen­der­gast had tak­en an­oth­er tack. And now he had the pro­fes­sor beg­ging him for in­for­ma­tion.

“Sure­ly you can at least tell me how he died.”

His pipe had gone out, and Pen­der­gast wait­ed while the pro­fes­sor drew out an­oth­er match. As Pon­son­by struck it, Pen­der­gast spoke. “He died an al­co­holic in a flop­house in Yonkers and was buried in the lo­cal pot­ter’s field.”

The pro­fes­sor dropped the burn­ing match, his face a mask of hor­ror. “Good God. I had no idea.”

“Very trag­ic.”

The pro­fes­sor tried to cov­er up his shock by open­ing the match­box again, but his shak­ing hands spilled them over the bench.

Pen­der­gast helped pick them up. The pro­fes­sor poked them back one by one in­to the trem­bling box. He put his pipe away, un­lit. D’Agos­ta was sur­prised to see the old man’s eyes film over. “Such afine stu­dent,” he said, al­most to him­self.

Pen­der­gast let the si­lence grow. Then he slipped Beck­mann’s copy ofLives of the Painters out from his suit coat and held it out to Pon­son­by.

For a mo­ment, the old man didn’t ap­pear to rec­og­nize it. Then he start­ed vi­olent­ly. “Where did you get this?” he asked, grasp­ing it quick­ly.

“It was with Mr. Beck­mann’s ef­fects.”

“This is the book I gave him.” As he opened the fly­leaf to the ded­ica­tion page, the pho­to­graph slipped out. “What’s this?” he asked as he picked it up.

Pen­der­gast said noth­ing, asked no ques­tions.

“There he is,” Pon­son­by said, point­ing at the pho­to. “That’s just how I re­mem­ber him. This must have been tak­en in Flo­rence in the fall.”

“Flo­rence?” said Pen­der­gast. “It could have been tak­en any­where in Italy.”

“No, I rec­og­nize that foun­tain be­hind them. It’s the one in Pi­az­za San­to Spir­ito. Al­ways a big hang­out for stu­dents. And there, be­hind, you can just see the­por­tone of the Palaz­zo Guadag­ni, which is a shab­by stu­dent­pen­sione. I say the fall be­cause they’re dressed that way, al­though I sup­pose it could have al­so been in spring.”

Pen­der­gast re­trieved the pic­ture, then asked offhand­ed­ly, “The oth­er stu­dents in the pho­to­graph were al­so from Prince­ton?”

“I’ve nev­er seen any of them be­fore. He must have met them in Flo­rence. Like I said, the Pi­az­za San­to Spir­ito was a gath­er­ing place for for­eign stu­dents. Still is.” He closed the book. His face looked very tired and his voice cracked. “Ranier . Ranier hadsuch promise.”

“We are all born with promise, Pro­fes­sor.” Pen­der­gast stood up, then hes­itat­ed. “You may keep the book, if you wish.”

But Pon­son­by didn’t seem to hear. His shoul­ders were bent, and he ca­ressed the spine with a trem­bling hand.

As they drove back to New York in the gath­er­ing dusk, D’Agos­ta stirred rest­less­ly in the front pas­sen­ger seat. “Amaz­ing how you ex­tract­ed all that in­for­ma­tion from the pro­fes­sor with­out his even know­ing it.” And it­was amaz­ing, though al­so a lit­tle sad: de­spite the pro­fes­sor’s ar­ro­gance and high-​hand­ed­ness, he’d seemed ter­ri­bly moved by the death of a fa­vorite stu­dent, even one not seen for three decades.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “One rule, Vin­cent: the more un­will­ing the sub­ject is to re­lease in­for­ma­tion, the bet­ter the in­for­ma­tion is, once re­leased. And Dr. Pon­son­by’s in­for­ma­tion was as good as gold.” His eyes gleamed in the dark.

“It looks like they met up in Flo­rence in the fall of ‘74.”

“Ex­act­ly. Some­thing hap­pened to them there, some­thing so ex­traor­di­nary it re­sult­ed in at least two mur­ders, thir­ty years lat­er.” He turned to D’Agos­ta. “Do you know the say­ing, Vin­cent, ‘All roads lead to Rome’?”

“Shake­speare?”

“Very good. In this case, how­ev­er, it ap­pears all roads lead to Flo­rence. And that is pre­cise­ly where­our road should lead.”

“To Flo­rence?”

“Pre­cise­ly. No doubt Bullard him­self is on his way there, if he’s not there al­ready.”

“I’m glad there’s not go­ing to be any ar­gu­ment about my com­ing along,” D’Agos­ta said.

“I wouldn’t have it any oth­er way, Vin­cent. Your po­lice in­stincts are first-​rate. Your marks­man­ship is as­ton­ish­ing. I know I can trust you in a tight spot. And the chances of our­selves end­ing up in just such a spot are rather good, I’m afraid. So if you wouldn’t mind slid­ing out the lap­top again, we’ll book our tick­ets now. First class, if you don’t mind, open re­turn.”

“Leav­ing when?”

“To­mor­row morn­ing.”

{ 48 }

D’Agos­ta let the cab drop him off at 136th Street and River­side.Af­ter what hap­pened on his first vis­it to Pen­der­gast’s crum­bling old man­sion, there was no way in hell he was go­ing to trust pub­lic trans­porta­tion. Still, cau­tion prompt­ed him to get off a block ear­ly. Some­how he felt Pen­der­gast would pre­fer it that way.

He dragged the lone suit­case out of the back­seat, hand­ed fif­teen dol­lars to the driv­er. “Keep the change,” he said.

“What­ev­er.” And the cab­bie sped away. See­ing D’Agos­ta and his lug­gage out­side the ho­tel, he’d clear­ly been hop­ing for an air­port fare-​and he hadn’t been at all pleased to find out the ac­tu­al des­ti­na­tion was Harlem.

D’Agos­ta watched the cab take the next cor­ner at speed and van­ish from sight. Then he scanned River­side Drive care­ful­ly, up and down, check­ing the win­dows, the stoops, the dark ar­eas be­tween the lamp­posts. Ev­ery­thing seemed qui­et. Heft­ing the suit­case, he be­gan trot­ting north.

It had tak­en about half an hour to pre­pare for the trip. He hadn’t both­ered to call his wifeas it was, the next time heeeeard from her would prob­ably be through a lawyer. Chief Mac­Cready of the Southamp­ton P.D. was de­light­ed to eear he’d be tak­ing an un­sched­uled trip as part of his mod­ified du­ty with the FBI. The chief was in in­creas­ing­ly hot wa­ter over the slow progress of the case, and this gave him a bone to throw the lo­cal press:SPD of­fi­cer sent to Italy to fol­low hot lead. Giv­en a dawn de­par­ture, Pen­der­gast had sug­gest­ed they both spend the night in New York at his place on River­side Drive. And now here he was, lug­gage in hand, just hours away from stand­ing on his fam­ily’s an­ces­tral soil. It was both an ex­hil­arat­ing and a sober­ing thought.

The one thing he’d miss, he thought as he neared the end of the block, was his blos­som­ing re­la­tion­ship with Lau­ra Hay­ward. Though the fran­tic pace of the last few days had most­ly kept them apart, D’Agos­ta re­al­ized he’d be­gun to feel, for the first time in al­most twen­ty years, that con­stant, low-​fre­quen­cy tin­gle of courtship. When he’d called her from the ho­tel to say he was ac­com­pa­ny­ing Pen­der­gast to Italy in the morn­ing, the line had gone silent for sev­er­al sec­onds. Then she’d said sim­ply, “Watch your ass, Vin­nie.” He hoped to eell this lit­tle jaunt wouldn’t throw a mon­key wrench in­to things.

Aeead, the Beaux Arts man­sion at 891 River­side rose up, the sharp ram­parts of its wid­ow’s walk prick­ing the night sky. He crossed the street, then slipped through the iron gate and made his way down the car­riage­way to the porte-​cochère. His knock was an­swered by Proc­tor, who word­less­ly es­cort­ed him through echo­ing gal­leries and tapestried cham­bers to the li­brary. It ap­peared to be lit on­ly by a large fire that blazed on the hearth. Peer­ing in­to the grand, book-​lined room, he made out Pen­der­gast near the far wall. The agent had his back to the door and was stand­ing be­fore a long ta­ble, writ­ing some­thing on a sheet of cream-​col­ored pa­per. D’Agos­ta could hear the crack­ling of the fire, the scratch of the pen. Con­stance was nowhere to be seen, but he thought he made out-​just at the thresh­old of hear­ing-​the dis­tant, mourn­ful sound of a vi­olin.

D’Agos­ta cleared his throat, knocked on the door frame.

Pen­der­gast turned quick­ly at the sound. “Ah, Vin­cent. Come in.” He slipped the sheet of pa­per in­to a small wood­en box, in­laid with moth­er-​of-​pearl, that lay on the ta­ble. Then he closed the box care­ful­ly and pushed it to one side. It al­most seemed to D’Agos­ta as if Pen­der­gast was care­ful to shield its con­tents from view.

“Would you care for some re­fresh­ment?” he asked, step­ping across the room. “Cognac, Cal­va­dos, Ar­magnac, Bud­weis­er?” Though the voice was Pen­der­gast’s usu­al slow, but­tery drawl, there was a strange bright­ness to his eyes D’Agos­ta had not seen be­fore.

“No, thanks.”

“Then I’ll help my­self, with your in­dul­gence. Please have a seat.” And mov­ing to a side­board, Pen­der­gast poured two fin­gers of am­ber liq­uid in­to a large snifter.

D’Agos­ta watched him care­ful­ly. There was some­thing un­usu­al about his move­ments, a strange hes­itan­cy, that-​com­bined with Pen­der­gast’s ex­pres­sion-​trou­bled D’Agos­ta in a way he could not quite de­scribe.

“What’s hap­pened?” he asked in­stinc­tive­ly.

Pen­der­gast did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond. In­stead, he re­placed the de­canter, picked up the snifter, and took a seat in a leather so­fa across from D’Agos­ta. He sipped med­ita­tive­ly, sipped again.

“Per­haps Ican tell you,” he said at last in a low voice, as if ar­riv­ing at a de­ci­sion. “In fact, if any oth­er liv­ing per­son is to know, I sup­pose that per­son should be you.”

“Know what?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“It ar­rived half an hour ago,” Pen­der­gast said. “It couldn’t pos­si­bly have come at a worse time. Nev­er­the­less, it can’t be helped; we’ve come too far with this case to change di­rec­tion now.”

“Whatar­rived?”

“That.” And Pen­der­gast nod­ded at a fold­ed let­ter on the ta­ble ly­ing be­tween them. “Go ahead, pick it up; I’ve al­ready tak­en the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions.”

D’Agos­ta didn’t know ex­act­ly what was meant by that, but he leaned over, picked up the let­ter, and un­fold­ed it gin­ger­ly. The pa­per was a beau­ti­ful linen, ap­par­ent­ly hand-​pressed. At the top of the sheet was an em­bossed coat of arms: a lid­less eye over two moons, with a crouch­ing li­on be­neath. At first, D’Agos­ta thought the sheet was emp­ty. But then he made out, in a beau­ti­ful, old-​fash­ioned script, a small date in the mid­dle of the page:Jan­uary 28 . It ap­peared to have been writ­ten with a goose quill.

D’Agos­ta put it down. “I don’t un­der­stand.”

“It’s from my broth­er, Dio­genes.”

“Your broth­er?” D’Agos­ta said, sur­prised. “I thought he was dead.”

“He is dead to me. At least, he has been un­til re­cent­ly.”

D’Agos­ta wait­ed. He knew bet­ter than to say more. Pen­der­gast’s sen­tences had grown hes­itant, al­most bro­ken, as if he found the sub­ject in­tol­er­ably re­pel­lent.

Pen­der­gast took an­oth­er sip of Ar­magnac. “Vin­cent, a line of mad­ness has run through my fam­ily for many gen­er­ations now. Some­times this mad­ness has tak­en a be­nign or even ben­efi­cial form. More fre­quent­ly, I fear, it has man­ifest­ed it­self through as­ton­ish­ing cru­el­ty and evil. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this dark­ness has reached full flow­er with the cur­rent gen­er­ation. You see, my broth­er, Dio­genes, is at once the most in­sane-​most evil-​and yet the most bril­liant mem­ber of our fam­ily ev­er to walk the earth. This was clear to me from a very ear­ly age. As such, it is a bless­ing we two are the last of our line.”

Still, D’Agos­ta wait­ed.

“As a young child, Dio­genes was con­tent with cer­tain . ex­per­iments. He de­vised high­ly com­plex ma­chines for the lure, cap­ture, and tor­ture of small an­imals. Mice, rab­bits, opos­sums. These ma­chines were bril­liant in a hor­ri­ble way. Pain fac­to­ries, he proud­ly called them when they were ul­ti­mate­ly dis­cov­ered.” Pen­der­gast paused. “His in­ter­ests soon grew more ex­ot­ic. House pets be­gan dis­ap­pear­ing-​first cats, then dogs-​nev­er to be found again. He spent days on end in the por­trait gallery, star­ing at paint­ings of our an­ces­tors . es­pe­cial­ly those who had met un­time­ly ends. As he grew old­er-​and as he re­al­ized he was be­ing watched with in­creas­ing vig­ilance-​he aban­doned these pas­times and with­drew in­to him­self. He poured forth his black dreams and his ter­ri­ble cre­ative en­er­gies in­to a se­ries of locked jour­nals. He kept these jour­nals well hid­den. Very well hid­den, in fact: it took me two years of stealthy surveil­lance as an ado­les­cent to dis­cov­er them. I read on­ly one page, but that was enough. I will nev­er for­get it, not as long as I live. The world was nev­er quite the same for me af­ter that. Need­less to say, I im­me­di­ate­ly burned all the jour­nals. He had hat­ed me be­fore, but this act earned his undy­ing rage.”

Pen­der­gast took an­oth­er sip, then pushed the snifter away, un­fin­ished.

“The last time I saw Dio­genes was the day he turned twen­ty-​one. He had just come in­to his for­tune. He said he was plan­ning a ter­ri­ble crime.”

“A sin­gle crime?” D’Agos­ta re­peat­ed.

“He gave no hint of the de­tails. All I can go on is his use of the wordter­ri­ble . For some­thing to be ter­ri­ble to­him . …” Pen­der­gast’s voice trailed off, and then he re­sumed briskly. “Suf­fice to say, it will be anath­ema to ra­tio­nal con­tem­pla­tion. On­ly he, in his lim­it­less mad­ness, could com­pre­hend its evil. How, when, where, against whom-​I have no idea. He dis­ap­peared that very day, tak­ing his for­tune with him, and I have not seen or heard from him since-​un­til now. This is his sec­ond no­tice to me. The first had the same date on it. I wasn’t sure what it meant. It ar­rived ex­act­ly six months ago-​and now this. The mean­ing is now ob­vi­ous.”

“Not to me.”

“I am be­ing put on no­tice. The crime will oc­cur in nine­ty-​one days. It is his chal­lenge to me, his hat­ed sib­ling. I sus­pect his plans are now com­plete. This note is equiv­alent to his fling­ing the gaunt­let at my feet, dar­ing me to try and stop him.”

D’Agos­ta stared at the fold­ed let­ter in hor­ror. “What are you go­ing to do?”

“The on­ly thing I can do. I will wrap up this cur­rent case of ours as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. On­ly then can I deal with my broth­er.”

“And if you find him? What then?”

“Imust find him,” Pen­der­gast said with qui­et fe­roc­ity. “And when I do-” He paused. “The sit­ua­tion will be ad­dressed with ap­pro­pri­ate fi­nal­ity.”

The look on the agent’s face was so ter­ri­ble D’Agos­ta looked away.

For a long mo­ment, the li­brary was silent. Then, at last, Pen­der­gast roused him­self. One glance told D’Agos­ta the sub­ject was closed.

Pen­der­gast’s voice changed back in­to its usu­al ef­fi­cient, cool tone. “As li­ai­son with the Southamp­ton P.D., it seemed log­ical to sug­gest you as FBI li­ai­son with the NYPD. This case be­gan in the Unit­ed States, and it may well end here. I’ve ar­ranged for you, work­ing with Cap­tain Hay­ward, to be that li­ai­son. It will re­quire you to be in touch with her on a reg­ular ba­sis, via phone and e-​mail.”

D’Agos­ta gave a nod.

Pen­der­gast was look­ing at him. “I trust you’ll find that a sat­is­fac­to­ry ar­range­ment?”

“Fine with me.” D’Agos­ta hoped he wasn’t blush­ing.Is there any­thing this guy doesn’t know?

“Very good.” Pen­der­gast rose. “And now I must pack for the trip and speak briefly with Con­stance. She’ll be re­main­ing be­hind, of course, to man­age the col­lec­tions and do any ad­di­tion­al re­search we may re­quire. Proc­tor will see that you’re com­fort­able. Feel free to ring if you need any­thing.”

He rose, of­fer­ing his hand. “Buona notte.And pleas­ant dreams.”

The room D’Agos­ta was shown to was on the third floor, fac­ing the rear. It was ex­act­ly what he’d dread­ed most: dim­ly lit and tall-​ceilinged, with dark crushed-​vel­vet wall­pa­per and heavy ma­hogany fur­ni­ture. It smelled of old fab­ric and wood. The walls were cov­ered with paint­ings in heavy gilt frames: land­scapes, still lifes, and some stud­ies in oil that were strange­ly dis­turb­ing if you looked at them too close­ly. The wood­en shut­ters were closed tight against the case­ments, and no ex­ter­nal noise fil­tered through the heavy stonework. Yet the room, like the rest of the house, was spot­less­ly clean; the fix­tures were mod­ern; and the huge Vic­to­ri­an bed, when he at last turned in, was ex­cep­tion­al­ly com­fort­able with fresh, clean sheets. The pil­lows had been aired and fluffed by some in­vis­ible house­keep­er; the com­forter, when he drew it up, was a lux­uri­ous­ly thick ei­der­down. Ev­ery­thing about the room seemed guar­an­teed to pro­vide an ide­al night’s sleep.

And yet sleep did not come quick­ly to D’Agos­ta. He lay in bed, eyes on the ceil­ing, think­ing of Dio­genes Pen­der­gast, for a long, long time.

{ 49 }

Locke Bullard sat in the rear of the Mer­cedes as it cruiseda­long the Viale Michelan­ge­lo above Flo­rence, the great eigh­teenth-​cen­tu­ry vil­las of the wealth­iest Flo­ren­tines in­vis­ible be­hind enor­mous walls and mas­sive iron gates. As the limou­sine passed the Pi­az­za­le, Bullard bare­ly glanced out at the stu­pen­dous view: the Duo­mo, the Palaz­zo Vec­chio, the Arno Riv­er. The car de­scend­ed to the an­cient gate of the Por­ta Ro­mana.

“Cut through the old city,” said Bullard.

The driv­er flashed his­per­me­sso at the po­lice­men on du­ty at the gate, and the limo eased in­to the crooked streets, head­ing first north, then west, pass­ing back through an­oth­er gate in the an­cient walls sur­round­ing the city. The Re­nais­sance palazzi turned in­to mod­est nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry apart­ment hous­es; these in turn gave way to anony­mous blocks of apart­ments, built mid­cen­tu­ry; and fi­nal­ly to hideous projects and high-​ris­es of gray con­crete. There were no high­ways, just a maze of jammed streets and de­cay­ing fac­to­ries, punc­tu­at­ed here and there by tiny kitchen gar­dens or a few hun­dred square feet of vine­yard.

In half an hour, the limou­sine was crawl­ing through the shab­by streets of Signa, one of the ugli­est of the in­dus­tri­al sub­urbs, a gray ex­panse of build­ings spread out in the flood­plains of the Arno. Laun­dry hung on con­crete bal­conies in the list­less, dead air. The on­ly re­minder that this was Bel­la Tus­cany was the dis­tant green hills of Carmignano, the tallest topped by the barest out­line of a cas­tle.

Bullard saw noth­ing be­yond the smoked win­dows, said noth­ing to the chauf­feur. His crag­gy face was ut­ter­ly blank, his deep-​set eyes cold be­neath the great jut­ting brows. The on­ly sign of the great tur­moil with­in were the slow­ly bulging mus­cles of his jaw, tens­ing and re­lax­ing, again and again.

At last, the limo turned down an anony­mous dead-​end lane, ar­rived at a shab­by chain-​link fence with a gate and guard­house. Be­yond, the end­less sub­urb stopped and a sur­pris­ing new world be­gan: a strange world of dark trees, vines, and a ri­ot of ivy-​cov­ered mounds and shapes.

The limo was checked, then waved for­ward in­to the dark­ly fan­tas­ti­cal land­scape. From this clos­er van­tage point, the green shapes could be de­scried as ru­ined build­ings, so sunken in creep­ers as to look like nat­ural cliffs. And yet these were not an­cient ru­ins, like those so of­ten seen in Italy. These heaps of fall­en ma­son­ry were nev­er vis­it­ed by tourists. The ru­ins dat­ed on­ly back to the ear­ly decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. As the limou­sine moved like a shark through the ru­ins, it passed old dor­mi­to­ries, tree­lined boule­vards pass­ing through rows of once-​fine hous­es, past over­grown rail­road sid­ings and wrecked lab­ora­to­ries-​and, dom­inat­ing it all, a brick smokestack that rose thir­ty sto­ries in­to the blue Tus­can sky. The on­ly clue as to what all this had once been was the fad­ed re­mains of a sign paint­ed on the stack, whereNO­BEL S.G.E.M. could still bare­ly be dis­cerned.

Se­cu­ri­ty seemed de­cep­tive­ly slack. The chain-​link fence along the out­er perime­ter was old and de­crepit. A de­ter­mined group of teenagers could have eas­ily en­tered. And yet the ru­ined com­pound showed no sign of ca­su­al hu­man tres­pass. There was no lit­ter, no graf­fi­ti, no sign of camp­fires or bro­ken wine bot­tles.

The limou­sine wound its way slow­ly along a maze of weed-​choked roads, curv­ing past a row of gi­ant ware­hous­es, now emp­ty, win­dows like dead eyes, fields of wild straw­ber­ries grow­ing around the cracked walls. The car con­tin­ued through an arch­way in an old brick wall, past more ru­ins and heaps of brick and bro­ken con­crete, un­til it hit a sec­ond gate. This gate was far more mod­ern than the first: at­tached to a so­phis­ti­cat­ed dou­ble perime­ter of blast­proof chain-​link, topped with glit­ter­ing coils of con­certi­na, and sur­round­ed by a wide mo­tion-​sen­sor field.

Again the limou­sine was in­spect­ed, this time much more thor­ough­ly, be­fore the gate opened elec­tron­ical­ly on well-​oiled hinges.

And now a shock­ing con­trast met the eye. Be­yond one last ru­ined fa­cade-​drown­ing in veg­eta­tion-​lay a man­icured lawn, sweep­ing up to a gleam­ing build­ing dressed in ti­ta­ni­um and glass, an ar­chi­tec­tural mas­ter­piece hid­den among the ru­ins. It was framed by shrub­bery that had been trimmed and shaped to per­fec­tion. An au­to­mat­ic sprin­kler sys­tem cast an arc of wa­ter that glit­tered rain­bows in the strong Flo­ren­tine sun­light.

In front of the build­ing stood three men. As the black car pulled up, one of them, clear­ly ag­itat­ed but mak­ing a strong ef­fort to sup­press it, came over and opened the door.

“Ben­tor­na­to, Sig­nor Bullard,”he said.

Bullard got out, his enor­mous frame swelling as he stood up. Ig­nor­ing the prof­fered hands, he arched his back, stretched his arms. He seemed to be look­ing over the heads of the men as if they didn’t ex­ist. His mas­sive, ug­ly, knot­ted face was an im­pen­etra­ble mask.

“We should be pleased if you could lunch with us, sir, be­fore-“

“Where is it?” Bullard cut him off.

There was a dis­mayed si­lence. “This way.”

The small group turned, and Bullard fol­lowed them down the lime­stone walk­way in­to the cool in­te­ri­or of the build­ing. They passed down a cor­ri­dor through two sets of au­to­mat­ic doors, each re­quir­ing a reti­nal scan from the lead­er of the group.

At one point, Bullard stopped and looked in­to a room lead­ing off the cor­ri­dor. The oth­ers paused ex­pec­tant­ly. The room was a lab­ora­to­ry, full of equip­ment and white­boards cov­ered with for­mu­las.

He stepped in­to the room, glanced at a near­by ta­ble cov­ered with what ap­peared to be air­craft nose cones. Each was paint­ed a dif­fer­ent col­or, and a pin was stuck in­to each, bear­ing a la­bel of notes and chem­ical for­mu­las. In a sud­den blind rage, Bullard raised his arm and swept the nose cones from the ta­ble. Then he turned back and, with­out a word, con­tin­ued down the cor­ri­dor.

They came to a third door, thick­er and small­er than the oth­ers, made of stain­less steel and brass.

There was a shout from be­hind. Ev­ery­one turned.

An el­egant­ly dressed man was strid­ing to­ward them, his face white with anger. “Stop,” he said. “Io do­man­do una sp­ie­gazione, Sig­nor Bullard, an­che da Lei.I de­mand an ex­pla­na­tion, even from you.” The man blocked their way, half the size of Bullard, al­most no­ble in his out­raged dig­ni­ty.

There was a flash of move­ment, a grunt, and the man sank to the ground, punched in the gut. He clutched his midriff, groan­ing, and Bullard gave him a vi­cious kick with the toe of his shoe, so hard the snap­ping of the ribs was au­di­ble to all. The man gasped and rolled in agony.

Bullard turned to one of the men. “I fired this man. Mar­tinet­ti was tres­pass­ing. I deeply re­gret that he re­sist­ed ap­pre­hen­sion, as­sault­ed a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer, and had to be sub­dued by that of­fi­cer.”

He turned to one of the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers es­cort­ing them. “Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, sir,” the man said in an Amer­ican ac­cent.

“Make it so.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call a de­tail to re­move this man and pre­fer charges against him for tres­pass­ing.” Bullard stepped over the pros­trate form and looked in­to the reti­nal scan him­self. There was a click of dis­en­gag­ing met­al, then the vault door swung open, ex­pos­ing ma­chined stain­less steel and brass. Be­yond lay a small vault. On one side were sev­er­al hard drives, locked in trans­par­ent plas­tic cas­es and care­ful­ly stacked atop plas­tic fil­ing cab­inets. On the oth­er was a small, rect­an­gu­lar box of pol­ished wal­nut, sur­round­ed by a clus­ter of so­phis­ti­cat­ed elec­tron­ics: cli­mate-​con­trol sen­sors, hu­mid­ity read­outs, a seis­mo­graph, gas an­alyz­er, barom­eters, and tem­per­ature gauges. Bullard strode over to the box, picked it up gen­tly by the han­dle. It was so light that in Bullard’s mas­sive grip it seemed weight­less. He turned.

“Let’s go.”

“Mr. Bullard, per­haps you might care to check the con­tents?”

Bullard turned to the man who’d spo­ken. “I’ll check soon enough. If it isn’t there, los­ing your jobs will be the least of your wor­ries.”

“Yes, sir.”

The ten­sion in the room was pal­pa­ble. The men shift­ed un­easi­ly, ap­par­ent­ly re­luc­tant to leave. Bullard brushed past them, start­ed to duck through the vault door, turned back. “You com­ing?”

The men fol­lowed him out of the vault. The door hissed shut be­hind. Bullard stepped over Mar­tinet­ti again and walked through the three sets of doors, the men in his wake, the on­ly sound the click­ing of heels on the pol­ished cor­ri­dors. In an­oth­er few min­utes, he was back at the curb, where the limou­sine sat idling. The men stood on the side­walk un­cer­tain­ly, look­ing at Bullard. There was no more men­tion of lunch.

With­out a back­ward glance, Bullard got in the car, slammed the door. “To the vil­la,” he said, plac­ing the wood­en box very care­ful­ly on his lap.

{ 50 }

D’Agos­ta stood at the win­dows of his suite in the Lun­gar­no Ho­tel, look­ing out over the deep green of the Arno, the pale yel­low palaces of Flo­rence lin­ing both banks, the Ponte Vec­chio with its crooked lit­tle build­ings perched out over the wa­ter. He felt strange­ly ex­pec­tant, even a lit­tle light-​head­ed. He wasn’t sure if it was jet lag, the op­ulence of his sur­round­ings, or the fact that he was in his coun­try of ori­gin for the first time in his life.

D’Agos­ta’s fa­ther had left Naples as a boy with his par­ents, right af­ter the war, to es­cape the ter­ri­ble famine of ‘44. They set­tled on Carmine Street in New York City. His fa­ther, Vi­to, out­raged by the ris­ing pow­er of the Mafia, had fought back by be­com­ing a New York City cop, and a damn good one. His shield and awards still stood in a glass case on the man­tel like holy relics: po­lice com­bat cross, medal of hon­or. D’Agos­ta had grown up on Carmine Street, sur­round­ed by Ital­ian im­mi­grants from Naples and Sici­ly, im­mersed in the lan­guage, the re­li­gion, the cy­cles of saints’ days and cel­ebra­tions. From child­hood, Italy had for him tak­en on the air of a myth­ical place.

And now here he was.

He felt a lump ris­ing in his throat. He had not ex­pect­ed it to be such an emo­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence. This was the land of his an­ces­tors go­ing back mil­len­nia. Italy was the birth­place of so much: art, ar­chi­tec­ture, sculp­ture, mu­sic, sci­ence, and as­tron­omy. The great names of the past rolled through his mind: Au­gus­tus Cae­sar, Ci­cero, Ovid, Dante, Christo­pher Colum­bus, Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Michelan­ge­lo, Galileo . The list stretched back more than two thou­sand years. D’Agos­ta felt cer­tain no oth­er na­tion on earth had pro­duced such ge­nius.

He opened the win­dow and breathed in the air. It was some­thing his wife nev­er un­der­stood, his im­mense pride in his her­itage. It was some­thing that she had al­ways thought a lit­tle sil­ly. Well, no won­der. She was En­glish. What had the En­glish done but scrib­ble a few plays and po­ems? Italy was the birth­place of West­ern civ­iliza­tion The land of his an­ces­tors. Some­day he would take his son, Vin­nie, here .

These de­li­cious rever­ies were in­ter­rupt­ed by a knock on the door. It was the valet with his lug­gage.

“Where would you like it, sir?” the valet said in En­glish.

D’Agos­ta made a flour­ish with his hand and launched non­cha­lant­ly in­to Ital­ian.”Buon giorno guagliòne. Pe’ pi­acère’ lassàte ì valigè abbecìno o li­ett’, gra­zie.”

The valet looked at him strange­ly, with what seemed to D’Agos­ta a fleet­ing look of dis­dain. “Ex­cuse me?” he asked in En­glish.

D’Agos­ta felt a brief swell of ir­ri­ta­tion “Ì valigè, ag­gia ritt’, met­titelè’ al­là.” He point­ed to the bed

The valet placed the two bags by the bed D’Agos­ta fished in his pock­ets but could not find any­thing less than a five-​eu­ro note. He gave it to the valet.

“Gra­zie, sig­nore, Lei è molto gen­tile. Se Lei ha bisog­no di qual­si­asi cosa, mi di­ca.”And the valet left.

D’Agos­ta hadn’t un­der­stood a word the man had said af­ter “Gra­zie, sig­nore.” It didn’t sound at all like the lan­guage his grand­moth­er spoke. He shook his head It must be the Flo­ren­tine ac­cent throw­ing him off: he knew he hadn’t for­got­ten­that much. Ital­ian was his first lan­guage, af­ter all.

He looked around This was like no ho­tel room he had ev­er stayed in be­fore, the height of clean, un­der­stat­ed taste and el­egance. It was al­so huge: al­most an apart­ment, re­al­ly, with a bed­room, sit­ting room, mar­ble bath, kitchen, and well-​stocked bar, along with a wall of win­dows look­ing out over the Arno, the Ponte Vec­chio, the Uf­fizi Gallery, the great cupo­la of the Duo­mo. The room must’ve cost a for­tune, but D’Agos­ta had long ago giv­en up wor­ry­ing about how Pen­der­gast spent his mon­ey, if in­deed it was his mon­ey. The guy re­mained as mys­te­ri­ous as ev­er.

There came an­oth­er soft knock on the door, and D’Agos­ta opened it. It was Pen­der­gast. The de­tec­tive, still dressed in his usu­al black-​which some­how looked less out of place in Flo­rence than it did in New York-​glid­ed in. He car­ried a sheaf of pa­pers in one hand.

“Ac­com­mo­da­tions to your sat­is­fac­tion, Vin­cent?”

“A bit cramped, lousy view of some old bridge, but I’ll get used to it.”

Pen­der­gast set­tled on the so­fa and hand­ed D’Agos­ta the sheaf of pa­pers. “You will find here aper­me­sso di sog­giorno , a firearm per­mit, an in­ves­tiga­tive au­tho­riza­tion from the Ques­tu­ra, your­codice fis­cale , and a few oth­er odds and ends to be signed-​all through the count’s good of­fices.”

D’Agos­ta took the pa­pers. “Fos­co?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Ital­ian bu­reau­cra­cy moves slow­ly, and the good count gave it a swift kick for­ward on our be­half.”

“Is he here?” D’Agos­ta asked with lit­tle en­thu­si­asm.

“No. He may come lat­er.” Pen­der­gast rose and strolled to the win­dow. “There is his fam­ily’s palaz­zo, across the riv­er, next to the Corsi­ni Palace.”

D’Agos­ta glanced out at a me­dieval build­ing with a crenel­lat­ed para­pet. “Nice pile.”

“In­deed. It’s been in the fam­ily since the late thir­teenth cen­tu­ry.”

An­oth­er knock came at the door.

“Tr­asite’,”D’Agos­ta called, proud to be able to use his Ital­ian in front of Pen­der­gast.

The valet came in again, car­ry­ing a bas­ket of fruit. “Sig­nori?”

“Faciteme stù pi­acère’ las­satele ‘ngop­pa’ o’ tavule.”

The valet made no move to­ward the ta­ble, say­ing in­stead, “Where shall I put it?” in En­glish. D’Agos­ta glanced at Pen­der­gast and saw a twin­kle of amuse­ment in his eye.

“O’ tavule,”he an­swered more brusque­ly.

The man stood there with the fruit in his hand, look­ing from the ta­ble to the desk, fi­nal­ly plac­ing it on the desk. D’Agos­ta felt a surge of ir­ri­ta­tion at his will­ful in­com­pre­hen­sion-​hadn’t he giv­en the man a big enough tip? Words he had so of­ten heard from his fa­ther flowed un­bid­den off his lips.”Al­lòra qual’è ò prob­le­ma’, sì sur­do? Nun mi capisc’i? Ma che è parl’ ò francèse’? Man­nag­gi’ ‘a mis­eria’.”

The man backed out of the room in con­fu­sion. D’Agos­ta turned to Pen­der­gast, to find the agent mak­ing a rare and un­suc­cess­ful at­tempt to sup­press an ef­fer­ves­cence of mirth.

“What’s so fun­ny?” D’Agos­ta said.

Pen­der­gast man­aged to com­pose his fea­tures. “Vin­cent, I didn’t know you had such a flair for lan­guages.”

“Ital­ian was my first lan­guage.”

“Ital­ian? Do you speak Ital­ian, too?”

“What do you mean,too ? What the hell do you think I was speak­ing?”

“It sound­ed re­mark­ably to me like Neapoli­tan, which is of­ten called a di­alect of Ital­ian but is ac­tu­al­ly a sep­arate lan­guage. A fas­ci­nat­ing lan­guage, too, but, of course, in­com­pre­hen­si­ble to a Flo­ren­tine.”

D’Agos­ta froze. Neapoli­tan­di­alect ? The thought had nev­er oc­curred to him. Sure, there were fam­ilies that spoke the Si­cil­ian di­alect where he grew up in New York, but he’d just as­sumed his own lan­guage was re­al Ital­ian. Neapoli­tan? No way. He spokeItal­ian .

Pen­der­gast, notic­ing the look on D’Agos­ta’s face, con­tin­ued. “When Italy was unit­ed in 1871, there were six hun­dred di­alects. A de­bate be­gan to rage as to what lan­guage the new coun­try should speak. The Ro­mans thought their di­alect was the best, be­cause, af­ter all, they wereRome . The Pe­ru­gians thought theirs was the purest, be­cause that’s where the old­est uni­ver­si­ty in Eu­rope was. The Flo­ren­tines felt theirs was cor­rect, be­cause theirs was the lan­guage of Dante.” He smiled again. “Dante won.”

“I nev­er knew that.”

“But peo­ple con­tin­ued to speak their di­alects. Even when your par­ents em­igrat­ed, on­ly a small por­tion of the cit­izen­ry spoke of­fi­cial Ital­ian. It wasn’t un­til the ar­rival of tele­vi­sion that Ital­ians be­gan aban­don­ing their di­alects and speak­ing the same lan­guage. What you con­sid­er ‘Ital­ian’ is ac­tu­al­ly the di­alect of Naples, a rich but sad­ly dy­ing lan­guage, with hints of Span­ish and French.”

D’Agos­ta was stunned.

“Who knows? Per­haps our re­search­es will take us south, where you can shine. But for now, see­ing as how it is get­ting on to­ward din­ner­time, shall we head out for a bite to eat? I know a won­der­ful lit­tleoste­ria in Pi­az­za San­to Spir­ito, where there is al­so a cu­ri­ous foun­tain I be­lieve might be of in­ter­est to our in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

Five min­utes lat­er they were walk­ing through the crooked me­dieval streets of Flo­rence, which led them to a broad, spa­cious pi­az­za, shad­ed by horse chest­nut trees and shut in on three sides by love­ly Re­nais­sance build­ings stuc­coed in hues of ivory, yel­low, and ocher. Dom­inat­ing the end clos­est to the riv­er was the plain fa­cade of the Chiesa di San­to Spir­ito, se­vere in its sim­plic­ity. An old mar­ble foun­tain splashed mer­ri­ly in the cen­ter of the pi­az­za. Stu­dents with back­packs clus­tered around it, smok­ing cigarettes and chat­ting.

Pen­der­gast ca­su­al­ly re­moved Beck­mann’s pho­to­graph from his pock­et, held it up to­ward the foun­tain, and then slow­ly cir­cled the pi­az­za un­til the back­ground matched. He stared for a long mo­ment. Then he put the pho­to away.

“That’s where the four of them stood, Vin­cent,” he said, point­ing. “And there, be­hind, is the Palaz­zo Guadag­ni, now man­aged as a stu­dent­pen­sione . We shall in­quire there to­mor­row to see if they re­mem­ber any of our friends, al­though I do not hold out much hope. But let us dine. I find my­self in the mood for lin­gui­ni with white truf­fles.”

“I could re­al­ly do with a cheese­burg­er and fries.”

Pen­der­gast turned to him, a strick­en look on his face. D’Agos­ta smiled back crooked­ly. “Just kid­ding.”

They strolled across the pi­az­za to­ward a small restau­rant, the Os­te­ria San­to Spir­ito. Ta­bles had been set up out­side, and peo­ple were eat­ing and drink­ing wine, their live­ly con­ver­sa­tion float­ing in­to the pi­az­za.

Pen­der­gast wait­ed un­til they were shown to a ta­ble, then ges­tured for D’Agos­ta to sit. “I must say, Vin­cent, you are look­ing fit­ter these days.”

“Been work­ing out. And af­ter that jaunt in River­side Park, I’ve al­so been brush­ing up at the shoot­ing range.”

“Your firearm skills are the stuff of leg­end. That just might come in handy for the lit­tle ad­ven­ture we’ll be hav­ing to­mor­row night.”

“Ad­ven­ture?” D’Agos­ta was tired, but jet lag on­ly seemed to en­er­gize Pen­der­gast.

“We are go­ing to Signa to vis­it Bullard’s se­cret lab­ora­to­ry. While you were un­wind­ing in your ho­tel room this af­ter­noon, I was speak­ing with var­ious Flo­ren­tine of­fi­cials, try­ing to pro­cure the files on Bullard and BAI’s do­ings here. But even Fos­co’s in­flu­ence got me nowhere. It seems Bullard is well con­nect­ed with the right peo­ple-​or at least knows where to spend his mon­ey. All I was able to pro­cure was a long-​out­dat­ed map of his plant site. In any case, it’s clear we’re not go­ing to get any­where through reg­ular chan­nels.”

“I take it he doesn’t know we’re com­ing.”

“Our vis­it will be in the man­ner of an in­ser­tion. We can get the gear we need to­mor­row morn­ing.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded slow­ly. “Could be ex­cit­ing.”

“Let us hope not­too ex­cit­ing. As I get old­er, Vin­cent, I have come to pre­fer a qui­et evening at home to a brac­ing ex­change of gun­fire in the dark.”

{ 51 }

Bryce Har­ri­man walked north along Fifth Av­enue, thread­ing hisway through the crowds with prac­ticed ease, his mind on the dev­il killings. Ritts was right: the Von Menck piece had re­al­ly touched a nerve in the city. He’d been flood­ed with calls. Most­ly from cranks, of coursethis was the­Post , af­ter all-​but still he couldn’t re­call a big­ger re­ac­tion to a sto­ry. The whole busi­ness of the gold­en ra­tio and the way ev­ery­thing fit­ted so neat­ly with the his­toric dates, the au­ra of math­emat­ics-​for an ig­no­rant per­son, it had all the ring of hard sci­en­tif­ic fact. And, Har­ri­man had to ad­mit, it­was a bit un­can­ny how the dates just hap­pened to fall in line like that.

He passed the Metropoli­tan Club, glimps­ing the mar­vels of old New York mon­ey with­in. That washis world in there, or rather, the world of his grand­par­ents. Al­though he was ap­proach­ing the age where he could start ex­pect­ing the first of sev­er­al pres­ti­gious club in­vi­ta­tions (ar­ranged by his fa­ther), he wor­ried that his cur­rent po­si­tion at the­Post would be an im­ped­iment. He need­ed to get back to theTimes , and fast.

This was the sto­ry that could do it.

Ritts loved him-​at least as much as that rep­tile could love any­one. But a good sto­ry was like a fire. It need­ed to be fed. And this one was al­ready gut­ter­ing. He sensed Ritts’s good fa­vor could fade as quick­ly as it came, leav­ing him and his big new raise un­com­fort­ably ex­posed. He need­ed a de­vel­op­ment, even if it was man­ufac­tured. That was what he hoped this re­turn vis­it to Cut­forth’s build­ing might pro­vide. His ear­li­er pieces had al­ready swelled the ranks of the Bible-​thumpers, dev­il wor­shipers, Goths, freaks, sa­tanists, and New Agers who now gath­ered dai­ly along the fringes of Cen­tral Park op­po­site the build­ing. There had al­ready been a cou­ple of fist­fights, some name-​call­ing, a few vis­its by New York’s finest to break things up. But it was all dis­or­ga­nized. All re­ac­tions need­ed a cat­alyst and this was no ex­cep­tion.

He was near­ing 68th Street. He could al­ready see the gath­er­ings of freaks on the park side of Fifth Av­enue, each in its own lit­tle clump. He si­dled up to the milling groups, el­bow­ing his way through the ring of rub­ber­neck­ers. Noth­ing much had changed from the last time he was there, ex­cept the crowd had swelled. A sa­tanist in black leather, clutch­ing a Bud, was hurl­ing curs­es at a New Ager in hemp robes. There was the smell of beer and pot, not un­like a rock con­cert. At the far end, a man in fad­ed jeans and a Black Watch plaid short-​sleeved shirt was speak­ing to a rather large crowd. Har­ri­man couldn’t hear what he was say­ing, but of all the acts go­ing on in this cir­cus, his seemed to be the biggest.

Har­ri­man peeled out of the group of on­look­ers and in­sert­ed him­self back in, much clos­er to the man. He was preach­ing, that much was clear; but he looked nor­mal, and his voice, in­stead of crack­ing at the edge of hys­te­ria, sound­ed calm, ed­ucat­ed, and rea­son­able. Even as he spoke, the crowd around him was swelling. A lot of on­look­ers were at­tract­ed by what he was say­ing, and even some sa­tanists and Goths were lis­ten­ing.

“This is an amaz­ing city,” the man was say­ing. “I’ve been here just twen­ty-​four hours, but I can al­ready safe­ly say there’s noth­ing else on earth like it. The tall build­ings, the limousines, the beau­ti­ful peo­ple. It daz­zles the eye, it sure­ly does. This is my first time in New York City. And you know what strikes me most, more than the glit­ter and the glam­our? It’s the­hur­ry . Look around you, friends. Look at the pedes­tri­ans. Look how fast they walk, talk­ing in­to their phones or star­ing straight ahead. I’ve nev­er seen a thing like it. Look at the peo­ple in the taxis and bus­es as they pass-​even when they’re not mov­ing, they seem to be in a rush. And I know what they’re all so busy with. I’ve been do­ing a lot of lis­ten­ing since I ar­rived. I’ve prob­ably lis­tened to a thou­sand con­ver­sa­tions al­ready, most of them one-​sid­ed, be­cause peo­ple on this Man­hat­tan Is­land seem to pre­fer talk­ing in­to cell phones than talk­ing to re­al peo­ple, face­to-​face. What are they busy with? They’re busy with­them­selves . With to­mor­row’s big meet­ing. With din­ner reser­va­tions. With cheat­ing on their spous­es. With back­stab­bing a busi­ness as­so­ciate. All sorts of plans and schemes and stratagems, and none of them any more fore­sight­ed than, say, next month’s trip to Club Med. How many of all these busy folk are busy think­ing thir­ty, forty years ahead-​to their own mor­tal­ity? How many of these folks are busy mak­ing their peace with God? Or think­ing of the words of Je­sus in Luke:Ver­ily I say un­to you, This gen­er­ation shall not pass away, till all be ful­filled ? Pre­cious few, I’d guess. If any.”

Har­ri­man looked more close­ly at the preach­er. He had sandy hair, neat­ly cut, a good­look­ing all-​Amer­ican face, well-​de­vel­oped arms, trim, neat, clean-​shaven. No tat­toos or pierc­ings, no met­al-​stud­ded leather cod­piece. If he had a Bible, it wasn’t in ev­idence. It was as if he was talk­ing to a group of friends-​peo­ple he re­spect­ed.

“I’ve done some­thing else since reach­ing New York,” the man went on. “I’ve vis­it­ed church­es.Lots of church­es. I nev­er knew one city, no mat­ter how big, could boast so many church­es. But see, friends, here’s the sad thing. No mat­ter how many peo­ple were throng­ing the street­sout­side , I found ev­ery one of these church­es emp­ty. They’re starv­ing. They’re per­ish­ing from ne­glect. Even St. Patrick’s Cathe­dral-​as beau­ti­ful a Chris­tian place as I’ve ev­er seen in my born days-​had on­ly a sprin­kling of wor­shipers. Tourists? Yes, in­deed, by the hun­dreds. But of the de­vout? Less than the fin­gers on my two hands.

“And this, my friends, is the sad­dest thing of all. To think that-​in a place of so much cul­ture, so much learn­ing and so­phis­ti­ca­tion-​there can be such a ter­ri­ble spir­itu­al empti­ness. I feel it all around me like a desert, dry­ing the very mar­row of my bones. I didn’t want to be­lieve what I read in the pa­pers, the aw­ful sto­ries that brought me here to this place al­most against my will. But it’s true, my broth­ers and sis­ters. Ev­ery last word of it. New York is a city de­vot­ed to Mam­mon, not God. Look at him,” and he point­ed to a well-​dressed twen­ty-​some­thing pass­ing by in a pin­stripe suit, yakking in­to a phone. “When do you sup­pose was the last time he thought abouthis mor­tal­ity? Or her?” He point­ed to a wom­an with bags from Hen­ri Ben­del and Tiffany’s, climb­ing out of a cab. “Or them?” His ac­cus­ing fin­ger aimed at a pair of col­lege stu­dents, walk­ing hand in hand down the street. “Or you?” His fin­ger now swiveled across the crowd. “How long sincey­ou thought about your own mor­tal­ity? It may be a week away, ten years, or fifty-​but it’s com­ing. As sure as my name is Wayne P. Buck, it’s com­ing. Are you ready?”

Har­ri­man shiv­ered in­vol­un­tar­ily. This guy was­good .

“I don’t care if you’re an in­vest­ment banker on Wall Street or a mi­grant work­er in Amar­il­lo, death has no prej­udice. Big or small, rich or poor, death will come for us all. Peo­ple in the Mid­dle Ages knew that. Even our own fore­bears knew that. Look at old grave­stones and what do you see? The im­age of winged death. And like as not the wordsme­men­to mori : ‘re­mem­ber, you will die.’ Do you think that young fel­low ev­er stops to think about that? Amaz­ing: all these cen­turies of progress, and yet we’ve lost sight of that one fun­da­men­tal truth that was al­ways,al­ways the first thought of our an­ces­tors. An old po­et, Robert Her­rick, put it like this:

“Our life is short, and our days run

As fast away as does the sun;

And, as a vapour or a drop of rain

Once lost, can ne’er be found again.”

Har­ri­man swal­lowed. His luck was hold­ing. This guy Buck was a per­son­al gift to him. The crowd was swelling rapid­ly, and peo­ple were shush­ing their neigh­bors so they could hear the man’s qui­et, per­sua­sive voice. He didn’t need a Bible-​Christ, he prob­ably had the whole thing in his head. And not on­ly the Bible-​he was quot­ing meta­phys­ical po­ets as well.

He care­ful­ly reached over to his shirt pock­et and pressed the record but­ton on his mi­cro­cas­sette recorder. He didn’t want to miss a word. Pat Robert­son with his Pan-​Cake make­up couldn’t hold a can­dle to this guy.

“That young man isn’t stop­ping to think that ev­ery day he spends out of touch with God is a day that can nev­er, ev­er be re­claimed. Those two young lovers aren’t stop­ping to think of how their deeds will be held ac­count­able in the af­ter­life. That wom­an load­ed with shop­ping bags most like­ly nev­er gave a thought to the­re­al val­ue of life. Most like­ly none of them even­be­lieve in an af­ter­life. They’re like the Ro­mans who stood blind­ly aside while our Lord was cru­ci­fied. If they ev­er do stop to think about the af­ter­life, they prob­ably just tell them­selves that they’ll die and be put in a cof­fin and buried, and that’s it.

“Ex­cept, my broth­ers and sis­ters, that is­not it. I’ve held a lot of jobs in my life, and one of them was a mor­tu­ary as­sis­tant. So I speak to you with con­fi­dence. When you die, that is­not the end. It is just the be­gin­ning.I’ve seen what hap­pens to the dead with my own eyes. “

Har­ri­man no­ticed that the crowd, though grow­ing all the time, had fall­en ut­ter­ly silent. No­body seemed to move. Har­ri­man re­al­ized he, too, was al­most hold­ing his breath, wait­ing to hear what the man would say next.

“Per­haps our im­por­tant young man with the cell phone will be lucky enough to be buried in the mid­dle of win­ter. That tends to slow things down a piece. But soon­er or lat­er-​usu­al­ly soon­er-​the din­ner guests ar­rive. First come the blowflies,Phormia regi­na , to lay their eggs. In a fresh corpse, there’s a pop­ula­tion ex­plo­sion of sorts. That kind of pop­ula­tion growth-​we’re talk­ing half a dozen gen­er­ations here-​adds up to tens of thou­sands of mag­gots, al­ways mov­ing, al­ways hun­gry. The lar­vae them­selves gen­er­ate so much heat that those at the cen­ter must crawl out to the edges to cool be­fore bur­row­ing back in again to the task at hand. In time-​lapse pho­tog­ra­phy, it all be­comes a boil­ing, churn­ing storm. And, of course, the mag­gots are on­ly the first ar­rivals. In time, the fra­grance of de­com­po­si­tion brings a host of oth­ers. But I see no rea­son to trou­ble you with all the de­tails.

“So much, my friends, for rest­ing in peace.

“Per­haps, then, our young fel­low with the cell phone might de­cide cre­ma­tion is the way to go. This leaves no corpse be­hind to be vi­olat­ed, over slow years, by the bee­tles and the worms. Sure­ly cre­ma­tion is a quick, a dig­ni­fied end to our hu­man form. Aren’t we told as much?

“Then let me be the one to tell you, my broth­ers and sis­ters, no death is dig­ni­fied that be­falls us out­side the sight of God. I’ve wit­nessed more cre­ma­tions that I can count. Do you have any idea how hard it is to burn a hu­man body? How much heat is re­quired? Or what hap­pens when the body comes in con­tact with a six-​hun­dred-​de­gree flame? I will tell you, my friends, and for­give me if I do not spare you. You will learn there is a rea­son I do not spare you.

“First the hair, from head to toe, crisps in a blaze of blue smoke. Then the body snaps to at­ten­tion, just like a cadet in a pa­rade re­view. And then the body tries tosit up . Doesn’t mat­ter that there’s a cas­ket lid in the way, it tries to sit up all the same. The tem­per­ature ris­es, maybe to eight hun­dred de­grees. And it is now that the mar­row boils and the bones them­selves be­gin to burst, the back­bone ex­plod­ing just like a string of Black Cats.

“And still the tem­per­ature goes up. A thou­sand de­grees, fif­teen hun­dred, two thou­sand. The erup­tions keep on, rat­tling the re­tort oven like gun­shots-​but again I will re­frain from nam­ing just what is ex­plod­ing at this point. Leave me on­ly say that this goes on for as long as three hours be­fore the mor­tal re­mains are re­duced to ash and frag­ments of bone.

“Why have I not spared you more of these de­tails, my broth­ers and sis­ters? I will tell you why. Be­cause Lu­cifer, the Prince of Dark­ness, who nev­er sleeps in his tire­less pur­suit of cor­rup­tion, will not spare you, ei­ther. And the fires of that cre­ma­to­ri­um burn far cool­er, and far briefer, than the fires to which that im­por­tant young man’s soul is sure­ly des­tined. Two thou­sand de­grees or ten thou­sand, three hours or three cen­turies-​these are noth­ing to Lu­cifer. These are but a warm spring wind pass­ing for the briefest of mo­ments. And when you try to sit up in that burn­ing lake of brim­stone-​when you bump your head on the roof of hell and fall back in­to that un­quench­able flame, burn­ing so hot it sur­pass­es all pow­ers of my poor tongue to de­scribe it-​who will hear your prayers? No­body. You al­ready had a life­time to pray, trag­ical­ly squan­dered.

“And that is why I am here, my friends. Up in that beau­ti­ful build­ing, tow­er­ing so high over our puny heads, Lu­cifer showed his face to this great city and seized the soul of a man. A man named Cut­forth. Rev­ela­tion tells us that in the End Days, Lu­cifer will open­ly walk the earth. He has ar­rived. The death out on Long Is­land, the death right here: these are but the be­gin­ning. We have been giv­en a sign, and we must act. And act now. It is not too late. The crypt or the cre­ma­to­ri­um urn, the mag­got or the flame-​you must all of you un­der­stand that it makes no dif­fer­ence. When your soul is laid bare be­fore the judge of all, what will be your ac­count? I ask you to look in­to your­self now, in si­lence; and in si­lence to judge your­self. And then, in a lit­tle while, we will pray to­geth­er. Pray for for­give­ness, and for the time still up­on this earth, and in this doomed city, in which to find re­demp­tion.”

Al­most me­chan­ical­ly, with­out tak­ing his eyes from Buck, Har­ri­man slipped his cell phone out of his pock­et and called the pho­to de­part­ment, speak­ing very soft­ly. It was Klein’s shift, and he un­der­stood ex­act­ly what Har­ri­man want­ed. No car­ica­ture of a Bible-​thump­ing preach­er here. Just the op­po­site. Har­ri­man would make the Rev­erend Buck look like a man the read­ers of the­Post would re­spect: a man who seemed the most rea­son­able, thought­ful per­son alive.

And if you heard him speak, you might be­lieve it your­self.

Har­ri­man slipped the phone back in­to his pock­et. This Rev­erend Buck might not know it yet, but soon-​very soon-​he was go­ing to be page one news.

{ 52 }

The night was hu­mid and fra­grant. Crick­ets trilled in the close dark­ness. D’Agos­ta fol­lowed Pen­der­gast along an aban­doned rail­road track be­tween squalid-​look­ing con­crete apart­ments. It was mid­night and the moon had just set, low­er­ing a vel­vety cloak over the city.

The tracks end­ed, leav­ing on­ly the rail­road grade, which was crossed by a sag­ging chain­link fence run­ning off in­to dark­ness on both sides. On the far side of the fence lay black­ness, with just the faintest out­line of large trees sil­hou­et­ted against the night.

Fol­low­ing Pen­der­gast, D’Agos­ta turned and walked along the fence for a few hun­dred yards un­til they reached a clus­ter of trees. In the cen­ter was a tiny clear­ing, car­pet­ed with dead leaves and old chest­nut burrs.

“We’ll prep here,” said Pen­der­gast, set­ting down the bag he’d been car­ry­ing.

D’Agos­ta put down his own bag and took a few deep breaths. He was glad he’d be­gun work­ing out af­ter the chase through River­side Park but wished he’d thought of it soon­er. Pen­der­gast didn’t even seem wind­ed.

Pen­der­gast stripped off his suit, fold­ing it up in­to neat pack­ets which he stowed in his bag. Un­der­neath he was wear­ing black pants and shirt. D’Agos­ta stripped down to a sim­ilar cos­tume.

“Here.” Pen­der­gast tossed D’Agos­ta a jar of face paint, tak­ing an­oth­er for him­self, and be­gan black­en­ing his face with the tips of his fin­gers.

D’Agos­ta be­gan to ap­ply the paint as he ex­am­ined the perime­ter fence. It looked about as low-​se­cu­ri­ty as you could get: rusty and lean­ing, with nu­mer­ous rends and tears. He took off his shoes and pulled on an­oth­er pair Pen­der­gast had sup­plied him with: black and tight-​fit­ting, with smooth soles.

Pen­der­gast slipped out his Les Baer and be­gan ap­ply­ing black­ing to the gun. D’Agos­ta winced; it was a hell of a thing to do to such a beau­ti­ful firearm.

“You need to do the same, Vin­cent. A sin­gle glint, no mat­ter how small, would be all their spot­ters need.”

D’Agos­ta re­luc­tant­ly re­moved his weapon and be­gan black­ing it.

“Un­doubt­ed­ly you are won­der­ing if all this is re­al­ly nec­es­sary.”

“The thought had crossed my mind.”

Pen­der­gast tugged on a pair of black gloves. “The fence, as you’ve sure­ly guessed, is de­cep­tive. There are sev­er­al rings of se­cu­ri­ty. The first is pure­ly psy­cho­log­ical, which no doubt is one rea­son Bullard chose this site to be­gin with.”

“Psy­cho­log­ical?”

“The site was once Il Di­na­mi­ti­fi­cio No­bel, one of Al­fred No­bel’s dy­na­mite fac­to­ries.” Pen­der­gast checked his watch. “One of the great ironies of his­to­ry is that No­bel, who es­tab­lished the No­bel Peace Prize, made his for­tune with what at the time was the cru­elest in­ven­tion in hu­man his­to­ry.”

“Dy­na­mite?”

“Ex­act­ly. Sev­en­teen times more pow­er­ful than gun­pow­der. It rev­olu­tion­ized war­fare. We’re so used to mass killing, Vin­cent, that we’ve for­got­ten what war was like with on­ly black pow­der, can­non, and bul­lets. A ter­ri­ble thing, to be sure, but noth­ing like what it would be­come. Now a sin­gle bomb, in­stead of killing two or three, could kill hun­dreds. Shells and bombs could blow up en­tire build­ings, bridges, and fac­to­ries. With the in­ven­tion of the air­plane, bombs could lev­el en­tire city blocks, burn cities to the ground, mur­der thou­sands. We tend to fo­cus on the ter­ror of nu­cle­ar weapons, but the fact is, dy­na­mite and its deriva­tives have killed and maimed mil­lions more than the atom­ic bomb ev­er did, or prob­ably ev­er will.” He slipped a clip in­to his weapon and qui­et­ly racked the slide.

“Right.”

“Al­fred No­bel had a patent on mod­ern war­fare. At the height of his suc­cess, he had hun­dreds of fac­to­ries all over Eu­rope mak­ing dy­na­mite. These fac­to­ries had to be built on large cam­pus­es like this one, be­cause no mat­ter how care­ful­ly they han­dled their ma­te­ri­als, once in a while it went off, killing hun­dreds. He sit­ed his fac­to­ries in im­pov­er­ished ar­eas which would pro­vide an end­less source of des­per­ate, ex­pend­able work­ers. This fac­to­ry was one of his largest.” He swept his hand to­ward the dark­ness be­yond the fence.

“No­bel might have gone down in his­to­ry as a thor­ough­ly evil man had not a cu­ri­ous thing hap­pened. In 1888 his broth­er died, and the news­pa­pers of Eu­rope mis­tak­en­ly re­port­ed his broth­er’s death as his own. ‘The Mer­chant of Death Is Dead,’ ran the head­lines. Read­ing his own obit­uary shocked No­bel deeply, and made him re­al­ize how his­to­ry would see him. His re­ac­tion was to es­tab­lish the No­bel prizes-​in­clud­ing the famed Peace Prize-​as a way to redi­rect what would cer­tain­ly have been the dread­ful judg­ment of his­to­ry on his life.”

“Seems to have worked,” mut­tered D’Agos­ta.

“Which brings me to the point. By the time this fac­to­ry closed, hun­dreds of peo­ple had been killed in ex­plo­sions. On top of that, many thou­sands had been dev­as­tat­ed by some of the chem­icals used in the man­ufac­ture of dy­na­mite, chem­icals that af­fect­ed the brain. As a re­sult, this is a cursed place. It is shunned by the lo­cals. Ex­cept for the vis­its of a care­tak­er, the area saw no hu­man be­ings un­til Bullard bought the prop­er­ty sev­en years ago.”

“So Bullard’s let­ting the rep of the place han­dle se­cu­ri­ty for him,” D’Agos­ta said. “Clever.”

“It’s a clever de­ter­rent, at least for the lo­cals. Nev­er­the­less, there will be se­cu­ri­ty, and prob­ably quite so­phis­ti­cat­ed se­cu­ri­ty at that. I can on­ly spec­ulate as to its na­ture-​my in­quiries, as you know, have not been fruit­ful. But I have a few tools that should aid us.”

Pen­der­gast re­moved a haver­sack from his bag and slung it over one shoul­der. Reach­ing back in­to the bag, he re­moved sev­er­al pieces of alu­minum tub­ing and fit­ted them to­geth­er, af­fix­ing a small disc to one end. He ap­proached the fence, slow­ly mov­ing the de­vice back and forth. Reach­ing the fence, he bent down, sweep­ing the ground be­fore him care­ful­ly. A small red light glowed faint­ly on the small disc.

Pen­der­gast rose, stepped back. “As I sus­pect­ed. There is a six­ty-​hertz al­ter­nat­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic field, in­di­cat­ing elec­tric cur­rent.”

“You’re say­ing that fence is elec­tri­fied?” D’Agos­ta asked. “That old thing?”

“Not the fence it­self. A pair of sen­sor wires are buried just in­side to alert se­cu­ri­ty if any­one pass­es over them.”

“So how do we de­ac­ti­vate it?”

“We don’t. Fol­low me.”

Stow­ing their bags in the thick­et, they crept along the fence un­til they reached a weak spot, where sev­er­al large holes had been crude­ly patched with bal­ing wire. Pen­der­gast knelt and, with a few deft twists, un­wired the largest. Then, care­ful­ly ex­tend­ing the de­tec­tor through the hole, he scanned the ground in­side the fence. Num­bers glowed from a tiny LED screen on the disc.

He with­drew the de­vice and, reach­ing for a stick, care­ful­ly scraped away the leaves and dirt, ex­pos­ing a pair of wires. Then he re­peat­ed the pro­cess at an­oth­er spot a few feet away, ex­pos­ing more wires. Reach­ing in­to his haver­sack, he re­trieved a pair of al­li­ga­tor clips mat­ed to tiny elec­tron­ic de­vices. He at­tached one of these clips to each end of the wire.

“What are you do­ing?”

“I’m us­ing these clip-​and-​ca­pac­itor com­po­nents to re­duce our elec­tro­mag­net­ic sig­na­ture to that of a sev­en­ty-​kilo­gram wild boar and its mate. They are com­mon in this area, and no doubt Bullard’s night se­cu­ri­ty de­tail is plagued by boars roam­ing the fence line. Now, quick­ly.”

They crawled through the hole, Pen­der­gast swift­ly wiring up the open­ing and re­mov­ing the clips. Then, with an­oth­er stick, he filled the holes and cov­ered them with dead leaves. Fi­nal­ly, he pulled a small spritzer bot­tle and mist­ed the dis­turbed ground. An acrid smell reached D’Agos­ta.

“Di­lut­ed boar urine. Fol­low me.”

The two ran par­al­lel to the fence for a few hun­dred yards, crouch­ing low, un­til they reached a heavy thick­et. As qui­et­ly as pos­si­ble, they crawled deep in­side.

“Now we wait for se­cu­ri­ty to in­ves­ti­gate. It will be a while. Reg­ulate your breath­ing and stay calm. They’ll be com­ing in with night vi­sion and in­frared, no doubt, so stay low and don’t move. Since they’re al­ready as­sum­ing it’s a boar, their search will not be long.”

Si­lence fell. It was ut­ter­ly black in the dense thick­et. D’Agos­ta wait­ed. To his left, Pen­der­gast re­mained so mo­tion­less, so silent, that he seemed to dis­ap­pear com­plete­ly. The on­ly noise was the faint rus­tle of wind, the oc­ca­sion­al call of a night bird. Three min­utes passed, then five.

D’Agos­ta felt an ant mov­ing on his an­kle. He reached down to flick it away. “No,” whis­pered Pen­der­gast.

D’Agos­ta left the ant alone.

Soon he could feel it crawl­ing over his shin, ex­plor­ing with short, herky-​jerky move­ments. It worked its way down to his shoe, where it be­gan try­ing to dig in­to his sock. When he tried to think about some­thing else, he re­al­ized his nose had be­gun to tick­le. How long had they been still? Ten min­utes? Je­sus, re­main­ing mo­tion­less like this was hard­er than run­ning a marathon. D’Agos­ta could see ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing. A cramp had come up in his leg. He should have tak­en more care to seat him­self com­fort­ably. He longed to move. His nose was itch­ing fierce­ly now, all the worse for his not be­ing able to scratch it. More ants, em­bold­ened by the in­ves­ti­ga­tions of their scout, be­gan to crawl over his skin. The cramp in his leg grew worse, and he could feel his calf mus­cle twitch­ing in­vol­un­tar­ily.

Then came the faint sound of voic­es. D’Agos­ta held his breath. He could see the dis­tant gleam of a light, al­most ob­scured by leaves. More voic­es; a burst of stat­ic from a walkie-​talkie; some desul­to­ry con­ver­sa­tion in En­glish. Then si­lence re­turned.

D’Agos­ta ex­pect­ed Pen­der­gast to give the all-​clear, but the FBI agent said noth­ing. Now all of his mus­cles were scream­ing with pain. One of his legs had gone to sleep, and the ants were all over him.

“All right.” Pen­der­gast rose and D’Agos­ta fol­lowed, huge­ly grate­ful, shak­ing out his legs, rub­bing his nose, slap­ping away the ants.

Pen­der­gast glanced at him. “Some­day, Vin­cent, I will teach you a use­ful med­ita­tion tech­nique, per­fect for sit­ua­tions such as that.”

“I could use it. Talk about agony.”

