Pendergast 07 - The Book of the Dead

by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

The Book of the Dead (2006)

The Book of the Dead (2006)

BY DOU­GLAS PRE­STON AND LIN­COLN CHILD

Lin­coln Child ded­icates this book to his moth­er, Nan­cy Child

Dou­glas Pre­ston ded­icates this book to An­na Mar­guerite Mc­Cann Tag­gart Ac­knowl­edg­ments

We would like to thank the fol­low­ing peo­ple at Warn­er Books: Jaime Levine, Jamie Raab,

Beth de Guz­man, Jen­nifer Ro­manel­lo, Mau­reen Egen, and De­vi Pil­lai. Thanks al­so to Lar­ry Kir­sh­baum for be­ing a be­liev­er in us al­most from day one. We want to thank our agents, Er­ic Si­monoff of Jan­klow & Nes­bit As­so­ciates and Matthew Sny­der of the Cre­ative Artists Agen­cy. A bou­quet of hot­house or­chids to Ead­ie Klemm for keep­ing us all neat and dust­ed off. Count Nic­colò Cap­poni of Flo­rence, Italy, sug­gest­ed (bril­liant­ly) our use of the Car­duc­ci po­em. And, as al­ways, we want to thank our wives and chil­dren for their love and sup­port.

1

Ear­ly-​morn­ing sun­light gild­ed the cob­bled drive of the staff en­trance at the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, il­lu­mi­nat­ing a glass pill­box just out­side the gran­ite arch­way. With­in the pill­box, a fig­ure sat slumped in his chair: an el­der­ly man, fa­mil­iar to all mu­se­um staff. He puffed con­tent­ed­ly on a cal­abash pipe and basked in the warmth of one of those false-​spring days that oc­cur in New York City in Febru­ary, the kind that coax­es daf­fodils, cro­cus­es, and fruit trees in­to pre­ma­ture bloom, on­ly to freeze them dead lat­er in the month.

“Morn­ing, doc­tor,” Curly said again and again to any and all passers­by, whether mail­room clerk or dean of sci­ence. Cu­ra­tors might rise and fall, di­rec­tors might as­cend through the ranks, reign in glo­ry, then plum­met to ig­no­min­ious ru­in; man might till the field and then lie be­neath; but it seemed Curly would nev­er be shift­ed from his pill­box. He was as much a fix­ture in the mu­se­um as the ul­tra­saurus that greet­ed vis­itors in the mu­se­um’s Great Ro­tun­da.

“Here, pops!”

Frown­ing at this fa­mil­iar­ity, Curly roused him­self in time to see a mes­sen­ger shove a pack­age through the win­dow of his pill­box. The pack­age had suf­fi­cient mo­men­tum to land on the lit­tle shelf where the guard kept his to­bac­co and mit­tens.

“Ex­cuse me!” Curly said, rous­ing him­self and wav­ing out the win­dow. “Hey!” But the mes­sen­ger was al­ready speed­ing away on his fat-​tire moun­tain bike, black ruck­sack bulging with pack­ages.

“Good­ness,” Curly mut­tered, star­ing at the pack­age. It was about twelve inch­es by eight by eight, wrapped in greasy brown pa­per, and tied up with an ex­ces­sive amount of old­fash­ioned twine. It was so beat­en-​up Curly won­dered if the mes­sen­ger had been run over by a truck on the way over. The ad­dress was writ­ten in a child­ish hand: For the rocks and min­er­als cu­ra­tor, The Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry.

Curly broke up the dot­tle in the bot­tom of his pipe while gaz­ing thought­ful­ly at the pack­age. The mu­se­um re­ceived hun­dreds of pack­ages ev­ery week from chil­dren, con­tain­ing “do­na­tions” for the col­lec­tion. Such do­na­tions in­clud­ed ev­ery­thing from squashed bugs and worth­less rocks to ar­row­heads and mum­mi­fied road­kill. He sighed, then rose painful­ly from the com­fort of his chair and tucked the pack­age un­der his arm. He put the pipe to one side, slid open the door of his pill­box, and stepped in­to the sun­light, blink­ing twice. Then he turned in the di­rec­tion of the mail­room re­ceiv­ing dock, which was on­ly a few hun­dred feet across the ser­vice drive.

“What have you got there, Mr. Tut­tle?” came a voice.

Curly glanced to­ward the voice. It was Dig­by Green­law, the new as­sis­tant di­rec­tor for ad­min­is­tra­tion, who was just ex­it­ing the tun­nel from the staff park­ing lot.

Curly did not an­swer im­me­di­ate­ly. He didn’t like Green­law and his con­de­scend­ing Mr. Tut­tle. A few weeks ear­li­er, Green­law had tak­en ex­cep­tion to the way Curly checked IDs, com­plain­ing that he “wasn’t re­al­ly look­ing at them.” Heck, Curly didn’t have to look at them—he knew ev­ery em­ploy­ee of the mu­se­um on sight.

“Pack­age,” he grunt­ed in re­ply.

Green­law’s voice took on an of­fi­cious tone. “Pack­ages are sup­posed to be de­liv­ered di­rect­ly to the mail­room. And you’re not sup­posed to leave your sta­tion.”

Curly kept walk­ing. He had reached an age where he found the best way to deal with un­pleas­ant­ness was to pre­tend it didn’t ex­ist.

He could hear the foot­steps of the ad­min­is­tra­tor quick­en be­hind him, the voice ris­ing a few notch­es on the as­sump­tion he was hard of hear­ing. “Mr. Tut­tle? I said you should not leave your sta­tion unat­tend­ed.”

Curly stopped, turned. “Thank you for of­fer­ing, doc­tor.” He held out the pack­age.

Green­law stared it at, squint­ing. “I didn’t say I would de­liv­er it.”

Curly re­mained in place, prof­fer­ing the pack­age.

“Oh, for heav­en’s sake.” Green­law reached ir­ri­ta­bly for the pack­age, but his hand fal­tered mid­way. “It’s a fun­ny-​look­ing thing. What is it?”

“Dun­no, doc­tor. Came by mes­sen­ger.”

“It seems to have been mis­han­dled.”

Curly shrugged.

But Green­law still didn’t take the pack­age. He leaned to­ward it, squint­ing. “It’s torn. There’s a hole . . . Look, there’s some­thing com­ing out.”

Curly looked down. The cor­ner of the pack­age did in­deed have a hole, and a thin stream of brown pow­der was trick­ling out.

“What in the world?” Curly said.

Green­law took a step back. “It’s leak­ing some kind of pow­der.” His voice rode up a notch. “Oh my Lord. What is it?”

Curly stood root­ed to the spot.

“Good God, Curly, drop it! It’s an­thrax!”

Green­law stum­bled back­ward, his face con­tort­ed in pan­ic. “It’s a ter­ror­ist at­tack—some­one call the po­lice! I’ve been ex­posed! Oh my God, I’ve been ex­posed!”

The ad­min­is­tra­tor stum­bled and fell back­ward on the cob­ble­stones, claw­ing the ground and spring­ing to his feet, and then he was off and run­ning. Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly, two guards came spilling out of the guard sta­tion across the way, one in­ter­cept­ing Green­law while the oth­er made for Curly.

“What are you do­ing?” Green­law shrieked. “Keep back! Call 911!”

Curly re­mained where he was, pack­age in hand. This was some­thing so far out­side his ex­pe­ri­ence that his mind seemed to have stopped work­ing.

The guards fell back, Green­law at their heels. For a mo­ment, the small court­yard was strange­ly qui­et. Then a shrill alarm went off, deaf­en­ing in the en­closed space. In less than five min­utes, the air was filled with the sound of ap­proach­ing sirens, cul­mi­nat­ing in an up­roar of ac­tiv­ity: po­lice cars, flash­ing lights, crack­ling ra­dios, and uni­formed men rush­ing this way and that string­ing up yel­low bio­haz­ard tape and erect­ing a cor­don, mega­phones shout­ing at the grow­ing crowds to back off, while at the same time telling Curly to drop the pack­age and step away, drop the pack­age and step away.

But Curly didn’t drop the pack­age and step away. He re­mained frozen in ut­ter con­fu­sion, star­ing at the thin brown stream that con­tin­ued to trick­le out of the tear in the pack­age, form­ing a small pile on the cob­bles at his feet.

And now two strange-​look­ing men wear­ing puffy white suits and hoods with plas­tic vi­sors were ap­proach­ing, walk­ing slow­ly, hands out­stretched like some­thing Curly had seen in an old sci­ence fic­tion movie. One gen­tly took Curly by the shoul­ders while the oth­er slipped the pack­age from his fin­gers and—with in­fi­nite care—placed it in a blue plas­tic box. The first man led him to one side and be­gan care­ful­ly vac­uum­ing him up and down with a fun­ny-​look­ing de­vice, and then they be­gan dress­ing him, too, in one of the strange plas­tic suits, all the time telling him in low elec­tron­ic voic­es that he was go­ing to be all right, that they were tak­ing him to the hos­pi­tal for a few tests, that ev­ery­thing would be fine. As they placed the hood over his head, Curly be­gan to feel his mind com­ing back to life, his body able to move again.

“Scuse me, doc­tor?” he said to one of the men as they led him off to­ward a van that had backed through the po­lice cor­don and was wait­ing for him, doors open.

“Yes?”

“My pipe.” He nod­ded to­ward the pill­box. “Don’t for­get to bring my pipe.”

2

Dr. Lau­ren Wilden­stein watched as the “first re­sponse” team car­ried in the blue plas­tic haz­mat con­tain­er, plac­ing it un­der the fume hood in her lab­ora­to­ry. The call had come in twen­ty min­utes ear­li­er, and both she and her as­sis­tant, Richie, were ready. At first it sound­ed like it might be the re­al deal for a change, some­thing that ac­tu­al­ly fit the pro­file of a clas­sic bioter­ror at­tack—a pack­age sent to a high-​pro­file New York City in­sti­tu­tion, drib­bling brown pow­der. But on-​site test­ing for an­thrax had al­ready come up neg­ative, and Wilden­stein knew that this one would al­most cer­tain­ly be an­oth­er false alarm. In her two years lead­ing the New York City DOHMS Sen­tinel lab­ora­to­ry, they had re­ceived over four hun­dred sus­pi­cious pow­ders to an­alyze and, thank God, not one had turned out to be a bioter­ror agent. So far. She glanced at the run­ning tal­ly they kept tacked to the wall: sug­ar, salt, flour, bak­ing so­da, hero­in, co­caine, pep­per, and dirt, in that or­der of fre­quen­cy. The list was a tes­ta­ment to para­noia and too damn many ter­ror alerts.

The de­liv­ery team left and she spent a mo­ment star­ing at the sealed con­tain­er. Amaz­ing, the con­ster­na­tion a pack­age of pow­der could cause these days. It had ar­rived half an hour ago at the mu­se­um, and al­ready a guard and a mu­se­um ad­min­is­tra­tor had been quar­an­tined, giv­en an­tibi­otics, and were now be­ing treat­ed by men­tal health ser­vices. It seemed the ad­min­is­tra­tor was par­tic­ular­ly hys­ter­ical.

She shook her head.

“Whad­dya think?” came a voice from over her shoul­der. “Ter­ror­ist cock­tail du jour?” Wilden­stein ig­nored this. Richie’s work was top-​notch, even if his emo­tion­al de­vel­op­ment

had been ar­rest­ed some­where be­tween the third and the fourth grade.

“Let’s run an X-​ray.”

“Rolling.”

The false-​col­or X-​ray that popped up on the mon­itor screen showed the pack­age was full

of an amor­phous sub­stance, with no let­ter or any oth­er ob­jects vis­ible.

“No det­ona­tor,” Richie said. “Darn.”

“I’m go­ing to open the con­tain­er.” Wilden­stein broke the haz­mat seals and care­ful­ly lift­ed

out the pack­age. She not­ed the crude, child­ish scrawl, the lack of a re­turn ad­dress, the mul­ti­ple strands of bad­ly tied twine. It seemed al­most de­signed to arouse sus­pi­cion. One cor­ner of the pack­age had been abrad­ed by mis­han­dling, and a light brown sub­stance not un­like sand drib­bled from it. This was un­like any bioter­ror agent she had stud­ied. Awk­ward­ly, on ac­count of her heavy gloves, she cut the twine and opened the pack­age, lift­ing out a plas­tic bag.

“We’ve been sand­bagged!” said Richie with a snort.

“We treat it as haz­ardous un­til proven oth­er­wise,” said Wilden­stein, al­though her pri­vate opin­ion was the same as his. Nat­ural­ly, it was bet­ter to err on the side of cau­tion. “Weight?”

“One point two ki­lo. For the record, I’m not­ing that all the bio­haz­ard and haz­mat alarms

un­der the hood are read­ing ze­ro.”

Us­ing a scoop, she took a few dozen grains of the sub­stance and dis­tribut­ed them in­to half a dozen test tubes, sealed and racked them, then re­moved them from be­neath the hood, pass­ing them on to Richie. With­out need­ing to be told, he start­ed the usu­al set of chem­ical reagents, test­ing for a suite.

“Nice hav­ing a shit­load of sam­ple to work with,” he said with a chuck­le. “We can burn it, bake it, dis­solve it, and still have enough left over to make a sand cas­tle.”

Wilden­stein wait­ed while he deft­ly did the workups.

“All neg­ative,” he re­port­ed at last. “Man, what is this stuff?”

Wilden­stein took a sec­ond rack of sam­ples. “Do a heat test in an ox­idiz­ing at­mo­sphere and vent the gas to the gas an­alyz­er.”

“Sure thing.” Richie took an­oth­er tube and, seal­ing it with a vent­ed pipette which led to the gas an­alyz­er, heat­ed the tube slow­ly over a Bun­sen burn­er. Wilden­stein watched, and to her sur­prise the sam­ple quick­ly ig­nit­ed, glow­ing for a mo­ment be­fore dis­ap­pear­ing, leav­ing no ash or residue.

“Burn, ba­by, burn.”

“What do you have, Richie?”

He scru­ti­nized the read­out. “Just about pure car­bon diox­ide and monox­ide, trace of wa­ter va­por.”

“The sam­ple must have been pure car­bon.”

“Gimme a break, boss. Since when does car­bon come in the form of brown sand?”

Wilden­stein peered at the grit in the bot­tom of one of the sam­ple tubes. “I’m go­ing to take a look at this stuff un­der the stere­ozoom.”

She sprin­kled a dozen grains on­to a slide and placed it on the mi­cro­scope stage, turned on the light, and looked through the oc­ulars.

“What do you see?” Richie asked.

But Wilden­stein did not an­swer. She kept look­ing, daz­zled. Un­der a mi­cro­scope, the in­di­vid­ual grains were not brown at all, but tiny frag­ments of a glassy sub­stance in myr­iad col­ors—blue, red, yel­low, green, brown, black, pur­ple, pink. Still look­ing through the oc­ulars, she picked up a met­al spoon, pressed it on one of the grains, and gave a lit­tle push. She could hear a faint scritch as the grain scratched the glass.

“What’re you do­ing?” Richie asked.

Wilden­stein rose. “Don’t we have a re­frac­tome­ter around here some­where?”

“Yeah, a re­al­ly cheap job dat­ing back to the Mid­dle Ages.” Richie rum­maged around in a cab­inet and drew out a dusty ma­chine in a yel­lowed plas­tic cov­er. He set it up, plugged it in. “You know how to work this pup­py?”

“I think so.”

Us­ing the stere­ozoom, she plucked a grain of the sub­stance and let it sink in­to a drop of min­er­al oil she put on a slide. Then she slid the slide in­to the read­ing cham­ber of the re­frac­tome­ter. Af­ter a few false starts, she fig­ured out how to turn the di­al and ob­tain a read­ing.

She looked up, a smile on her face.

“Just what I sus­pect­ed. We have an in­dex of re­frac­tion of two point four.”

“Yeah? So?”

“There we are. Nailed it.”

“Nailed what, boss?”

She glanced at him. “Richie, what is made of pure car­bon, has an in­dex of re­frac­tion above two, and is hard enough to cut glass?”

“Di­amond?”

“Bra­vo.”

“You mean, what we’ve got here is a bag of in­dus­tri­al di­amond grit?”

“That’s what it would seem.”

Richie re­moved his haz­mat hood, wiped his brow. “That’s a first for me.” He turned, reached for a phone. “I think I’ll put a call in to the hos­pi­tal, let them know they can stand down from bi­olog­ical alert. From what I heard, that mu­se­um ad­min­is­tra­tor ac­tu­al­ly soiled his draw­ers.”

3

Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy, di­rec­tor of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, felt a prick­ling of ir­ri­ta­tion on the back of his neck as he ex­it­ed the el­eva­tor in­to the mu­se­um’s base­ment. It had been months since he’d been down in these sub­ter­ranean depths, and he won­dered why the dev­il Wil­fred Sher­man, chair­man of the Min­er­al­ogy De­part­ment, was so in­sis­tent on his com­ing to the min­er­al­ogy lab in­stead of Sher­man’s com­ing to Col­lopy’s of­fice on the fifth floor.