“Now that we’ve by­passed the first lay­er of se­cu­ri­ty, on to the sec­ond. Keep di­rect­ly be­hind me and stay in my tracks as much as pos­si­ble.”

They moved through the woods, Pen­der­gast still scan­ning with his de­vice. The trees thinned and they emerged in­to an over­grown field. Be­yond stood a row of ru­ined build­ings, enor­mous brick ware­hous­es with peaked roofs and va­cant doors. Vines crawled up the sides, sprout­ing off in dark heads that nod­ded and swayed in the heavy air.

Pen­der­gast con­sult­ed a small map, and they moved to­ward the first ware­house. In­side it smelled of mold and dry rot; their foot­steps, even with the silent shoes, seemed to echo. They passed through a far door in­to a gi­gan­tic square sur­round­ed by build­ings. The ce­ment of the square was rid­dled with cracks, through which thrust dark veg­eta­tion.

“What if they have dogs?” D’Agos­ta whis­pered.

“Loose dogs are a thing of the past. They’re un­pre­dictable, noisy, and of­ten end up at­tack­ing the wrong per­son. Dogs are now on­ly used for track­ing. What we have to watch out for will be far more sub­tle.”

They crossed the ex­panse of con­crete. Noc­tur­nal an­imals rus­tled in the fo­liage as they passed. At the far end of the court­yard was a grassy al­ley be­tween two rows of ru­ined build­ings, the heaps of ma­son­ry cov­ered with ivy that, in the dark­ness, looked like spread­ing stains. Pen­der­gast pro­ceed­ed more cau­tious­ly now, us­ing a small, hood­ed flash­light to il­lu­mi­nate their way. Halfway along the al­ley he paused, knelt, and ex­am­ined the ground. Then he picked up a branch and gave a lit­tle poke to the grass ahead. He prod­ded hard­er, and the stick sud­den­ly broke through in­to space.

“A pit,” he said. “No­tice that, with these ru­ins flank­ing ei­ther side, this al­ley is the on­ly way to pro­ceed.”

“A boo­by trap?”

“Un­doubt­ed­ly. But dis­guised to look like some part of the old fac­to­ry, so that when the in­trud­er falls in and is killed, no­body would be blamed.”

“How did you spot it?”

“Lack of boar tracks.” Pen­der­gast care­ful­ly with­drew the stick and turned. “We shall have to make our way through one of these ru­ined lab­ora­to­ries. Take care: there may still be the odd bot­tle of ni­tro­glyc­erin around, strate­gi­cal­ly placed to snag the un­wary. We should con­sid­er this the next ring of se­cu­ri­ty, Vin­cent; we must be both qui­et and vig­ilant.”

They en­tered a dark door­way and Pen­der­gast flashed his hood­ed light around. The floor was cov­ered with bro­ken glass, rusty pieces of met­al, bro­ken tile, and bricks. Pen­der­gast paused, then sig­naled to D’Agos­ta to back out.

Two min­utes lat­er they were in the con­crete court­yard.

“What was wrong?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“Too much bro­ken glass, too even­ly spread, and the glass was too mod­ern to be from the orig­inal fac­to­ry. A noise trap, with sen­sors ready to pick up the tell­tale crunch of hu­man feet. Mo­tion sen­sors, too, I ex­pect.”

In the green­ish glow of his lantern, Pen­der­gast’s face seemed trou­bled.

“What now?”

“Back to the pit.”

They cir­cled back around to the al­ley­way and Pen­der­gast crept for­ward alone, prod­ding with a stick un­til he’d lo­cat­ed the pit. Then he lay on his stom­ach, care­ful­ly part­ed the thick grass and veg­eta­tion, and shone his light in­to the dark hole. A mo­ment lat­er he with­drew, snap­ping off his light.

“Wait here.”

And then he was gone, melt­ing in­to the night.

D’Agos­ta wait­ed. Pen­der­gast hadn’t told him to re­main still and silent; he hadn’t need­ed to. He crouched in the inky dark­ness, bare­ly dar­ing to breathe. Five min­utes passed. Left alone, the ten­sion be­gan to take its toll. D’Agos­ta could feel his heart pound­ing in his chest.

Re­lax.

And then-​as sud­den­ly and silent­ly as he had dis­ap­peared-​Pen­der­gast was back, a long plank in his hands. He laid it across the brushy open­ing, then turned to D’Agos­ta. “Be­yond this, no talk­ing un­less ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary. Fol­low my lead.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

They crossed the wob­bly plank, one af­ter the oth­er. On the far side, the brush was thick­er, pre­sent­ing a dark wall. Pen­der­gast moved for­ward, probed with his sen­sor, sniffed. He briefly turned on the light, then turned it off again. They moved par­al­lel to the brushy area, then veered in­to it on what ap­peared to be an an­imal trail.

The boars are sav­ing our ass,D’Agos­ta thought.

They crept slow­ly through the thick brush. A brick wall loomed to their right: a blast wall, judg­ing by its mas­sive­ness. In one place it had been knocked down by what D’Agos­ta guessed was an old ex­plo­sion. They moved through this gap, still fol­low­ing the boar trail. D’Agos­ta could bare­ly see Pen­der­gast, and could hear even less: the man moved as silent­ly as a leop­ard.

The trail pe­tered out in a large mead­ow less over­grown than the oth­ers they had passed. Pen­der­gast paused to re­con­noi­ter, mo­tion­ing for D’Agos­ta to stay back. At the far end lay the dark sil­hou­ette of more wrecked build­ings and, be­yond that, the faint glow of light.

Pen­der­gast slipped a pack of cigarettes out of his pock­et. Turn­ing back to­ward D’Agos­ta, and very care­ful­ly shield­ing a cigarette with his hands, he lit up. D’Agos­ta watched, as­ton­ished. Pen­der­gast in­haled lazi­ly, turned, and blew out a stream of smoke.

Not three feet in front of them, the drift­ing smoke re­vealed a bril­liant beam of blue light: a laser. It was set just high enough to clear the back of a boar.

Pen­der­gast got down on his stom­ach and be­gan to slith­er for­ward through the tall grass, mo­tion­ing D’Agos­ta to do like­wise.

Slow­ly, painstak­ing­ly, they ad­vanced across the field. Now and then Pen­der­gast would take a drag on the con­cealed cigarette and blow a stream of smoke over­head, il­lu­mi­nat­ing the laser beams that criss­crossed the field. Dark woods and ru­ins sur­round­ed the verge of the mead­ow, and it was im­pos­si­ble to see where the beams were com­ing from. When the cigarette went out, he lit an­oth­er.

In five min­utes they were across. Pen­der­gast ground out the stub of cigarette, rose, and moved at a crouch to an emp­ty door frame, with­draw­ing his light and di­rect­ing it in­side. The beam briefly il­lu­mi­nat­ed a long pas­sage­way, rooms front­ed with met­al bars fac­ing each oth­er across the cor­ri­dor. To D’Agos­ta it looked al­most like a prison. The ceil­ings had caved in, along with some of the walls, leav­ing a maze of bro­ken ma­son­ry, beams, and tile.

Pen­der­gast paused in the door­way to wave a hand­held me­ter of some kind, then ad­vanced cau­tious­ly. What was left of the ed­ifice seemed about to col­lapse, and from time to time D’Agos­ta could hear the creak­ing and groan­ing of a beam or the rat­tle of falling plas­ter. As they moved through the vast crum­bling space, the faint light ahead grew stronger, com­ing in through a row of shat­tered win­dows at the far end. Reach­ing the win­dows, they cau­tious­ly peered out.

An as­ton­ish­ing sight greet­ed D’Agos­ta’s eyes. Be­yond the ru­ined build­ing was a dou­blechain-​link fence, topped with con­certi­na wire, en­clos­ing a sweep­ing lawn swathed in light. A new build­ing stood there be­hind trimmed shrub­bery and flow­ers, a post­mod­ern struc­ture in glass, ti­ta­ni­um, and white pan­el­ing, glow­ing like a crys­tal in the night. To the far right, D’Agos­ta could see a guard­house and a gate in the fence.

They moved away from the win­dow, and Pen­der­gast sat against the wall. He seemed to be think­ing. Sev­er­al min­utes passed be­fore he roused him­self and mo­tioned D’Agos­ta to fol­low. Keep­ing low, they moved the length of the far wall and ex­it­ed a side door. Thick brush and goose­ber­ry bush­es grew up to with­in about ten yards of the dou­ble fence, where the close­ly clipped lawn be­gan.

They wormed their way in­to the brush and be­gan crawl­ing for­ward. Then D’Agos­ta felt Pen­der­gast freeze. The sound of voic­es was rapid­ly ap­proach­ing, along with the prob­ing of a bright spot­light. D’Agos­ta flat­tened him­self in the bush­es, hop­ing to God his black out­fit and face paint would keep him in­vis­ible. But the voic­es were get­ting close, too close; and they were loud; and the light was draw­ing ev­er near­er.

{ 53 }

D’Agos­ta lay mo­tion­less, hard­ly dar­ing to breathe, while the­beam of the spot­light lanced through the leaves and vines. The voic­es were even clos­er now, and he could make out what the men were say­ing. They were Amer­ican. There were two of them, it seemed, and they were walk­ing slow­ly along the in­ner perime­ter of the fence. He felt a sud­den, al­most ir­re­sistible de­sire to look up. But then the bril­liant beam land­ed square on his back, and he went still as death. The beam lin­gered, un­mov­ing. The men had stopped. There was a scratch­ing sound, the flar­ing of a match, fol­lowed by the faint smell of cigarette smoke.

“. ….re­al bas­tard,” came one of the voic­es. “If it weren’t for the mon­ey, I’d go back to Brook­lyn.”

“The way things are go­ing, we might all be head­ing back,”.replied the oth­er.

“The fuck­er’s gone crazy.”

A grunt of as­sent.

“They say he lives in a vil­la once owned by Machi­avel­li.”

“Who?”

“Machi­avel­li.”

“He’s that new tight end for the Rams, right?”

“For­get it.” The light abrupt­ly swiveled away, leav­ing sud­den dark­ness in its wake. It was a hand­held torch, D’Agos­ta re­al­ized, car­ried by one of the men.

The cigarette arced through the dark­ness, land­ing near D’Agos­ta’s left thigh, and the men con­tin­ued on.

Sev­er­al min­utes passed. Then, abrupt­ly, Pen­der­gast was at his side.

“Vin­cent,” he whis­pered, “the se­cu­ri­ty here is con­sid­er­ably more so­phis­ti­cat­ed than I had hoped. This is a sys­tem de­signed not just to thwart cor­po­rate es­pi­onage, but to keep out the CIA it­self. We can’t hope to get in­side with the tools at hand. We must re­treat and plan an­oth­er av­enue of at­tack.”

“Such as?”

“I have de­vel­oped a sud­den in­ter­est in Machi­avel­li.”

“I hear you.”

They crept back the way they had come, through the groan­ing, ru­ined build­ing. The trip seemed longer than be­fore. When they were halfway through, Pen­der­gast paused. “Nasty odor,” he mur­mured.

D’Agos­ta smelled it, too. The wind had shift­ed, and the scent of de­cay reached them from a far room. Pen­der­gast opened a shut­ter on the flash­light, al­low­ing a faint il­lu­mi­na­tion. The green­ish light dis­closed what had once been a small lab­ora­to­ry, its roof caved in. Be­low, sev­er­al heavy beams lay criss­crossed on the ground, and-​pro­trud­ing from them-​a rot­ting, part­ly skele­tonized head of a boar, its tusks bro­ken off in­to stubs.

“Boo­by trap?” whis­pered D’Agos­ta.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “De­signed as an un­sta­ble, rot­ting build­ing.” He let the shaft of green light fall here and there, fi­nal­ly paus­ing on a door­sill. “There’s the trig­ger. Step on that and you bring down the works.”

D’Agos­ta shiv­ered, think­ing how he’d blithe­ly crossed this very thresh­old not ten min­utes be­fore.

They passed care­ful­ly through the rest of the build­ing, warn­ing creaks of wood sound­ing oc­ca­sion­al­ly over their heads. Be­yond lay the broad field. It looked to D’Agos­ta like a lake of black­ness. Pen­der­gast lit an­oth­er cigarette, then knelt and moved for­ward cau­tious­ly, blow­ing smoke be­fore him once again, un­til the first laser beam be­came vis­ible, pen­cil-​thin and glow­ing dul­ly. Pen­der­gast nod­ded over his shoul­der, and they re­turned to the la­bo­ri­ous work of crawl­ing through the field, keep­ing un­der the beams.

This time the pro­cess seemed in­ter­minable. When D’Agos­ta fi­nal­ly al­lowed him­self a glance ahead, he was shocked to find they had on­ly reached the mid­dle of the field.

Just then there was a sud­den com­mo­tion in the grass ahead of them. A fam­ily of hares burst in­to view, star­tled, leap­ing in sev­er­al di­rec­tions at once and bound­ing off in­to the black­ness.

Pen­der­gast paused, took in an­oth­er lung­ful of smoke, and blew it at the spot where the rab­bits had been. A criss­cross­ing of laser beams be­came vis­ible.

“Nasty bit of luck,” he said.

“Trig­gered the beam?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“What do we do now?”

“We run.”

Pen­der­gast leaped up and flew like a bat across the field. D’Agos­ta rose and be­gan to fol­low, do­ing his best to keep up with the agent.

In­stead of head­ing back the way they had come, Pen­der­gast was mak­ing for the woods to their left. As they ap­proached the trees, D’Agos­ta heard dis­tant shouts and the start­ing of car en­gines. A mo­ment lat­er, sev­er­al pairs of head­lights came saw­ing across the mead­ow, trailed by the much more bril­liant beam of a mount­ed spot­light, as a pair of mil­itary-​style jeeps came tear­ing around the ru­ined build­ings.

Pen­der­gast and D’Agos­ta crashed in­to the dense un­der­growth of the woods, claw­ing through bram­bles and heavy brush. Af­ter a hun­dred yards, Pen­der­gast took a sharp turn and con­tin­ued at a right an­gle to their pre­vi­ous course, the haver­sack bounc­ing wild­ly on his shoul­der. D’Agos­ta fol­lowed, heart ham­mer­ing in his ears.

Pen­der­gast took an­oth­er sharp turn and they plunged on. Sud­den­ly they emerged on­to an old road filled with waist-​high grass. They pushed through it, D’Agos­ta strug­gling to keep Pen­der­gast in sight. Al­ready he was grow­ing wind­ed, but fear and adrenaline spurred him on.

A pow­er­ful beam lanced down the length of the road and they dived to the ground. Once it swept past, Pen­der­gast was up and run­ning again, this time in­to an­oth­er copse at the far end of the aban­doned road. More beams flick­ered through the trees, far­ther away, and voic­es float­ed to­ward them over the sullen air.

In­side the copse, Pen­der­gast stopped to pull out his map and scan it with the green flash­light while D’Agos­ta caught up. Then they con­tin­ued on, this time along a gen­tle rise. The woods grew thick­er, and it seemed they had man­aged to put space be­tween them­selves and their pur­suers. For the first time, D’Agos­ta al­lowed him­self to hope they might es­cape, af­ter all.

The trees thinned and D’Agos­ta saw a scat­ter­ing of starlight. And then sud­den­ly ris­ing be­fore them was an im­men­si­ty of black-​a wall, twen­ty feet high, all rot­ten bricks, dan­gling veg­eta­tion, and vines.

“This isn’t on the map,” said Pen­der­gast. “An­oth­er blast wall-​a late ad­di­tion, it seems.”

He glanced in ei­ther di­rec­tion. Through the trees be­low, D’Agos­ta could see the flick­er of flash­lights. Pen­der­gast turned and ran along the base of the wall. It curved along the top of a gen­tle ridge, its over­grown rim out­lined against the night sky.

Ahead, where the wall de­scend­ed, D’Agos­ta could see danc­ing lights through the veg­eta­tion.

“We climb,” said Pen­der­gast.

He turned, seized a root, pulled him­self up. D’Agos­ta did like­wise. He grabbed a stem, an­oth­er, found a foothold. In his haste, one of the plants tore out of the wall, send­ing down a show­er of rot­ting brick. D’Agos­ta dan­gled, re­cov­ered. He could see Pen­der­gast al­ready far above him, climb­ing like a cat. The lights be­low were com­ing up the hill, while an­oth­er group to their right was al­so clos­ing in.

“Faster!” Pen­der­gast hissed.

D’Agos­ta seized a vine, an­oth­er, slip­ping, scram­bling, one leg scrab­bling in space.

He now heard a ca­copho­ny of voic­es be­hind him. Pen­der­gast was just reach­ing the top of the wall. There was a shot and the thud of the bul­let on the wall to his right. One more hoist up, one more foothold.

Two more shots. Pen­der­gast was reach­ing down, grab­bing him by the arms, haul­ing him to the top. The lights had now reached the open area just be­fore the wall, bob­bing fran­ti­cal­ly, flash­ing up on the wall and hit­ting them.

“Down!”

D’Agos­ta was al­ready throw­ing him­self down on the crum­bling, over­grown top of the mas­sive wall. It was at least ten feet from side to side.

“Crawl.”

Dig­ging in his el­bows and knees, he be­gan to crawl across the top of the wall, keep­ing cov­er in the veg­eta­tion. There was a burst of au­to­mat­ic-​weapons fire, the rounds snick­ing through the bush above, show­er­ing him with twigs and leaves.

They reached the oth­er side-​on­ly to see more men there, ar­riv­ing with dogs: silent dogs held on leash­es. D’Agos­ta ducked back and rolled from the edge as more shots raked the bush­es to one side of him.

“Je­sus!” He lay on his back for a mo­ment, star­ing at the un­mov­ing stars.

The sud­den bay­ing of dogs reached his ears. The dogs had been re­leased.

Now there were voic­es on ei­ther side, a ba­bel of Ital­ian and En­glish. Pow­er­ful lights passed over­head, shone from be­low. D’Agos­ta could hear the rus­tle and scram­ble of climb­ing.

Pen­der­gast was sud­den­ly at his ear. “We stand up and run. Stay in the mid­dle of the wall and run at a crouch.”

“They’ll shoot us.”

“They’re go­ing to kill us, any­way.”

D’Agos­ta stood, be­gan to run-​not ex­act­ly run, but push and crash through the heavy veg­eta­tion grow­ing out of what must have once been a walk­way at the top.

Lights raked the top of the wall, and a burst of gun­fire sound­ed. And a voice:”Non sparate!”

“Keep run­ning!” Pen­der­gast cried.

But it was too late. There, in front of them on the wall, dark fig­ures were mount­ing, block­ing the way. Lights shone in their di­rec­tion. D’Agos­ta and Pen­der­gast dove to the rub­ble, flat­ten­ing them­selves.

“Non sparate!” some­one shout­ed again. “Do not shoot!”

From be­hind, D’Agos­ta saw that a sec­ond group had sur­mount­ed the wall. They were sur­round­ed. D’Agos­ta lay hud­dled in a pool of bril­liant light, feel­ing ex­posed, naked.

“Ec­coli!There they are!”

“Hold your fire!”

And then a voice-​qui­et and rea­son­able-​said:

“You may both stand up now and sur­ren­der. Or we will kill you. Your choice.”

{ 54 }

Locke Bullard stared across the ta­ble at the two men shack­led­to the wall. Two sons of bitch­es dressed in black spe­cial-​ops out­fits. They were Amer­icans, that much was clear; prob­ably CIA.

He turned to his se­cu­ri­ty chief. “Wipe the paint off their faces. Let’s see who they are.”

The man pulled out a hand­ker­chief and brusque­ly wiped off the paint.

Bullard could hard­ly be­lieve his eyes. They were the two peo­ple he least ex­pect­ed: the po­lice sergeant from Long Is­land and Pen­der­gast, the FBI spe­cial agent. Im­me­di­ate­ly, he re­al­ized Vasquez had failed. Or more like­ly, run off with the mon­ey. Un­be­liev­able. Yet even with­out Vasquez, it stunned Bullard to think these two had some­how fol­lowed him to Italy and man­aged to break through sev­er­al lay­ers of se­cu­ri­ty at the lab. He kept un­der­es­ti­mat­ing them, again and again. He had to get out of that habit. These two were formidable. And that’s ex­act­ly what he didn’t need. He had some­thing a lot more im­por­tant to do than mess around with these two.

He turned to the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor. “What hap­pened?”

“They pen­etrat­ed out­er se­cu­ri­ty at the old rail­road grade, made it as far as the sec­ond ring. They tripped the laser grid at the in­ner field.”

“You found out what they’re af­ter? What they heard?”

“They heard noth­ing, sir. They got noth­ing.”

“You sure they nev­er made it past the sec­ond ring?”

“Ab­so­lute­ly, sir.”

“Any comm de­vices on them?”

“No, sir. And none dropped. They came in deaf and dumb.”

Bullard nod­ded, his shock slow­ly giv­ing way to rage. These two had in­sult­ed him. They’ddam­aged him.

He cast his eye to­ward the fat one, who-​as it hap­pened-​didn’t look quite so fat any­more. “Hey, D’Agos­ta, you shed a few pounds? How’s the hard-​on prob­lem?”

No an­swer. The fuck was look­ing at him with ha­tred. Good. Let him hate.

“And the not-​so-​spe­cial agent. If that’s what you re­al­ly are. Want to tell me what you’re do­ing here?”

No re­sponse.

“Didn’t get jack shit, did you?”

This was a waste of time. They hadn’t pen­etrat­ed the sec­ond, let alone the third, ring of se­cu­ri­ty, which meant they couldn’t have learned any­thing of val­ue. Best thing now was to get rid of them. Sure, the feds would be all over the place to­mor­row, but this was Italy, and he had friends in the Ques­tu­ra. He had five hun­dred acres in which to hide the bod­ies. They wouldn’t find shit.

One hand was in his trous­er pock­et, rolling around some eu­ros. The hand fell on his pock­etknife. He re­moved it, opened the nail file, be­gan idly clean­ing his nails. With­out look­ing up, he asked: “Wife still do­ing the RV sales­man, D’Agos­ta?”

“You’re a John­ny-​one-​note, you know that, Bullard? Makes me think you’ve had some prob­lems along those lines your­self.”

Bullard felt a surge of rage, which he quick­ly mas­tered. He was go­ing to kill them, but first D’Agos­ta was go­ing to pay a lit­tle. He con­tin­ued with his nails.

“Your hit man fucked up,” D’Agos­ta went on. “Too bad, him go­ing the cyanide high­way be­fore he could im­pli­cate you. We’ll still see you get stuck with a con­spir­acy rap, though. You’ll do hard time. Hear me, Bullard? And once you’re safe­ly in the Big House, I’ll per­son­al­ly make sure some­body makes you his num­ber one bitch. Oh, you’ll make some skin­head a nice punk, Bullard.”

It was on­ly through long prac­tice that Bullard man­aged to keep his com­po­sure. So Vasquez hadn’t run off with the mon­ey. He’d tak­en the job and failed. Some­how, he’d failed.

He re­mind­ed him­self it hard­ly mat­tered now.

He ex­am­ined his work, closed the nail file, opened the long blade. He kept it ra­zor-​sharp for oc­ca­sions just like this one. Who knew: he might even get some in­for­ma­tion.

He turned to one of his as­sis­tants. “Put his right hand on the ta­ble.”

While one guard grabbed D’Agos­ta’s face in a meaty paw and slammed it back against the wall, the oth­er un­mana­cled one hand, jerked it for­ward, and pinned it to the ta­ble. The cop strug­gled briefly.

Bullard eyed the class ring on the hand. Some shit­ty P.S. in Queens, prob­ably. “Play the pi­ano, D’Agos­ta?”

No an­swer.

He swiped the knife down across D’Agos­ta’s right mid­dle fin­ger­nail, split­ting the tip of the fin­ger.

D’Agos­ta jerked, gasped, pulling his fin­ger free. Blood welled out from the wound: slow­ly at first, then faster. The man strug­gled wild­ly, but the guards re­gained a lock on him. Slow­ly, they forced the hand back in­to po­si­tion against the ta­ble.

Bullard felt a flush of ex­cite­ment.

“Son of abitch !” D’Agos­ta groaned.

“You know what?” Bullard said. “I like this. I could do this all night.”

D’Agos­ta strug­gled against the guards.

“You’re CIA, aren’t you?”

D’Agos­ta groaned again.

“An­swer me.”

“No, for chris­sakes.”

“You.” He turned to Pen­der­gast. “CIA? An­swer me. Yes or no?”

“No. And you’re mak­ing an even larg­er mis­take than you made ear­li­er.”

“Sure I am.” Why was he both­er­ing? And what dif­fer­ence did it make? These were the bas­tards who had hu­mil­iat­ed him in front of the whole city. He felt rage seize him again, and­more care­ful­ly now-​he took the knife and sliced it hard across the ta­ble, tak­ing the tip off D’Agos­ta’s al­ready dam­aged fin­ger.

“Fuck!”D’Agos­ta screamed. “Youbas­tard !”

Bullard stepped back, breath­ing hard. His palms were sweat­ing; he wiped them on the sleeve of his jack­et, took a fresh grip on the knife. Then he caught sight of the wall clock. It was al­ready close to two. He couldn’t let him­self get caught up in a mi­nor dis­trac­tion. He had some­thing more im­por­tant to do be­fore dawn. Some­thing much,much more im­por­tant.

He turned back to his se­cu­ri­ty chief. “Kill them. Then get rid of the bod­ies. Dump their weapons with them. Do it over at the old shafts. I don’t want any foren­sics left on the premis­es, es­pe­cial­ly not around the lab. You know what I mean: hair, blood, any­thing with DNA. Don’t even let them spit.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You-,” be­gan Pen­der­gast, but Bullard spun around and land­ed a mas­sive up­per­cut in his stom­ach. Pen­der­gast dou­bled over.

“Gag them. Gag them both.”

The se­cu­ri­ty men rammed balls of cloth in­to their mouths, then bound them tight­ly with duct tape.

“Blind­fold them, too.”

“Yes, Mr. Bullard.”

Bullard looked at D’Agos­ta. “Re­mem­ber how I promised to pay you back? Now your fin­ger’s as short as your dick.”

D’Agos­ta strug­gled, mak­ing inar­tic­ulate sounds as the blind­fold went on.

Bullard turned to his as­sis­tant, nod­ded at the ta­ble. “Clean up that mess. And then get the hell out of here.”

{ 55 }

Gagged and blind­fold­ed, hands cuffed be­hind his back,D’Agos­ta was herd­ed along by one of the two se­cu­ri­ty men. He could hear the chink of Pen­der­gast’s shack­les be­side him. They were mov­ing through what seemed a long, damp un­der­ground pas­sage­way: the air stank of fun­gus, and he could feel the chill hu­mid­ity soak­ing in­to his clothes. Or maybe it was his own sweat. His mid­dle fin­ger felt like it had been dipped in molten lead. It was puls­ing in time to his heart­beat, the blood run­ning freely down the small of his back.

There was some­thing un­re­al about the whole sit­ua­tion. At any oth­er time, the thought he’d just lost the end of a fin­ger would be all-​con­sum­ing. Yet right now on­ly the pain it­self reg­is­tered. Ev­ery­thing had hap­pened so quick­ly. Just hours be­fore, he’d been re­lax­ing in a lux­uri­ous suite. Just a few hours be­fore, he’d been al­most tear­ful at see­ing his own na­tive land at long last. And now here he was-​a dirty cloth stuffed in his mouth, his eyes blind­fold­ed, arms bound, be­ing led to an ex­ecu­tion-​style death.

He couldn’t re­al­ly be­lieve he was about to die. And yet that was ex­act­ly what was go­ing to hap­pen un­less ei­ther he or Pen­der­gast could think of some­thing. But they had been thor­ough­ly searched. And Pen­der­gast’s most pow­er­ful weapon-​his tongue-​had been si­lenced. It seemed im­pos­si­ble, un­think­able. And yet the fact was he had on­ly min­utes left to live.

He tried to force the sense of un­re­al­ity away; tried to for­get the sear­ing pain; strug­gled to think of some last-​minute es­cape, some way to turn the ta­bles on the two men that were so mat­ter-​of-​fact­ly lead­ing them off to their deaths. But there was noth­ing in his train­ing, noth­ing even in the de­tec­tive books he’d read or writ­ten, to give him a clue.

They paused, and D’Agos­ta heard the groan of rusty met­al be­ing forced open. Then he was shoved for­ward, and the trilling of crick­ets and the hu­mid night air hit his nos­trils. They were out­side.

He was prod­ded for­ward by what was un­doubt­ed­ly the bar­rel of a gun. Now they were walk­ing on what felt through the soft shoes like a grassy trail. He could hear the rustling of leaves above his head. Such small, in­signif­icant sen­sa­tions-​and yet they had sud­den­ly grown un­bear­ably pre­cious to him.

“Christ,” said one of the men. “This dew is go­ing to ru­in my shoes. I just paid two hun­dred eu­ros for them, hand­made over in Pan­zano.”

The oth­er chuck­led. “Good luck get­ting an­oth­er pair. That old geezer makes like one pair a month.”

“We al­ways get the shit jobs.” As if to un­der­score this, the man gave D’Agos­ta an­oth­er shove. “They’re soaked through al­ready, god­damn it.”

D’Agos­ta found his thoughts steal­ing to­ward Lau­ra Hay­ward. Would she shed a tear for him? It was strange, but the one thing he most want­ed right now was to be able to tell her how he went out. He thought that would make it eas­ier to bear, eas­ier than just van­ish­ing, than nev­er know­ing .

“A lit­tle shoe pol­ish and they’ll be like new.”

“Once leather gets wet it’s nev­er the same.”

“You and your fuck­ing shoes.”

“If you paid two hun­dred eu­ros, you’d be pissed, too.”

D’Agos­ta’s sense of un­re­al­ity grew. He tried to em­brace the throb­bing pain in his fin­ger, be­cause as long as he could feel that, he knew he was still alive. What he feared was when the pain end­ed .

Just a few more min­utes now. He took a step for­ward, an­oth­er, then stum­bled against some­thing in the grass.

A slap to the side of the head. “Watch your step, ass­hole.”

The air had grown cool­er, and there was a smell of earth and de­cay­ing leaves. He felt a ter­ri­ble help­less­ness. The gag and blind­fold robbed him of all abil­ity to make eye con­tact with Pen­der­gast, to sig­nal, to do any­thing.

“The trail to the old quar­ry goes that way.”

There was a rustling, then a grunt. “Je­sus, it’s over­grown in here.”

“Yeah, and watch where you put your feet.”

D’Agos­ta felt him­self shoved for­ward once again. Now they were push­ing through wet fo­liage.

“It’s right up ahead. There’s a lot of stones near the edge, don’t trip.” A guf­faw. “It’s a long way down.”

More push­ing through bush­es and wet grass. Then D’Agos­ta felt him­self brusque­ly halt­ed

“An­oth­er twen­ty feet,” his man said.

Si­lence. D’Agos­ta caught a whiff of some­thing wet and cold-​the ex­ha­la­tion of stale air from a deep mine shaft.

“One at a time. We don’t want to fuck this up. You go first. I’ll wait here with this one. And hur­ry up, I’m get­ting bit­ten al­ready.”

D’Agos­ta heard Pen­der­gast be­ing pushed for­ward, heard the swish of wet foot­steps through the un­der­growth ahead. The first man had a tight hold on his cuffs, a gun bar­rel pushed hard in­to his ear. He should do some­thing, hehad to do some­thing. But what? The slight­est move and he was dead. He couldn’t be­lieve what was hap­pen­ing. His mind re­fused to ac­cept it. He re­al­ized that, deep down, he’d been cer­tain Pen­der­gast would man­age to do some­thing mirac­ulous, pull an­oth­er rab­bit out of his hat. But the time for that was past. What could Pen­der­gast do: gagged, blind­fold­ed, a gun to his head, stand­ing at the edge of a precipice? The last small bit of hope drained away.

“That’s far enough,” came the voice from about thir­ty feet away, slight­ly muf­fled by the fo­liage. It was the sec­ond man, speak­ing to Pen­der­gast. D’Agos­ta caught an­oth­er whiff of cold air from the mine shaft. In­sects whined in his ear. His fin­ger throbbed.

It re­al­ly was over.

He heard the sound of a round be­ing racked in­to a pis­tol cham­ber.

“Make your peace with God, scum­bag.”

A pause. And then the sound of a gun­shot, in­cred­ibly loud. An­oth­er pause-​and then from far be­low, echo­ing up the shaft in a dis­tort­ed way, the sound of a heavy ob­ject hit­ting wa­ter.

There was a longer si­lence, and then the man’s voice came back, a lit­tle breath­less. “Okay. Bring up the oth­er one.”

{ 56 }

Three a.m.

Locke Bullard stood in the enor­mous, vault­ed­sa­lone of his vil­la, iso­lat­ed on a hill south of Flo­rence, his feel­ings be­trayed on­ly by the mus­cles work­ing slow­ly above his mas­sive jaw­line. He walked to the lead­ed win­dows that looked over the walled gar­dens, opened one with a shak­ing, knot­ted hand. The stars were ob­scured by clouds, the night sky per­fect­ly black. A per­fect night for this kind of busi­ness; as per­fect as that oth­er night had been, all those years ago. God, what he would give to un­do that night . He shiv­ered at the mem­ory, or maybe it was just the cool breath of the wind sigh­ing through the an­cient trees in thep­ine­ta be­yond the gar­den.

He stood at the win­dow for some time, strug­gling to calm him­self, to sup­press a grow­ing feel­ing of dread. Be­low, on the ter­race, the in­dis­tinct white shapes of mar­ble stat­ues glowed faint­ly. Soon it would be over, he re­mind­ed him­self. And he would be free.Free. But right now, he had to keep calm He had to put his old, ra­tio­nal view of the world aside, if on­ly for one night. To­mor­row, he could tell him­self it had all been a bad dream.

With a great ef­fort he cleared his mind, tried to fo­cus on some­thing else, even briefly. Be­yond the sway­ing tops of the um­brel­la pines, he could see the out­lines of cy­press­es on the far hills, and then the dis­tant cupo­la of the Duo­mo, next to Giot­to’s tow­er, bright­ly lit. Who was it that said on­ly if you lived with­in sight of the Duo­mo were you a true Flo­ren­tine? This was the same view Machi­avel­li had seen, ex­act­ly this: those hills, that fa­mous dome, the dis­tant tow­er. Per­haps Machi­avel­li had stood in this very spot five hun­dred years ago, work­ing out the de­tails ofThe Prince . Bullard had read the book when he was twen­ty. It was one of the rea­sons he’d jumped at the op­por­tu­ni­ty to own the vil­la Machi­avel­li was born and raised in.

Bullard won­dered how Machi­avel­li would have re­act­ed to this predica­ment. The great courtier would no doubt have felt the same things he did: dread and res­ig­na­tion How do you make a choice when faced with a prob­lem that has two so­lu­tions, both in­tol­er­able? He cor­rect­ed him­self: one was in­tol­er­able, the oth­er un­think­able.

You ac­cept­ed the in­tol­er­able.

He turned from the win­dow and looked across the dim room at the clock on the man­tel­piece. Ten min­utes af­ter three. He need­ed to make his fi­nal prepa­ra­tions.

He moved to­ward a ta­ble and lit a huge, an­cient can­dle, whose glow il­lu­mi­nat­ed an old piece of parch­ment: a cer­tain page from a thir­teenth-​cen­tu­ry gri­moire. Then, tak­ing up the an­cien­tarthame knife that lay be­side it, Bullard care­ful­ly be­gan to score a cir­cle in the ter­ra-​cot­ta floor of the room, work­ing slow­ly, tak­ing the ut­most care to make sure the cir­cle re­mained un­bro­ken When that was done, he took a piece of char­coal, spe­cial­ly pre­pared, and be­gan to in­scribe let­ters in Greek and Ara­ma­ic on the pe­riph­ery of the cir­cle, stop­ping now and then to con­sult the gri­moire. He fol­lowed this by in­scrib­ing two pen­ta­grams around it all. Next he in­scribed a small­er cir­cle-​this one bro­ken-​be­side the larg­er. He did not wor­ry about be­ing in­ter­rupt­ed: he had dis­missed all the se­cu­ri­ty and the help. He want­ed no chance of wit­ness­es and-​above all-​no chance of in­ter­rup­tion When you were do­ing what he was about to do,rais­ing what he hoped to raise, there could be no dis­rup­tions, no mis­takes, noth­ing left out. The stakes were greater than his life-​be­cause, it seemed, the con­se­quences would not end with his death.

He paused, prepa­ra­tions al­most com­plete. It would not be long now. It would be over and then he could be­gin again. There would be, of course, mi­nor loose ends to take care of: the dis­ap­pear­ance of Pen­der­gast and D’Agos­ta, for ex­am­ple; the Chi­nese and what had hap­pened in Pa­ter­son. But it would be a re­lief to re­turn to busi­ness as usu­al. Those prob­lems, as tricky as they were, be­longed to the re­al world, and he could han­dle them. They were small pota­toes com­pared toth­is .

He went over the manuscript page again, then yet again, mak­ing sure he had missed noth­ing. Then, al­most against his will, his gaze shift­ed to the old rect­an­gu­lar box sit­ting on the ta­ble. Now it was time forthat .

He reached out, un­did the brass latch. He ca­ressed the pol­ished sur­face of the box and then-​with a ter­ri­ble re­luc­tance-​opened it. A faint scent of an­tique wood and horse­hair waft­ed up­ward. He breathed it in: this an­cient per­fume, this price­less scent With a trem­bling hand, he reached in­to the dark­ness of the box, stroked the smooth ob­ject in­side. He did not dare take it out-​han­dling it had al­ways fright­ened him a lit­tle. It was not made for him at all. It was made for oth­ers. Oth­ers who, if he was suc­cess­ful, would nev­er see it again .

A sud­den rush of re­gret, anger, fear, and help­less­ness stag­gered him. He was al­most over­whelmed by the sheer force of it. In­cred­ible that a thought could vir­tu­al­ly bring him to his knees. He gasped again, breath­ing hard; took a firm grip on the heavy ta­ble. What had to be done, had to be done.

He care­ful­ly closed the box, latched it, and placed it on the ground in­side the small­er, bro­ken cir­cle. He wouldn’t look at it again, wouldn’t tor­ture him­self fur­ther. With a trou­bled heart, he glanced over at the clock. It re­spond­ed by chim­ing out the quar­ter hour, the bell-​like tones a strange coun­ter­point to the op­pres­sive dark­ness of the room. Bullard swal­lowed, worked his jaw, and fi­nal­ly, with a supreme ef­fort, spoke the words he had mem­orized so care­ful­ly.

It was the work of nine­ty sec­onds to com­plete the in­can­ta­tion

At first, noth­ing hap­pened. He strained, lis­ten­ing, but there was not a sound, not a sigh; noth­ing. Had he said it in­cor­rect­ly? With the help gone, the place was as qui­et as the tomb.

His eye drift­ed back to the manuscript page. Should he re­cite it again? But no-​the cer­emo­ny had to be per­formed pre­cise­ly, with­out de­vi­ation Rep­eti­tion could have dis­as­trous, unimag­in­able con­se­quences

As he wait­ed, there in the faint light, he won­dered if per­haps it wasn’t true, af­ter all: that it was all hol­low su­per­sti­tion. But at this thought, such a des­per­ate mix­ture of hope and un­cer­tain­ty rose with­in him that he forced him­self to push it aside. He was not wrong. There could be no oth­er an­swer .

Then he felt, or thought he felt, a strange shift­ing of the air. A faint smell came to him, drift­ing across the­sa­lone . It was the acrid odor of sul­fur

A breeze shift­ed the cur­tains of the win­dow. The room seemed to grow dim­mer, as if a great dark­ness was en­croach­ing from all di­rec­tions. He felt him­self go rigid with fear and an­tic­ipa­tion It was hap­pen­ing. The in­can­ta­tion was work­ing, just as promised.

He wait­ed, al­most afraid to breathe. The smell got stronger, and now it al­most seemed as if ten­drils of smoke were drift­ing in the lazy air of the room, ten­drils that licked about the win­dows and curled in the cor­ners. He felt a strange sense of ap­pre­hen­sion, of phys­ical dread. Yes, it was aphys­ical sen­sa­tion, a harbinger of what was to come, and the air seemed to con­geal with a ris­ing warmth.

Bullard stood with­in the greater cir­cle, his heart pound­ing, his eyes strain­ing to see be­yond the dark­ened door­way. A vague out­line . a lum­ber­ing, slow-​mov­ing shape .

He’d done it! He’d suc­ceed­ed!He was com­ing!He was re­al­ly com­ing . !

{ 57 }

D’Agos­ta felt numb. The shot, the si­lence, and the fi­nal­splash-​this was re­al­ly it.

“Come on,” his min­der said, giv­ing him a push.

D’Agos­ta couldn’t move; he couldn’t be­lieve what was hap­pen­ing.

“Move!” The man jabbed D’Agos­ta in the back of the head with his gun bar­rel.

He stum­bled for­ward, me­chan­ical­ly try­ing to keep his foot­ing among dis­card­ed pieces of stone. The moldy breath of the open shaft washed over him. Six steps, eight, a dozen.

“Stop.”

Now he could feel the foul air tick­ling his nose, stir­ring his hair. Ev­ery­thing seemed ab­nor­mal­ly clear, and time had slowed to a crawl.Je­sus, what a way to go out.

The gun bar­rel pressed hard against his skull. D’Agos­ta squeezed his eyes tight­ly closed be­hind the blind­fold, prayed for a quick end.

He took a shal­low breath, an­oth­er. Then came a deaf­en­ing gun­shot. He fell for­ward in­to space .

. Vague­ly, as if at a great dis­tance, he sensed a steel arm shoot­ing out from be­hind and haul­ing him back from the ut­ter brink. The hand let go, and D’Agos­ta col­lapsed im­me­di­ate­ly on­to the rock-​strewn grass. A mo­ment lat­er he heard a body-​not his-​hit­ting the wa­ter far be­low.

“Vin­cent?”

It was Pen­der­gast.

A snick and his blind­fold was re­moved; an­oth­er snick and Pen­der­gast had cut off his gag. D’Agos­ta lay where he had fall­en, stunned.

“Wake up, Vin­cent.”

Slow­ly, D’Agos­ta came back. Pen­der­gast was stand­ing to one side, gun trained on his own min­der, bind­ing him to a tree. D’Agos­ta’s man was nowhere to be seen.

D’Agos­ta stum­bled wood­en­ly to his feet. He felt a strange wet­ness on his face. Tears? Dew from the grass? It seemed a mir­acle. He swal­lowed, man­aged to croak, “How . ?”

But Pen­der­gast sim­ply shook his head and glanced in­to the yawn­ing mouth of the shaft. “I think his shoe trou­bles are over.” Then he glanced at the re­main­ing guard and flashed him a brief, chill­ing smile.

The man paled and mum­bled some­thing through his gag.

Pen­der­gast turned to D’Agos­ta. “Show me your fin­ger.”

D’Agos­ta had for­got­ten all about it. Pen­der­gast took his hand, ex­am­ined it. “Done with a sharp knife. You’re lucky: nei­ther the bone nor the root of the nail was af­fect­ed.” He tore a strip of cloth from the hem of his black shirt and ban­daged it. “It might be wise to get you to a hos­pi­tal.”

“The hell with that. We’re go­ing af­ter Bullard.”

Pen­der­gast raised his eye­brows. “I’m de­light­ed to hear that we are of the same opin­ion. Yes, now is a good op­por­tu­ni­ty. As for your fin­ger-“

“For­get the fin­ger.”

“As you wish. Here’s your ser­vice piece.”

Pen­der­gast hand­ed him the Glock 9mm, then turned to his min­der and aimed his own Les Baer at the man’s tem­ple. “You have one chance-​on­ly one-​to tell us the best route out. I al­ready know a great deal about the lay­out of this place, so any at­tempt to de­ceive will be de­tect­ed and in­stant­ly an­swered with a bul­let to the pari­etal lobe. Un­der­stand?”

The man couldn’t talk fast enough.

An hour lat­er, Pen­der­gast and D’Agos­ta were driv­ing south of Flo­rence on the Via Volter­rana, a dark, stone-​walled road that curved along the hill­tops south of the city. A faint scat­ter­ing of lights winked from the sur­round­ing hills.

“How did you do it?” D’Agos­ta asked. He could still hard­ly be­lieve it. “I thought we were about to buy the farm.”

They were still in their black stealth out­fits, and on­ly Pen­der­gast’s hands and face could be seen. In the dim light of the dash­board, his ex­pres­sion was hard and flat. “I have to ad­mit a mo­ment of dis­com­fort back there my­self. We were lucky they de­cid­ed to sep­arate, to kill us one at a time. That was their first mis­take. The sec­ond was over­con­fi­dence and inat­ten­tion. The third was my man keep­ing his gun pressed in­to me-​which, of course, re­vealed ex­act­ly where the weapon was at all times. I al­ways car­ry a few small tools in my shirt cuff, the hem of my trousers, oth­er places. It’s an old ma­gi­cians’ trick. I used these to pick the lock of my cuffs. Luck­ily, the Ital­ian locks were rather crude. When we halt­ed at the pit, I dis­armed my op­po­nent with a blow to the so­lar plexus, re­moved my blind­fold and gag. I then shot the gun in­to the air while push­ing a heavy rock in­to the quar­ry with my foot. Next I in­struct­ed my guard to or­der you brought for­ward-​which he did as soon as he re­cov­ered his wind. I re­gret shoot­ing your guard, but there would have been no way to man­age both of them . I do not care for killing peo­ple in cold blood, but there was no help for it.”

He fell silent.

D’Agos­ta felt his own anger grow.He had no sense of re­gret. His fin­ger was throb­bing painful­ly again, in time to the beat of his heart.Bullard. Pen­der­gast had been cor­rect: the man would pay dear­ly.

The car swung around a curve, and there, a half mile ahead, D’Agos­ta could see the out­line of a vil­la sil­hou­et­ted against the faint glow of the night sky, a crenel­lat­ed tow­er on one end framed by cy­press trees.

“Machi­avel­li’s place of ex­ile,” mur­mured Pen­der­gast.

The car dipped in­to a val­ley, cruis­ing along an an­cient wall. Pen­der­gast slowed as they ap­proached an iron gate, then turned off the road. They hid the car in an olive grove and ap­proached the gate.

“I was ex­pect­ing heavy se­cu­ri­ty,” Pen­der­gast said af­ter quick­ly ex­am­in­ing the lock. “In­stead, this gate’s open.” He peered through. “And the guard­house ap­pears to be un­oc­cu­pied.”

“Are you sure we’re at the right vil­la?”

“Yes.” He slow­ly eased the gate open, and they stepped in­to the dark­ness of the vil­la’s great park. Two rows of cy­press­es lined a drive that led up a hill cov­ered with more olive groves. Pen­der­gast paused, drop­ping to his hands and knees to ex­am­ine faint tread marks in the grav­el of the drive. Then he stood, looked around, and nod­ded to­ward a dense for­est of um­brel­la pines that lay to one side. “That way.”

They moved through the pines, Pen­der­gast stop­ping ev­ery now and then, ap­par­ent­ly look­ing for guards or oth­er signs of se­cu­ri­ty. “Odd,” he mur­mured to him­self. “Very odd.”

Soon they reached a thick hedge of lau­rel, im­mac­ulate­ly clipped and im­pen­etra­ble. They walked along the hedge to a locked gate, which Pen­der­gast deft­ly picked. Be­yond lay a for­mal Ital­ian gar­den, low box­wood hedges laid in rect­an­gu­lar shapes, bor­dered by beds of laven­der and marigolds. In the cen­ter stood a mar­ble stat­ue of a faun play­ing pan­pipes, wa­ter pour­ing from the pipes and splash­ing in­to a mossy pool be­low. Be­yond rose the dark fa­cade of the vil­la.

They paused to ex­am­ine the huge struc­ture. It was stuc­coed in a pale yel­low. A log­gia ran across the fourth floor, just un­der the tiled roof: a row of columns topped by Ro­man arch­es. The on­ly sign of life was a faint, flick­er­ing glow through the open lead­ed win­dows of what ap­peared to be a grand­sa­lone on the sec­ond floor.

Pen­der­gast moved for­ward again and D’Agos­ta fol­lowed, the bur­bling foun­tain mask­ing their foot­steps. In an­oth­er few min­utes, they reached the out­er wall of the vil­la it­self. There was still no sign of any se­cu­ri­ty.

“Strange,” whis­pered Pen­der­gast.

“Maybe Bullard isn’t home.”

They passed un­der one of the great win­dows of the­sa­lone . That was when the smell hit D’Agos­ta. It was just a fleet­ing whiff, yet it felt like a phys­ical blow. In­stant­ly his anger turned to dis­be­lief, then to creep­ing dread.

“Sul­fur.”

“In­deed.”

Fum­bling half un­con­scious­ly for his cross, D’Agos­ta fol­lowed Pen­der­gast around the side of the house to the great­por­tone of the vil­la.

“It’s open,” Pen­der­gast said, slip­ping in­side.

Af­ter the briefest of hes­ita­tions, D’Agos­ta fol­lowed. They paused in the en­try­way, ex­am­in­ing the great vault­ed spaces of thep­iano ter­ra , dark with an­cient fres­coes and trompe l’oeil.

The smell was stronger here. Sul­fur, phos­pho­rus-​and burned grease.

Now Pen­der­gast moved up the great sweep of stairs lead­ing to the sec­ond floor and the­sa­lone . D’Agos­ta fol­lowed him down a vault­ed hall­way to a mas­sive set of wood­en doors, bolt­ed and band­ed in iron. One was ajar, and a flick­er­ing light came from be­yond.

Pen­der­gast pushed it wide.

It took D’Agos­ta a mo­ment to reg­is­ter. The light came, not from a burn­ing can­dle or the great fire­place in the far wall, but from the mid­dle of the room. There, in the cen­ter of a crude cir­cle, some­thing was in the last stages of burn­ing, just a few licks of flame ris­ing from charred lumps.

It was the out­line of a hu­man be­ing.

With hor­ror and dis­be­lief, D’Agos­ta took in the smol­der­ing, greasy out­line; the ashy rem­nants of the skele­ton, ev­ery fire-​cracked bone in place, spread-​ea­gled on the floor. There in its prop­er place was the belt buck­le, there were the three met­al but­tons of a jack­et. Where one of the pock­ets had been was now a fused lump of eu­ros. The re­mains of a gold pen rest­ed among the ash­es of the up­per ribs. The burned bones of one hand still sport­ed a pair of fa­mil­iar-​look­ing rings.

But not all had burned. A sin­gle foot was per­fect­ly pre­served, burned on­ly as far as the an­kle. It looked ab­surd­ly like a movie prop, still en­cased in a beau­ti­ful­ly pol­ished hand­made wing tip. And there at the oth­er end was an­oth­er piece of the body: just the side of the face, with one star­ing eye, a lock of hair, and a per­fect pink ear, all in­tact, as if the fire that had con­sumed this per­son had sud­den­ly ceased at a line drawn down the side of the head. The oth­er half was mere skull, black­ened, split and crum­bled by heat.

Enough of the face re­mained to leave no doubt who this was. Locke Bullard.

D’Agos­ta found he’d been hold­ing his breath. He let it out with a shud­der, took in a lung­ful of what stank of sul­fur and burned roast. As his fac­ul­ties be­gan to re­turn, he no­ticed that the silk-​draped walls and ceil­ing were cov­ered with a greasy film. The large cir­cle the body lay with­in ap­peared to have been in­cised in­to the floor, sur­round­ed by mys­te­ri­ous sym­bols, the whole en­closed in a dou­ble pen­ta­gram. Near­by was a small­er cir­cle-​but this sec­ond cir­cle was emp­ty.

D’Agos­ta couldn’t find the en­er­gy to turn away. He felt a snap and re­al­ized he’d been grip­ping his cross so hard he’d bro­ken the chain. He looked down at the ob­ject in his hand, so fa­mil­iar and re­as­sur­ing. It seemed in­cred­ible that it could be true; that ev­ery­thing the sis­ters had told him so many years ago was, in fact, re­al: but at this mo­ment, there wasn’t the slight­est doubt in his mind that this,this , was the work of the dev­il him­self.

He glanced over at Pen­der­gast and found he, too, was root­ed to the spot, his face full of as­ton­ish­ment, shock-​and dis­ap­point­ment.This means the end of a the­ory , D’Agos­ta thought to him­self.And the loss of a wit­ness. It was not just a shock. It was a ter­ri­ble, per­haps even crit­ical, blow to the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

But even as D’Agos­ta stared, Pen­der­gast took out his cell phone and start­ed di­al­ing.

D’Agos­ta could hard­ly be­lieve his eyes. “Who are you call­ing?”

“I’m call­ing the cara­binieri. Ital­ian law en­force­ment. We are guests here, and it is im­por­tant to play by the rules.” He spoke briefly in Ital­ian, snapped the phone shut, turned back to D’Agos­ta. “We have about twen­ty min­utes un­til the po­lice ar­rive. Let us make the most of it.”

He be­gan to make a quick tour of the crime scene, paus­ing at a small ta­ble on which sev­er­al ob­jects lay: an old piece of parch­ment, a strange-​look­ing knife, a small pile of salt. D’Agos­ta sim­ply watched, un­able to bring him­self to par­tic­ipate.

“My, my,” said Pen­der­gast. “Our friend Bullard had been con­sult­ing a gri­moire short­ly be­fore his, ah,demise .”

“What’s a gri­moire?”

“A book of the black arts. They con­tain in­struc­tions for rais­ing demons, among oth­er things.”

D’Agos­ta swal­lowed. He want­ed to get the hell out of here. This wasn’t like Grove’s death, or even Cut­forth’s-​this had just hap­pened. And this wasn’t any nor­mal killer. There was noth­ing Pen­der­gast or any hu­man law en­force­ment en­ti­ty could do.Hail Mary, full of grace .

Pen­der­gast was bend­ing over the knife. “What do we have here? Anarthame , by the looks of it.”

D’Agos­ta want­ed to tell Pen­der­gast they had to get out, that forces a lot big­ger than them­selves were at work here, but he couldn’t seem to form the words.

“Note that the cir­cle en­clos­ing Bullard has a lit­tle piece scratched out-​do you see?-over there. It’s been turned in­to abro­ken cir­cle.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded mute­ly.

“On the oth­er hand, the small­er cir­cle be­side it was nev­er com­plete to be­gin with. I be­lieve it was­con­struct­ed as a bro­ken cir­cle.” Pen­der­gast walked to­ward it and bent down, ex­am­in­ing the cir­cle in­tent­ly. He re­moved a pair of tweez­ers from his cuff and plucked some­thing from the cen­ter of the cir­cle.

“Right,” D’Agos­ta man­aged to say, swal­low­ing again.

“I’m very cu­ri­ous to know what was in this bro­ken cir­cle-​an ob­ject ev­ident­ly placed there as a gift to the, ah, dev­il.”

“The dev­il.”The Lord is with thee .

Pen­der­gast ex­am­ined the tip of his tweez­ers close­ly, turn­ing it this way and that. Then his eye­brows shot up, a look of as­ton­ish­ment on his face.

D’Agos­ta stopped in mid­prayer. “What is it?”

“Horse­hair.”

And D’Agos­ta saw, or thought he saw, a flash of re­al­iza­tion spread over the agent’s pale fea­tures.

“What is it? What does it mean?”

Pen­der­gast low­ered the tweez­ers. “Ev­ery­thing.”

{ 58 }

Har­ri­man strolled past the Plaza Ho­tel and in­to Cen­tral Park,breath­ing in the crisp air with rel­ish. It was a glo­ri­ous fall evening, the gold­en light tint­ing the leaves above his head. Squir­rels ran around gath­er­ing nuts; moth­ers pushed ba­bies in strollers; groups of bi­cy­clists and Rollerbladers glid­ed past on South Park Drive.

His piece on Buck had run in the morn­ing edi­tion, and Ritts had loved it. The phones had been ring­ing all day, fax ma­chines hum­ming, read­er e-​mails flow­ing in. Once again, he’d touched a chord.

On this glo­ri­ous evening, Bryce Har­ri­man strolled north­ward, back to the site of his ear­li­er tri­umph, in search of fresh glo­ry. What was need­ed now was an in­ter­view with the good Rev­erend Buck him­self-​aPost ex­clu­sive. And if any­one could get that ex­clu­sive, he could.

As he came around the back of the Cen­tral Park Zoo and passed the old ar­se­nal, he stopped in sur­prise. There was a tent here, an old can­vas tent, pitched in the over­grown area just north of 65th Street along the Fifth Av­enue side. As he walked up a small rise, more tents came in­to view. He crest­ed the rise to find a ver­ita­ble tent city spread be­fore him, the smoke from dozens of fires ris­ing in­to the au­tumn air.

Har­ri­man paused, sur­prise chang­ing to a glow of sat­is­fac­tion.He had done this. He had kept the sto­ry alive, iden­ti­fied a lead­er, kept the peo­ple com­ing. And nowthis .

He moved in­to the out­skirts of the camp. Some peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly the nu­mer­ous high school and col­lege-​aged kids, were wrapped on­ly in news­pa­pers; oth­ers had sleep­ing bags of var­ious makes and col­ors; still oth­ers had makeshift tents made of sheets held up by sticks. A few had fan­cy tents from North Face and Antarc­ti­ca Ltd.-trust fund brats from Scars­dale and Short Hills, prob­ably.

Out of the cor­ner of his eye, he saw a cou­ple of cops along the Fifth Av­enue wall, eye­ing the sit­ua­tion. And to his left were more cops, just stand­ing around, keep­ing a low pro­file. No won­der: there must be five hun­dred peo­ple camped in here.

He wan­dered in­to the en­camp­ment and down a makeshift al­ley be­tween rows of tents. It was al­most like a De­pres­sion-​era shan­ty­town, lit­tle nar­row lanes built among the woodsy hol­lows and ex­posed rock faces: cook­ing fires, peo­ple sit­ting around on quilts and blan­kets drink­ing cof­fee. Here and there peo­ple were ar­riv­ing with back­packs and set­ting up more tents. It had to ex­tend at least to 70th Street: four square blocks of park­land. It was in­cred­ible. Had any­thing like this hap­pened in New York be­fore? Quick­ly, he got out his cell phone and or­dered up a pool pho­tog­ra­pher.

Har­ri­man then stopped to ask di­rec­tions and with­in min­utes had lo­cat­ed Buck’s tent: a large army-​sur­plus job near the camp’s cen­ter. Just in­side, he could make out Buck him­self, seat­ed at a card ta­ble and writ­ing. He was a cu­ri­ous­ly dig­ni­fied fig­ure, and Har­ri­man was re­mind­ed of old pic­tures he’d seen of Civ­il War gen­er­als. He hoped that damn pho­tog­ra­pher would hur­ry up.

As Har­ri­man ap­proached the en­trance to the tent, a young man cut him off. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Mr. Buck.”

“A lot of peo­ple are here to see the rev­erend. He’s busy, can’t be dis­turbed.”

“I’m Har­ri­man from the­Post .”

“And I’m Todd from Levit­town.” The aide-​de-​camp stood firm, block­ing the way, a kind of dreamy, su­per­cil­ious smile on his face.

No ass­hole like a born-​again ass­hole, Har­ri­man thought. He glanced be­yond the self­ap­point­ed guardian to Buck, work­ing at his card ta­ble, ig­nor­ing them. What was that he saw, taped to the in­side wall of the tent? A row of ar­ti­cles clipped from the­Post .His ar­ti­cles. He felt em­bold­ened.

“The rev­erend will want to seeme .” He pushed past the fel­low, ducked in­to the tent, and strode over to Buck, hand ex­tend­ed. “Rev­erend Buck?”

The man rose. “And you are-?”

“Har­ri­man from the­Post .”

“He just barged in, Rev­erend-,” the aide-​de-​camp be­gan.

But a slow smile was spread­ing across Buck’s face. “Har­ri­man. It’s all right, Todd, I’ve been ex­pect­ing this gen­tle­man.”

De­flat­ed, Todd re­treat­ed to a cor­ner of the tent, while Buck shook the ex­tend­ed hand. Seen up close, he looked short­er than he did while preach­ing. He wore a sim­ple checked short-​sleeved shirt and a pair of chi­nos: no blow-​dried hel­met of hair or polyester suits for this preach­er. His fore­arms were meaty and one sport­ed a tat­too. His hand­shake was a crush­er. Ex-​prison, guessed Har­ri­man.

“You’ve been wait­ing for me?” he asked.

Buck nod­ded. “I knew you’d come.”

“You did?”

“It’s all part of the plan. Won’t you sit down?”

Har­ri­man took a plas­tic seat at the card ta­ble and re­moved his mi­cro­cas­sette recorder. “May I?”

“Be my guest.”

Har­ri­man turned it on, test­ed it, set it care­ful­ly on the ta­ble. “Per­haps we should be­gin with this plan of yours. Tell me about it.”

Buck smiled in­dul­gent­ly. “I was re­fer­ring to God’s plan.”

“Right. Okay. Which is?”

Buck spread his hands. “What you see all around you. I am noth­ing, just one flawed hu­man try­ing my best to ful­fill God’s plan. You, Mr. Har­ri­man, whether you know it or not, are a part of that plan, too. An im­por­tant part, as it turns out. Your ar­ti­cles have swelled this crowd, brought peo­ple to­geth­er-​those with ears to hear and eyes to wit­ness.”

“Wit­ness what?”

“The rap­ture.”

“Ex­cuse me?”

“God’s promise to his fol­low­ers in the End Days. When the faith­ful will be lift­ed in­to heav­en while the wicked sink in­to filth and fire.” Buck hes­itat­ed briefly. And in that hes­ita­tion, Har­ri­man de­tect­ed a flash-​just a flash-​of ner­vous­ness. Per­haps the man was a lit­tle scared at what he’d un­leashed.

“What makes you think the End Days are here?”

“God sent me a sign. It was your ar­ti­cle in the news­pa­per, the ar­ti­cle on the deaths of Grove and Cut­forth, that first brought me here all the way from Yu­ma, Ari­zona.”

“And just who are all these peo­ple camped around you?”

“The saved, Mr. Har­ri­man. Out there are the damned. Which are you?”

Har­ri­man was tak­en aback by the sud­den­ness of the ques­tion. Buck was eye­ing him with an al­most Rasputin-​like in­ten­si­ty.

“Does it mat­ter?” Har­ri­man laughed weak­ly.

“Does it mat­ter whether you spend eter­ni­ty boil­ing in a lake of fire or ly­ing sweet­ly in the lap of Je­sus? Be­cause the time has come to make a choice. These aw­ful deaths have made that clear. No more sit­ting on the fence, won­der­ing where the truth is. This ques­tion en­ters ev­ery­one’s life at some point, and now that life-​chang­ing de­ci­sion has sud­den­ly, with­out warn­ing,come to you . Re­mem­ber Paul’s Epis­tle to the Ro­mans:There is none righ­teous, no, not one . For all have sinned, and come short of the glo­ry of God. You must re­pent and be born again in the love of Je­sus. You can wait no longer. So, Mr. Har­ri­man: are you saved, or are you damned?”

Buck wait­ed for a re­ply.

Har­ri­man felt a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck. The guy was re­al­ly wait­ing for an an­swer, and it was clear he wouldn’t go on un­til he got one. What was he go­ing to re­ply? Sure, he’d al­ways con­sid­ered him­self a Chris­tian, sort of-​but not a Bible-​thump­ing, pros­ely­tiz­ing Chris­tian.

“I’m still work­ing it out,” he fi­nal­ly said. How had he al­lowed Buck to set the agen­da like this? Who was in charge of this in­ter­view, any­way?

“What’s there to work out? The de­ci­sion is sim­ple. Re­mem­ber what Je­sus said to the wealthy man who de­sired eter­nal life:Sell all that thou hast, and dis­tribute un­to the poor . For it is eas­ier for a camel to go through a nee­dle’s eye, than for a rich man to en­ter in­to the king­dom of God. Are you ready to give away your earth­ly goods, Mr. Har­ri­man, and join me? Or will you walk away, like that rich man in the Gospel of Luke?”

Har­ri­man thought about this. Had Je­sus re­al­ly said that? Some­thing must have been lost in the trans­la­tion.

Maybe an­oth­er tack would break this im­passe. “So when, Rev­erend, is all this go­ing to hap­pen?”

“If ev­ery­body knew when the Day of Judg­ment would dawn, we’d have a whole lot of con­verts the night be­fore. It will come­when the world least ex­pects it .”

“Bu­ty­ou ex­pect it. And very soon.”

“Yes. Be­cause God has sent his faith­ful a sign, and that sign was the death that took place right across the street.”

Har­ri­man not­ed that the group of po­lice­men in the dis­tance had grown a lit­tle big­ger. They were talk­ing and tak­ing notes. He re­al­ized abrupt­ly this lit­tle Shangri-​La wasn’t go­ing to last. If Christ didn’t come soon, the po­lice would. You couldn’t have hun­dreds of peo­ple shit­ting in the bush­es of Cen­tral Park for­ev­er. And come to think of it, there­was an odd smell waft­ing on the air .

“What will you do if the po­lice move in to evict you?” he asked.

Buck paused, his face be­tray­ing an­oth­er fleet­ing glimpse of un­cer­tain­ty, but it was gone as quick­ly as it had ap­peared. The serene ex­pres­sion re­turned.

“God will be my guide, Mr. Har­ri­man. God will be my guide.”

{ 59 }

D’Agos­ta heard the sirens first, shat­ter­ing the peace of the Tus­can­coun­try­side with their dis­so­nant two-​note dit­ty. Next came the head­lights of two ve­hi­cles speed­ing around a near­by hill and sweep­ing up the drive. They ground to a halt be­fore the vil­la with an au­di­ble spray of grav­el. Po­lice lights cartwheeled across the ceil­ing of the­sa­lone .

Pen­der­gast rose from his crouch. The tweez­ers that had mag­ical­ly ap­peared from his cloth­ing just as mag­ical­ly dis­ap­peared.

He glanced at D’Agos­ta. “Shall we re­tire to the chapel? We wouldn’t want these good gen­tle­men to think we’ve been tam­per­ing with their crime site.”

D’Agos­ta, still gripped with fear and dread, nod­ded dumb­ly. The chapel. That seemed like a good idea. A re­al­ly good idea.

The chapel was in the tra­di­tion­al lo­ca­tion at the far end of the­sa­lone , a tiny but exquisite Baroque room which could fit lit­tle more than a priest and half a dozen fam­ily mem­bers. There didn’t seem to be any elec­tric lights, so Pen­der­gast lit a vo­tive can­dle in a red glass hold­er, and they set­tled on the hard wood­en bench­es to wait.

Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly there was the sound of a door boom­ing open; boots echo­ing in the down­stairs hall; po­lice ra­dios blar­ing. D’Agos­ta was still hold­ing his cross, his eyes on the small mar­ble al­tar. The can­dle gave out a flick­er­ing red­dish glow, and the air was redo­lent with frank­in­cense and myrrh. He re­sist­ed the im­pulse to go down on his knees. He re­mind­ed him­self he was a po­lice­man, this was a crime scene, and the idea that the dev­il had come and claimed Bullard’s soul was ridicu­lous.

And yet, in the per­fumed dark­ness, it didn’t feel the least bit ridicu­lous. His hand shook as it clutched the cross.

Now the cara­binieri burst in­to the­sa­lone . D’Agos­ta heard a gasp; some muf­fled ex­pos­tu­la­tions of shock; what sound­ed like a prayer be­ing quick­ly in­toned. Then came the fa­mil­iar sounds of a crime scene be­ing se­cured and flood­lights be­ing set up. A mo­ment lat­er the room be­yond was bathed in al­most un­bear­ably bright light. A beam lanced in­to the chapel, strik­ing the mar­ble Christ be­hind the al­tar and set­ting it aglow.