He turned a cor­ner at a brisk walk, his shoes scrap­ing the grit­ty floor, and came to the min­er­al­ogy lab door—which was shut. He tried the han­dle—locked—and in a fresh surge of ir­ri­ta­tion knocked sharply.

The door was opened al­most im­me­di­ate­ly by Sher­man, who just as quick­ly closed and locked it be­hind them. The cu­ra­tor looked di­sheveled, sweaty—not to put too fine a term on it, a wreck. As well he should, thought Col­lopy. His eye swept the lab and quick­ly fixed on the of­fend­ing pack­age it­self, soiled and wrin­kled, sit­ting in a dou­ble-​zi­plocked bag on a spec­imen ta­ble next to a stere­ozoom mi­cro­scope. Be­side it lay a half-​dozen white en­velopes.

“Dr. Sher­man,” he in­toned, “the care­less way this ma­te­ri­al was de­liv­ered to the mu­se­um has caused us ma­jor em­bar­rass­ment. This is noth­ing short of out­ra­geous. I want the name of the sup­pli­er, I want to know why this wasn’t han­dled through prop­er pro­cure­ment chan­nels, and I want to know why such valu­able ma­te­ri­al was han­dled so care­less­ly and mis­de­liv­ered in such a way as to cause a pan­ic. As I un­der­stand it, in­dus­tri­al-​grade di­amond grit costs sev­er­al thou­sand dol­lars a pound.”

Sher­man didn’t an­swer. He just sweat­ed.

“I can just see the head­line in to­mor­row’s news­pa­per: Bioter­ror Scare at the Nat­ural His­to­ry Mu­se­um. I’m not look­ing for­ward to read­ing it. I’ve just got­ten a call from some re­porter at the Times—Har­ri­man some­thing or oth­er—and I have to call him back in half an hour with an ex­pla­na­tion.”

Sher­man swal­lowed, still say­ing noth­ing. A drop of sweat trick­led down his brow and he quick­ly wiped it away with a hand­ker­chief.

“Well? Do you have an ex­pla­na­tion? And is there a rea­son why you in­sist­ed on my com­ing to your lab?”

“Yes,” Sher­man man­aged to say. He nod­ded to­ward the stere­ozoom. “I want­ed you to take a . . . take a look.”

Col­lopy got up, went over to the mi­cro­scope, re­moved his glass­es, and put his eyes over the oc­ulars. A blur­ry mess leaped in­to view. “I can’t see a bloody thing.”

“The fo­cus needs ad­just­ment, there.”

Col­lopy fum­bled with the knob, sweep­ing the spec­imen in and out of fo­cus as he tried to find the right spot. Fi­nal­ly, he found him­self star­ing at a breath­tak­ing­ly beau­ti­ful ar­ray of thou­sands of bril­liant­ly col­ored bits and pieces of crys­tal, back­lit like a stained-​glass win­dow.

“What is it?”

“A sam­ple of the grit that came in the pack­age.”

Col­lopy pulled away. “Well? Did you or some­one in your de­part­ment or­der it?”

Sher­man hes­itat­ed. “No, we didn’t.”

“Then tell me, Dr. Sher­man, how did thou­sands of dol­lars’ worth of di­amond grit come to be ad­dressed and de­liv­ered to your de­part­ment?”

“I have an ex­pla­na­tion—” Sher­man stopped. With a shak­ing hand, he picked up one of the white en­velopes. Col­lopy wait­ed, but Sher­man seemed to have frozen up.

“Dr. Sher­man?”

Sher­man did not re­spond. He ex­tract­ed the hand­ker­chief and dabbed his face a sec­ond time.

“Dr. Sher­man, are you ill?”

Sher­man swal­lowed. “I don’t know how to tell you this.”

Col­lopy said briskly, “We have a prob­lem, and I’ve now got”—he checked his watch—“on­ly twen­ty-​five min­utes to call this fel­low Har­ri­man back. So just go ahead and lay it out for me.”

Sher­man nod­ded dumb­ly, dabbed yet again at his face. De­spite his an­noy­ance, Col­lopy felt pity for the fel­low. In many ways, he was ba­si­cal­ly a mid­dle-​aged kid who nev­er out­grew his rock col­lec­tion . . . Sud­den­ly, Col­lopy re­al­ized it wasn’t just sweat the man was wip­ing away—his eyes were leak­ing tears.

“It’s not in­dus­tri­al di­amond grit,” Sher­man said at last.

Col­lopy frowned. “Ex­cuse me?”

The cu­ra­tor took a deep breath, seemed to brace him­self. “In­dus­tri­al di­amond grit is made from black or brown di­amonds of no aes­thet­ic val­ue. Un­der a mi­cro­scope, it looks like what you’d ex­pect: dark crys­talline par­ti­cles. But when you look at these un­der the mi­cro­scope, you see col­or.” His voice qua­vered.

“That’s what I saw, yes.”

Sher­man nod­ded. “Tiny frag­ments and crys­tals of col­or, ev­ery col­or in the rain­bow. I con­firmed that they were in­deed di­amond, and I asked my­self . . .” His voice fal­tered.

“Dr. Sher­man?”

“I asked my­self: how in the world did a sack of di­amond grit come to be made up of mil­lions of frag­ments of fan­cy col­or di­amonds? Two and a half pounds’ worth.”

The lab fell in­to a pro­found si­lence. Col­lopy felt him­self go cold. “I don’t un­der­stand.”

“This is not di­amond grit,” said Sher­man all in a rush. “This is the mu­se­um’s di­amond col­lec­tion.”

“What the dev­il are you say­ing?”

“The man who stole our di­amonds last month. He must have pul­ver­ized them. All of them.” The tears were now flow­ing freely, but Sher­man no longer both­ered to wipe them away.

“Pul­ver­ized?” Col­lopy looked around wild­ly. “How can you pul­ver­ize a di­amond?”

“With a sledge­ham­mer.”

“But they’re sup­posed to be the hard­est thing in the world.”

“Hard, yes. That doesn’t mean they aren’t brit­tle.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Many of our di­amonds have a unique col­or. Take the Queen of Nar­nia, for ex­am­ple. No oth­er di­amond has quite that blue col­or, with hints of vi­olet and green. I was able to iden­ti­fy each tiny frag­ment. That’s what I’ve been do­ing—sep­arat­ing them out.”

He took the white en­ve­lope in his hand and tipped it out on a sheet of pa­per ly­ing on the spec­imen ta­ble. A pile of blue grit poured out. He point­ed to it.

“The Queen of Nar­nia.”

He took out an­oth­er en­ve­lope, tipped it over in­to a pur­ple pile. “The Heart of Eter­ni­ty.”

One af­ter an­oth­er he emp­tied the lit­tle en­velopes. “The In­di­go Ghost. Ul­ti­ma Thule. The Fourth of Ju­ly. The Zanz­ibar Green.”

It was like a steady drum­beat, one pound­ing blow af­ter an­oth­er. Col­lopy stared in hor­ror at the tiny piles of glit­ter­ing sand.

“This is a sick joke,” he fi­nal­ly said. “Those can’t be the mu­se­um’s di­amonds.”

“The ex­act hues of many of these fa­mous di­amonds are quan­tifi­able,” Sher­man replied. “I have hard da­ta on them. I test­ed the frag­ments. They’re di­amonds with ex­act­ly the right hue. There can be no mis­take. There’s noth­ing else they could be.”

“But sure­ly not all of them,” said Col­lopy. “He can’t have de­stroyed them all.”

“That pack­age con­tained 2.42 pounds of di­amond grit. That’s equiv­alent to about 5,500 carats. Adding in the amount that spilled, the orig­inal ship­ment would have con­tained rough­ly 6,000 carats. I added up the carat weights of the di­amonds that were stolen . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Well?” Col­lopy asked at last, no longer able to con­tain him­self.

“The to­tal weight was 6,042 carats,” Sher­man said in a whis­per.

A long si­lence filled the lab­ora­to­ry, the on­ly sound the faint hum of the flu­ores­cent lights. At last Col­lopy raised his head and looked Sher­man in the eye.

“Dr. Sher­man,” he be­gan, but his voice cracked and he was forced to start over. “Dr. Sher­man. This in­for­ma­tion must not leave this room.”

Sher­man, al­ready pale, went white as a ghost. But af­ter a mo­ment, he nod­ded silent­ly.

4

William Smith­back Jr. en­tered the dark and fra­grant con­fines of the pub known as the Bones and scanned the noisy crowd. It was five o’clock and the place was packed with mu­se­um staff, all lu­bri­cat­ing them­selves af­ter the long and dusty hours spent la­bor­ing in the gran­ite pile across the street. Why in the world they all want­ed to hang out in a place whose ev­ery square inch of wall space was cov­ered with bones, af­ter es­cap­ing just such an en­vi­ron­ment at work, was a mys­tery to him. These days he him­self came to the Bones for one rea­son on­ly: the forty-​year-​old sin­gle malt that the bar­tender kept hid­den un­der the bar. At thir­ty-​six dol­lars a shot, it wasn’t ex­act­ly a bar­gain, but it sure beat hav­ing your in­sides cor­rod­ed by three dol­lars’ worth of Cut­ty Sark.

He spied the cop­per-​col­ored hair of his new bride, No­ra Kel­ly, at their usu­al ta­ble in the back. He waved, saun­tered over, and struck a dra­mat­ic pose.

“‘But, soft! What light through yon­der win­dow breaks?’” he in­toned. Then he kissed the back of her hand briefly, kissed her lips rather more at­ten­tive­ly, and took a seat across the ta­ble. “How are things?”

“The mu­se­um con­tin­ues to be an ex­cit­ing place to work.”

“You mean that bioter­ror scare this morn­ing?”

She nod­ded. “Some­one de­liv­ered a pack­age for the Min­er­al­ogy De­part­ment, leak­ing some kind of pow­der. They thought it was an­thrax or some­thing.”

“I heard about that. In fact, broth­er Bryce filed a sto­ry on that to­day.” Bryce Har­ri­man was Smith­back’s col­league and archri­val at the Times, but Smith­back had se­cured him­self a lit­tle breath­ing room with some re­cent—and very dra­mat­ic—scoops.

The hang­dog wait­er came by and stood by the ta­ble, silent­ly wait­ing to take their drink or­ders.

“I’ll take two fin­gers of the Glen Grant,” Smith­back said. “The good stuff.”

“A glass of white wine, please.”

The wait­er shuf­fled off.

“So it caused a stir?” Smith­back asked.

No­ra gig­gled. “You should have seen Green­law, the guy who found it. He was so sure he was dy­ing they had to car­ry him out on a stretch­er, pro­tec­tive suit and all.”

“Green­law? I don’t know him.”

“He’s the new V.P. for ad­min­is­tra­tion. Just hired from Con Ed.”

“So what’d it turn out to be? The an­thrax, I mean.”

“Grind­ing pow­der.”

Smith­back chuck­led as he ac­cept­ed his drink. “Grind­ing pow­der. Oh, God, that’s per­fect.” He swirled the am­ber liq­uid around in the bal­loon glass and took a sip. “How’d it hap­pen?” “It seems the pack­age was dam­aged in tran­sit, and the stuff was drib­bling out. A mes­sen­ger dropped it off with Curly, and Green­law just hap­pened by.”

“Curly? The old guy with the pipe?”

“That’s the one.”

“He’s still at the mu­se­um?”

“He’ll nev­er leave.”

“How did he take it?”

“In stride, like ev­ery­thing else. He was back in his pill­box a few hours lat­er, like noth­ing had hap­pened.”

Smith­back shook his head. “Why in the world would any­one send a sack of grit by mes­sen­ger?”

“Beats me.”

He took an­oth­er sip. “You think it was de­lib­er­ate?” he asked ab­sent­ly. “Some­one try­ing to freak out the mu­se­um?”

“You’ve got a crim­inal mind.”

“Do they know who sent it?”

“I heard the pack­age didn’t have a re­turn ad­dress.”

At this small de­tail, Smith­back grew sud­den­ly in­ter­est­ed. He wished he’d called up Har­ri­man’s piece on the Times in­ter­nal net­work and read it. “You know how much it costs to send some­thing by mes­sen­ger in New York City these days? Forty bucks.”

“Maybe it was valu­able grit.”

“But then, why no re­turn ad­dress? Who was it ad­dressed to?”

“Just the Min­er­al­ogy De­part­ment, I heard.”

Smith­back took an­oth­er thought­ful sip of the Glen Grant. There was some­thing about this sto­ry that set off a jour­nal­is­tic alarm in his head. He won­dered if Har­ri­man had got­ten to the bot­tom of it. Not bloody like­ly.

He ex­tract­ed his cell. “Mind if I make a call?”

No­ra frowned. “If you must.”

Smith­back di­aled the mu­se­um, asked to be put through to min­er­al­ogy. He was in luck: some­one was still there. He be­gan speak­ing rapid­ly. “This is Mr. Humnhmn in the Grmhmhmn’s of­fice, and I had a quick ques­tion: what kind of grind­ing pow­der was it that caused the scare this morn­ing?”

“I didn’t catch—”

“Look, I’m in a hur­ry. The di­rec­tor’s wait­ing for an an­swer.”

“I don’t know.”

“Is there any­one there who does?”

“There’s Dr. Sher­man.”

“Put him on.”

A mo­ment lat­er, a breath­less voice got on. “Dr. Col­lopy?”

“No, no,” said Smith­back eas­ily. “This is William Smith­back. I’m a re­porter for the New York Times.”

A si­lence. Then a very tense “Yes?”

“About that bioter­ror scare this morn­ing—”

“I can’t help you,” came the im­me­di­ate re­sponse. “I al­ready told ev­ery­thing I know to your col­league, Mr. Har­ri­man.”

“Just a rou­tine fol­low-​up, Dr. Sher­man. Mind?”

Si­lence.

“The pack­age was ad­dressed to you?”

“To the de­part­ment,” came the terse re­ply.

“No re­turn ad­dress?”

“No.”

“And it was full of grit?”

“That’s right.”

“What kind?”

A hes­ita­tion. “Corun­dum grit.”

“How much is corun­dum grit worth?”

“I don’t know off­hand. Not much.”

“I see. That’s all, thanks.”

He hung up to find No­ra look­ing at him.

“It’s rude to use your cell phone in a pub,” she said.

“Hey, I’m a re­porter. It’s my job to be rude.”

“Sat­is­fied?”

“No.”

“A pack­age of grit came to the mu­se­um. It was leak­ing, it freaked some­one out. End of sto­ry.”

“I don’t know.” Smith­back took an­oth­er long sip of the Glen Grant. “That guy sound­ed aw­ful­ly ner­vous just now.”

“Dr. Sher­man? He’s high-​strung.”

“He sound­ed more than high-​strung. He sound­ed fright­ened.”

He opened his cell phone again, and No­ra groaned. “If you start mak­ing calls, I’m head­ing home.”

“Come on, No­ra. One more call, then we’ll head over to the Rat­tlesnake Café for din­ner. I got­ta make this call now. It’s al­ready af­ter five and I want to catch peo­ple be­fore they leave.”

Quick­ly, he di­aled in­for­ma­tion, got a num­ber, punched it in. “De­part­ment of Health and Men­tal Ser­vices?”

Af­ter be­ing bounced around a bit, he fi­nal­ly got the lab he want­ed.

“Sen­tinel lab,” came a voice.

“To whom am I speak­ing?”

“Richard. And to whom am I speak­ing?”

“Hi, Richard, this is Bill Smith­back of the Times. You in charge?”

“I am now. The boss just went home.”

“Lucky for you. Can I ask a few ques­tions?”

“You said you’re a re­porter?”

“That’s right.”

“I sup­pose so.”

“This is the lab that han­dled that pack­age from the mu­se­um this morn­ing?”

“Sure is.”

“What was in it?”

Smith­back heard a snort. “Di­amond grit.”

“Not corun­dum?”

“No. Di­amond.”

“Did you ex­am­ine the grit your­self?”

“Yup.”

“What’d it look like?”

“Un­der coarse ex­am­ina­tion, like a sack of brown sand.”

Smith­back thought for a mo­ment. “How’d you fig­ure out it was di­amond grit?”

“By the in­dex of re­frac­tion of the par­ti­cles.”

“I see. And it couldn’t be con­fused with corun­dum?”

“No way.”

“You al­so ex­am­ined it un­der a mi­cro­scope, I as­sume?”

“Yup.”

“What’d it look like?”

“It was beau­ti­ful, like a bunch of lit­tle col­ored crys­tals.”

Smith­back felt a sud­den tin­gling at the nape of his neck. “Col­ored? What do you mean?”

“Bits and frag­ments of ev­ery col­or of the rain­bow. I had no idea di­amond grit was so pret­ty.”

“That didn’t strike you as odd?”

“A lot of things that are ug­ly to the hu­man eye look beau­ti­ful un­der the mi­cro­scope. Like bread mold, for in­stance—or sand, for that mat­ter.”

“But you said the grit looked brown.”

“On­ly when blend­ed to­geth­er.”

“I see. What’d you do with the pack­age?”

“We sent it back to the mu­se­um and chalked it up as a false alarm.”

“Thanks.”

Smith­back slow­ly shut the phone. Im­pos­si­ble. It couldn’t be.

He looked up to find No­ra star­ing at him, an­noy­ance clear on her face. He reached over and took her hand. “I’m re­al­ly sor­ry, but I’ve got an­oth­er call to make.”

She crossed her arms. “And I thought we were go­ing to have a nice evening to­geth­er.”

“One more call. Please. I’ll let you lis­ten in. Be­lieve me, this is go­ing to be good.”

No­ra’s cheeks grew pink. Smith­back knew that look: his wife was get­ting steamed.

Quick­ly, he di­aled the mu­se­um again, put the phone on speak­er. “Dr. Sher­man?”

“Yes?”

“This is Smith­back from the Times again.”

“Mr. Smith­back,” came the shrill re­ply, “I’ve al­ready told you ev­ery­thing I know. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a train to catch.”

“I know that what ar­rived at the mu­se­um this morn­ing was not corun­dum grit.”

Si­lence.

“I know what it re­al­ly was.”

More si­lence.

“The mu­se­um’s di­amond col­lec­tion.”

In the si­lence, No­ra looked at him sharply.

“Dr. Sher­man, I’m com­ing over to the mu­se­um to talk to you. If Dr. Col­lopy is still around, he would be wise to be there—or, at least, to make him­self avail­able by phone. I don’t know what you told my col­league Har­ri­man, but you’re not go­ing to fob the same stuff off on­to me. It’s bad enough that the mu­se­um al­lowed its di­amond col­lec­tion—the most valu­able in the world—to be stolen. I’m cer­tain the mu­se­um trustees wouldn’t want a cov­er-​up scan­dal to fol­low hard on the heels of the rev­ela­tion that the same di­amond col­lec­tion had just been re­duced to in­dus­tri­al-​strength grind­ing pow­der. Are we clear on that, Dr. Sher­man?”

It was a very weak and shaky voice that fi­nal­ly is­sued from the cell phone. “It wasn’t a cov­er-​up, I as­sure you. It was, ah, just a de­lay in the an­nounce­ment.”

“I’ll be there in ten min­utes. Don’t go any­where.”

Smith­back im­me­di­ate­ly made an­oth­er call, to his ed­itor at the Times. “Fen­ton? You know that piece on the an­thrax scare at the mu­se­um that Bryce Har­ri­man filed? Bet­ter kill that. I’ve got the re­al sto­ry, and it’s a bomb­shell. Hold the front page for me.”

He shut the phone and looked up. No­ra was no longer mad. She was white.

“Dio­genes Pen­der­gast,” she whis­pered. “He de­stroyed the di­amonds?”

Smith­back nod­ded.

“But why?”

“That’s a very good ques­tion, No­ra. But now, dar­ling, with my in­fi­nite apolo­gies, and an IOU for din­ner at the Rat­tlesnake Café, I have to go. I’ve got a cou­ple of in­ter­views to con­duct and a sto­ry to file be­fore mid­night if I’m go­ing to make the na­tion­al edi­tion. I’m re­al­ly, re­al­ly sor­ry. Don’t wait up for me.”

He rose and gave her a kiss.

“You’re amaz­ing,” she said in an awed voice.

Smith­back hes­itat­ed, feel­ing an un­ac­cus­tomed sen­sa­tion. It took him a mo­ment to re­al­ize he was blush­ing.

5

Dr. Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy stood be­hind the great nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry leather-​topped desk of his cor­ner of­fice in the mu­se­um’s south­east tow­er. The huge desk was bare, save for a copy of the morn­ing’s New York Times. The news­pa­per had not been opened. It did not need to be: al­ready, Col­lopy could see ev­ery­thing he need­ed to see, on the front page, above the fold, in the largest type the staid Times dared use.

The cat was out of the bag, and it could not be put back in.

Col­lopy be­lieved that he oc­cu­pied the great­est po­si­tion in Amer­ican sci­ence: di­rec­tor of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. His mind drift­ed from the sub­ject of the ar­ti­cle to the names of his dis­tin­guished fore­bears: Ogilvy, Scott, Throck­mor­ton. His goal, his one am­bi­tion, was to add his name to that au­gust reg­istry—and not fall in­to ig­nominy like his two im­me­di­ate pre­de­ces­sors: the late and not-​much-​lament­ed Win­ston Wright or the in­ept Olivia Mer­ri­am.

And yet there, on the front page of the Times, was a head­line that might just be his tomb­stone. He had weath­ered sev­er­al bad patch­es re­cent­ly, ir­rup­tions of scan­dal that would have felled a less­er man. But he had han­dled them cool­ly and de­ci­sive­ly—and he would do the same here.

A soft knock came at the door.

“Come in.”

The beard­ed fig­ure of Hugo Men­zies, chair­man of the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment, dressed el­egant­ly and with less than the usu­al de­gree of aca­dem­ic rum­pled­ness, en­tered the room. He silent­ly took a chair as Josephine Roc­co, the head of pub­lic re­la­tions, en­tered be­hind him, along with the mu­se­um’s lawyer, the iron­ical­ly named Beryl Dar­ling of Wil­fred, Spragg and Dar­ling.

Col­lopy re­mained stand­ing, watch­ing the three as he stroked his chin thought­ful­ly. Fi­nal­ly he spoke.

“I’ve called you here in emer­gen­cy ses­sion, for ob­vi­ous rea­sons.” He glanced down at the pa­per. “I as­sume you’ve seen the Times?”

His au­di­ence nod­ded in silent as­sent.

“We made a mis­take in try­ing to cov­er this up, even briefly. When I took this po­si­tion as di­rec­tor of the mu­se­um, I told my­self I would run this place dif­fer­ent­ly, that I wouldn’t op­er­ate in the se­cre­tive and some­times para­noid man­ner of the last few ad­min­is­tra­tions. I be­lieved the mu­se­um to be a great in­sti­tu­tion, one strong enough to sur­vive the vi­cis­si­tudes of scan­dal and con­tro­ver­sy.”

He paused.

“In try­ing to play down the de­struc­tion of our di­amond col­lec­tion, in seek­ing to cov­er it up, I made a mis­take. I vi­olat­ed my own prin­ci­ples.”

“An apol­ogy to us is all well and good,” said Dar­ling in her usu­al crisp voice, “but why didn’t you con­sult me be­fore you made that hasty and ill-​con­sid­ered de­ci­sion? You must have re­al­ized you couldn’t get away with it. This has done se­ri­ous dam­age to the mu­se­um and made my job that much more dif­fi­cult.”

Col­lopy re­mind­ed him­self this was pre­cise­ly the rea­son the mu­se­um paid Dar­ling four hun­dred dol­lars an hour: she al­ways spoke the un­var­nished truth.

He raised a hand. “Point tak­en. But this is a de­vel­op­ment I nev­er in my worst night­mares an­tic­ipat­ed—find­ing that our di­amonds have been re­duced to . . .” His voice cracked: he couldn’t fin­ish.

There was an un­easy shift­ing in the room.

Col­lopy swal­lowed, be­gan again. “We must take ac­tion. We’ve got to re­spond, and re­spond now. That is why I’ve asked you to this meet­ing.”

As he paused, Col­lopy could hear, com­ing faint­ly from Mu­se­um Drive be­low, the shouts and calls of a grow­ing crowd of protesters, along with po­lice sirens and bull­horns.

Roc­co spoke up. “The phones in my of­fice are ring­ing off the hook. It’s nine now, and I think we’ve prob­ably got un­til ten, maybe eleven at the lat­est, to make some kind of of­fi­cial state­ment. In all my years in pub­lic re­la­tions, I’ve nev­er en­coun­tered any­thing quite like this.”

Men­zies shift­ed in his chair, smoothed his sil­ver hair. “May I?”

Col­lopy nod­ded. “Hugo.”

Men­zies cleared his throat, his in­tense blue eyes dart­ing to the win­dow and back to Col­lopy. “The first thing we have to re­al­ize, Fred­er­ick, is that this catas­tro­phe is be­yond ‘spin­ning.’ Lis­ten to the crowd out there—the fact that we even con­sid­ered cov­er­ing up such a loss has the peo­ple up in arms. No: we’ve got to take the hit, hon­est­ly and square­ly. Ad­mit our wrong. No more dis­sem­bling.” He glanced at Roc­co. “That’s my first point and I hope we’re all in agree­ment on it.”

Col­lopy nod­ded again. “And your sec­ond?”

He leaned for­ward slight­ly. “It’s not enough to re­spond. We need to go on the of­fen­sive.”

“What do you mean?”

“We need to do some­thing glo­ri­ous. We need to make a fab­ulous an­nounce­ment, some­thing that will re­mind New York City and the world that, de­spite all this, we’re still a great mu­se­um. Mount a sci­en­tif­ic ex­pe­di­tion, per­haps, or em­bark on some ex­traor­di­nary re­search project.”

“Won’t that look like a rather trans­par­ent di­ver­sion?” asked Roc­co.

“Per­haps to some. But the crit­icism will last on­ly a day or two, and then we’ll be free to build in­ter­est and good pub­lic­ity.”

“What kind of project?” Col­lopy asked.

“I haven’t got­ten that far.”

Roc­co nod­ded slow­ly. “Per­haps it would work. This event could be com­bined with a gala par­ty, strict­ly A-​list, the so­cial ‘must’ of the sea­son. That will mute mu­se­um-​bash­ing among the press and politi­cians, who will nat­ural­ly want to be in­vit­ed.”

“This sounds promis­ing,” Col­lopy said.

Af­ter a mo­ment, Dar­ling spoke. “It’s a fine the­ory. All we lack is the ex­pe­di­tion, event, or what­ev­er.”

At that mo­ment, Col­lopy’s in­ter­com buzzed. He stabbed at it with ir­ri­ta­tion. “Mrs. Surd, we’re not to be dis­turbed.”

“I know, Dr. Col­lopy, but . . . well, this is high­ly un­usu­al.”

“Not now.”

“It re­quires an im­me­di­ate re­sponse.”

Col­lopy sighed. “Can’t it wait ten min­utes, for heav­en’s sake?”

“It’s a bank wire trans­fer do­na­tion of ten mil­lion eu­ros for—”

“A gift of ten mil­lion eu­ros? Bring it in.”

Mrs. Surd en­tered, ef­fi­cient and plump, car­ry­ing a pa­per.

“Ex­cuse me for a mo­ment.” Col­lopy snatched the pa­per. “Who’s it from and where do I sign?”

“It’s from a Comte Thier­ry de Ca­hors. He’s giv­ing the mu­se­um ten mil­lion eu­ros to ren­ovate and re­open the Tomb of Senef.”

“The Tomb of Senef? What the dev­il is that?” Col­lopy tossed the pa­per on the desk. “I’ll deal with this lat­er.”

“But it says here, sir, that the funds are wait­ing in transat­lantic es­crow and must be ei­ther re­fused or ac­cept­ed with­in the hour.”

Col­lopy re­sist­ed an im­pulse to wring his hands. “We’re awash in bloody re­strict­ed funds like this! What we need are gen­er­al funds to pay the bills. Fax this count who­ev­er and see if you can’t per­suade him to make this an un­re­strict­ed do­na­tion. Use my name with the usu­al cour­te­sies. We don’t need the mon­ey for what­ev­er wind­mill he’s tilt­ing at.”

“Yes, Dr. Col­lopy.”

She turned away and Col­lopy glanced at the group. “Now, I be­lieve Beryl had the floor.”

The lawyer opened her mouth to speak, but Men­zies held out a sup­press­ing hand. “Mrs. Surd? Please wait a few min­utes be­fore con­tact­ing the Count of Ca­hors.”

Mrs. Surd hes­itat­ed, glanc­ing at Col­lopy for con­fir­ma­tion. The di­rec­tor nod­ded his con­fir­ma­tion and she left, clos­ing the door be­hind her.

“All right, Hugo, what’s this about?” Col­lopy asked.

“I’m try­ing to re­mem­ber the de­tails. The Tomb of Senef—it rings a bell. And, now that I re­call, so does the Count of Ca­hors.”

“Can we move on here?” Col­lopy asked.

Men­zies sat for­ward sud­den­ly. “Fred­er­ick, this is mov­ing on! Think back over your mu­se­um his­to­ry. The Tomb of Senef was an Egyp­tian tomb on dis­play in the mu­se­um from its orig­inal open­ing un­til, I be­lieve, the De­pres­sion, when it was closed.”

“And?”

“If mem­ory serves, it was a tomb stolen and dis­as­sem­bled by the French dur­ing the Napoleon­ic in­va­sion of Egypt and lat­er seized by the British. It was pur­chased by one of the mu­se­um’s bene­fac­tors and re­assem­bled in the base­ment as one of the mu­se­um’s orig­inal ex­hibits. It must still be there.”

“And who is this Ca­hors?” Dar­ling asked.

“Napoleon brought an army of nat­ural­ists and ar­chae­ol­ogists with his army when he in­vad­ed Egypt. A Ca­hors led the ar­chae­olog­ical con­tin­gent. I imag­ine this fel­low is a de­scen­dant.”

Col­lopy frowned. “What does this have to do with any­thing?”

“Don’t you see? This is pre­cise­ly what we’re look­ing for!”

“A dusty old tomb?”

“Ex­act­ly! We make a big an­nounce­ment of the count’s gift, set an open­ing date with a gala par­ty and all the trap­pings, and make a me­dia event out of it.” Men­zies looked in­quir­ing­ly at Roc­co.

“Yes,” Roc­co said. “Yes, that could work. Egypt is al­ways pop­ular with the gen­er­al pub­lic.”

“Could work? It will work. The beau­ty of it is that the tomb’s al­ready in­stalled. The Sa­cred Im­ages ex­hi­bi­tion has run its course, it’s time for some­thing new. We could do this in two months—or less.”

“A lot de­pends on the con­di­tion of the tomb.”

“Nev­er­the­less, it’s still in place and ready to go. It might on­ly need to be swept out. Our stor­age rooms are full of Egyp­tian odds and ends that we could put in the tomb to round out the ex­hi­bi­tion. The count is of­fer­ing plen­ty of mon­ey for what­ev­er restora­tion is nec­es­sary.”

“I don’t un­der­stand,” Dar­ling said. “How could an en­tire ex­hi­bi­tion be for­got­ten for sev­en­ty years?”

“For one thing, it would have been bricked up—that’s of­ten what they did to old ex­hibits to pre­serve them. “ Men­zies smiled a lit­tle sad­ly. “This mu­se­um sim­ply has too many ar­ti­facts, and not enough mon­ey or cu­ra­tors to tend them. That’s why I’ve lob­bied for years now to cre­ate a po­si­tion for a mu­se­um his­to­ri­an. Who knows what oth­er se­crets sleep in the long­for­got­ten cor­ners?”

A brief si­lence set­tled over the room, bro­ken abrupt­ly as Col­lopy brought his hand down on his desk. “Let’s do it.” He reached for the phone. “Mrs. Surd? Tell the count to re­lease the mon­ey. We’re ac­cept­ing his terms.”

6

No­ra Kel­ly stood in her lab­ora­to­ry, gaz­ing at a large spec­imen ta­ble cov­ered with frag­ments of an­cient Anasazi pot­tery. The pot­sherds were of an un­usu­al type that glowed al­most gold­en in the bright lights, a sheen caused by count­less mi­ca par­ti­cles in the orig­inal clay. She had col­lect­ed the sherds dur­ing a sum­mer­time ex­pe­di­tion to the Four Cor­ners area of the South­west, and now she had ar­ranged them on a huge con­tour map of the Four Cor­ners, each sherd in the pre­cise ge­ograph­ical lo­ca­tion where it had been found.

She stared at the glit­ter­ing ar­ray, once again try­ing to make sense of it. This was the core of her ma­jor re­search project at the mu­se­um: trac­ing the dif­fu­sion of this rare mi­ca­ceous pot­tery from its source in south­ern Utah as it was trad­ed and re­trad­ed across the South­west and be­yond. The pot­tery had been de­vel­oped by a re­li­gious kachi­na cult that had come up from Aztec Mex­ico, and No­ra be­lieved that—by trac­ing the spread of the pot­tery across the South­west—she could there­by trace the spread of the kachi­na cult.

But there were so many sherds, and so many C-14 dates, that mak­ing all the vari­ables work to­geth­er was a thorny prob­lem, and she had not even be­gun to solve it. She stared hard: the an­swer was there. She just had to find it.

She sighed and took a sip of cof­fee, glad she had her base­ment lab as a refuge from the storm rag­ing out­side the mu­se­um above. Yes­ter­day it had been the an­thrax scare, but to­day was worse—thanks in large part to her hus­band, Bill, who had a sin­gu­lar knack for stir­ring up trou­ble. He had bro­ken the sto­ry in the Times this morn­ing that the pow­der was, in fact, the mu­se­um’s stolen di­amond col­lec­tion, worth hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars, pul­ver­ized to dust by the thief. The news had caused an up­roar worse than any­thing No­ra could re­mem­ber. The may­or, cor­nered by a bevy of tele­vi­sion cam­eras out­side his of­fice, had al­ready blast­ed the mu­se­um and called for the im­me­di­ate re­moval of its di­rec­tor.