A man ap­peared in the door­way, cast­ing a long shad­ow. He was dressed, not in uni­form, but in a tai­lored gray suit, a cou­ple of gold leaves on his lapel sig­ni­fy­ing rank. He paused, star­ing. To D’Agos­ta, he seemed no more than an out­line, framed in bril­liant light, a short­bar­reled 9mm Beretta Para­bel­lum in his hand.

“Ri­manete se­du­ti, mani in al­to, per cortesìa,”he said calm­ly.

“Re­main seat­ed, hands in view,” trans­lat­ed Pen­der­gast. “We’re po­lice­men-“

“Tacete!”

D’Agos­ta sud­den­ly re­mem­bered they were dressed in black, their faces still half paint­ed. God on­ly knew what this po­lice of­fi­cer was think­ing.

The man ad­vanced, gun in hand, not ex­act­ly aimed at them but not quite aimed away, ei­ther. “Who are you?” he asked in light­ly-​ac­cent­ed En­glish.

“Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion, Unit­ed States of Amer­ica.” Pen­der­gast’s wal­let was in his hand, and it fell open to re­veal his shield on one side, his ID on the oth­er.

“And you?”

“Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta, Southamp­ton Po­lice De­part­ment, FBI li­ai­son. We’re-“

“Bas­ta.”The man stepped for­ward. He reached for Pen­der­gast’s wal­let, looked at the badge, the ID card. “Are you the one who called in the homi­cide?”

“Yes.”

“What are you do­ing here?”

“We are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a se­ries of mur­ders in the Unit­ed States, which that man”Pen­der­gast nod­ded out in­to the great room-“was con­nect­ed to.”

“Mafiosi?”

“No.”

The man looked vis­ibly re­lieved. “You know the iden­ti­ty of the de­ceased?”

“Locke Bullard.”

The man hand­ed back the wal­let, ges­tured at their out­fits. “Are these the newest uni­forms among the FBI?”

“It’s a long sto­ry, Colon­nel­lo.”

“How did you get here?”

“You will find our car-​if you haven’t al­ready-​in the olive grove across the street. A black Fi­at Sty­lo. I will, of course, pre­pare a for­mal re­port for you on all the par­tic­ulars: who we are, why we’re here. Some of it is al­ready on file at the Ques­tu­ra.”

“God, no. No re­ports. It is so in­con­ve­nient when facts get writ­ten down. At the prop­er time, we will talk about it over an espres­so, like civ­ilized hu­man be­ings.” The man moved out of the glar­ing back­light. For the first time, D’Agos­ta could see his fea­tures: promi­nent cheek­bones, cleft chin, and deep-​set eyes. He was about six­ty, and he moved with a stiff mil­itary bear­ing, his gray­ing hair brushed back, rest­less eyes tak­ing in ev­ery­thing.

“I am Colon­nel­lo Orazio Es­pos­ito. For­give me for not in­tro­duc­ing my­self ear­li­er.” He shook their hands. “Who is your li­ai­son at the Ques­tu­ra?”

“Com­mis­sario Si­monci­ni.”

“I see. And what do you make of this . ” He nod­ded again to­ward the great room. “This . casi­no ?”

“It is the third in a se­ries of mur­ders, the first two of which took place in New York.”

A cyn­ical smile grew on Es­pos­ito’s face. “I can see we’re go­ing to have quite a lot to talk about, Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast. Lis­ten. There is a nice lit­tle­caf­fè in Bor­go Og­nis­san­ti, just two doors down from the church and very near our head­quar­ters. Shall we meet there at eight this morn­ing? Un­of­fi­cial­ly, of course.”

“It would be my plea­sure.”

“And now it would be bet­ter if you leave. We’ll make no note of your pres­ence in the of­fi­cial re­port. To have the Amer­ican FBI re­port­ing a crime on Ital­ian soil . ” His smile broad­ened. “It just wouldn’t do.”

He briskly shook their hands and turned on his heel, cross­ing him­self so rapid­ly as he passed the al­tar D’Agos­ta wasn’t sure if he had done it at all.

{ 60 }

D’Agos­ta had seen a lot of po­lice head­quar­ters in his time, but­the so-​called bar­racks of the cara­binieri in Flo­rence beat them all. It wasn’t a bar­racks at all, but rather a de­cay­ing Re­nais­sance build­ing-​D’Agos­ta thought it was Re­nais­sance, any­way-​fac­ing a nar­row me­dieval street. It was hud­dled up be­side the fa­mous Og­nis­san­ti Church, its gray lime­stone fa­cade streaked with dirt, ev­ery ledge and pro­jec­tion cov­ered with nee­dle-​like spikes to ward off pi­geons. Flo­rence it­self was noth­ing like what he’d imag­ined: even in the warm, mid-​Oc­to­ber light, the city seemed aus­tere, its crooked streets al­ways in shad­ow, the rough-​cut stone fa­cades of its build­ings al­most grim. The air smelled of diesel fumes, and the im­pos­si­bly nar­row side­walks were clogged with slow-​mov­ing tourists dressed in flop­py hats and kha­ki shorts, with packs on their backs and wa­ter bot­tles strapped to their waists, as if they were on an ex­pe­di­tion in­to the Sa­hara rather than walk­ing around per­haps the most civ­ilized city in the world.

They had met the­colon­nel­lo in the near­by café, as planned, and Pen­der­gast had quick­ly brought him up to speed on their in­ves­ti­ga­tion-​omit­ting, D’Agos­ta no­ticed, cer­tain small but crit­ical de­tails. Now they were fol­low­ing him back to his of­fice, sin­gle file, fight­ing a steady stream of Japanese tourists com­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion.

The­colon­nel­lo turned in­to the grand arched en­try­way of the bar­racks, over which hung a limp Ital­ian flag-​the first D’Agos­ta had seen since ar­riv­ing in Italy. They passed through a colon­nad­ed cor­ri­dor and in­to a vast in­te­ri­or court­yard. Once el­egant, the court­yard it­self had been turned in­to a park­ing lot and was wall-​to-​wall with po­lice vans and cars, packed to­geth­er with such math­emat­ical pre­ci­sion it seemed im­pos­si­ble to move one with­out mov­ing them all. The win­dows look­ing down on the court­yard were all open, and from them is­sued a con­tin­uous clam­or of ring­ing tele­phones, voic­es, and slam­ming doors, mag­ni­fied and dis­tort­ed by the con­fined space.

They turned in­to an­oth­er vault­ed cor­ri­dor lined with stone pil­lars-​the crum­bling re­mains of re­li­gious fres­coes still vis­ible-​past a bat­tered stat­ue of a saint; then up a mas­sive flight of stone stairs and in­to a war­ren of mod­ern cu­bi­cles con­struct­ed hap­haz­ard­ly out of what had once been a sin­gle pil­lared room.

“The­caser­ma, ” said Es­pos­ito as they walked, “was once the monastery con­nect­ed to the Og­nis­san­ti Church. That large room is the sec­re­tar­ial pool, and be­yond”-he waved his hand at a se­ries of small but mas­sive oak­en doors giv­ing on­to tiny of­fices-“are the work spaces of the of­fi­cers, built in the for­mer cells of the monks.”

They turned a cor­ner and pro­ceed­ed down yet an­oth­er vault­ed cor­ri­dor. “The re­fec­to­ry, where the monks used to eat, has an im­por­tant fres­co by Ghirlandaio that no­body ev­er sees.”

“In­deed.”

“Here in Italy, we make do with what we have.”

Reach­ing the far end of the cor­ri­dor, they went up an­oth­er flight of stairs. From the land­ing, they passed through what D’Agos­ta re­al­ized must have once been a se­cret door in the wall; mount­ed a tiny cir­cu­lar stair­case; passed through crowd­ed rooms smelling of mold and over­heat­ed fax ma­chines-​and then sud­den­ly ar­rived at a small, grimy door bear­ing noth­ing but a num­ber. Here Es­pos­ito stopped with a smile. Then he pushed the door open and ush­ered them in.

D’Agos­ta stepped in­to a light-​flood­ed room that end­ed in a wall of glassed-​in columns and arch­es. Be­yond lay a sweep­ing view south­ward, over the Arno Riv­er. Al­most de­spite him­self, he was drawn to­ward the view.

From above, fi­nal­ly, Flo­rence looked like he had imag­ined it: a city of church domes and tow­ers, red-​tile roofs, gar­dens, and pi­azze, sur­round­ed by steep green hills cov­ered with fairy­tale cas­tles. There was the Ponte Vec­chio and the Pit­ti Palace; the Boboli Gar­dens; the dome of San Fre­di­ano in Ces­tel­lo; and, be­yond, the hill of Bel­los­guar­do. It was a mo­ment be­fore he could shift his at­ten­tion back to the room it­self.

It was large and open, filled with rows of old ma­hogany desks. The floor, pol­ished by five hun­dred years of feet, was in­laid in a strik­ing ar­ray of col­ored mar­bles, and on the stuc­coed walls hung gi­ant paint­ings of old men in ar­mor. There was a tense air in the room, and a num­ber of men in suits at the desks were glanc­ing ner­vous­ly in their di­rec­tion. The killing-​and its bizarre par­tic­ulars es­pe­cial­ly-​were clear­ly on ev­ery­one’s mind.

“Wel­come to the Nu­cleo In­ves­tiga­ti­vo, the elite unit of the cara­binieri of which I am in charge. We in­ves­ti­gate the ma­jor crimes.” Es­pos­ito looked at D’Agos­ta side­ways. “Is this your first vis­it to Italy, Sergeant D’Agos­ta?”

“It is.”

“And how do you find it?”

“It’s . not quite what I ex­pect­ed.”

He could see a faint look of amuse­ment in the man’s eyes. Es­pos­ito’s hand swept over the sky­line. “Beau­ti­ful, no?”

“From up here.”

“The Flo­ren­tines . ” He rolled his eyes. “They live in the past. They be­lieve they cre­at­ed ev­ery­thing beau­ti­ful in the world-​art, sci­ence, mu­sic, lit­er­ature-​and that is enough. Why do any­thing more? They’ve been rest­ing on their lau­rels for four hun­dred years. Where I grew up we have a say­ing:Nun cagnà ‘a via vec­chia p’a no­va, ca saie chel­lo che lasse, nun saie chel­lo ca trou­ve. “

“Don’t live in the past-​you will know what you’ve lost but not what you’ve found?” D’Agos­ta asked.

Es­pos­ito went still. Then he smiled. “Your fam­ily is orig­inal­ly from Naples?”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

“This is re­mark­able. And you ac­tu­al­ly speak Neapoli­tan?”

“I thought I grew up speak­ing Ital­ian.”

Es­pos­ito laughed. “This is not the first time I have heard of this hap­pen­ing. You are for­tu­nate, Sergeant, to speak a beau­ti­ful and an­cient lan­guage no longer taught in any school. Any­one can learn Ital­ian, but on­ly a re­al man can speak­napoli­tano. I my­self am from Naples. Im­pos­si­ble to work there, of course, but a mar­velous place to live.”

“Si suonne Napele vi­ato a tte,”D’Agos­ta said.

Es­pos­ito looked even more as­ton­ished. “‘Blessed be you if you dream of Naples.’ What a love­ly say­ing. I’ve nev­er heard it be­fore.”

“When I was a lit­tle boy, my grand­moth­er used to whis­per that in my ear ev­ery time she kissed me good night.”

“And did you ev­er dream of Naples?”

“I some­times dreamed of a city that I thought was Naples, but I’m sure it was all my imag­ina­tion. I’ve nev­er been there.”

“Then don’t go. Live in your dreams: they are al­ways so much bet­ter ” He turned to Pen­der­gast. “And now-​as you Amer­icans say-​to busi­ness.”

He led them to a small sit­ting area in a far cor­ner of the room, couch­es and chairs po­si­tioned around an old stone ta­ble. Es­pos­ito waved his hand.”Caf­fè per noi, per fa­vore.”

In mo­ments, a wom­an ap­peared with a tray of tiny cups of espres­so. Es­pos­ito took one, tossed it back, then drank a sec­ond just as quick­ly. He slipped out a pack of cigarettes, of­fered them around.

“Ah, you Amer­icans nev­er smoke.” He took one him­self, lit it, ex­haled. “This morn­ing, be­tween sev­en and eight, I re­ceived six­teen tele­phone calls-​one from the Amer­ican Em­bassy in Rome, five from the Amer­ican Con­sulate on the Lun­gar­no, one from the U.S. State De­part­ment, two from the­New York Times , one from the­Wash­ing­ton Post , one from the Chi­nese Em­bassy in Rome, and five from var­ious un­pleas­ant peo­ple in Mr. Bullard’s com­pa­ny.” He looked up, eyes twin­kling. “Giv­en that, and what you told me just now in the café, it’s clear this Bullard was an im­por­tant man.”

“You didn’t know him?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“By rep­uta­tion on­ly.” In­hale, ex­hale. “My col­leagues at the­polizia have a file on him al­ready, which nat­ural­ly they will not share with us.”

“I could sup­ply you with far more on Bullard, but it would do you no good. The in­for­ma­tion will on­ly dis­tract you, as it did me.”

Es­pos­ito turned to the two cara­binieri who were whis­per­ing to­geth­er be­hind him.”Bas­ta’ cù stì fes­sarie! Met­titeve à fat­icà! Maròn­na me­ja, chist’ so pro­pri’ sci­em’!”

D’Agos­ta sup­pressed a laugh. “I un­der­stood that.”

“I didn’t,” said Pen­der­gast.

“He was just telling those men in, ah, Neapoli­tan, ‘Cut the bull­shit and get back to work.’”

“My men are fool­ish and su­per­sti­tious. Half of them be­lieve this to be the work of the dev­il. The oth­er half think it the work of some se­cret so­ci­ety. As you know, Flo­ren­tine no­bil­ity is rife with them.” In­hale, ex­hale. “It ap­pears to me, Mr. Pen­der­gast, that we have a jok­er on our hands.”

“On the con­trary, our killer could not be more se­ri­ous.”

“But all this-​chest è ‘nà sce­na rò di­avu­lo?Come, now. All this may scare my men half to death, but you?”

“I as­sure you there is a most pur­pose­ful de­sign here.”

“I see you al­ready have a the­ory as to what hap­pened to Mr. Bullard. Per­haps you will be kind enough to share it with me?” The­colon­nel­lo leaned for­ward, el­bows on his knees. “Af­ter all, I’ve al­ready done you an enor­mous fa­vor by not re­port­ing your pres­ence at the scene of the crime. Oth­er­wise, you would be fill­ing out pa­per­work from now un­til Christ­mas.”

“I am grate­ful,” said Pen­der­gast. “But for now, there’s lit­tle more I can tell you than what I men­tioned last night. We’re in­ves­ti­gat­ing two mys­te­ri­ous deaths that took place re­cent­ly in New York State. Locke Bullard was a pos­si­ble sus­pect. At the very least, he was in­volved in some ex­treme­ly shady deal­ings. But as it hap­pens, his own death pat­terns the first two.”

“I see. And do you have any ideas? Con­jec­tures?”

“It would be un­wise for me to an­swer that ques­tion. And you wouldn’t be­lieve me if I did.”

“Va be’.Well then, what now?” He leaned back, picked up yet an­oth­er cup of espres­so, and tossed it back like a Rus­sian toss­es back a shot of vod­ka.

“I would like you to do a search of all deaths in Italy over the past year in which the body was found burned or par­tial­ly burned.”

Es­pos­ito smiled. “An­oth­er­fa­vor . ” He let his voice trail off in­to a cloud of smoke. “Here in Italy, we be­lieve in the prin­ci­ple of re­cip­ro­ca­tion. I would like you to tell me, Mr. Pen­der­gast, what you will be do­ing forme .”

Pen­der­gast leaned for­ward. “Colon­nel­lo, all I can say is, one way or an­oth­er Iwill re­turn the fa­vor.”

Es­pos­ito gazed at him for a mo­ment, stubbed out his cigarette. “Well then. You’re look­ing for a burned corpse in Italy ” He laughed. “That would in­volve half the homi­cides in the South. The Mafia, Camor­ra, Cosa Nos­tra, the Sar­dini­ans-​burn­ing their vic­tims af­ter killing them is a time-​hon­ored tra­di­tion.”

“We can safe­ly elim­inate homi­cides re­lat­ed to or­ga­nized crime, fam­ily or busi­ness feuds, or any for which you’ve al­ready caught the killer. We’re look­ing for one that is iso­lat­ed, per­haps an old­er per­son, prob­ably ru­ral.”

D’Agos­ta stared at Pen­der­gast. What was he driv­ing at? There was an ea­ger glint in his eyes. He was clear­ly hot on some trail and, as usu­al, wasn’t shar­ing it with any­one.

“That will nar­row things down tremen­dous­ly,” said Es­pos­ito. “I’ll get some­one on it right away. It might take a day or two-​we are not near­ly as com­put­er­ized as your FBI.”

“I am most grate­ful.” Pen­der­gast rose and shook Es­pos­ito’s hand.

The po­lice­man leaned for­ward and said,”Quann’ ‘o di­avu­lo t’ac­carez­za, vo’ll’àne­ma.”

As they ex­it­ed in­to the sun, Pen­der­gast turned to D’Agos­ta. “I find that I need to call on you again for a trans­la­tion.”

D’Agos­ta grinned. “It’s an old Neapoli­tan proverb.You need a strong heart to re­sist the dev­il’s ca­ress­es. “

“Ap­pro­pri­ate.” Pen­der­gast in­haled. “What a fine day. Shall we go sight­see­ing?”

“What’d you have in mind?”

“I hear Cre­mona is love­ly this time of year.”

{ 61 }

D’Agos­ta stepped out of the Cre­mona train sta­tion in­to the­warm sun­light of late morn­ing. A wind had sprung up and was shak­ing the leaves of the plane trees in the broad pi­az­za that lay be­fore them. Be­yond was the old part of the city, a cheer­ful me­dieval jum­ble of red-​brick build­ings ris­ing from a maze of nar­row streets. Pen­der­gast chose one of these-​the Cor­so Garibal­di-​and be­gan strid­ing down it quick­ly, his black suit coat flap­ping be­hind him in the stiff wind.

With a sigh of res­ig­na­tion, D’Agos­ta has­tened to keep up. He no­ticed the agent hadn’t both­ered to con­sult a map. Pen­der­gast had spent most of the train ride talk­ing about the his­to­ry of the near­by mar­ble quar­ries at Car­rara, and the ex­traor­di­nary co­in­ci­dence that the source of the purest white mar­ble in the world was lo­cat­ed on­ly a few dozen miles down­riv­er from the birth­place of the Re­nais­sance, giv­ing the Flo­ren­tine sculp­tors op­tions oth­er than black or green mar­ble. He had deft­ly de­flect­ed D’Agos­ta’s in­quiries as to the rea­son why sight­see­ing had tak­en them here.

“Now what?” D’Agos­ta asked, sound­ing a lit­tle more ir­ri­tat­ed than he in­tend­ed.

“Cof­fee.” Pen­der­gast swerved in­to a café and ap­proached the zinc bar. D’Agos­ta felt his ir­ri­ta­tion swell.

“Due caf­fè, per fa­vore,”Pen­der­gast said.

“Since when did cof­fee be­come your fa­vorite drink? I thought you were a green-​tea man.”

“Usu­al­ly, yes. But when in Rome-​or Cre­mona, as the case may be . “

The cof­fees ar­rived, in the usu­al tiny espres­so cups. Pen­der­gast stirred his, tossed it down in the Ital­ian man­ner. D’Agos­ta drank his more slow­ly, catch­ing Pen­der­gast’s eye. There it was again: that look of ea­ger­ness.

“My dear Vin­cent, please don’t think I’m be­ing in­ten­tion­al­ly mys­te­ri­ous. In cer­tain kinds of po­lice work, there can be great dan­ger in pro­pound­ing the­ories. They take on a life of their own. They are like wear­ing col­ored spec­ta­cles, be­com­ing the truth we see even when it is wrong. So I hes­itate to bandy the­ories-​es­pe­cial­ly with some­one whose judg­ment I re­spect as much as yours-​un­til I have proof in hand. That is why I have not asked fory­our the­ories, ei­ther.”

“I don’t have any the­ories.”

“You will, be­fore the day is up.” He tossed a two-​eu­ro coin on the counter, and they went out. “Our first stop is the Palaz­zo Co­mu­nale, a fine ex­am­ple of me­dieval civic ar­chi­tec­ture, con­tain­ing a no­table mar­ble chim­ney­piece by Pe­doni.”

“Heck, I’ve al­ways want­ed to see that chim­ney­piece.”

Pen­der­gast smiled.

A ten-​minute walk brought them to the heart of the city and a crooked pi­az­za. On one side stood an enor­mous cathe­dral with a soar­ing tow­er. Pen­der­gast ges­tured at it as they passed. “That is said to be the tallest me­dieval tow­er in Italy. Built in the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, the height of a thir­ty-​three-​sto­ry skyscrap­er.”

“Amaz­ing.”

“And here is the Palaz­zo Co­mu­nale.” They en­tered a mas­sive, un­adorned me­dieval palace built of brick. A guard nod­ded at them as they passed the en­trance, and D’Agos­ta won­dered if it was Pen­der­gast’s air of ut­ter self-​con­fi­dence, or some­thing else, that al­lowed them such easy en­try. He fol­lowed Pen­der­gast up a flight of stairs and down sev­er­al stone cor­ri­dors to a small, bar­ren room. A glass case stood in its cen­ter, and an enor­mous Vene­tian glass chan­de­lier hung from above, bristling with light­bulbs and giv­ing the room the bril­liance of a movie set. An armed guard stood near­by.

In the glass case were six vi­olins.

“Ah!” said Pen­der­gast. “Here we are: the Salet­ta dei Vi­oli­ni.”

“Vi­olins?”

“Not just any vi­olins. What we are look­ing at is the his­to­ry of the vi­olin, in one case. Which is, in mi­cro­cosm, a his­to­ry of mu­sic.”

“I see,” said D’Agos­ta, let­ting a note of sar­casm creep in­to his voice. Pen­der­gast would, even­tu­al­ly, get to the point.

“The first one, there, was made by An­drea Am­ati in 1566. You’ll re­call the vi­olin Con­stance plays is al­so an Am­ati, though very much in­fe­ri­or to these. Those two be­side it are by his sons; that one by his grand­son. That next was built by Giuseppe Guarneri in 1689.” Pen­der­gast paused. “And that last one was made by An­to­nio Stradi­vari in 1715.”

“As in Stradi­var­ius?”

“The world’s most cel­ebrat­ed vi­olin­mak­er. He in­vent­ed the mod­ern vi­olin and dur­ing his life­time made eleven hun­dred, of which about six hun­dred sur­vive. Al­though all his in­stru­ments re­main among the great­est ev­er made, there was a pe­ri­od when he made a string of vi­olins that had a most glo­ri­ous­ly per­fect tone-​per­haps twen­ty or thir­ty. We call that his gold­en pe­ri­od.”

“Okay.”

“Stradi­vari was a man of many se­crets. To this day, no one has ev­er solved the mys­tery of how he made such per­fect vi­olins. He kept his meth­ods and for­mu­las in his head, nev­er wrote them down. He passed these price­less trade se­crets on to his two sons, who took over his work­shop, but when they died, all Stradi­vari’s se­crets died with them. Ev­er since, peo­ple have been try­ing to du­pli­cate his vi­olins. A num­ber of sci­en­tists have tried to re-​cre­ate his se­cret for­mu­las. But to this day, Stradi­vari’s se­cret has nev­er been cracked.”

“They must be worth a lot of dough.”

“Not so long ago you could buy a good Strad for fifty or a hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars. But the mar­ket for vi­olins has been ru­ined by the su­per-​rich. Now a top Strad can fetch ten mil­lion or more.”

“No shit.”

“The best are price­less, es­pe­cial­ly those made dur­ing his gold­en pe­ri­od. In those in­stru­ments, he got the for­mu­la just right. No­body re­al­ly knows why. It’s quite hum­bling, Vin­cent, to re­al­ize we can land a space­ship on Mars, we can build a ma­chine to per­form a tril­lion cal­cu­la­tions a sec­ond, we can split the nu­cle­us of the atom-​but we still can­not make a bet­ter vi­olin than could a man put­ter­ing around in a sim­ple work­shop three cen­turies ago.”

“Well, hewas Ital­ian.”

Pen­der­gast laughed qui­et­ly. “One of the beau­ti­ful things about a Strad is that it has to be­played in or­der to main­tain its tone. It’s alive. If you leave it in a case, it los­es its tone and dies.”

“What about these?”

“They are tak­en out and played at least once a week. Cre­mona is still the cen­ter of vi­olin­mak­ing, and there are many ea­ger vol­un­teers.”

He clasped his hands be­hind his back, turned. “And now, for the­re­al rea­son we came to Cre­mona. Stick close be­hind me, please, and don’t get lost.”

Pen­der­gast led the way through a maze of back pas­sages and nar­row stair­cas­es to a side al­ley be­hind the palaz­zo. There they paused at least a minute while Pen­der­gast made a care­ful in­spec­tion of the al­ley and sur­round­ing build­ings. Then, mov­ing very quick­ly, he led D’Agos­ta through a wind­ing se­ries of ev­er more tor­tu­ous me­dieval streets, the an­cient brick and stone build­ings crowd­ing in above. Some of the streets were so nar­row they were dark de­spite the mid­day sun. Now and then, Pen­der­gast would duck in­to a door­way or side al­ley and make an­oth­er vi­su­al scan.

“What’s up?” D’Agos­ta asked at one point.

“Just cau­tion, Vin­cent; ha­bit­ual cau­tion.”

They fi­nal­ly ar­rived at a street so nar­row it could hard­ly ad­mit a bi­cy­cle. It twist­ed in­to a dead end at what ap­peared to be a de­sert­ed shopfront, a plate-​glass win­dow rude­ly af­fixed to a me­dieval stone arch. The plate glass was cracked and taped and opaque with dirt. A met­al grate had been fit­ted and locked over the front, where it seemed to have rust­ed in place.

Pen­der­gast slid his hand through the grate and pulled a string. There was a small tin­kle in the shop be­yond.

“Would it com­pro­mise your in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­plete­ly if you told me who we’re vis­it­ing now?”

“This is the lab­ora­to­ry and work­shop ofil dot­tor Lui­gi Spezi, one of the world’s fore­most ex­perts on Stradi­vari vi­olins. He is a bit of a Re­nais­sance man him­self, be­ing a sci­en­tist and en­gi­neer as well as a fine mu­si­cian. His re-​cre­ations of the Stradi­vari vi­olins are among the best in the world. But I warn you: he is known to be a lit­tle cranky.”

Pen­der­gast pulled again, and a voice rum­bled from the back.”Non lo voglio. Va’ via!”

Pen­der­gast rang again, in­sis­tent­ly.

A gray shape ma­te­ri­al­ized be­hind the glass: an enor­mous, stooped man in a leather apron with long gray hair and a gray mus­tache. He waved both hands at Pen­der­gast in a shoo­ing mo­tion.”Che cazz’! Via, ho det­to!”

Pen­der­gast took out a busi­ness card, wrote a sin­gle word on the back, and slipped it through the mail slot in the door. It flut­tered to the floor. The man picked it up, read the back, and went very still for a mo­ment. He looked up at Pen­der­gast, looked down at the card-​and then be­gan the la­bo­ri­ous pro­cess of un­lock­ing the door and rais­ing the grate. With­in a minute, they had stooped be­neath the arch and were stand­ing in his shop.

D’Agos­ta looked around cu­ri­ous­ly. The walls of the shop were al­most com­plete­ly cov­ered with the hang­ing bel­lies, back­plates, and pur­flings of vi­olins in var­ious stages of carv­ing. It had a pleas­ant smell of wood, saw­dust, var­nish, oil, and glue.

The man stared at Pen­der­gast as if he were star­ing at a ghost. He was wear­ing a dirty leather apron, and he re­moved a pair of saw­dust-​cov­ered glass­es in or­der to peer at the agent more close­ly.

“So, Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast, Ph.D.,” he said in al­most flaw­less En­glish. “You have got­ten my at­ten­tion. What is it you want?”

“Is there a place where we can talk?”

They fol­lowed him through the con­fines of the nar­row shop-​per­haps eight feet wide-​to a much larg­er space in the back. Spezi in­di­cat­ed for them to sit on a long bench. He him­self perched against the cor­ner of a work­table, fold­ed his hands, and stared.

In the rear wall, D’Agos­ta could see a stain­less-​steel door, gross­ly out of place, with a sin­gle small win­dow. On the far side of the win­dow was a gleam­ing white lab­ora­to­ry, racks of com­put­er equip­ment and CRTs bathed in un­pleas­ant flu­ores­cent light.

“Thank you for agree­ing to see me, Dot­tor Spezi,” Pen­der­gast said. “I know you are a very busy man, and I can as­sure you we will not waste your time.”

The man bowed his head, mol­li­fied slight­ly.

“This is my as­so­ciate, Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta of the Southamp­ton Po­lice De­part­ment, New York.”

“Very pleased.” The man leaned for­ward and shook his hand. He had a sur­pris­ing­ly strong grip. Then he sat back again and wait­ed.

“I pro­pose an ex­change of in­for­ma­tion,” Pen­der­gast said.

“As you wish.”

“You tell me what you know of Stradi­vari’s se­cret for­mu­las. I will tell you what I know of the ex­is­tence of the vi­olin men­tioned on my card. Nat­ural­ly, I will keep your in­for­ma­tion se­cret. I will write noth­ing down and speak to no one about it, ex­cept to my as­so­ciate, who is a man of com­plete dis­cre­tion.”

D’Agos­ta watched the man’s deep pale eyes stare back at them. He ap­peared to be think­ing about, per­haps even strug­gling with, the pro­pos­al. Fi­nal­ly he nod­ded curt­ly.

“Very well, then,” said Pen­der­gast. “I won­der if you could an­swer some ques­tions about your work.”

“Yes, but first: the vi­olin. How in the world-?”

“First things first. Tell me, Dot­tore-​since I am a man who knows noth­ing about vi­olins-​tell me what makes the sound of a Stradi­var­ius so per­fect?”

The man seemed to re­lax, ev­ident­ly re­al­iz­ing he was not deal­ing with a spy or com­peti­tor. “This is no se­cret. I would char­ac­ter­ize it as very live­ly. It is an­in­ter­est­ing sound. On top of that, it has a com­bi­na­tion of dark­ness and bril­liance, a bal­ance be­tween high and low fre­quen­cies-​a tone that is rich but as pure and sweet as hon­ey. Of course, each Strad sounds dif­fer­ent-​some have a fat­ter tone, oth­ers are lean, even harsh; some are thin and quite dis­ap­point­ing. Some have been re­paired and re­built so many times they can hard­ly be called orig­inal. On­ly six Strads, for ex­am­ple, re­tain their orig­inal necks. When you drop a vi­olin, it’s al­ways the neck that breaks. But there are about ten or twen­ty that sound al­most per­fect.”

“Why?”

At this, the man smiled. “That, of course, is the ques­tion.” He rose, went to the steel door, un­locked it, and swung it open, re­veal­ing two hard-​disk record­ing work­sta­tions and racks of dig­ital sam­plers, com­pres­sors, and lim­iters. The walls and ceil­ing were cov­ered with acous­tic foam pan­el­ing.

They fol­lowed him in, and he shut and locked the door be­hind them. Then he switched on an am­pli­fi­er, pulled up the faders on a near­by mix­ing con­sole. A low hum be­gan to sound from the ref­er­ence speak­ers set high in the walls.

“The first re­al­ly sci­en­tif­ic test done on a Stradi­var­ius was per­formed about fifty years ago. They hooked a sound gen­er­ator to the bridge of a vi­olin and had it vi­brate the in­stru­ment. Then they mea­sured how the vi­olin vi­brat­ed in re­turn. An ab­surd test, re­al­ly, be­cause it has noth­ing to do with the way a vi­olin is played. But even such a crude test showed the Strad gave back an ex­traor­di­nary re­sponse in the two-​thou­sand-​to-​four-​thou­sand-​hertz range­which, not at all co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, hap­pens to be the range of sound that the hu­man ear is most sen­si­tive to. Lat­er, high-​speed com­put­ers al­lowed re­al-​time pro­cess­ing of a Strad be­ing played. Let me give you an ex­am­ple.”

He turned to one of the dig­ital sam­plers, used an at­tached key­board to se­lect an au­dio sam­ple, sent the out­put to the mix­er. The sweet sound of a vi­olin filled the room.

“This is Jascha Heifetz play­ing the ca­den­za of Beethoven’s vi­olin con­cer­to on the Mes­si­ah Stradi­var­ius.”

A com­plex se­ries of danc­ing lines ap­peared on a mon­itor sit­ting be­hind the mix­er. Spezi point­ed at them.

“That is a fre­quen­cy anal­ysis from thir­ty to thir­ty thou­sand hertz. Look at the rich­ness of the low-​fre­quen­cy sounds! They give the vi­olin its dark­ness, its sonor­ity. And in the two thou­sand to four thou­sand range I men­tioned, see how live­ly and ro­bust it is.This is what fills the con­cert hall with sound.”

D’Agos­ta won­dered what any of this had to do with Bullard or the mur­ders. He al­so won­dered what Pen­der­gast had writ­ten on the busi­ness card the man was still clutch­ing in one fist. What­ev­er it was, it had clear­ly made this man re­mark­ably co­op­er­ative.

“And these are the high fre­quen­cies. Look how they leap and flick­er, like the flame of a can­dle. It’s these tran­sients that give the Strad that breath­ing, trem­bling tone, so del­icate and fleet­ing.”

Pen­der­gast in­clined his head. “So, Dot­tore-​what’s the se­cret?”

Spezi reached for the sam­pler and the mu­sic stopped. “There is no one se­cret. It was a whole cat­alog of se­crets, some of which we’ve cracked, oth­ers we haven’t. For ex­am­ple, we know ex­act­ly what kind of ar­chi­tec­ture Stradi­vari used. With com­put­er­ized to­mog­ra­phy, we can map a Strad per­fect­ly in three di­men­sions. We know all there is to know about Stradi­vari’s de­signs for the bel­ly, back­plate, pur­fling, f-​holes-​ev­ery­thing. We al­so know just what types of wood he used. We can make a per­fect copy.”

He turned to one of the com­put­ers, typed again, and the im­age of a beau­ti­ful vi­olin ap­peared on its screen. “There it is. An ab­so­lute­ly per­fect copy of the Har­ri­son Strad, down to the very nicks and scratch­es. It took me al­most half a year, back in the ear­ly eight­ies, to com­plete.” He glanced over at them with a mirth­less smile. “It sounds­dread­ful . The re­al se­cret, you see, was in the­chem­istry . Specif­ical­ly, the recipe for the so­lu­tion Stradi­vari soaked his wood in, and the recipe for his var­nish. This has been the thrust of my re­search ev­er since.”

“And?”

The man hes­itat­ed. “I don’t know why I am in­clined to trust you, but I do. The wood Stradi­vari used was cut in the foothills of the Apen­nines and dumped green in­to the Po or Adi­ge Rivers, float­ed down­stream, and stored in brack­ish la­goons near Venice. This was pure­ly for con­ve­nience, but it did some­thing crit­ical to the wood-​it opened up its pores. Stradi­vari pur­chased the wood wet. He did not sea­son it. In­stead, he soaked it fur­ther in a so­lu­tion of his own mak­ing-​as far as I can de­duce, a com­bi­na­tion of bo­rax, sea salt, fruit gum, quartz and oth­er min­er­als, and ground, col­ored Vene­tian glass. He soaked it for months, per­haps years, while it ab­sorbed these chem­icals. What did they do to the wood? Amaz­ing, com­plex, mirac­ulous things! First, they pre­served it. The bo­rax made the wood tighter, hard­er, stiffer. The ground quartz and glass pre­vent­ed the vi­olin from be­ing eat­en by wood­worms-​but it al­so filled in the air spaces and gave it a bril­liance and clar­ity of tone. The fruit gum caused sub­tle changes and act­ed as a fungi­cide. Of course, the re­al se­cret lies in the pro­por­tions-​and those, Sig­nor Pen­der­gast, I will not tell you.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“Over the years, I’ve made hun­dreds of vi­olins from wood treat­ed this way, ex­per­iment­ing with the ra­tios and the length of time in so­lu­tion. The re­sult­ing in­stru­ments had a big, bril­liant sound. But it was aharsh sound. Some­thing was need­ed to­damp­en the vi­bra­tions, the over­tones.”

He paused. “Here is where the true ge­nius of Stradi­vari comes in. He found that in his se­cret var­nish.”

He moused up the com­put­er screen, clicked through a few menus. A new im­age ap­peared in black and white, a land­scape of in­cred­ible rugged­ness, look­ing to D’Agos­ta like some vast moun­tain range.

“Here is the var­nish of a Stradi­var­ius un­der a scan­ning elec­tron mi­cro­scope, 30,000x. As you can see, it is not the smooth, hard lay­er it seems to the naked eye. In­stead, there are bil­lions of mi­cro­scop­ic cracks. When the vi­olin is played, these cracksab­sorb and­damp­en the harsh vi­bra­tions and res­onances, al­low­ing on­ly the purest, clear­est tone to es­cape. That’s the true se­cret to Stradi­vari’s vi­olins. The prob­lem is, the var­nish he used was an in­cred­ibly com­plex chem­ical so­lu­tion, in­volv­ing boiled in­sects and oth­er or­gan­ic and in­or­gan­ic sources. It has de­fied all anal­ysis-​and we have so lit­tle of it to test. You can’t strip the var­nish off a Stradremov­ing even a lit­tle will ru­in a vi­olin. You’d need to de­stroy an en­tire in­stru­ment to get enough var­nish to an­alyze it prop­er­ly. Even then, you couldn’t use one of his in­fe­ri­or vi­olins. Those were ex­per­imen­tal, and the var­nish recipe changed many times. No-​you’d have to de­stroy one from the gold­en pe­ri­od. Not on­ly that, but you’d need to cut in­to the wood and an­alyze the chem­istry of the so­lu­tion he soaked them in as well as the in­ter­face be­tween the var­nish and the wood. For all these rea­sons, we have not been able to fig­ure out ex­act­ly how he did it.”

He leaned back. “An­oth­er prob­lem. Even if youhad all his se­cret recipes, you still might fail. Stradi­vari, know­ing all that we don’t, man­aged to make some mediocre vi­olins. There were oth­er fac­tors to mak­ing a great vi­olin, some ap­par­ent­ly even be­yond­his con­trol-​such as the par­tic­ular qual­ities of the piece of wood he used.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“And that, Mr. Pen­der­gast, is all I can tell you.” The man’s face glit­tered with fever­ish in­ten­si­ty. “And now let us speak ofthis .” He opened his hand and smoothed the crum­pled busi­ness card. And for the first time, D’Agos­ta glimpsed what Pen­der­gast had writ­ten on it.

It was the word­Storm­cloud .

{ 62 }

The man held out the card in a trem­bling hand.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded in re­turn. “Per­haps the best way to start would be for you to tell Sergeant D’Agos­ta what you know of its his­to­ry.”

Spezi turned to D’Agos­ta, his face fill­ing with re­gret. “The Storm­cloud was Stradi­vari’s great­est vi­olin. It was played by a string of vir­tu­osi in an al­most un­bro­ken line from Mon­tever­di to Pa­gani­ni and be­yond. It was present at some of the great­est mo­ments in the his­to­ry of mu­sic. It was played by Franz Clement at the pre­miere of Beethoven’s vi­olin con­cer­to. It was played by Brahms him­self at the pre­miere of his Sec­ond Vi­olin Con­cer­to, and by Pa­gani­ni for the first Ital­ian per­for­mance of all twen­ty-​four of his caprices. And then, just be­fore World War I-​on the death of the vir­tu­oso Lu­ciano Toscanel­li, may God curse him-​it dis­ap­peared. Toscanel­li went in­sane at the end of his days and, some say, de­stroyed it. Oth­ers say it was lost in the Great War.”

“It wasn’t.”

Spezi straight­ened abrupt­ly. “You mean it stillex­ists ?”

“A few more ques­tions if I may, Dot­tore. What do you know of the own­er­ship of the Storm­cloud?”

“That was one of its mys­ter­ies. It was al­ways owned by the same fam­ily, ap­par­ent­ly, who it was said pur­chased the in­stru­ment di­rect­ly from Stradi­vari him­self. It was passed down from fa­ther to son on­ly in name, be­ing on con­tin­uous loan to a string of vir­tu­osi. That’s nor­mal, of course: most of the Strads to­day are owned by wealthy col­lec­tors who turn them over to vir­tu­osi to play on long-​term loan. Just so with the Storm­cloud. When the vir­tu­oso who was play­ing it died-​or if he had the mis­for­tune to give a bad con­cert-​it was tak­en away by the fam­ily that owned it and giv­en to an­oth­er. There would have been in­tense com­pe­ti­tion for it. No doubt that is the rea­son the fam­ily re­mained anony­mous-​they didn’t want to be har­ried and im­por­tuned by as­pir­ing vi­olin­ists. They made se­cre­cy of their iden­ti­ty a strict con­di­tion of play­ing the vi­olin.”

“No vir­tu­oso ev­er broke the si­lence?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“And Toscanel­li was the last vir­tu­oso to play it.”

“Yes, Toscanel­li. The great and ter­ri­ble Toscanel­li. He died a syphilitic wreck in 1910, un­der strange and mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances. The vi­olin was not be­side his body and was nev­er found.”

“Whoshould the vi­olin have gone to af­ter Toscanel­li?”

“A good ques­tion. Per­haps the Rus­sian child prodi­gy, young Count Ravet­sky. Mur­dered in the rev­olu­tion, though-​a great loss. What a ter­ri­ble cen­tu­ry that was. And now, Mr. Pen­der­gast-​I am al­most ex­pir­ing from cu­rios­ity.”

Pen­der­gast reached in­to his pock­et and slipped out a glas­sine en­ve­lope, held it up to the light. “A frag­ment of horse­hair from the bow of the Storm­cloud.”

The man reached out with trem­bling fin­gers. “May I?”

“I promised an ex­change. It’s yours.”

The man opened it, re­moved the horse­hair with a pair of tweez­ers, placed it on a mi­cro­scope stage. A mo­ment lat­er the im­age ap­peared on a com­put­er screen.

“It’s def­inite­ly horse­hair from a vi­olin bow-​you can see the grains of rosin, here, and the dam­age that play­ing has done to the mi­cro­scop­ic scales on the shaft, there.” He straight­ened. “Of course, any bow with the Storm­cloud al­most cer­tain­ly isn’t the orig­inal, and even if it was, the horse­hair must have been re­placed a thou­sand times. This is hard­ly proof.”

“I’m well aware of that. It was on­ly the first clue that led me on a string of de­duc­tions, the con­clu­sion of which was that the Storm­cloud still ex­ists. It is here, Dot­tore, in Italy.”

“If on­ly it were so! Where did you get this hair?”

“From a crime scene in Tus­cany.”

“For God’s sake, man:who has it? “

“I don’t yet know for cer­tain.”

“How will you find out?”

“First, I need to learn the name of the fam­ily that orig­inal­ly owned it.”

Spezi thought for a mo­ment. “I’d start with Toscanel­li’s heirs-​he was said to have had a dozen chil­dren from al­most as many mis­tress­es. God knows, one might still be alive some­where-​and now that I think of it, it seems to me there’s a grand­daugh­ter or some such here in Italy. He was a no­to­ri­ous wom­an­iz­er, drinker of ab­sinthe, in­dis­creet in his lat­er years. Per­haps he told one of his mis­tress­es, who then might have passed it on to her is­sue.”

“An ex­cel­lent sug­ges­tion.” Pen­der­gast rose. “You have been most gen­er­ous, Dot­tore. When I do learn more about the Storm­cloud’s where­abouts, I promise I shall share the facts with you. For now, I thank you for your time.”

Pen­der­gast led the way back out through the nar­row streets with the same cau­tion he’d shown in ap­proach­ing Spezi’s work­shop. By the time they’d reached the café, how­ev­er, he seemed to have sat­is­fied him­self on some point, and sug­gest­ed they stop for an­oth­er espres­so. Stand­ing at the bar, he turned to D’Agos­ta with a smile.

“And now, my dear Vin­cent-​do you have a the­ory?”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. “Most of one, any­way.”

“Ex­cel­lent! Don’t tell me yet. Let us con­tin­ue our in­ves­ti­ga­tions in si­lence just a lit­tle longer. The time will soon come when we need to share our con­clu­sions.”

“Fine by me.”

D’Agos­ta sipped the bit­ter drink. He won­dered if it was pos­si­ble to get a cup of de­cent Amer­ican cof­fee some­where in Italy in­stead of this poi­sonous black stuff that stripped the in­side of your throat and boiled in your stom­ach for hours af­ter­ward.

Pen­der­gast tossed his off, then leaned against the bar. “Can you imag­ine, Vin­cent, what the Re­nais­sance would have been like had Michelan­ge­lo’sDavid been carved in green mar­ble?”

{ 63 }

Cap­tain of De­tec­tives Lau­ra Hay­ward sat in the or­ange plas­tic­cha­ir, cof­fee go­ing cold in its Sty­ro­foam cup. She was acute­ly aware of be­ing both the youngest per­son, and the on­ly fe­male, in this room full of high-​rank­ing po­lice of­fi­cers. The walls of the con­fer­ence room were paint­ed the usu­al pale puce. A pic­ture of Rudolph Giu­liani dec­orat­ed one wall, framed to­geth­er with a pic­ture of the Twin Tow­ers and, be­low, a list of po­lice of­fi­cers killed in the at­tacks. No pic­ture of the cur­rent may­or, pres­ident of the U.S., or any­one else.

Hay­ward liked that.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Hen­ry Rock­er sat at the head of the ta­ble, his large hand per­ma­nent­ly closed around a huge mug of black cof­fee, his per­ma­nent­ly tired face gaz­ing down the mid­dle of the ta­ble. To his right sat Mil­ton Grable, cap­tain of pa­trol for the precinct in which Cut­forth had been mur­dered and the tent city erect­ed.

Hay­ward checked her watch. It was 9A.M. sharp.

“Grable?” Rock­er said, open­ing the meet­ing.

Grable cleared his throat, shuf­fled some pa­pers. “As you know, Com­mis­sion­er, this tent city is be­com­ing a prob­lem. A big prob­lem.”

The on­ly ac­knowl­edg­ment of this, it seemed to Hay­ward, was that the dark cir­cles un­der Rock­er’s eyes grew dark­er.

“We got a cou­ple hun­dred peo­ple liv­ing across the street from the most ex­clu­sive neigh­bor­hood in my precinct-​the whole city, in fact-​and they’re trash­ing the park, piss­ing in the bush­es, shit­ting ev­ery­where-” His eyes dart­ed to Hay­ward. “Sor­ry, ma’am.”

“It’s all right, Cap­tain,” Hay­ward said crisply. “I’m ac­quaint­ed with both the term and the bod­ily func­tion.”

“Right.”

“Pro­ceed,” the com­mis­sion­er said dry­ly. Hay­ward thought she no­ticed a sub­tle flick­er of amuse­ment in Rock­er’s tired eyes.

“We’re get­ting calls up the wa­zoo”-an­oth­er glance at Hay­ward-“from im­por­tant peo­ple. You know who I’m re­fer­ring to, sir. They’re de­mand­ing, they’re­scream­ing , for some­thing to be done. And they’re right. These peo­ple in the park have no per­mit.”

Hay­ward shift­ed in her chair. Her job was on the Cut­forth mur­der, not lis­ten­ing to some precinct cap­tain talk about per­mits.

“It isn’t a po­lit­ical protest, a ques­tion of free­dom of speech,” Grable went on. “It’s a bunch of re­li­gious nuts, egged on by this so-​called Rev­erend Buck. Who, by the way, did nine years in Joli­et for mur­der two, shot some clerk over a pack of gum.”

“Is that right?” Rock­er mur­mured. “And why not mur­der one?”

“Plea-​bar­gained it down. The point I’m mak­ing, Com­mis­sion­er, is that we’re not deal­ing with a sim­ple fa­nat­ic here. Buck’s a dan­ger­ous man. And the damn­Post is beat­ing the drum, do­ing all they can to keep things stirred up. It’s get­ting worse by the day.”

Hay­ward knew the facts al­ready, and she half tuned Grable out, her mind turn­ing to D’Agos­ta and Italy. She re­al­ized, with a twinge she didn’t ful­ly un­der­stand, that he was over­due for a phone up­date. Now, there was a re­al cop. And where did it get him? It was guys like Grable who got the pro­mo­tions-​desk jock­eys.

“This isn’t just a precinct sit­ua­tion. It’s a prob­lem for the whole city.” Grable laid his hands on the ta­ble, palms-​up. “I want a SWAT team to go in there and bring this man out be­fore we have a ri­ot on our hands.”

When Rock­er replied, his voice was grav­el­ly and calm. “And that’s just what we’re here for, Cap­tain: to fig­ure out a waynot to have a ri­ot on our hands.”

“Ex­act­ly, sir.”

Rock­er turned to a man sit­ting at his left. “Went­worth?”

Hay­ward had no idea who this was. She’d nev­er seen him be­fore, and there were no in­signia on his suit to in­di­cate rank. He didn’t even look like a cop.

Went­worth turned, eyes half lid­ded, fin­gers tent­ed, and took a long, slow breath be­fore an­swer­ing.

Psy­chol­ogist,thought Hay­ward.

“As far as this, ah,Buck fel­low is con­cerned,” Went­worth drawled, “he’s a com­mon-​enough per­son­al­ity type. With­out an in­ter­view, of course, it’s im­pos­si­ble to de­vel­op a firm di­ag­no­sis. But from what I’ve ob­served, he ex­hibits a marked psy­chopathol­ogy: pos­si­bly para­noid schizophrenic, po­ten­tial for a Mes­sian­ic com­plex. There’s a good chance he suf­fers from a delu­sion of per­se­cu­tion. This is com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that the man is prone to vi­olence. I would def­inite­ly­not rec­om­mend send­ing in a SWAT team.” He paused thought­ful­ly. “The oth­ers are sim­ply fol­low­ers and will re­spond as Buck re­sponds: with vi­olence or with co­op­er­ation. They will fol­low his lead. The key here is get­ting Buck out of the pic­ture. I would sug­gest that the move­ment will col­lapse of its own ac­cord once Buck is re­moved.”

“Right,” said Grable. “But how do you get him out, if not with a SWAT team?”

“If you threat­en a man like Buck, he’ll lash out. Vi­olence is the lan­guage of last re­sort for such a man. I would sug­gest send­ing an of­fi­cer or two in there-​un­armed, non­threat­en­ing, prefer­ably fe­male and at­trac­tive-​to take him out. A gen­tle and non­provoca­tive ar­rest. Do it quick­ly, sur­gi­cal­ly. With­in a day, the tent city will be gone, his fol­low­ers off to the next gu­ru, or Grate­ful Dead con­cert, or what­ev­er they were do­ing be­fore they read those ar­ti­cles in the­Post .” An­oth­er long ex­ha­la­tion. “That is my con­sid­ered ad­vice.”

Hay­ward couldn’t help rolling her eyes. Buck, a schizophrenic? His speech­es, as lov­ing­ly quot­ed in the­Post , showed none of the dis­or­ga­nized thought pro­cess­es you’d ex­pect from schizophre­nia.

Rock­er, who was about to pass over her, caught her ex­pres­sion. “Hay­ward? Do you have some­thing to con­tribute?”

“Thank you, sir. While I agree with some of Mr. Went­worth’s anal­ysis of the sit­ua­tion, I dis­agree with his rec­om­men­da­tion, with all due re­spect.”

She found Went­worth’s wa­tery eyes on her, clear­ly pity­ing her ig­no­rance. Too late, she re­al­ized she had called him “Mr.” in­stead of “Dr.” A car­di­nal sin among aca­demics, and his an­tag­onism was pal­pa­ble. Well, screw him.

“There’s no such thing as a non­provoca­tive ar­rest,” she went on. “Any at­tempt to go in there and take Buck away by force-​even gen­tly-​won’t work. If he’s crazy, then he’s crazy like a fox. He’ll refuse to come. As soon as the cuffs ap­pear, your two ‘prefer­ably fe­male and at­trac­tive’ cops will find them­selves in a nasty sit­ua­tion.”

“Com­mis­sion­er,” Grable in­ter­rupt­ed, “this man is open­ly flout­ing the law. I’m get­ting a thou­sand calls a day from busi­ness­es and res­idents on Fifth Av­enue-​the Sher­ry Nether­land, the Metropoli­tan Club, the Plaza. The phone lines are jammed. And you can bet that if they’re call­ing me, they’re call­ing the may­or.” He paused, let­ting this sink in.

“I am acute­ly aware they have been call­ing the may­or,” Rock­er said, his voice low and un­amused.

“Then you know, sir, that we don’t have the lux­ury of time. We’ve got to do some­thing. What oth­er op­tions are there be­sides ar­rest­ing this man? Does Cap­tain Hay­ward have a bet­ter idea? I’d like to hear it.” He leaned back, breath­ing hard.

Hay­ward spoke cool­ly. “Cap­tain Grable, these busi­ness­es and res­idents you men­tion should not be al­lowed to push the po­lice in­to a hasty and ill-​con­sid­ered op­er­ation.”In oth­er words, she thought,they can go fuck them­selves.

“Easy for you to say from your perch in the de­tec­tive bu­reau. These peo­ple are in my face ev­ery day. If you had solved the Cut­forth homi­cide, we wouldn’t have this prob­lem,Cap­tain .”

Hay­ward nod­ded, keep­ing her face neu­tral. Score one to Grable.

Rock­er turned to her. “Speak­ing of that, how is the in­ves­ti­ga­tion pro­ceed­ing, Cap­tain?”

“There’s some new foren­sic ev­idence the boys in lab coats are go­ing over. We’re still check­ing the peo­ple on Cut­forth’s call list dur­ing his last sev­en­ty-​two hours. And we’re re­view­ing the se­cu­ri­ty video cams from his apart­ment lob­by, cross-​check­ing them against res­idents and known vis­itors. And, of course, the FBI is fol­low­ing up some promis­ing leads in Italy.” This was thin, and Hay­ward knew it sound­ed that way. The fact was, they didn’t have squat.

“So what’syour plan for deal­ing with this guy Buck?” Grable, sens­ing he had the up­per hand, faced her bel­liger­ent­ly.

“I would ad­vise an even less ag­gres­sive ap­proach. Don’t push it. Don’t do any­thing to pro­voke things. In­stead, send some­one in there to talk to Buck. Lay it out for him. He’s got hun­dreds of peo­ple there, ru­in­ing the park and dis­turb­ing the neigh­bor­hood. He is a re­spon­si­ble per­son at heart and will nat­ural­ly want to do some­thing about that; he’ll sure­ly want to send his fol­low­ers home to shave, shit, and show­er. That’s how I’d put it. On top of that, I’d of­fer Buck a deal: if he sends his fol­low­ers home, we give him a pa­rade per­mit. Treat him like a ra­tio­nal hu­man be­ing. All car­rot, no stick. Then, as soon as they’ve bro­ken camp, fence the area un­der the guise of re­seed­ing. And then give them a pa­rade per­mit for eight o’clock Mon­day morn­ing for the far cor­ner of Flush­ing Mead­ows Park. That will be the last you see of them.”

She saw an­oth­er cyn­ical glim­mer in Rock­er’s eye. She won­dered if it in­di­cat­ed agree­ment with, or amuse­ment at, her sug­ges­tion. Rock­er had a good rep among the rank and file, but he was no­to­ri­ous­ly hard to read.

“Treat him like a ra­tio­nal hu­man be­ing?” Grable re­peat­ed. “The man’s a con­vict­ed mur­der­er.”

The psy­chol­ogist chuck­led. Hay­ward glanced at him, and he re­turned the look. His ex­pres­sion had be­come even more con­de­scend­ing. She won­dered if he knew some­thing she didn’t. This was all be­gin­ning to look like a fore­gone con­clu­sion.

“And if your plan doesn’t work?” Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er asked her.

“Then I would de­fer to, ah, Mr. Went­worth.”

“That’s Doc-,” be­gan Went­worth, but he was in­ter­rupt­ed by Grable.

“Com­mis­sion­er, we don’t have the time to try first one plan and then an­oth­er. We need to get Buck out now. Ei­ther he comes nice­ly or in cuffs-​his choice. We do it quick, at dawn. He’ll be sweat­ing in the back of a squad car even be­fore his fol­low­ers know he’s miss­ing.”

Si­lence. Rock­er was look­ing around the room. There were a cou­ple of men who hadn’t spo­ken. “Gen­tle­men?”

Nods, mur­murs. Ev­ery­one, it seemed, agreed with the psy­chol­ogist and Grable.

“Well,” said Rock­er, ris­ing. “I have to go along with the con­sen­sus. Af­ter all, we don’t have a psy­chol­ogist on staff on­ly to ig­nore his ad­vice.” He glanced at Hay­ward. She couldn’t quite read his ex­pres­sion, but she sensed some­thing not un­sym­pa­thet­ic in the look.

“We’ll go in with a small group, as Went­worth sug­gests,” Rock­er con­tin­ued. “Just two of­fi­cers. Cap­tain Grable, you’ll be the first.”

Grable looked at him in sur­prise.

“It’s your precinct, as you took pains to point out. And you’re the one ad­vo­cat­ing quick ac­tion.”

Grable quick­ly mas­tered his sur­prise. “Of course, sir. Quite right.”

“And al­so as Went­worth sug­gests, we’ll send in a wom­an.” Rock­er nod­ded to Hay­ward. “That would be you.”

The room fell silent. Hay­ward saw Grable and Went­worth ex­chang­ing glances.

But Rock­er was still look­ing di­rect­ly at her.Keep things ra­tio­nal for me, Hay­ward , the look seemed to say.

“Buck will ap­pre­ci­ate two rank­ing of­fi­cers. That should ap­peal to his sense of im­por­tance.” Rock­er turned. “Grable, you’ve got se­nior­ity and it’s your op­er­ation. I leave it to you to or­ga­nize the de­tails and tim­ing. This meet­ing is ad­journed.”

{ 64 }

The morn­ing af­ter the trip to Cre­mona was bright and crisp, andD’Agos­ta squint­ed against the noon­day sun as he ac­com­pa­nied Pen­der­gast back to Pi­az­za San­to Spir­ito, across the riv­er from their ho­tel.

“You checked in with Cap­tain Hay­ward?” Pen­der­gast asked as they walked.

“Just be­fore go­ing to bed.”

“Any­thing of in­ter­est?”

“Not re­al­ly. What few leads they’d been fol­low­ing up on Cut­forth all turned in­to dead ends. The se­cu­ri­ty video cams at his build­ing told them noth­ing. It’s the same with Grove, ap­par­ent­ly. And now, all the top New York brass are pre­oc­cu­pied with this preach­er who’s tak­en up res­idence in Cen­tral Park.”

This time, D’Agos­ta found the pi­az­za not near­ly as qui­et as be­fore: its tran­quil­li­ty was spoiled by a large group of back­pack­ers sit­ting on the steps of the foun­tain, smok­ing pot and pass­ing around a bot­tle of Brunel­lo wine, talk­ing loud­ly in half a dozen lan­guages. They were ac­com­pa­nied by at least ten loose dogs.

“Care­ful where you step, Vin­cent,” mur­mured Pen­der­gast with a wry smile. “Flo­rence: such a mar­velous mix­ture of high and low.” He raised his hand above the piles of dogshit and ges­tured at the mag­nif­icent build­ing which oc­cu­pied the south­east cor­ner. “For ex­am­ple, the Palaz­zo Guadag­ni. One of the finest ex­am­ples of a Re­nais­sance palace in the en­tire city. It was con­struct­ed in the 1400s, but the Guadag­ni fam­ily goes back sev­er­al more cen­turies.”

D’Agos­ta ex­am­ined the build­ing. The first sto­ry was built in rough blocks of dun-​col­ored lime­stone, while the up­per floors were cov­ered in yel­low stuc­co. Most of the top floor was a log­gia: a roofed por­ti­co sup­port­ed by stone columns. The struc­ture was re­strained but el­egant.

“There are var­ious of­fices and apart­ments on the sec­ond floor, a lan­guage school on the third. And the top floor is apen­sione , run by a Sig­no­ra Do­natel­li. That, with­out doubt, is where Beck­mann and the rest met back in 1974.”

“Does this wom­an own the palaz­zo?”

“She does. The last de­scen­dant of the Guadag­ni.”

“You re­al­ly think she’ll re­mem­ber a cou­ple of col­lege stu­dents who vis­it­ed three decades ago?”

“One can on­ly try, Vin­cent.”

They picked their way gin­ger­ly across the pi­az­za and through an enor­mous pair of iron­stud­ded wood­en doors. A once-​grand but now grimy vault­ed pas­sage­way led to a stair­way and a sec­ond-​floor land­ing. Here, a shab­by piece of card­board had been hung on the cor­nice of a fad­ed Baroque fres­co. A hand-​drawn ar­row and the wor­dRecep­tion had been scrawled on the card­board with a firm hand.

The re­cep­tion room was in­con­gru­ous­ly small for such a gi­ant palace: clut­tered yet neat as a pin, bi­sect­ed by a wood­en tran­som, a bat­tered set of wood­en mail slots on one side and a rack of keys on the oth­er. The room had on­ly one oc­cu­pant: a tiny old la­dy sit­ting be­hind an an­cient desk. She was dressed with ex­traor­di­nary el­egance, her hair per­fect­ly dyed and coiffed, red lip­stick im­pec­ca­bly ap­plied, with what looked like re­al di­amonds draped around her neck and dan­gling from with­ered ears.

She rose and Pen­der­gast bowed.

“Molto li­eto di conoscer­La, sig­no­ra.”

The wom­an re­spond­ed crisply,”Il pi­acere è mio.” Then she con­tin­ued in ac­cent­ed En­glish. “Ob­vi­ous­ly, you are not here to take a room.”

“No,” said Pen­der­gast. He re­moved his ID, of­fered it to her.

“You are po­lice­men.”

“Yes.”

“What is it that you want? My time is lim­it­ed.” The voice was sharp and in­tim­idat­ing.

“In the fall of 1974, I be­lieve, sev­er­al Amer­ican stu­dents stayed here. Here is a pic­ture of them.” Pen­der­gast took out Beck­mann’s pho­to.

She did not look at it. “Do you have the names?”

“Yes.”

“Then come with me.” And she turned and walked around the tran­som, through a back door, and in­to a much larg­er room. D’Agos­ta saw it was an old li­brary of sorts, with bound books, manuscripts, and vel­lum doc­uments fill­ing shelves from floor to ceil­ing. It smelled of parch­ment and dry rot, old leather and wax. The ceil­ing was cof­fered and had once been elab­orate­ly gild­ed. Now it was crum­bling with age, the wood rid­dled with holes.

“The archives of the fam­ily,” she said. “They go back eight cen­turies.”

“You keep good records.”

“I keep­ex­cel­lent records, thank you.” She made a bee­line to a low shelf at the far end of the room, se­lect­ed a mas­sive reg­is­ter, car­ried it to a cen­ter ta­ble. She opened the reg­is­ter, re­veal­ing page af­ter page of ac­counts, pay­ments, names, and dates, writ­ten in a fa­nat­ical, tiny hand.

“Names?”

“Bullard, Cut­forth, Beck­mann, and Grove.”

She be­gan flip­ping pages, scan­ning each with tremen­dous ra­pid­ity, each flip send­ing up a faint cloud of dust. Sud­den­ly, she stopped.

“There. Grove.” A bony fin­ger, bur­dened with a huge di­amond ring, point­ed to the name. Then it slid down the rest of the page.

“Beck­mann . Cut­forth . Bullard. Yes, they were all here in Oc­to­ber.”

Pen­der­gast peered at the reg­is­ter, but even he was clear­ly hav­ing trou­ble de­ci­pher­ing the mi­nus­cule hand.

“Did their vis­its over­lap?”

“Yes.” A pause. “Ac­cord­ing to this, one night on­ly, that of Oc­to­ber 31.”

She closed the book with a snap. “Any­thing else,sig­nore ?”

“Yes,sig­no­ra . Will you do me the cour­tesy of look­ing at this pho­to­graph?”

“Sure­ly you don’t ex­pect me to re­mem­ber some sloven­ly Amer­ican stu­dents from thir­ty years ago? I am nine­ty-​two, sir. I have earned the priv­ilege of for­get­ting.”

“I beg your in­dul­gence.”

Sigh­ing with im­pa­tience, she took the pho­to­graph, looked at it-​and vis­ibly start­ed. She stared a long time, what lit­tle col­or there was in her face slow­ly dis­ap­pear­ing. Then she hand­ed the pho­to­graph back to Pen­der­gast.

“As it hap­pens,” she said in a low tone, “I do re­mem­ber.That one.” She point­ed to Beck­mann. “Let me see. Some­thing ter­ri­ble hap­pened. He and some oth­er boys, prob­ably those oth­ers in the pho­to­graph, went off some­where to­geth­er. They were gone all night. He came back and was ter­ri­bly up­set. I had to get a priest for him . …”

She paused, her voice trail­ing off. Gone was the crisp con­fi­dence, the un­shak­able sense of self.

“It was the night be­fore All Saints’ Day. He came back from a night of carous­ing, and he was in a bad state. I took him to church.”

“What church?”

“The one right here, San­to Spir­ito. I re­mem­ber him pan­icked and beg­ging to go to con­fes­sion. It was long ago, yet it was such a strange oc­cur­rence it stuck in my mind. That, and the ex­pres­sion on the poor boy’s face. He was beg­ging for a priest as if his life de­pend­ed on it.”

“And?”

“He went to con­fes­sion and right af­ter­wards he packed up his be­long­ings and left.”

“And the oth­er Amer­ican stu­dents?”

“I don’t re­call. Ev­ery year they cel­ebrate All Saints’ Day, or rather the day be­fore, which I be­lieve you call Hal­loween. It’s an ex­cuse to drink.”

“Do you know where they went that evening, or who they might have en­coun­tered?”

“I know noth­ing more than what I have told you.”

The ring of a bell came from the front of­fice. “I have guests to at­tend to,” she said.

“One last ques­tion,sig­no­ra, if you please,” Pen­der­gast said. “The priest who heard the con­fes­sion-​is he still alive?”

“That would have been Fa­ther Zeno­bi. Yes, Fa­ther Zeno­bi. He is now liv­ing with the monks of La Ver­na.”

She turned, then paused and slow­ly glanced back. “But if you think you can per­suade him to break the sa­cred seal of the con­fes­sion­al, sir, you are sad­ly mis­tak­en.”

{ 65 }

D’Agos­ta as­sumed that, up­on leav­ing the palaz­zo, they woul­dreturn di­rect­ly to their ho­tel. But in­stead, Pen­der­gast lin­gered in the pi­az­za: strolling, hands in his pock­ets, eyes glanc­ing first left, then right. Af­ter a few min­utes, he turned to D’Agos­ta.

“Gela­to? Some of the best in Flo­rence, if I am not mis­tak­en, can be found right here at Café Ric­chi.”

“I’ve giv­en up on ice cream.”

“I haven’t. In­dulge me.”

They en­tered the café and ap­proached the bar. Pen­der­gast or­dered his cone-​tiramisu and­crème anglaise -while D’Agos­ta asked for an espres­so.