She forced her mind back to the prob­lem of the pot­sherds. All the lines of dif­fu­sion led back to one place: the source of the rare clay at the base of the Kaiparow­its plateau of Utah, where it had been mined and fired by the in­hab­itants of a large cliff dwelling hid­den in the canyons. From there, it had been trad­ed to places as far away as north­ern Mex­ico and west­ern Texas. But how? And when? And by whom?

She got up and went to a cab­inet, re­mov­ing the last zi­plock bag of pot­sherds. The lab was as qui­et as a tomb, the on­ly sound the faint hiss of the forced-​air ducts. Be­yond the lab­ora­to­ry it­self lay large stor­age ar­eas: an­cient oak cab­inets with rip­pled glass win­dows, filled with pots, ar­row­heads, ax­es, and oth­er ar­ti­facts. A faint whiff of paradichloroben­zene waft­ed in from the In­di­an mum­my stor­age room next door. She be­gan lay­ing the sherds out on the map, fill­ing in its last blank cor­ner, dou­ble-​check­ing the ac­ces­sion num­ber on each sherd as she placed it.

Sud­den­ly she paused. She had heard the creak­ing-​open of the lab­ora­to­ry door and the sound of a soft foot­fall on the dusty floor. Hadn’t she locked it? It was a sil­ly habit, lock­ing the door: but the mu­se­um’s vast and silent base­ment, with its dim cor­ri­dors and its dark stor­age rooms filled with strange and dread­ful ar­ti­facts, had al­ways giv­en her the creeps. And she could not for­get what had hap­pened to her friend Mar­go Green just a few weeks ear­li­er in a dark­ened ex­hi­bi­tion hall, two floors above where she stood now.

“Is some­one there?” she called out.

A fig­ure ma­te­ri­al­ized from the dim­ness, first the out­lines of a face, then a close­ly trimmed beard with sil­very-​white hair—and No­ra re­laxed. It was on­ly Hugo Men­zies, chair­man of the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment and her im­me­di­ate boss. He was still a lit­tle pale from his re­cent bout with gall­stones, his cheer­ful eyes rimmed in red.

“Hel­lo, No­ra,” said the cu­ra­tor, giv­ing her a kind­ly smile. “May I?”

“Of course.”

Men­zies perched him­self on a stool. “It’s so love­ly and qui­et down here. Are you alone?” “Yes. How are things up top?”

“The crowd out­side is still grow­ing.”

“I saw them when I came in.”

“It’s get­ting ug­ly. They’re jeer­ing and hec­tor­ing the ar­riv­ing staff and block­ing traf­fic on Mu­se­um Drive. And I fear this is just the be­gin­ning. It’s one thing when the may­or and gov­er­nor make pro­nounce­ments, but it ap­pears the peo­ple of New York have al­so been aroused. God save us from the fury of the vul­gus mo­bile.”

No­ra shook her head. “I’m sor­ry that Bill was the cause—”

Men­zies laid a gen­tle hand on her shoul­der. “Bill was on­ly the mes­sen­ger. He did the mu­se­um a fa­vor in ex­pos­ing this ill-​ad­vised cov­er-​up scheme be­fore it could take hold. The truth would have come out even­tu­al­ly.”

“I can’t un­der­stand why some­one would go to the trou­ble to steal the gems and then de­stroy them.”

Men­zies shrugged. “Who knows what goes on in the mind of a de­ranged in­di­vid­ual? It evinces, at the very least, an im­pla­ca­ble ha­tred of the mu­se­um.”

“What had the mu­se­um ev­er done to him?”

“On­ly one per­son can an­swer that ques­tion. But I’m not here to spec­ulate on the crim­inal’s mind. I’m here for a spe­cif­ic rea­son, and it has to do with what’s go­ing on up­stairs.”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

“I’ve just come from a meet­ing in Dr. Col­lopy’s of­fice. We made a de­ci­sion, and it in­volves you.”

No­ra wait­ed, feel­ing a creep­ing sense of alarm.

“Are you fa­mil­iar with the Tomb of Senef?”

“I’ve nev­er heard of it.”

“Not sur­pris­ing. Few mu­se­um em­ploy­ees have. It was one of the mu­se­um’s orig­inal ex­hibits, an Egyp­tian tomb from the Val­ley of the Kings that was re­assem­bled in these base­ments. It was closed down and sealed off in the thir­ties and nev­er re­opened.”

“And?”

“What the mu­se­um needs right now is some pos­itive news, some­thing that will re­mind ev­ery­one that we’re still do­ing good things. A dis­trac­tion, as it were. That dis­trac­tion is go­ing to be the Tomb of Senef. We’re go­ing to re­open it, and I want you as point per­son for the project.”

“Me? But I put off my re­search for months to help mount the Sa­cred Im­ages show!”

An iron­ic smile played over Men­zies’s face. “That’s right, and that’s why I’m ask­ing you to do this. I saw the work you did on Sa­cred Im­ages. You’re the on­ly one in the de­part­ment who can pull this off.”

“In how long?”

“Col­lopy wants it fast-​tracked. We’ve got six weeks.”

“You’ve got to be kid­ding!”

“We face a re­al emer­gen­cy. Fi­nances have been in a sor­ry state for a long time. And with this new spate of bad pub­lic­ity, any­thing could hap­pen.”

No­ra fell silent.

“What set this in mo­tion,” Men­zies con­tin­ued gen­tly, “is that we just re­ceived ten mil­lion eu­ros—thir­teen mil­lion dol­lars—to fund this project. Mon­ey is no ob­ject. We’ll have the unan­imous sup­port of the mu­se­um, from the board of trustees to all the unions. The Tomb of Senef has re­mained sealed, so it should be in fair­ly good con­di­tion.”

“Please don’t ask me to do this. Give it to Ash­ton.”

“Ash­ton’s no good at con­tro­ver­sy. I saw how you han­dled your­self with those protesters at the Sa­cred Im­ages open­ing. No­ra, the mu­se­um is in a fight for its life. I need you. The mu­se­um needs you.”

There was a si­lence. No­ra glanced back over her pot­sherds with a hor­ri­bly sink­ing heart. “I don’t know any­thing about Egyp­tol­ogy.”

“We’re bring­ing in a top Egyp­tol­ogist as a tem­po­rary hire to work with you.”

No­ra re­al­ized there was no es­cape. She heaved a huge sigh. “All right. I’ll do it.”

“Bra­va! That’s what I want­ed to hear. Now then, we haven’t got­ten very far with the idea yet, but the tomb hasn’t been on dis­play in sev­en­ty years, so it will ob­vi­ous­ly need some spruc­ing up. It’s not enough these days to mount a stat­ic ex­hi­bi­tion; you need mul­ti­me­dia. And of course, there will be a gala open­ing, some­thing ev­ery New York­er with so­cial as­pi­ra­tions will have to get a tick­et for.”

No­ra shook her head. “All this in six weeks?”

“I was hop­ing you might have some ideas.”

“When do you need them?”

“Right now, I’m afraid. Dr. Col­lopy has sched­uled a press con­fer­ence in half an hour to an­nounce about the show.”

“Oh, no.” No­ra slumped on her stool. “Are you sure spe­cial ef­fects will be nec­es­sary? I hate com­put­er­ized win­dow dress­ing. It dis­tracts from the ob­jects.”

“That is what be­ing a mu­se­um means these days, un­for­tu­nate­ly. Look at the new Abra­ham Lin­coln li­brary. Yes, on a cer­tain lev­el, it’s a bit vul­gar per­haps—but this is the twen­ty­first cen­tu­ry and we’re com­pet­ing with tele­vi­sion and video games. Please, No­ra: I need ideas now. The di­rec­tor will be bom­bard­ed with ques­tions and he wants to be able to talk about the ex­hib­it.”

No­ra swal­lowed. On the one hand, it made her sick to think of putting off her re­search yet again, work­ing sev­en­ty-​hour weeks, nev­er see­ing her hus­band of on­ly a few months. On the oth­er hand, if she was go­ing to do this—and it seemed she had no choice—she want­ed to do it well.

“We don’t want any­thing cheesy,” she said. “No mum­mies pop­ping up from their sar­copha­gi. And it’s got to be ed­uca­tion­al.”

“My feel­ings ex­act­ly.”

No­ra thought a mo­ment. “The tomb was robbed, am I right?”

“It was robbed in an­tiq­ui­ty, like most Egyp­tian tombs, prob­ably by the very priests who buried Senef—who, by the way, was not a pharaoh, but vizier and re­gent to Thut­mo­sis IV.”

No­ra di­gest­ed this. It was, she sup­posed, a huge hon­or to be asked to co­or­di­nate a ma­jor new ex­hi­bi­tion—and this one would have ex­cep­tion­al­ly high vis­ibil­ity. It was in­trigu­ing. She found her­self be­ing drawn in­to it, de­spite her­self.

“If you’re look­ing for some­thing dra­mat­ic,” she said, “why not re-​cre­ate the mo­ment of the rob­bery it­self? We could dra­ma­tize the rob­bers at work—show their fear of be­ing caught, what would hap­pen to them if they were caught—with a voice-​over ex­plain­ing what was hap­pen­ing, who Senef was, that sort of thing.”

Men­zies nod­ded. “Ex­cel­lent, No­ra.”

No­ra felt a mount­ing ex­cite­ment. “If done right, with com­put­er­ized light­ing and so forth, it would give vis­itors an ex­pe­ri­ence they’d nev­er for­get. Make his­to­ry come alive in­side the tomb it­self.”

“No­ra, some­day you’ll be di­rec­tor of this mu­se­um.”

She blushed. The idea did not dis­please her.

“I’d been think­ing of some sort of sound-​and-​light show my­self. It’s per­fect.” With un­char­ac­ter­is­tic ex­uber­ance, Men­zies seized No­ra’s hand. “This is go­ing to save the mu­se­um. And it will make your ca­reer here. As I said, you’ll have all the mon­ey and sup­port you’ll need. As for the com­put­er ef­fects, let me man­age that side of things—you fo­cus on the ob­jects and dis­plays. Six weeks will be just enough time to get the buzz go­ing, get out the in­vi­ta­tions, and work the press. They won’t be able to trash the mu­se­um if they’re an­gling to be in­vit­ed.”

He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to pre­pare Dr. Col­lopy for the press con­fer­ence. Thank you so much, No­ra.”

He bus­tled out, leav­ing No­ra alone in the silent lab­ora­to­ry. She turned her eye re­gret­ful­ly to the ta­ble she had so care­ful­ly ar­ranged with pot­sherds, and then she start­ed pick­ing them up, one at a time, and re­turn­ing them to their stor­age bags.

7

Spe­cial Agent Spencer Cof­fey round­ed the cor­ner and ap­proached the war­den’s of­fice, his steel-​capped heels mak­ing a sat­is­fy­ing tat­too against the pol­ished ce­ment floor. Short, bot­tle­mus­tached Agent Ra­bin­er fol­lowed, def­er­en­tial­ly rid­ing his wake. Cof­fey paused be­fore the in­sti­tu­tion­al oak door, gave a tap, then opened it with­out wait­ing for an in­vi­ta­tion.

The war­den’s sec­re­tary, a thin bleach-​blonde with old ac­ne scars on her face and a nob­ull­shit at­ti­tude, gave him the once-​over. “Yes?”

“Agent Cof­fey, Fed­er­al Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tion.” He waved his badge. “We’ve got an ap­point­ment, and we’re in a hur­ry.”

“I’ll tell the war­den you’re here,” she said, her up­state hick ac­cent grat­ing on his nerves.

Cof­fey glanced at Ra­bin­er and rolled his eyes. He’d al­ready had a run-​in with the wom­an over a dropped con­nec­tion when he called ear­li­er that day, and now, meet­ing her in per­son, he con­firmed she was ev­ery­thing he de­spised, a low-​class hay­seed who’d clawed her way in­to a po­si­tion of semire­spectabil­ity.

“Agent Cof­fey and—?” She glanced at Ra­bin­er.

“Spe­cial Agent Cof­fey and Spe­cial Agent Ra­bin­er.”

The wom­an picked up the in­ter­com phone with in­so­lent slow­ness. “Agents Cof­fey and Ra­bin­er to see you, sir. They say they have an ap­point­ment.”

She lis­tened for a mo­ment, and then hung up. She wait­ed just long enough to let Cof­fey know she wasn’t in near­ly the hur­ry he was. “Mr. Imhof,” she fi­nal­ly said, “will see you.”

Cof­fey start­ed to walk past her desk. Then he paused. “So. How are things down on the farm?”

“Seems to be rut­tin’ sea­son for hogs,” she re­spond­ed with­out a pause, not even look­ing at him.

Cof­fey con­tin­ued in­to the in­ner of­fice, won­der­ing just what the bitch meant and whether he’d been in­sult­ed or not.

As Cof­fey shut the door be­hind them, War­den Gor­don Imhof rose from be­hind a large Formi­ca desk. Cof­fey hadn’t seen him in per­son be­fore, and found the man far younger than he ex­pect­ed, small and neat, with a goa­tee and cool blue eyes. He was im­pec­ca­bly dressed and sport­ed a hel­met of blow-​dried hair. Cof­fey couldn’t quite pi­geon­hole him. In the old days, war­dens came through the ranks; but this fel­low looked like he’d got­ten some Ph.D. some­where in cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­ity man­age­ment and had nev­er felt the sat­is­fy­ing thok! of a night­stick strik­ing hu­man flesh. Still, there was a thin­ness to the lips that bod­ed well.

Imhof ex­tend­ed his hand to Cof­fey and Ra­bin­er. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you.”

“How did the in­ter­ro­ga­tion go?”

“Our case is de­vel­op­ing,” Cof­fey said. “If this doesn’t fit the fed­er­al death penal­ty statute to a T, I don’t know what does. But it’s no slam dunk. There are cer­tain com­pli­ca­tions.” He didn’t men­tion that the in­ter­ro­ga­tion had, in fact, gone bad­ly—very bad­ly.

Imhof’s face was in­scrutable.

“I want to make some­thing clear,” Cof­fey con­tin­ued. “One of this killer’s vic­tims was a col­league and friend of mine, the third most dec­orat­ed agent in the his­to­ry of the FBI.”

He let that sink in. What he didn’t men­tion was that this vic­tim, Spe­cial Agent in Charge Mike Deck­er, was re­spon­si­ble for a hu­mil­iat­ing de­mo­tion Cof­fey had been hit with sev­en years be­fore, in the wake of the mu­se­um killings, and that noth­ing in his life had sat­is­fied Cof­fey more than hear­ing about his death—ex­cept the news of who’d done it.

That had been a spe­cial mo­ment.

“So you’ve got a very spe­cial pris­on­er, Mr. Imhof. He’s a so­cio­path­ic se­ri­al killer of the most dan­ger­ous kind—mur­dered at least three peo­ple, al­though our in­ter­est in him is re­strict­ed to the mur­der of the fed­er­al agent. We’re let­ting the State of New York wor­ry about the oth­ers, but we hope by the time they con­vict we’ll al­ready have the pris­on­er strapped to a gur­ney with a nee­dle in his arm.”

Imhof, lis­ten­ing, in­clined his head.

“The pris­on­er is al­so an ar­ro­gant bas­tard. I worked with him on a case years ago. He thinks he’s bet­ter than ev­ery­one else, thinks he’s above the rules. He’s got no re­spect for au­thor­ity.”

At the men­tion of re­spect, Imhof fi­nal­ly seemed to re­spond. “If there’s one thing I de­mand as war­den of this in­sti­tu­tion, it’s re­spect. Good dis­ci­pline be­gins and ends with re­spect.”

“Ex­act­ly,” said Cof­fey. He de­cid­ed to fol­low up this line, see if he could get Imhof to bite. “Speak­ing of re­spect, dur­ing the in­ter­ro­ga­tion the pris­on­er had some choice things to say about you.”

Now he could see Imhof get­ting in­ter­est­ed.

“But they don’t bear re­peat­ing,” Cof­fey went on. “Nat­ural­ly, you and I have learned to rise above such pet­ti­ness.”

Imhof leaned for­ward. “If a pris­on­er has shown a lack of re­spect—and I’m not talk­ing about any­thing per­son­al here, but a lack of re­spect for the in­sti­tu­tion in any way—I need to know about it.”

“It was the usu­al bull­shit and I’d hate to re­peat it.”

“Nev­er­the­less, I’d like to know.”

Of course, the pris­on­er had, in fact, said noth­ing. That had been the prob­lem. “He re­ferred to you as a beer-​swill­ing Nazi bas­tard, a Boche, a Kraut, that sort of thing.” Imhof’s face tight­ened slight­ly, and Cof­fey knew im­me­di­ate­ly he’d scored a hit. “Any­thing else?” the war­den asked qui­et­ly.

“Very crude stuff, some­thing about the size of your—ah, well, I don’t even re­call the de­tails.”

There was a frosty si­lence. Imhof’s goa­tee quiv­ered slight­ly.

“As I said, it was all bull­shit. But it points out an im­por­tant fact: the pris­on­er hasn’t seen the wis­dom of co­op­er­at­ing. And you know why? Ev­ery­thing stays the same for him whether he an­swers our ques­tions or not, whether he shows re­spect for you or the in­sti­tu­tion or not. That’s got to change. He has to learn that his wrong choic­es have con­se­quences. And an­oth­er thing: he’s got to be kept in to­tal, ut­ter iso­la­tion. He can’t be al­lowed to pass any mes­sages to the out­side. There have been al­le­ga­tions that he might be in league with a broth­er, still on the lam. So no phone calls, no more meet­ings with his lawyer, to­tal black­out of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the out­side world. We wouldn’t want any fur­ther, ah, col­lat­er­al dam­age to oc­cur due to lack of vig­ilance. Do you un­der­stand what I mean, War­den?”

“I cer­tain­ly do.”

“Good. He’s got to be made to see the ad­van­tages of co­op­er­ation. I’d love to work him over with a rub­ber hose and a cat­tle prod—he de­serves noth­ing less—but un­for­tu­nate­ly that’s not pos­si­ble, and we sure as hell don’t want to do any­thing that could come back to haunt us at the tri­al. He may be crazy, but he’s not dumb. You can’t give a guy like that an open­ing. He’s got enough mon­ey to dig up John­nie Cochran and hire him for the de­fense.”

Cof­fey stopped talk­ing. Be­cause for the first time, Imhof had smiled. And some­thing about the look in the man’s blue eyes chilled Cof­fey.

“I un­der­stand your prob­lem, Agent Cof­fey. The pris­on­er must be shown the val­ue of re­spect. I’ll see to it per­son­al­ly.”

8

On the morn­ing ap­point­ed for open­ing the sealed Tomb of Senef, No­ra ar­rived in Men­zies’s ca­pa­cious of­fice to find him sit­ting in his usu­al wing chair, in con­ver­sa­tion with a young man. They both rose as she came in.

“No­ra,” he said. “This is Dr. Adri­an Wicher­ly, the Egyp­tol­ogist I men­tioned to you. Adri­an, this is Dr. No­ra Kel­ly.”

Wicher­ly turned to her with a smile, a thatch of un­tidy brown hair the on­ly ec­cen­tric­ity in his oth­er­wise per­fect­ly dressed and groomed per­son. At a glance, No­ra took in the un­der­stat­ed Sav­ile Row suit, the fine wing tips, the club tie. Her sweep came to rest on an ex­traor­di­nar­ily hand­some face: dim­pled cheeks, flash­ing blue eyes, and per­fect white teeth. He was, she thought, no more than thir­ty.

“De­light­ed to meet you, Dr. Kel­ly,” he said in an el­egant Oxbridge ac­cent. He clasped her hand gen­tly, bless­ing her with an­oth­er daz­zling smile.

“A plea­sure. And please call me No­ra.”

“Of course. No­ra. For­give my for­mal­ity—my stuffy up­bring­ing has left me rather ham­strung this side of the pond. I just want to say how smash­ing it is to be here, work­ing on this project.”

Smash­ing. No­ra sup­pressed a smile—Adri­an Wicher­ly was al­most a car­ica­ture of the dash­ing young Brit, of a type she didn’t think even ex­ist­ed out­side P. G. Wode­house nov­els.

“Adri­an comes to us with some im­pres­sive cre­den­tials,” Men­zies said. “D.Phil. from Ox­ford, di­rect­ed the ex­ca­va­tion of the tomb KV 42 in the Val­ley of the Kings, uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of Egyp­tol­ogy at Cam­bridge, au­thor of the mono­graph Pharaohs of the XX Dy­nasty.”

No­ra looked at Wicher­ly with fresh re­spect. He was amaz­ing­ly young for an ar­chae­ol­ogist of such stature. “Very im­pres­sive.”

Wicher­ly put on a self-​dep­re­cat­ing face. “A lot of aca­dem­ic rub­bish, re­al­ly.”

“It’s hard­ly that.” Men­zies glanced at his watch. “We’re meet­ing some­one from the Main­te­nance De­part­ment at ten. As I un­der­stand it, no­body knows quite pre­cise­ly where the Tomb of Senef is any­more. The one cer­tain­ty is that it was bricked up and has been in­ac­ces­si­ble ev­er since. We’re go­ing to have to break our way in.”

“How in­trigu­ing,” said Wicher­ly. “I feel rather like Howard Carter.”

They de­scend­ed in an old brass el­eva­tor, which creaked and groaned its way to the base­ment. They emerged in the Main­te­nance Sec­tion and thread­ed a com­plex path through the ma­chine shop and car­pen­try, at last ar­riv­ing at the open door of a small of­fice. In­side, a small man sat at a desk, por­ing over a thick press of blueprints. He rose as Men­zies rapped on the door frame.

“I’d like to in­tro­duce you both to Mr. Sea­mus Mc­Corkle,” said Men­zies. “He prob­ably knows more about the lay­out of the mu­se­um than any­one alive.”

“Which still isn’t say­ing much,” said Mc­Corkle. He was an elvish man in his ear­ly fifties with a fine Celtic face and a high, whistling voice. He pro­nounced the fi­nal word mitch.

Af­ter com­plet­ing the in­tro­duc­tions, Men­zies turned back to Mc­Corkle. “Have you found our tomb?”

“I be­lieve so.” Mc­Corkle nod­ded at the slab of old blueprints. “It’s not easy, find­ing things in this old pile.”

“Why ev­er not?” Wicher­ly asked.

Mc­Corkle be­gan rolling up the top blueprint. “The mu­se­um con­sists of thir­ty-​four in­ter­con­nect­ed build­ings, with a foot­print of more than six acres, over two mil­lion square feet of space, and eigh­teen miles of cor­ri­dors—and that’s not even count­ing the sub-​base­ment tun­nels, which no one’s ev­er sur­veyed or di­agrammed. I once tried to fig­ure out how many rooms there were in this joint, gave up when I hit a thou­sand. It’s been un­der con­stant con­struc­tion and ren­ova­tion for ev­ery sin­gle one of its hun­dred and forty years. That’s the na­ture of a mu­se­um—col­lec­tions get moved around, rooms get joined to­geth­er, oth­ers get split apart and re­named. And a lot of these changes are made on the fly, with­out blueprints.”

“But sure­ly they couldn’t lose an en­tire Egyp­tian tomb!” said Wicher­ly.

Mc­Corkle laughed. “That would be dif­fi­cult, even for this mu­se­um. It’s find­ing the en­trance that might be tricky. It was bricked up in 1935 when they built the con­nect­ing tun­nel from the 81st Street sub­way sta­tion.” He tucked the blueprints un­der his arm and picked up an old leather bag that lay on his desk. “Shall we?”

“Lead the way,” said Men­zies.

They set off along a puke-​green cor­ri­dor, past main­te­nance rooms and stor­age ar­eas, through a heav­ily traf­ficked sec­tion of the base­ment. As they went along, Mc­Corkle gave a run­ning ac­count. “This is the met­al shop. This is the old phys­ical plant, once home to the an­cient boil­ers, now used to store the col­lec­tion of whale skele­tons. Juras­sic di­nosaur stor­age . . . Cre­ta­ceous . . . Oligocene mam­mals . . . Pleis­tocene mam­mals . . . dugongs and man­atees . . .”

The stor­age ar­eas gave way to lab­ora­to­ries, their shiny, stain­less-​steel doors in con­trast to the dingy cor­ri­dors, lit with caged light­bulbs and lined with rum­bling steam pipes.

They passed through so many locked doors No­ra lost count. Some were old and re­quired keys, which Mc­Corkle se­lect­ed from a large ring. Oth­er doors, part of the mu­se­um’s new se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem, he opened by swip­ing a mag­net­ic card. As they moved deep­er in­to the fab­ric of the build­ing, the cor­ri­dors be­came pro­gres­sive­ly emp­ty and silent.

“I dare­say this place is as vast as the British Mu­se­um,” said Wicher­ly.

Mc­Corkle snort­ed in con­tempt. “Big­ger. Much big­ger.”

They came to an an­cient set of riv­et­ed met­al doors, which Mc­Corkle opened with a large iron key. Dark­ness yawned be­yond. He hit a switch and il­lu­mi­nat­ed a long, once-​el­egant cor­ri­dor lined with dingy fres­coes. No­ra squint­ed: they were paint­ings of a New Mex­ico land­scape, with moun­tains, deserts, and a mul­ti­sto­ried In­di­an ru­in she rec­og­nized as Taos Pueblo.

“Fre­mont El­lis,” said Men­zies. “This was once the Hall of the South­west. Shut down since the for­ties.”

“These are ex­traor­di­nary,” said No­ra.

“In­deed. And very valu­able.”

“They’re rather in need of cu­ra­tion,” said Wicher­ly. “That’s a rather nasty stain, there.”

“It’s a ques­tion of mon­ey,” Men­zies said. “If our count hadn’t stepped for­ward with the nec­es­sary grant, the Tomb of Senef would prob­ably have been left to sleep for an­oth­er sev­en­ty years.”

Mc­Corkle opened an­oth­er door, re­veal­ing an­oth­er dim hall turned in­to stor­age, full of shelves cov­ered with beau­ti­ful­ly paint­ed pots. Old oak­en cab­inets stood against the walls, front­ed with rip­pled glass, re­veal­ing a pro­fu­sion of dim ar­ti­facts.

“The South­west col­lec­tions,” Mc­Corkle said.

“I had no idea,” said No­ra, amazed. “These should be avail­able for study.”

“As Adri­an point­ed out, they need to be cu­rat­ed first,” Men­zies said. “Once again, a ques­tion of mon­ey.”

“It’s not on­ly mon­ey,” Mc­Corkle added, with a strange, pinched ex­pres­sion on his face.

No­ra ex­changed glances with Wicher­ly. “I’m sor­ry?” she asked.

Men­zies cleared his throat. “I think what Sea­mus means is that the, ah, first Mu­se­um Beast killings hap­pened in the vicin­ity of the Hall of the South­west.”

In the si­lence that fol­lowed, No­ra made a men­tal note to have a look at these col­lec­tions lat­er—prefer­ably, in the com­pa­ny of a large group. Maybe she could write a grant to see them moved to up­dat­ed stor­age.

An­oth­er door gave way to a small­er room, lined floor-​to-​ceil­ing with black met­al draw­ers. Half hid­den be­hind the draw­ers were an­cient posters and an­nounce­ments from the twen­ties and thir­ties, with art de­co let­ter­ing and im­ages of Gib­son Girls. In an ear­li­er era, it must have been an an­techam­ber of sorts. The room smelled of paradichloroben­zene and some­thing bad—like old beef jerky, No­ra de­cid­ed.

At the far end, a great dim hall opened up. In the re­flect­ed light, she could see that its walls were cov­ered with fres­coes of the pyra­mids of Giza and the Sphinx as they had ap­peared when first built.

“Now we’re ap­proach­ing the old Egyp­tian gal­leries,” Mc­Corkle said.

They en­tered the vast hall. It had been turned in­to stor­age space: shelv­ing was cov­ered in trans­par­ent plas­tic sheets, which were in turn over­laid with dust.

Mc­Corkle un­rolled the blueprints, squint­ed at them in the dim light. “If my es­ti­ma­tions are cor­rect, the en­trance to the tomb was in what is now the an­nex, at the far end.”

Wicher­ly went to one shelf, lift­ed the plas­tic. Be­neath, No­ra could make out met­al shelves crowd­ed with pot­tery ves­sels, gild­ed chairs and beds, head­rests, canopic jars, and small­er fig­urines in al­abaster, faience, and ce­ram­ic.

“Good Lord, this is one of the finest col­lec­tions of ushabtis I’ve ev­er seen.” Wicher­ly turned ex­cit­ed­ly to No­ra. “Why, there’s enough ma­te­ri­al here alone to fill up the tomb twice over.” He picked up an ushabti and turned it over with rev­er­ence. “Old King­dom, II Dy­nasty, reign of the pharaoh Het­epsekhemwy.”

“Dr. Wicher­ly, the rules about han­dling ob­jects . . . ,” said Mc­Corkle, a warn­ing note in his voice.

“It’s quite all right,” said Men­zies. “Dr. Wicher­ly is an Egyp­tol­ogist. I’ll take re­spon­si­bil­ity.”

“Of course,” said Mc­Corkle, a lit­tle put out. No­ra had the feel­ing that Mc­Corkle took a kind of pro­pri­etary in­ter­est in these old col­lec­tions. They were his, in a way, as he was one of the few peo­ple ev­er to see them.

Wicher­ly went from one shelf to the next, his mouth prac­ti­cal­ly wa­ter­ing. “Why, they even have a Ne­olith­ic col­lec­tion from the Up­per Nile! Good Lord, take a look at this cer­emo­ni­al thatof!” He held up a foot-​long stone knife, flaked from gray flint.

Mc­Corkle cast an an­noyed glance at Wicher­ly. The ar­chae­ol­ogist laid the knife back in its place with the ut­most care, then reshroud­ed it in plas­tic.

They came to an­oth­er iron-​bound door, which Mc­Corkle had some dif­fi­cul­ty open­ing, try­ing sev­er­al keys be­fore find­ing the cor­rect one. The door groaned open at last, the hinges shed­ding clouds of rust.

Be­yond lay a small room filled with sar­copha­gi made of paint­ed wood and car­ton­nage. Some were with­out lids, and in­side, No­ra could make out the in­di­vid­ual mum­mies—some wrapped, some un­wrapped.

“The mum­my room,” said Mc­Corkle.

Wicher­ly rushed in ahead of the rest. “Good heav­ens, there must be a hun­dred in here!” He swept a plas­tic sheet aside, ex­pos­ing a large wood­en sar­coph­agus. “Look at this!”

No­ra went over and peered at the mum­my. The linen ban­dages had been ripped from its face and chest, the mouth was open, the black lips shriv­eled and drawn back as if cry­ing out in protest at the vi­ola­tion. In its chest stood a gap­ing hole, the ster­num and ribs torn out.

Wicher­ly turned to­ward No­ra, eyes bright. “Do you see?” he said in an al­most rev­er­en­tial whis­per. “This mum­my was robbed. They tore off the linen to get at pre­cious amulets hid­den in the wrap­pings. And there—where that hole is—was where a jade and gold scarab bee­tle had been placed on the chest. The sym­bol of re­birth. Gold was con­sid­ered the flesh of the gods, be­cause it nev­er tar­nished. They ripped it open to take it.”

“This can be the mum­my we put in the tomb,” Men­zies said. “The idea—No­ra’s idea—was that we show the tomb as it ap­peared while be­ing robbed.”

“How per­fect,” said Wicher­ly, turn­ing a bril­liant smile to No­ra.

“I be­lieve,” Mc­Corkle in­ter­rupt­ed, “that the tomb en­trance was against that wall.” Drop­ping his bag on the floor, he pulled the plas­tic sheet­ing away from the shelves cov­er­ing the far wall, ex­pos­ing pots, bowls, and bas­kets, all filled with black shriv­eled ob­jects.

“What’s that in­side?” No­ra asked.

Wicher­ly went over to ex­am­ine the ob­jects. Af­ter a si­lence, he straight­ened up. “Pre­served food. For the af­ter­life. Bread, an­te­lope joints, fruits and veg­eta­bles, dates—pre­served for the pharaoh’s jour­ney to the af­ter­world.”

They heard a grow­ing rum­ble com­ing through the walls, fol­lowed by a muf­fled squeal of met­al, then si­lence.

“The Cen­tral Park West sub­way,” Mc­Corkle ex­plained. “The 81st Street sta­tion is very close.”

“We’ll have to find some way to damp­en that sound,” Men­zies said. “It de­stroys the mood.”

Mc­Corkle grunt­ed. Then he re­moved an elec­tron­ic de­vice from the bag and aimed it at the new­ly ex­posed wall, turned, aimed again. Then he pulled out a piece of chalk, made a mark on the wall. Tak­ing a sec­ond de­vice from his shirt pock­et, he laid it against the wall and slid it across slow­ly, tak­ing read­ings as he went.

Then he stepped back. “Bin­go. Help me move these shelves.”

They be­gan shift­ing the ob­jects to shelves on the oth­er walls. When the wall was at last bare, Mc­Corkle pulled the shelf sup­ports from the crum­bling plas­ter with a set of pli­ers and put them to one side.

“Ready for the mo­ment of truth?” Mc­Corkle asked, a gleam in his eye, good hu­mor re­turn­ing.

“Ab­so­lute­ly,” said Wicher­ly.

Mc­Corkle re­moved a long spike and ham­mer from his bag, po­si­tioned the spike on the wall, gave it a sharp blow, then an­oth­er. The sounds echoed in the con­fined space and plas­ter be­gan falling in sheets, ex­pos­ing cours­es of brick. He con­tin­ued to drive the spike in, dust ris­ing . . . and then sud­den­ly the spike slid in to the hilt. Mc­Corkle ro­tat­ed it, giv­ing it a few side blows with the ham­mer, loos­en­ing the brick. A few more deft blows knocked free a large chunk of brick­work, leav­ing a black rect­an­gle. He stepped back.