“I didn’t know you had a sweet tooth,” D’Agos­ta said as they leaned against the bar.

“I have some­thing of a weak­ness for gela­to. But our main rea­son for stop­ping here is to learn his in­ten­tions.”

“His­in­ten­tions? Whose in­ten­tions?”

“The man who’s fol­low­ing us.”

D’Agos­ta straight­ened up. “What?”

“No-​don’t look. He’s non­de­script, mid-​thir­ties, wear­ing a blue shirt and dark pants. Quite pro­fes­sion­al.”

Pen­der­gast’s cone ar­rived and he took a dain­ty bite. Then, sud­den­ly, a change came over his face.

“He’s just en­tered thep­en­sione ,” he said. Aban­don­ing his gela­to, Pen­der­gast dropped a few eu­ros on the counter and strode out of the café, D’Agos­ta fol­low­ing.

“Are you afraid for the­sig­no­ra ?”

“The­sig­no­ra is per­fect­ly safe. It’s the priest for whom I fear.”

“The priest-?” Sud­den­ly, D’Agos­ta un­der­stood. “Then we can stop this guy when he leaves thep­en­sione .”

“That would serve no pur­pose but to em­broil us in end­less le­gal­ities. Our best chance is the monastery it­self. Come, Vin­cent: we haven’t a mo­ment to lose.”

In twen­ty min­utes, they were driv­ing through the hills north­east of Flo­rence, Pen­der­gast at the wheel of their rent­ed Fi­at. Al­though D’Agos­ta had done more than his share of high-​speed driv­ing-​and though Pen­der­gast was clear­ly an ex­pert-​D’Agos­ta’s heart was beat­ing at an un­com­fort­able rate. The car was squeal­ing around a se­ries of hair­pin curves, none of which had guardrails, at a ter­ri­fy­ing clip. With each climb­ing turn, a ris­ing sea of moun­tains swam in­to view be­fore them: the great spine of the Apen­nines.

“I’ve been aware of surveil­lance for some time now,” Pen­der­gast said. “Since we found Bullard’s body, and per­haps even be­fore. At im­por­tant mo­ments-​such as our trip to Cre­mona-​I’ve man­aged to keep him at arm’s length. I haven’t yet con­front­ed our shad­ow­er, hop­ing in­stead to learn who’s be­hind him. I did not think he would take such a di­rect ap­proach as he did just now in the pi­az­za. It means we are get­ting close to the truth. It al­so means in­creased dan­ger, for us and for those with cru­cial in­for­ma­tion-​such as Fa­ther Zeno­bi.”

The car squealed around an­oth­er curve. D’Agos­ta braced him­self against the lat­er­al gforces, sweat break­ing out on his brow.

“I’ve seen you weasel in­for­ma­tion out of all kinds of peo­ple,” he said when it was safe to draw breath again. “But if you can con­vince a priest to re­veal a thir­ty-​year-​old con­fes­sion, I’ll swim all the way back to Southamp­ton.”

An­oth­er long, screech­ing turn, the car hang­ing prac­ti­cal­ly over the edge of a chasm.

This time, D’Agos­ta al­most had to pry his fin­gers from the dash­board. “Do you think we might slow down?”

“I don’t think so.” And Pen­der­gast nod­ded over his shoul­der.

The car made an­oth­er semi­con­trolled skid around a cor­ner, and as D’Agos­ta fell against the pas­sen­ger win­dow he got a ter­ri­fy­ing glimpse back down the moun­tain­side. About three switch­backs be­low he could see a mo­tor­cy­cle, black and chrome, its an­gu­lar chas­sis ex­posed and gleam­ing. It was ap­proach­ing fast.

“There’s a mo­tor­cy­cle on our tail!” he said.

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “A Ducati Mon­ster, S4R mod­el, if I’m not mis­tak­en. A four-​valve twin, well over a hun­dred horse­pow­er, light but very pow­er­ful.”

D’Agos­ta glanced back again. The rid­er was dressed in red leather, wear­ing a hel­met with a smoked vi­sor.

“The man from the plaza?” he asked.

“Ei­ther him or some­body al­lied with him.”

“He’s af­ter us?”

“No. He’s af­ter the priest.”

“We sure as hell can’t out­run him.”

“We can slow him down. Get out your weapon.”

“And do what?”

“I’ll leave that to your dis­cre­tion.”

Now D’Agos­ta could hear the high-​pitched whine of an en­gine in high gear, ap­proach­ing from be­hind. They tore around an­oth­er cor­ner, scat­ter­ing clouds of dust as the Fi­at slewed, first right, then left. But al­ready the mo­tor­cy­cle was bit­ing in­to the same cor­ner, lean­ing at an in­cred­ible an­gle, al­most peg­ging the road. The rid­er straight­ened quick­ly and be­gan clos­ing the gap, prepar­ing to pass.

“Hang on, Vin­cent.”

The car swerved in­to the left lane just as the mo­tor­cy­cle came along­side, then swerved back with a shriek of rub­ber, cut­ting him off. D’Agos­ta looked back and saw the mo­tor­cy­clist drop­ping back, prepar­ing to make an­oth­er run past them.

“He’s com­ing on the right!” he shout­ed.

At the last minute, Pen­der­gast jerked the car to the left again, cor­rect­ly an­tic­ipat­ing a feint; there was a screech of tires be­hind them as the mo­tor­cy­clist dumped his rear brake and the bike rose in a re­verse wheel­ie. The rid­er straight­ened, re­cov­ered. D’Agos­ta saw him reach in­to his jack­et.

“He’s got a gun!”

D’Agos­ta plant­ed him­self against the pas­sen­ger door and wait­ed, his own weapon at the ready. He doubt­ed that a man on a mo­tor­cy­cle, go­ing eighty miles an hour on a wind­ing moun­tain road, could fire with any ac­cu­ra­cy-​but he wasn’t go­ing to take any chances.

With a burst of speed, the mo­tor­cy­cle closed again, the gun lev­el­ing, steady­ing. D’Agos­ta aimed his weapon.

“Wait un­til he fires,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured.

There was a bang and a blue puff, in­stant­ly whisked away; a si­mul­ta­ne­ous thump; and the back win­dow went abrupt­ly opaque, a web of cracks run­ning away from a per­fect 9mm hole. An in­stant lat­er Pen­der­gast braked with ter­ri­fy­ing sud­den­ness, throw­ing D’Agos­ta for­ward against the seat belt, then swerved and ac­cel­er­at­ed again.

D’Agos­ta un­buck­led the seat belt, jumped in­to the back­seat, kicked away the sag­ging rear win­dow, stead­ied his gun, and fired. The cy­clist swerved and dropped back be­hind a curve, kick­ing his way down through the gears.

“The bas­tard-!”

The car slid in­to the next cor­ner, fish­tail­ing on loose grav­el and slid­ing per­ilous­ly close to the cliff edge. D’Agos­ta knelt in the rear seat, hard­ly dar­ing to breathe, aim­ing through the ru­ined win­dow, ready to fire as soon as the mo­tor­cy­cle reap­peared. As they ripped around an­oth­er hill­side, he saw the Ducati flash in­to view about a hun­dred yards back.

Pen­der­gast down­shift­ed, the en­gine scream­ing with the ef­fort, the rpm nee­dle redlin­ing. The car went in­to an­oth­er long, sick­en­ing turn.

As they ac­cel­er­at­ed out of the curve, the road emerged on­to a shoul­der of a moun­tain, head­ing straight through a long, dark for­est of pine trees, tun­nel­ing in­to shade. A sign flashed past:Chiusi del­la Ver­na 13km. Keep­ing watch on their rear, D’Agos­ta could see a whirl­wind of danc­ing pine nee­dles thrown up by their pas­sage.

. ….And there came the Ducati, swing­ing around the curve. D’Agos­ta aimed but it was an im­pos­si­ble shot, two hun­dred yards back from a mov­ing car. He sat, await­ing his chance.

With a pierc­ing whine, the mo­tor­cy­cle came surg­ing for­ward, scream­ing in­to fifth, then sixth gear, ap­proach­ing at ev­er-​in­creas­ing speed. The man had put away his gun, and both his gloved hands were on the han­dle­bars, his head low­ered.

“He’s go­ing to try an­oth­er run past us.”

“No doubt.” Pen­der­gast stayed in the cen­ter of the road, ac­cel­er­ator floored.

But the car was no match for the Ducati. It came straight up be­hind them, ac­cel­er­at­ing all the way.The thing must top out at a hun­dred and eighty , D’Agos­ta thought. He knew it would try to turn and dart past them at the last mo­ment, and there would be no way for Pen­der­gast to guess if the rid­er would veer to the right or the left. He stead­ied his gun. He had vast­ly im­proved his shoot­ing from many ses­sions at the 27th Precinct range, but with the vi­bra­tion, the mo­tion of the car, the mo­tion of the bike-​it was go­ing to be tough. The bike was go­ing at least twice their speed now, com­ing up on them fast . …

D’Agos­ta squeezed off a shot, aim­ing low at the ma­chine, and missed.

The car made a vi­olent mo­tion to the right as the bike came blast­ing past on the left-​du­al si­lencers flash­ing, rid­er lean­ing so far for­ward he seemed draped over the front fork-​and was gone around the next curve.

“I lost that coin toss,” Pen­der­gast said dry­ly.

They were now ap­proach­ing the curve them­selves, their speed be­yond any pos­si­bil­ity of con­trol­ling the turn. Pen­der­gast braked hard while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly jam­ming on the gas ped­al and twist­ing the wheel left. The car spun vi­olent­ly around, twice, per­haps three timesD’Agos­ta was too shak­en to be sure-​be­fore com­ing to rest on the very edge of the cliff.

They paused just a mo­ment, the acrid smell of burned brake pads waft­ing over the car.

“Fi­at, for all its trou­bles, still knows how to make a de­cent ve­hi­cle,” said Pen­der­gast.

“Eu­ro­car isn’t go­ing to like this,” D’Agos­ta replied.

Pen­der­gast jammed on the gas, and the car screeched back on­to the road, ac­cel­er­at­ing in­to the next turn.

They tore through the fir for­est once again be­fore mount­ing an­oth­er se­ries of steep switch­backs, worse than the last. D’Agos­ta felt his stom­ach be­gin to rise un­com­fort­ably. He al­lowed him­self a sin­gle glance out over the edge. Far be­low-​very, very far be­low-​he could see the Casenti­no Val­ley, dot­ted with fields and vil­lages. He looked quick­ly away.

Turn af­ter turn they mount­ed, Pen­der­gast driv­ing in grim si­lence. D’Agos­ta reload­ed and checked his gun: it beat look­ing out the win­dow. Sud­den­ly hous­es flashed past, and they whipped through the town of Chiusi del­la Ver­na, Pen­der­gast lean­ing on the horn, pedes­tri­ans jump­ing in­to the door­way of a shop in ter­ror as the car blast­ed by, clip­ping the side-​view mir­ror from a parked van and send­ing it bounc­ing and rolling down the street. Just past town was an­oth­er fad­ed sign:San­tu­ario del­la Ver­na 6km.

The road climbed steadi­ly through a steep for­est, one bru­tal­ly sharp turn af­ter an­oth­er. And then sud­den­ly they emerged from the trees in­to a mead­ow, and there-​di­rect­ly ahead but still a thou­sand feet above them-​stood the monastery of La Ver­na: a great tan­gle of an­cient stone, perched on a crag that seemed to hang over open space. It was win­dow­less, so old and vast and scarred by time it looked a part of the cliff face it­self. De­spite ev­ery­thing, D’Agos­ta felt a chill go down his spine; he knew from Sun­day school that this was per­haps the holi­est Chris­tian monastery in the world, built in 1224 by St. Fran­cis him­self.

The car blast­ed back in­to the for­est and the monastery dis­ap­peared from view. “Have we got a chance?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“It de­pends on how quick­ly our man finds Fa­ther Zeno­bi. The monastery is a big place. If on­ly they had a phone!”

The car ca­reened around an­oth­er turn. D’Agos­ta could hear a bell ring­ing, the faint sound of chant­ing float­ing to­ward him over the noise of the en­gine.

“I think the monks are at prayer,” he said. He glanced at his watch. It would be the ser­vice of Sext: sixth hour of the Opus Dei.

“Yes. Most un­for­tu­nate.” Pen­der­gast pushed the car around the fi­nal bend, wheels slip­ping on an­cient, mossy cob­bles in­stead of as­phalt.

The cob­bled road-​clear­ly nev­er built to be driv­en up­on-​led up be­hind the monastery. There, at the stone arch­way lead­ing through the out­er wall of the monastery in­to a mas­sive clois­ter, D’Agos­ta saw the Ducati ly­ing on its tubu­lar frame, fat rear wheel still spin­ning lazi­ly.

Pen­der­gast slewed to a stop and was out, gun drawn, even be­fore the car was com­plete­ly at rest. D’Agos­ta fol­lowed hard on his heels. They ran past the bike, across a stone bridge, and in­to the clois­ters. A large chapel stood to the right, its doors wide, the vig­or­ous sounds of plain­chant ris­ing and falling on the cool breeze. As they ran, the chant­ing seemed to hes­itate, then die away in a ragged con­fu­sion.

They rushed in­to the church just in time to see the fig­ure in red leather-​his arm ex­tend­ed, rigid-​fire point-​blank in­to an old monk, who was kneel­ing, his hands raised in sur­prise or prayer. The re­port of the gun was shock­ing­ly loud in the con­fined space, re­ver­ber­at­ing even as the notes of the plain­song died away. D’Agos­ta shout­ed out in dis­may, rage, and hor­ror as the priest fell and the shoot­er raised his gun, ex­ecu­tion style, tak­ing care­ful aim for a sec­ond shot.

{ 66 }

In the predawn light, Hay­ward stood with Cap­tain Grable on arocky point just north of the Cen­tral Park Ar­se­nal. From here, they com­mand­ed a good view of the tent city, still slum­ber­ing in the qui­et morn­ing air. They’d been briefed on the lo­ca­tion of Wayne Buck’s tent, and she could make it out clear­ly: a large green can­vas job in the heart of the en­camp­ment.

Hay­ward’s mis­giv­ings in­creased. This was no clean shot, in and out. The makeshift city had grown much larg­er than she re­al­ized: there had to be three hun­dred tents, maybe more, scat­tered through the fo­liage. And the land­scape wouldn’t help: deep green swales and leafy hol­lows, sur­round­ed by grassy hum­mocks, their sides fre­quent­ly ex­pos­ing long swaths of dark gray rock. Through the thick­et of tree branch­es, she could just make out-​parked along Fifth-​the cop car that would take Buck away. It was idling on the park side of the av­enue, right op­po­site the en­trance to Cut­forth’s build­ing.

Fact was, this was just about the last place she want­ed to be at the mo­ment. By rights she should be pur­su­ing the Cut­forth mur­der. She shouldn’t be out here-​not any­more, not when there was an open homi­cide to be worked. It felt too much like the bad old days when she was a rouster for the tran­sit po­lice.

She glanced at Grable. She had talked to D’Agos­ta the night be­fore, briefly, and now she wished he was here. There was a guy you could count on. As for Grable

Grable ad­just­ed his tie, squared his shoul­ders. “Let’s cir­cle around and come in from the west.” He was sweat­ing, his shirt plas­tered to his chest de­spite the cool morn­ing.

Hay­ward nod­ded. “As I see it, the key here is­speed . We don’t want to be caught in there.”

Grable swal­lowed, hiked up his belt. “Cap­tain, un­like some in the force, I didn’t waste my time in the class­room pil­ing up de­grees. I came up through the rank and file. I know what I’m do­ing.”

There was a long mo­ment while Grable looked down on the slum­ber­ing tent city. Hay­ward glanced at her watch. The light was com­ing up mo­ment by mo­ment, and the sun would rise with­in min­utes. Why the hell was Grable wait­ing?

“We’re run­ning a lit­tle late, if you don’t mind me say­ing so,” she said.

“I don’t op­er­ate on a timetable, Cap­tain.”

Hay­ward tried to sup­press her mis­giv­ings. This was Grable’s op­er­ation-​Rock­er had made that clear-​and she was to fol­low his lead. Go­ing in with a bad at­ti­tude wasn’t go­ing to do any good. And the plan might work. Hell, it­would work if they could just get in and out fast enough, drag Buck to the wait­ing squad car be­fore he’d even man­aged to wake up.It could work , she told her­self,as long as Grable moves fast. If you’re go­ing to ar­rest some­one, you do it. You don’t give them time to think about it first. She glanced at Grable again, won­der­ing why he was tak­ing so long.

“Right,” said Grable, notic­ing the glance. “Let’s go.”

They cut west through the low trees and brushy un­der­growth, cir­cling the flank of the tent city, stick­ing close to one side of a shal­low de­file. Soon they reached what looked like a herd path lead­ing di­rect­ly in­to the makeshift com­mu­ni­ty. They were down­wind now, and the odor of raw sewage and un­washed hu­man­ity hit Hay­ward hard.

Grable quick­ened his pace as they ap­proached the fringes. A few peo­ple were al­ready up, some cook­ing on lit­tle back­pack­ing stoves, oth­ers wan­der­ing around.

Grable hes­itat­ed just in­side the ragged out­er ring of tents. Then he nod­ded brusque­ly to Hay­ward and they start­ed for­ward again. Hay­ward nod­ded in a friend­ly way to those who were up and watch­ing them pass. The ground flat­tened and the tents hud­dled clos­er to­geth­er, form­ing nar­row lanes and al­leys. In a few min­utes they had ar­rived at the cen­ter clear­ing around Buck’s tent.

So far, so good,thought Hay­ward.

The front flap was tied on two side posts. Grable stopped be­fore the en­trance and called in a loud voice: “Buck? This is Cap­tain Grable of the NYPD.”

“Hey!” A tall, clean-​cut fel­low ap­peared out of nowhere. “What are you do­ing?”

“None of your busi­ness,” said Grable brusque­ly.

Shit,thought Hay­ward.Not like that.

“There’s no prob­lem,” she said. “We’re just here to talk to the rev­erend.”

“Yeah? What about?”

“Back off, pal,” said Grable.

“What is it?” came a muf­fled voice from in­side the tent. “Who’s there?”

“Cap­tain Grable, NYPD.” Grable be­gan un­ty­ing the knot­ted draw­string that held the flap shut against one of the side poles. He had it al­most un­done when a hand reached from in­side, closed over his, and re­moved it. The flap lift­ed and then Buck stood there, straight and stern. “This is my home,” he said cold­ly and with dig­ni­ty. “Do not vi­olate it.”

Cuff him, Hay­ward thought.Cuff the son of a bitch and get the hell out.

“We’re New York City po­lice of­fi­cers, and this is pub­lic land. This isn’t some pri­vate dwelling.”

“Sir, I ask you once again to stand back from my home.”

Hay­ward was as­ton­ished by the man’s pres­ence. She turned to see how Grable was go­ing to han­dle it. She was shocked to see his face pal­ing be­neath the sheen of sweat.

“Wayne Buck, you are un­der ar­rest.” Grable tried to un­clip his hand­cuffs, but his hands were shak­ing slight­ly and it took longer than it should have.

Hay­ward couldn’t be­lieve it. Grable was out of his depth. That was the on­ly an­swer. He’d rid­den a desk so long he’d lost his street smarts-​if he ev­er had them-​and he’d for­got­ten how to deal with a flu­id sit­ua­tion like this. That ex­plained his hes­ita­tion back at the ar­se­nal, his sweat­ing, ev­ery­thing. He’d want­ed the com­mis­sion­er to send in a large par­ty to deal with Buck, but when Rock­er had giv­en the job di­rect­ly to him, he couldn’t refuse. Now, with no SWAT team to back him up, con­front­ed by the im­pla­ca­ble Buck, he was los­ing his nerve.

Buck stared, mak­ing no move to co­op­er­ate, but not do­ing any­thing to re­sist, ei­ther.

The clean-​cut man, who seemed to be Buck’s body­guard or aide-​de-​camp, turned, cupped his hands, and cried out in a tremen­dous voice,”Arise! Arise! The cops are here to ar­rest the rev­erend!”

There was a stir­ring, a sud­den mur­mur of voic­es.

“Turn around and place your hands be­hind your back, sir,” said Grable, but his voice was trem­bling.

Still Buck made no move.

“Arise!”

“Cap­tain,” said Hay­ward, her voice low, “he’s re­sist­ing ar­rest.Cuff him .”

But Grable made no move.

In an in­stant, Hay­ward sized up the sit­ua­tion and re­al­ized their win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty had al­ready closed. Look­ing around, she re­called the time when-​as a kid on a dare-​she’d poked a stick in­to a hor­net’s nest. There was a mo­ment, just a mo­ment, of sus­pen­sion . then a muf­fled hum just be­fore the hor­nets came boil­ing out, mad­der than hell. That’s what the tent city felt like. Peo­ple were up but not yet out of their tents, a dull hum of ac­tiv­ity that was about to ex­plode.

“De­fend the rev­erend! The po­lice are here to ar­rest him! Arise!”

Now came the boil­ing. Sud­den­ly, hun­dreds of peo­ple were up and out of their tents, pulling on shirts, mov­ing to­ward them.

Hay­ward leaned in to­ward Grable. “Cap­tain? We got trou­ble. Just be cool.”

Grable’s mouth sagged but no sound came out.

The crowd was press­ing in, a wall of peo­ple quick­ly form­ing at the front, oth­ers stream­ing in from ev­ery di­rec­tion, ring­ing the tent, a bab­ble of an­gry voic­es.

Shit.She turned to face the crowd. “Look, friends, we’re not here to cause trou­ble.”

“Liar!”

The cry went up. “Blas­phe­mers!”

They pressed in. Buck said noth­ing, did noth­ing; he just stood there, the pic­ture of dig­ni­ty.

“Look,” said Hay­ward, hold­ing out her hands, keep­ing her voice calm, “there’s just the two of us. Noth­ing to get ex­cit­ed about.”

“God­less sol­diers of Rome!”

“Keep your filthy hands off the rev­erend!”

This was even ugli­er than she thought. Grable was back­ing up in­stinc­tive­ly, eyes roam­ing for an es­cape route that did not ex­ist.

The crowd surged for­ward, grow­ing an­gri­er.

“Touch ei­ther one of us and it’s as­sault,” Hay­ward said, loud­ly but calm­ly.

This paused the front of the crowd; but with oth­ers be­hind press­ing for­ward, it was on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore they were over­whelmed.

Grable dropped the hand­cuffs and went for his gun.

“Grable,no !” Hay­ward yelled.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, a roar went up.”He’s go­ing to shoot! Mur­der­er! Ju­das!” The front wall surged for­ward.

Whang!went the gun in­to the air, the re­ac­tion to the sud­den sound rip­pling through the crowd. And in that in­stant, Buck, stand­ing on­ly a few feet be­hind Grable, knocked the gun from his hand with one swift, sure mo­tion.

Thank God,thought Hay­ward, keep­ing her hands in sight and well away from her own piece. Some­thing had to be done right away, or they were toast. She turned and spoke to Buck. “You bet­ter do some­thing, Rev­erend. It’s all in your hands.”

Buck stepped for­ward, rais­ing his hands. There was si­lence from the crowd, an in­stant still­ness.

He let a mo­ment pass, and then slow­ly low­ered his arm and aimed a steady fin­ger at Grable. “This man came here un­der the cloak of the Prince of Dark­ness to ar­rest me. But God has ex­posed his de­ceit.”

Grable ap­peared speech­less.

“These cen­tu­ri­ons, these sol­diers of Rome, en­tered our en­camp­ment like skulk­ing snakes, on the dev­il’s own er­rand. And they have been de­feat­ed by their own shame and cow­ardice.”

“Shame, cow­ards!”

Hay­ward took ad­van­tage of a lull to speak qui­et­ly to Buck. “We’d like to go now.”

An­oth­er roar erupt­ed from the crowd.”Shame!”

A stick flew out of the crowd, land­ing in the dust by their feet. She could see oth­ers be­ing bran­dished above the crowd. Peo­ple on the fringes had be­gun to hunt among the shrub­bery for rocks.

Hay­ward leaned for­ward, speak­ing again in a low voice she hoped on­ly Buck could hear. “Rev­erend Buck? What’s go­ing to hap­pen to you and your fol­low­ers if we get in­jured? Or tak­en hostage? How do you think the NYPD will re­act to that?” She smiled cold­ly. “It’ll make Wa­co look like a Sun­day bar­be­cue.”

There was a mo­ment of si­lence. Then, not even ac­knowl­edg­ing he’d heard, Buck raised his hands again and bowed his head. Once more a si­lence im­me­di­ate­ly fell.

“My peo­ple,” he said. “My peo­ple. We are Chris­tians. They may come with mal­ice, but we must show them com­pas­sion and for­give­ness.” He turned to his aide-​de-​camp. “Open a way for the un­clean ones, Todd. Let them go in peace.”

Slow­ly, the sticks were low­ered. A lane ap­peared amidst the shuf­fling throng. Hay­ward bent for­ward, face burn­ing; picked up Grable’s gun, tucked it in­to her belt. She turned away on­ly to re­al­ize Grable wasn’t fol­low­ing. He was still root­ed in place.

“You com­ing,Cap­tain ?”

He start­ed, looked around, then walked past with­out look­ing at her. Af­ter a mo­ment, he broke in­to a trot. A great cheer rose up from the crowd. Hay­ward fol­lowed at a dig­ni­fied walk, eyes straight ahead, strug­gling not to be­tray in any way-​through ex­pres­sion, pos­ture, voicethat she was en­dur­ing the worst hu­mil­ia­tion of her en­tire ca­reer.

{ 67 }

A gun­shot, ter­ri­bly loud, sound­ed in D’Agos­ta’s ear. It wasPender­gast, fir­ing over the heads of the crowd.

The as­sas­sin turned and saw them ap­proach­ing. He glanced back down at the crum­pled fig­ure at his feet, looked quick­ly around him, then turned and fled. Monks in brown robes were clus­tered around their fall­en broth­er, some pray­ing, oth­ers cry­ing out and ges­tic­ulat­ing.

A num­ber of monks were point­ing to the back of the church.”Da ques­ta parte! È scap­pa­to di là!”

Pen­der­gast shot them a glance. “Vin­cent, af­ter him!” He had his cell phone out and was al­ready call­ing for a mede­vac he­li­copter.

A monk leaped up and grasped D’Agos­ta’s arm. “I help you,” he said in bro­ken En­glish. “Fol­low me.”

They ran to­geth­er through a door to the right of the al­tar; down a dark pas­sage­way and in­to an in­ner clois­ter; then across its court­yard and through a sec­ond stone pas­sage­way that abrupt­ly ter­mi­nat­ed in the cliff face it­self. Here they stopped. A lat­er­al pas­sage crossed their path, arch­es and pil­lars carved out of the liv­ing stone.

“He went this way.” The monk turned and raced down the an­cient, fres­coed cor­ri­dor. There was an iron door at its end, hang­ing ajar, and the monk threw it wide. Sun­light flood­ed the dark pas­sage. D’Agos­ta fol­lowed the monk through the door­way and in­to open air. A dizzy­ing stone stair­case fell away be­low them, carved di­rect­ly in­to the cliff face, no pro­tec­tion from a breath­tak­ing drop save for a rot­ten iron rail­ing.

D’Agos­ta leaned away from the cliff face, glanced over the rail­ing. For a mo­ment, ver­ti­go over­whelmed him. Then he glimpsed the red-​suit­ed fig­ure be­low, scram­bling down the stone path­way.

“Ec­co­lo!”The monk re­sumed the chase, robes flap­ping be­hind him. D’Agos­ta fol­lowed as quick­ly as he dared: the stairs were so pol­ished by time, so damp with hu­mid­ity, they felt as slip­pery as ice. The stair­case was old and dis­used, so erod­ed in places they had to step over yawn­ing blue space.

“You know where he’s head­ed?” D’Agos­ta asked be­tween gasps.

“To the for­est be­low.”

The stair­way lev­eled off briefly, and they moved slow­ly over an­oth­er gap. The iron rail­ing had rot­ted away at this spot, and rough hand­holds were their on­ly pro­tec­tion. A stiff, cold wind buf­fet­ed them.

A shot rang out from be­low. The monk slipped, clutched at a hand­hold, scram­bled to re­gain his bal­ance. D’Agos­ta pressed him­self against the rock face. He was com­plete­ly ex­posed, un­able to help, un­able even to move for­ward. With both hands clutch­ing the rock he could not even un­hol­ster his gun.

An­oth­er shot rang out. D’Agos­ta felt a spray of rock slash his face. Glanc­ing down, he could make out the killer a hun­dred yards far­ther down the stair­way, point­ing his hand­gun di­rect­ly at them.

There was no help for it: he couldn’t just stand here, wait­ing to get shot. D’Agos­ta let go with one hand, des­per­ate­ly brac­ing him­self against the cliff edge with his feet and his knees, and drew out his gun. Aim­ing as best he could, he fired once, twice.

Two close shots, miss­ing by inch­es. The man gave a cry and ducked out of sight be­low. Mean­while, the monk had re­cov­ered and moved on to a safer spot. D’Agos­ta felt him­self slip­ping; he was go­ing to have to drop his gun.

“A me!”said the monk.

D’Agos­ta tossed him the Glock, which the monk deft­ly caught. Then he pulled him­self back in­to po­si­tion and leaped over the gap. Just as he got to the far side, an­oth­er shot rang out.

“Down!”

They crouched on the stone walk­way, in the fee­ble cov­er of a small pro­ject­ing rock. An­oth­er shot, an­oth­er spray of rock.

Christ, thought D’Agos­ta,we’re pinned . Un­able to move for­ward, un­able to go back. He would have to re­turn fire again.

The monk hand­ed him his gun.

D’Agos­ta slid out the mag­azine, checked it. Eight rounds left. He slapped it back in place.

“When I shoot, you go.Capis­ci? “

The monk nod­ded.

In one mo­tion, D’Agos­ta rose, aimed, squeezed off a string of sup­press­ing fire, just clip­ping the top of the rock be­hind which the shoot­er was crouch­ing, keep­ing him down, un­able to fire. The monk scram­bled across the open sec­tion of trail, find­ing good cov­er at the far end where the path­way once again be­gan to de­scend a crude stair­case.

Mag­azine spent, D’Agos­ta ducked back be­hind the rocky pro­jec­tion. He slapped in his spare mag­azine, then ran across the open area un­til he reached the monk and the safe­ty of the stair­case, paus­ing to peer over a rocky wall. The shoot­er was nowhere to be seen.

Quick­ly, he rose and re­sumed the pur­suit, the monk at his heels. Down and down they de­scend­ed un­til, quite sud­den­ly, they reached the bot­tom. There was a small vine­yard here at the base of the cliff. Be­yond rose a dense wall of for­est.

“Which way?” D’Agos­ta asked.

The monk shrugged. “He is gone.”

“No. We’ll fol­low him in­to the for­est.”

D’Agos­ta took off again, half crouch­ing, down the row of vines to­ward the trees. With­in mo­ments, they were in­side the for­est, the cathe­dral-​like trunks sur­round­ing them, silent and smelling of resin and cold, stretch­ing ahead in­to dark­ness. D’Agos­ta scanned the ground, but there was no in­di­ca­tion of foot­steps in the thick bed of pine nee­dles.

“Do you have any idea which way he went?” he asked.

“Not pos­si­ble to know. Need dogs.”

“Does the monastery have dogs?”

“No.”

“We can call the po­lice.”

The monk shrugged again. “Takes time. For dogs, two, three days maybe.”

D’Agos­ta looked back in­to the end­less for­est. “Shit.”

Back at the chapel, the scene re­mained one of con­fu­sion. Pen­der­gast was bend­ing over the pros­trate form of the monk, ap­ply­ing heart mas­sage and ar­ti­fi­cial res­pi­ra­tion. Sev­er­al of the monks were kneel­ing in a half-​cir­cle, ap­par­ent­ly led by the head of the or­der; oth­ers were stand­ing well back, mur­mur­ing in low, shocked tones. As D’Agos­ta walked across the chapel, ut­ter­ly wind­ed, he could hear the dis­tant beat of a chop­per.

He knelt and took the old priest’s frail hand. The man’s eyes were closed, his face gray. In the back­ground, the steady mur­mur of prayers con­tin­ued, sooth­ing in its mea­sured ca­dence.

“I think he’s suf­fered a heart at­tack,” Pen­der­gast said, press­ing down on the man’s chest. “The trau­ma of the gun­shot wound. Still, with the mede­vac ar­riv­ing, he might be saved.”

Sud­den­ly the monk coughed. A hand flut­tered and his eyes opened, star­ing di­rect­ly at Pen­der­gast.

“Padre,”said Pen­der­gast, his voice low and calm,”mi di­ca la con­fes­sione più ter­ri­bile che lei ha mai sen­ti­to.”

The eyes, so wise and so close to death, seemed to un­der­stand all.”Un ragaz­zo Amer­icano che ha fat­to un pat­to con il di­avo­lo, ma l’ho sal­va­to, l’ho si­cu­ra­mente sal­va­to.” He sighed, smiled, then closed his eyes and took one long, fi­nal, shud­der­ing breath.

A mo­ment lat­er the paramedics burst in with a trans­port stretch­er. There was an erup­tion of fu­ri­ous ac­tiv­ity as they worked to sta­bi­lize the vic­tim: one at­tached a car­diac mon­itor while an­oth­er re­layed the lack of vi­tals to the hos­pi­tal and re­ceived or­ders in re­turn. The stretch­er was rushed back out the door, and with­in sec­onds the sound of the he­li­copter was re­ced­ing again. And then it was over. The church seemed sud­den­ly emp­ty, the smell of in­cense drift­ing on the air, the steady sound of prayer adding a cu­ri­ous note of peace to a most shock­ing act of vi­olence.

“He got away,” D’Agos­ta gasped.

Pen­der­gast laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sor­ry, Vin­cent.”

“What did you say to the priest just now?”

Pen­der­gast hes­itat­ed a mo­ment. “I asked him to re­call the most ter­ri­ble con­fes­sion he’d ev­er heard. He said it was from a boy-​an Amer­ican boy-​who had made a pact with the dev­il.”

D’Agos­ta felt re­vul­sion con­strict his stom­ach. So it was true, af­ter all. It was re­al­ly true.

“He added that he had cer­tain­ly saved the boy’s soul. In fact, heknew he’d saved his soul.”

D’Agos­ta had to sit down. He hung his head a mo­ment, still breath­ing hard, and then looked up at Pen­der­gast. “Yeah. But what about the oth­er three?”

{ 68 }

The Rev­erend Buck sat at the desk in­side his tent, the beams of­bright morn­ing sun slant­ing through the door net and set­ting the can­vas walls ablaze. Ev­ery­body in camp was still keyed up from the show­down with the po­lice, still abuzz with en­er­gy. Buck could feel that same en­er­gy cours­ing through his be­ing. The pas­sion and be­lief of his fol­low­ers had as­ton­ished, had heart­ened him. Clear­ly, the spir­it of God was among them. With God, any­thing was pos­si­ble.

The prob­lem was, the po­lice would not rest. They would act de­ci­sive­ly, and act soon. His mo­ment was about to ar­rive: the mo­ment he had come so far, worked so hard, to ful­fill.

Butwhat mo­ment? And how, ex­act­ly, would he ful­fill it?

The ques­tion had been grow­ing with­in him, gnaw­ing at him, for days now. At first, it had been just a faint voice, a sense of dis­qui­et. But now it nev­er left him, de­spite his pray­ing and fast­ing and pen­itence. God’s path was un­clear, His wish­es mys­te­ri­ous.

Yet again he bowed his head in prayer, ask­ing God to show him the way.

Out­side, in the back­ground, he could hear the ex­cit­ed hum of a hun­dred con­ver­sa­tions. He paused to lis­ten. Ev­ery­body was talk­ing about the abort­ed at­tempt to ar­rest him. Strange that the po­lice had sent in on­ly two. They prob­ably didn’t want to make a show of ag­gres­sion, have a Wa­co on their hands.

Wa­co.That lit­tle aside from the wom­an cop had sobered him up. It had been al­most like a sur­gi­cal thrust. She was some­thing, that one. Couldn’t be more than thir­ty-​five, a re­al look­er, self-​as­sured as any­thing. The oth­er was just an­oth­er weak, vain­glo­ri­ous bul­ly, like any num­ber of the screws he’d dealt with in the Big House. But she-​she­had the con­fi­dence, the pow­er, of the dev­il be­hind her.

Should he re­sist, put up a fight? He had tremen­dous pow­er in his hands, hun­dreds of fol­low­ers who be­lieved in him heart and soul. He had the pow­er of con­vic­tion and the Spir­it, but they had the pow­er of phys­ical arms. They had the might of the state be­hind them. They had weapons, tear gas, wa­ter can­non. If he re­sist­ed, it would be a butch­ery.

What did God want him to do? He bowed, prayed again.

There was a knock on one of the wood­en posts of the tent.

“Yes?”

“It’s al­most time for your morn­ing ser­mon and the lay­ing-​on of hands.”

“Thank you, Todd. I’ll be out in a few min­utes.”

He need­ed an an­swer, if on­ly for him­self, be­fore he could face his peo­ple once again. They re­lied on him for spir­itu­al guid­ance in this great­est cri­sis of all. He was so proud of them, of their brav­ery and con­vic­tion. “Sol­diers of Rome,” they’d shout­ed so apt­ly at the cops .

Sol­diers of Rome-​that was it.

Sud­den­ly, like the cogs of some vast spir­itu­al ma­chine, a se­ries of con­nec­tions fell to­geth­er like domi­noes in his mind.Pi­late. Herod. Gol­go­tha. It had been there all the time, the an­swer he’d been search­ing for. He’d just need­ed the strength of faith to find it.

He knelt a mo­ment longer. “Thank you, Fa­ther,” he mur­mured. Then he rose, feel­ing suf­fused with light.

Now he knew ex­act­ly how he would face the armies of Rome.

He armed aside the tent flap and strode to­ward the preach­ing rock. He glanced around at the beau­ty of the morn­ing, the beau­ty of God’s earth. Life was so pre­cious, such a fleet­ing gift. As he climbed the path that cir­cled be­hind the rock, he re­mind­ed him­self that the next world would be far bet­ter, far more beau­ti­ful. When the in­fi­dels came, a thou­sand strong, he knew ex­act­ly how he was go­ing to de­liv­er them un­to de­feat.

He raised his hands to a thun­der­ous cheer.

{ 69 }

The cel­lar of the cara­binieri bar­racks looked more like the dun-​geon it had once been than a base­ment, and as D’Agos­ta fol­lowed Colon­nel­lo Es­pos­ito and Pen­der­gast through the wind­ing tun­nels of un­dressed stone, streaked with cob­webs and lime, he was half sur­prised to find no skele­tons chained to the walls.

The­colon­nel­lo paused at an iron door, opened it. “As you’ll see, alas, we have yet to join the twen­ty-​first cen­tu­ry,” he said as he ges­tured for them to en­ter.

D’Agos­ta stepped in­to a room wall-​to-​wall with fil­ing cab­inets and open shelves. Fas­ci­cles of doc­uments sat on the shelves, tied up in twine. Some were so old and moldy they must have dat­ed back cen­turies. An of­fi­cer in a neat uni­form of blue and white, with a smart red stripe down the out­side of the slacks, stood and salut­ed crisply.

“Bas­ta,”said the­colon­nel­lo in a tired voice, then ges­tured at some old wood­en chairs ar­ranged around a long ta­ble. “Please sit.”

As they seat­ed them­selves, the­colon­nel­lo spoke to the younger of­fi­cer, who in turn pro­duced a dozen fold­ers and laid them on the ta­ble. “Here are the sum­maries of the homi­cides that fell with­in your re­quire­ments: un­solved mur­ders over the last year in which the vic­tim was found burned. I have been through them my­self and found noth­ing of the slight­est in­ter­est. I am much more con­cerned about what hap­pened up at La Ver­na this morn­ing.”

Pen­der­gast took the first fold­er, opened it, slid out the case sum­ma­ry. “I re­gret that more than I can say.”

“I re­gret it even more. Things were tran­quil here un­til you ar­rived-​and then . ” He opened his hands and smiled wan­ly.

“We are al­most there, Colon­nel­lo.”

“Then let us pray you get there, wher­ev­er ‘there’ may be, as soon as pos­si­ble.”

Pen­der­gast be­gan read­ing through the case sum­maries, pass­ing each to D’Agos­ta as he com­plet­ed it. The on­ly sound was the gen­tle whis­per of forced air, car­ried in­to the base­ment by shiny alu­minum ducts that snaked along the vault­ed ceil­ings in a fu­tile at­tempt to bring fresh air in­to these depths. D’Agos­ta looked at each case and its as­so­ci­at­ed pho­to­graph, strug­gling to com­pre­hend the Ital­ian, able to get the gist but no more. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly he jot­ted down a note-​more to have some­thing to re­port to Hay­ward on their next call than for his own rec­ol­lec­tion.

In less than an hour, they’d gone through them all.

Pen­der­gast turned to D’Agos­ta. “Any­thing?”

“Noth­ing stood out.”

“Let us take a sec­ond pass.”

The­colon­nel­lo glanced at his watch, lit a cigarette.

“There’s no need for you to stay,” said Pen­der­gast.

Es­pos­ito waved his hand. “I am quite con­tent to be buried down here, out of reach, my cell phone dead. It is not so pleas­ant up­stairs, with the Procu­ra­tore del­la Re­pub­bli­ca call­ing ev­ery half hour-​thanks again, I fear, to you ” He looked around. “All that’s lack­ing is an espres­so ma­chine.” He turned to the of­fi­cer.”Caf­fè per tut­ti.”

“Sis­sig­nore.”

D’Agos­ta heaved a sigh and be­gan leaf­ing again through the bare­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble files. This time he paused at a black-​and-​white pho­to of a man ly­ing in what looked like an aban­doned build­ing. The corpse lay curled in a cracked ce­ment cor­ner, very bad­ly burned. It was a typ­ical po­lice pho­to, sor­did, vile.

But there was some­thing else. Some­thing wrong.

Pen­der­gast in­stant­ly de­tect­ed his in­ter­est. “Yes?”

D’Agos­ta slid the pho­to over. Pen­der­gast scru­ti­nized it for a few sec­onds. Then his eye­brows shot up. “Yes, I do see.”

“What is it?” asked the­colon­nel­lo , re­luc­tant­ly lean­ing for­ward.

“This man. You see the small pool of blood there, un­der­neath him? He was burnedand then shot.”

“And so?”

“Usu­al­ly vic­tims are shot, then burned, to con­ceal ev­idence. Have you ev­er heard of burn­ing a man first and then shoot­ing him?”

“Fre­quent­ly. To ex­tract in­for­ma­tion.”

“Not over half the body. Tor­ture burn­ing is lo­cal­ized.”

Es­pos­ito peered at the pho­to. “That means noth­ing. A ma­ni­ac, per­haps.”

“May we see the com­plete file?”

The­colon­nel­lo shrugged, rose, shuf­fled to a dis­tant cab­inet, then re­turned with a fat bun­dle of doc­uments. He put it on the ta­ble, cut the twine with his pock­etknife.

Pen­der­gast looked through the doc­uments, pulled one out, be­gan to sum­ma­rize in En­glish: “Car­lo Van­ni, aged six­ty-​nine, re­tired farmer, body found in a ru­ined­casa coloni­ca in the moun­tains near Abetone. There was no phys­ical ev­idence re­cov­ered at the site, no fin­ger­prints, fibers, shell cas­ings, prints, tracks.” He glanced up. “This does not look like the work of a ma­ni­ac to me.”

A slow smile gath­ered on the­colon­nel­lo ’s face. “Even among the cara­binieri, in­com­pe­tence has been known to oc­cur. Just be­cause no ev­idence was re­cov­ered does not mean there­was no ev­idence to re­cov­er.”

Pen­der­gast flipped the page. “A sin­gle shot to the heart. And what’s this? Some droplets of molten alu­minum re­cov­ered by themedi­co legale , burned deep in­to the man’s flesh.”

He flipped an­oth­er page.

“Now, this is even more in­trigu­ing. Sev­er­al years be­fore his mur­der, Van­ni was ac­cused of mo­lest­ing chil­dren in the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty. He got off on a tech­ni­cal­ity. The po­lice the­orized that the mur­der was sim­ple vengeance, and it ap­pears they did not try very hard to find the killer.”

The­colon­nel­lo stubbed out his cigarette. “Al­lo­ra.A re­venge killing, some­one from the com­mu­ni­ty. The killer want­ed to make this pe­dophile suf­fer for what he had done. Hence the burn­ing, then the shot to the heart. It ex­plains ev­ery­thing.”

“It would seem so.”

A long si­lence.

“And yet,” said Pen­der­gast, al­most to him­self, “it’s too per­fect. If you want­ed to kill some­one, Colon­nel­lo, but it made no dif­fer­ence who it was, who would you choose? A man ex­act­ly like this: guilty of a heinous crime but nev­er pun­ished for it. A man with no fam­ily, no im­por­tant con­nec­tions, no job. The po­lice aren’t go­ing to ex­ert them­selves to find the killer, and the towns­peo­ple will do all they can to hin­der the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.”

“That is too clever, Agent Pen­der­gast. Nev­er in my life have I dealt with a crim­inal who would be ca­pa­ble of such so­phis­ti­cat­ed plan­ning. And why kill some­one at ran­dom? It is like some­thing out of Dos­to­evsky.”

“We are not deal­ing with an or­di­nary crim­inal, and our killer had a very spe­cif­ic rea­son to kill.” Pen­der­gast laid the file down and gazed at D’Agos­ta. “Vin­cent?”

“Worth pur­su­ing.”

“May I have a copy of the re­port of themedi­co legale ?” Pen­der­gast asked.

The­colon­nel­lo mur­mured to the of­fi­cer, who had just re­turned with the cof­fee. The man took the fold­er to a pho­to­copy ma­chine, re­turn­ing with the copy a mo­ment lat­er.

The­colon­nel­lo hand­ed it to Pen­der­gast, then lit a cigarette, his face creased with ir­ri­ta­tion. “I hope you are not go­ing to ask me for an ex­huma­tion or­der.”

“I’m afraid we are.”

Es­pos­ito sighed, smoke drib­bling out of his nos­trils. “Mio Dio.This is all I need. You re­al­ize how long this will take? At least a year.”

“Un­ac­cept­able.”

The­colon­nel­lo nod­ded. “That’s Italy.” A thin smile worked it­self in­to his face. “Of course . “

“Of course what?”

“You could al­ways go the un­of­fi­cial route.”

“You mean, grave rob­bing?”

“We pre­fer to call itil con­trol­lo pre­lim­inare . If you find some­thing,then you do the pa­per­work.”

Pen­der­gast rose. “Thank you, Colon­nel­lo.”

“For what? I said noth­ing.” And he made a mock bow. “Be­sides, the place is out of my ju­ris­dic­tion. A sat­is­fac­to­ry ar­range­ment for all con­cerned-​save per­haps Car­lo Van­ni.”

As they were leav­ing, the­colon­nel­lo called af­ter them. “Do not for­get to pack­pani­ni and a good bot­tle of Chi­anti. The night, I fear, will be long and chilly.”

{ 70 }

The church where Car­lo Van­ni was in­terred lay in the foothill­sof the Apen­nines above the town of Pis­toia, at the end of a wind­ing road that seemed to climb for­ev­er through dark­ness. Their re­place­ment Fi­at wound back and forth, the head­lights stab­bing in­to dark­ness at each turn.

“We should be pre­pared for com­pa­ny,” said Pen­der­gast.

“You think they know we’re here?”

“I know it. A car’s trail­ing us. I glimpsed it a cou­ple of times three or four switch­backs down the moun­tain. He’ll have to park be­low the church, and I don’t in­tend to be sur­prised. Are you fa­mil­iar with the move-​and-​cov­er ap­proach to an ob­jec­tive?”

“Sure.”

“You’ll cov­er me while I move, then I’ll sig­nal you to fol­low, like this.” And he gave a low hoot­ing sound in­dis­tin­guish­able from an owl’s.

D’Agos­ta grinned. “Your tal­ents al­ways man­age to sur­prise me. Rules of en­gage­ment?”

“We’re deal­ing with a po­ten­tial killer, but we can’t shoot first. Wait for the first shot, then shoot to kill.”

“Mean­while, you’re down.”

“I can take care of my­self. Here we are.” Pen­der­gast slowed, mak­ing the fi­nal turn. “Check weapons.”

D’Agos­ta re­moved his Glock, eject­ed the mag­azine, made sure it was at its max­imum fif­teen-​round ca­pac­ity, slammed it home, and racked the slide. Pen­der­gast drove past the church and parked in a turnout near the end of the road and ex­it­ed the ve­hi­cle.

The smell of crushed mint rose around them. It was a chill, moon­less night. There was a scat­ter­ing of bright stars above the dark line of cy­press­es. The church it­self stood be­low, faint­ly sil­hou­et­ted against the dis­tant glow of Pis­toia. Crick­ets trilled in the dark­ness. It was a per­fect place for a tomb rob­bing, thought D’Agos­ta-​qui­et and iso­lat­ed.

Pen­der­gast touched his shoul­der and nod­ded to­ward a dark copse of trees about a hun­dred yards down­hill. D’Agos­ta crouched in the shad­ows of the car, gun drawn, as Pen­der­gast dart­ed silent­ly down to­ward the copse, dis­ap­pear­ing in­to the dark­ness.

A minute lat­er, D’Agos­ta heard a low hoot.

He rose, moved quick­ly to­ward the trees, and joined Pen­der­gast. Be­yond stood the church: small and very an­cient, built of stone blocks with a square tow­er. The front en­trance-​a Goth­ic arch over a wood­en door-​was closed.

Pen­der­gast touched D’Agos­ta’s arm again, nod­ded this time to­ward the en­trance. D’Agos­ta re­treat­ed in­to the shad­ows, wait­ing.

Pen­der­gast shot across the court­yard in front of the church. D’Agos­ta could just make out his sil­hou­ette, black against black, be­fore the door. There was the sound of a locked door be­ing tried. This was fol­lowed by the faint scrap­ing of iron against iron as Pen­der­gast picked the lock, and then a dull creak as the door opened. Pen­der­gast slipped quick­ly in­side. With­in mo­ments, an­oth­er hoot of an owl. Tak­ing a deep breath, D’Agos­ta ran across the open pi­az­za and past the door. Pen­der­gast im­me­di­ate­ly closed it be­hind him and, in­sert­ing a nar­row de­vice in­to the key­hole, re­locked it.

D’Agos­ta turned, crossed him­self. The in­te­ri­or of the church was cool and smelled of wax and stone. A few can­dles gut­tered be­fore a paint­ed wood­en stat­ue of the Vir­gin, throw­ing a dim or­ange light across the small nave.

“You take the left side, I’ll take the right,” said Pen­der­gast.

They moved down op­po­site walls of the an­cient church, guns drawn. It was emp­ty save for the stat­ue of the Vir­gin, a con­fes­sion­al with a drawn cur­tain, and a rough al­tar with a cru­ci­fix.

Pen­der­gast crept up to the con­fes­sion­al, took hold of the cur­tain, jerked it aside.

Emp­ty.

D’Agos­ta watched him put his gun away and glide to a small, rust­ed iron door set in­to a far cor­ner. He bent over the lock and-​with an­oth­er rat­tle and scrape-​opened it to re­veal a de­scend­ing stone stair­case. Pen­der­gast switched on his flash­light and probed in­to the murk.

“This isn’t the first tomb I’ve dis­turbed,” mur­mured Pen­der­gast as D’Agos­ta drew up be­side him, “but it promis­es to be one of the most in­ter­est­ing.”

“Why was Van­ni buried down here, and not in a ceme­tery out­side?”

They passed through the door­way, and Pen­der­gast gen­tly closed and locked the door be­hind them. “Be­cause of the steep hill, the church has no out­side­cam­posan­to . All the dead are buried down in the crypts, cut in­to the hill­side un­der­neath the church.”

They de­scend­ed the stair­case to find them­selves in a low, vault­ed space. D’Agos­ta’s nos­trils filled with the smell of mold. To the left, the flash­light re­vealed some me­dieval sar­copha­gi, sev­er­al with the bod­ies of the de­ceased carved in mar­ble on the lids, as if asleep. One was shown in a suit of ar­mor; an­oth­er was dressed as a bish­op.

D’Agos­ta fol­lowed Pen­der­gast to the right. This pas­sage­way led past more old tombs, dec­orat­ed with sculp­tures and re­lief, end­ing in an­oth­er iron door. In a mo­ment, Pen­der­gast had it open.

The flash­light dis­closed a much crud­er tun­nel be­yond, fash­ioned out of the rock it­self. Shelves were cut in­to the rude walls, each with its own pile of bones, a skull, and bits of rag. Some of the skele­tons had rings on their bony fin­gers, or bits of jew­el­ry and neck­laces scat­tered among the rib cages. There was the faint rustling of mice, and a few fur­ry bul­lets shot across the dirt floor, head­ing for cov­er. Far­ther on were rows of new­er tombs, nar­row edge out, as in a mau­soleum. Each niche was cov­ered with a mar­ble plaque.

As they walked, the dates on the plaques grew more re­cent. Some had pho­tographs of the de­ceased af­fixed to the front, un­smil­ing nine­teenth- and ear­ly-​twen­ti­eth-​cen­tu­ry faces marked by hard­ship and dis­ap­point­ment. A scat­ter­ing of va­cant crypts with blank mar­ble plaques ap­peared. Oth­ers had a name and birth­date but no date of de­cease. Pen­der­gast swept his flash­light from left to right and back again as they pro­gressed. Ahead, D’Agos­ta could make out the ter­mi­nal wall of the crypt. And there, iso­lat­ed at the end, in the bot­tom row, was the tomb they were look­ing for:

CAR­LO VAN­NI

1948-2003

Pen­der­gast reached in­to his suit coat and re­moved a thin cloth, which he quick­ly spread on the stone floor in front of the crypt. Next, he pro­duced a nar­row crow­bar and a long met­al blade with a curved end. He shimmed the blade be­hind the mar­ble plaque, moved it slow­ly along all four edges, then stuck the crow­bar in­to the new­ly cre­at­ed joint and gave a sharp tug. The plaque popped loose with a faint cloud of dust. Pen­der­gast caught it deft­ly and laid it on the cloth.

The dark hole ex­haled a nasty, burned smell.

Pen­der­gast shone his flash­light in­to the niche. “Give me a hand, please.”

D’Agos­ta knelt be­side him. He avoid­ed look­ing in the hole; it didn’t seem de­cent some­how.

“You grab the left foot, I’ll grab the right, and we’ll slide him out. It’s our good for­tune that Van­ni’s niche is at floor lev­el.”

Now D’Agos­ta forced him­self to look. In the dim­ness, all he could see were the soles of two shoes, each with a hole in it.

“Ready?”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. He reached in, grabbed the shoe.

“On sec­ond thought, grasp it above the an­kle. We wouldn’t want the foot com­ing off at the an­kle­bone.”

“Right.” D’Agos­ta moved his hand up, around the pant leg. It felt like grab­bing a knot­ty bone, ex­cept there was a crack­le of some­thing else un­der there, like parch­ment, that al­most turned his stom­ach. The smell was ap­palling.

“At the count of three, pull slow­ly and eas­ily. One, two, three . “

D’Agos­ta pulled, and af­ter a mo­ment of sticky re­sis­tance, the body came free and be­gan slid­ing out, sur­pris­ing­ly light.

“Keep go­ing.”

D’Agos­ta backed up, pulling as he went, un­til the corpse was en­tire­ly out of the niche. A nest of ear­wigs was ex­posed, the pan­icked in­sects rac­ing off in all di­rec­tions. D’Agos­ta jumped back, slap­ping at sev­er­al that had dashed up his leg.

Car­lo Van­ni lay be­fore them, arms crossed, hands fold­ed around a cru­ci­fix, eyes wide open but black and wrin­kled. The lips had drawn back from the teeth, which were no more than rot­ten stumps. The man’s white hair had been slicked down with some formidable sub­stance, be­cause not a strand was out of place. The suit had holes in it from in­sect ac­tiv­ity but was oth­er­wise in­tact, if a bit dusty. The on­ly ob­vi­ous sign of burn­ing was on the hands them­selves, which were black and twist­ed, the fin­ger­nails curled up in lit­tle scrolls. “Hold the light, please, Vin­cent.”

Pen­der­gast bent over the body, placed a knife at the corpse’s throat, and in one mo­tion slit the clothes from neck to navel. He pulled them aside. Pa­per wadding, used to bulk up the suit, filled the sunken ab­domen. Pen­der­gast pulled this away to re­veal a black­ened tor­so, skin peel­ing away in dusty burned sheets. Burned ribs sprang from the rib cage, charred ends ex­posed.

D’Agos­ta made an ef­fort to keep the light steady.

Pen­der­gast re­moved a piece of pa­per from his pock­et and laid it be­side the body. D’Agos­ta saw it was the copy of the M.E.’s re­port, a pho­to­copy of an X-​ray show­ing the lo­ca­tion of the drops of met­al. Next, he fit­ted a jew­el­er’s loupe to his eye, bend­ing close to the body as he ad­just­ed the ob­jec­tive. With the knife in one hand aaaaa pair of sur­gi­cal tweez­ers in the oth­er, he be­gan to poke in­to the ab­domen. Faint crack­ling sounds rose up.

“Ah!” He held up a frozen droplet of met­al, sus­pend­ed be­tween the tweez­ers, then dropped it in­to a test tube and reap­plied him­self to the corpse.

From the dark­ness be­hind them came a sound.

D’Agos­ta straight­ened im­me­di­ate­ly, turn­ing the light back down the crypt. “You hear that?”

“A rat. The light, if you please?”

D’Agos­ta re­turned the light to Van­ni, heart pound­ing. There was a lot to be said for wait­ing for the pa­per­work to come through. A year? Make that two.

There was an­oth­er sound and D’Agos­ta swept the light back. A rat the size of a small cat crouched and blinked, show­ing its teeth with a lit­tle hiss.

“Shoo!” D’Agos­ta kicked some dirt at it and it slunk away.

“The light?”

D’Agos­ta swung the light back. “Nasty bug­gers.”

“Here’s an­oth­er.” Pen­der­gast put a long drib­ble of frozen met­al in­to the test tube. “In­ter­est­ing. This met­al pen­etrat­ed more than six inch­es of flesh. These droplets weren’t mere­ly splat­tered on the corpse: they en­tered the body at high ve­loc­ity. The re­sult, I would guess, of a small ex­plo­sion.”

Pen­der­gast ex­tract­ed a third aaaafourth droplet, stop­pered the tube, re­moved the loupe. Ev­ery­thing dis­ap­peared back in­to his suit. “I think we’re done here,” he said, glanc­ing up at D’Agos­ta. “Let’s re­turn Mr. Van­ni to his rest­ing place.”

D’Agos­ta bent and, once again tak­ing hold of the corpse, helped shove him back in­to the niche.

Pen­der­gast whisked the bits and pieces of the body that had bro­ken off on­to the M.E.’s re­port and tipped them in­to the niche. He then re­moved a small tube of con­struc­tion ce­ment, dabbed it around the edges of the mar­ble plaque, aaaafit­ted it back in place, tap­ping here and there to seal it.

He stepped back, looked at his hand­iwork. “Ex­cel­lent.”

They ex­it­ed the crypt aaaa­climbed in­to the church. The door was still closed aaaalocked. Pen­der­gast un­locked it, aaaaD’Agos­ta cov­ered him while he flit­ted across the court­yard. A mo­ment lat­er he heard Pen­der­gast’s voice. “It’s all right.”

D’Agos­ta stepped out in­to the warm night, im­mea­sur­ably re­lieved to be free of the tomb. He brushed at his arms and legs, feel­ing the smell, the mold, still cling­ing to his clothes. Ahead, Pen­der­gast was point­ing to­ward the dark­ness of the hill. A pair of tail­lights could be seen wind­ing down the moun­tain­side a half mile be­low them.

“That’s our man.” His light came on, re­veal­ing un­fa­mil­iar shoe tracks clear­ly out­lined in the short, dew-​laden grass.

“What was he do­ing?”

“It seems they no longer want to kill us. Rather, they are mere­ly anx­ious to keep track of how much we know. Now, why do you think that is, Vin­cent?”

{ 71 }

Hay­ward nev­er liked the sen­sa­tion of déjà vu, aaaashe was feel­ing it es­pe­cial­ly strong­ly this af­ter­noon, sit­ting in the same room, with the same peo­ple, lis­ten­ing to the same ar­gu­ments she’d heard twen­ty-​four hours ear­li­er. On­ly now it was ass-​cov­er­ing time. It re­mind­ed her of mu­si­cal chairs: as soon as the mu­sic stopped in this room, some poor schmuck would no doubt be left stand­ing, ass ex­posed aaaaready to be kicked.

Grable seemed to be try­ing hard to make sure that ex­posed ass was hers.

He was in the mid­dle of a long-​wind­ed ac­count of the botched ar­rest at­tempt, aa ac­count that some­how trans­formed his own craven and er­rat­ic be­hav­ior in­to re­straint and hero­ism. The sto­ry went on and on, the cli­max com­ing when he was obliged to fire in­to the air to warn the sav­age crowd. As a re­sult they’d been able to de­part in good or­der, up­hold­ing the dig­ni­ty of the New York City Po­lice De­part­ment, even if they had failed in their ob­jec­tive of ar­rest­ing Buck. Through­out the ac­count, there was the faint im­pli­ca­tion that he had done all the work, tak­en all the risks, while Hay­ward had been a re­luc­tant par­tic­ipant at best. He even man­aged to give the im­pres­sion of re­frain­ing from crit­icism, as if she’d been a dead weight on the whole op­er­ation.

If he was as good in the field as he is at ass-​cov­er­ing, Hay­ward thought grim­ly,we wouldn’t be here right now. She con­sid­ered re­spond­ing, but de­cid­ed she didn’t want to play that par­tic­ular game. If she point­ed out that Grable had run like a cur with its tail tucked be­tween its legs, that he had fired in pan­ic and lost his gun-​well, it might set the record straight, but it would do her no good. Her mind wan­dered, tun­ing out the pa­rade of half-​truths.

One bright note was that Pen­der­gast and D’Agos­ta seemed to be mak­ing progress in Italy. And Pen­der­gast was out of her hair, no doubt mak­ing some Ital­ian po­lice of­fi­cer’s life mis­er­able. On the oth­er hand, she missed D’Agos­ta. Missed him even more than she’d thought she would.

It was Went­worth’s turn next, and she made an ef­fort to con­cen­trate. He ex­pound­ed at length on the psy­chol­ogy of crowds, trot­ting out quo­ta­tions on mega­lo­ma­nia from file cards spe­cial­ly pre­pared for the oc­ca­sion. It was a huge smoke­screen of words and the­ories, piled one on top of an­oth­er, sig­ni­fy­ing noth­ing. This was fol­lowed by some neigh­bor­hood hon­cho, talk­ing about how up­set the may­or was, how ev­ery­body was up in arms, how all the im­por­tant peo­ple of the city were be­side them­selves that noth­ing was be­ing done.

No one, it seemed, had any ideas on how to get Buck out of...

Rock­er heard them all out with the same tired ex­pres­sion on his face, an ex­pres­sion which be­trayed noth­ing of his in­ner thoughts. Fi­nal­ly, the tired eyes came to rest on her. “Cap­tain Hay­ward?”

“I have noth­ing to add.” She said it per­haps a lit­tle more curt­ly than she in­tend­ed.

Rock­er’s eye­brows raised just slight­ly. “So you agree with the gen­tle­men here?”

“I didn’t say that. I said I had noth­ing to add.”

“Did you find out any­thing more on Buck’s record? An out­stand­ing war­rant, per­haps?”

“Yes,” said Hay­ward, hav­ing spent part of the morn­ing on the phone. “But it isn’t much. He’s want­ed in Bro­ken Ar­row, Ok­la­homa, for vi­olat­ing pa­role.”

“Vi­olat­ing pa­role!” Grable laughed. “What a joke. The laws he’s bro­ken here in­clude as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, re­sist­ing ar­rest, at­tempt­ed kid­nap­ping-​I mean, we got enough here to put him away for years.”

Hay­ward said noth­ing. Fact is, the pa­role vi­ola­tion was the on­ly charge that would stick. As far as the oth­ers went, there were dozens of wit­ness­es who would tes­ti­fy truth­ful­ly that Grable had drawn and fired his gun with no re­al provo­ca­tion, that Buck had not, in fact, re­sist­ed ar­rest, that the crowd had part­ed like the damn Red Sea to let them go, and that Grable had run, leav­ing his gun in the dust.

Rock­er nod­ded. “What now?”

Si­lence.

Rock­er was still look­ing at Hay­ward. “Cap­tain?”

“I’d sug­gest just what I sug­gest­ed in the first meet­ing.”

“Even af­ter your, ah, un­pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence this morn­ing?”

“Noth­ing hap­pened this morn­ing to change my mind.”

That pro­duced a long, lead­en si­lence. Grable was shak­ing his head, as if to say,Some peo­ple nev­er learn.

“I see. You sug­gest­ed go­ing in alone, is that right?”

“Right. I go in there and ask for Buck’s co­op­er­ation in send­ing his peo­ple home for a show­er and change of clothes. We’ll promise him a pa­rade per­mit in re­turn. Treat him with re­spect. De­liv­er a fair, hon­est warn­ing.”

There was a snort of de­ri­sion from Grable.

Rock­er turned. “Cap­tain Grable, you have some­thing to say?”

“I wasthere , Com­mis­sion­er. Buck is crazy. He’s a dan­ger­ous ex-​mur­der­er. And his fol­low­ers are like Jon­estown, re­al fa­nat­ics. She goes in there alone, with­out a large force to pro­tect her, they’ll take her hostage. Or worse.”

“Com­mis­sion­er, I re­spect­ful­ly dis­agree with Cap­tain Grable. It’s been al­most a week now, and Buck and his fol­low­ers have been rea­son­ably well be­haved and or­der­ly. I be­lieve it’s worth a try.”

Wentworth had joined in the head-shaking.

“Dr. Went­worth?” Rock­er said.

“I would give Cap­tain Hay­ward’s plan a very low prob­abil­ity of suc­cess. Cap­tain Hay­ward

is not a psy­chol­ogist, and her prog­nos­ti­ca­tions of hu­man be­hav­ior are sim­ply lay opin­ion, not

based on sci­en­tif­ic study of hu­man psy­chol­ogy.”

Hay­ward looked at the com­mis­sion­er. “I’m not one to toot my own horn, sir, but the fact is,

I do have an M.S. in foren­sic psy­chol­ogy from NYU. Since I be­lieve Dr. Went­worth is an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor at the Col­lege of Stat­en Is­land-​CUNY, it’s un­der­stand­able that we nev­er met

aca­dem­ical­ly.”

In the un­com­fort­able si­lence, it seemed to Hay­ward that Rock­er might even be sup­press­ing a lit­tle smile of his own.

“I stand by my ear­li­er com­ment,” Went­worth said acid­ly.

Rock­er ig­nored him, still speak­ing to Hay­ward. “And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“You bet­ter have a SWAT team stand­ing by to ex­tract Cap­tain Hay­ward, along with paramedics, for when the in­evitable oc­curs,” said Grable.

Rock­er looked down at his hands, his brow creased. Then he raised his head again.

“Sun­day is the day af­ter to­mor­row. I’d al­ready de­cid­ed on us­ing the rel­ative calm to go in with

over­whelm­ing force and ar­rest this man. But I hate to take a step like that un­til all av­enues

have been tried. I’m in­clined to let Cap­tain Hay­ward have a shot at it. If she can get Buck out

of there with­out tear gas and wa­ter can­non, I’m all for it.” He turned to Hay­ward. “You do your

thing at noon. If it doesn’t work, we move in, as sched­uled.”