As he did so, Wicher­ly dart­ed for­ward. “For­give me if I claim ex­plor­er’s priv­ilege.” He turned back with his most charm­ing smile. “Any ob­jec­tions?”

“Be our guest,” said Men­zies. Mc­Corkle frowned but said noth­ing.

Wicher­ly took his flash­light and shined it in­to the hole, press­ing his face to the gap. A long si­lence en­sued, in­ter­rupt­ed by the rum­ble of an­oth­er sub­way train.

“What do you see?” asked Men­zies at last.

“Strange an­imals, stat­ues, and gold—ev­ery­where the glint of gold.”

“What in heck?” said Mc­Corkle.

Wicher­ly glanced back at him. “I was be­ing face­tious—quot­ing what Howard Carter said when he first peered in­to King Tut’s tomb.”

Mc­Corkle’s lips tight­ened. “If you’ll step aside, please, I’ll have this open in a mo­ment.”

Mc­Corkle stepped back up to the gap, and with a se­ries of ex­pert­ly aimed blows of the spike, loos­ened sev­er­al rows of bricks. In less than ten min­utes, he had opened a hole big enough to step through. He dis­ap­peared in­side, came back out a mo­ment lat­er.

“The elec­tric­ity isn’t work­ing, as I sus­pect­ed. We’ll have to use our flash­lights. I’m re­quired to lead the way,” he said with a glance at Wicher­ly. “Mu­se­um reg­ula­tions. Might be haz­ards in there.”

“The mum­my from the Black La­goon, per­haps,” said Wicher­ly with a laugh and a glance at No­ra.

They stepped care­ful­ly in­side, then stopped to re­con­noi­ter. In the glow of their flash­light beams, a great stone thresh­old was vis­ible, and be­yond, a de­scend­ing stair­case carved out of rough lime­stone blocks.

Mc­Corkle moved to­ward the first step, hes­itat­ed, then gave a slight­ly ner­vous chuck­le. “Ready, ladies and gents?”

9

Cap­tain of Homi­cide Lau­ra Hay­ward stood silent­ly in her of­fice, look­ing at the un­tidy for­est that seemed to sprout from her desk, from ev­ery chair, and to spill over to the floor—chaot­ic heaps of pa­pers, pho­tographs, tan­gles of col­ored string, CDs, yel­low­ing telex sheets, la­bels, en­velopes. The out­ward dis­ar­ray, she mused, was a per­fect mir­ror of her in­ner state of mind.

Her beau­ti­ful lay­out of ev­idence against Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, with all its ac­cusato­ry para­pher­na­lia of col­ored strings, pho­tos, and la­bels, was no more. It had fit to­geth­er so well. The ev­idence had been sub­tle but clean, con­vinc­ing, ut­ter­ly con­sis­tent. An out-​of-​the-​way spot of blood, some mi­cro­scop­ic fibers, a few strands of hair, a knot tied in a cer­tain way, the chain of own­er­ship of a mur­der weapon. The DNA tests didn’t lie, the foren­sics didn’t lie, the au­top­sies didn’t lie. They all point­ed to Pen­der­gast. The case against him was that good.

Maybe too good. And that, in a nut­shell, was the prob­lem.

A ten­ta­tive knock came at the door and she turned to see the fig­ure of Glen Sin­gle­ton, lo­cal precinct cap­tain, hov­er­ing out­side. He was in his late for­ties; tall, with the sleek, ef­fi­cient move­ments of a swim­mer, a long face, and an aquiline pro­file. He wore a char­coal suit that was far too ex­pen­sive and well cut for an NYPD cap­tain, and ev­ery oth­er week he dropped $120 at the bar­ber­shop in the lob­by of the Car­lyle to have his salt-​and-​pep­per hair trimmed to per­fec­tion. But these were signs of per­son­al fas­tid­ious­ness, not a cop on the take. And de­spite the sar­to­ri­al af­fec­ta­tions, he was a damned good cop, one of the most dec­orat­ed on ac­tive du­ty in the force.

“Lau­ra, may I?” He smiled, dis­play­ing an ex­pen­sive row of per­fect teeth.

“Sure, why not?”

“We missed you at the de­part­men­tal din­ner last night. Did you have a con­flict?”

“A con­flict? No, noth­ing like that.”

“Re­al­ly? Then I can’t un­der­stand why you’d pass up a chance to eat, drink, and be mer­ry.”

“I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t re­al­ly in the mood to be mer­ry.”

There was an awk­ward si­lence while Sin­gle­ton looked around for an emp­ty chair.

“Sor­ry about the mess. I was just do­ing . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“What?”

Hay­ward shrugged.

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Sin­gle­ton hes­itat­ed briefly, seemed to come to some de­ci­sion, then shut the door be­hind him and stepped for­ward.

“This isn’t like you, Lau­ra,” he said in a low voice.

So it’s go­ing to be like that, thought Hay­ward.

“I’m your friend, and I’m not go­ing to beat around the bush,” he went on. “I have a pret­ty good idea what you were ‘just do­ing,’ and you’re ask­ing for trou­ble by do­ing it.” Hay­ward wait­ed.

“You de­vel­oped the case in text­book fash­ion. You han­dled it per­fect­ly. So why are you beat­ing your­self up about it now?”

She gazed steadi­ly at Sin­gle­ton for a mo­ment, try­ing to con­trol the surge of anger that she knew was di­rect­ed more at her­self than him.

“Why? Be­cause the wrong man’s in jail. Agent Pen­der­gast didn’t mur­der Tor­rance Hamil­ton, he didn’t mur­der Charles Duchamp, and he didn’t mur­der Michael Deck­er. His broth­er, Dio­genes, is the re­al mur­der­er.”

Sin­gle­ton sighed. “Look. It’s clear that Dio­genes stole the mu­se­um’s di­amonds and kid­napped Vi­ola Maske­lene. There are state­ments from Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta, that gemol­ogist, Ka­plan, and Maske­lene her­self to that ef­fect. But that doesn’t make him a mur­der­er. You have ab­so­lute­ly no proof of that. On the oth­er hand, you’ve done a great job prov­ing Agent Pen­der­gast did com­mit those mur­ders. Let it go.”

“I did the job I was sup­posed to do, and that’s the prob­lem. I was set up. Pen­der­gast was framed.”

Sin­gle­ton frowned. “I’ve seen plen­ty of frame jobs in my ca­reer, but for this to work, it would have to have been im­pos­si­bly so­phis­ti­cat­ed.”

“D’Agos­ta told me all along that Dio­genes Pen­der­gast was fram­ing his broth­er. Dio­genes col­lect­ed all the phys­ical ev­idence he need­ed dur­ing Pen­der­gast’s con­va­les­cence in Italy—blood, hair, fibers, ev­ery­thing. D’Agos­ta in­sist­ed Dio­genes was alive; that he was the kid­nap­per of Vi­ola Maske­lene; that he was be­hind the di­amond theft. He was right about those things, and it makes me think he might be right about ev­ery­thing else.”

“D’Agos­ta messed up big-​time!” Sin­gle­ton snapped. “He be­trayed my trust, and yours. I’ve no doubt that the dis­ci­plinary tri­al will con­firm his dis­missal from the force. You re­al­ly want to tie your wag­on to that star?”

“I want to tie my wag­on to the truth. I’m re­spon­si­ble for putting Pen­der­gast on tri­al for his life, and I’m the on­ly one who can un­do it.”

“The on­ly way to do that is to prove some­body else is the mur­der­er. Do you have a sin­gle shred of ev­idence against Dio­genes?”

Hay­ward frowned. “Mar­go Green de­scribed her as­sailant as—”

“Mar­go Green was at­tacked in a dark­ened room. Her tes­ti­mo­ny would nev­er hold up.” Sin­gle­ton hes­itat­ed. “Look, Lau­ra,” he said in a gen­tler voice. “Let’s not bull­shit each oth­er here. I know what you’re go­ing through. Hook­ing up with some­one on the force is nev­er easy. Break­ing up with them is even hard­er. And with Vin­cent D’Agos­ta in the mid­dle of this case, I don’t won­der you feel a touch of—”

“D’Agos­ta and I are an­cient his­to­ry,” Lau­ra in­ter­rupt­ed. “I don’t ap­pre­ci­ate that in­sin­ua­tion. And for that mat­ter, I don’t ap­pre­ci­ate this vis­it of yours.”

Sin­gle­ton picked up a pile of pa­pers from the guest chair, placed them on the floor, and sat down. He bowed his head, propped his el­bows on his knees, sighed, then looked up.

“Lau­ra, “ he said, “you’re the youngest fe­male homi­cide cap­tain in the his­to­ry of the NYPD. You’re twice as good as any man at your lev­el. Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er loves you. The may­or loves you. Your own peo­ple love you. You’re go­ing to be com­mis­sion­er some­day—you’re that good. I didn’t come here at any­one’s be­hest, I came here on my own. To warn you that you’ve run out of time on this. The FBI is mov­ing ahead with their case against Pen­der­gast. They think he killed Deck­er, and they aren’t in­ter­est­ed in in­con­sis­ten­cies. What you’ve got is a hunch, noth­ing more . . . and it’s not worth throw­ing away your ca­reer on a hunch. Be­cause that’s what will hap­pen if you go up against the FBI on this—and lose.”

She looked at him steadi­ly, took a deep breath. “So be it.”

10

The small group de­scend­ed the dust-​laden stair­case of the Tomb of Senef, their shoes leav­ing prints as in a coat­ing of fresh snow.

Wicher­ly paused, shin­ing his light around. “Ah. This is what the Egyp­tians called the God’s First Pas­sage along the Sun’s Path.” He turned to­ward No­ra and Men­zies. “Are you in­ter­est­ed, or will I be mak­ing a bore of my­self?”

“By all means,” said Men­zies. “Let’s have the tour.”

Wicher­ly’s teeth gleamed in the dim light. “The prob­lem is, much of the mean­ing of these an­cient tombs still eludes us. They’re easy enough to date, though—this seems a fair­ly typ­ical New King­dom tomb, I’d say late XVI­IIth Dy­nasty.”

“Right on tar­get,” said Men­zies. “Senef was the vizier and re­gent to Thut­mo­sis IV.” “Thank you.” Wicher­ly ab­sorbed the com­pli­ment with ev­ident sat­is­fac­tion. “Most of these New King­dom tombs had three parts—an out­er, mid­dle, and in­ner tomb, di­vid­ed in­to a to­tal of twelve cham­bers, which to­geth­er rep­re­sent­ed the pas­sage of the Sun God through the un­der­world dur­ing the twelve hours of night. The pharaoh was buried at sun­set, and his soul ac­com­pa­nied the Sun God on his so­lar bar­que as he made the per­ilous jour­ney through the un­der­world to­ward his glo­ri­ous re­birth at dawn.”

He shone his light ahead, il­lu­mi­nat­ing a dim por­tal at the far end. “This stair­case would have been filled with rub­ble, end­ing in a sealed door.”

They con­tin­ued de­scend­ing the stair­case, at last reach­ing a mas­sive door­way topped by a lin­tel carved with a huge Eye of Ho­rus. Wicher­ly paused, shin­ing his light on the Eye and the hi­ero­glyph­ics sur­round­ing it.

“Can you read these hi­ero­glyph­ics?” asked Men­zies.

Wicher­ly grinned. “I make a pret­ty good show of it. It’s a curse.” He winked sly­ly at No­ra. “To any who cross this thresh­old, may Am­mut swal­low his heart.”

There was a short si­lence.

Mc­Corkle is­sued a high-​pitched chuck­le. “That’s all?”

“To the an­cient tomb rob­ber,” said Wicher­ly, “that would be enough—that’s a heck of a curse to an an­cient Egyp­tian.”

“Who is Am­mut?” No­ra asked.

“The Swal­low­er of the Damned.” Wicher­ly point­ed his flash­light on a dim paint­ing on the far wall, de­pict­ing a mon­ster with a crocodil­ian head, the body of a leop­ard, and the grotesque hindquar­ters of a hip­po, squat­ting on the sand, mouth open, about to de­vour a row of hu­man hearts. “Evil words and deeds made the heart heavy, and af­ter death Anu­bis weighed your heart on a bal­ance scale against the Feath­er of Maat. If your heart weighed more than the feath­er, the ba­boon-​head­ed god, Thoth, tossed it to the mon­ster Am­mut to eat. Am­mut jour­neyed in­to the sands of the west to defe­cate, and that’s where you’d end up if you didn’t lead a good life—a shite, bak­ing in the heat of the West­ern Desert.”

“That’s more than I need­ed to hear, thank you, Doc­tor,” said Mc­Corkle.

“Rob­bing a pharaoh’s tomb must have been a ter­ri­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for an an­cient Egyp­tian. The curs­es put on any who en­tered the tomb were very re­al to them. To can­cel the pow­er of the dead pharaoh, they didn’t just rob the tomb, they de­stroyed it, smash­ing ev­ery­thing. On­ly by de­stroy­ing the ob­jects could they dis­perse their malev­olent pow­er.”

“Fod­der for the ex­hib­it, No­ra,” Men­zies mur­mured.

Af­ter the briefest hes­ita­tion, Mc­Corkle stepped across the thresh­old, and the rest fol­lowed.

“The God’s Sec­ond Pas­sage,” Wicher­ly said, shin­ing his light around at the in­scrip­tions. “The walls are cov­ered with in­scrip­tions from the Re­unupertemhru, the Egyp­tian Book of the Dead.”

“Ah! How in­ter­est­ing!” Men­zies said. “Read us a sam­ple, Adri­an.”

In a low voice, Wicher­ly be­gan to in­tone:

The Re­gent Senef, whose word is truth, saith: Praise and thanks­giv­ing be un­to thee, Ra, O thou who rollest on like un­to gold, thou Il­lu­min­er of the Two Lands on the day of thy birth. Thy moth­er brought thee forth on her hand, and thou didst light up with splen­dor the cir­cle which is trav­eled over by the Disk. O Great Light who rollest across Nu, thou dost raise up the gen­er­ations of men from the deep source of thy wa­ters . . .

“It’s an in­vo­ca­tion to Ra, the Sun God, by the de­ceased, Senef. It’s pret­ty typ­ical of the Book of the Dead.”

“I’ve heard about the Book of the Dead,” No­ra said, “but I don’t know much about it.”

“It was ba­si­cal­ly a group of mag­ical in­vo­ca­tions, spells, and in­can­ta­tions. It helped the dead make the dan­ger­ous jour­ney through the un­der­world to the Field of Reeds—the an­cient Egyp­tian idea of heav­en. Peo­ple wait­ed in fear dur­ing that long night af­ter the buri­al of the pharaoh, be­cause if he bug­gered up some­how down in the un­der­world and wasn’t re­born, the sun would nev­er rise again. The dead king had to know the spells, the se­cret names of the ser­pents, and all kinds of oth­er ar­cane knowl­edge to fin­ish the jour­ney. That’s why it’s all writ­ten on the walls of his tomb—the Book of the Dead was a set of crib notes to eter­nal life.”

Wicher­ly chuck­led, shin­ing his beam over four reg­is­ters of hi­ero­glyph­ics paint­ed in red and white. They stepped to­ward them, rais­ing clouds of deep­en­ing gray dust. “There’s the First Gate of the Dead,” he went on. “It shows the pharaoh get­ting in­to the so­lar bar­que and jour­ney­ing in­to the un­der­world, where he’s greet­ed by a crowd of the dead . . . Here in Gate Four they’ve en­coun­tered the dread­ed Desert of Sokor, and the boat mag­ical­ly be­comes a ser­pent to car­ry them across the burn­ing sands . . . And this! This is very dra­mat­ic: at mid­night, the soul of the Sun God Ra unites with his corpse, rep­re­sent­ed by the mum­mi­fied fig­ure—” “Par­don my say­ing so, Doc­tor,” Mc­Corkle broke in, “but we’ve still got eight rooms to go.” “Right, of course. So sor­ry.”

They pro­ceed­ed to the far end of the cham­ber. Here, a dark hole re­vealed a steep stair­case plung­ing in­to black­ness. “This pas­sage would al­so have been filled with rub­ble,” Wicher­ly said. “To hin­der rob­bers.”

“Be care­ful,” Mc­Corkle mut­tered as he led the way.

Wicher­ly turned to No­ra and held out a well-​man­icured hand. “May I?”

“I think I can han­dle it,” she said, amused at the old-​world cour­tesy. As she watched Wicher­ly de­scend with ex­ces­sive cau­tion, his beau­ti­ful­ly pol­ished shoes heav­ily coat­ed with dust, she de­cid­ed that he was far more like­ly to slip and break his neck than she was.

“Be care­ful!” Wicher­ly called out to Mc­Corkle. “If this tomb fol­lows the usu­al plan, up ahead is the well.”

“The well?” Mc­Corkle’s voice float­ed back.

“A deep pit de­signed to send un­wary tomb rob­bers to their death. But it was al­so a way to keep wa­ter from flood­ing the tomb, dur­ing those rare pe­ri­ods when the Val­ley of the Kings flash-​flood­ed.”