“Thank you, sir.”

A beat. “Hay­ward, are yousure this plan of yours is go­ing to work?”

“No, sir.”

Rock­er smiled. “That’s all I want­ed to hear-​a lit­tle god­damned hu­mil­ity for a change.” His

eyes raked the rest of them, then re­turned to Hay­ward. “Go to it, Cap­tain.” { 72 }

D’Agos­ta looked out at the vague out­lines of the is­land loom­ing off the fer­ry’s port bow,

ris­ing steep and blue from the sea, shim­mer­ing slight­ly in the mid­morn­ing light. Capra­ia: out­er­most of the Tus­can is­lands, a moun­tain­top lost in the wide ocean. It looked un­re­al, al­most

fairy­like. The Tore­mar car fer­ry chis­eled its way for­ward, squat steel bows stub­born­ly part­ing

the turquoise wa­ter as it plowed to­ward its des­ti­na­tion.

Pen­der­gast stood be­side D’Agos­ta, sea breeze ruf­fling his blond hair, his fine­ly cut fea­tures like al­abaster in the glare of the sun. “A most in­ter­est­ing is­land, Vin­cent,” he was say­ing.

“Once a prison for the most dan­ger­ous and in­tel­li­gent crim­inals in Italy-​Mafia ca­pos and se­ri­al

es­capees. The prison closed in the mid-​six­ties, and now most of the is­land is a na­tion­al park.” “Strange place to live.”

“It is ac­tu­al­ly the most charm­ing of all the Tus­can is­lands. There is a small port and a tiny

vil­lage on a bluff, con­nect­ed by the is­land’s on­ly road, which is all of half a mile in length.

There’s been no ug­ly de­vel­op­ment, thanks to the fact that the is­land doesn’t have any

beach­es.”

“What’s the wom­an’s name again?”

“Her name is Vi­ola Maske­lene. La­dy Vi­ola Maske­lene. I couldn’t find out much about her

on short no­tice-​she’s a pri­vate per­son. It seems she spends her sum­mers on the is­land, leav­ing at the end of Oc­to­ber. Trav­els the rest of the year, or so I’ve been in­formed.” “You sure she’s home?”

“No. But I pre­fer to take the chance of sur­pris­ing our quar­ry.”

“Quar­ry?”

“In an in­ves­tiga­tive sense. We’re deal­ing with a so­phis­ti­cat­ed and well-​trav­eled En­glish­wom­an. As the on­ly great-​grand­child of Toscanel­li’s great­est love, she is in the best po­si­tion to

know the fam­ily se­crets.”

“She might be a tough nut to crack.”

“Quite pos­si­bly. Hence the sur­prise ap­proach.”

“How old is she?”

“I as­sume mid­dle-​aged, if my cal­cu­la­tions are cor­rect.”

D’Agos­ta glanced at him. “So what’s the fam­ily sto­ry?”

“It was one of those tor­rid nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry af­fairs one reads about. The stuff of opera.

Vi­ola Maske­lene’s great-​grand­moth­er, a fa­mous Vic­to­ri­an beau­ty, mar­ried the Duke of Cum­ber­land, thir­ty years her se­nior and as cold and cor­rect a man as you could find. Toscanel­li

se­duced her on­ly a few months af­ter her mar­riage, and they car­ried on a leg­endary af­fair. An

il­le­git­imate daugh­ter came of the union, and the poor duchess died in child­birth. That child

was La­dy Maske­lene’s grand­moth­er.”

“What did the duke have to say about all that?”

“He may have been cold, but he al­so seems to have been a rather de­cent sort. Af­ter his

wife’s death, he took steps to legal­ly adopt the child. The greater ti­tles and es­tates were en­tailed away, but the daugh­ter in­her­it­ed a less­er ti­tle and some land in Corn­wall.” The fer­ry throbbed be­neath their feet, and the is­land seemed to gain weight and sub­stance as they ap­proached. As they stood silent­ly, Pen­der­gast drew the test tube out of his

pock­et. He held it up, the melt­ed droplets tak­en from Van­ni’s corpse the night be­fore glit­ter­ing

in the sun. “We haven’t spo­ken yet about these.”

“Yeah. But I’ve been think­ing about them.”

“So have I. Per­haps, Vin­cent, the time has come at last for each of us to turn over a card.” “You first.”

Pen­der­gast smiled faint­ly and held up a fin­ger. “Nev­er. As the of­fi­cer in charge, I re­serve

the right to call your hand.”

“Pulling rank on me?”

“Pre­cise­ly.”

“Well, I’d say those drops came from some de­vice which mal­func­tioned, spray­ing molten

met­al in­to Van­ni and burn­ing him ter­ri­bly.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “What kind of de­vice?”

“Some de­vice meant to torch Van­ni. Same de­vice that killed the oth­ers. But in Van­ni’s

case, it didn’t seem to work, so he had to be shot af­ter­wards.”

“Bra­vo.”

“Your the­ory?”

“I reached the same con­clu­sions. Van­ni was an ear­ly vic­tim-​per­haps a test sub­ject-​of a

high­ly spe­cial­ized killing de­vice. It ap­pears we are deal­ing with a flesh-​and-​blood as­sas­sin,

af­ter all.”

Now the fer­ry was slip­ping past surf-​scoured vol­canic cliffs and in­to a small har­bor. A row

of crum­bling hous­es, stuc­coed yel­low and red, crowd­ed the quay, hill­sides ris­ing steeply be­hind them. The fer­ry ma­neu­vered in­to port, and a sin­gle car and a scat­ter­ing of pas­sen­gers

got off. Al­most be­fore D’Agos­ta’s feet were on firm ground, it was back­ing out again and

head­ing to its next stop, the is­land of El­ba.

“We have four hours be­fore the fer­ry re­turns on its home­ward swing.” Pen­der­gast pulled

out a lit­tle piece of pa­per, scru­ti­nized it. “La­dy Vi­ola Maske­lene, Via Sara­ci­no, 19. Let’s hope

we find­la sig­no­ri­na at home.”

He set off down the quay to­ward a bus stop, D’Agos­ta at his side. With­in mo­ments, an old

or­ange bus wheezed in­to view, strug­gled to turn around in the lone nar­row street, then

opened its doors. They board­ed; the doors creaked shut; and the bus be­gan groan­ing and

wheez­ing its way back up the fright­en­ing­ly steep slope that seemed to rise straight out of the

foam­ing sea.

In five min­utes, they were in the vil­lage at the far end of the road. The doors creaked open

again and they de­scend­ed. An an­cient peach-​col­ored church sat on one side, a to­bac­conist

on the oth­er. Cob­bled lanes ran off at odd an­gles, too nar­row to ad­mit a car. A gi­ant, ru­ined

cas­tle, com­plete­ly over­grown with prick­ly pears, dom­inat­ed the head­land be­fore them. Be­hind

the vil­lage mount­ed a se­ries of emp­ty, scrub-​cov­ered moun­tains.

“Charm­ing,” said Pen­der­gast. He point­ed at a street sign, carved on an old mar­ble plaque

and ce­ment­ed in­to the wall of a build­ing, read­ingVia Sara­ci­no. “This way, Sergeant.” They walked down a lane be­tween small white­washed hous­es, the num­bers mount­ing

slow­ly. Soon the town end­ed and the lane turned to dirt, bound­ed by stone walls en­clos­ing

gar­den plots of small lemon trees and mi­cro­scop­ic vine­yards. The air car­ried the scent of cit­rus. The lane made a sharp curve, and there-​at the edge of the cliff, all by it­self-​stood a neat

stone house shad­ed by bougainvil­lea, over­look­ing the blue im­men­si­ty of the Mediter­ranean. Pen­der­gast slipped down the path, en­tered the pa­tio, and knocked on the door. Si­lence.

“C’è nes­suno?”he called.

The wind sighed through the rose­mary bush­es, car­ry­ing the fra­grance of the sea with it. D’Agos­ta looked around. “There’s some­one over there,” he said. “A man, dig­ging.” He

nod­ded to­ward a small, ter­raced vine­yard a hun­dred yards away, where a fig­ure was turn­ing

earth with a spade. The man was wear­ing a bat­tered straw hat, old can­vas pants, and a

rough shirt un­but­toned part­way down the front. See­ing them, the per­son straight­ened up. “Cor­rec­tion: a wom­an dig­ging.” Pen­der­gast set off down the path with a vig­or­ous step.

Reach­ing the vine­yard, they stepped gin­ger­ly through clods of fresh­ly turned earth. The wom­an watched them ap­proach, lean­ing on her shov­el.

Pen­der­gast paused to of­fer the wom­an his hand, giv­ing his usu­al lit­tle half-​bow. In re­sponse, she re­moved her straw hat, shook out a mass of dark glossy hair, and took the hand. D’Agos­ta froze.This is no mid­dle-​aged wom­an.

She was stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful, tall, ath­let­ic, and slen­der, with spir­it­ed hazel eyes, high

cheek­bones, skin tanned and freck­led from the sun, nose still flar­ing from the ef­fort of dig­ging. Af­ter a mo­ment, he re­al­ized Pen­der­gast, af­ter hav­ing bowed, had straight­ened again but

seemed root­ed to the spot, still hold­ing her hand, say­ing noth­ing but look­ing in­to her eyes.

The wom­an ap­peared to be do­ing the same. There was a mo­ment of ut­ter still­ness. D’Agos­ta

won­dered if they had known each oth­er be­fore-​it al­most seemed as if they rec­og­nized each

oth­er.

“I am Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast,” Pen­der­gast said af­ter a long mo­ment.

“I’m Vi­ola Maske­lene,” she replied in a rich, warm En­glish ac­cent.

As they re­leased each oth­er’s hand, D’Agos­ta re­al­ized Pen­der­gast had un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly for­got­ten to in­tro­duce him. “And I’m Sergeant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta, Southamp­ton Po­lice.” The wom­an turned to him, as if notic­ing him for the first time. But the smile she gave him

was full of warmth. “Wel­come to Capra­ia, Sergeant.”

An­oth­er awk­ward si­lence. D’Agos­ta glanced at Pen­der­gast. He had a most un­char­ac­ter­is­tic look of sur­prise on his face, as if some­body had just dropped a scoop of ice cream down

his back. What was go­ing on?

“Well,” said La­dy Maske­lene with an­oth­er smile, “I as­sume you’re here to see me, Mr.

Pen­der­gast?”

“Yes,” he said hasti­ly. “Yes, we are. It con­cerns-“

She held up her fin­ger. “A hot vine­yard is no place to have a civ­ilized con­ver­sa­tion. Let’s

go back to my house and en­joy some­thing cool on theter­raz­za , shall we?” “Yes, of course.”

She smiled again: a daz­zling, dim­pled smile. “Fol­low me.” She set off across the field, her

big boots clomp­ing through the clods of earth. Theter­raz­za was shad­ed by a per­go­la draped

with wis­te­ria, and bor­dered by bloom­ing rose­mary and minia­ture lemon trees. It was like be­ing perched on the edge of the known world, the cliffs drop­ping away to an in­fin­ity of blue,

stretch­ing to the hori­zon and merg­ing im­per­cep­ti­bly with the sky. The ex­panse was bro­ken by

a sin­gle, tiny black reef, about a mile off­shore, which on­ly served to in­crease the sense of dis­tance, of in­fin­ity.

La­dy Maske­lene seat­ed them around an old tiled ta­ble, in bat­tered wood­en chairs, and

then dis­ap­peared in­to the house. A minute lat­er she re­turned with a wine bot­tle with­out a la­bel, filled with a pale am­ber liq­uid; some glass­es; a bot­tle of olive oil; and a bat­tered clay plat­ter heaped with thick pieces of rough-​cut bread. She set down the glass­es and, mov­ing

around the ta­ble, filled them with white wine. As she passed D’Agos­ta his glass, he caught

her faint scent, a per­fume of grapevines, earth, and the sea.

Pen­der­gast took a sip. “Is it yours, La­dy Maske­lene?”

“Yes. The olive oil is mine al­so. There’s some­thing mar­velous­ly sat­is­fy­ing about work­ing

your own piece of ground.”

“Com­pli­men­ti.”Pen­der­gast took an­oth­er sip, dipped a piece of the rough bread in a dish of

olive oil. “Ex­cel­lent.”

“Thank you.”

“Al­low me to tell you why we’ve come, La­dy Maske­lene.”

“No,” she said in a low voice, look­ing not at him, but far out to sea, her hazel eyes al­most

blue in the in­tense light, a strange smile on her lips. “Don’t spoil this . par­tic­ular mo­ment just

yet.”

D’Agos­ta won­dered just what par­tic­ular mo­ment she might be talk­ing about. The faint

sound of surf and the cries of seag­ulls drift­ed from the edge of the cliff. “What an en­chant­ing vil­la you have here, La­dy Maske­lene.”

She laughed. “A vil­la it is not-​just a sim­ple sea­side bun­ga­low. That’s why I love it. Here I

have my books, my mu­sic, my vines, my olive trees-​and the sea. What more could you ask

for?”

“You men­tioned mu­sic. Do you play an in­stru­ment?”

A hes­ita­tion. “The vi­olin.”

Now we’re get­ting some­where, thought D’Agos­ta. As usu­al, Pen­der­gast was slid­ing in­to

the sub­ject side­ways.

“You are here year-​round?”

“Oh, no. I’d get bored. I’m not­that much of a recluse.”

“Where do you spend the rest of your time?”

“I lead a rather deca­dent life. Fall in Rome, De­cem­ber in Lux­or, at the Win­ter Palace.” “Egypt? That’s a cu­ri­ous place to spend the win­ter.”

“I’m di­rect­ing a small dig in the Val­ley of the No­bles.”

“You’re an ar­chae­ol­ogist, then?”

“An Egyp­tol­ogist and philol­ogist. There’s a dif­fer­ence, you know-​we study a great deal

more than dirt, pots, and bones. We’ve been ex­ca­vat­ing the tomb of a Nine­teenth Dy­nasty

scribe, full of fas­ci­nat­ing hi­er­at­ic in­scrip­tions. Of course, the tomb was loot­ed in an­tiq­ui­ty, but

for­tu­nate­ly all the loot­ers want­ed were the gold and gems. They left the scrolls and in­scrip­tions in­tact. We found the scribe him­self in his sar­coph­agus, hold­ing a bun­dle of mys­te­ri­ous

scrolls full of mag­ical for­mu­las which we have yet to un­roll and trans­late. They’re ex­ceed­ing­ly

del­icate.”

“Fas­ci­nat­ing.”

“And then, come spring, I go to Corn­wall, the fam­ily place.”

“Spring, in Eng­land?”

She laughed. “I love mud. And freez­ing rain. And sprawl­ing on a fur rug in front of a roar­ing fire read­ing a good book. How about you, Mr. Pen­der­gast? What doy­ou love?” The ques­tion seemed to take Pen­der­gast by sur­prise, and he cov­ered his con­fu­sion with a

sip of wine. “I love this wine of yours. Fresh, sim­ple, un­pre­ten­tious.”

“It’s made from mal­va­sia vines brought to the is­land al­most four thou­sand years ago by

Mi­noan traders. For me, the fla­vor some­how evokes his­to­ry it­self, the Mi­noans cross­ing the

wine-​dark sea in trireme ships, bound for dis­tant is­lands . ” She laughed, sweep­ing her black

hair from her face. “I’m an in­cur­able ro­man­tic. When I was a child, I want­ed to grow up to be

Odysseus.” She looked at Pen­der­gast. “And you? When you were a child, what did you want

to be?”

“A great white hunter.”

She laughed. “What a cu­ri­ous am­bi­tion! And did you be­come one?”

“In a way. But on a hunt in Tan­za­nia . I dis­cov­ered quite sud­den­ly that I had lost the taste

for it.”

More si­lence. D’Agos­ta gave up try­ing to make sense of what tack Pen­der­gast was tak­ing.

He sipped the wine with re­newed in­ter­est It was very pleas­ant, if a bit dry. And the bread was

fab­ulous, thick and chewy, the olive oil so fresh it was spicy. He dipped a piece of bread,

stuffed it in his mouth, fol­lowed with an­oth­er. He hadn’t eat­en break­fast and had been a bit

too se­vere with his di­et. He glanced sur­rep­ti­tious­ly at his watch If Pen­der­gast didn’t hur­ry

things up, they’d miss the fer­ry.

Then, to D’Agos­ta’s sur­prise, the wom­an brought the sub­ject up her­self. “Speak­ing of his­to­ry, there’s quite a lot of that in my own fam­ily. You know of my great­grand­fa­ther, Lu­ciano Toscanel­li?”

“I do.”

“He did two things in life ex­cep­tion­al­ly well: play­ing the vi­olin and se­duc­ing wom­en. He

was the Mick Jag­ger of his age. His groupies were countess­es, baroness­es, princess­es.

Some­times he would have two or three wom­en in a day, and not al­ways at dif­fer­ent times ”

She laughed light­ly.

Pen­der­gast cleared his throat, took a piece of bread.

“He had one great love, how­ev­er, and that was my great-​grand­moth­er. The Duchess of

Cum­ber­land. He gave her an il­le­git­imate daugh­ter, my grand­moth­er.” She paused, looked at

Pen­der­gast cu­ri­ous­ly. “Thi­sis why you came, isn’t it?”

It took Pen­der­gast a mo­ment to re­ply. “Yes, it is.”

She sighed. “My great-​grand­fa­ther end­ed up like so many in the days be­fore peni­cillin:

with a bad dose of vene­re­al dis­ease.”

“La­dy Maske­lene,” said Pen­der­gast hasti­ly, “please don’t think I have come to pry in­to

your fam­ily’s pri­vate af­fairs. I re­al­ly on­ly have one ques­tion that needs an­swer­ing.” “I know what that ques­tion is. But first, I want you to know the his­to­ry of my fam­ily.” “There is no need-“

Maske­lene blushed, her hand touch­ing the but­tons of her shirt. “I want you to know it up

front, that’s all. Then we won’t have to speak of it again.”

D’Agos­ta lis­tened with sur­prise.I want you to know it up front . Up front of what? Pen­der­gast seemed equal­ly non­plussed. In any case, when he had no an­swer for this, she be­gan

again.

“So my great-​grand­fa­ther got syphilis. It even­tu­al­ly pro­gressed to the ter­tiary stage, where

the spiro­chetes at­tack the brain. His play­ing changed. It grew bizarre. He gave a con­cert in

Flo­rence where he was pelt­ed by the au­di­ence. The fam­ily who owned the vi­olin de­mand­ed it

back. He wouldn’t give it up. He fled to es­cape them and their agents, trav­el­ing from city to

city, driv­en by a ris­ing in­san­ity and aid­ed by count­less wom­en. The fam­ily’s agents and

pri­vate de­tec­tives pur­sued him dogged­ly-​but qui­et­ly, be­cause keep­ing the fam­ily name se­cret was of the ut­most im­por­tance. My great-​grand­fa­ther stayed one step ahead. He played in his ho­tel rooms at night: in­sane, shock­ing, even ter­ri­fy­ing ren­der­ings of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, ex­ecut­ed-​so the sto­ry goes-​with enor­mous tech­ni­cal vir­tu­os­ity but cold, strange, all

wrong. Those who heard him say it was as if the dev­il him­self had tak­en up the vi­olin.” She paused.

“Go on,” said Pen­der­gast gen­tly.

“The fam­ily who owned the Storm­cloud was very pow­er­ful. They were re­lat­ed by blood to

some of the roy­al fam­ilies of Eu­rope. Even so, they couldn’t catch my great-​grand­fa­ther. They

pur­sued him from one end of Eu­rope to the oth­er. The chase fi­nal­ly end­ed in the small vil­lage

of Siusi in the South Ty­rol. There, un­der the peaks of the Dolomites, they cor­nered him. He

was be­trayed by a wom­an, nat­ural­ly. He es­caped out the back of a smal­lal­ber­go and fled in­to

the high moun­tains with noth­ing but the vi­olin and the clothes on his back. He as­cend­ed the

great Scil­iar. Do you know it?”

“No,” said Pen­der­gast.

“It’s a high Alpine plateau wedged be­tween the peaks of the Dolomites, cut by ravines and

sheer cliffs. They say it’s where the witch­es once held their black mass­es. In the sum­mer, a

few hardy shep­herds graze their flocks there. But this was fall and the Scil­iar was de­sert­ed.

That night it snowed heav­ily. The next day they found his body, frozen to death, in one of the

de­sert­ed shep­herd’s huts. The Storm­cloud was gone. There were no tracks in the snow

around the hut, no clues. They con­clud­ed that on the way up the Scil­iar, in the grip of mad­ness, he had flung the vi­olin in­to the Falls of the Scil­iar.”

“Is this what you be­lieve?”

“Re­luc­tant­ly, yes.”

Pen­der­gast leaned for­ward. His nor­mal­ly calm, al­most hon­eyed south­ern tones had tak­en

on an un­usu­al in­ten­si­ty. “La­dy Maske­lene, I am here to tell you that the Storm­cloud ex­ists.” Her eyes gazed at him steadi­ly. “I’ve heard that be­fore.”

“I will prove it to you.”

She con­tin­ued look­ing at him with a grave, steady face. Fi­nal­ly she gave a wan smile and

shook her head sad­ly. “I’ll be­lieve it when I see it.”

“Iwill get it back. And I will place it in your hands my­self.”

D’Agos­ta lis­tened with sur­prise. He might be wrong, but he was pret­ty sure Pen­der­gast’s

aim in com­ing here wasn’t to in­form this wom­an of the vi­olin’s ex­is­tence. Fact was, he felt sur­prised Pen­der­gast even men­tioned it.

She shook her head more vig­or­ous­ly. “There are hun­dreds of Storm­cloud fakes and copies out there. They were churned out by the gross in the late nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, sold for nine

pounds apiece.”

“When I bring you the vi­olin, La­dy Maske­lene-“

“Enough of this ‘La­dy Maske­lene’ busi­ness. Ev­ery time you say that, I think my moth­er

must have stepped in­to the room. Call me Vi­ola.”

“Cer­tain­ly. Vi­ola.”

“That sounds bet­ter. And I’ll call you Aloy­sius.”

“Of course.”

“What an un­usu­al fun­ny name, though. Did your moth­er read a lot of Rus­sian nov­els?” “Un­usu­al names are a tra­di­tion in my fam­ily.”

Vi­ola laughed. “Just as mu­si­cal names were in mine. Now tell me about the Storm­cloud.

Where in the world did you find it? If you did re­al­ly find it, that is.”

“I’ll tell you the whole sto­ry when I bring it to you. You’ll play it-​and then you’ll know.” “It is too much to hope for. Still, I should love to hear it be­fore I die.”

“It would al­so clear your fam­ily name.”

Maske­lene laughed, waved her hand. “What rot. I hate be­ing called La­dy Maske­lene, if

you want to know the truth. Ti­tles, fam­ily hon­or-​that’s nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry rub­bish.” “Hon­or is nev­er out of date.”

She looked at Pen­der­gast cu­ri­ous­ly. “You’re a rather old-​fash­ioned sort, aren’t you?” “I don’t pay much at­ten­tion to cur­rent fash­ions, if that’s what you mean.”

She looked his black suit up and down with an amused smile. “No, I sup­pose you don’t. I

rather like that.”

Again Pen­der­gast looked non­plussed.

“Well”-she stood up, her brown eyes catch­ing the light off the wa­ter, a smile dim­pling her

face-“whether you find the vi­olin or not, come back any­way and tell me about it. Will you?” “Noth­ing would please me more.”

“Good. That’s set­tled.”

Pen­der­gast looked at her grave­ly. “Which brings me to the point of my vis­it.” “The big ques­tion. Ah.” She smiled. “Go ahead.”

“What is the name of that pow­er­ful fam­ily that once owned the Storm­cloud?” “I can do bet­ter than give you a mere an­swer.” She reached in­to her pock­et, re­moved an

en­ve­lope, and laid it be­fore Pen­der­gast. In a love­ly cop­per­plate hand was writ­ten,Dr. Aloy­sius

X. L. Pen­der­gast.

Pen­der­gast looked at it, his face drain­ing of col­or. “Where did you get this?” “Yes­ter­day, the cur­rent Count Fos­co-​for that was the fam­ily that once owned the vi­olin-​paid me a sur­prise vis­it. Sur­prise is hard­ly the word-​I was bowled over. He said you’d be

com­ing, that you were friends, and that he want­ed me to give you this.”

Pen­der­gast reached down and slow­ly picked up the en­ve­lope. D’Agos­ta watched as he

slid his fin­ger un­der the flap, tore it open, and pulled out a card, on which was writ­ten in the

same gen­er­ous, flow­ing hand:

Isidor Ot­tavio Bal­das­sare Fos­co,

Count of the Holy Ro­man Em­pire,

Knight Grand Cross of the Or­der of the Quin­cunx,

Per­pet­ual Arch-​Mas­ter of the Rosi­cru­cian Ma­sons of Mesopotamia,

Fel­low of the Roy­al Ge­ograph­ical So­ci­ety, etc.,,,,,,,

de­sires the plea­sure of your com­pa­ny

at his fam­ily seat,

Cas­tel Fos­co,

Sun­day, Novem­ber 4

Cas­tel Fos­co

Greve in Chi­anti

Firen­ze

Pen­der­gast looked sharply at D’Agos­ta and then back at La­dy Maske­lene. “This man is no

friend. He’s ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous.”

“What? That fat, charm­ing old count?” She laughed, but the laugh­ter died when she saw

the ex­pres­sion on his face.

“He’s the one who has the vi­olin.”

She stared. “It would be his, any­way-​wouldn’t it? I mean, if it were found.” “He bru­tal­ly mur­dered at least four peo­ple to get it.”

“Oh, my God-“

“Don’t say any­thing to any­one about this. You’ll be safe here, on Capra­ia. He would have

killed you al­ready if he thought it was nec­es­sary.”

She stared back. “You’re fright­en­ing me.”

“Yes, and I’m sor­ry, but some­times it’s good to be afraid. It will be over in two or three

days. Please be care­ful, Vi­ola. Just stay here and do noth­ing un­til I re­turn with the vi­olin.” For a mo­ment, she did not re­ply. Then she stirred. “You must go. You’ll miss the fer­ry.” Pen­der­gast took her hand. They stood quite still, look­ing at each oth­er, say­ing noth­ing.

Then Pen­der­gast turned and quick­ly walked through the gate and down the trail. D’Agos­ta leaned against the fan­tail of the fer­ry, watch­ing the is­land dis­solve on the hori­zon in much the same way it had ap­peared: with a sense of ex­pectan­cy, of a fresh be­gin­ning.

Pen­der­gast stood be­side him. Since they had left the small house on the bluff, the agent

hadn’t said a word. He stared back over the churn­ing wake, ap­par­ent­ly lost in thought. “Fos­co knew that you knew,” said D’Agos­ta. “That’s what saved her.”

“Yes.”

“This whole thing. It was just an elab­orate plot to get the vi­olin, wasn’t it?” Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“I knew from the be­gin­ning that fat bas­tard had some­thing to do with it.”

Pen­der­gast didn’t re­spond. His gaze was far away.

“Are you all right?” D’Agos­ta fi­nal­ly risked ask­ing.

Pen­der­gast start­ed, looked over. “Quite all right, thanks.”

The is­land had fi­nal­ly dis­ap­peared. As if on cue, the low out­line of the Tus­can main­land

be­gan to ma­te­ri­al­ize on the east­ern hori­zon.

“What now?”

“I ac­cept Fos­co’s in­vi­ta­tion. It’s one thing to know, quite an­oth­er to have proof. If we want

to get Fos­co, we have to get what­ev­er ma­chine he used to com­mit these mur­ders.” “So why did Fos­co give you an in­vi­ta­tion?”

“He wants to kill me.”

“Great. And you plan on ac­cept­ing?”

Pen­der­gast turned away and gazed back out to sea, his eyes al­most white in the bril­liant

light. “Fos­co knows I’ll ac­cept, be­cause it’s the on­ly chance to gath­er the ev­idence we need to

put him be­hind bars. If we don’t do it now, he will be back to haunt us next month, per­haps, or

a year from now, or ten years . ” He paused. “And what’s more, he’ll al­ways be a dan­ger to Vi­ola-​La­dy Maske­lene-​for what she knows.”

“I get it.”

But Pen­der­gast was still look­ing out to sea. When he spoke again, his voice was very low.

“It ends to­mor­row, in the Cas­tel Fos­co.”

{ 73 }

Bryce Har­ri­man sat at the old ta­ble, tak­ing notes in the harsh­light of a Cole­man lantern,

the Rev­erend Buck across from him. It was al­most mid­night, but he wasn’t the least bit

sleepy. The day be­fore, he had filed a crack­er­jack sto­ry, about the failed at­tempt to ar­rest

Buck. He had pieced it to­geth­er from a half dozen wit­ness­es, and it was juicy: the swag­ger­ing

po­lice cap­tain com­ing in to ar­rest Buck, how he’d pan­icked and run, leav­ing it to the oth­er

cap­tain-​a wom­an-​to straight­en things out. Great copy. In the long run, it might turn out to be

more than just great copy: he’d be­gun putting out feel­ers at theTimes , and they seemed re­cep­tive to a job in­ter­view. This new ar­ti­cle would be gravy. And thanks to Buck, he was now

the on­ly jour­nal­ist al­lowed in the tent city. With this sec­ond piece ap­pear­ing hot on the heels

of the first, he was go­ing to score a dou­ble wham­my. And he would be there to­mor­row, too,

just in case there was a show­down with New York’s finest.

Judg­ing from the mood in the camp, it was go­ing to be a mess. Since the botched ar­rest,

the whole place had been on edge, rest­less, bel­liger­ent, like a pow­der keg ready to go. Even

at mid­night, more than a day af­ter the would-​be raid, ev­ery­one was still awake, the prayers

and camp meet­ings sound­ing shril­ly through the dark­ness. A lot of the kids he’d no­ticed on

his first vis­it to the tent city were gone-​a night or two of sleep­ing on the hard ground, with­out

an In­ter­net con­nec­tion or ca­ble TV, had sent them scur­ry­ing home to their com­fy sub­urbs.

What re­mained was the hard-​core el­ement, the re­al zealots. And there was no short­age of

those: there had to be at least three hun­dred tents here.

Buck him­self was dif­fer­ent. Gone was the flick­er of un­cer­tain­ty, the faint au­ra of sur­prise

and won­der that he had pos­sessed be­fore. Now he seemed al­most tran­scen­den­tal­ly calm

and as­sured. When he looked at Har­ri­man, it was as if he was look­ing right through him to an­oth­er world.

“Well, Mr. Har­ri­man,” he was say­ing, “have you got­ten what you came for? It’s al­most mid­night, and I usu­al­ly de­liv­er a mes­sage to the peo­ple be­fore re­tir­ing.”

“Just one oth­er ques­tion. What do you think’s go­ing to hap­pen? The NYPD aren’t just go­ing to walk away, you re­al­ize.”

He had half ex­pect­ed the ques­tion to shake Buck up a bit, but in­stead, the man seemed to

set­tle even deep­er in­to some­thing like seren­ity. “What will hap­pen will hap­pen.” “It may not be pret­ty. Are you ready?”

“No, it won’t be pret­ty, and yes, I am ready.”

“You say that al­most as if you know what’s go­ing to hap­pen.”

Buck smiled know­ing­ly but said noth­ing.

“Aren’t you con­cerned?” Har­ri­man asked more in­sis­tent­ly.

Again that enig­mat­ic smile.Damn, you can’t quote a smile. “We’re talk­ing tear gas maybe,

cops swing­ing bil­ly clubs. No more fun and games.”

“I put my trust in God, Mr. Har­ri­man. Who do you trust?”

Time to wrap this up.”Thank you, Rev­erend, you’ve been very help­ful.” Har­ri­man rose. “And thank you, Mr. Har­ri­man. Won’t you stay a few min­utes to hear my mes­sage to the

peo­ple? As you say, some­thing is about to hap­pen. And as a re­sult, my ser­mon this evening

will be some­what dif­fer­ent.”

The re­porter hes­itat­ed. He had to be up at five, ready to go. He was pret­ty sure the cops

were go­ing to do their thing to­mor­row, and it might be­gin ear­ly. “What’s it on?” “Hell.”

“In that case, I’ll stay.”

Buck rose and sig­naled one of his men, who came over, helped him don a sim­ple vest­ment, and then ac­com­pa­nied him out of the tent. Har­ri­man fol­lowed in their wake, pulling his recorder out of one pock­et, try­ing to ig­nore the heavy reek of the en­camp­ment. They were head­ed, he knew, to a huge glacial er­rat­ic that reared out of the earth to the west of the tent

city and which was now uni­ver­sal­ly called the “preach­ing rock.”

The bus­tle of the camp died away as Buck went out of sight be­hind the mas­sive boul­der,

climbed the grassy hum­mock to the rear, then reap­peared on its lofty crag. He raised his

hands slow­ly. Watch­ing from be­low, Har­ri­man found hun­dreds of peo­ple drift­ing in out of the

dark­ness to sur­round him.

“My friends,” he be­gan. “Good evening. Once again I thank you for join­ing me on this spir­itu­al quest. It’s been my cus­tom, in these evening talks, to speak to you of this quest: to ex­plain why we are here and what it is we must do. But tonight my sub­ject will be dif­fer­ent. “Broth­ers and sis­ters, you will soon face a tri­al. A great tri­al. We won a mighty vic­to­ry here

yes­ter­day, thanks be to God. But the agents of dark­ness are not eas­ily turned back. There­fore, you must be strong. Be strong, and ac­cept­the will of God .”

Har­ri­man, lis­ten­ing with recorder raised, was sur­prised by Buck’s tone and man­ner. His

voice was qui­et, but it rang with an iron con­vic­tion he’d nev­er heard be­fore, even in the very

first ser­mon de­liv­ered out­side Cut­forth’s build­ing. There was a strange look in Buck’s bright

eyes: a look of an­tic­ipa­tion min­gled with an al­most sto­ic res­ig­na­tion.

“I have spo­ken to you many times about what we have come here to achieve. Now, on the

eve of your tri­al to end all tri­als, I must take a mo­ment to re­mind you of what we are up

against and who your en­emy is. Re­mem­ber my words even when I am no longer among you.” The eve ofy­our­tri­al. Who youren­emy is. No longer among you. Since his last meet­ing in

Buck’s tent, Har­ri­man had be­gun read­ing the Bible-​just a lit­tle, here and there-​and the words

of Je­sus came back to him now:Whith­er I go, thou canst not fol­low me now; but thou shalt fol­low me af­ter­wards.

“Why, my friends and my broth­ers, were our me­dieval an­ces­tors-​un­so­phis­ti­cat­ed and un­let­tered in oth­er ways-​so much more God-​fear­ing than peo­ple to­day? But I speak the an­swer

even as I ask the ques­tion. Be­cause they had the­fear of God. They knew what re­wards

await­ed the cho­sen few in heav­en. And they al­so knew what await­ed the sin­ful, the wicked,

the lazy and un­be­liev­ing.

“The fault lies not just with the peo­ple. To­day’s cler­gy are even more at fault. They sug­ar­coat the word of God, make light of his warn­ings, tell their flocks that hell is mere­ly a metaphor or an an­tique con­cept with no ac­tu­al re­al­ity. God’s love is ex­pan­sive and for­giv­ing, they

tell us. They lull their flocks in­to a false sense of en­ti­tle­ment. As if a bap­tism here, a few good

deeds there, a com­mu­nion or two, is a tick­et to heav­en. My friends, this is a trag­ic mis­take.” Buck paused to glance around at the hushed mul­ti­tude.

“God’s love is a tough love. In this city, as in all great cities, peo­ple die ev­ery day. They

die by the hun­dreds. At what point do you sup­pose all those poor souls be­gin to re­al­ize the­re­al fate that lies in store for them? At what point do the scales fall from their eyes and they

learn their en­tire life has been a lie-​that they’ve spent it run­ning from the light ev­er deep­er in­to

the dark­ness-​and that they now have noth­ing but unimag­in­able tor­ment to look for­ward to?

There is no way to know for sure. But I be­lieve at least some peo­ple­have a glimpse of it in

their last mo­ments. I be­lieve that, for these peo­ple, there is a creep­ing sense that some­thing

is ter­ri­bly wrong: some­thing far, far worse than the act of dy­ing it­self. In those last mo­ments,

as the soul be­gins to sep­arate from the body, the fab­ric of ev­ery­day re­al­ity is ripped asun­der.

And sud­den­ly they can see in­to the void be­yond. Then comes a ter­ri­ble op­pres­sion; over­whelm­ing fear; ris­ing heat. They can­not scream, they can­not flee. This is no pan­ic at­tack that

will pass; this is mere­ly the fore­taste of what is to come. This is a step on­to the first tread of

the long stair­way down in­to hell.

“And what is hell it­self like? Our an­ces­tors were told it was a burn­ing lake of fire, of sul­fur

and brim­stone, in which one was eter­nal­ly sub­merged. A ter­ri­ble fur­nace whose flames bring

no light, but mere­ly dark­ness made vis­ible. And in a sim­pler time, such a de­pic­tion was

enough.”

He stopped again to look around, fix­ing first one, then an­oth­er, with his eyes. “Mind you, I do be­lieve this is hell for some. But it is not the on­ly hell. There are count­less

hells, my broth­ers and sis­ters. There is a hell fore­ach of us. Lu­cifer may be no match for our

God. Yet he was a very mighty an­gel in­deed, and as such, has pow­ers far be­yond our poor

com­pre­hen­sion.

“You must re­mem­ber some­thing, and re­mem­ber it al­ways: Lu­cifer, the dev­il, was cast out

of heav­en be­cause of his over­mas­ter­ing en­vy and evil. In his im­pla­ca­ble jeal­ousy, his un­quench­able thirst for re­venge, he now us­es us as his pawns. Just as the re­ject­ed child hates

a fa­vored ri­val, he hates us for what we are: beloved chil­dren of God. And which of us can

hope to com­pre­hend the depths of his bot­tom­less rage? Each hu­man he cor­rupts, each soul

he takes, is for him a vic­to­ry: a fist shak­en up at God.

“He knows our in­di­vid­ual weak­ness­es, our pet­ty de­sires; he knows what trig­gers our van­ity or our greed or our lust or our cru­el­ty. We have no se­crets from him. He has hand­craft­ed

temp­ta­tions for each one of us; he has strewn our path with a thou­sand ways to veer in­to

dark­ness. And once he has suc­cess­ful­ly lured a soul in­to his king­dom-​once he has won, yet

again-​do you think Sa­tan will be con­tent to leave that soul in agener­ic hell? Think again, my

friends: think again. He who knows all our weak­ness­es al­so knows all our fears. Even those

we may not know our­selves. And to com­plete his vic­to­ry, to make his vic­tim’s suf­fer­ing­supreme , he will fash­ion each in­di­vid­ual hell to be the most un­en­durable for its par­tic­ular in­hab­itant. And worst of all, it will be a hell that lasts for­ev­er. And ev­er.And ev­er. For some, that

may well mean a burn­ing lake of fire. For oth­ers, it may mean an eter­ni­ty nailed up in a black

cof­fin, mo­tion­less, light­less, speech­less, as in­san­ity dou­bles and re­dou­bles over long eons.

For oth­ers, it might mean, say, eter­nal suf­fo­ca­tion. Imag­ine that for a mo­ment, my friends.

Imag­ine that you’ve held your breath for two min­utes, maybe three. Imag­ine the des­per­ate

need for oxy­gen, the exquisite tor­ture. And yet in hell, there is no re­lease of breath, no draw­ing in of good sweet air. Nor is there the blank­ness of obliv­ion. There is sim­ply that mo­ment of

max­imal agony, pro­longed for­ev­er.”

Max­imal agony, pro­longed for­ev­er.De­spite him­self, Har­ri­man shiv­ered in the warm night. “Oth­er hells might be more sub­tle. Imag­ine the man who al­ways feared go­ing crazy, do­ing

so over decades or even slow cen­turies. And then be­gin­ning the pro­cess over. And over. Or

imag­ine the dot­ing moth­er, forced to watch-​again and again and again-​how af­ter her own

pass­ing her chil­dren slide in­to pover­ty and ne­glect, drug ad­dic­tion, de­pres­sion, mal­treat­ment,

and death.”

Here he stopped, and stepped up to the very edge of the rock.

“Take a mo­ment to think of the very worst hell you could imag­ine for your­self. And then

re­al­ize that Sa­tan, who knows you even bet­ter than you know your­self, could fash­ion one far

worse. And he will.He al­ready has. In an­tic­ipa­tion. Be­cause he has on­ly one salve for his bit­ter pain: the de­spair, the des­per­ate plead­ings, the cries and suf­fer­ings of his vic­tims.” Buck paused again. He took a deep breath, then an­oth­er. Then, in an even low­er voice,

he went on.

“I’ve said there was a hell for each of us. That hell is there, wait­ing for each one of you.

Sa­tan has made your hell so very easy to find, with a wide and com­fort­able road lead­ing

straight to it. It is far, far eas­ier for us to go with the flow, to stroll un­think­ing down that broad

pleas­ant av­enue, far eas­ier than to search for the rough, hid­den turnoff that leads to heav­en.

We must fight against the lure of the easy road. It is a fight, my friends; a fight to the death.

Be­cause that is the on­ly way-​the on­ly way-​we are go­ing to dis­cov­er that dif­fi­cult trail to heav­en. I ask you to re­mem­ber this in the tri­als we are about to face.”

And then he turned and stepped down out of sight.

{ 74 }

When D’Agos­ta en­tered Pen­der­gast’s ho­tel suite, he found theagent at break­fast. The ta­ble was set with as­sort­ed fruits, break­fast rolls, and the in­escapable and in­evitable tiny espres­so. Pen­der­gast was nib­bling dain­ti­ly at poached eggs and read­ing what looked like a set

of faxed doc­uments. For a brief mo­ment, D’Agos­ta thought of the ear­li­er meal they’d shared,

back in Southamp­ton, when this case was still brand-​new. It seemed a dis­tant mem­ory in­deed.

“Ah, Vin­cent,” Pen­der­gast said. “Come in. Would you care to or­der some­thing?” “No, thanks.” Al­though it was a beau­ti­ful morn­ing and sun­light gild­ed the rooms, D’Agos­ta

felt as if a threat­en­ing cloud was hang­ing over them both. “I’m sur­prised you’ve got an ap­petite.”

“It’s im­por­tant I take some re­fresh­ment now. I’m not sure how long it will be un­til my next

meal. But that shouldn’t stop you: come, have a crois­sant. These Al­sa­tian plum pre­serves

from Fau­chon are de­light­ful.” He put the fax­es aside and picked up­La Nazione . “What’s that you were read­ing?”

“Some fax­es from Con­stance. I’ll need all the, ah, am­mu­ni­tion I can gath­er for what’s to

come. She has proven most help­ful.”

D’Agos­ta stepped for­ward. “I’m com­ing with you,” he said grim­ly. “I want to get that

straight here and now so there won’t be any ques­tions lat­er.”

Pen­der­gast low­ered the pa­per. “I as­sumed you’d make such a de­mand. Let me re­mind

you the in­vi­ta­tion was for me alone.”

“I doubt that fat-​assed count would have any ob­jec­tions.”

“You’re prob­ably right.”

“I’ve come all this way. I’ve been shot at more than once, lost the end of a fin­ger, al­most

been pushed off a cliff, al­most been­driv­en off a cliff.”

“Right again.”

“So don’t ex­pect me to spend the evening re­lax­ing by the pool with a few cold ones while

you’re in Fos­co’s lair.”

Pen­der­gast smiled faint­ly. “I have one more er­rand to run be­fore leav­ing Flo­rence. Let’s

dis­cuss it then.”

And he raised the pa­per once again.

Two hours lat­er, their car stopped on a nar­row street in Flo­rence, out­side a vast, aus­tere

build­ing of rough stone.

“The Palaz­zo Maf­fei,” Pen­der­gast said from be­hind the wheel. “If you wouldn’t mind wait­ing here a mo­ment? I won’t be long.” He got out of the car, ap­proached a brass plaque of

door buzzers set in­to the fa­cade, scanned the names, and pressed one. A mo­ment lat­er, a

muf­fled voice rasped over the in­ter­com. Pen­der­gast an­swered. Then the great door buzzed

open and he van­ished in­side.

D’Agos­ta watched, cu­ri­ous. He’d picked up enough Ital­ian to know that what Pen­der­gast

said in­to the in­ter­com hadn’t sound­ed right. It sound­ed more like Latin, to tell the truth. Get­ting out of the car, he crossed the nar­row street and ex­am­ined the buzzers. The one

Pen­der­gast pressed was la­beled sim­ply­Cor­so Maf­fei . This told D’Agos­ta noth­ing, and he re­turned to their rental car.

With­in ten min­utes, Pen­der­gast emerged from the build­ing and got back in­to the driv­er’s

seat.

“What was that all about?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“In­sur­ance,” Pen­der­gast replied. Then he turned to look in­tent­ly at D’Agos­ta. “The

chances of suc­cess in this ven­ture are not much bet­ter than fifty-​fifty. I have to do this. You do

not. I would per­son­al­ly pre­fer it if you didn’t come.”

“No way. We’re in this to­geth­er.”

“I see you are de­ter­mined. But let me just re­mind you, Vin­cent, that you have a son and

what ap­pear to be ex­cel­lent prospects for ad­vance­ment, pro­mo­tion, and a hap­py life ahead of

you.”

“Isaid , we’re in this to­geth­er.”

Pen­der­gast smiled and laid a hand on his arm-​a strange­ly af­fec­tion­ate ges­ture from a man

who hard­ly ev­er showed af­fec­tion. “I knew this would be your an­swer, Vin­cent, and I am glad.

I have come to re­ly on your com­mon sense, your steadi­ness, and your shoot­ing abil­ity,

among oth­er ex­cel­lent qual­ities.”

D’Agos­ta felt him­self un­ac­count­ably em­bar­rassed and he grunt­ed a re­ply. “We should reach the cas­tle by midafter­noon. I’ll brief you on the way.”

The road run­ning south from Flo­rence in­to Chi­anti wound through some of the pret­ti­est

coun­try D’Agos­ta had ev­er seen: hills striped with vine­yards turn­ing yel­low in fall col­ors, and

pale gray-​green olive groves; fairy-​tale cas­tles and gor­geous Re­nais­sance vil­las sprin­kled on

hills and ridges. Be­yond loomed a range of forest­ed moun­tains, dot­ted here or there with a

grim monastery or an an­cient bell tow­er.

The road loose­ly fol­lowed the ridges above the Greve Riv­er. As they passed over the

Pas­so dei Pec­orai, the town of Greve came in­to view far be­low, ly­ing in a low val­ley along the

riv­er. As they came around an­oth­er bend in the road, Pen­der­gast point­ed a fin­ger at his side

win­dow. “Cas­tel Fos­co,” he said.

It stood on a lone­ly spar of rock far up in the Chi­anti­gian hills. From this dis­tance, it looked

to D’Agos­ta like a sin­gle mas­sive tow­er, crenel­lat­ed and time-​worn, ris­ing above the for­est.

The road turned, dipped, and the cas­tle dis­ap­peared. A mo­ment lat­er Pen­der­gast turned off

the main road, and af­ter a con­fus­ing se­ries of turns on­to ev­er-​small­er lanes, they ar­rived at a

mossy wall with an iron gate. The mar­ble plaque be­side it read­Cas­tel Fos­co. The open gate

was rot­ten and rust­ed, and it seemed to have set­tled crooked­ly in­to the very ground it­self. An

an­cient dirt road ran up from the gate through some vine­yards, climb­ing a steep hill­side and

dis­ap­pear­ing over the brow of the hill.

As they wound their way up the hill­side, Pen­der­gast nod­ded to­ward the ter­raced vine­yards

and groves that lined the road. “A rich es­tate, ap­par­ent­ly, and one of the largest in Chi­anti.” D’Agos­ta said noth­ing. Ev­ery yard they drove far­ther in­to the count’s do­main seemed to

in­crease the sense of op­pres­sion that hung over him.

The road topped the ridge and the cas­tle came in­to view again, much clos­er now: a mon­strous stone keep perched on a crag far up the moun­tain­side. Built in­to one side of the keep

was a lat­er, yet still an­cient, ad­di­tion: a grace­ful Re­nais­sance vil­la with a pale yel­low stuc­coed

ex­te­ri­or and red-​tile roofs. Its rows of state­ly win­dows stood in strong con­trast to the grim, al­most bru­tal lines of the cen­tral keep.

The en­tire struc­ture was sur­round­ed by a dou­ble set of walls. The out­er­most was al­most

com­plete­ly in ru­ins, con­sist­ing most­ly of gaps of tum­bled stone, bro­ken tow­ers, and crum­bling

bat­tle­ments. The in­ner cur­tain was in much bet­ter re­pair and act­ed as a kind of re­tain­ing wall

to the cas­tle it­self, its enor­mous ram­parts pro­vid­ing fields of lev­el ground around the ex­te­ri­or.

Be­yond the cas­tle, the slopes of the moun­tain rose yet an­oth­er thou­sand feet in­to a wild, forest­ed am­phithe­ater, jagged out­crops form­ing a ser­rat­ed semi­cir­cu­lar edge against the low­er­ing sky.

“Over five thou­sand acres,” said Pen­der­gast. “I un­der­stand it dates back more than a mil­len­ni­um.”

But D’Agos­ta did not re­ply. The sight of the cas­tle had chilled him more than he cared to

ad­mit. The sense of op­pres­sion grew stronger. It seemed in­sane, walk­ing in­to the li­on’s den

like this. But he’d learned to trust Pen­der­gast im­plic­it­ly. The man nev­er did any­thing with­out a

rea­son. He’d out­foxed the sniper. He’d saved them from death at the hands of Bullard’s men.

He’d saved their lives many times be­fore, on ear­li­er cas­es. Pen­der­gast’s plan-​what­ev­er it

was-​would work.

Of course it would work.

{ 75 }

The car came around a fi­nal turn and passed the ru­ined out­er­gate. The cas­tle rose above

them in its stern and im­mense majesty. They pro­ceed­ed down an av­enue of cy­press trees

with mas­sive ribbed trunks and stopped at a park­ing area just out­side the in­ner cur­tain.

D’Agos­ta peered at this wall through the pas­sen­ger win­dow with deep mis­giv­ing. It tow­ered

twen­ty feet over his head, its great slop­ing but­tress­es streaked with lime, drip­ping moss and

maid­en­hair ferns. There was no gate in this in­ner wall, just a spiked and band­ed pair of

wood­en doors at the top of a broad stone stair­case.

As they got out of the car, there was a hum­ming sound, fol­lowed by a deep scrap­ing

noise, and the doors opened at an in­vis­ible cue.

They mount­ed the stairs, passed through a hulk­ing door­way, and stepped in­to what

seemed like an­oth­er world. The smooth lawn of the in­ner ward ran for a hun­dred yards to the

skirt of the cas­tle it­self. To one side of the lawn lay a large, cir­cu­lar re­flect­ing pool sur­round­ed by an an­cient mar­ble balustrade, or­na­ment­ed at its cen­ter by a stat­ue of Nep­tune astride a sea mon­ster. To the right stood a small chapel with a tiled dome. Be­yond was an­oth­er mar­ble balustrade over­look­ing a small gar­den that stepped down the hill­side, end­ing abrupt­ly at the

for­ti­fied in­ner wall.

There was an­oth­er scrap­ing noise, and the ground trem­bled; D’Agos­ta turned to see the

great wood­en doors rum­bling closed be­hind them.

“Nev­er mind,” mur­mured Pen­der­gast. “Prepa­ra­tions have been made.”

D’Agos­ta hoped to hell he knew what he was talk­ing about. “Where’s Fos­co?” he asked. “We’ll no doubt see him soon enough.”

They crossed the lawn and ap­proached the main en­trance of the mas­sive keep. It opened

with a creak of iron. And there stood Fos­co, dressed in an el­egant dove-​gray suit, longish hair

brushed back, his smooth white face creased with a smile. As al­ways, he was wear­ing kid

gloves.

“My dear Pen­der­gast, wel­come to my hum­ble abode. And Sergeant D’Agos­ta, as well?

Nice of you to join our lit­tle par­ty.”

He held out his hand. Pen­der­gast ig­nored it.

The count let the hand drop, his smile un­af­fect­ed. “A pity. I had hoped we could con­duct

our busi­ness with cour­tesy, like gen­tle­men.”

“Is there a gen­tle­man here? I should like to meet him.”

Fos­co clucked dis­ap­prov­ing­ly. “Is this a way to treat a man in his own home?” “Is it any way to treat a man, burn­ing him to death in his own home?”

A look of dis­taste crossed Fos­co’s face. “So anx­ious to get to the busi­ness at hand, are

we? But there will be time, there will be time. Do come in.”

The count stood aside, and they walked through a long arch­way in­to the cas­tle’s great

hall. It was quite un­like what D’Agos­ta had ex­pect­ed. A grace­ful log­gia ran along three sides,

with columns and Ro­man arch­es.

“Note the Del­la Rob­bi­aton­di ,” said Fos­co, ges­tur­ing to­ward some paint­ed ter­ra-​cot­ta dec­ora­tions set in­to the walls above the arch­es. “But you must be tired af­ter the drive down. I will

take you to your quar­ters, where you can re­fresh your­selves.”

“Our rooms?” Pen­der­gast asked. “Are we spend­ing the night?”

“Nat­ural­ly.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be nec­es­sary, or even pos­si­ble.”

“But I must in­sist.” The count turned and seized an iron ring on the open cas­tle door,

draw­ing it shut with a boom. With a dra­mat­ic flour­ish, he re­moved a gi­ant key from his pock­et

and locked it. Then he opened a small wood­en box mount­ed on the near­by wall. In­side,

D’Agos­ta saw a high-​tech key­pad, wild­ly out of place amidst the an­cient ma­son­ry. The count punched a long se­quence of num­bers in­to the key­pad. In re­sponse, there was a clank, and a mas­sive iron bar shot down from above, slid­ing in­to a heavy iron brack­et and bar­ring the

door.

“Now we are safe from unau­tho­rized in­va­sion,” said Fos­co. “Or, for that mat­ter, unau­tho­rized de­par­ture.”

Pen­der­gast made no an­swer. The count turned and, mov­ing in his pe­cu­liar light-​foot­ed

way, led them through the hall and in­to a long, cold stone gallery. Por­traits, al­most black with

age, lined both walls, along with mount­ed sets of rust­ed ar­mor, spears, lances, pikes, maces,

and oth­er me­dieval weapon­ry.

“The ar­mor is of no val­ue, eigh­teenth-​cen­tu­ry re­pro­duc­tions. The por­traits are of my an­ces­tors, of course. Age has ob­scured them, for­tu­nate­ly-​the counts of Fos­co are not a pret­ty

race. We have owned the es­tate since the twelfth cen­tu­ry, when my dis­tin­guished an­ces­tor

Gio­van de Ar­daz wrest­ed it from a Lon­go­bardic knight. The fam­ily be­stowed the ti­tle

‘cav­aliere’ on it­self and took as its coat of arms a drag­on ram­pant, bar sin­is­ter. Dur­ing the

time of the grand dukes, we were made counts of the Holy Ro­man Em­pire by the elec­tress

pala­tine her­self. We have al­ways led a qui­et ex­is­tence here, tend­ing our vines and olive

groves, nei­ther med­dling in pol­itics nor as­pir­ing to of­fice. We Flo­ren­tines have a say­ing:The

nail that sticks out gets ham­mered back in. The House of Fos­co did not stick out, and as a

re­sult, we nev­er felt the blow of the ham­mer dur­ing many, many shifts of po­lit­ical for­tune.” “And yet you, Count, have man­aged to stick your­self out quite a bit these past few

months,” Pen­der­gast replied.

“Alas, and much against my will. It was on­ly to re­cov­er what was right­ful­ly ours to be­gin

with. But we shall talk more of this at din­ner.”

They passed out of the gallery and through a beau­ti­ful draw­ing room with lead­ed-​glass

win­dows and tapestried walls. Fos­co ges­tured to­ward some large land­scape paint­ings.

“Hobbe­ma and van Ruis­dael.”

The draw­ing room was fol­lowed by a long se­ries of gra­cious­ly ap­point­ed, light-​filled cham­bers, un­til quite sud­den­ly the char­ac­ter of the rooms changed abrupt­ly. “We are now en­ter­ing

the orig­inal, Lon­go­bardic part of the cas­tle,” Fos­co said. “Dat­ing back to the ninth cen­tu­ry.” Here the rooms were small and al­most win­dow­less, the on­ly light ad­mit­ted by ar­row ports

and tiny, square open­ings high on the walls. The walls were cal­cined, the rooms bare. “I have no use for these drea­ry old rooms,” said the count as they passed through. “They

are al­ways damp and cold. There are, how­ev­er, sev­er­al lev­els of cel­lars, tun­nels, and sub­base­ments be­low, most use­ful for mak­ing wine,bal­sam­ico , and­prosci­ut­to di cinghiale . We

hunt our own boar here on the es­tate, you know, and it is just­ly fa­mous. The low­est of those

tun­nels were cut in­to the rock by the Etr­uscans, three thou­sand years ago.” They came to a heavy iron door, set in­to an even heav­ier stone wall. Deep­er with­in the

cas­tle, D’Agos­ta could see that the stonework was bead­ed with mois­ture. “The keep,” Fos­co said as he un­locked the door with an­oth­er key.

Im­me­di­ate­ly in­side was a wide, win­dow­less cir­cu­lar stair­case that corkscrewed its way up

from the depths and curved out of sight above their heads. Fos­co re­moved a bat­tery-​pow­ered

torch from a wall sconce, turned it on, and led the way up the stairs. Af­ter five or six rev­olu­tions, they stopped at a small land­ing con­tain­ing a sin­gle door. Open­ing it with yet an­oth­er

key, Fos­co ush­ered them in­to what looked like a small apart­ment, retrofitted in­to the old

cas­tle keep, its tiny win­dows over­look­ing the val­ley of the Greve and the rolling hills march­ing

to­ward Flo­rence, far be­low. A fire burned in a stone fire­place at one end, and Per­sian rugs

cov­ered the ter­ra-​cot­ta floor. There was a com­fort­able sit­ting area in front of the fire; a ta­ble to

one side well fur­nished with wines and liquors; a wall of well-​stocked book­shelves. “Ec­co­ci quà!I trust you will find your cham­bers com­fort­able. There are two small bed­rooms

on ei­ther side. The view is re­fresh­ing, don’t you think? I am con­cerned that you brought no

lug­gage. I will have Pin­ketts fur­nish you with any­thing you might need-​ra­zors, bathrobes, slip­pers, sleep­ing shirts.”

“I very much doubt we will be stay­ing the night.”

“And I very much doubt you will be leav­ing.” The count smiled. “We eat late, in the Con­ti­nen­tal fash­ion. At nine.”

He bowed, backed out of the door, shut­ting it with a hol­low boom. With sink­ing heart,

D’Agos­ta heard a key rasp in the lock, and then the foot­steps of the count dis­ap­pear­ing

quick­ly down the stair­way.

{ 76 }

The stag­ing area for the move on Buck’s en­camp­ment was amain­te­nance park­ing lot be­hind the ar­se­nal, well out of sight of the tent city. Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er had called up no few­er than three NYPD ri­ot con­trol di­vi­sions, along with a SWAT team, two hostage ne­go­tia­tors,

of­fi­cers on horse­back, two mo­bile com­mand units, and plen­ty of rank and file with hel­mets

and bul­let­proof vests to man­age the ar­rests. Then there were the fire trucks, am­bu­lances, and

pris­on­er trans­port vans, all stand­ing by at a dis­creet dis­tance on 67th Street. Hay­ward stood at the north­ern fringe of the stag­ing area, giv­ing her ra­dio and weapon a fi­nal check. The crowd of uni­formed of­fi­cers milling around with ba­tons and ri­ot shields was

enor­mous, not to men­tion var­ious op­er­ations spe­cial­ists with wires dan­gling from their ears

and even a few con­fi­den­tial in­for­mants dressed as tent city res­idents. She un­der­stood the

rea­son for the overkill: if you went in, you went in with over­whelm­ing force, and nine times out

of ten the op­po­si­tion caved. The worst thing you could do was let them think they might have

a chance if they made a stand.

And yet these peo­ple thought they had God be­hind them. These weren’t strik­ing bus

drivers or mu­nic­ipal work­ers with spous­es and kids, two cars in the drive­way. These were true

be­liev­ers. They were un­pre­dictable. Her ap­proach made more sense.

Didn’t it?

Rock­er ap­peared out of the crowd, strode over, and laid a hand on Hay­ward’s shoul­der.

“Ready?”

She nod­ded.

He gave her a fa­ther­ly pat. “Ra­dio if you run in­to heavy weath­er. We’ll move in ear­ly.” He

glanced at the ar­ray of men and equip­ment be­hind them. “I hope to hell none of this is nec­es­sary.”

“So do I.”

She could see Went­worth at one of the mo­bile com­mand units, wire dan­gling from his ear,

talk­ing, ges­tur­ing this way and that. He was play­ing cop, hav­ing the time of his life. He

glanced in her di­rec­tion and she turned away. It would be hu­mil­iat­ing if she failed. Not on­ly

that, it would se­ri­ous­ly dam­age her ca­reer. Went­worth had al­ready pre­dict­ed fail­ure, and it

was on­ly through Rock­er’s sup­port that her mis­sion had been ap­proved at all. Not for the first

time since the last meet­ing, she won­dered why she’d stuck her neck out. This was not the

way to ad­vance a ca­reer. How many times had she seen that those who went with the flow

rode the tide to suc­cess? D’Agos­ta’s at­ti­tude must be rub­bing off on her.

“Ready?”

She nod­ded.

Rock­er re­leased her shoul­der. “Then have at it, Cap­tain.”

She took one more look back at the safe­ty of the stag­ing area. Then she set off along a

walk­way that curved north around the ar­se­nal, tak­ing her badge from her pock­et and clip­ping

it to her jack­et as she did so.

In a few min­utes, the strag­gling out­er tents of the en­camp­ment came in­to view. She

slowed, get­ting a feel for the crowd. It was noon, and peo­ple were mov­ing around ev­ery­where. There was the smell of fry­ing ba­con in the air. As she neared the first line of tents,

peo­ple stopped to stare. She nod­ded in a friend­ly way, re­ceiv­ing hos­tile looks in re­sponse.

The crowd seemed a lot more tense than on Fri­day-​and no won­der. They weren’t stupid.

They knew they weren’t go­ing to get away with threat­en­ing po­lice of­fi­cers. They were wait­ing

for the sec­ond shoe to drop. She just had to make sure they re­al­ized she wasn’t that shoe. She en­tered one of the crooked lanes, feel­ing all eyes on her, hear­ing whis­pered com­ments. The wordsSa­tan an­dun­clean reached her ears. She kept a friend­ly smile on her face,

an eas­iness in her walk. She re­mem­bered her pro­fes­sor in So­cial Dy­nam­ics say­ing a crowd

was like a dog: if you showed fear, it would bite; if you ran, it would chase. The path was fa­mil­iar, and in less than a minute, she found her­self ap­proach­ing Buck’s

tent. He was sit­ting at a ta­ble out front, read­ing a book, to­tal­ly ab­sorbed. The same of­fi­cious

man who had ac­cost­ed her and Grable two days be­fore-​Buck had called him Todd-​sud­den­ly

ap­peared in front of her. Al­ready a crowd was form­ing. Noth­ing ug­ly: just cu­ri­ous, silent, and

hos­tile.

“You again,” the man said.

“Me again,” Hay­ward replied. “Here to chat with the rev­erend.”

“They’re back!” the man cried to the oth­ers, step­ping for­ward to block her way. “Not ‘they.’ Just me.”

The mur­mur of the crowd rose like an elec­tric buzz. The air was sud­den­ly tense. Hay­ward

glanced back, sur­prised at how large the crowd was grow­ing.Fo­cus on Buck. But he re­mained

read­ing at the desk, ig­nor­ing her. From here, she could make out the ti­tle:Foxe’s Book of Mar­tyrs, Read­er’s Di­gest Edi­tion.

Todd ad­vanced to the point where he was al­most-​but not quite-​touch­ing her with his body. “The rev­erend can’t be dis­turbed.”

Hay­ward felt a twinge of some­thing un­com­fort­ably like doubt. Was this plan of hers re­al­ly

go­ing to work? Or was Went­worth right, af­ter all?

She spoke loud­ly enough for Buck to hear. “I’m just here to talk. I’ve got no ar­rest war­rant.

I just want to talk to the rev­erend, one hu­man be­ing to an­oth­er.”

“Pre­var­ica­tor!” some­one shout­ed from the crowd.

She had to get past this aide-​de-​camp block­ing her way. She took a step for­ward, brush­ing him.

“That’s as­sault, Of­fi­cer,” Todd said.

“If the rev­erend doesn’t want to talk to me, let me hear him say it him­self. Let the rev­erend

make his own de­ci­sions.”

“The rev­erend asked not to be dis­turbed.” They were still touch­ing, and it gave Hay­ward

the creeps, but she sensed a back-​down in the mak­ing.

She wasn’t wrong. Todd took a step back, still block­ing her way.

“Ro­man!” came a cry from the crowd.

What is it with this Ro­man shit?”All I ask is five min­utes of your time, Rev­erend,” she

called, lean­ing around Todd. “Five min­utes.”

At last, Buck laid down the book with great de­lib­er­ation, rose from the ta­ble, and fi­nal­ly

raised his head to look at her. The in­stant her eyes met his, she felt a chill. On Fri­day he’d

seemed a lit­tle un­sure of what he’d wrought; per­haps amenable to per­sua­sion. But to­day

there was a cool­ness, a calm­ness, a sense of ut­ter self-​con­fi­dence she had not seen be­fore.

The on­ly emo­tion she sensed in him was a pass­ing flick­er, per­haps, of dis­ap­point­ment. She

swal­lowed.

“Ex­cuse me.” She tried to step past the guardian.

Buck nod­ded to the man, who took a step to the side. Then Buck looked back at her, but

the look was such she was un­sure whether he was see­ing her, or see­ing through her. “Rev­erend, I’ve been sent by the NYPD to ask you and your fol­low­ers a fa­vor.”Keep it

chat­ty, in­for­mal, non­in­tim­idat­ing. That’s what she had learned in ne­go­ti­ations train­ing.Let

them think they’re mak­ing the de­ci­sions.

But Buck showed no sign of hav­ing heard.

The crowd had fall­en omi­nous­ly silent. She didn’t turn, but she sensed it had grown

enor­mous by now-​no doubt much of the en­camp­ment.

“Look, Rev­erend, we’ve got a prob­lem. Your fol­low­ers are ru­in­ing the park, tram­pling the

bush­es, killing the grass. On top of that, they’ve been us­ing the sur­round­ings as a pub­lic la­trine. The neigh­bors are com­plain­ing. It’s a health haz­ard, es­pe­cial­ly for you all.” She paused, won­der­ing if any of this was sink­ing in.

“Rev­erend, can you help us out here?”

She wait­ed. Buck said noth­ing.

“I need your help.”

She heard rest­less mur­mur­ing in the crowd be­hind her. Peo­ple were flow­ing in around the

back side of Buck’s tent, fill­ing her field of vi­sion. She was tru­ly sur­round­ed now. “I’ve got a deal to of­fer you. I think it’s a fair deal. A straight deal.”