“Even if it re­mains in­tact, the well will sure­ly be bridged over,” Men­zies said. “Re­call that this was once an ex­hib­it.”

They moved for­ward cau­tious­ly, their beams fi­nal­ly re­veal­ing a rick­ety wood­en bridge span­ning a pit at least fif­teen feet deep. Mc­Corkle, ges­tur­ing for them to re­main be­hind, ex­am­ined the bridge care­ful­ly with his light, then ad­vanced out on­to it. A sud­den crack! caused No­ra to jump. Mc­Corkle grabbed des­per­ate­ly for the rail­ing. But it was mere­ly the sound of set­tling wood, and the bridge held.

“It’s still safe,” said Mc­Corkle. “Cross one at a time.”

No­ra walked gin­ger­ly across the nar­row bridge. “I can’t be­lieve this was once part of an ex­hib­it. How did they ev­er in­stall a well like this in the sub-​base­ment of the mu­se­um?”

“It must have been cut in­to the Man­hat­tan bedrock,” Men­zies said from be­hind. “We’ll have to bring this up to code.”

On the far side of the bridge, they passed over an­oth­er thresh­old. “Now we’re in the mid­dle tomb,” said Wicher­ly. “There would have been an­oth­er sealed door here. What mar­velous fres­coes! Here’s an im­age of Senef meet­ing the gods. And more vers­es from the Book of the Dead.”

“Any more curs­es?” No­ra asked, glanc­ing at an­oth­er Eye of Ho­rus paint­ed promi­nent­ly above the once-​sealed door.

Wicher­ly shone his light to­ward it. “Hm­mm. I’ve nev­er seen an in­scrip­tion like this be­fore. The place which is sealed. That which li­eth down in the closed place is re­born by the Ba-​soul which is in it; that which walketh in the closed space is dis­pos­sessed of the Ba-​soul. By the Eye of Ho­rus I am de­liv­ered or damned, O great god Osiris.”

“Sure sounds like an­oth­er curse to me,” said Mc­Corkle.

“I would guess it’s mere­ly an ob­scure quo­ta­tion from the Book of the Dead. The bloody thing runs to two hun­dred chap­ters and no­body’s fig­ured all of it out.”

The tomb now opened up on­to a stu­pen­dous hall, with a vault­ed roof and six great stone pil­lars, all dense­ly cov­ered with hi­ero­glyph­ics and fres­coes. It seemed in­cred­ible to No­ra that this huge, or­nate space had been asleep in the bow­els of the mu­se­um for more than half a cen­tu­ry, for­got­ten by al­most all.

Wicher­ly turned, play­ing his light across the ex­ten­sive paint­ings. “This is rather ex­traor­di­nary. The Hall of the Char­iots, which the an­cients called the Hall of Re­pelling En­emies. This was where all the war stuff the pharaoh need­ed in the af­ter­life would have been stored—his char­iot, bows and ar­rows, hors­es, swords, knives, war club and staves, hel­met, leather ar­mor.”

His beam paused at a frieze de­pict­ing be­head­ed bod­ies laid out by the hun­dreds on the ground, their heads ly­ing in rows near­by. The ground was splat­tered with blood, and the an­cient artist had added such re­al­is­tic de­tails as lolling tongues.

They moved through a long se­ries of pas­sage­ways un­til they came to a room that was small­er than the oth­ers. A large fres­co on one side showed the same scene of weigh­ing the heart de­pict­ed ear­li­er, on­ly much larg­er. The hideous, slaver­ing form of Am­mut squat­ted near­by.

“The Hall of Truth,” Wicher­ly said. “Even the pharaoh was judged, or in this case, Senef, who was al­most as pow­er­ful as a pharaoh.”

Mc­Corkle grunt­ed, then dis­ap­peared in­to the next cham­ber, and the rest fol­lowed. It was an­oth­er spa­cious room with a vault­ed ceil­ing, paint­ed with a night sky full of stars, the walls dense with hi­ero­glyph­ics. An enor­mous gran­ite sar­coph­agus sat in the mid­dle, emp­ty. The walls on each side were in­ter­rupt­ed by four black doors.

“This is an ex­traor­di­nary tomb,” said Wicher­ly, shin­ing the light around. “I had no idea. When you called me, Dr. Men­zies, I thought it would be some­thing small but charm­ing. This is stu­pen­dous. Where in the world did the mu­se­um get it?”

“An in­ter­est­ing sto­ry,” Men­zies replied. “When Napoleon con­quered Egypt in 1798, one of his prizes was this tomb, which he had dis­as­sem­bled, block by block, to take back to France. But when Nel­son de­feat­ed the French in the Bat­tle of the Nile, a Scot­tish naval cap­tain fi­na­gled the tomb for him­self and re­assem­bled it at his cas­tle in the High­lands. In the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, his last de­scen­dant, the 7th Baron of Rat­tray, find­ing him­self strapped for cash, sold it to one of the mu­se­um’s ear­ly bene­fac­tors, who had it shipped across the At­lantic and in­stalled while they were build­ing the mu­se­um.”

“The baron let go of one of Eng­land’s na­tion­al trea­sures, I should say.”

Men­zies smiled. “He re­ceived a thou­sand pounds for it.”

“Worse and worse! May Am­mut swal­low the greedy baron’s heart for sell­ing the rud­dy thing!” Wicher­ly laughed, cast­ing his flash­ing blue eyes on No­ra, who smiled po­lite­ly. His at­ten­tive­ness was be­com­ing ob­vi­ous, and he seemed not at all dis­cour­aged by the wed­ding band on her fin­ger.

Mc­Corkle be­gan to tap his foot im­pa­tient­ly.

“This is the buri­al cham­ber,” Wicher­ly be­gan, “which the an­cients called the House of Gold. Those an­techam­bers would be the Ushabti Room; the Canopic Room, where all the pharaoh’s pre­served or­gans were stored in jars; the Trea­sury of the End; and the Rest­ing Place of the Gods. Re­mark­able, isn’t it, No­ra? What fun we’ll have!”

No­ra didn’t an­swer im­me­di­ate­ly. She was think­ing about just how mas­sive the tomb was, and how dusty, and how much work lay ahead of them.

Men­zies must have been think­ing the same thing, be­cause he turned to her with a smile that was half ea­ger, half rue­ful.

“Well, No­ra,” he said. “It should prove an in­ter­est­ing six weeks.”

Ger­ry Fecteau slammed the door to soli­tary 44 hard, caus­ing a deaf­en­ing boom through­out the third floor of Herk­moor Cor­rec­tion­al Fa­cil­ity 3. He smirked and winked at his com­pan­ion as they paused out­side the door, lis­ten­ing while the sound echoed through the vast ce­ment spaces be­fore dy­ing slow­ly away.

The pris­on­er in 44 was a big mys­tery. All the guards were talk­ing about him. He was im­por­tant, that much was clear: FBI agents had come to vis­it him sev­er­al times and the war­den had tak­en a per­son­al in­ter­est. But what most im­pressed Fecteau was the tight lid on in­for­ma­tion. For most new pris­on­ers, it didn’t take long for the ru­mor mill to grind out the ac­cu­sa­tion, the crime, the gory de­tails. But in this case, no­body even knew the pris­on­er’s name, let alone his crime. He was re­ferred to sim­ply by a sin­gle let­ter: A.

On top of that, the man was scary. True, he wasn’t phys­ical­ly im­pos­ing: tall and slen­der with skin so pale it looked like he might have been born in soli­tary. He rarely spoke, and when he did, you had to lean for­ward to hear him. No, it wasn’t that. It was the eyes. In his twen­ty­five years in cor­rec­tions, Fecteau had nev­er be­fore seen eyes that were so ut­ter­ly cold, like two glit­ter­ing sil­very chips of dry ice, so far be­low ze­ro they just about smoked.

Christ, it gave Fecteau a chill just think­ing about them.

There was no doubt in Fecteau’s mind this pris­on­er had com­mit­ted a tru­ly heinous crime. Or se­ries of crimes, a Jef­frey Dah­mer type, a cold-​blood­ed se­ri­al killer. He looked that scary. That’s why it gave Fecteau such sat­is­fac­tion when the or­der came down that the pris­on­er was to be moved to soli­tary 44. Noth­ing more need­ed to be said. It was where they sent the hard cas­es, the ones who need­ed soft­en­ing up. Not that soli­tary 44 was any worse than the oth­er cells in Herk­moor 3 Soli­tary—all the cells were iden­ti­cal: met­al cot, toi­let with no seat, sink with on­ly cold run­ning wa­ter. What made soli­tary 44 spe­cial, so use­ful in break­ing a pris­on­er, was the pres­ence of the in­mate in soli­tary 45. The drum­mer.

Fecteau and his part­ner, Ben­jy Doyle, stood on ei­ther side of the cell door, mak­ing no noise, wait­ing for the drum­mer to start up again. He’d paused, as he al­ways did for a few min­utes when a new pris­on­er was in­stalled. But the pause nev­er last­ed long.

Then, as if on sched­ule, Fecteau heard a faint soft-​shoe shuf­fle start up again in­side soli­tary 45. This was fol­lowed by the pop­ping sound of lips, and then a low tat­too of fin­gers drum­ming against the met­al rail of the bed. A lit­tle more soft-​shoe, some snatch­es of hum­ming . . . and then, the drum­ming. It start­ed slow­ly, and quick­ly ac­cel­er­at­ed, a rapid roll break­ing off in­to syn­co­pat­ed riffs, punc­tu­at­ed with a pop or a shuf­fle, a nev­er-​end­ing son­ic flood of in­ex­haustible hy­per­ac­tiv­ity.

A smile spread across Fecteau’s face and his eyes met those of Doyle.

The drum­mer was a per­fect in­mate. He nev­er shout­ed, screamed, or threw his food. He nev­er swore, threat­ened the guards, or trashed his cell. He was neat and tidy, keep­ing his hair groomed and his body washed. But he had two pe­cu­liar char­ac­ter­is­tics that kept him in soli­tary: he al­most nev­er slept, and he spent his wak­ing hours—all his wak­ing hours—drum­ming. Nev­er loud­ly, nev­er in-​your-​face. The drum­mer was ut­ter­ly obliv­ious to the out­side world and the many curs­es and threats di­rect­ed at him. He did not even seem to be aware that there was an out­side world, and he con­tin­ued on, nev­er vary­ing, nev­er ruf­fled or dis­turbed, to­tal­ly fo­cused. Cu­ri­ous­ly, the very soft­ness of the drum­mer’s sounds were the most un­en­durable as­pect of them: Chi­nese wa­ter tor­ture of the ear.

In trans­fer­ring the pris­on­er known as A to soli­tary, Fecteau and Doyle had had or­ders to de­prive the man of all his pos­ses­sions, in­clud­ing—es­pe­cial­ly in­clud­ing, the war­den had made clear—writ­ing in­stru­ments. They had tak­en ev­ery­thing: books, sketch­es, pho­tographs, jour­nals, note­books, pens and inks. The pris­on­er was left with noth­ing—and with noth­ing to do but lis­ten:

Ba-​da-​ba-​da-​dit­ty-​dit­ty-​bop-​hup-​hup-​hup­pa-​hup­pa-​be-​bop-​be-​bop-​dit­ty-​dit­ty-​dit­ty-​boom! Dit­ty-​boom! Dit­ty-​boom! Dit­ty-​ba­da-​boom-​ba­da-​boom-​ba-​ba-​ba-​boom! Ba-​da-​ba-​da-​pop! Bapop! Ba-​pop! Dit­ty-​dit­ty-​dat­ty-​shuf­fle-​shuf­fle-​dit­ty-​da-​da-​da-​dit! Dit­ty-​shuf­fle-​tap-​shuf­fle-​tap-​da­da-​dadada­da-​pop! Dit-​dit­ty-​dit-​dit­ty-​dap! Dit-​dit­ty . . .

Fecteau had heard enough. It was al­ready get­ting un­der his skin. He ges­tured to­ward the ex­it with his chin, and he and Doyle head­ed hur­ried­ly back down the hall, the sounds of the drum­mer dy­ing away.

“I give him a week,” said Fecteau.

“A week?” Doyle replied with a snort. “The poor bas­tard won’t last twen­ty-​four hours.” Lieu­tenant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta lay on his bel­ly, in a freez­ing driz­zle, on a bar­ren hill above the Herk­moor Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al and Hold­ing Fa­cil­ity in Herk­moor, New York. Next to him crouched the dark form of the man named Proc­tor. The time was mid­night. The great prison spread out in a flat val­ley be­low them, bril­liant­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ed by the yel­low glare of over­head lights, as sur­re­al an in­dus­tri­al con­fec­tion as a gi­ant oil re­fin­ery.

D’Agos­ta raised a pair of pow­er­ful dig­ital binoc­ulars and once again ex­am­ined the gen­er­al lay­out of the fa­cil­ity. It cov­ered at least twen­ty acres, con­sist­ing of three low, enor­mous con­crete build­ing blocks, set in a U shape, sur­round­ed by as­phalt yards, look­out tow­ers, fenced ser­vice ar­eas, and guard­hous­es. D’Agos­ta knew the first build­ing was the Fed­er­al Max­imum Se­cu­ri­ty Unit, filled with the very worst vi­olent of­fend­ers con­tem­po­rary Amer­ica could pro­duce—and that, D’Agos­ta thought grim­ly, was say­ing quite a bit. The sec­ond, much small­er area bore the of­fi­cial ti­tle of Fed­er­al Cap­ital Sen­tence Hold­ing and Trans­fer Fa­cil­ity. While New York State had no death penal­ty, there was a fed­er­al death penal­ty, and this is where those few who had been sen­tenced to death by the fed­er­al courts were held.

The third unit al­so had a name that could on­ly have been in­vent­ed by a prison bu­reau­crat: the Fed­er­al High-​Risk Vi­olent Of­fend­er Pre­tri­al De­ten­tion Fa­cil­ity. It con­tained those await­ing tri­al for a small list of heinous fed­er­al crimes: men who had been de­nied bail and who were con­sid­ered at es­pe­cial­ly high risk of es­cape or flight. This fa­cil­ity held drug king­pins, do­mes­tic ter­ror­ists, se­ri­al killers who had ex­er­cised their trade across state bound­aries, and those ac­cused of killing fed­er­al agents. In the lin­go of Herk­moor, this was the Black Hole.

It was this unit that cur­rent­ly housed Spe­cial Agent A. X. L. Pen­der­gast.

While some of the sto­ried state pris­ons, such as Sing Sing and Al­ca­traz, were famed for nev­er hav­ing had an es­cape, Herk­moor was the on­ly fed­er­al fa­cil­ity that could boast a sim­ilar record.

D’Agos­ta’s binoc­ulars con­tin­ued to roam the fa­cil­ity, tak­ing in even the minute de­tails he had al­ready spent three weeks study­ing on pa­per. Slow­ly, he worked his way from the cen­tral build­ings to the out­build­ings and, fi­nal­ly, to the perime­ter.

At first glance, the perime­ter of Herk­moor looked un­re­mark­able. Se­cu­ri­ty con­sist­ed of the stan­dard triple bar­ri­er. The first was a twen­ty-​four-​foot chain-​link fence, topped by con­certi­na wire, il­lu­mi­nat­ed by the mul­ti­mil­lion-​can­dle­pow­er bril­liance of xenon sta­di­um lights. A se­ries of twen­ty-​yard spaces spread with grav­el led to the sec­ond bar­ri­er: a forty-​foot cin­der-​block wall topped with spikes and wire. Along this wall, ev­ery hun­dred yards, was a tow­er kiosk with an armed guard; D’Agos­ta could see them mov­ing about, wake­ful and alert. A hun­dred-​foot gap roamed by Dober­mans led to the fi­nal perime­ter, a chain-​link fence iden­ti­cal to the first. From there, a three-​hun­dred-​yard ex­panse of lawn ex­tend­ed to the edge of the woods. What made Herk­moor unique was what you couldn’t see: a state-​of-​the-​art elec­tron­ic surveil­lance and se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem, said to be the finest in the coun­try. D’Agos­ta had seen the specs to this sys­tem—he had, in fact, been por­ing over them for days—but he still bare­ly un­der­stood it. He did not see that as a prob­lem: Eli Glinn, his strange and silent part­ner—holed up in a high-​tech surveil­lance van a mile down the road—un­der­stood it, and that’s what count­ed.

It was more than a se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem: it was a state of mind. Al­though Herk­moor had suf­fered many es­cape at­tempts, some ex­traor­di­nar­ily clever, none had suc­ceed­ed—and ev­ery guard at Herk­moor, ev­ery em­ploy­ee, was acute­ly aware of that fact and proud of it. There would be no bu­reau­crat­ic turpi­tude or self-​sat­is­fac­tion here, no sleep­ing guards or mal­func­tion­ing se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras.

That trou­bled D’Agos­ta most of all.

He fin­ished his scruti­ny and glanced over at Proc­tor. The chauf­feur was ly­ing prone on the ground be­side him, tak­ing pic­tures with a dig­ital Nikon equipped with a minia­ture tri­pod, a 2600mm lens, and spe­cial­ly made CCD chips, so sen­si­tive to light they were able to record the ar­rival of sin­gle pho­tons.