Ask what it is, ass­hole.It was cru­cial to get him talk­ing, ask­ing ques­tions,any­thing . But he

said noth­ing. He con­tin­ued look­ing at her, look­ing­past her. Christ, she had some­how mis­judged him-​or some­thing had changed since their last vis­it. This was not the same man. For the first time, the re­al pos­si­bil­ity of fail­ure loomed be­fore her.

“You want to hear it?”

No re­sponse.

She forged game­ly ahead. “First, the health haz­ard. We don’t want you or your fol­low­ers

to get sick. We’d like you to give your peo­ple a day off. That’s all-​a day off. Let them go home,

show­er, have a hot meal. In re­turn, we’ll give you a pa­rade per­mit that’ll al­low you to gath­er

law­ful­ly with the city’s bless­ing. Not like this, wreck­ing the park, an­noy­ing res­idents, earn­ing

the dis­re­spect of the whole city. Look, I’ve heard you talk. I know you’re a fair guy, a straight

shoot­er. I’m giv­ing you a chance to go le­git, earn some re­spect-​and still get your mes­sage

out.”

She stopped.Don’t say too much. Let him come round.

All around them, an air of ex­pectan­cy had grown. Ev­ery­one was wait­ing for the rev­erend

to speak. It all de­pend­ed on Buck.

At last, he moved. He blinked, raised his hand slow­ly, al­most robot­ical­ly. The ten­sion in­creased with the si­lence. It was so silent, in fact, Hay­ward could hear birds chirp­ing in the

trees around them.

The hand came around and point­ed at her.

“Cen­tu­ri­on,” he said in a voice so low it was bare­ly more than a whis­per. It was like the re­lease of pres­sure from a cook­er.”Cen­tu­ri­on!” came the sud­den cry of the

crowd. “Sol­dier of Rome!” The throng jos­tled and shoved as it be­gan to close in. For the first time, Hay­ward felt a stab of re­al fear. Fail­ure was be­com­ing a fore­gone con­clu­sion, but there was more than her ca­reer at stake now. This crowd was dan­ger­ous­ly

aroused.

“Rev­erend, if your an­swer is no-“

But Buck had turned away, and now, to her over­whelm­ing dis­may, he was en­ter­ing his

tent, lift­ing the flap, dis­ap­pear­ing in­side. More peo­ple streamed in where he’d stood, fill­ing the

gap.

He’d left her to the mer­cy of the crowd.

She turned to face them.Now it was time to get the hell out. “All right, folks, I know when to

take no for an an­swer-“

“Si­lence, Ju­das!”

Hay­ward saw sticks once again, sway­ing above the heads. It amazed her how ug­ly a

crowd could get, so quick­ly. She had failed, failed mis­er­ably. Her ca­reer was ru­ined, no ques­tion. The re­al ques­tion was whether she could get out in one piece.

“I’m leav­ing,” she said loud­ly and firm­ly. “I’m leav­ing, and I ex­pect to be al­lowed to leave

peace­ful­ly. I am an of­fi­cer of the law.”

She moved to­ward the wall of peo­ple, but this time no path opened. She kept walk­ing, ex­pect­ing, hop­ing for, them to fall back. But they didn’t. Sev­er­al hands reached out and shoved

her back-​hard.

“I came in peace!” she said loud­ly, try­ing to keep the tremor out of her voice. “And I’m

leav­ing in peace!” She took an­oth­er step to­ward the wall of peo­ple, com­ing face-​to-​face with

Todd. He was bran­dish­ing some­thing in one hand. A rock.

“Don’t do any­thing stupid,” she said.

He raised his hand as if to throw. She im­me­di­ate­ly took a step to­ward him, look­ing in­to his

eyes, just as one would do with a dan­ger­ous dog. It was al­ways the cra­zies who got to the

front of a hot crowd. The fol­low­ers stayed back, hop­ing for a good lick once the ad­ver­sary

was down and help­less. But these front ones, they were the killers.

Todd took a step back. “Ju­das bitch,” he said, wav­ing the rock threat­en­ing­ly. Reach­ing down in­side and search­ing for calm, Hay­ward quick­ly re­viewed her op­tions. If

she pulled her piece, that would be the end. Sure, by fir­ing in­to the air she might drive them

back for a mo­ment, but they would be on her in a flash and she’d be forced to shoot in­to the

crowd. And then she’d be dead meat. She could call Rock­er, but it would be ten min­utes at

least be­fore he could mo­bi­lize and move in. Blood would be up, and he’d meet im­me­di­ate re­sis­tance. By the time they reached her . God, she didn’t have ten min­utes, she didn’t even

have five.

The on­ly one who could con­trol this crowd was Buck, and he was in his tent. She backed up, turn­ing in a slow cir­cle. The crowd was so thick she couldn’t even see his

tent any­more. And she was be­ing pushed away from it, as if the crowd want­ed to keep the un­pleas­ant­ness of what was to come away from him. Taunts and chant­ing rose from all sides. She searched her mind des­per­ate­ly for some­thing use­ful from her train­ing. Crowd psy­chol­ogy was some­thing that in­ter­est­ed her, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the Wish­er Ri­ots a few years back.

Prob­lem was, an an­gry crowd did not be­have like a nor­mal hu­man be­ing. A crowd did not re­spond to the cues of body lan­guage. A crowd did not lis­ten to any­thing ex­cept it­self. You

could not rea­son with a crowd. A crowd would en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly com­mit an act of vi­olence no

sin­gle mem­ber would nor­mal­ly con­done.

“Cen­tu­ri­on!” Todd had tak­en an­oth­er step for­ward, em­bold­ened, the crowd con­sol­idat­ing

be­hind him. Hys­ter­ical­ly an­gry. They weren’t go­ing to hurt her-​they were go­ing to kill her. “Buck!” she shout­ed, turn­ing, but it was hope­less, he couldn’t hear over the taunts of the

crowd.

She faced them again. “You call your­selves Chris­tians?” she screamed. “Look at you!” Wrong move. It just pushed their anger up a notch. But it was all she had left. “Ev­er heard of turn­ing the oth­er cheek? Lov­ing thy neigh­bor-“

“Blas­phe­mer!” Todd shook his rock, the crowd flow­ing with him.

She was re­al­ly fright­ened now. She took a step back, felt her­self shoved from be­hind. Her

voice cracked. “In the Bible, it says-“

“She’s blas­phem­ing the Bible!”

“You hear her?”

“Shut her up!”

A dead end.Hay­ward knew she was out of time. She had to fig­ure out some­thing be­fore

the stones came rain­ing down. Once the first was thrown, it wouldn’t stop un­til it was over. The prob­lem was, she’d ex­haust­ed all her op­tions. There was noth­ing left to do. Noth­ing.

{ 77 }

At five min­utes to nine, D’Agos­ta turned from the win­dow tosee Pen­der­gast ris­ing calm­ly

from the so­fa, where he had been ly­ing mo­tion­less for the past half hour. Ear­li­er, the agent

had es­tab­lished he could open the door with his lock-​pick­ing tools, but he seemed un­in­ter­est­ed in ex­plor­ing, so he’d re­locked it and they had wait­ed.

“Good nap?” He won­dered how Pen­der­gast could sleep at a time like this. He felt so

keyed up it seemed he’d nev­er be able to sleep again.

“I wasn’t nap­ping, Vin­cent-​I was think­ing.”

“Yeah. So was I. Like how are we go­ing to get out of this place?”

“Sure­ly you don’t think I have brought us in here with­out a well-​con­ceived plan of de­par­ture? And if my plan does not work, I am a great be­liev­er in im­pro­vi­sa­tion.” “Im­pro­vi­sa­tion? I don’t like the sound of that.”

“These old cas­tles are full of holes. One way or an­oth­er we’ll es­cape with the ev­idence we

need and re­turn with re­in­force­ments. Re­in­force­ments that will on­ly be con­vinced by the ev­idence. Com­ing here, Vin­cent,was our on­ly op­tion-​aside from giv­ing up.”

“That’s not an op­tion in my book.”

“Nor in mine.”

There was a knock at the door. It opened and Pin­ketts stood there, in full liv­ery.

D’Agos­ta’s hand drift­ed to­ward his ser­vice piece.

Pin­ketts gave a slight bow and said, in his plum­my En­glish, “Din­ner is served.” They fol­lowed him back down the stair­case and through a se­ries of rooms and pas­sage­ways to the din­ingsa­lot­to . It was a cheer­ful space, paint­ed yel­low, with a high vault­ed ceil­ing.

The ta­ble had been laid with sil­ver and plate, an ar­range­ment of fresh ros­es in the mid­dle.

There were three places set.

Fos­co was stand­ing at the far end of the room, where a small fire burned in the grate of an

enor­mous stone fire­place, sur­mount­ed with a carved coat of arms. He turned quick­ly, a lit­tle

white mouse scam­per­ing over his fat hand and run­ning up his sleeve.

“Wel­come.” He put the mouse away in a small wire pago­da. “Mr. Pen­der­gast, you will sit

here, on my right; Mr. D’Agos­ta on my left, if you please.”

D’Agos­ta seat­ed him­self, edg­ing his chair away from Fos­co. The count had al­ways giv­en

him the creeps; now he could hard­ly stand to be in the same room. The man was a fiend. “A lit­tlepros­ec­co ? It is my own.”

Both men shook their heads. Fos­co shrugged. Pin­ketts filled his glass with the wine, and

the count raised it.

“To the Storm­cloud,” he said. “Pity you can’t toast. Have some wa­ter, at least.” “Sergeant D’Agos­ta and I are ab­stain­ing tonight,” replied Pen­der­gast.

“I have pre­pared a mar­velous repast.” He drained the glass and, on cue, Pin­ketts brought

out a plat­ter heaped with what looked to D’Agos­ta like cold cuts.

“Af­fet­tati misti toscani,”said Fos­co. “Prosci­ut­to from boar tak­en on the es­tate, shot by my­self, in fact. Won’t you try some?Finoc­chiona and­so­pras­sa­ta , al­so from the es­tate.” “No, thank you.”

“Mr. D’Agos­ta?”

D’Agos­ta didn’t an­swer.

“Pity we don’t have a dwarf handy to taste the food. I so dis­like eat­ing alone.” Pen­der­gast leaned for­ward. “Shall we leave the din­ner aside, Fos­co, and set­tle the busi­ness at hand? Sergeant D’Agos­ta and I can­not stay the night.”

“But I in­sist.”

“Your in­sis­tence means noth­ing. We will go when we choose.”

“You will not be leav­ing-​tonight, or any oth­er night, for that mat­ter. I sug­gest you eat. It will

be your last meal. Don’t wor­ry, it isn’t poi­soned. I have a much clev­er­er fate in mind for you

both.”

This was greet­ed by si­lence.

Pin­ketts came and poured a glass of red wine. The count swirled it in his glass, tast­ed it,

nod­ded. Then he looked at Pen­der­gast. “When did you re­al­ize it was me?” Pen­der­gast’s re­ply, when it came, was slow. “I found a frag­ment of horse­hair at the site of

Bullard’s mur­der. I knew it came from a vi­olin bow. At that point, I re­called the name of Bullard’s boat: theStorm­cloud . It all came to­geth­er: I re­al­ized then that this case was mere­ly a

sor­did at­tempt at theft through mur­der and in­tim­ida­tion. My thoughts nat­ural­ly turned to youalthough I’d long been sure the busi­ness went be­yond Bullard.”

“Clever. I didn’t ex­pect you to put it to­geth­er so quick­ly-​hence the un­seem­ly rush to kill the

old priest. I re­gret that more than I can say. It was un­nec­es­sary, stupid. I had a mo­men­tary

pan­ic.”

“‘Un­nec­es­sary’?” snapped D’Agos­ta. “‘Stupid’? We’re talk­ing about mur­der­ing an­oth­er hu­man be­ing here.”

“Spare me the moral ab­so­lutism.” Fos­co sipped his wine, fold­ed a piece of prosci­ut­to on­to

his fork, ate it, re­cov­ered his good hu­mor. He glanced back at Pen­der­gast. “As for me, I knew

you were go­ing to be a prob­lem with­in five min­utes of en­coun­ter­ing you. Who’d have ex­pect­ed a man like you would go in­to law en­force­ment?”

When he didn’t re­ceive an an­swer, he raised his glass in an­oth­er toast. “From the very

first time I met you, I knew that I would have to kill you. And here we are.” He took a sip, set down the glass. “I had hoped that id­iot Bullard would pull it off. But, of

course, he failed.”

“You put him up to that, nat­ural­ly.”

“Let us just say that, in his fright­ened con­di­tion, he was sus­cep­ti­ble to sug­ges­tion. And so

now it is left to me. But first, don’t you think you should con­grat­ulate me on a beau­ti­ful­ly ex­ecut­ed plan? I ex­tract­ed the vi­olin from Bullard. And as you know well, Mr. Pen­der­gast, there

are no wit­ness­es or phys­ical ev­idence to con­nect me to the mur­ders.”

“You have the vi­olin. Bullard once had it. That can be es­tab­lished be­yond the shad­ow of a

doubt.”

“It be­longs to the Fos­co fam­ily by le­gal right. I still have the bill of sale, signed by An­to­nio

Stradi­vari him­self, and the chain of own­er­ship is be­yond ques­tion. A suit­able pe­ri­od will pass

fol­low­ing Bullard’s death; then the vi­olin will sur­face in Rome. I’ve planned it down to the last

de­tail. I will make my claim, pay a small re­ward to the lucky shop­keep­er, and it will come to

me free and clear. Bullard told no one why he need­ed to re­move the vi­olin from his lab­ora­to­ry,

not even the peo­ple at his com­pa­ny. How could he?” Fos­co is­sued a dry chuck­le. “So you

see, there is noth­ing, Mr. Pen­der­gast, no ev­idence at all against me. But then, I have al­ways

been a most for­tu­nate man in such mat­ters.” He bit off a piece of bread. “For ex­am­ple, there

is an ex­traor­di­nary co­in­ci­dence at the very heart of this af­fair. Do you know what it is?” “I can guess.”

“On Oc­to­ber 31, 1974, in the ear­ly af­ter­noon, while on my way out of the Bib­liote­ca

Nazionale, I ran in­to a group of cal­low Amer­ican stu­dents. You know the type-​they throng

Flo­rence all year long. It was the af­ter­noon of All Hal­lows’ Eve-​Hal­loween to them, of course­and they’d been drink­ing to ex­cess. I was young and cal­low my­self, and I found them so as­ton­ish­ing­ly vul­gar that they amused me. We fell in for the mo­ment. At some point, one of the

stu­dents-​Jere­my Grove to be pre­cise-​went on a tear about re­li­gion, about God be­ing rub­bish

for the weak mind, that sort of thing. The sheer ar­ro­gance of it an­noyed me. I said that I

couldn’t speak on the ex­is­tence of God, but I did know one thing: that the dev­il ex­ist­ed.” Fos­co laughed silent­ly, his ca­pa­cious front shak­ing.

“They all round­ly de­nied the ex­is­tence of the dev­il. I said I had friends who dab­bled in the

oc­cult, who had col­lect­ed old manuscripts and that sort of thing, and that, in fact, I had an old

parch­ment which con­tained for­mu­las on how to raise Lu­cifer him­self. We could set­tle the

ques­tion that very night. The night was per­fect, in fact, be­ing Hal­loween. Would they like to try

it? Oh, yes, they said. What a mar­velous idea!”

An­oth­er in­ter­nal dis­tur­bance shook Fos­co’s per­son.

“So you put on a show for them.”

“Ex­act­ly. I in­vit­ed them to a mid­night séance in my cas­tle, and then rushed back my­self to

set it all up. It was a great deal of fun. Pin­ketts helped-​and, by the way, he isn’t En­glish at all,

but a manser­vant named Pinchet­ti who hap­pens to be both a clever lin­guist and a lover of in­trigue. We had on­ly six hours, but we did it up rather well. I’ve al­ways been a tin­ker­er, a builder of ma­chines and gad­gets, and in­ci­den­tal­ly a de­sign­er of­fuochi d’ar­ti­fi­cio -fire­works. There

are all sorts of se­cret pas­sage­ways, trap­doors, and hid­den pan­els in the cel­lars here, and we

took full ad­van­tage of them. That was a night to re­mem­ber! You should have seen their faces

as we re­cit­ed the in­can­ta­tions, asked the Prince of Dark­ness to bring them great wealth,

of­fered their souls in re­turn, pricked their fin­gers and signed con­tracts in blood-​es­pe­cial­ly

when Pin­ketts ac­ti­vat­ed the the­atrics.” He leaned back, peal­ing with laugh­ter. “You ter­ri­fied them. You scared Beck­mann so much it ru­ined his life.”

“It was all in good fun. If it shook up their pa­thet­ic lit­tle cer­tain­ties, so much the bet­ter.

They went their way and I went mine. And here comes the co­in­ci­dence so mar­velous I feel it

must be pre­des­ti­na­tion: thir­ty years lat­er, I dis­cov­ered to my hor­ror that one of these philistines hadac­quired the Storm­cloud.”

“How did you learn?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“I had been on the track of the Storm­cloud al­most my en­tire adult life, Mr. Pen­der­gast. I

made it my life’s goal to re­turn that vi­olin to my fam­ily. You’ve been to see La­dy Maske­lene,

so you know its his­to­ry. I knew per­fect­ly well Toscanel­li had not thrown it in­to the Falls of the

Scil­iar. How could he? As crazy as he was, he knew bet­ter than any­one what that vi­olin rep­re­sent­ed. But if he didn’t de­stroy it, then what had hap­pened? The an­swer is not so mys­te­ri­ous. He froze to death in a shep­herd’s hut up on the Scil­iar, and then it snowed. There were

no foot­prints in the snow. Ob­vi­ous­ly, some­one had found him dead with the vi­olin­be­fore it

snowed and had stolen the vi­olin. And who was this some­one? Just as ob­vi­ous­ly, the man

who owned the hut.”

Pin­ketts whisked away his plate, then re­turned bear­ing an­oth­er oftortel­loni with but­ter and

salvia. Fos­co tucked in­to it with rel­ish.

“Re­mem­ber how I told you I loved de­tec­tive work? I have a rare tal­ent for it. I traced the

Storm­cloud from the shep­herd, to his nephew, to a band of Gyp­sies, to a shop in Spain, to an

or­phan­age in Mal­ta-​this way and that it trav­eled. I shud­der to think of the times it was left in

the sun; packed in a case with a few threads of straw and thrown in­to the back of a truck; left

unat­tend­ed in some school au­di­to­ri­um.Mio Dio! Yet it sur­vived. It end­ed up in France, where it

was sold in a lot of junk in­stru­ments to a ly­cée. Some clum­sy oaf in the or­ches­tra dropped it,

chipped one of the scrolls, and it was tak­en to a vi­olin shop in An­goulême for re­pair. The man

who owned the shop rec­og­nized it, sub­sti­tut­ed it, and sent back an­oth­er in­stru­ment in its

place.” Fos­co clucked dis­ap­prov­ing­ly. “What a mo­ment that must have been for him! He knew

he could nev­er ac­quire le­gal ti­tle to it, so he smug­gled it to Amer­ica and qui­et­ly put it up for

sale. It took a long time to find a buy­er. Who want­ed a Stradi­var­ius if you couldn’t play it as a

Strad? If you could nev­er es­tab­lish ti­tle to it? If it might be tak­en from you at any mo­ment? But he fi­nal­ly did find a buy­er-​in Locke Bullard. Two mil­lion dol­lars-​that was all! I found out three

months af­ter the deal had closed.”

A dark furor passed over Fos­co’s face, rapid­ly clear­ing as Pin­ketts car­ried in the next

course, abis­tec­ca fiorenti­na , siz­zling from the fire. Fos­co carved off a piece of al­most raw

meat, placed it in his mouth, chewed.

“I was per­fect­ly will­ing to buy it from Bullard, even pay­ing a hand­some price, de­spite the

fact it was mine to be­gin with. But I nev­er got to the point of mak­ing an of­fer. You see, Bullard

was go­ing to de­stroy the vi­olin.”

“To crack Stradi­vari’s se­cret for­mu­las once and for all.”

“Ex­act­ly. And do you know why?”

“I know Bullard was not in the busi­ness of mak­ing vi­olins, nor did he have any in­ter­est in

mu­sic.”

“True. But do you know the busi­ness his com­pa­ny, BAI,was in­to? With the Chi­nese?” Pen­der­gast did not re­ply.

“Mis­siles, my dear Pen­der­gast. He was work­ing on­bal­lis­tic mis­siles . That’s why he

need­ed the vi­olin!”

“Bull­shit!” D’Agos­ta in­ter­ject­ed. “There can’t pos­si­bly be a con­nec­tion be­tween a three­hun­dred-​year-​old vi­olin and a bal­lis­tic mis­sile.”

Fos­co ig­nored this. He was still look­ing at Pen­der­gast. “I sense you know rather more

than you let on, my good sir. In any case, I pen­etrat­ed their lab­ora­to­ry with a mole in my em­ploy. Poor fel­low end­ed up with his head crushed. But be­fore that hap­pened, he did tell me

just what Bullard planned to do with the vi­olin.”

He leaned for­ward, eyes flash­ing with in­dig­na­tion. “The Chi­nese, you see, had de­vel­oped

a bal­lis­tic mis­sile that could the­oret­ical­ly pen­etrate the Unit­ed States’ planned an­timis­sile

shield. But they had a prob­lem with their mis­siles break­ing up on re-​en­try. To make the mis­sile in­vis­ible to radar, you know, one can’t have any curved or shiny sur­faces. Look at the

strange an­gu­lar shapes of your stealth fight­ers and bombers. But this wasn’t a bomber fly­ing

at six hun­dred miles an hour: this was a bal­lis­tic mis­sile re-​en­ter­ing the at­mo­sphere at ten

times that speed. Their test mis­siles broke up un­der un­con­trol­lable res­onance vi­bra­tions dur­ing at­mo­spher­ic re-​en­try.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded al­most im­per­cep­ti­bly.

“Bullard’s sci­en­tists re­al­ized the so­lu­tion to this prob­lem lay in theStradi­vari for­mu­la for the

var­nish. Can you imag­ine? You see, the key to the Stradi­vari var­nish is that, af­ter a few years

of play­ing, it de­vel­ops bil­lions of mi­cro­scop­ic cracks and flaws, too small to be seen. These

are phe­nom­enal­ly ef­fec­tive in damp­en­ing and warm­ing the sound of a Stradi­vari. This is al­so

why the vi­olin must be played reg­ular­ly-​oth­er­wise, the cracks and flaws start knit­ting back up. Bullard was de­sign­ing a high-​per­for­mance coat­ing for those Chi­nese mis­siles that would do the same thing-​a coat­ing that would have bil­lions of mi­cro­scop­ic flaws to damp­en the vi­bra­tional res­onance of re-​en­try. But he had to fig­ure out­pre­cise­ly what the physics was, why those cracks and flaws did what they did. He had to know how they were dis­tribut­ed three­di­men­sion­al­ly in the var­nish; how they made con­tact with the wood; how wide, long, and deep

they were; how they con­nect­ed to each oth­er.”

Fos­co stopped talk­ing long enough to eat some more steak and sip his wine. “To do that, Bullard need­ed to cut up a gold­en pe­ri­od Strad. Any would do, but none were

for sale-​es­pe­cial­ly to him. And then along came the black-​mar­ket Storm­cloud.Ec­co fat­to! “ D’Agos­ta stared in min­gled re­pul­sion and dis­be­lief as the count wiped his red and greasy

lips on an over­size nap­kin. It seemed out­ra­geous, im­pos­si­ble.

“Now you see, Pen­der­gast, why I need­ed to go to such lengths. It was worth a bil­lion to

Bullard on the Chi­nese deal alone. With more mon­ey to come as he resold the tech­nol­ogy to

a host of oth­er ea­ger buy­ers. Ihad to get the vi­olin quick­ly, be­fore he de­stroyed it. He had

al­ready brought it to his Ital­ian lab­ora­to­ry, where it was guard­ed un­der tru­ly im­pen­etra­ble se­cu­ri­ty. And that’s when it came to me. I’d use the on­ly lever­age I had: our first and on­ly en­counter, thir­ty years ago. I’dfright­en Bullard in­to giv­ing up the vi­olin!”

“Through mur­der­ing the oth­ers who had been at the staged dev­il rais­ing.” “Yes. I would kill Grove, Beck­mann, and Cut­forth, mak­ing it look in each case like the dev­il

had fi­nal­ly come for their souls. Beck­mann seemed to have dis­ap­peared, so that left on­ly

Grove and Cut­forth. On­ly two. What­ev­er I did, it had to be ut­ter­ly con­vinc­ing. Bullard was an

ig­no­rant, blus­ter­ing man with few re­li­gious im­puls­es. I need­ed a way to kill them that was so

unique and dread­ful that the po­lice would be baf­fled, that would gen­er­ate all kinds of talk

about the dev­il-​and most im­por­tant, that would con­vince Bullard. It had to be heat, nat­ural­ly.

And that was how I came to in­vent my lit­tle de­vice. But that is an­oth­er sto­ry.” He paused for an­oth­er sip of wine.

“I pre­pared the scene of Grove’s death with great care. I be­gan by call­ing and alarm­ing

him with a sto­ry of a ter­ri­ble vis­ita­tion I’d had; how I feared Lu­cifer was com­ing for us be­cause

of the cer­emo­ny years be­fore, how we had to do some­thing. He was skep­ti­cal at first, so I had

Pin­ketts set up a few bits of stage busi­ness in his house. Strange sounds, smells, and the

like. Re­mark­able how a few props can un­der­mine the con­vic­tion of even the most ar­ro­gant

man. He grew fright­ened. I sug­gest­ed some kind of atone­ment for his sins; hence, the pe­cu­liar din­ner par­ty. I loaned him my beloved cross. The poor fool gave me the keys to his house,

the codes to the alarm sys­tem-​ev­ery­thing I need­ed.

“His death worked like a charm. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly Bullard was on the phone to me. I

was care­ful to en­sure all my calls were made from an un­trace­able phone card. I con­tin­ued play­ing the role of ter­ri­fied count. I told him of strange things that had hap­pened to me, sul­furous smells, dis­em­bod­ied sounds, un­com­fort­able tin­gling sen­sa­tions-​all the things, of course, that would hap­pen to him lat­er. I pre­tend­ed to be con­vinced the dev­il was com­ing for all of us: af­ter all, we had of­fered our souls in the com­pact we made thir­ty years be­fore. The dev­il had

com­plet­ed his side of the bar­gain; now it was time for us to ful­fill ours.

“Af­ter send­ing Bullard off to stew about this, it was time to deal with Cut­forth. I had

Pin­ketts here pur­chase the apart­ment next to his, pos­ing as an En­glish baronet, to as­sist with

the var­ious, ah,ar­range­ments . Like Grove, Cut­forth scoffed at the idea at first. He’d been

con­vinced my lit­tle show back in 1974 was a fraud. But as de­tails of Grove’s death emerged,

he grew in­creas­ing­ly ner­vous. I didn’t want him­too ner­vous-​just ner­vous enough to call Bullard and alarm him fur­ther. Which, of course, he did.”

He is­sued a dry laugh.

“Af­ter Cut­forth’s death, your vul­gar tabloids did a fab­ulous job beat­ing the drum, whip­ping

peo­ple in­to a fren­zy. It was per­fect. And Bullard fell apart. He was out of his mind. Then

thecolpo di grazia : I called Bullard and said that I had man­aged to can­cel my con­tract with

Lu­cifer!”

Fos­co pat­ted his hands to­geth­er with de­light. Watch­ing, D’Agos­ta felt his stom­ach turn. “He was des­per­ate to know how. I told him I’d lo­cat­ed an an­cient manuscript ex­plain­ing

the dev­il would some­times ac­cept a gift in re­turn for a hu­man soul. But it had to be a tru­ly

unique gift, some­thing of enor­mous rar­ity, some­thing whose loss would de­base the hu­man

spir­it. I told him I’d sac­ri­ficed my Ver­meer in just such a way.

“Poor Bullard was be­side him­self. He had no Ver­meer, he said; noth­ing of val­ue ex­cept

boats, cars, hous­es, and com­pa­nies. He begged me to ad­vise him what he should buy, what

he should give the dev­il. I told him it had to be some­thing ut­ter­ly unique and pre­cious, an ob­ject that would im­pov­er­ish the world by its loss. I said I couldn’t ad­vise him-​nat­ural­ly he

couldn’t know I was aware of the Storm­cloud-​and I said I doubt­ed he owned any­thing the dev­il would want, that I had been huge­ly for­tu­nate to have a Ver­meer, that the dev­il sure­ly would

not have ac­cept­ed my Car­avag­gio!”

At this wit­ti­cism, Fos­co burst in­to laugh­ter.

“I told Bullard that, what­ev­er it was, the dev­il had to have it im­me­di­ate­ly. The thir­ty-​year

an­niver­sary of our orig­inal pact was near­ing. Grove and Cut­forth were al­ready dead. There

was not enough time for him to ac­quire some­thing of the req­ui­site rar­ity. I re­mind­ed him the

dev­il would be able to see in­to his heart, that there would be no cheat­ing the old gen­tle­man,

and that what­ev­er he of­fered had bet­ter fit the bill or his soul would burn for­ev­er. “That’s when he fi­nal­ly broke down and told me he had a vi­olin of great rar­ity, a Stradi­var­ius called the Storm­cloud-​would that do? I told him I couldn’t speak for the dev­il, but that I

hoped for his sake it would. I con­grat­ulat­ed him on be­ing so for­tu­nate.”

Fos­co paused to place an­oth­er piece of drip­ping meat in­to his mouth. “I, of course, re­turned to Italy far ear­li­er than I let on to you. I was here even be­fore Bullard ar­rived. I dug an

old gri­moire out of the li­brary here, gave it to him, told him to fol­low the rit­ual and place the vi­olin in­side a bro­ken cir­cle. With­in his own, un­bro­ken cir­cle, he would be pro­tect­ed. But he

must send away all his help, turn off the alarm sys­tem, and so forth-​the dev­il didn’t like in­ter­rup­tions. The poor man did as I asked. In place of the dev­il, I sent in Pin­ketts, who is dev­il

enough, I can tell you. With the­atri­cal ef­fects and the ap­pro­pri­ate garb. He took the vi­olin and

re­treat­ed, while I used my lit­tle ma­chine to dis­pense with Bullard.”

“Why the ma­chine and the the­atrics?” Pen­der­gast asked qui­et­ly. “Why not put a bul­let in

him? The need to ter­ri­fy your vic­tim had passed.”

“That was fory­our ben­efit, my dear fel­low! It was a way to stir up the po­lice, keep you in

Italy a while longer. Where you would be eas­ier to dis­pose of.”

“Whether we will be easy to dis­pose of re­mains to be seen.”

Fos­co chuck­led with great good hu­mor. “You ev­ident­ly think you have some­thing to bar­gain with, oth­er­wise you wouldn’t have ac­cept­ed my in­vi­ta­tion.”

“That is cor­rect.”

“What­ev­er you think you have, it won’t be good enough. You are al­ready as good as dead.

I know you bet­ter than you re­al­ize. I know you be­cause you are like me. You arevery like me.” “You could not be more wrong, Count. I am not a mur­der­er.”

D’Agos­ta was sur­prised to see a faint blush of col­or in Pen­der­gast’s face. “No, but youcould be. You have it in you. I can see it.”

“You see noth­ing.”

Fos­co had fin­ished his steak and now he rose. “You think me an evil man. You call this

whole af­fair sor­did. But con­sid­er what I’ve done. I’ve saved the world’s great­est vi­olin from de­struc­tion. I’ve pre­vent­ed the Chi­nese from pen­etrat­ing the planned U.S. an­timis­sile shield, re­mov­ing a threat to mil­lions of your fel­low cit­izens. And at what cost? The lives of a ped­erast, a

traitor, a pro­duc­er of pop­ular mu­sic who was fill­ing the world with his filth, and a god­less soul

who de­stroyed ev­ery­one he touched.”

“You haven’t in­clud­ed our lives in this cal­cu­la­tion.”

Fos­co nod­ded. “Yes. You and the un­for­tu­nate priest. Re­gret­table in­deed. But if the truth

be known, I’d waste a hun­dred lives for that in­stru­ment. There are five bil­lion peo­ple. There is

on­ly one Storm­cloud.”

“It isn’t worth even one hu­man life,” D’Agos­ta heard him­self say.

Fos­co turned, his eye­brows raised in sur­prise. “No?”

He turned and clapped his hands. Pin­ketts ap­peared at the door.

“Get me the vi­olin.”

The man dis­ap­peared and re­turned a mo­ment lat­er with an old wood­en case, shaped like

a small dark cof­fin, cov­ered with the pati­na of ages. Pin­ketts placed it on a ta­ble next to the

wall and with­drew to a far cor­ner.

Fos­co rose and strolled over to the case. He took out the bow, tight­ened it, ran a rosin up

and down a few times, and then-​slow­ly, lov­ing­ly-​with­drew the vi­olin. To D’Agos­ta, it didn’t look

at all ex­traor­di­nary: just a vi­olin, old­er than most. Hard to be­lieve it had led them on this long

jour­ney, cost so many lives.

Fos­co placed it un­der his chin, stood tall and straight. A mo­ment of si­lence passed while

he sighed, half clos­ing his eyes. And then the bow be­gan mov­ing slow­ly over the strings, the

notes flow­ing clear­ly. It was one of the few clas­si­cal tunes D’Agos­ta rec­og­nized, one that his

grand­fa­ther used to sing to him as a child: Bach’sJe­su, Joy of Man’s De­sir­ing. The melody

was sim­ple, the mea­sured notes ris­ing, one af­ter an­oth­er, in a dig­ni­fied ca­dence, fill­ing the air

with beau­ti­ful sound.

The room seemed to change. It be­came suf­fused with a kind of tran­scen­dent bright­ness.

The tremu­lous pu­ri­ty of the sound took D’Agos­ta’s breath away. The melody filled him like a

pres­ence, sweet and clean, speak­ing in a lan­guage be­yond words. A lan­guage of pure

beau­ty.

And then the melody was over. It was like be­ing yanked from a dream. D’Agos­ta re­al­ized

that, for a mo­ment, he’d lost track of ev­ery­thing: Fos­co, the killings, their per­ilous sit­ua­tion.

Now it all came back with re­dou­bled vengeance, all the worse for hav­ing been tem­porar­ily for­got­ten.

There was a si­lence while Fos­co low­ered the vi­olin. Then he spoke in a whis­per, his voice

trem­bling. “You see now? This is not just a vi­olin. It isalive . Do you un­der­stand, Mr. D’Agos­ta,

why the sound of the Stradi­var­ius is so beau­ti­ful? Be­cause it is mor­tal. Be­cause it is like the

beat­ing heart of a bird in flight. It re­minds us that all beau­ti­ful things must die. The pro­found

beau­ty of mu­sic lies some­how in its very tran­sience and fragili­ty. It breathes for a shin­ing mo­ment-​and then it ex­pires. That was the ge­nius of Stradi­vari: he cap­tured that mo­ment in wood

and var­nish. Heim­mor­tal­ized mor­tal­ity.”

He looked back at Pen­der­gast, eyes still haunt­ed. “Yes, the mu­sic al­ways dies. But­this “

he held up the vi­olin-“will nev­er die. It will out­live us all a hun­dred times over. Tell me now, Mr.

Pen­der­gast, that I have done wrong to save this vi­olin. Please, say that I have com­mit­ted a

crime.”

Pen­der­gast said noth­ing.

“I’ll say it,” said D’Agos­ta. “You’re a cold-​blood­ed mur­der­er.”

“Ah, yes,” Fos­co mur­mured. “One can al­ways count on a philis­tine to lay down ab­so­lute

moral­ity.” He care­ful­ly wiped down the vi­olin with a soft cloth and put it away. “Beau­ti­ful as it

is, it isn’t at its best. It needs more play­ing. I’ve been ex­er­cis­ing it ev­ery day, fif­teen min­utes at

first, now up to half an hour. It’s heal­ing al­ready. In an­oth­er six months, it will be back to its

per­fect self. I will loan it to Re­na­ta Licht­en­stein. Do you know her? The first wom­an to win the

Tchaikovsky Com­pe­ti­tion, a girl of on­ly eigh­teen but al­ready a tran­scen­den­tal ge­nius. Yes,

Re­na­ta will play it and go on to glo­ry and renown. And then, when she can no longer play, my

heir will loan it to some­one else, and his heir to some­one else, and so it will go down the cen­turies.”

“Do you have an heir?” Pen­der­gast asked.

D’Agos­ta was sur­prised by the ques­tion. But Fos­co was not; he seemed to wel­come it. “Not a di­rect heir, no. But I shall not wait long to fur­nish my­self with a son. I have just met

the most charm­ing wom­an. The on­ly draw­back is that she is En­glish, but at least she can

boast an Ital­ian great-​grand­fa­ther.” His smile broad­ened.

As D’Agos­ta watched, Pen­der­gast grew pale. “You are grotesque­ly de­lud­ed if you thinkshe will mar­ry you.”

“I know, I know. Count Fos­co is fat, re­volt­ing­ly fat. But do not un­der­es­ti­mate the pow­er of

a charm­ing tongue to cap­ture a wom­an’s heart. La­dy Maske­lene and I had a mar­velous af­ter­noon on the is­land. We are both of the no­ble class­es. We­un­der­stand each oth­er.” He dust­ed

his waist­coat. “I might even go on a di­et.”

This was greet­ed by a short si­lence. Then Pen­der­gast spoke again. “You’ve showed us

the vi­olin. May we now see this lit­tle de­vice that you spoke of? The de­vice that killed at least

four men?”

“With great­est plea­sure. I’m very proud of it. Not on­ly will I show it to you, I’ll give you a

demon­stra­tion.”

D’Agos­ta felt a chill.Demon­stra­tion?

Fos­co nod­ded to Pin­ketts, who took the vi­olin and left the room. With­in mo­ments he re­turned with a large alu­minum suit­case. Fos­co un­latched the case and raised the lid, ex­pos­ing

half a dozen pieces of met­al nes­tled in gray foam rub­ber. He be­gan re­mov­ing them, screw­ing

them to­geth­er. Then he turned and nod­ded to D’Agos­ta.

“Will you please stand over there, Sergeant?” he asked qui­et­ly.

{ 78 }

“Buck!” Hay­ward screamed again, fight­ing against an al­mostover­whelm­ing pan­ic. “Don’t

let them do this!” But it was hope­less; the roar of the crowd drowned out her voice, and Buck

was in his tent, flaps closed, out of sight be­hind a wall of peo­ple.

The crowd was clos­ing in now, the noose tight­en­ing fast. The ringlead­er-​Buck’s aide-​de­camp, bol­stered by in­creas­ing­ly fren­zied fol­low­ers-​raised the hand with the rock. Watch­ing him, Hay­ward saw his eyes widen, his nos­trils flare. She’d seen that look be­fore: it was the

look of some­one about to strike.

“Don’t!” she shout­ed. “This isn’t what you’re about! It’s against ev­ery­thing you stand for!” “Shut up, cen­tu­ri­on!” Todd cried.

She stum­bled, right­ed her­self. Even at this mo­ment of ex­treme dan­ger, she re­al­ized she

could not show fear. She kept her eyes on Todd-​he was the great­est threat, the match for the

pow­der keg-​and let her gun hand hov­er near her piece. As a last re­sort-​a very last re­sort-​she’d have to use it. Of course, once she did, that would be the end. But she wasn’t go­ing to go down like a cat un­der a pack of dogs.

Some­thing about all this isn’t right.Some­thing was go­ing on; some­thing was be­ing played

out here that she didn’t un­der­stand.

The cries of the crowd, their strange ep­ithets, made no sense.Cen­tu­ri­on. Sol­dier of Rome.

What was this talk? Some­thing Buck was sub­tly en­cour­ag­ing in re­cent ser­mons? And speak­ing of Buck, why had he seemed dis­ap­point­ed when she ar­rived-​and then just walked away?

Why the glassy, ex­pec­tant look in his eyes? Some­thing had hap­pened to him, be­tween this

vis­it and the last.

What was it?

“Blas­phe­mer!” Todd screamed. He took an­oth­er step clos­er.

In re­sponse, the crowd tight­ened around Hay­ward. She had bare­ly enough room to turn

around now. She could feel ran­cid breath on the back of her neck; feel her heart beat­ing like

mad. Her hand strayed clos­er to the butt of her gun.

There was a pat­tern here, if on­ly she could see it. There­had to be.

She fought to stay ra­tio­nal. Her on­ly way out of this was Buck him­self. There was no oth­er.

Quick­ly, she went back over her knowl­edge of de­viant psy­chol­ogy, over Buck’s pos­si­ble

mo­ti­va­tions. What had Went­worth said?Pos­si­bly para­noid schizophrenic, po­ten­tial for a Mes­sian­ic com­plex. Deep down, she was still con­vinced Buck was no schizophrenic. But a Mes­sian­ic com­plex . ?

The need to be the Mes­si­ah.Per­haps-​just per­haps-​Went­worth was more right on that point

than he knew.

Then, in an in­stant of rev­ela­tion, it came to her. All of Buck’s new hopes, new de­sires,

were sud­den­ly laid bare. This talk about Ro­mans-​they weren’t talk­ing about Ro­man Catholics.

They were talk­ing about re­al Ro­mans. Pa­gan Ro­mans. Cen­tu­ri­ons.The sol­diers who came to

ar­rest Je­sus.

She sud­den­ly un­der­stood the script Buck was fol­low­ing.That was why he ig­nored her,

walked back in­to the tent.She didn’t fit in­to his vi­sion of what had to hap­pen. She faced the crowd, ad­dressed them in her loud­est voice. “A band of sol­diers are com­ing

to ar­rest Buck!”

This had a gal­van­ic ef­fect on the crowd. The yelling fal­tered a lit­tle, front to back, like the

rip­ple of a stone on a pond.

“Did you hear!”

“The sol­diers are com­ing!”

“They’re com­ing!”Hay­ward yelled en­cour­ag­ing­ly.

The crowd took up the cry as she hoped they would, act­ing as a mega­phone to Buck.”The

sol­diers are com­ing!The cen­tu­ri­ons are com­ing! “

There was a move­ment in the crowd, a kind of gen­er­al sigh. As one group moved back,

Hay­ward saw that Buck had reap­peared at the door of his tent. The crowd seethed with ex­pec­ta­tion. Todd raised his rock once again, then hes­itat­ed.

It was the open­ing she need­ed. Mo­men­tary, but just enough to call Rock­er. She slipped

out her ra­dio and bent for­ward, shield­ing her­self from the crowd.

“Com­mis­sion­er!” she called out.

For a mo­ment, stat­ic. Then Rock­er’s voice crack­led over the tiny speak­er. “What the hell’s go­ing on, Cap­tain? It sounds like a ri­ot. We’re mo­bi­liz­ing, we’re go­ing in­now and get­ting your as­sout -“

“No!” Hay­ward said sharply. “It’ll be a blood­bath!”

“She’s us­ing her ra­dio!” Todd screamed. “Be­tray­er!”

“Sir,lis­ten to me. Send in thir­ty-​three men. Thir­ty-​three­ex­act­ly . And those un­der­cov­er cops

you’ve been us­ing for on-​site in­tel, the ones dressed like Buck’s fol­low­ers? Send in one of

them.Just one. “

“Cap­tain, I have no idea what you’re-“

“Shut up, please, an­dlis­ten . Buck has to act out the pas­sion of Christ. That’s how he sees

him­self. He’s New York’s sac­ri­fi­cial lamb. There’s no oth­er ex­pla­na­tion for his be­hav­ior. So

we’ve got to play along, let him act it out. The un­der­cov­er cop, he’s the shill, he’s Ju­das, he’s

got to em­brace Buck. Do you hear, sir?He’s got to em­brace Buck. And then the cops move in

and make the cuff. You do that, Com­mis­sion­er,andthere’ll be no ri­ot . Buck will go peace­ful­ly.

Oth­er­wise-“

“But thir­ty men? That’s not enough-“

“Thir­ty-​three.The num­ber in a Ro­man band.”

“Get her ra­dio!”Hay­ward was jos­tled. She spun away, shield­ing her ra­dio. “Are you telling me Buck thinks-“

“Just do it, sir.Now! “

Hay­ward felt her­self shoved hard from be­hind. She lost her grip on the ra­dio, and it went

fly­ing in­to the crowd.

“Agent of dark­ness!”

Hay­ward had no idea if Rock­er had un­der­stood. More to the point, she didn’t know how

the crowd would act. Buck might have his script, but would this fren­zied mob fol­low it, too? She looked to­ward Buck, who was now wad­ing in­to the crowd. “Make way for the sol­diers

of Rome!” she yelled. “Make way!” She point­ed south­west, the di­rec­tion she knew the po­lice

would come from.

It was amaz­ing: peo­ple were turn­ing, look­ing. Buck him­self was look­ing. He was stand­ing,

calm and tall, wait­ing for the dra­ma to be­gin.

“Here they come!”oth­ers were yelling. “Here they come!”

There was a surge of con­fu­sion, a scuf­fling as the rest of the group be­gan to arm them­selves with rocks and sticks. Sud­den­ly Buck held up his arms, tried to say some­thing. The

sound of the crowd fell.

“He’s about to speak!”peo­ple called out.”Si­lence, ev­ery­one!”

Buck in­toned in a deep, pen­etrat­ing voice, “Make way for the cen­tu­ri­ons!” This took ev­ery­one by sur­prise. Some took tighter grips on their makeshift weapons; oth­ers looked over their shoul­ders, in the di­rec­tion of the ap­proach­ing po­lice. Still oth­ers looked

at Buck, un­cer­tain they had heard him cor­rect­ly.

“This is as it should be!” Buck cried. “It is time to ful­fill that which the prophets have

spo­ken. Make way, my broth­ers and sis­ters, make way!”

The cry was tak­en up, at first ragged­ly, then with grow­ing con­vic­tion.”Make way!” “Do not fight them!” Buck cried. “Drop your weapons! Make way for the cen­tu­ri­ons!” “Make way for the cen­tu­ri­ons!”

Buck spread his hands, and the crowd be­gan to part hes­itat­ing­ly be­fore him. As she watched, Hay­ward felt a flush spread through her limbs. It was work­ing. The at­ten­tion of the crowd had shift­ed from her. On­ly Todd, the aide-​de-​camp, seemed not to ac­cept

the change. He was still star­ing from her to Buck and back again, as if too caught up in the

fren­zy of the mo­ment to shift di­rec­tion.

“Traitor!” he barked at her.

And now, right on cue, a pha­lanx of cops came run­ning through the dis­tant trees to­ward

them. Rock­er­had un­der­stood, af­ter all: he’d come through. They wad­ed in­to the out­er fringes

of the crowd, shov­ing and push­ing with their ri­ot shields. But al­ready, with Buck’s ex­hor­ta­tions, the peo­ple were falling back.

“Let them pass!” Buck was cry­ing, arms spread.

Now the cops were bar­rel­ing down the open lane, tram­pling tents, shov­ing aside strag­glers. As they broke in­to the open area be­fore Buck’s tent, there was a mo­ment of pan­ic and

strug­gle. Todd raised his rock, fury twist­ing his fea­tures. “You did this, youbitch -!” And the rock came fly­ing, strik­ing a glanc­ing blow to Hay­ward’s tem­ple. She stag­gered

back, fell to her knees, feel­ing the hot trick­le of blood.

Sud­den­ly Buck was there, his strong arms around her, rais­ing her up and stay­ing the

crowd with his hand. “Put up thy swords! They have come to ar­rest me, and I will go with

them peace­ful­ly! This is the will of God!”

Dazed, Hay­ward looked at Buck. He dabbed at her wound with a snowy hand­ker­chief.

“Suf­fer ye thus far,” he mur­mured. His face was ra­di­ant, suf­fused with light. Of course,she thought.Even this is part of the script.

There was more con­fu­sion. Some­one em­braced Buck-​the shill at last-​she heard Buck say­ing, “Ju­das, be­trayest thou me with a kiss?”-and then the cops were all around, and he was

pulled away from her. The cut on her head was bleed­ing freely, and she felt woozy. “Cap­tain Hay­ward?” she heard some­body call out. “Cap­tain Hay­ward’s been hurt!” “Of­fi­cer down! We need a medic!”

“Cap­tain Hay­ward, you all right? Did he as­sault you?”

“I’m all right,” she said, shak­ing away the woozi­ness as cops crowd­ed around her, ev­ery­one try­ing to help. “It’s noth­ing, just a scratch. It wasn’t Buck.”

“She’s bleed­ing!”

“For­get it, it’s noth­ing. Let me go.” They re­leased her re­luc­tant­ly.

“Who was it? Who as­sault­ed you?”

Todd was star­ing, hu­man­ity shocked back in­to him, hor­ri­fied at what he’d done. Hay­ward looked away. An­oth­er ar­rest right now could be dis­as­trous. “Don’t know. Came

out of nowhere. It doesn’t mat­ter.”

“Let’s get you to an am­bu­lance.”

“I’ll walk by my­self,” she said, brush­ing off yet an­oth­er prof­fered arm. She felt em­bar­rassed. It­was noth­ing: scalp wounds al­ways bled a great deal. She looked around, blink­ing

her eyes. An im­mense si­lence seemed to have set­tled on the crowd. The po­lice had the cuffs

on Buck and had formed a semi­cir­cle around him, al­ready mov­ing him out. The crowd looked

on, stunned, while Buck ex­hort­ed them to re­main calm, be peace­ful, hurt no one. “For­give them,” he said.

All the mo­men­tum was gone. Buck had or­dered them to stand down, and they had

obeyed.

It was over.

{ 79 }

Im­me­di­ate­ly, D’Agos­ta pulled out his ser­vice piece and drew­down on the count. “No fuck

ing way,” he said.

The count stared at the gun, sigh­ing con­de­scend­ing­ly. “Put away that gun, you fool.

Pin­ketts?”

The manser­vant, who had left the room, now re­turned, car­ry­ing a large pump­kin in both

arms. He set it down on the hearth be­fore the fire­place.

“It is true, Sergeant D’Agos­ta, you would have been a much more ef­fec­tive demon­stra­tion.

But it would have caused such amess. ” Fos­co went back to as­sem­bling the de­vice. D’Agos­ta moved slow­ly back­ward, slip­ping his gun back in­to his hol­ster as he did so.

Some­how, the act of draw­ing his weapon brought fresh re­solve. He and Pen­der­gast were

both armed. At the first in­di­ca­tion of trou­ble, he would have no hes­ita­tion about tak­ing out

both the count and Pin­ketts. Ex­cept for some kitchen help, there didn’t seem to be any oth­er

ser­vants around-​but he knew that, with the count, ap­pear­ances were de­cep­tive. “There we go.” Fos­co heft­ed the as­sem­bled ma­chine, which looked some­thing like a large

ri­fle, made pri­mar­ily of stain­less steel, with a bul­bous dish at one end and a bar­rel sport­ing

half a dozen but­tons and di­als at the oth­er. “As I said, I knew I had to kill Grove and Cut­forth

in such a way that the po­lice would be ut­ter­ly baf­fled. It had to be done with heat, of course.

But how? Burn­ing, ar­son, boil­ing-​much too com­mon. It had to be mys­te­ri­ous, un­ex­plain­able.

That was when I re­called the phe­nomenon known as spon­ta­neous hu­man com­bus­tion. You

know the first doc­ument­ed case of it was here in Italy?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “The count­ess Cor­nelia.”

“Count­ess Cor­nelia Zan­gari de’ Ban­di di Ce­se­na. Most dra­mat­ic. How, I won­dered, could

a sim­ilar­ly dev­il­ish ef­fect be du­pli­cat­ed? Then I thought ofmi­crowaves .”

“Mi­crowaves?” D’Agos­ta re­peat­ed.

The count smiled pa­tron­iz­ing­ly at him. “Yes, Sergeant. Just like your own mi­crowave

oven. They seemed per­fect for my needs. Mi­crowaves heat from the in­side out. They can be

fo­cused, just like light, to-​say-​burn a body while leav­ing the rest of the en­vi­ron­ment in­tact. Mi­crowaves heat wa­ter far more se­lec­tive­ly than dry ma­te­ri­als, fats, or oils, so they would burn a

wet body be­fore heat­ing the rugs or fur­nish­ings. And they have an ion­iz­ing and heat­ing ef­fect

on met­als with a cer­tain num­ber of va­lence elec­trons.”

Fos­co ran a hand over his de­vice, then laid it on the ta­ble next to him. “As you know, Mr.

Pen­der­gast, I’m a tin­ker­er. I love a chal­lenge. It’s quite sim­ple to build a mi­crowave trans­mit­ter that would de­liv­er the nec­es­sary wattage. The prob­lem was the pow­er sup­ply. But I. G.

Far­ben, a Ger­man com­pa­ny which my fam­ily was con­nect­ed with dur­ing the War, makes a

mar­velous com­bi­na­tion of ca­pac­itor and bat­tery ca­pa­ble of de­liv­er­ing the req­ui­site charge.” D’Agos­ta glanced at the mi­crowave de­vice. It looked al­most sil­ly, like a cheap prop to an

old sci­ence fic­tion movie.

“It would nev­er work as a weapon of war: the top the­oret­ical range is less than twen­ty feet,

and it takes time to do its work. But it suit­ed my pur­pos­es per­fect­ly. I had quite a time work­ing

out the kinks. Many pump­kins were sac­ri­ficed, Sergeant D’Agos­ta. At last, I test­ed it on that

old pe­dophile in Pis­toia-​the one whose tomb you ex­am­ined. There was a bit of a melt­down-​the hu­man body takes a lot more heat­ing than a pump­kin. I re­built the de­vice with im­prove­ments and used it more suc­cess­ful­ly on the ter­ror­ized Grove. It wasn’t quite enough to

set the man on fire, but it did the job. Then I ar­ranged the scene to my sat­is­fac­tion, packed

up, and left, lock­ing ev­ery­thing and turn­ing the alarm back on. With Cut­forth it was even sim­pler. As I said, my man Pin­ketts had rent­ed the apart­ment next door and was un­der­tak­ing

‘ren­ova­tions.’ He made a mar­velous el­der­ly En­glish gen­tle­man, poor man, all bent over and

muf­fled up against the chill.”

“That ex­plains why they couldn’t iden­ti­fy a sus­pect from the se­cu­ri­ty video cams,”

D’Agos­ta said.

“Pin­ketts used to be in the the­ater, which fre­quent­ly comes in handy for my pur­pos­es. In

any case, the weapon works beau­ti­ful­ly through walls made of dry­wall and wood­en studs. Mi­crowaves, my dear Pen­der­gast, have the mar­velous prop­er­ty of pen­etrat­ing dry­wall like light

through glass, as long as there is no mois­ture or met­al. There could of course be no met­al

nails in the wall be­tween the two apart­ments, be­cause met­al ab­sorbs mi­crowaves and would

heat up and cause a fire. So Pin­ketts opened our side of the wall, re­moved the nails, and re­placed them with wood­en dow­els. When it was all over, he put our side of the wall back up.

The whole op­er­ation was dis­guised as part of the re­mod­el­ing job. Pin­ketts him­self did the

hon­ors on Cut­forth while I was at the opera with you. What bet­ter al­ibi than to con­trive to

spend the evening of the mur­der with the de­tec­tive him­self!” Fos­co heaved in silent mirth. “And the smell of sul­fur?”

“Sul­fur burned with phos­pho­rus in a censer, in­ject­ed through the wall at cracks around the

mold­ing.”

“How did you burn the im­ages in­to the wall?”

“The hoof­print in Grove’s house was done di­rect­ly, fo­cus­ing the mi­crowave. The im­age in

Cut­forth’s apart­ment had to be done in­di­rect­ly-​Pin­ketts couldn’t get in­to the apart­ment-​by fo­cus­ing the de­vice against a mask. That was a lit­tle trick­ier, but it worked. Burned the im­age

right through the wall. Bril­liant, don’t you think?”

“You’re sick,” said D’Agos­ta.

“I am a tin­ker­er. I like noth­ing more than solv­ing tricky lit­tle prob­lems.” He grinned hor­ri­bly

and picked up the de­vice. “Now please stand back. I need to ad­just the range of the beam. It

wouldn’t do to scorch us as well as the pump­kin.”

Fos­co raised the un­gain­ly thing, slid its leather strap over his shoul­der, aimed it at the

pump­kin, ad­just­ed some knobs. Then he pressed a rudi­men­ta­ry kind of trig­ger. D’Agos­ta

stared in hor­ri­fied fas­ci­na­tion. There was a hum­ming noise in the ca­pac­itor-​that was all. “Right now the de­vice is work­ing up from its low­est set­ting. If that pump­kin were our vic­tim, he would be­gin to ex­pe­ri­ence a most aw­ful crawl­ing sen­sa­tion in his guts and over his

skin about now.”

The pump­kin re­mained un­af­fect­ed. Fos­co turned a knob, and the hum­ming went up a

notch.

“Now our vic­tim is scream­ing. The crawl­ing sen­sa­tion has got­ten un­bear­able. I imag­ine it’s

like a stom­ach full of wasps, sting­ing end­less­ly. His skin, too, would start to dry and blis­ter.

The ris­ing heat with­in his mus­cles would soon cause the neu­rons to be­gin fir­ing, jerk­ing his

limbs spas­mod­ical­ly, caus­ing him to fall down and go in­to con­vul­sions. His in­ter­nal tem­per­ature is soar­ing. With­in a few more sec­onds he’ll be thrash­ing on the ground, bit­ing off or swal­low­ing his tongue.”

An­oth­er tick of the di­al. Now a small blis­ter ap­peared on the skin of the pump­kin. It

seemed to soft­en, sag a bit. A soft pop, and the pump­kin split open from top to bot­tom, is­su­ing a spurt of steam.

“Now our vic­tim is un­con­scious, sec­onds from death.”

There was a muf­fled boil­ing sound in­side the pump­kin, and the fis­sure widened. With a

sud­den wet noise, a jet of or­ange slime forced it­self from the split, ooz­ing over the floor in

steam­ing rivulets.

“No com­ment nec­es­sary. By now, our vic­tim is dead. The in­ter­est­ing part, how­ev­er, is yet

to come.”

Blis­ters be­gan swelling all over the sur­face of the pump­kin, some pop­ping with lit­tle puffs

of steam, oth­ers break­ing and weep­ing or­ange flu­id.

An­oth­er tick of the di­al.

The pump­kin split afresh, with a sec­ond rush of boil­ing pulp and seeds squeez­ing out in a

hot vis­cous paste. The pump­kin sagged fur­ther and dark­ened, the stem black­en­ing and

smok­ing; more flu­id and seeds oozed from the cracks along with jets of steam. And then sud­den­ly, with a sharp pop­ping sound, the seeds be­gan to ex­plode. The pump­kin seemed to

hard­en, the room fill­ing with the smell of burned pump­kin flesh; then, with a sud­den­paff! , it

burst in­to flame.

“Ec­co!The deed is done. Our vic­tim is on fire. And yet, if you were to place your hand on

the stone next to the pump­kin, you would find it bare­ly warm to the touch.” Fos­co low­ered the de­vice. The pump­kin con­tin­ued to smol­der, a flame lick­ing the stem,

siz­zling and crack­ling as it burned, a foul black smoke ris­ing slow­ly.

“Pin­ketts?”

The ser­vant, with­out miss­ing a beat, picked up a bot­tle ofac­qua min­erale from the din­ner

ta­ble and poured it over the pump­kin. Then he gave the bub­bling re­mains a deft kick in­to the

fire, heaped on a few more sticks, and re­tired again to the cor­ner.

“Mar­velous, don’t you think? And yet it’s much more dra­mat­ic with a hu­man body, I can

as­sure you.”

“You’re one sick fuck, you know that?” said D’Agos­ta.

“This man of yours, Pen­der­gast, is be­gin­ning to an­noy me.”

“Clear­ly a man of many virtues,” Pen­der­gast replied. “But I think this has gone on long

enough. It is time for us to get to the re­main­ing busi­ness at hand.”

“Quite, quite.”

“I have come here to of­fer you a deal.”

“Nat­ural­ly.” Fos­co’s lip curled cyn­ical­ly.

Pen­der­gast glanced at the count a mo­ment, his looks un­read­able, let­ting the si­lence build.

“You will write out and sign a con­fes­sion of all that you have told us tonight, and you will give

me that di­abol­ical ma­chine as proof. I will es­cort you to the cara­binieri, who will ar­rest you.

You will be tried for the mur­ders of Locke Bullard and Car­lo Van­ni, and as an ac­com­plice in

the mur­der of the priest. Italy has no death penal­ty, and you will prob­ably be re­leased in

twen­ty-​five years, at the age of eighty, to live the re­main­der of your days in peace and qui­et-​if

you man­age to sur­vive prison. This is your side of the bar­gain.”

Fos­co lis­tened, an in­cred­ulous smile de­vel­op­ing on his face. “Is that all? And what will you

give me in ex­change?”

“Your life.”

“I wasn’t aware my life was in your hands, Mr. Pen­der­gast. It seems to me it’s the oth­er

way around.”

D’Agos­ta saw a move­ment out of the cor­ner of his eye. Pin­ketts had with­drawn a 9mm

Beretta and had it trained on them. D’Agos­ta’s hand moved to­ward his own weapon, un­strapped the keep­er.

Pen­der­gast stopped him with a shake of his head. Then he re­moved an en­ve­lope from his

pock­et. “A let­ter iden­ti­cal to this one has been placed with Prince Cor­so Maf­fei, to be opened

in twen­ty-​four hours if I have not re­turned to re­claim it.”

At the name of Maf­fei, Fos­co paled.

“You are a mem­ber of the se­cret so­ci­ety known as the Comi­ta­tus Dec­imus, the Com­pa­ny

of Ten. As a mem­ber of this so­ci­ety, which dates back to the Mid­dle Ages, you in­her­it­ed and

were en­trust­ed with cer­tain doc­uments, for­mu­las, and manuscripts. You abused that trust, in

par­tic­ular on Oc­to­ber 31, 1974, when you went through a mock cer­emo­ny us­ing those same

in­stru­ments to fright­en a group of Amer­ican stu­dents. Then you com­pound­ed it with these

killings.”

The pale­ness had giv­en way to mot­tled fury. “Pen­der­gast, this is ab­surd.” “You know bet­ter than I it is not. You be­long to this se­cret so­ci­ety by virtue of your ti­tle.

You had no choice in the mat­ter: you were born in­to it. You didn’t take it se­ri­ous­ly as a young

man; you thought it a joke. On­ly years lat­er did you re­al­ize the sever­ity of that mis­take.” “This is all blus­ter, a poor at­tempt to save your own skin.”

“It’s your skin you should be con­cerned about. You know what awaits those who break the

so­ci­ety’s seal of si­lence. Re­mem­ber what hap­pened to the march­ese Meuc­ci? The ten men

who head the Comi­ta­tus have enor­mous mon­ey, pow­er, and reach. They will find you, Fos­co-​you know that.”

Fos­co said noth­ing, sim­ply star­ing back at Pen­der­gast.

“As I said, I will give you your life back by re­triev­ing that let­ter-​but on­ly af­ter I have re­ceived your signed con­fes­sion and es­cort­ed you to the cara­binieri head­quar­ters. The vi­olin

you may keep. It is yours, af­ter all. A fair deal, when you con­sid­er it.”

Fos­co tore open the let­ter with a fat hand and be­gan to read. Af­ter a mo­ment, he paused

and looked up. “This ii­iin­famy!”

Pen­der­gast mere­ly watched as Fos­co re­turned his at­ten­tion to the doc­ument, hands vis­ibly shak­ing.

D’Agos­ta ob­served this in­ter­change with grow­ing com­pre­hen­sion. Now he un­der­stood the

pur­pose of Pen­der­gast’s stop that morn­ing, a stop he had re­ferred to as “in­sur­ance.” He had

been de­posit­ing the copy of his let­ter with this Prince Maf­fei. How Pen­der­gast had put all this

to­geth­er, and ex­act­ly what it meant, D’Agos­ta didn’t know. No doubt he would learni­in time.

But his over­whelm­ing feel­ing was one of re­lief. Once again, Pen­der­gast had saved their

ass­es.

The count low­ered the doc­ument abrupt­ly. His face had gone white.

“How did you know this? Some­one must have al­ready bro­ken the seal of the Comi­ta­tus!

Some­one else must pay, not me!”

“I learned it from you, and no­body else. That is all you need to know.”

Fos­co ap­peared to be strug­gling to mas­ter him­self. He placed the let­ter on the ta­ble, faced

Pen­der­gast. “Very well. I had ex­pect­ed a strong open­ing move, but this one does you cred­it. Twen­ty-​four hours, you say? Pin­ketts will es­cort you back to your rooms while I con­sid­er my

ri­poste.”

“No fuck­ing way,” said D’Agos­ta. “We’re leav­ing. You can tele­phone our ho­tel when you’re

ready to hand over the con­fes­sion.” He glanced at Pin­ketts, who had his gun trained on them,

the muz­zle mov­ing back and forth. D’Agos­ta fig­ured the chances were pret­ty good that-​if he

timed it right-​he could put a bul­leti­in Pin­ketts be­fore the man could re­act.

“You will go to your quar­ters and await my an­swer,” the count said im­pe­ri­ous­ly. When no­body moved, he gave an al­most im­per­cep­ti­ble nod to Pin­ketts.

All it took was a faint move­ment in the man’s hand, and D’Agos­ta had dropped, rolled, and

fired in one smooth, end­less­ly prac­ticed move. With­out even a cry, Pin­ketts stag­gered back

against the wall, Beretta still in hand, fir­ing once above their heads. D’Agos­ta rose to his knee

and fired two more shots. Pin­ketts jerked, the gun skid­ded across the floor, com­ing to rest in a

cor­ner. Pen­der­gast had his own gun out and was now aim­ing at the count.

Slow­ly, Fos­co raised his hands.

Sud­den­ly, men ap­peared in the door­ways lead­ing out of the din­ing room: rough-​look­ing

men in peas­ant dress, guns in hand, faces set. They came in or­der­ly, de­lib­er­ate­ly, with­out

haste, sure of them­selves. In a mo­ment, more than half a dozen had en­tered, guns aimed at

Pen­der­gast and D’Agos­ta.

There was a long si­lence,iin­ter­rupt­ed on­ly by a long, gar­gling rat­tle from Pin­ketts that

wheezed of­fi­in­to si­lence.

Fos­co’s hands were still raised. “We seem to be at a stand­off,” he said. “How very the­atri­cal. You kill me, my men kill you.” Though the words sound­ed light, they held a harsh, chill

un­der­tone.

“Letius walk out of here,” said D’Agos­ta. “And no­body’ll getikilled.”

“You’ve al­ready killed Pin­ketts,” Fos­co replied crisply. “Here you are, the man who dared

lec­ture me on the sanc­ti­ty of hu­man life. Pin­ketts, who was my best and most loy­al ser­vant.” D’Agos­ta took a step to­ward the count.

“Agent Pen­der­gast!” Fos­co said, turn­ing and rais­ing his voice. “A mo­ment’s re­flec­tion will

show you this is a game you can­not win. At the count of three, I will or­der D’Agos­ta killed. I

will die too, at your hand.You , on the oth­er hand, will live to pon­der how you brought death to

your part­ner. You know me well enough to know it’s not a bluff. Youwill lay down the gun­be­cause you have thelet­ter .”

He paused. “One.”

“It’s a bluff!” D’Agos­ta shout­ed. “Don’t fall for it!”

“Two.”

Pen­der­gast laid down his weapon.

The count paused again, hands still in the air. “Now, Mr. D’Agos­ta, you haven’t put

downy­our gun. Do I need to say that last num­ber, or can you un­der­stand the sit­ua­tion has

gone against you? Even with your re­mark­able marks­man­ship, you will not suc­ceed in drop­ping more than one or two of my men be­fore you are sent back to your Mak­er.” D’Agos­ta slow­ly low­ered his gun. He still had a sec­ond strapped to his leg, and he knew

Pen­der­gast had one, too. The game was not over by a long shot. And they still had the let­ter. Fos­co looked from one to the oth­er, eyes glit­ter­ing. “Very well. My men will es­cort you to

your rooms while I con­sid­er your of­fer.”

{ 80 }

Dawn was fi­nal­ly break­ing through the tiny win­dows of the­keep when Pen­der­gast

emerged from his room. D’Agos­ta, sit­ting by the fire, grunt­ed an ac­knowl­edg­ment. He had

spent the night toss­ing rest­less­ly, un­able to sleep, but Pen­der­gast seemed to have had no dif­fi­cul­ty.

“Ex­cel­lent fire, Vin­cent,” he said, smooth­ing the front of his suit and tak­ing a seat near­by.

“I find these fall morn­ings a bit chilly.”

D’Agos­ta gave the fire a sav­age poke. “Nice sleep?”

“The bed was an abom­ina­tion. Oth­er­wise, pass­able, thank you.”

D’Agos­ta heaved on an­oth­er log. He hat­ed all this wait­ing, this not know­ing, and was un­able to com­plete­ly sup­press his ir­ri­ta­tion at Pen­der­gast’s go­ing di­rect­ly to his room the night

be­fore with­out a sat­is­fac­to­ry ex­pla­na­tion.

“How did you know about that se­cret so­ci­ety busi­ness, any­way?” he asked a lit­tle gruffly.

“I’ve seen you pull a rab­bit out of a hat be­fore, but this one took the cake.” “What a de­light­ful mixed metaphor. I had a sus­pi­cion that Fos­co was in­volved in some

way or an­oth­er, even be­fore I found the horse­hair from the Storm­cloud at the site of Bullard’s

killing.”

“When did you first sus­pect him?”

“You re­call the as­so­ciate I men­tioned, Mime? I had him per­form In­ter­net back­ground

checks on the re­cent ac­tiv­ities of all who were at Grove’s last par­ty. His re­search even­tu­al­ly

picked up the fact that, six months ago, Fos­co qui­et­ly pur­chased a rare sev­en­teenth-​cen­tu­ry

Flo­ren­tine cross from an an­tique deal­er on the Via Mag­gio.”

“The one he gave Grove?”

“Ex­act­ly. And re­call the count him­self was care­ful to point out to me that, had Grove lived

on­ly one more day, he would have been forty mil­lion dol­lars rich­er.”

“Yeah. Any­time some­one vol­un­teers an al­ibi, some­thing’s fishy.”

“The count’s Achilles’ heel is his vol­ubil­ity.”

“Thatand his big mouth.”

“I be­gan to search for weak­ness­es in the count. He was clear­ly a dan­ger­ous man, and I

felt we need­ed ev­ery ad­van­tage we could get-​just in case. You may re­call the com­ment of

the­colon­nel­lo ’s, back at his bar­racks, about se­cret so­ci­eties. He said the Flo­ren­tine no­bil­ity

was ‘rife with them.’ I be­gan to won­der if Fos­co be­longed to such a se­cret so­ci­ety, and if so,

whether it might be used against him in some way. The Flo­ren­tine no­bil­ity are among the old­est in Eu­rope-​their lin­eages go back to the 1200s. Most of their an­cient ti­tles are as­so­ci­at­ed

with var­ious ar­cane or­ders and guilds, some go­ing as far back as the Cru­sades. Most have

se­cret doc­uments, rites, and so forth. The Knights Tem­plars, the Black Gon­faloniers, the

Cav­aliers of the Rose-​there are many oth­ers.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded silent­ly.

“Some of these so­ci­eties take them­selves ex­treme­ly se­ri­ous­ly, even if their orig­inal func­tion has long passed and all that re­mains are emp­ty ob­ser­vances and cer­emonies. The count,

com­ing from one of the most an­cient fam­ilies, sure­ly be­longed by hered­itary right to a num­ber

of them. I e-​mailed Con­stance, who man­aged to un­earth sev­er­al pos­si­bil­ities. I fol­lowed up

with some of my own con­tacts here in Italy.”

“When?”

“The night be­fore last.”

“And here I thought you were fast asleep in your ho­tel suite.”

“Sleep is an un­for­tu­nate bi­olog­ical re­quire­ment that both wastes time and leaves one vul­ner­able. At any rate, I un­cov­ered hints of the ex­is­tence of the Comi­ta­tus Dec­imus, the Com­pa­ny of Ten. It was a group of as­sas­sins formed dur­ing the most con­tentious years of the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, long be­fore the Medi­ci came to pow­er. One of the founders of the or­der was a

French baron named Hugo d’Aquilanges, who brought to Flo­rence some pe­cu­liar manuscripts

full of the dark arts. Us­ing these manuscripts, the group con­jured up the dev­il-​or so they be­lieved-​to aid in their mid­night as­sas­si­na­tions. They swore blood se­cre­cy to each oth­er, and

any vi­ola­tion was pun­ish­able by im­me­di­ate death. The cav­aliere Man­tun de Ar­daz da Fos­co

was an­oth­er of the founders; he passed mem­ber­ship with the ti­tle to his son and so forth,

down to our Fos­co. Their line, ap­par­ent­ly, was al­so the keep­er of the li­brary of the Comi­ta­tus.

It was these an­cient doc­uments Fos­co used in con­jur­ing up the dev­il for Bullard and the rest

on All Hal­lows’ Eve. Whether he planned to use those doc­uments from the be­gin­ning, I can’t

be sure. But he would have learned Beck­mann could read Ital­ian and that Grove, even as a

stu­dent, was knowl­edge­able about old manuscripts. Fos­co couldn’t pass off any old

manuscript-​it had to be the re­al thing. I be­lieve that he sim­ply could not re­sist the fun. Of

course, he didn’t re­al­ize at the time what it meant-​or what penal­ties his breach of se­cre­cy would in­cur. You see, mem­bers aren’t in­duct­ed in­to the or­der un­til they reach the age of

thir­ty.”

“But you still haven’t ex­plained how you knew Fos­co be­longed.”

“The re­search in­di­cat­ed that when the hered­itary mem­ber is in­duct­ed in­to the so­ci­ety, he

is marked with a black spot-​a tat­too, re­al­ly-​us­ing a bot­tle of ash­es from the corpse of Man­tun

de Ar­daz, who was drawn, quar­tered, and burned in the Pi­az­za del­la Sig­no­ria for heresy. This

black spot is placed di­rect­ly over the heart.”

“And when did you get a glimpse ofthat ?”

“When I in­ter­viewed him at the Sher­ry Nether­land. He wore an open-​necked white shirt.

Of course, at the time I didn’t un­der­stand its sig­nif­icance-​it mere­ly looked like a large mole.” “But you re­mem­bered it.”

“A pho­to­graph­ic mem­ory can be quite use­ful.”

Abrupt­ly, Pen­der­gast mo­tioned for D’Agos­ta to be silent. For about a minute they wait­ed,

mo­tion­less. Then D’Agos­ta heard foot­steps, a soft knock.

“Come in,” Pen­der­gast said.

The door opened and Fos­co slipped through, fol­lowed by half a dozen men with guns. He

bowed. “Good morn­ing to you both. I trust you passed a de­cent night?”

D’Agos­ta did not re­ply.

“And how was your night, Count?” Pen­der­gast asked.

“I al­ways sleep like a ba­by, thank you.”

“Fun­ny how most mur­der­ers do.”

Fos­co turned to D’Agos­ta. “You, on the oth­er hand, look a lit­tle peaked, Sergeant. I hope

you haven’t caught cold.”

“You make me sick.”

“There’s no ac­count­ing for taste,” Fos­co said with a smile. Then he glanced back at Pen­der­gast. “As promised, I’ve con­sid­ered your of­fer. And I have brought you my ri­poste.” He reached in­side his jack­et and with­drew a smooth white en­ve­lope. He held it out to Pen­der­gast, eyes twin­kling.

D’Agos­ta was star­tled to see Pen­der­gast go pale as he took the en­ve­lope. “That’s right. The very let­ter you left with Prince Maf­fei. Un­opened and un­read. I be­lieve

the word here is­check , Mr. Pen­der­gast. Your move.”

“How did-?” D’Agos­ta be­gan. Then he fell silent.

Fos­co waved his hand. “Mr. Pen­der­gast didn’t count on my bril­liance. I told Prince Maf­fei

that my cas­tle had been bur­glar­ized and that I was con­cerned for the safe­ty of the Comi­ta­tus’s most se­cret manuscript-​which, as the li­brar­ian of the Comi­ta­tus, I of course had in my

pos­ses­sion. I asked him if he would hold it him­self for safe­keep­ing un­til the bur­glars had been caught. Nat­ural­ly he took me to his most se­cure repos­ito­ry, where I felt sure he would have placed your let­ter. I didn’t know, of course, what you had said to him about the let­ter, so I felt it was bet­ter not even to men­tion it. The old fool opened his vault to put in the manuscript, and there, amidst all his moldy old pa­pers, was a fresh, crisp en­ve­lope! I knew it had to be yours. A quick sleight of hand and the let­ter was mine. When you fail to re­turn, the prince Maf­fei will open his vault and find noth­ing, and no doubt be­gin to wor­ry about the toll old age is tak­ing on his fee­ble mind.” Fos­co laughed silent­ly, his ca­pa­cious front shak­ing, hold­ing out the en­vel

ope.

There was a si­lence as Pen­der­gast stared at the en­ve­lope. Then he took it, opened it,

glanced at the sheet in­side, and let it fall to the ground.

“I said­check, but per­haps I should have said­check­mate , Mr. Pen­der­gast.” He turned to

the men stand­ing in the door­way. They were dressed in rough woolen and leather cloth­ing,

each point­ing a firearm. An­oth­er man, in a stained suede jack­et, stood be­hind them. He had a

small, sharp face and was watch­ing them with in­tel­li­gent eyes.

D’Agos­ta’s hand crept to­ward his gun. Pen­der­gast no­ticed, made a brief sup­press­ing mo­tion.

“That’s right, D’Agos­ta. Your su­pe­ri­or knows it is fu­tile-​on­ly in the movies can two men

over­pow­er sev­en. Of course, I am quite will­ing to see you both die right here and now. But

then,” he added teas­ing­ly, “don’t lose hope-​there’s al­ways the chance you might es­cape!” He

chucked and turned. “Fab­bri, dis­arm these gen­tle­men.”

The man in the leather jack­et stepped for­ward, held out his hand. Af­ter a mo­ment, Pen­der­gast re­moved his back­up weapon and hand­ed it to him. With a huge sense of fore­bod­ing,

D’Agos­ta re­luc­tant­ly gave the man his own as well.

“Now search them,” said the count.

“You first, Mr. Pen­der­gast,” Fab­bri said in a heav­ily ac­cent­ed voice. “Re­move your jack­et

and your shirt. Then stand over there with your arms up.”

Pen­der­gast did as or­dered, hand­ing each ar­ti­cle of cloth­ing to Fab­bri. When Pen­der­gast

re­moved his shirt, D’Agos­ta no­ticed for the first time that the agent wore a chain around his

neck, with a small pen­dant at­tached: a strange de­sign of a lid­less eye hov­er­ing over the im­age of a phoenix, ris­ing from the ash­es of a fire.

One of the peas­ants shoved Pen­der­gast to­ward the wall. Fab­bri be­gan pat­ting him down

ex­pert­ly. He quick­ly found a stilet­to.

“There will be lock-​pick­ing tools as well,” said the count.

Fab­bri searched Pen­der­gast’s col­lar and cuffs, fi­nal­ly re­mov­ing a small tool kit held there

with Vel­cro. Oth­er things ap­peared: a sy­ringe and nee­dle, some small test tubes. “You’ve got quite an ar­se­nal tucked away in that suit of yours,” Fos­co said. “Fab­bri, set it

all on the ta­ble over here, if you please.”

Re­mov­ing a stitch­ing knife, Fab­bri pro­ceed­ed to cut open the lin­ings of Pen­der­gast’s suit,

search­ing them thor­ough­ly. Out came oth­er items-​tweez­ers, some small fold­ed pack­ets of

chem­icals-​which the man placed on the ta­ble.

“His mouth. Check his mouth.”

The man opened Pen­der­gast’s mouth, checked his teeth, looked un­der his tongue. D’Agos­ta re­coiled in hor­ror at this in­dig­ni­ty. With the dis­cov­ery of each ad­di­tion­al tool, he’d

felt his hopes dim fur­ther. But Pen­der­gast had a lot of tricks up his sleeve. He’d get them out

of this some­how.

Fab­bri di­rect­ed Pen­der­gast to step to one side and bend his head for­ward so he could

search his hair. Pen­der­gast com­plied, his arms still raised, po­si­tion­ing him­self so he was fac­ing away from the half-​cir­cle of men and the count, who was ex­am­in­ing the items on the ta­ble with mur­murs of in­ter­est. Now Fab­bri’s back was turned to D’Agos­ta, while Pen­der­gast

was fac­ing him. And D’Agos­ta was amazed at what he saw.

He saw Pen­der­gast, mov­ing his hands ev­er so slight­ly, ex­tract a tiny piece of met­al from

be­tween the ring and lit­tle fin­gers of his left hand. Some­how he had man­aged to palm this at

the be­gin­ning of the search.

“All right,” Fab­bri said. “Low­er your arms and step over here.”

Pen­der­gast did as di­rect­ed. With a mo­tion so fleet­ing D’Agos­ta wasn’t even sure he’d

seen it, Pen­der­gast tucked the piece of met­al be­neath Fab­bri’s own jack­et col­lar-​us­ing the

man him­self as a hid­ing place.

Next, Fab­bri ex­am­ined Pen­der­gast’s shoes, cut­ting off the heels with a knife and stab­bing

through the sole in sev­er­al places. This pro­duced a sec­ond lock-​pick­ing set. He frowned and

re­turned once again to Pen­der­gast’s suit.

At last, the search was com­plet­ed, leav­ing Pen­der­gast’s clothes in tat­ters. “Now the oth­er one,” said Fos­co.

They re­peat­ed the same pro­cess with D’Agos­ta, strip­ping him and un­stitch­ing ev­ery­thing,

sub­ject­ing him to the same hu­mil­iat­ing search.

“I would leave you both bare,” said the count, “but the dun­geons of this cas­tle are­so damp.

I would hate to see you catch cold.” He nod­ded to­ward their clothes. “Get dressed.” They did so.

Fab­bri spun them around and man­acled their hands be­hind their backs.”An­di­amo­ci.” The count turned and stepped out of the apart­ment. Fab­bri fol­lowed, then Pen­der­gast and

D’Agos­ta. The half dozen thugs brought up the rear.

Down the cir­cu­lar stair­case they went, out of the keep and back in­to the an­cient rooms of

the cas­tle. The count led the way back to the din­ingsa­lot­to , then through the kitchen and in­to

a large, drafty pantry. An arched open­ing was set in­to the far wall, with a stair­case de­scend­ing out of sight. The group de­scend­ed this in­to a deep, vault­ed tun­nel, its walls weep­ing mois­ture and en­crust­ed with cal­cite crys­tals. Silent­ly they walked past store­rooms and emp­ty gal­leries of stone.

“Ec­co,”said the count, stop­ping be­fore a low door­way. Fab­bri stopped in turn, and Pen­der­gast, his eyes on the ground, clum­si­ly stum­bled in­to him from be­hind. Fab­bri cursed and

pushed him away, send­ing the agent sprawl­ing to the stone floor.

“Get in,” said the count.

Pen­der­gast rose to his feet and ducked in­to the tiny room be­yond the door­way. D’Agos­ta

fol­lowed. The iron door slammed, the met­al key turned, and they were in dark­ness. The count’s face ap­peared at the small grat­ing set in­to the door.

“You’ll be se­cure here,” he said, “while I at­tend to a few fi­nal de­tails. And then I will be

back. You see, I have pre­pared some­thing spe­cial, some­thing­fit­ting , for you both. For Pen­der­gast, a lit­er­ary end-​some­thing out of Poe, ac­tu­al­ly. And for D’Agos­ta, mur­der­er of my

Pinchet­ti, I will use my mi­crowave de­vice one more time be­fore de­stroy­ing it, and with it the

last ev­idence of my in­volve­ment in this af­fair.”

The face van­ished. A mo­ment lat­er, the faint il­lu­mi­na­tion of the cor­ri­dor was ex­tin­guished. D’Agos­ta sat in the dark, lis­ten­ing to the echo of re­treat­ing foot­steps. In a mo­ment, all was

silent save for the faint drip­ping of wa­ter and the flut­ter of what D’Agos­ta thought must be

bats.

He shift­ed, pulled his torn clothes more tight­ly around him. Pen­der­gast’s voice came to

him through the dark­ness, so low as to be al­most in­audi­ble.

“I don’t see any rea­son to de­lay our de­par­ture. Do you?”

“Was that a lock­pick I saw you hid­ing un­der Fab­bri’s col­lar?” D’Agos­ta whis­pered. “Of course. Most oblig­ing of him to car­ry it for me. Nat­ural­ly, I stum­bled in­to him just now

in or­der to re­claim it. And now I have lit­tle doubt that Fab­bri or one of the oth­ers is out­side,

guard­ing us. Bang on the door, Vin­cent, and see if you can’t get a re­sponse from him.” D’Agos­ta banged and shout­ed: “Hey! Let us out!Let us out! “

The echoes slow­ly died away in the cor­ri­dor be­yond.

Pen­der­gast touched D’Agos­ta’s arm and whis­pered again. “Keep mak­ing noise while I

pick the lock.”

D’Agos­ta shout­ed, yelled, and swore. A minute lat­er, Pen­der­gast touched his arm once

again.

“Done. Now lis­ten. The man wait­ing in the dark no doubt has an elec­tric torch, which he’ll

turn on at the slight­est in­di­ca­tion of fun­ny busi­ness. I’m go­ing to find him and take care of him.

You keep mak­ing noise as a di­ver­sion, and to cov­er any sounds of my crawl­ing through the

dark.”

“Okay.”

D’Agos­ta once again took up the cry, stomp­ing around and de­mand­ing to be let out. It was

pitch-​black, and he could see noth­ing of what Pen­der­gast was do­ing. He yelled and yelled.

Sud­den­ly there was a loud thump out­side, fol­lowed by a thud. Then a beam of light stabbed

through the low open­ing.

“Ex­cel­lent work, Vin­cent.”

D’Agos­ta ducked back out be­neath the low door­way. There, about twen­ty feet away, was

Fab­bri, face­down on the stone floor, arms flung wide.

“Are you sure there’s a way out of this pile?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“You heard the squeak­ing of bats. Right?”

“Right.”

“There must be a way out.”

“Yeah, for a bat.”

“Where bats fly, so shall we. But first we must get our hands on the ma­chine. It’s our on­ly

re­al ev­idence against the count.”

{ 81 }

They made their way back through the dark stonework of thestor­age cel­lars and furtive­ly

climbed the an­cient stair­way to the pantry. Pen­der­gast checked the room care­ful­ly, then mo­tioned D’Agos­ta for­ward. Slow­ly, they moved from the pantry to the kitchen: a huge room with

par­al­lel ta­bles of oiled pine and mar­ble, and a mas­sive fire­place re­plete with grills and racks.

Cast-​iron cook­ware hung on great hooks and chains from the ceil­ing. No sounds is­sued from

the din­ingsa­lot­to be­yond. All ap­peared de­sert­ed.

“When Pin­ketts re­trieved the weapon,” whis­pered Pen­der­gast, “he came through this kitchen, and was gone no more than a minute. It has to be close.”

“Why would it still be in the same place?”

“Re­mem­ber what Fos­co said. He’s plan­ning to use it once more-​on you. Oth­er than the

din­ing area, there are on­ly two ways out of this room. The pantry we just came through, andthat .” He point­ed to a door lead­ing in­to what looked like an old meat lock­er. At that mo­ment, foot­steps sound­ed from be­yond the din­ing room. They flat­tened them­selves be­hind the door of the kitchen. Voic­es spoke in Ital­ian, too in­dis­tinct to make out, but

ap­proach­ing.

“Let’s keep look­ing,” Pen­der­gast said af­ter a mo­ment. “Any mo­ment now the alarm might

be raised.”

He ducked in­to the meat lock­er: a cool stone room hung with prosci­ut­ti and sala­mi,

shelves groan­ing un­der the weight of mas­sive wheels of ag­ing cheeses. Pen­der­gast shone

Fab­bri’s torch around the crowd­ed space. There was a gleam of alu­minum on one of the up­per shelves.

“There!” D’Agos­ta grabbed the case.

“Too bulky,” Pen­der­gast said. “Get rid of the case and let’s as­sem­ble the weapon.” They opened the case, and-​with a lit­tle dif­fi­cul­ty-​Pen­der­gast screwed to­geth­er the var­ious

parts. He hand­ed it to D’Agos­ta, who slung it over his shoul­der by its at­tached leather strap.

Then they hur­ried back in­to the kitchen. More voic­es, this time from the din­ing room it­self.

Then the hiss of a ra­dio. A voice rasped out, loud, full of pan­ic.

“Sono scap­pati!”

A flur­ry of ac­tiv­ity, fol­lowed by re­treat­ing foot­steps.

“They’ve got ra­dios,” Pen­der­gast mur­mured. He paused on­ly an­oth­er mo­ment. Then he

dashed back through the kitchen and across the din­ing room, D’Agos­ta fol­low­ing, weapon

bounc­ing on his shoul­der. They ran out in­to the cen­tral gallery, past the age-​dark­ened por­traits and lux­uri­ous tapestries.

Dim voic­es could be heard ahead.

“This way,” Pen­der­gast said, nod­ding to­ward a small open door. They ran through it to find

them­selves in an old ar­mory. Rust­ed swords, ar­mor, and chain mail hung from the walls.

With­out a word, Pen­der­gast took down a sword, ex­am­ined it, put it back, took down an­oth­er. The voic­es grew loud­er. And then a group of men passed by the door­way, run­ning at top

speed to­ward the din­ing room and the kitchen.

Pen­der­gast peered out, and then mo­tioned to D’Agos­ta.

They con­tin­ued down the gallery, then veered away through a maze of el­egant cham­bers,

ar­riv­ing at last in the small, damp, win­dow­less rooms sur­round­ing the old keep. D’Agos­ta

heard no foot­steps but their own. It seemed they were tem­porar­ily in luck: no­body ex­pect­ed

they’d head for the heart of the cas­tle in­stead of mak­ing to­ward the out­er walls. No soon­er had this thought oc­curred to him than he heard a voice ahead, talk­ing fu­ri­ous­ly.

He looked around. There was no place to hide in this se­ries of bare stone rooms. Pen­der­gast swift­ly got be­hind the door, D’Agos­ta crouch­ing at his back. A man ap­peared

in the door­way, jog­ging, ra­dio in hand. Pen­der­gast raised his sword with one swift mo­tion; the

man grunt­ed, then sprawled for­ward on­to the floor, run through, blood run­ning out over the

paving stones.

In an in­stant, Pen­der­gast had re­trieved the man’s hand­gun, a 9mm Beretta. He hand­ed

the sword to D’Agos­ta and ges­tured for him to fol­low.

Ahead yawned the en­trance to a cir­cu­lar stair­case, lead­ing down in­to dark­ness. They

be­gan fly­ing down the steps, two at a time. Then Pen­der­gast raised his hand. Foot­steps rang faint­ly from be­low. Some­one was run­ning up to­ward them. “How many thugs does the fat fuck em­ploy?” D’Agos­ta mut­tered.

“As many as he wants, I imag­ine. Stay still. We have the ad­van­tage of sur­prise and al­ti­tude.” And Pen­der­gast aimed the gun care­ful­ly down the curve of the stairs. Mo­ments lat­er, a

man in peas­ant dress ap­peared. Pen­der­gast fired with­out hes­ita­tion, then knelt be­side the

crum­pled form, re­trieved his weapon, and tossed it to D’Agos­ta.

A sec­ond man was shout­ing up from be­low.”Car­lo! Cosa c’è?”

Pen­der­gast dart­ed down the stairs, tat­tered suit flap­ping be­hind him, and-​leap­ing to­ward

the sec­ond man-​sent him sprawl­ing back­ward with a kick to the head. He land­ed light­ly,

paused to pluck the man’s gun from his hand, and thrust it in­to the waist­band of his trousers. They ran down the dank cor­ri­dor lead­ing away from the stair­case. Be­hind them, D’Agos­ta

could hear shouts and cries. Pen­der­gast switched off the flash­light to make them less of a tar­get, and they con­tin­ued for­ward in al­most com­plete dark­ness.

Ahead, the tun­nel di­vid­ed. Pen­der­gast stopped, ex­am­ined the ground, the ceil­ing. “Note the guano? The bats fly out this way.”

They took the left-​hand tun­nel. Now a faint light ap­peared in the dis­tance be­hind them. A

shot rang out, whin­ing off stone. D’Agos­ta stopped to re­turn fire. Their pur­suers hung back. “What about the mi­crowave weapon?” he asked.

“Use­less in this sit­ua­tion. Takes too long to op­er­ate, doesn’t have the range. Be­sides, we

don’t have the time now to fig­ure out how to use it.”

The tun­nel branched again. D’Agos­ta smelled fresh air ahead, then caught a faint glow of

light. They ran around an­oth­er cor­ner, then an­oth­er-​and sud­den­ly came up against a thick

grate of iron bars, bright light stream­ing in be­tween them. D’Agos­ta could see that the grate

opened on­to the cliff be­low the cas­tle. Be­yond, he could make out the steep flanks of the

moun­tain, to the left plung­ing in­to a deep ravine and to the right ris­ing to pin­na­cles and crags. “Shit.”

“I ex­pect­ed some­thing like this,” said Pen­der­gast. He swift­ly ex­am­ined the bars. “An­cient,

but sound.”

“What now?”

“We make a stand. I’m count­ing on that shoot­ing abil­ity of yours, Vin­cent.” Pen­der­gast flat­tened him­self against the last an­gle of the tun­nel, and D’Agos­ta did the

same. The men were com­ing up faster now-​judg­ing by the foot­steps, there were at least half a dozen of them. D’Agos­ta turned, aimed, squeezed off a shot. In the dim­ness, he saw one of the fig­ures fall. The rest scat­tered, flat­ten­ing them­selves against the rough rock walls. There was an an­swer­ing blast of a shot­gun. This was fol­lowed by the fast stut­ter of an au­to­mat­ic

weapon: two short bursts, the bul­lets car­oming off the ceil­ing in show­ers of sparks and stone. “Shit!” D’Agos­ta said, shrink­ing back in­vol­un­tar­ily.

“Keep hold­ing them, Vin­cent, while I see what I can do about these bars.” D’Agos­ta crouched low, ducked briefly around the cor­ner, fired. The au­to­mat­ic weapon re­turned fire, the bul­lets once again ric­ochet­ing off the ceil­ing, thud­ding in­to the ground in a

scat­tered pat­tern not far from D’Agos­ta.

They’re de­lib­er­ate­ly aim­ing for the ric­ochet.

He yanked his mag­azine out of the grip, ex­am­ined it. It was a ten-​shot mag­azine: six bul­lets were vis­ible, plus the one in the cham­ber.

“Here’s the spare clip,” Pen­der­gast said, toss­ing it to him. “Con­serve your fire.” D’Agos­ta glanced at it: full. He had sev­en­teen shots.

An­oth­er short burst of au­to­mat­ic-​weapons fire came zing­ing off the ceil­ing, thud­ding in­to

the ground di­rect­ly be­fore his feet.

An­gle of in­ci­dence equals an­gle of re­frac­tion,D’Agos­ta vague­ly re­mem­bered from his

pool-​shoot­ing days. He fired at the place where he’d seen the rounds ric­ochet off, fired a

sec­ond time, each time aim­ing for a smooth patch of stone, care­ful­ly an­gling for the ric­ochet. He heard a cry.Score one to math­emat­ics.

Now a fusil­lade of shots came ric­ochet­ing in. D’Agos­ta rolled back just in time, half a

dozen rounds slap­ping the ground where he had been.

“How’s it go­ing?” he called over his shoul­der.

“More time, Vin­cent. Buy me time.”

More bul­lets came in off the ceil­ing, with a spray of bro­ken stone.

Time.D’Agos­ta had no choice but to re­turn fire again. He crawled up to the an­gle, peered

around. A man had ducked out from the shad­ows and was run­ning up to a clos­er po­si­tion.

D’Agos­ta fired once and winged the man, who re­treat­ed with a cry.

Now Pen­der­gast was fir­ing his own gun in mea­sured shots. Glanc­ing back, D’Agos­ta

could see him shoot­ing in­to the ma­son­ry hold­ing the grate in place.

More shots came in, land­ing about him in ir­reg­ular spots. D’Agos­ta squeezed off an­oth­er

round.

Pen­der­gast had emp­tied his mag­azine. “Vin­cent!” he called.

“What?”

“Toss me your gun.”

“But-“

“The gun.”

Pen­der­gast caught it, took care­ful aim, and fired point-​blank in­to the ma­son­ry at each

point where the bars were ce­ment­ed. The ce­ment was old and soft, and the shots were tak­ing

ef­fect, but still D’Agos­ta winced, un­able to pre­vent him­self from count­ing the wast­ed bul­lets.One, two, three, four, click. Pen­der­gast popped out the spent mag­azine, tossed it aside.

D’Agos­ta hand­ed him the spare. The fire from around the cor­ner had in­ten­si­fied. They had

on­ly mo­ments be­fore they were over­run.

Sev­en more shots rang out. Then Pen­der­gast paused, crouched.

“Kick to­geth­er. On three.”

They gave the grate a vi­olent kick, but it re­mained im­mo­bile.

Pen­der­gast fired two more shots, then tucked the gun in­to his waist­band. “Kick again. From the ground.”

They lay on their backs, cocked their legs, struck the grate to­geth­er.

It moved.

Again, then yet again-​and now it came free, clang­ing down the cliff face with a show­er of

rocks and peb­bles.

They stood and ap­proached the edge. The rough rock went straight down at least fifty feet

be­fore be­gin­ning to lev­el out.

“Shit,” D’Agos­ta mur­mured.

“No choice. Toss the de­vice. Look for brush, the gen­tlest land­ing place pos­si­ble. Then

climb down.”

D’Agos­ta leaned out, tossed the mi­crowave weapon down in­to a thick patch of bush­es.

Then, swal­low­ing his ter­ror, he turned and eased him­self over the edge. Slid­ing down slow­ly,

hold­ing fast to the mor­tar of the grate with his hands, he found a pur­chase for his feet. Then

an­oth­er de­scent, an­oth­er pur­chase. In a mo­ment, his face was be­low the edge of the cham­ber, cling­ing to the cliff face.

And then Pen­der­gast was sud­den­ly be­side him. “Go side­ways as you de­scend. It’s eas­ier

to see footholds, and you’ll make a more dif­fi­cult tar­get.”

The rock was shelv­ing lime­stone, dread­ful­ly sheer but of­fer­ing abun­dant hand- and

footholds. While it prob­ably would have pro­vid­ed lit­tle chal­lenge to a pro­fes­sion­al rock

climber, D’Agos­ta was ter­ri­fied nonethe­less. His feet kept slip­ping, and his leather-​soled

shoes were al­most use­less.

Down he went, gin­ger­ly, one hand af­ter the oth­er, try­ing not to scrape his hurt fin­ger

against the sharp rocks. Pen­der­gast was far be­low al­ready, de­scend­ing swift­ly. Shots echoed from the open­ing above, fol­lowed by a tremen­dous fusil­lade, fol­lowed by si

lence. Then a rush of voic­es:Ec­coli! Di là!

D’Agos­ta glanced up to see a few heads cran­ing out over the gulf. A hand with a gun ap­peared, aim­ing right at him. He was a sit­ting duck. Christ, it was over.

Pen­der­gast’s gun cracked from far be­low: his fi­nal round. The shoot­er was hit square in

the fore­head; he stag­gered, fell, then came hurtling silent­ly past, head­ed for the rocks be­low.

D’Agos­ta looked away, re­sumed his de­scent as quick­ly as he dared.

From the open­ing above came more com­mo­tion. D’Agos­ta saw an­oth­er fig­ure ap­pear

cau­tious­ly, this time with the au­to­mat­ic weapon in hand. D’Agos­ta rec­og­nized the stub­by form

of an Uzi.

He flat­tened him­self against the rock. Pen­der­gast had van­ished out of sight be­low. Where

the hell was he?

He heard the Uzi go off in short bursts, rounds hum­ming past his ear. He tried fish­ing out

with his leg, search­ing for an­oth­er foothold, but re­al­ized he was pro­tect­ed on­ly by a thin shelf

of rock over­head; if he moved again, he would be ex­posed.

An­oth­er burst con­firmed the fact: he was pinned.

“Pen­der­gast!”

No an­swer.

More shots came, sting­ing his face with splin­ters of stone. He shift­ed one foot, probed. An­oth­er burst, and he felt one of the rounds nick his shoe. He pulled his leg back. He was

hy­per­ven­ti­lat­ing now, gasp­ing for breath as he clung to the tiny pur­chase. He had nev­er felt

so ter­ri­fied in his life.

More shots, the stone frag­ment­ing.

They were shoot­ingth­rough the thin shelf above him. Even if he didn’t move, they’d get

him. He felt blood run­ning down his cheek from where the stone chips had cut him. Then he heard a sin­gle shot, this time from be­low; a scream from over­head; and then an­oth­er man hur­tled past, Uzi fly­ing.

Pen­der­gast.He must have reached the bot­tom and re­trieved the dead man’s weapon. D’Agos­ta be­gan to climb down in a pan­ic, slip­ping, re­cov­er­ing, slip­ping again. There was

an­oth­er shot from be­low, then an­oth­er-​Pen­der­gast cov­er­ing him, keep­ing the open­ing above

clear of men.

The rock be­gan to lev­el out a lit­tle and he half climbed, half slid the last twen­ty feet. Then

he was on his feet at the top of a scree slope, soaked in per­spi­ra­tion, heart ham­mer­ing, his

legs like jel­ly. Pen­der­gast was here, crouched be­hind a rock, fir­ing up again at the open­ing. “Get the de­vice and let’s go,” he said.

D’Agos­ta rose, scram­bled down to the thick­et of bush­es, and re­trieved the weapon. One

of its bulbs was slight­ly dinged, and the de­vice looked a lit­tle smudged and scratched, but oth­er­wise it seemed un­dam­aged. He slung it over his shoul­der and raced for the cov­er of the

trees. Pen­der­gast joined him a mo­ment lat­er.

“Down. To the Greve road.”

They took off down­hill, leap­ing and run­ning through chest­nut trees, the sound of shots be­hind and above grow­ing fainter and fainter.

And then, sud­den­ly, Pen­der­gast stopped again.

In the en­su­ing si­lence, D’Agos­ta heard a sound ris­ing from be­low. The mea­sured bay­ing

of dogs.

A lot of dogs.

{ 82 }

Pen­der­gast lis­tened for a mo­ment, then he turned to D’Agos­ta.”The count’s boar-​hunt­ing

dogs. With their han­dlers. Com­ing up from be­low.”

“Oh, my God . “

“They’re trained to fan out in­to an im­pen­etra­ble line, trap their prey, and sur­round it. We’ve

no choice. We’ve got to go up and over the top of the moun­tain. That’s our on­ly chance to es­cape.”

They turned and be­gan scram­bling up through the steep woods, mov­ing at an an­gle to the

slope, away from the cas­tle. It was a tough, nasty as­cent: the chest­nut for­est was full of brush

and bram­bles, the ground wet and the leaves slip­pery. D’Agos­ta could hear the bay­ing of the

dogs be­low, dozens and dozens it seemed, over­lap­ping in­to a ca­copho­ny of noise. The

sounds echoed clear across the val­ley, from one end to the oth­er. They seemed to be get­ting

clos­er.

They climbed through an es­pe­cial­ly steep sec­tion of for­est and broke out on­to a gen­tler

slope, plant­ed in vines, leaves yel­low in the fall air. They ran up­hill be­tween the rows, stum­bling and pant­ing through the wet clods, sticky earth cling­ing to their shoes. There was no ques­tion: the dogs were gain­ing.

At the far end of the vine­yard, Pen­der­gast paused a sec­ond to re­con­noi­ter. They were in a

couloir be­tween two moun­tain ridges. Above, the ridges nar­rowed as they ap­proached the

sum­mit, about half a mile away. The cas­tle lay be­low them on its own pro­ject­ing shelf of rock,

grim and dark.

“Come on, Vin­cent,” Pen­der­gast said. “There’s not a mo­ment to lose.”

The vine­yard gave way to an­oth­er steep slope, thick­ly cov­ered with chest­nut trees. They

thrashed their way up­ward, bri­ars tear­ing at their al­ready tat­tered clothes. The bro­ken wall of

some an­cient ru­in came in­to view over­head, an old­casa coloni­ca sunken in vines. They climbed past the ru­in and its out­build­ings and en­tered an over­grown clear­ing. Again Pen­der

gast paused to ex­am­ine the hill­side above them.

D’Agos­ta felt his heart was go­ing to ex­plode. The mi­crowave de­vice was a dead weight

across his shoul­der. Star­ing down the ridge­line, gasp­ing for breath, he caught a brief glimpse

of sev­er­al of the dogs be­low, run­ning, bay­ing. Their line was tight­en­ing. He could now make

out the dis­tant whistling and shout­ing of the han­dlers.

Pen­der­gast was star­ing in­tent­ly up­slope, where the couloir nar­rowed to­ward the sum­mit. “I

see a glint of steel.”

“Men?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded. “Have you ev­er hunt­ed boar?”

“No.”

“That’s pre­cise­ly how we’re be­ing hunt­ed. Like boar. Up there, where that draw nar­rows,

will be the hunters. Per­haps a dozen, maybe more, ar­ranged in blinds. Their field of fire will

com­plete­ly cov­er the up­per part of the ridge.” He nod­ded, al­most as if in ap­proval. “It’s a

stan­dard hunt. The dogs flush out the boar and drive them up a nar­row­ing val­ley to­ward a

ridge­line, where they are forced to break cov­er and are tak­en down by the hunters.” “So what do we do?”

“We don’t be­have like boar. In­stead of run­ning­away from the dogs, we head side­ways.” He turned and ran along the slope, at right an­gles to the fall line, fol­low­ing the rise and fall

of the to­pog­ra­phy. The bay­ing of the dogs was clos­er, their sounds echo­ing back among the

ris­es of land, mak­ing it ap­pear as if the an­imals were ap­proach­ing from all sides. The steep flank of the moun­tain lay per­haps a quar­ter mile in front of them. If they could

get over that, D’Agos­ta thought as they stum­bled for­ward, they could out­flank the dogs and

head down­hill again. But the for­est grew ev­er steep­er and denser, slow­ing them down. And

then, quite sud­den­ly, they reached the lip of a small but very steep ravine, a stream at its bot­tom plung­ing down over sharp boul­ders. On the oth­er side, per­haps twen­ty feet away, was a

cliff of wet, moss-​cov­ered rock.

It was im­pass­able.

Pen­der­gast turned back. The dogs seemed very close now. D’Agos­ta could even hear the

crack­ling of twigs, the break­ing of brush, the curs­es of the han­dlers.

“We can’t cross this ravine,” Pen­der­gast said. “That leaves on­ly one choice. We must go

up, try to creep through the line of hunters.”

Pen­der­gast pulled out the hand­gun he’d tak­en from the fall­en man, checked the

mag­azine. “Three rounds left,” he said. “Let’s go.”

They re­sumed their climb. It seemed in­cred­ible to D’Agos­ta that he could go any far­ther,

but adrenaline-​and the dread­ful bay­ing of the boar hounds-​kept him mov­ing. Af­ter a few min­utes, the for­est thinned and it grew brighter. They crouched, then crept for­ward slow­ly. Above, the for­est gave way com­plete­ly to mead­ows and brushy draws. D’Agos­ta caught his breath in dis­may. The draws were full of im­pen­etra­ble brush; the mead­ows were open and bare, dot­ted with iso­lat­ed copses of trees. The land rose an­oth­er quar­ter of a mile, hemmed be­tween the two ridges of rock, fi­nal­ly top­ping over a bar­ren sum­mit. It was like a

shoot­ing gallery.

Pen­der­gast ex­am­ined the sum­mit for at least a minute, de­spite the rapid­ly ap­proach­ing

dogs. Then he shook his head.

“It’s no good, Vin­cent. It’s sui­cide to go far­ther. There will be too many men up there, and

they’ve no doubt been hunt­ing boar in this val­ley all their lives. We’ll nev­er break through.” “Are you sure? Sure the men are up there, I mean?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded, look­ing back up the ridge. “I can see at least half a dozen from here.

It’s im­pos­si­ble to say how many oth­ers are hid­den be­hind the rock blinds.” He paused, as if

con­sid­er­ing. Then he spoke rapid­ly, al­most to him­self. “The ring is al­ready closed on ei­ther

side and above. And we can’t go down: we’ll nev­er pen­etrate the line of dogs.” “Are you pos­itive?”

“Not even a two-​hun­dred-​pound male boar, mov­ing through heavy brush at thir­ty miles an

hour, can get past those dogs. As soon as the boar hits the line, the dogs con­verge, and . “ He stopped. Then he looked at D’Agos­ta, eyes glit­ter­ing.

“Vin­cent, that’s it. There is a way out.Lis­ten to me . I will head di­rect­ly down­hill. When I hit

the line of dogs, their cry will bring the oth­ers, and they’ll bunch. Mean­while, you move a

cou­ple of hun­dred yards lat­er­al­ly, that way, quick as you can. Then go slow­ly down­hill.Slow­ly.

When you hear the cor­ner­ing cry of the dogs-​it’s an un­mis­tak­able sound-​you’ll know I’ve hit

the line and they’re bay­ing at me. The line will break as the dogs con­verge, andthat’s when

you can pass. Then, an­don­ly then. Is that clear?Lis­ten for the cor­ner­ing cry. When you break

through, head straight to the Greve road.”

“And you?”

Pen­der­gast held up the gun.

“With three shots? You’ll never do it.”

“There’s no oth­er way.”

“But where will I meet up with you? The Greve road?”

Pen­der­gast shook his head. “Don’t wait for me. Get the­colon­nel­lo and re­turn in full force

as soon as pos­si­ble.In full force. You un­der­stand? Take the ma­chine-​you’ll need it to con­vince him.”

“But . ” D’Agos­ta stopped. And then-​on­ly then-​did the full con­se­quences of Pen­der­gast’s in­ten­tions re­veal them­selves to him.

“The hell with that,” he said. “We go to­geth­er.”

The bay­ing grew clos­er.

“On­ly one of us can get through. There’s no oth­er way. Now,go! “

“I won’t. No way . I’mnot leav­ing you to the dogs . “

“Damny­ou, Vin­cent, youmust! ” And with­out an­oth­er word, Pen­der­gast turned his back and took off down­hill.

“No!” D’Agos­ta shout­ed.”Noooo-!”

But it was too late.

He felt par­alyzed, root­ed to the spot in dis­be­lief. Pen­der­gast’s thin black fig­ure was leap­ing like a cat down the hill, gun up­raised-​and then it van­ished in­to the trees.

There was noth­ing to do but fol­low the plan. Al­most robot­ical­ly, D’Agos­ta be­gan scram­bling along the hill, mov­ing lat­er­al­ly, un­til he had gone about three hun­dred yards. He turned, pre­pared to de­scend.

Then he stopped. Ahead, in a thick­ly wood­ed copse be­neath a spur of rock, stood a lone fig­ure. From any oth­er van­tage point, he would have been in­vis­ible be­low the out­crop­ping of rock. He stood very still, look­ing at D’Agos­ta.

Je­sus,D’Agos­ta thought.This ii­iit.

He reached for the mi­crowave de­vice, thought bet­ter of it. The man wasn’t armed; or, if he was, his weapon was out of sight. This sit­ua­tion was bet­ter han­dled with bare hands. He gath­ered him­self to leap for­ward.

But then he hes­itat­ed. Though the man was dressed in peas­ant garb, he seemed dif­fer­ent from the rest of Fos­co’s men. He was very tall and slen­der, per­haps four inch­es taller than Pen­der­gast, and he wore a close­ly trimmed beard. There was some­thing strange about his eyes. They were dif­fer­ent col­ors: the left was hazel, the right an in­tense blue.

Maybe he’s a lo­cal,D’Agos­ta thought.Or a poach­er, or some­thing. Great fuck­ing time to be out for a stroll.

Sud­den­ly, he be­came aware of the dogs again. They were still bay­ing: a reg­ular, mea­sured sound, as be­fore.

No more time to waste. The man had turned calm­ly away from him, un­in­ter­est­ed. D’Agos­ta be­gan de­scend­ing slow­ly, wait­ing for the change in the dogs’ cry. He glanced back once and saw the stranger, still mo­tion­less, look­ing in­tent­ly downs­lope.

D’Agos­ta turned back and con­tin­ued slow­ly and care­ful­ly down through the for­est.For­get him. The im­por­tant thing now was Pen­der­gast. He would es­cape. He had to, hehad to .

And then, sud­den­ly, off to his right and be­low, he heard a sin­gle dog bark­ing hys­ter­ical­ly, its voice sound­ing a much high­er, more ur­gent note than be­fore. He paused, lis­ten­ing. An­oth­er took up the cry, then a third. In a mo­ment, the whole line had tak­en it up. D’Agos­ta could hear them con­verg­ing on a sin­gle spot with a ba­bel of high-​pitched bark­ing. Then came the re­port of a gun, the shriek of a dog. The fren­zy in­creased in pitch. It was a ter­ri­fy­ing sound, in­ter­rupt­ed by a sec­ond shot, then a third. These were fol­lowed in turn by the low­er boom­boomof an old, heavy-​cal­iber car­bine. D’Agos­ta could see noth­ing through the dense brush, but he could hear what was hap­pen­ing all too clear­ly.

This was his chance. Hug­ging the ma­chine close to him, D’Agos­ta ran down­hill as hard and fast as he could, leap­ing, rip­ping through bram­bles, stum­bling, re­cov­er­ing, run­ning on and on. He broke through a small clear­ing, and there-​far off to his right now-​he caught one last glimpse of Pen­der­gast: a lone fig­ure in black, sur­round­ed by a boil­ing pack of dogs, a dozen or more men con­verg­ing from two sides and be­low, each with heavy ri­fles trained on him. The din was in­cred­ible, the fren­zied ring of dogs clos­ing in, the bold­er ones dash­ing for­ward, at­tempt­ing to tear out chunks of flesh.

D’Agos­ta kept run­ning, run­ning-​and then he was past the line, the dogs’ ter­ri­ble raven­ing cry now be­hind and above him. He kept on go­ing, the night­mar­ish shriek­ing of the dogs, the curs­ing and shout­ing of the han­dlers, ring­ing ev­er more faint­ly in his ears. The hunt was over, the quar­ry cor­nered-​on­ly it wasn’t a boar, it was a hu­man be­ing. Pen­der­gast. And he wasn’t go­ing to es­cape: not this time, he wasn’t.

{ 83 }

Buck sat on the cot in his cell at the Man­hat­tan De­ten­tion Cen­ter, lis­ten­ing and wait­ing. It was a mod­ern, ster­ile fa­cil­ity, all white walls and flu­ores­cent light­ing, the lights re­cessed be­hind caged glass. De­spite the fact that it was past mid­night, he could hear a lot of noise from the oth­er pris­on­ers, who were bang­ing on the bars, yelling, ar­gu­ing, de­mand­ing lawyers. Some were shout­ing in un­in­tel­li­gi­ble lan­guages that sound­ed harsh, al­most bar­barous.

He’d been pro­cessed, fin­ger­print­ed, pho­tographed, show­ered, giv­en a change of clothes. He’d been fed, giv­en a copy of theTimes , been of­fered a phone to call a lawyer-​and told ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing. It seemed he’d been in the cell for­ev­er. Ev­ery hour that passed turned the screw an­oth­er notch. When would it be­gin? Is this what Christ felt, wait­ing to be brought be­fore Pon­tius Pi­late? He would have pre­ferred al­most any­thing-​beat­ing, tor­ture, abuse-​to this in­ter­minable wait. And this en­vi­ron­ment was ster­ile, suf­fo­cat­ing. What was worse, he’d been giv­en a cell to him­self. His treat­ment was al­most cru­el in its cour­tesy. He won­dered how much longer he could stand these peo­ple com­ing and go­ing with his food: these peo­ple who nev­er an­swered his ques­tions, nev­er looked him in the eye, nev­er said a word.

He knelt to pray. When wouldit hap­pen? When would the walls shake, the voic­es sound on high, the ground open to swal­low the un­clean? When would the screams of the damned fill the air, the kings and princes run to hide among the rocks, the four horse­men of the Apoc­alypse ap­pear in the sky? He didn’t even have a win­dow to look out of, no way to see any­thing.

The sus­pense was lit­er­al­ly killing him.

Yet an­oth­er guard ap­peared: a large black man in a blue uni­form, car­ry­ing a tray.

“What’s this?” Buck asked, look­ing up.

No an­swer. The man opened the slid­ing tray in the bars, set it down, slid it in, shut the slot, turned, and walked away.

“What’s hap­pen­ing out there?” Buck cried. “What’s-?”

But the or­der­ly had dis­ap­peared.

Buck rose and sat down again on the bunk. He looked at the food: a bagel with cream cheese and jel­ly; a chick­en breast sit­ting in some con­gealed gravy; some gray­ish green beans and car­rots; a dol­lop of hard­en­ing mashed pota­toes. The sheer ba­nal­ity of it made him sick.

Now, above the usu­al prison sounds, he heard some­thing else: voic­es, a clang, a sud­den burst of shout­ing from the oth­er pris­on­ers. Buck stood up.

Was it start­ing? Was it start­ing at last?

Four po­lice of­fi­cers ap­peared down the hall, heav­ily armed, bil­ly clubs swing­ing from their hips, swag­ger­ing in for­ma­tion. For him: they were com­ing­for him . He felt a tin­gle of an­tic­ipa­tion. Some­thing would hap­pen now. It might be very hard. It would no doubt test him to the ut­most. But what­ev­er it was, he would ac­cept it. It was part of God’s great plan.

They halt­ed out­side his cell. He stared back at them, wait­ing. One stepped for­ward and read from a card clipped to a green fold­er.

“Wayne Paul Buck?”

He nod­ded, stiff­en­ing.

“You’re to come with us.”

“I’m ready,” he said, de­fi­ant­ly but with qui­et dig­ni­ty.

The man un­locked the cell. The oth­ers stood back, guns at the ready.

“Step out, please. Turn around and place your hands be­hind your back.”

He did as he was told. It was go­ing to be bad, very bad: he could feel it. The cold steel of the cuffs went around his wrists, and there was a click: a por­tent of things to come. “This way, sir.”

Sir.The mock­ing was be­gin­ning.

They marched him silent­ly down the hall to an el­eva­tor, rose a few floors, then down an­oth­er ster­ile cor­ri­dor to a gray met­al door. They knocked.

“Come in,” said a fem­inine voice.

The door opened, and Buck found him­self in a small of­fice with a met­al desk, a sin­gle win­dow look­ing out over the nightscape of low­er Man­hat­tan. Sit­ting at the desk wasthat one, the fe­male cop who had led the cen­tu­ri­ons in to ar­rest him.

He stood proud­ly be­fore her, un­bowed. She was his Pon­tius Pi­late.

She ac­cept­ed the fold­er from the lead cop. “Have you had ac­cess to a lawyer?” she asked.

“I don’t need a lawyer. God is my ad­vo­cate.” He no­ticed, for the first time, how pret­ty she was-​and how young. She had a dis­creet ban­dage above her ear, where she had been hit with the rock. He had saved her from death.

The dev­il has many faces.

“As you wish.” She rose, pulled her jack­et off a hook, slid in­to it, then nod­ded to the po­lice­men. “Is the mar­shal ready?”

“Yes, Cap­tain.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“Where?” Buck asked.

Her on­ly an­swer was to lead the way down the hall. They took an­oth­er el­eva­tor down and out through a maze of cor­ri­dors in­to the yard, where an un­marked po­lice car sat, idling, gleam­ing be­neath a dozen sodi­um lamps. A uni­formed cop was be­hind the wheel. A small, heavy­set man in gray polyester stood be­side the pas­sen­ger door, hands clasped be­fore him.

“You can un­cuff him,” Hay­ward said to the cops. “Put him in the back, please.”

They un­cuffed him, opened the door, eased him in. Mean­while, Hay­ward was talk­ing to the man in the suit, giv­ing him the green fold­er and a clip­board. He signed the clip­board, hand­ed it back to her, got in be­side the driv­er, and slammed the door.

Now Hay­ward leaned in at the rear win­dow. “You’re prob­ably won­der­ing what’s go­ing to hap­pen to you, Mr. Buck.”

Buck felt a rush of emo­tion. This was it: he was be­ing led away, tak­en to meet his end, his supreme mo­ment. He was ready.

“This gen­tle­man is a U.S. mar­shal, who is go­ing to es­cort you by plane back to Bro­ken Ar­row, Ok­la­homa, where you are want­ed for pa­role vi­ola­tion.”

Buck sat there, stunned. This couldn’t be. More mock­ery. It was a trick, a ruse. “Did you hear me?”

Buck did not ac­knowl­edge. Ithad to be a trick.

“The D.A. de­cid­ed not to file any charges against you here in New York-​too much trou­ble. And to tell you the truth, you didn’t re­al­ly do any­thing all that wrong, out­side of ex­er­cis­ing your right of free speech in a rather mis­guid­ed way. We were lucky, avoid­ed a ri­ot, man­aged to dis­perse the crowd peace­ful­ly once you left. Ev­ery­one went home and the area’s now fenced. Soon the Parks De­part­ment will be giv­ing it a thor­ough clean­ing and re­seed­ing, which it need­ed any­way. So, you see, no re­al harm was done, and we felt it bet­ter to let the whole in­ci­dent die a qui­et death and be for­got­ten.”

Buck lis­tened, hard­ly able to be­lieve his ears.

“And what about me?” he fi­nal­ly man­aged to say.

“Like I said, we’re ship­ping you back to Ok­la­homa, where there’s a pa­role of­fi­cer re­al­ly anx­ious to talk to you. We don’t want you. They had a pri­or and want­ed you back. Nice end­ing all around.”

She smiled, laid her hand on the side of the car. “Mr. Buck? Are you all right?”

He didn’t an­swer. Hewasn’t all right. He felt sick. This wasn’t what was sup­posed to hap­pen. It was a trick, a vi­cious trick.

She leaned in just a lit­tle far­ther. “Mr. Buck? If you don’t mind, there’s some­thing per­son­al I’d like to say to you.”

He stared at her.

“First of all, there’s on­ly one Je­sus and you aren’t Him. An­oth­er thing: I’m a Chris­tian, and I try to be a good one, al­though I may not al­ways suc­ceed. You had no right to stand there when I was at the mer­cy of that crowd, point your fin­ger at me, and pass judg­ment. You should take a good look at that pas­sage in the Gospel of Matthew:Judge not, that ye be not judged . Thou hyp­ocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clear­ly to cast out the mote out of thy broth­er’s eye. “

She paused. “I al­ways liked the King James Ver­sion the best. Now, lis­ten. You wor­ry abouty­our­self from now on, be­ing a good cit­izen, keep­ing out of trou­ble, and obey­ing the law.”

“But . You don’t re­al­ize . It’s go­ing to hap­pen. I warn you, it’s com­ing.” Buck could bare­ly ar­tic­ulate the words.

“If there’s a Sec­ond Com­ing in the works, you sure as heck won’t get ad­vance no­tice-​that much Ido know.”

With that, she smiled, pat­ted the side of the car, and said, “Farewell, Mr. Buck. Keep your nose clean.”

{ 84 }

In the el­egant­ly ap­point­ed din­ing room with­in the main massin­gof the Castel­lo Fos­co, the count wait­ed, quite pa­tient­ly, for his din­ner. The walls of the fif­teenth-​cen­tu­ry vil­la were ex­treme­ly thick, and there was no sound at all save the faint me­chan­ical whirring of Bu­cephalus from a white T-​stand near­by, ap­ply­ing his ar­ti­fi­cial beak to an ar­ti­fi­cial nut. The state­ly win­dows of the room looked out over a spec­tac­ular land­scape: the hills of Chi­anti, the deep val­ley of the Greve. But Fos­co was con­tent to sit in his heavy oak chair at one end of the long ta­ble, re­view­ing-​with de­li­cious tran­quil­li­ty-​the events of the day.

His rever­ie was bro­ken by the shuf­fle of feet in the pas­sage­way. A mo­ment lat­er his cook, As­sun­ta, ap­peared, bear­ing a large serv­ing tray. Plac­ing it at the far end of the ta­ble, she pre­sent­ed the dish­es to him one by one; a sim­ple­mal­tagliati ai porci­ni ; ox­tail, servedal­la vac­ci­nara ;fe­ga­tin­igrilled over the fire; acon­torno of fen­nel braised in olive oil. It was the sim­ple, home­ly fare his cook ex­celled at and Fos­co pre­ferred while in the coun­try. And if As­sun­ta’s pre­sen­ta­tion lacked the pol­ish and sub­tle­ty of Pin­ketts-​that, alas, could not be helped.

He thanked her, pour­ing him­self a glass of the es­tate’s ex­cep­tion­al Chi­anti Clas­si­co as she left the room. And then he ap­plied him­self to his din­ner with rel­ish. Al­though he felt fam­ished, he ate slow­ly, sa­vor­ing ev­ery bite, ev­ery mouth­ful of wine.

At last, meal com­plete, he rang a small sil­ver bell that lay near his right hand. As­sun­ta reap­peared.

“Gra­zie,”he said, dab­bing the cor­ners of his mouth with a huge linen nap­kin.

As­sun­ta curt­sied a lit­tle awk­ward­ly.

The count rose. “Once you have cleared away, you may take a few days off.”

The cook glanced at him in­quir­ing­ly with­out rais­ing her head.

“Per fa­vore, sig­no­ra.It has been months since you vis­it­ed your son in Pon­tremoli.”

The curt­sy deep­ened.”Mille gra­zie.”

“Prego. Buona sera.”And the count turned light­ly on his heel and left the din­ing room.

Once the cook had de­part­ed, the cas­tle would be emp­ty of ser­vants. His men had done their work and de­part­ed. Even the groundskeep­ers had been giv­en a few days’ ab­sence. On­ly Giuseppe, the an­cient dog­mas­ter, re­mained on the es­tate: as it hap­pened, he could not be spared.

It was not that Fos­co dis­trust­ed his re­tain­ers: they all had an­cient ties to his fam­ily, some go­ing back as far as eight hun­dred years, and their loy­al­ty was with­out ques­tion. It was sim­ply that he want­ed to fin­ish this busi­ness undis­turbed.

He moved slow­ly and pur­pose­ful­ly through the huge rooms of the cas­tle: the­sa­lone ; the hall of por­traits; the hall of ar­mor. His stroll took him back through time: first, through the old­er, thir­teenth-​cen­tu­ry ad­di­tions, then in­to still old­er cham­bers, built half a mil­len­ni­um ear­li­er. Here there was no elec­tric­ity, no mod­ern con­ve­niences such as plumb­ing or cen­tral heat­ing. The war­ren of small, win­dow­less rooms grew dark and op­pres­sive, and Fos­co stopped to pull a torch from a wall sconce and light it. Turn­ing to an an­cient work­table near­by, he picked up some­thing else and tucked it in­to his waist­coat. Then he took a side pas­sage and con­tin­ued on and down: down in­to a sub­ter­ranean war­ren of tun­nels cut in­to the liv­ing rock.

Many of the ex­ten­sive base­ments of the Castel­lo Fos­co were tak­en up with the pro­duc­tion of the es­tate. A great many rooms were de­vot­ed to wine­mak­ing: filled with bot­tling ma­chin­ery and fer­men­ta­tion vats, or with count­less small bar­rels of French oak. Oth­ers were giv­en over to the ag­ing of boar hams: deep, cool spaces from whose ceil­ings hung count­less hams, still cov­ered in coarse fur. Still oth­ers were used for stor­ing olive oil or mak­ing­bal­sam­ico . But here-​far be­neath the bulk of the cas­tle’s stronghold-​there were no such large and well­ven­ti­lat­ed spaces. Nar­row vaults dug deeply in­to the beetling cliff face of lime­stone, and stairs corkscrewed down to­ward old wells and cham­bers un­used for half a mil­len­ni­um.

It was one of these stair­cas­es that Fos­co now de­scend­ed. The air was chill, the walls slick with damp. The count slowed fur­ther: the hand-​cut steps were slip­pery, and if he fell there would be no­body to hear his cries.

At last, the stair­case end­ed in a labyrinth of nar­row vaults, lined in an­cient brick. Nich­es were cut in­to the walls, and each con­tained a skele­ton: some long-​de­ceased fam­ily mem­ber or-​more like­ly, giv­en the sheer num­ber-​fall­en al­lies from wars fought a mil­len­ni­um ago. The air was bad here, and Fos­co’s torch gut­tered as he thread­ed his com­plex path.

As he pen­etrat­ed deep­er in­to the maze, the an­cient walls grew more un­even. He passed sev­er­al places where they had fall­en away from the rock, leav­ing heaps of scat­tered bricks. Skele­tons lay in thick pro­fu­sion, as if dumped and aban­doned where they lay, the bones chewed and scat­tered by rats.

The vault fi­nal­ly end­ed in a cul-​de-​sac. The dark­ness here was so thick, so com­plete, that Fos­co’s torch bare­ly pen­etrat­ed. He took an­oth­er step for­ward, waved the torch in a cau­tious arc in­to the last re­cess ahead of him.

The gut­ter­ing flame re­vealed the fig­ure of Agent Pen­der­gast, head lolled for­ward on­to his chest. His face was scratched and bleed­ing in a dozen places. His nor­mal­ly im­mac­ulate black suit was shred­ded and dirty, the jack­et ly­ing in a heap at his feet. His hand-​tai­lored En­glish shoes were cov­ered in thick Tus­can mud. He ap­peared un­con­scious and would have sunk to the ground be­fore Fos­co if not for the heavy chain bound tight­ly across his chest. This was fixed to an iron sta­ple set in­to the lime­stone wall, and was pad­locked to a sec­ond iron sta­ple on Pen­der­gast’s far side. His wrists hung limply at his sides, se­cured by ad­di­tion­al lengths of chain fixed to the rear wall of the niche.

Fos­co’s first sweep of the torch had been a care­ful one. He had learned, even now, not to un­der­es­ti­mate his op­po­nent. But Pen­der­gast was clear­ly im­mo­bi­lized, help­less. Em­bold­ened, the count brought the torch for­ward again.

As the light of the torch crossed his face, Pen­der­gast stirred. His eyes flut­tered open.

In­stant­ly, Fos­co stepped back. “Agent Pen­der­gast?” he crooned. “Aloy­sius? Are we awake?”

Pen­der­gast did not an­swer, but his eyes re­mained open. He moved his limbs weak­ly, flexed his man­acled hands.

“Please for­give me, but I’m afraid the re­straints are nec­es­sary. As you shall soon un­der­stand.”

When there was no re­sponse, the count con­tin­ued. “You no doubt feel weak, bare­ly able to stir. And you may be ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a cer­tain de­gree of am­ne­sia. Phe­no­bar­bi­tal does have that ef­fect at times: it seemed the eas­iest way to re­turn you to the cas­tle with­out un­due ex­er­tions. So al­low me to re­fresh your mem­ory. You and the good sergeant D’Agos­ta grew tired of my hos­pi­tal­ity and de­sired to leave. I, nat­ural­ly, took ob­jec­tion. There was a nasty strug­gle, I’m afraid, in which my beloved Pin­ketts per­ished. You had de­posit­ed some pa­per­work I was obliged to re­claim. Then came your es­cape at­tempt. Sergeant D’Agos­ta made good his es­cape, I fear. But the im­por­tant thing is thaty­ou’re back, my dear Agent Pen­der­gast: back safe­ly again in the bo­som of Cas­tel Fos­co! And I in­sist you re­main here, as my guest. No, re­al­ly-​I’ll hear no ob­jec­tion.”

Fos­co placed the torch care­ful­ly in­to an iron wall mount­ing. “I beg your par­don for the scant ac­com­mo­da­tion. Still, these cham­bers are not with­out their nat­ural charm. You’ll no­tice the white web­work that gleams from the cav­ern walls? It’s ni­tre, my dear Pen­der­gast-​you of all peo­ple should ap­pre­ci­ate the lit­er­ary al­lu­sion. And thus un­der­stand what is to fol­low.”

And to un­der­score this, the count slipped his hand in­to his waist­coat and slow­ly with­drew a trow­el.

Star­ing at it, Pen­der­gast’s dull, drug-​heavy eyes gleamed briefly.

“Aha!” the count cried, pleased. “It is­not lost on you! Let us then pro­ceed with all haste.” And turn­ing to one side, he swept away a heap of tum­bled bones, re­veal­ing a large quan­ti­ty of fresh­ly slaked mor­tar.

Us­ing the trow­el, he laid a thick line of mor­tar along the front lip of the re­cess. Then he moved to one of the piles of col­lapsed brick and, two at a time, brought the bricks back to the niche, lay­ing them care­ful­ly in a line atop the mor­tar. With­in a few min­utes, the first course of bricks was in place and Fos­co was trow­el­ing an­oth­er lay­er of mor­tar along its top.

“How won­der­ful these bricks are!” he said as he worked. “They are many cen­turies old, made from the very clay of the hill­side. See how mas­sive: none of your tri­fling En­glish bricks for Fos­co! I’ve called for a great deal of lime in the mor­tar-​near­ly two parts lime to each part sand-​but then I want your fi­nal habi­ta­tion to be as strong as pos­si­ble. I want it to last through the ages, my dear Pen­der­gast. I want it to last un­til the fi­nal trump is sound­ed!”

Pen­der­gast said noth­ing. But his drug-​cloud­ed eyes had cleared. They watched Fos­co work with an al­most fe­line sto­icism-​if, Fos­co re­flect­ed, sto­icism was the cor­rect word. Fin­ish­ing the sec­ond course of bricks, he paused to re­turn the gaze.

“I’ve been prepar­ing this for some time,” he said. “Quite some time, in fact. You see, ev­er since our first meet­ing-​at the memo­ri­al ser­vice for Jere­my Grove, when we had our lit­tle dis­agree­ment over the Ghirlandaio pan­el-​I re­al­ized you were the most formidable op­po­nent I had ev­er faced.”

He paused, wait­ing. But still Pen­der­gast said noth­ing, did not move ex­cept to blink his eye­lids. And so Fos­co re­turned to his work and-​with the en­er­gy of a sud­den surge of anger-​laid the third, fourth, and fifth course of bricks.

When he laid the last brick of the sixth course in place, he paused once more. The brief anger had passed and he was again him­self. The wall reached now to Pen­der­gast’s waist. Throw­ing back the tails of his coat, Fos­co perched dain­ti­ly on the old pile of bricks to rest. His gaze fell al­most kind­ly on the pris­on­er.

“You’ll note I’m lay­ing the bricks in Flem­ish bond, al­ter­nat­ing the head­ers with the stretch­ers,” he said. “Beau­ti­ful, is it not? I could have been a ma­son, per­haps, had I so cho­sen. Of course, build­ing such a wall is time-​con­sum­ing. Con­sid­er it my fi­nal gift. My­part­ing gift. You see, once the last brick is in place, it will not take long-​per­haps a day, per­haps two, de­pend­ing on how much air seeps through these an­cient walls. I am no sadist. Your death will not be un­du­ly pro­longed-​though I imag­ine slow suf­fo­ca­tion in the dark might not be quite as mer­ci­ful as one would hope. It can­not be helped.”

He sat for a mo­ment, catch­ing his breath. Then he went on, his voice now al­most med­ita­tive.

“Do not think, Sig­nor Pen­der­gast, I take this re­spon­si­bil­ity light­ly. I re­al­ize that by en­tomb­ing you here, I rob the world of a great in­tel­lect. It will be a duller place with­out you. How­ev­er, it will al­so be safer, for me and those like me: men and wom­en who would pre­fer to pur­sue their des­tinies un­fet­tered by laws de­vised by their in­fe­ri­ors.”

He glanced in­to the re­cess. With the wall half com­plete, the niche lay in deep­est shad­ow. On­ly the gaunt lines of Pen­der­gast’s blood­ied face re­flect­ed in the torch­light.

The count looked at him quizzi­cal­ly. “Still noth­ing? Very well: let us con­tin­ue.” And he pulled him­self to his feet.

The next three tiers were laid in si­lence. Fi­nal­ly, as Fos­co put the last brick of the ninth course in po­si­tion and smoothed fresh mor­tar across its top, Pen­der­gast spoke. The wall had reached the lev­el of his pale eyes, and his voice echoed hol­low­ly in­side the new-​made vault. “You must not do this,” he said. His voice had none of its usu­al creamy, al­most lazy pre­ci­sion.

This, Fos­co knew, was a side ef­fect of the phe­no­bar­bi­tal. “But my dear Pen­der­gast, it is done!” He trow­eled off the mor­tar and re­turned to the brick pile.

The tenth course was half laid be­fore Pen­der­gast spoke once more. “There is some­thing I must do. Some­thing un­fin­ished, of great im­por­tance to the world. A mem­ber of my fam­ily is in a po­si­tion to do great harm. I must be al­lowed to stop him.”

Fos­co halt­ed, lis­ten­ing.

“Let me com­plete that task. Then I will re­turn to you. You . you may then dis­pose of me as you see fit. I give you my word as a gen­tle­man.”

Fos­co laughed. “Do you take me for a fool? I am to be­lieve you shall re­turn, will­ing­ly, like Reg­ulus to Carthage, to meet your end? Bah! Even if you do keep your word, when should I ex­pect you? Twen­ty or thir­ty years from now, when you have grown old and tired of life?”

No an­swer came from the dark­ness of the niche.

“But this task you men­tion. It in­trigues me. A fam­ily mem­ber, you say? Give me more de­tails.”

“Free me first.”

“That is im­pos­si­ble. But come-​I see we are sim­ply bandy­ing words. And I weary of this task.” And more quick­ly now, Fos­co fin­ished the tenth course and start­ed on the eleventh and last.

It was when on­ly a sin­gle stone re­mained to be fit­ted and mortared in­to the wall that Pen­der­gast spoke again. “Fos­co”-the voice was faint, sepul­chral, as if emerg­ing from the deep­est re­cess­es of a tomb-“I ask you, as a gen­tle­man and a hu­man be­ing. Do not place that brick.”

“Yes. It does seem a shame.” And Fos­co heft­ed the fi­nal brick in his hand. “But I’m afraid the time has come for us to part. I thank you for the plea­sure of your com­pa­ny these last few days. I say to you, no­tar­rived­er­la, bu­tad­dio. ” And he forced the last stone in­to place.

As he smoothed away the last bit of ex­cess mor­tar, Fos­co heard-​or thought he heard-​a sound from the tomb with­in. A low moan, or ex­ha­la­tion of breath. Or was it just the wind, cry­ing through the an­cient cat­acombs? He pressed his head to the fresh­ly laid wall and lis­tened in­tent­ly.

But there was noth­ing fur­ther.

Fos­co stepped back, kicked a pile of scat­tered bones in­to po­si­tion be­fore the wall, then grabbed the torch and made his way hasti­ly through the rat’s nest of tun­nels to the an­cient stair­well. Reach­ing it, he be­gan to climb-​a dozen steps, two dozen, three-​head­ing for the sur­face and the warm evening sun­light, leav­ing the rest­less nether­world of shad­ows far be­hind. { 85 }

D’Agos­ta sat silent­ly in the back­seat of the car as it moved up­the wind­ing moun­tain road. The coun­try­side was as beau­ti­ful as it had been two days be­fore: the hills clad in au­tumn rai­ment, shin­ing rust and gold un­der the ear­ly morn­ing sun. D’Agos­ta bare­ly no­ticed. He was star­ing up at the cru­el-​look­ing keep of Cas­tel Fos­co, just now ris­ing in­to view above its spar of gray rock. Mere­ly see­ing the cas­tle again brought a chill not even the con­voy of po­lice cars could al­lay.

He shift­ed the weight of the can­vas bag from one leg to the oth­er. In­side was Fos­co’s di­abol­ical weapon. The chill evap­orat­ed be­fore the fu­ri­ous, care­ful­ly con­trolled anger that burned with­in him. D’Agos­ta tried to chan­nel that anger: he’d need it for the en­counter to come. The mad­den­ing, ex­cru­ci­at­ing twelve-​hour de­lay was fi­nal­ly over. The pa­per­work, the war­rant, had fi­nal­ly come through; the bu­reau­cra­cy had been sat­is­fied. Now he was back here, on the en­emy’s home ground. He had to stay calm, stay in con­trol. He knew he had on­ly one shot to save Pen­der­gast-​if in­deed Pen­der­gast was still alive-​and he wasn’t go­ing to blow it by los­ing his cool.

Colon­nel­lo Es­pos­ito, sit­ting be­side him, took a last deep drag on his cigarette, then ground it out in an ash­tray. He’d been qui­et dur­ing the drive, mov­ing on­ly oc­ca­sion­al­ly to light a new cigarette. Now he, too, glanced out the win­dow.

“A most formidable res­idence,” he said.

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

Es­pos­ito pulled out a fresh cigarette, re­con­sid­ered, re­placed it, and turned to D’Agos­ta. “This Fos­co you de­scribe seems a shrewd char­ac­ter. It will be nec­es­sary to catch him red­hand­ed, se­cure the ev­idence our­selves. We will there­fore go in fast.”

“Yes. Good.”

Es­pos­ito ran a hand over his brushed-​back gray hair. “He is al­so clear­ly one who leaves noth­ing to chance. I wor­ry that Pen­der­gast may be . ” His voice trailed off.

“If we hadn’t wait­ed twelve hours-“

The­colon­nel­lo shook his head. “One can­not change the way things are ” He fell silent while the cars passed the cas­tle’s ru­ined out­er gate and made their way along the av­enue of cy­press trees. Then he stirred again. “One re­quest, Sergeant.”

“What?”

“Let me do the talk­ing, if you please. I will make sure the con­ver­sa­tion is in En­glish. Fos­co speaks En­glish well?”

“Per­fect­ly.”

D’Agos­ta was more ex­haust­ed than he ev­er re­mem­bered be­ing. Ev­ery limb ached, and his skin was scratched and torn in count­less places. On­ly his iron re­solve to res­cue Pen­der­gast, his fear about what his friend might be un­der­go­ing at the hands of the count, kept him go­ing.Maybe he’s still alive, he thought.Back in the same cell. Of course he is. He must be.

D’Agos­ta prayed briefly, fer­vent­ly, that this would prove the case. The al­ter­na­tive was too dread­ful to con­tem­plate.

The cars pulled in­to the grav­eled park­ing area just out­side the in­ner wall. Here, in the deep shad­ow of the stone but­tress­es, it was chilly. D’Agos­ta opened the car door and stepped out briskly de­spite his aches and pains.

“The Fi­at,” he said. “Our rent­ed car. It’s gone.”

“What mod­el?” Es­pos­ito asked.

“A Sty­lo, black. Li­cense IGP 223.”

Es­pos­ito turned to one of his men and barked an or­der.

The cas­tle seemed de­sert­ed, al­most preter­nat­ural­ly qui­et. The­colon­nel­lo nod­ded to his men, then led the way quick­ly up the stone steps to the band­ed doors.

This time, the doors to the in­ner ward did not open by them­selves. In fact, it took five min­utes-​and in­creas­ing­ly ag­itat­ed raps by the­colon­nel­lo -be­fore they groaned slow­ly open. There, on the far side, stood Fos­co. His gaze trav­eled over the knot of po­lice­men, com­ing to rest at last on D’Agos­ta. He smiled.

“Why, my heav­ens! It’s Sergeant D’Agos­ta. How are you find­ing Italy?”

D’Agos­ta did not re­ply. Just the sight of the grotesque count brought on a rush of loathing.Keep it cool, he re­mind­ed him­self.

Fos­co was puff­ing just a bit but oth­er­wise seemed his jovial, un­flap­pable self. “Please ex­cuse my de­lay in re­spond­ing. I wasn’t ex­pect­ing any com­pa­ny to­day.” Then he turned to­ward the­colon­nel­lo . “But we haven’t yet been in­tro­duced. I am Fos­co.”

“I am Colon­nel­lo Orazio Es­pos­ito of the Nu­cleo In­ves­tiga­ti­vo,” Es­pos­ito said brusque­ly. “We have a war­rant to search these premis­es. I would ask you to step aside, sir.”

“A war­rant!” Sur­prise bloomed on the count’s face. “What’s it about?”

Es­pos­ito ig­nored him, walk­ing past, bark­ing or­ders to his men. He turned to the count. “My men will need ac­cess to all parts of the cas­tle.”

“Of course!” The count has­tened across the lawn of the in­ner ward, past the purl­ing foun­tain, and in­to the fast­ness of the dark and brood­ing keep, putting on a re­mark­able front of sur­prise and alarm, min­gled with sub­servient co­op­er­ation.

D’Agos­ta main­tained a stony si­lence, keep­ing his can­vas bag well away from Fos­co. He no­ticed that, this time, none of the mas­sive doors scraped closed be­hind them.

The count led the way down the cen­tral gallery and in­to a room D’Agos­ta hadn’t seen be­fore: a large and el­egant li­brary, its walls cov­ered with an­cient vol­umes, leather spines stamped and gild­ed. A fire crack­led mer­ri­ly on the hearth.

“Please, gen­tle­men,” Fos­co said, ush­er­ing them in. “Have a seat. Can I of­fer you sher­ry? A cigar?”

“I’m afraid there is no time for pleas­antries,” Es­pos­ito said. He reached in­to his pock­et, with­drew a sheet of pa­per bear­ing of­fi­cial stamps, laid it on the ta­ble. “Here is the war­rant. We will search the base­ments and cel­lars first, then work our way up.”

The count had tak­en a cigar from a carved wood­en box. “Of course I shall co­op­er­ate, but I’d like to know what it’s about.”

“Sergeant D’Agos­ta has lev­eled very grave charges against you.”

“Again­stme ?” the count said. He glanced at D’Agos­ta. “What­ev­er are you talk­ing about?”

“Kid­nap­ping, at­tempt­ed mur­der-​and the ac­cu­sa­tion that you are still hold­ing Pen­der­gast.”

The sur­prise on Fos­co’s face deep­ened. “But this-​this is out­ra­geous!” He low­ered the cigar, look­ing from D’Agos­ta to Es­pos­ito and back again. “Sergeant, is this true? Do you make such ac­cu­sa­tions?”

“Let’s go,” said D’Agos­ta im­pa­tient­ly. Al­though he kept his tone lev­el, he seethed in­ward­ly at the mas­ter­ful act­ing. The count tru­ly looked like a man strug­gling with shock and dis­be­lief.

“Well. If that is the case, who am I to protest?” Fos­co ex­am­ined the cigar, snipped off the end with a tiny sil­ver clip­per, lit it. “But you may put away that war­rant, Of­fi­cer. I give you and your men free run of the cas­tle. Ev­ery door is open to you. Search where you will. Please al­low me to as­sist you in any way I can.”

Es­pos­ito turned briskly to some of the cara­binieri, speak­ing in Ital­ian. The men salut­ed, fanned out, dis­ap­peared.

Es­pos­ito turned back to D’Agos­ta. “Sergeant, per­haps you could take us to the room where you were in­car­cer­at­ed for the night. Count, you will ac­com­pa­ny us.”

“I would in­sist up­on it. The Fos­cos are an an­cient and no­ble fam­ily, and we val­ue our hon­or above all else. These charges must be ad­dressed, and set­tled, im­me­di­ate­ly.” He glanced back at D’Agos­ta with just a trace of in­dig­na­tion.

D’Agos­ta led the way down the gallery, through the draw­ing room, and in­to the long pro­ces­sion of el­egant cham­bers. The count fol­lowed, walk­ing in his pe­cu­liar light-​foot­ed way, point­ing out var­ious works of art and sights of in­ter­est for the­colon­nel­lo , who ig­nored him. The re­main­ing two cara­binieri brought up the rear.

Then came a point where D’Agos­ta lost his way. He looked around, stepped for­ward, stopped again. There had been a door in this stuc­coed wall-​hadn’t there?

“Sergeant?” Es­pos­ito said.

“Per­haps I could be of as­sis­tance?” Fos­co vol­un­teered.

D’Agos­ta glanced through one door­way, back­tracked, looked through an­oth­er. It had been less than twen­ty-​four hours; he couldn’t have for­got­ten. Could he? He ad­vanced, touched the stuc­co, but it was old, crum­bling, any­thing but fresh.

“The sergeant said the apart­ment where he was held pris­on­er was in the tow­er it­self,” the­colon­nel­lo told Fos­co.

The count cast a puz­zled gaze on the­colon­nel­lo , turned to D’Agos­ta. “There is on­ly one apart­ment in the tow­er, but it is not this way.”

“Take us to it.”

The count led them quick­ly through a se­ries of pas­sages and low, dark stone rooms, bar­ren of fur­nish­ings.

“This is the old­est part of the cas­tle,” Fos­co said. “Dat­ing back to the ninth cen­tu­ry. It’s rather cold and de­press­ing. There are no mod­ern ameni­ties like elec­tric­ity or plumb­ing. I nev­er come here my­self.”

With­in a minute, they had reached the heavy iron door of the keep. Fos­co opened it with dif­fi­cul­ty, the lock rusty. The door creaked open, Fos­co brush­ing away cob­webs. He led the way up the stair­case be­yond, the echo of feet fill­ing the stony spaces. Reach­ing the land­ing, D’Agos­ta paused be­fore the door of their apart­ment. It was ajar.

“Is this it?” Es­pos­ito asked.

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

Es­pos­ito beck­oned to his men, who came for­ward, opened the door, and stepped in­side. Es­pos­ito fol­lowed, D’Agos­ta on his heels.

The snug apart­ment where he’d spent the night be­fore last was gone. The rugs, book­shelves, and fur­ni­ture were nowhere to be seen. Lights, plumb­ing fix­tures-​ev­ery­thing that had been retrofitted in­to the space was now gone. In­stead, he gazed in­to a chill, dark vault filled with de­cay­ing lum­ber, bro­ken stone carv­ings, molder­ing stacks of heavy draperies. A mas­sive iron chan­de­lier, twist­ed and rust­ing, lay on the floor. Ev­ery­thing was coat­ed in a thick man­tle of dust. It looked like a stor­age area for the cast-​off de­tri­tus of past cen­turies.

“Sergeant-​are you sure this is the room?”

D’Agos­ta’s as­ton­ish­ment gave way to puz­zle­ment, then anger. “Yes, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t like this at all. There were bed­rooms, a bath­room-“

The room fell silent.

So that’s the game,D’Agos­ta thought. “The count has used the twelve hours it took to get the war­rant to fix things. To dis­guise ev­ery­thing.”

Es­pos­ito ran his fin­ger over the dust on an old, wormy ta­ble, rubbed it be­tween thumb and fin­ger, then looked at D’Agos­ta rather in­tent­ly. He turned to the count. “Are there any oth­er apart­ments in the tow­er?”

“As you can see, this oc­cu­pies the en­tire up­per floor.”

Es­pos­ito looked back at D’Agos­ta. “All right. What next?”

“We went down to din­ner.” D’Agos­ta was care­ful to keep his voice calm. “In the main din­ing room. Fos­co said we’d nev­er leave the cas­tle alive. There was an ex­change of gun­fire. I killed his manser­vant.”

The count’s eye­brows shot up again. “Pin­ketts?”

With­in five min­utes, they were step­ping in­to the cheery din­ingsa­lot­to . But it was as D’Agos­ta had be­gun to fear: there were no blood­stains, no sign of any strug­gle. The re­mains of a sin­gle break­fast lay on the ta­ble.

“You’ll ex­cuse me, I hope,” Fos­co said, ges­tur­ing to­ward the half-​eat­en meal. “You caught me break­fast­ing. As I said, I was not ex­pect­ing vis­itors. And I gave the staff a few days off.”

Es­pos­ito was strolling around the room, hands clasped be­hind his back, ex­am­in­ing the walls, search­ing for chips or holes that would in­di­cate bul­let marks. He asked, “Sergeant, how many rounds were ex­changed?”

D’Agos­ta thought a mo­ment. “Four. Three went in­to Pin­ketts. The oth­er should be some­where on the wall above the fire­place. If it hasn’t been plas­tered over.”

But of course there was no mark: none at all.

Es­pos­ito turned to­ward the count. “This Pin­ketts, may we meet him?”

“He’s back in Eng­land for a few weeks. Left the day be­fore yes­ter­day-​a death in the fam­ily, I un­der­stand. I would be glad to give you his ad­dress and tele­phone num­ber in Dorset.”

Es­pos­ito nod­ded. “Lat­er.”

An­oth­er si­lence fell over the room.

He’s not En­glish!D’Agos­ta al­most shout­ed.And his name’s not Pin­ketts! But he knew there was no point in ar­gu­ing about it now. Fos­co had clear­ly pre­pared things all too well. And he would not al­low him­self to rise to the bait-​not in front of the­colon­nel­lo .

Find Pen­der­gast. That’s the most im­por­tant thing.

Two of the cara­binieri re­turned, speak­ing rapid­ly in Ital­ian to the­colon­nel­lo . Es­pos­ito turned to D’Agos­ta. “My men found no sign of the car in the garages or any­where else on the grounds.”

“He’s ob­vi­ous­ly dis­posed of it.”

Es­pos­ito nod­ded thought­ful­ly. “What was the rental com­pa­ny?”

“Eu­ro­car.”

Es­pos­ito turned back to his men, spoke in Ital­ian. The men nod­ded and left.

“Af­ter Fos­co re­turned from Flo­rence, we were locked in an old store­room,” D’Agos­ta said, strug­gling against a grow­ing sense of pan­ic. “In the cel­lars. I can lead you there. The stair­way’s just off the pantry.”

“Please.” And Es­pos­ito ges­tured for him to pro­ceed.

D’Agos­ta led the group out of the din­ing room, through the large and emp­ty kitchen, and in­to the pantry be­yond. The stair­case lead­ing down to the stor­age cel­lars was now cov­ered by a mas­sive ar­moire, cop­per pots and cook­ware hang­ing from its an­cient brass hooks.

Bin­go!D’Agos­ta thought.

“The stair­way’s be­hind there,” he said. “He’s cov­ered it up with that ar­moire.”

Es­pos­ito nod­ded to his two men, who moved it with great dif­fi­cul­ty. D’Agos­ta felt him­self go cold. The stair­way was gone. In its place was bare wall, an­cient and dusty as the rest of the room.

“Feel it!” he said, un­able now to keep the frus­tra­tion and mount­ing hor­ror from his voice. “He’s bricked it in! The mor­tar’s got to be still wet!”

The­colon­nel­lo stepped for­ward, re­moved a penknife from his pock­et, and stabbed its point in­to the mor­tar. Small, dried pieces crum­bled away in a train of dust. He dug it in far­ther, prob­ing. Then he turned and, with­out a word, hand­ed the knife to D’Agos­ta.

D’Agos­ta knelt, felt along the bot­tom. The wall looked old, dusty-​there were even what ap­peared to be cob­webs ex­posed by the mov­ing of the ar­moire. He stepped back, looked around the room. No mis­take: this was the right place.

“The count has cov­ered it up. Dis­guised it some­how.There was a door here. “

An­oth­er, longer, si­lence fell. Es­pos­ito’s eyes met D’Agos­ta’s, then looked away.

See­ing the spec­ula­tive look, D’Agos­ta felt a re­newed sense of steely de­ter­mi­na­tion set­tle over him. “Let’s join your men. Search the whole god­damned place.”

An hour lat­er, D’Agos­ta found him­self back in the cen­tral gallery. They had ex­plored more pas­sages, sa­lons, rooms, vaults, base­ments, and tun­nels than he’d ev­er imag­ined one cas­tle could hold. The cas­tle was so large, so sprawl­ing, it was im­pos­si­ble to know whether or not they had cov­ered all its drafty spaces and dank stair­wells. All his mus­cles quiv­ered with weari­ness. The can­vas bag with the mi­crowave weapon hung like a dead weight by his side.

As the search pro­gressed, Es­pos­ito had grown in­creas­ing­ly qui­et. Through­out it all, Fos­co had stayed by their side, so­lic­itous, pa­tient, un­lock­ing ev­ery door, even sug­gest­ing new routes of in­quiry from time to time.

Now, the count cleared his throat. “Could I sug­gest we re­turn to my li­brary? We can talk more com­fort­ably there.”

As they seat­ed them­selves around the fire, one of the cara­binieri came in and whis­pered in Es­pos­ito’s ear. The­colon­nel­lo nod­ded, then dis­missed the man with a ges­ture, his ex­pres­sion un­read­able. Fos­co once again of­fered him a cigar, and this time Es­pos­ito ac­cept­ed. D’Agos­ta watched all this with a sense of grow­ing dis­be­lief. He felt rage tak­ing over now, al­most be­yond his abil­ity to con­trol, com­bined with a sense of hor­ror and grief. It was un­re­al, a night­mare.

Es­pos­ito spoke at last, his voice neu­tral. “My men looked in­to the Sty­lo. It was re­turned to Eu­ro­car at 13:00 yes­ter­day. The chit was signed by A. X. L. Pen­der­gast, paid for with an Amer­ican Ex­press card be­long­ing to Pen­der­gast. A Spe­cial Agent A. X. L. Pen­der­gast had a reser­va­tion on a flight to Paler­mo at 14:30 from Firen­ze Pere­to­la. We’re still try­ing to find out whether he was, in fact, on that flight. The air­lines these days are so dif­fi­cult . “

“Of cour­seit will ap­pear he was on the flight! Can’t you see what Fos­co’s game is?”

“Sergeant-“

“It’s all­bull­shit! ” D’Agos­ta said, ris­ing from his chair. “Or­ches­trat­ed by Fos­co! Just like he walled up the pas­sage­way, dis­guised the apart­ment. Just like he’s plannede­very fuck­ing thing! “

“Sergeant, please,” Es­pos­ito said qui­et­ly. “Con­trol your­self “

“You said your­self we were deal­ing with a de­ter­mined man!”

“Sergeant.” The voice was firmer.

D’Agos­ta stood, al­most out of his mind with rage, frus­tra­tion, and grief. Fos­co had Pen­der­gast’s cred­it card. What did it mean? And now the bas­tard was slip­ping through his fin­gers. Pen­der­gast was gone, van­ished. He made an al­most su­per­hu­man strug­gle at con­trol-​if he lost it, he would nev­er have an­oth­er chance. He had to find a chink in the count’s ar­mor. “He’s not in the cas­tle, then. They’ve tak­en him in­to the woods, up on the moun­tain. We’ve got to search the area “

Es­pos­ito puffed thought­ful­ly on the cigar, wait­ing for D’Agos­ta to fin­ish. Then he spoke. “Sergeant D’Agos­ta. In your sto­ry, you claim the count killed four peo­ple to get back a vi­olin-“

“At least­four peo­ple. We’re just wast­ing time here! We have to-“

Es­pos­ito raised a hand for si­lence. “Ex­cuse me. You claim the count killed these men with that de­vice you’re car­ry­ing “

“Yes.” D’Agos­ta tried to con­trol his breath­ing.

“Why don’t you show it to the count?”

D’Agos­ta pulled the mi­crowave de­vice from the bag.

“My good­ness,” Fos­co said, star­ing with great in­ter­est. “What is that?”

“The sergeant tells us it is a mi­crowave weapon,” Es­pos­ito said. “De­signed by you, and used by you, to burn to death Mr. Locke Bullard, a peas­ant from Abetone, and two oth­er peo­ple back in the Unit­ed States.”

Fos­co looked first at the­colon­nel­lo , then at D’Agos­ta, as­ton­ish­ment and then-​pity?-on his face. “The sergeant says this?”

“Cor­rect.”

“A ma­chine, you say? That zaps peo­ple, turns them in­to smok­ing piles of ash? That I built?” He spread his hands, as­ton­ish­ment on his face. “I should like to see a demon­stra­tion “

“Sergeant, per­haps you’d care to demon­strate the de­vice for us and the count?”

D’Agos­ta looked down at the weapon, turned it over in his hands. Fos­co’s skep­ti­cal tone went un­re­fut­ed by the­colon­nel­lo , and no won­der: the de­vice looked al­most car­toon­ish, a Flash Gor­don con­fec­tion

“I don’t know how to use it,” D’Agos­ta said.

“Try,” said Es­pos­ito, an edge of sar­casm in his voice.

It oc­curred to D’Agos­ta that if he could get it work­ing, it might be his on­ly chance to turn the tide. It was his last chance.

He point­ed it to­ward the fire­place hearth, where-​as if placed as a de­lib­er­ate chal­lenge-​sat a fresh pump­kin. He tried to clear his mind, tried to re­mem­ber pre­cise­ly what Fos­co had done be­fore. He turned a knob, pulled the trig­ger.

Noth­ing hap­pened.

He spun more di­als, pressed a but­ton, aimed, pulled the trig­ger.

Still noth­ing.

For all he knew, it had been dam­aged dur­ing the es­cape, when he tossed it in­to the bush­es. He fid­dled with the di­als, pulling the trig­ger again and again, hop­ing for the low hum he’d heard dur­ing the demon­stra­tion. But the ma­chine re­mained silent, cold.

“I think we’ve seen enough,” said Es­pos­ito qui­et­ly.

Slow­ly, very slow­ly, D’Agos­ta re­placed it in the can­vas bag. He could hard­ly bring him­self to look at the­colon­nel­lo. The man was star­ing at him, his face a mask of skep­ti­cism. No, not just skep­ti­cism: pure dis­be­lief, anger-​and pity.

From over Es­pos­ito’s shoul­der, Fos­co al­so stared. Then-​very slow­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly-​Fos­co reached in­to his col­lar, drew out a chain with a medal­lion at the end, and draped it care­ful­ly over his shirt­front, pat­ting it fa­mil­iar­ly with a plump hand.

With a sud­den, burn­ing shock of recog­ni­tion, D’Agos­ta rec­og­nized the medal­lion: the lid­less eye over a phoenix ris­ing from the ash­es. Pen­der­gast’s own chain. Fos­co’s pri­vate mes­sage was all too ter­ri­bly clear.

“You bas­tard-!” And D’Agos­ta lunged for the count.

In a mo­ment, the cara­binieri leaped on D’Agos­ta and pulled him back, re­strain­ing him against a far wall of the li­brary. The­colon­nel­lo quick­ly placed him­self be­tween D’Agos­ta and Fos­co.

“The son of a bitch! That’s Pen­der­gast’s chain! There’s your proof!He killed Pen­der­gast and took it! “

“Are you all right?” Es­pos­ito asked the count, ig­nor­ing D’Agos­ta.

“Quite all right, thank you,” Fos­co said, sit­ting back and smooth­ing his ca­pa­cious front. “I was star­tled, that is all. To set­tle the ques­tion once and for all, so there can beno doubt -” He turned the disc over, and there, on the re­verse of the medal­lion, ev­ident­ly worn by time, was an in­tri­cate en­grav­ing of the count’s own crest.

Es­pos­ito looked at the crest, then turned to stare at D’Agos­ta, dark eyes glit­ter­ing. D’Agos­ta, clamped in the arms of six men, could bare­ly move. He tried to re­gain con­trol of him­self, his voice. The way the count had said­So there can be no doubt, with that pe­cu­liar em­pha­sis on the word­sno doubt . It was a mes­sage aimed di­rect­ly at D’Agos­ta It was a mes­sage that told him he was too late. Those twelve hours ma­neu­ver­ing for the war­rant had proved fa­tal. The des­per­ate hope D’Agos­ta had been fight­ing to hold on to-​that the count might have kept Pen­der­gast alive, a pris­on­er-​gut­tered and died. Pen­der­gast was dead.So there can be no doubt .

Es­pos­ito ex­tend­ed his hand to Fos­co.”Ab­bi­amo fini­to qui, Con­te. Chiedo scusa per il dis­tur­bo, e la ringrazio per la sua pazien­za con ques­ta fac­cen­da pi­ut­tosto spi­acev­ole.”

The count in­clined his head gra­cious­ly.”Niente dis­tur­bo, Colon­nel­lo. Prego.” He glanced in D’Agos­ta’s di­rec­tion.”Mi dispi­ace per lui.”

Es­pos­ito and Fos­co shook hands. “We’ll be go­ing now,” Es­pos­ito said. “There is no need to show us out.” And with this he bowed deeply to Fos­co and left the room, ig­nor­ing D’Agos­ta.

The cara­binieri hold­ing D’Agos­ta re­leased him. D’Agos­ta picked up the can­vas bag and head­ed for the door. A red mist hung be­fore his eyes In the door­way, he stopped to look back at Fos­co. “You’re a dead man,” he said, bare­ly man­ag­ing to speak. “You-“

But the words died in his throat as Fos­co swiveled to stare at him in turn, his large fea­tures and wet lips spread­ing in­to a hor­ri­ble grin It was like noth­ing D’Agos­ta had ev­er seen be­fore-​malev­olent, tri­umphant, a grotesque leer of ex­ul­ta­tion. If the count had spo­ken the words out loud, the mes­sage couldn’t have been clear­er.He had mur­dered Pen­der­gast.

And then the smile was gone, hid­den be­hind a cloud of cigar smoke.

Colon­nel­lo Es­pos­ito said noth­ing dur­ing the walk back along the gallery, across the man­icured lawn, through the gate of the in­ner ward. He re­mained silent as the cars made their way down the nar­row road, past the cy­press trees and olive groves It was not un­til they were on the main road back to Flo­rence that he turned to D’Agos­ta.

“I mis­judged you, sir,” he said in a low, chill voice. “I wel­comed you here, gave you cre­den­tials, co­op­er­at­ed with you in ev­ery way In re­turn, you dis­graced your­self and hu­mil­iat­ed me and my men I will be lucky if the count doesn’t bring ade­nun­cia against me for this in­va­sion of his home and in­sult to his per­son.”

He leaned a lit­tle clos­er. “You may con­sid­er all your of­fi­cial priv­ileges re­voked from this mo­ment on. The pa­per­work to have you de­clared per­sona non gra­ta in Italy will take a lit­tle time-​but if I were you,sig­nore, I would leave this coun­try by the next avail­able flight.”

Then he sat back, stared stoni­ly out the win­dow, and spoke no more.

{ 86 }

It was ap­proach­ing mid­night when Count Fos­co fin­ished hi­sev­ening con­sti­tu­tion­al and, puff­ing slight­ly, re­turned to the main din­ingsa­lot­to of the cas­tle. Whether in town or coun­try, it was his habit, be­fore turn­ing in, to take a short stroll for his health’s sake. And the long gal­leries and cor­ri­dors of Cas­tel Fos­co of­fered an al­most end­less va­ri­ety of per­am­bu­la­tions.

He took a seat in a chair fac­ing the vast stone fire­place, warm­ing his hands be­fore the mer­ry blaze, dis­pelling the damp em­brace of the cas­tle. He’d take a glass of port and sit here awhile be­fore re­tir­ing: sit here, and con­tem­plate the end of a suc­cess­ful day.

The end, in fact, of a suc­cess­ful un­der­tak­ing.

His men had been paid off and had all melt­ed away, back in­to the huts and ten­ant farm­hous­es of his es­tate. The small de­tach­ment of po­lice had gone, along with Sergeant D’Agos­ta and his fire and blus­ter. The man would soon be on a flight back to New York. The ser­vants would not re­turn un­til the next morn­ing. The cas­tle seemed al­most watch­ful in its si­lence.

Fos­co rose, poured him­self a glass of port from a bot­tle on annnncient side­board, then re­turned to his com­fort­able chair. For the past few days, the walls of the cas­tle had rung with noise and ex­cite­ment. Now, by com­par­ison, they seemed preter­nat­ural­ly qui­et.

He sipped the port, found it ex­cel­lent.

It was a great pity, not hav­ing Pin­ketts, or rather Pinchet­ti, here to an­tic­ipate his ev­ery need. It was a great pity, to think of him at rest in an un­marked tomb with­in the fam­ily vault. The man would be dif­fi­cult, even im­pos­si­ble, to re­place. Truth to tell, sit­ting here by him­self, in this vast emp­ty ed­ifice, Fos­co found him­self feel­ing just the least bit lone­ly.

But then, he re­mind­ed him­self, he was­not alone. He had Pen­der­gast for com­pa­ny-​or, at least, his corpse.

Fos­co had faced many ad­ver­saries in the past, but none had shown the brillinnce or tenac­ity of Pen­der­gast. In fact, had it not been for Fos­co’s home soil ad­van­tages-​his moles in the po­lice and else­where, the ma­tu­ri­ty of his long-​laid plans, the scope of his con­tin­gen­cy ar­range­ments-​the sto­ry might well have end­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. Even so, he’d felt just the least bit anx­ious. And so Fos­co had made sure this evening’s con­sti­tu­tion­al took him back down-​very deep down in­deed-​to Pen­der­gast’s cur­rent domi­cile. Just to make sure. As ex­pect­ed, he’d found the new­ly mortared but care­ful­ly dis­guised wall as he left it. He’d rapped on it, lis­tened, called soft­ly, but, of course, there was no an­swer­ing re­sponse. Al­most thir­ty-​six hours had passed. No doubt the good agent was al­ready dead.

He sipped the port, sank back in the chair, bask­ing in the re­flec­tions of a suc­cess­ful out­come. There was, of course, one loose end: Sergeant D’Agos­ta. Fos­co re­flect­ed on the fury, the im­po­tent mur­der­ous rage, on the po­lice­man’s face as he’d been led off the grounds. Fos­co knew this rage would soon fade. And in its place would come first res­ig­na­tion, then un­cer­tain­ty, and then-​ul­ti­mate­ly-​fear. Be­cause by now D’Agos­ta sure­ly must know the kind of man he was deal­ing with. He, Fos­co, would not for­get. He would snip off that loose end, fin­ish the busi­ness, make D’Agos­ta re­pay the debt he in­curred for shoot­ing Pinchet­ti, and in so do­ing re­trieve his clever lit­tle in­ven­tion.

But there was no hur­ry. No hur­ry at all.

As he sipped his port, Fos­co re­al­ized there was, in fact, a sec­ond loose end. Vi­ola, La­dy Maske­lene. He thought of her, tend­ing her bit of vine­yard, strong limbs made tawny by the Mediter­ranean sun. Her bear­ing, her move­ments, had a mix of good breed­ing, cat­like ath­leti­cism, and sex­ual­ity he found de­li­cious­ly in­tox­icat­ing. Her con­ver­sa­tion sparkled like no oth­er wom­an’s he had met. She was burst­ing with vi­tal­ity. She would bring warmth to any place she vis­it­ed-​even Cas­tel Fos­co .

A faint sound, like the scur­ry of dead leaves on stone, came from the dark­ness be­yond the room.

Fos­co paused in mid-​sip.

Slow­ly, he put the glass down, stood, and walked to the main en­trance to the­sa­lot­to . Be­yond lay the long gallery, lit on­ly by the moon and the oc­ca­sion­al wall sconce. Long ranks of suit­ed ar­mor lined the walls, glow­ing faint­ly in the pal­lid light.

Noth­ing.

Fos­co turned thought­ful­ly. The old cas­tle was full of rats; it was high time he had the head gar­den­er in again to deal with them.

He be­gan walk­ing back to­ward the fire, feel­ing a chill that could not en­tire­ly be ex­plained by the cool air.

Then he stopped again. There was one thing, he knew, that would put him in fine high spir­its.

Tak­ing a tack away from the fire, he made for the small door­way that led in­to his pri­vate work­shop. He crossed the dark room, thread­ing his way through a maze of lab ta­bles and free­stand­ing equip­ment, un­til he reached the wood­en pan­el­ing of the rear wall. He knelt, ran one fat hand along the pol­ished wain­scot­ing, found a tiny de­tent. He pressed it. One of the wood­en pan­els above his head popped ajar with a faint snick. Ris­ing, the count pulled the pan­el wide, ex­pos­ing a large safe retrofitted in­to the stonework of the wall. He punched a code in­to the safe’s key­pad, and its door sprung open. Care­ful­ly, rev­er­ent­ly, the count reached in­side and pulled out the small, cof­fin-​shaped wood­en case that held the Storm­cloud Stradi­var­ius.

He car­ried the case in­to the din­ingsa­lot­to and placed it on the ta­ble against the wall, well away from the heat of the fire, leav­ing it closed, so it would slow­ly ac­cus­tom it­self to the change in tem­per­ature. Then he re­turned to his seat. Com­pared to the chill of the lab, it was de­li­cious­ly warm be­fore the fire. He took an­oth­er sip of port, think­ing about what he would play. A Bach cha­conne? A flashy Pa­gani­ni? No: some­thing sim­ple, some­thing clean, re­fresh­ing . Vi­val­di. “La Pri­mav­era,” from­Le Quat­tro Sta­gioni.

Af­ter a few min­utes, he rose again, walked over to the vi­olin, un­did the brass fas­ten­ing, and lift­ed the lid. He did not play it, not yet: it would need at least an­oth­er ten min­utes to ad­just to the am­bi­ent tem­per­ature and hu­mid­ity. He mere­ly gazed dot­ing­ly on its won­drous and mys­te­ri­ous fin­ish, its sen­su­al lines. Star­ing at the vi­olin, Fos­co felt a joy, a sense of com­ple­tion, flood through him.

He re­turned to his com­fort­able chair, loos­ened his cra­vat, un­did his waist­coat. The Storm­cloud was back where it be­longed: in the fam­ily seat.He had snatched it from the jaws of obliv­ion. It had been worth the ex­pense, the ex­trav­agant plan­ning, the dan­ger, the lives. It was worth any cost, any strug­gle. As Fos­co stared at it, glow­ing crim­son in the warm re­flect­ed fire­light, it seemed to him that the in­stru­ment was not of this world. Rather, it was the voice-​the song-​of the bet­ter world to come.

It was now very warm in the room. He rose, took up a pok­er, pushed the logs back a lit­tle, turned his chair from the fire. “La Pri­mav­era.” The sweet, live­ly melody coursed through his mind as if he was al­ready play­ing it. Five more min­utes. He re­moved his cra­vat and un­but­toned the top but­ton of his shirt.

A log cracked loud­ly in the fire­place, startling him; he sat bolt up­right, the port slosh­ing out of his glass and spilling on­to his open waist­coat.

He sat back slow­ly, won­der­ing at the sense of un­ease. Nerves: the af­fair had tak­en more of a toll on him than he’d thought. His stom­ach gave a small lurch, and he set down the glass of port. Per­haps he should have tak­en some­thing stronger as adi­ges­ti­vo : a drop of Cal­va­dos, a grap­pa, or, even bet­ter, one of the ex­cel­lent herbal di­ges­tives pro­duced by the monks at Monte Senario.

A most un­pleas­ant sen­sa­tion of poor di­ges­tion now in­fused his stom­ach. He rose, lum­bered over to the side­board-​how un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly heavy he felt on his feet!-and took out a small bot­tle of Amaro Bor-​gh­ini, filled a small glass with the red­dish-​brown liq­uid, and re­turned to the chair. His stom­ach was protest­ing vo­cif­er­ous­ly, and he took a swal­low, then a sec­ond, of the bit­ter liqueur. And as he did, he heard an­oth­er sound, like a foot­fall, at the door.

He half rose, but felt weak and sank back. Nat­ural­ly, there was no­body there. There couldn’t be. The ser­vants had all been giv­en a few days off. It was his imag­ina­tion play­ing tricks with him. It was the strain of the last few days. He was get­ting on in years for busi­ness such as this.

His in­nards were al­most boil­ing with in­di­ges­tion and he drained the glass, shift­ing in his chair, try­ing to get com­fort­able. The heat in the room had grown op­pres­sive, but, blast it, there was no one to douse the fire. He fetched a deep, shud­der­ing sigh. He would calm him­self, then take out the Storm­cloud and re­store his pre­vi­ous mood with a leap­ing ren­di­tion of “La Pri­mav­era.”

On­ly calm­ness did not come. He felt a strange op­pres­sion creep stealthi­ly over him-​a pres­sure that seemed to build slow­ly, lay­er on lay­er, from with­in. This was not in­di­ges­tion; he was get­ting ill. He mopped his brow with a hand­ker­chief, aware that his heart was beat­ing un­com­fort­ably fast. He had caught a chill in the crypts, no doubt, heft­ing those heavy bricks, brought out by his un­wise sec­ond vis­it to those clam­my, ni­tred depths. He would take a hol­iday; leave to­mor­row, in fact. The isle of Capra­ia, he told him­self, would be a per­fect spot .

He ex­tend­ed a trem­bling hand to­ward the glass ofamaro , but the liqueur sud­den­ly tast­ed wrong, like hot pitch and vine­gar in his mouth-​hot, even, in his hand. Burn­ing hot. He rose with a cry, the glass falling away and dash­ing to pieces against the floor. Fos­co whirled, stum­bled, right­ed him­self.

Por­ca mis­eria,what was hap­pen­ing?

He gasped, felt his eyes smart, felt his mouth go dry, his heart ac­cel­er­ate. For a mo­ment, he won­dered if he was hav­ing a fit of some kind, or per­haps a heart at­tack. He’d heard heart at­tacks of­ten be­gan with a feel­ing just like this: a feel­ing that some­thing,some­thing, was ter­ri­bly wrong. But there was no lo­cal­ized pain to his chest or arm. In­stead, the ter­ri­ble op­pres­sion with­in grew, and still grew, un­til it en­veloped him. His very guts seemed to writhe. He looked around fran­ti­cal­ly, but there was noth­ing-​not the bot­tle of port, not the vi­olin, not the fur­ni­ture or the rich tapestries-​noth­ing to give any aid or ex­pla­na­tion

His in­sides felt as if they were crawl­ing, boil­ing. He felt his mouth twitch­ing, his eyes blink­ing un­con­trol­lably, gri­mac­ing, his fin­gers jerk­ing. The heat was like be­ing suf­fo­cat­ed with a burn­ing blan­ket. His skin felt as if it was cov­ered with a blan­ket of bees. Now fear and heat rose with­in him as one: an un­en­durable, ir­re­sistible heat that had noth­ing to do with the fire on the hearth

Sud­den­ly he knew. Heknew.

“D’Agos­ta-!” he choked, but his throat closed up and no more words came out

He whirled to­ward the closed door of the­sa­lot­to , stag­gered for­ward, fell over the side ta­ble with a crash, rose to his knees. His mus­cles were jerk­ing spas­mod­ical­ly, but with an enor­mous ef­fort of will, he be­gan to crawl for­ward.

“Bas­tar­do-!”It came out like a choked cry. As he did so, his limbs be­gan to take on a life of their own, twitch­ing and jerk­ing with a hor­ri­ble vi­olence, but he had on­ly a few more feet to go; he gave one su­per­hu­man lurch, seized the door han­dle. It was burn­ing hot, and he felt his skin pop­ping and siz­zling, yet he clung tena­cious­ly, heaved, turned-​locked.

With a sup­pressed shriek he sank, col­laps­ing at the door, writhing. The heat grew, and grew, like la­va spread­ing it­self through his veins. A ter­ri­ble pierc­ing whine, like the buzz of a mon­strous gnat, filled his head. What was that he smelled burn­ing? All of a sud­den the count went rigid. His jaws clamped to­geth­er in­vol­un­tar­ily, grind­ing with such force his teeth chipped and split. Now, un­bid­den, his many sins and ex­cess­es pa­rad­ed be­fore him in a ter­ri­ble blur. As the heat con­tin­ued to grow-​in­tol­er­able yet still in­creas­ing, an in­fer­no of agony he could nev­er have imag­ined pos­si­ble-​Fos­co felt his vi­sion grow dim and strange. His eyes jerked around the room, com­ing to rest on the fire, while re­al­ity it­self be­gan to dis­tort, fall away, and he be­gan to see things­be­yond .

. Oh, dear Je­sus, what is that dark shape ris­ing in the fire . ?

And now, sum­mon­ing ev­ery last ounce of willpow­er he pos­sessed-​de­spite the teeth grind­ing in­to meal and the blood that filled his mouth and the swelling tongue that re­fused to move­Fos­co be­gan to slur, in some­thing be­tween a gar­gle and a groan, the words of the Lord’s Prayer.

Pa­ter nos­ter .

He felt his skin blis­ter, his oiled hair curl and smoke. He clawed his hands across the stone floor in agony, tear­ing away the nails in his ef­forts to get out the words:

. ….Qui es in coelis . …

Over the shriek­ing buzz in his ears, Fos­co could hear-​as if ris­ing from the deep­est depths of the earth-​the rich and ter­ri­ble laugh­ter, not of Sergeant D’Agos­ta, not of any earth­ly be­ing . …

. ….Sanc­ti­fice­tur . …

He tried, with the last of a supreme ef­fort of will, to con­tin­ue the prayer, but the sub­cu­ta­neous fat was boil­ing be­neath the skin of his lips:

. ….Sanc­ti­fer­rrrrrrr . …

And then came the point where no sound, not even a scream, was pos­si­ble to ut­ter.

{ 87 }

Bryce Har­ri­man ducked in­to the stale, smoke-​fouled of­fice ofhis ed­itor, Ru­pert Ritts. He had been wait­ing for this mo­ment a long, long time, and he was de­ter­mined to en­joy it, drag it out as long as pos­si­ble. It would be a sto­ry he’d tell his kids and grand­kids, put in his mem­oirs. One of the mo­ments he’d sa­vor the rest of his life.

“Har­ri­man!” Ritts came around from be­hind his desk-​his idea of a show of re­spect-​and seat­ed him­self on one cor­ner. “Take a seat.”

Har­ri­man sat. Why not? Let Ritts talk a bit first.

“That was quite a piece you wrote on Hay­ward and that man, Buck. I’m al­most sor­ry that crack­er preach­er got his ass sent back to Ok­la­homa. I hope he de­cides to move back to the Big Ap­ple once his pa­role is up.” He laughed and picked a piece of pa­per from his desk. “Here’s some­thing I bet you’ll be in­ter­est­ed to hear: news­stand circ for the week end­ing to­day.” He waved the pa­per in Har­ri­man’s face. “Nine­teen per­cent above this same time last year, six per­cent above last week, six­ty per­cent sell-​through.”

Ritts grinned, as if the news­stand cir­cu­la­tion and sell-​through fig­ures of the­New York Post were the be-​all and end-​all of Har­ri­man’s ex­is­tence. Har­ri­man kicked back in the chair, lis­ten­ing, a prac­ticed smile on his face.

“And look at this. Ad­ver­tis­ing rev­enues up three and a half.”

An­oth­er pause so that Har­ri­man might ab­sorb and glo­ri­fy in the stu­pen­dous news.

Ritts lit a cigarette. He snapped the lighter shut, ex­haled. “Har­ri­man, don’t ev­er say I don’t give cred­it where cred­it is due. This was your sto­ry from be­gin­ning to end. You did it. Sure, I helped with some ideas here and there, gave you the ben­efit of my ex­pe­ri­ence, nudged you in the right di­rec­tion once or twice-​but this was your sto­ry.”

Ritts paused, as if wait­ing. For what? Ef­fu­sive, gen­uflect­ing thanks? Har­ri­man leaned back and lis­tened, still smil­ing.

“Any­way, as I was say­ing,you did this. You’ve been no­ticed, and I mean­no­ticed , by the pow­ers on high.”

Who was that? Har­ri­man won­dered. The big cheese him­self? That would be a joke. The guy prob­ably couldn’t even get in­to his fa­ther’s club.

Now Ritts dropped his bomb. “Next week, I want you to be my guest at the an­nu­al News Cor­po­ra­tion din­ner at Tav­ern on the Green. This wasn’t just my idea-​al­though I hearti­ly ap­proved. It was”-and now his eyes flashed up­ward as if a heav­en­ly host had is­sued the in­vi­ta­tion-“hisidea. He wants to meet you, shake your hand.”

Meet me, shake my hand.This was beau­ti­ful. God, this was beau­ti­ful. He couldn’t wait to tell his friends about this.

“It’s black tie-​you got one of those? If not, I rent mine at a place op­po­site Bloom­ing­dale’s. Dis­count Tux, best deal in the city.”

Har­ri­man could hard­ly be­lieve his ears. What a bo­zo. Not eve­nashamed to ad­mit he rent­ed his tux­es. “I have one or two, thanks,” he said cool­ly.

Ritts looked at him a lit­tle strange­ly. “You all right? You do know about the an­nu­al din­ner, right? I mean, I’ve been in this busi­ness thir­ty years and let me tell you, this is­some­thing spe­cial . It’s Thurs­day evening, drinks at six in the Crys­tal Room, din­ner at sev­en. You and a guest. Bring your squeeze, if you have one.”

Har­ri­man sat for­ward. “I’m afraid that won’t be pos­si­ble.”

“Come alone, then. No prob­lem.”

“You don’t un­der­stand. I can’t come at all. I’m oth­er­wise en­gaged.”

“What?”

“I’mbusy .”

There was a shocked si­lence. And then Ritts was off his perch. “You’re­busy ? Aren’t you lis­ten­ing? I’m talk­ing about din­ner with­the man him­self ! I’m talk­ing about the­News Corp. an­nu­al fuck­ing din­ner !”

Har­ri­man rose and dust­ed his sleeve, on which Ritts’s ash­es had fall­en as he’d waved his cigarette around in ex­cite­ment.

“I’ve ac­cept­ed an ap­point­ment as a re­porter at a news­pa­per called the­New York Times. Per­haps you know of it.” Har­ri­man slipped an en­ve­lope out of his pock­et. “My let­ter of res­ig­na­tion.” He laid it on the desk, right on the shiny place where Ritts usu­al­ly perched his ass.

There it was. Said and done. He’d drawn it out about as long as he could. There was no point in wast­ing any more time: he had a new of­fice to fix up, a lot to do. Af­ter all, Bill Smith­back would be re­turn­ing from his ex­tend­ed hon­ey­moon on Mon­day to find the sur­prise of his life: Bryce Har­ri­man, as­so­ciate re­porter, fel­low col­league, oc­cu­py­ing the of­fice next door.

Now,that would be some­thing.

God, life was good.

He turned and walked to the door, turn­ing just once to get a fi­nal look at Ritts, stand­ing there, mouth open, for once with noth­ing to say.

“See you around, old chap,” Har­ri­man said.

{ 88 }

The big jet hit the tar­mac with a jolt; tipped back in­to the air atan an­gle; then set­tled once more on­to the ground, thrust re­versers scream­ing.

As the plane de­cel­er­at­ed, a lazy voice came over the P.A. sys­tem. “This is your cap­tain speak­ing. We’ve land­ed at Kennedy Air­port, and as soon as we get clear­ance, we’ll taxi to the gate. Mean­while, y’all please keep your seats. Sor­ry about that bit of tur­bu­lence back there. Wel­come to New York City.”

Faint ap­plause arose here and there from a sea of ashen faces, then died quick­ly away.

“Bit of tur­bu­lence,” mut­tered the man in the aisle seat. “Is that what he calls it? Shit on astick . You couldn’t pay me enough to get back in a plane af­ter this.”

He turned to his seat­mate, nudged him with his el­bow. “Glad to be back on the ground, pal?”

The nudge brought D’Agos­ta back to the present. He turned slow­ly away from the win­dow, through which he’d been star­ing with­out re­al­ly see­ing, and glanced at the man. “What’s that?”

The man snort­ed in dis­be­lief. “Come on, stop play­ing it cool. Me, my own life passed be­fore my eyes at least twice the last half hour.”

“Sor­ry.” And D’Agos­ta turned back to the win­dow. “Wasn’t re­al­ly pay­ing at­ten­tion.”

D’Agos­ta walked wood­en­ly through Ter­mi­nal 8 on his way out of cus­toms, suit­case in one hand. All around him, peo­ple were talk­ing ex­cit­ed­ly, hug­ging, laugh­ing. He passed by them all, bare­ly notic­ing, eyes straight ahead.

“Vin­nie!” came a voice. “Hey, Vin­nie. Over here!”

D’Agos­ta turned to see Hay­ward, wav­ing, walk­ing to­ward him through the crowds. Lau­ra Hay­ward, beau­ti­ful in a dark suit, her black hair shin­ing, her eyes as deep and blue as the wa­ter off Capra­ia. She was smil­ing, but the smile did not reach quite as far as those per­fect eyes.

“Vin­nie,” she said, em­brac­ing him. “Oh, Vin­nie.”

Au­to­mat­ical­ly, his arms went around her. He could feel the wel­com­ing tight­ness of her clasp; the warmth of her breath on his neck; the crush of her breasts against him. It was like a gal­van­ic shock. Had it re­al­ly been on­ly ten days since they last em­braced? A shud­der passed through him: he felt strange, like a swim­mer strug­gling up­ward from a very great depth.

“Vin­nie,” she mur­mured. “What can I say?”

“Don’t say any­thing. Not now. Lat­er, maybe.”

Slow­ly, she re­leased him.

“My God. What hap­pened to your fin­ger?”

“Locke Bullard hap­pened.”

They be­gan to move through the bag­gage area. A si­lence grew be­tween them, just long enough to be­come awk­ward.

“How’s it been here?” he asked at last, lame­ly.

“Not much has hap­pened since you called last night. We’ve still got ten de­tec­tives work­ing the Cut­forth mur­der. Tech­ni­cal­ly. And from what I hear, that Southamp­ton chief of po­lice is catch­ing holy hell for lack of progress on Grove.”

D’Agos­ta grit­ted his teeth, start­ed to speak, but Hay­ward put a fin­ger to his lips.

“I know. I know. But that’s the na­ture of the job some­times. Now that Buck’s out of the pic­ture and the­Post has moved on to oth­er things, Cut­forth’s fi­nal­ly off the front page. Even­tu­al­ly it’ll be­come just an­oth­er un­solved mur­der. Along with Grove’s, of course.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

“Amaz­ing that it was Fos­co. I’m floored.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head.

“It’s a hell of a thing, know­ing who the perp is but be­ing able to do noth­ing.”

There was the ring of a clax­on; an am­ber alarm flashed over­head; and a carousel near­by be­gan to move.

“Iwas able to do some­thing,” he said in a low voice.

Hay­ward looked at him sharply.

“I’ll ex­plain in the car.”

Ten min­utes lat­er they were on the Van Wyck Ex­press­way, halfway back to Man­hat­tan, Hay­ward at the wheel. D’Agos­ta sat be­side her, idly look­ing out the win­dow.

“So it was all about a vi­olin,” Hay­ward said. “The whole damn thing. A lousy vi­olin.”

“Not just any vi­olin.”

“I don’t care. It wasn’t worth all those deaths. And ite­spe­cial­ly wasn’t worth-” But here she stopped, as if hes­itant to break some un­spo­ken code be­tween them. “Where is it now?”

“I sent it by spe­cial couri­er to a wom­an on the is­land of Capra­ia. Comes from a line of vi­olin­ists. She’ll re­store it to the Fos­co fam­ily at a time of her choos­ing, when the new heir is set­tled in. Some­how, I think that’s what Pen­der­gast would have want­ed.”

It was the first time Pen­der­gast’s name had passed be­tween them.

“I know you couldn’t ex­plain on the phone,” she went on. “But what hap­pened, ex­act­ly? Af­ter you took the Ital­ian po­lice to Fos­co’s cas­tle yes­ter­day morn­ing, I mean.”

D’Agos­ta did not re­ply.

“Come on, Vin­nie. It’ll be bet­ter if you talk about it.”

D’Agos­ta sighed. “I spent the rest of the day comb­ing the Chi­anti coun­try­side. Talk­ing to farm­ers. Talk­ing to vil­lagers. Any­one who might have seen any­thing, heard any­thing. Check­ing my ho­tel for mes­sages. Of course, there was noth­ing. But I had to be sure, you see­ab­so­lute­ly sure . “

Hay­ward wait­ed. Af­ter a mo­ment, he went on.

“The thing is, deep down, I was al­ready sure. We’d searched the cas­tle. And then there was that look Fos­co gave me, that aw­ful look. If you’d seen it . ” He shook his head. “Close to mid­night, I drift­ed back to the cas­tle. Went in the same way we’d come out. I took the time to fig­ure out how the mi­crowave de­vice worked. And then I . used it. One last time.”

“You brought Fos­co to jus­tice. Avenged your part­ner. I’d have done the same thing.”

“Would you?” D’Agos­ta asked qui­et­ly.

Hay­ward nod­ded.

D’Agos­ta shift­ed rest­less­ly. “There’s not much more to tell. I spent this morn­ing back in Flo­rence, check­ing hos­pi­tals, morgues, po­lice re­ports. More to keep busy than for any­thing else. And then I board­ed the plane.”

“What did you do with that weapon?”

“Dis­as­sem­bled it, smashed the pieces, and de­posit­ed them in half a dozen garbage cans around Flo­rence.”

She nod­ded. “And what are your plans now?”

D’Agos­ta shrugged. He hadn’t giv­en this any thought. “I don’t know. Go back to Southamp­ton, I guess. Face the mu­sic.”

A small smile crept over her face. “Didn’t you hear what I said? It’s the chief who’s fac­ing the mu­sic. He got back from va­ca­tion and was so ea­ger to hog the lime­light that now it’s all com­ing back to roost. Brask­ie’s run­ning against him in the next elec­tion, odds-​on fa­vorite to win.”

“Even worse for me.”

She changed lanes. “There’s some­thing else you should know. They’ve sus­pend­ed the NYPD hir­ing freeze. That means you can work the city again. Get your old job back.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head. “No way. I’ve been away too long. I’m old goods.”

“It hasn’t been­that long. They’re re­hir­ing by se­nior­ity. And with your ex­pe­ri­ence in Southamp­ton, and as FBI li­ai­son . ” She paused to ne­go­ti­ate the ramp on­to the Long Is­land Ex­press­way. “Of course, it couldn’t be in my di­vi­sion. But they’ve got open­ings in sev­er­al of the down­town precincts.”

D’Agos­ta sat a mo­ment, let­ting this pen­etrate. Then he looked at her sharply. “Wait a minute. My old job back, open­ings down­town. You didn’t have any­thing to do with this, did you? Have a talk with Rock­er, or some­thing like that?”

“Me? You know the kind of cop I am. By the book. Miss Straight Ar­row ” But her smile seemed to deep­en briefly.

Up ahead, the maw of the Queens-​Mid­town Tun­nel loomed, grid­works of tile il­lu­mi­nat­ed by flu­ores­cent tubes. Hay­ward merged smooth­ly in­to the E-​ZPass toll lane.

From the pas­sen­ger seat, D’Agos­ta watched her: the beau­ti­ful lines of her face, the curve of her nose, the lit­tle fur­row of con­cen­tra­tion as she ne­go­ti­at­ed the evening traf­fic. It was won­der­ful just to see her again, to be here by her side. And yet he could not es­cape the sense of des­ola­tion that en­veloped him. It was like a hol­low­ness he car­ried around, a vac­uum that could not be filled.

“You’re right,” he said as they en­tered the tun­nel. “It doesn’t mat­ter if that vi­olin’s the most pre­cious ev­er made. It wasn’t worth Pen­der­gast dy­ing. Noth­ing was worth that.”

Hay­ward kept her eyes on the road. “You don’t know he’s dead.”

D’Agos­ta didn’t an­swer. He’d told him­self this al­ready: once, twice, a thou­sand times. When ev­ery­thing had been stacked against them-​when there seemed no way they could pos­si­bly sur­vive-​Pen­der­gast had al­ways saved them. At times, it had seemed al­most mirac­ulous. And yet, this time, Pen­der­gast had not reap­peared. This time, it felt dif­fer­ent.

Then there was that oth­er feel­ing, the one that made him al­most phys­ical­ly ill. It was the im­age of Pen­der­gast, there in the clear­ing, sur­round­ed by dogs. Ev­ery­one-​the hunters, the han­dlers, the beat­ers-​clos­ing in.On­ly one of us can get through. There’s no oth­er way.

D’Agos­ta felt his throat close up. “You’re right. I have no proof. Ex­cept may­bethis .” He reached in­to his pock­et, drew out Pen­der­gast’s plat­inum chain and pen­dant: a lid­less eye over a phoenix, ris­ing from fiery ash, now pit­ted and part­ly melt­ed. The chain he’d re­trieved from Fos­co’s burn­ing, smok­ing corpse. He stared at it a mo­ment. He balled the hand in­to a fist, pressed a knuck­le against his teeth. He felt a ridicu­lous im­pulse to burst in­to tears.

The worst of it was, D’Agos­ta knew he was the one who should have been left on that hill. He wished, more than any­thing else, that he had been left on that hill.

“Any­way, he would have con­tact­ed me by now. Or you. Or­some body.” He paused. “I don’t know how I’m go­ing to tell Con­stance.”

“Who?”

“Con­stance Greene. His ward.”

They drove through the rest of the tun­nel in si­lence, fi­nal­ly emerg­ing in­to the Man­hat­tan night. Then he felt Hay­ward take his hand.

“Let me off any­where,” he said, sick at heart. “Penn Sta­tion’s fine. I’ll take the LIRR out to Southamp­ton.”

“Why?” she replied. “There’s noth­ing for you out there. Your fu­ture’s here, in New York City.”

D’Agos­ta re­mained silent as the car cruised west: past Park, past Madi­son, past Fifth.

“You have a place to stay in town?” she asked.

D’Agos­ta shook his head.

“I-,” Hay­ward be­gan. Then she, too, fell silent.

D’Agos­ta roused him­self, glanced at her. “What?” It was hard to tell, but in the re­flect­ed light of the street­lamps, he thought she was blush­ing.

“I was just think­ing. If you’re com­ing back to the NYPD, work­ing here in the city . well, why not stay with me? For a while,” she added hasti­ly. “You know. See how it works out.”

For a mo­ment, D’Agos­ta didn’t an­swer. He just looked back out at the lights pass­ing over the wind­shield.

Then he re­al­ized, quite abrupt­ly, he had to let go. Let go, at least for the mo­ment. The past was over and done. To­mor­row was an un­known, still to come. He had no con­trol over ei­ther. All he could con­trol, all he could live, was the here and now. Know­ing this didn’t make things any bet­ter, re­al­ly-​but it did make them eas­ier to bear.

“Look, Vin­nie,” Hay­ward said in a low voice. “It doesn’t mat­ter what you say. I just can’t be­lieve that Pen­der­gast is dead. My gut tells me he’s still alive. The guy’s as close to in­de­struc­tible as a body can be. He’s cheat­ed death a thou­sand times. He’ll do it again some­how. Iknow he will.”

D’Agos­ta smiled faint­ly.

Ahead, a traf­fic light turned red. She eased to a stop, then turned to look at him.

“So, you com­ing back with me, or what? It’s not po­lite to make a la­dy ask twice.”

He turned to her, squeezed her hand.

“I think I’d like that,” he said, his smile broad­en­ing. “I think I’d like that very much.”

{ Epi­logue }

A chill Novem­ber sun il­lu­mi­nat­ed, but did not warm, the bleak­stone ram­parts of Cas­tel Fos­co. The gar­den was de­sert­ed; the mar­ble foun­tain purled and splashed for no one. Be­yond the cas­tle walls, dead leaves swirled over the grav­el of the park­ing area, ob­scur­ing the tracks of the many ve­hi­cles that had come and gone ear­li­er in the day. Now all was qui­et. The nar­row road lead­ing down the moun­tain­side was emp­ty. A sin­gle raven sat on the bat­tle­ments above, gaz­ing silent­ly over the val­ley of the Greve.

The coro­ner’s van had re­moved Fos­co’s body around mid-​morn­ing. The po­lice lin­gered a lit­tle longer, snap­ping pho­tos, tak­ing state­ments, look­ing for ev­idence but find­ing noth­ing of val­ue. As­sun­ta, who had dis­cov­ered the corpse, had been borne away, ashen and dis­traught, by her son. The few re­main­ing ser­vants had al­so gone off, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the un­ex­pect­ed va­ca­tion. There seemed lit­tle rea­son to stay. Fos­co’s near­est re­la­tion, a dis­tant cousin, was va­ca­tion­ing on the Cos­ta Smer­al­da of Sar­dinia and would not ar­rive for sev­er­al days at least. Be­sides, none were ea­ger to linger in a place to which death had made such a grue­some vis­ita­tion. And so the cas­tle was left to brood in shad­ows and si­lence.

Nowhere was the si­lence more pro­found than in the an­cient pas­sage­ways that rid­dled the rock far be­neath the base­ments of the cas­tle. Here there was not even the rus­tle of the wind to dis­turb the dusty tombs and stone sar­copha­gi of the for­got­ten dead.

The deep­est of these pas­sages, carved by Etr­uscans in­to the liv­ing rock more than three thou­sand years be­fore, twist­ed down in­to black depths and came to an end in a hor­izon­tal tun­nel. At the far end of this tun­nel stood a brick wall with a small scat­ter of bones ly­ing be­fore it. Though the tun­nel was dark, even with the aid of a torch it would have been al­most im­pos­si­ble to tell the wall had been built on­ly forty-​odd hours be­fore, seal­ing up an an­cient tomb, the bones of its for­mer oc­cu­pant, an un­known Lon­go­bardic knight, swept out and left ly­ing in the dirt.

The an­cient tomb that lay be­hind the brick wall was just large enough to con­tain a man. In­side that tomb there was no sound. Dark­ness reigned so pro­found­ly that even the very pas­sage of time seemed sus­pend­ed.

And then a muf­fled sound broke the still­ness: a faint foot­fall.

This was fol­lowed by a rat­tle, as if a bag of tools had been set down on the ground. Si­lence de­scend­ed briefly once again. And then came an un­mis­tak­able sound: the scrape of iron against mor­tar, the sharp rap of a ham­mer against a cold chis­el.

The rap­ping went on in a low, mea­sured ca­dence, me­thod­ical, like the tick­ing of a clock. Min­utes passed, and the sound stopped. An­oth­er si­lence, and then there were the faint sounds of scrap­ing, the abra­sion of brick against mor­tar; a few more sharp raps-​and sud­den­ly a faint light ap­peared in the tomb, a glow­ing crack that out­lined the rect­an­gu­lar shape of a brick in the up­per por­tion of the wall. With a soft, slow grat­ing, the brick was with­drawn, mil­lime­ter by mil­lime­ter. Then it was gone, and a soft yel­low light shone through the new­ly opened hole, pen­etrat­ing the dark­ness of the tomb.

A mo­ment lat­er, two eyes ap­peared in the glow­ing rect­an­gle, gaz­ing in with cu­rios­ity, per­haps even anx­iety.

Two eyes: one hazel, one blue.

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