D’Agos­ta ran over the list of ques­tions Glinn want­ed an­swered. Some were ob­vi­ous­ly im­por­tant: how many dogs there were, how many guards oc­cu­pied each tow­er, how many guards manned the gates. Glinn had al­so re­quest­ed a de­scrip­tion of the ar­rival and de­par­ture of all ve­hi­cles, with as much in­for­ma­tion as pos­si­ble on them. He want­ed de­tailed pic­tures of the clus­ters of an­ten­nas, dish­es, and mi­crowave horns on the build­ing roofs. But oth­er re­quests were not so clear. Glinn want­ed to know, for ex­am­ple, if the area be­tween the wall and the out­er fence was dirt, grass, or grav­el. He had asked for a down­stream sam­ple from the brook run­ning past the fa­cil­ity. Strangest of all, he had asked D’Agos­ta to col­lect all the trash he could find in a cer­tain stretch of the brook. He had asked them to ob­serve the prison through a full twen­ty-​four-​hour pe­ri­od, keep­ing a log of ev­ery ac­tiv­ity they could note: pris­on­er ex­er­cise times, the move­ments of guards, the com­ings and go­ings of sup­pli­ers, con­trac­tors, and de­liv­ery peo­ple. He want­ed to know the times when the lights went on and off. And he want­ed it all record­ed to the near­est sec­ond.

D’Agos­ta paused to mur­mur some ob­ser­va­tions in­to the dig­ital recorder Glinn had giv­en him. He heard the faint whirring of Proc­tor’s cam­era, the pat­ter of rain on leaves.

He stretched. “Je­sus, it re­al­ly kills me to think of Pen­der­gast in there.”

“It must be very hard on him, sir,” said Proc­tor in his usu­al im­pen­etra­ble way. The man was no mere chauf­feur—D’Agos­ta had fig­ured that out as soon as he saw him break down and stow away a CAR-15/XM-177 Com­man­do in less than six­ty sec­onds—but he could nev­er seem to pen­etrate Proc­tor’s Jeeves-​like opac­ity. The soft click and whir of the cam­era con­tin­ued.

The ra­dio on his belt squawked. “Ve­hi­cle,” came Glinn’s voice.

A mo­ment lat­er, a pair of head­lights flashed through the bare branch­es of the trees, ap­proach­ing on the sin­gle road lead­ing to Herk­moor, which ran up the hill from the town two miles away. Proc­tor quick­ly swung the lens of his cam­era around. D’Agos­ta clapped the binoc­ulars to his eyes, the gain au­to­mat­ical­ly ad­just­ing to com­pen­sate for the chang­ing con­trasts of dark and light.

The truck came out of the woods and in­to the glow of lights sur­round­ing the prison. It looked like a food-​ser­vice truck of some kind, and as it turned, D’Agos­ta could read the lo­go on the side, Helmer’s Meats and By-​Prod­ucts. It stopped at the guard­house, pre­sent­ed a sheaf of doc­uments, and was waved through. The three sets of gates opened au­to­mat­ical­ly, one af­ter the oth­er, the gate ahead not open­ing un­til the one be­hind had closed. The soft click­ing of the cam­era’s shut­ter con­tin­ued. D’Agos­ta checked his stop­watch, mur­mured in­to the recorder. He turned to Proc­tor.

“Here comes to­mor­row’s meat loaf,” he said, mak­ing a fee­ble joke.

“Yes, sir.”

D’Agos­ta thought of Pen­der­gast, the supreme gourmet, eat­ing what­ev­er it was that truck was bring­ing. He won­dered how the agent was han­dling it.

The truck en­tered the in­ner ser­vice drive, did a two-​point turn, and backed up in­to a cov­ered load­ing dock, where it was ob­scured from view. D’Agos­ta made an­oth­er en­try on the dig­ital recorder, then set­tled down to wait. Six­teen min­utes lat­er, the ve­hi­cle drove back out.

He glanced at his watch. Al­most one o’clock. “I’m head­ing down to get that wa­ter and air sam­ple, and do the mag­net­ic drag.”

“Be care­ful.”

D’Agos­ta shoul­dered his small knap­sack and re­treat­ed to the back side of the hill, mak­ing his way down through bare trees, scrub, and moun­tain lau­rel. Ev­ery­thing was sop­ping wet, and wa­ter dripped from the trees. Here and there, small patch­es of damp snow glis­tened be­neath the branch­es. He didn’t need a light once he’d round­ed the hill—there was enough glow from Herk­moor to light up most of the moun­tain.

D’Agos­ta was glad of the ac­tiv­ity. Dur­ing the wait on top, he’d had too much time to think. And think­ing was the last thing he want­ed to do: think­ing about his up­com­ing dis­ci­plinary tri­al, which might very well end in his dis­missal from the NYPD. It seemed in­cred­ible what had hap­pened in the last few months: his sud­den pro­mo­tion to the NYPD; his blos­som­ing re­la­tion­ship with Lau­ra Hay­ward; his re­con­nec­tion with Agent Pen­der­gast. And then it had all come crash­ing down. His ca­reer as a cop was in deep shit; he was es­tranged from Hay­ward; and his friend Pen­der­gast was rot­ting in that damp hell be­low, short­ly to go on tri­al for his life.

D’Agos­ta stag­gered, right­ed him­self. He tilt­ed his bleary face up­ward, let­ting the drops of icy rain lash a mod­icum of alert­ness in­to him.

He wiped his face and pushed on. Get­ting the wa­ter sam­ple was go­ing to be tricky, since the stream flowed along the edge of an open field out­side the prison walls, com­plete­ly ex­posed to the guards in the tow­ers. But this was noth­ing com­pared to the mag­net­ic drag he was charged with per­form­ing. Glinn want­ed him to crawl as close to the out­er perime­ter fence as he could get, car­ry­ing a minia­ture mag­ne­tome­ter in his pock­et, to see if there were any buried sen­sors or hid­den elec­tro­mag­net­ic fields . . . and then plant the damn thing in the ground. Of course, if there were any sen­sors, he might well set them off—and then things would get ex­cit­ing.

He crept slow­ly down­hill, the ground grad­ual­ly lev­el­ing out. De­spite his slick­er and gloves, he could feel the icy wa­ter creep­ing down his legs and in through the poor seal­ing of his boots. A hun­dred yards far­ther on, he could make out the edge of the woods and hear the gur­gle of the stream. He kept low in the lau­rel bush­es as he moved for­ward. The last few yards he got down on his hands and knees and crawled.

A mo­ment lat­er, he was at the edge of the brook. It was dark and smelled of damp leaves, and along one bank a scal­loped edge of old, rot­ten ice stub­born­ly re­mained.

He paused, look­ing at the prison. The guard tow­ers loomed above now, on­ly two hun­dred yards dis­tant, the bright lights like mul­ti­ple suns. He fum­bled in his pock­et and was about to re­move the vial Glinn had giv­en him when he froze. His as­sump­tion that the guards would be look­ing in­ward, to­ward the prison, had been wrong: he could clear­ly see one of them look­ing out, scan­ning the edge of the woods near­by with high-​pow­ered binoc­ulars.

An im­por­tant de­tail.

He froze, flat­ten­ing him­self in the lau­rel. He had al­ready en­tered the for­bid­den perime­ter, and he felt hor­ri­bly ex­posed to view.

The guard’s at­ten­tion seemed to have swept past him. With ex­ag­ger­at­ed care, he edged for­ward and dipped the vial in­to the icy wa­ter, filled it, then screwed the top back on. Then he crept down­stream, fish­ing out trash—old Sty­ro­foam cof­fee cups, a few beer cans, gum wrap­pers—and putting it in the knap­sack. Glinn had been quite in­sis­tent that D’Agos­ta col­lect ev­ery­thing. It was a high­ly un­pleas­ant job, wad­ing in the icy wa­ter, some­times hav­ing to root about the cob­bled stream bot­tom up to his shoul­der in wa­ter. One jam-​up of branch­es across the stream act­ed like a sieve and he hit the jack­pot, col­lect­ing a good ten pounds of sod­den garbage.

When he was done, he found him­self at the point down­stream where Glinn want­ed the mag­ne­tome­ter placed. He wait­ed un­til the guard’s at­ten­tion was at the far­thest point; then he half wad­ed, half crawled across the stream. The mead­ow that sur­round­ed the prison was un­kempt, grass­es dead and flat­tened by the win­ter snows. But there were just enough skele­tal weeds to pro­vide at least the sem­blance of cov­er.

D’Agos­ta crawled for­ward, freez­ing in place ev­ery time the guard swept the binoc­ulars his way.

The min­utes crawled by. He felt the icy driz­zle trick­ling down his neck and back. The fence grew clos­er on­ly by ex­cru­ci­at­ing de­grees of slow­ness. But he had to keep go­ing, and as fast as he dared: the longer he lin­gered, the high­er the prob­abil­ity that one of the guards would spot him.

At last he reached the groomed part of the lawn. He re­moved the de­vice from his pock­et, pushed one hand out through the tall weeds, sank the mag­ne­tome­ter down to the lev­el of the grass, then be­gan an awk­ward re­treat.

Crawl­ing back was much more dif­fi­cult. Now he was fac­ing the wrong di­rec­tion and un­able to mon­itor the guard tow­ers. He kept on, slow­ly but steadi­ly, with fre­quent long paus­es. Forty­five min­utes af­ter set­ting out, he once again crossed the stream and reen­tered the drip­ping woods, push­ing up through the lau­rel bush­es to­ward their spy nest on top of the hill, feel­ing half frozen, his back aching from lug­ging the knap­sack of wet trash.

“Mis­sion ac­com­plished?” Proc­tor asked as he re­turned.

“Yeah, as­sum­ing I don’t lose my frig­ging toes to frost­bite.”

Proc­tor ad­just­ed a small unit. “Sig­nal’s com­ing in nice­ly. It ap­pears you got with­in fifty feet of the fence. Nice work, Lieu­tenant.”

D’Agos­ta turned weari­ly to­ward him. “Call me Vin­nie,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’d call you by your first name, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Proc­tor is fine.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. Pen­der­gast had sur­round­ed him­self with peo­ple al­most as enig­mat­ic as him­self. Proc­tor, Wren . . . and in the case of Con­stance Greene, maybe even more enig­mat­ic. He checked his watch again: al­most two.

Four­teen hours to go.

13

Rain ham­mered against the crum­bling brick-​and-​mar­ble fa­cade of the Beaux Arts man­sion at 891 River­side Drive. Far above the mansard roof and its wid­ow’s walk, light­ning tore at the night sky. The first-​floor win­dows had been board­ed up and cov­ered with tin, and the win­dows of the up­per three sto­ries were se­cure­ly shut­tered—no light pierced through to be­tray life with­in. The fenced front yard was over­grown with sumac and ailan­thus bush­es, and stray bits of wind-​whipped trash lay in the car­riage drive and be­neath the porte cochere. In ev­ery way, the man­sion ap­peared aban­doned and de­sert­ed, like many oth­ers along that bleak stretch of River­side Drive.

For a great many years—a tru­ly re­mark­able num­ber of years, in fact—this house had been the shel­ter, re­doubt, lab­ora­to­ry, li­brary, mu­se­um, and repos­ito­ry for a cer­tain Dr. Enoch Leng. But af­ter Leng’s death, the house had passed through ob­scure and se­cret chan­nels—along with the charge of Leng’s ward, Con­stance Greene—to his de­scen­dant, Spe­cial Agent Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast.

But now, Agent Pen­der­gast was in soli­tary con­fine­ment in the max­imum se­cu­ri­ty wing of Herk­moor Cor­rec­tion­al Fa­cil­ity, await­ing tri­al for mur­der. Proc­tor and Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta were away on a re­con­nais­sance of the prison. The queer ex­citable man known as Wren, who was Con­stance Greene’s nom­inal guardian while Pen­der­gast was gone, was at his night job at the New York Pub­lic Li­brary.

Con­stance Greene was alone.

She sat be­fore a dy­ing fire in the li­brary, where nei­ther the sounds of rain nor those of traf­fic pen­etrat­ed. She had be­fore her My Life by Gi­aco­mo Casavec­chio, and she was in­tent­ly study­ing the Re­nais­sance spy’s ac­count of his cel­ebrat­ed es­cape from the Leads, the dread­ed prison in the Vene­tian Ducal Palace from which no one had ev­er es­caped be­fore—or would es­cape again. A stack of sim­ilar vol­umes cov­ered a near­by ta­ble: ac­counts of prison es­capes from all over the world, but es­pe­cial­ly fo­cus­ing on the fed­er­al cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem in the Unit­ed States. She read in si­lence, ev­ery so of­ten paus­ing to make a no­ta­tion in a leather-​bound note­book.

As she fin­ished one of these no­ta­tions, the fire set­tled in the grate with a loud crack. Con­stance looked up abrupt­ly, eyes widen­ing at the sud­den noise. Her eyes were large and vi­olet, and strange­ly wise for a face that ap­peared to be no old­er than twen­ty-​one. Slow­ly, she re­laxed again.

It was not that she felt ner­vous, ex­act­ly. Af­ter all, the man­sion was hard­ened against in­trud­ers; she knew its se­cret ways bet­ter than any­one; and she could van­ish in­to one of a dozen hid­den pas­sages at a mo­ment’s no­tice. No—it was that she had lived here so long, knew the old dark house so well, that she could al­most sense its moods. And she had the dis­tinct im­pres­sion some­thing was not right; that the house was try­ing to tell her some­thing, warn her about some­thing.

A pot of chamomile tea sat on a side ta­ble be­side the chair. She put the doc­uments aside, poured her­self a fresh cup, then rose. Smooth­ing down the front of her bone-​col­ored pinafore, she turned and walked to the book­shelves set in­to the far wall of the li­brary. The stone floor was cov­ered in rich Per­sian rugs, and as she moved, Con­stance made no noise.

Reach­ing the book­shelves, she leaned close, squint­ing at the gilt bind­ings. The on­ly light came from the fire and a lone Tiffany lamp be­side her chair, and this far cor­ner of the li­brary was dim. At last she found what she was look­ing for—a De­pres­sion-​era prison man­age­ment trea­tise—and re­turned to her chair. Seat­ing her­self once again, she opened the book, leafed ahead to the con­tents page. Find­ing the de­sired chap­ter, she reached for her tea, took a sip, then moved to re­place the cup.

As she did so, she glanced up.

In the wing chair next to the side ta­ble, a man was now seat­ed: tall, aris­to­crat­ic, with an aquiline nose and a high fore­head, pale skin, dressed in a se­vere black suit. He had gin­ger­col­ored hair and a small, neat­ly trimmed beard. As he looked back at her, the fire­light il­lu­mi­nat­ed his eyes. One was a rich hazel green; the oth­er, a milky, dead blue.

The man smiled.

Con­stance had nev­er seen this man be­fore, and yet she knew im­me­di­ate­ly who he was. She rose with a cry, the cup drop­ping from her fin­gers.

As fast as a strik­ing snake, the man’s arm shot out and deft­ly caught the cup just be­fore it hit the ground. He re­placed it on its sil­ver salver, sat back again. Not a drop had spilled. It had hap­pened so fast that Con­stance was hard­ly sure it had hap­pened at all. She re­mained stand­ing, un­able to move. De­spite her pro­found shock, one thing was clear: the man was seat­ed be­tween her and the room’s on­ly ex­it.

The man spoke soft­ly, as if sens­ing her thoughts. “There is no need for alarm, Con­stance. I mean you no harm.”

She re­mained where she was, stand­ing mo­tion­less be­fore the chair. Her eyes flick­ered about the room and re­turned to the seat­ed man.

“You know who I am, don’t you, child?” he asked. Even the but­tery New Or­leans tones were fa­mil­iar.

“Yes. I know who you are.” She choked on the un­can­ny re­sem­blance to the man she knew so well, all ex­cept his hair—and his eyes.

The man nod­ded. “I am grat­ified.”

“How did you get in here?”

“How I got in is unim­por­tant. Why I am here is the true ques­tion, don’t you think?”

Con­stance seemed to con­sid­er this for a mo­ment. “Yes. Per­haps you are right.” She took a step for­ward, let­ting the fin­gers of one hand drift from her wing chair and slide along the side ta­ble. “Very well, then: why are you here?”

“Be­cause it’s time we spoke, you and I. It’s the least cour­tesy you could pay me, af­ter all.”

Con­stance took an­oth­er step, her fin­gers trail­ing along the pol­ished wood. Then she paused. “Cour­tesy?”

“Yes. Af­ter all, I—”

With a sud­den mo­tion, Con­stance snatched a let­ter open­er from the side ta­ble and leaped at the man. The at­tack was re­mark­able not on­ly for its swift­ness, but for its si­lence. She had done noth­ing, said noth­ing, to warn the man of her strike.

To no avail. The man twitched aside at the last in­stant and the let­ter open­er sank to its hilt in the worn leather of the wing chair. Con­stance jerked it free and—still with­out ut­ter­ing a sound—whirled to face the man, rais­ing the weapon above her head.

As she lunged, the man cool­ly dodged the stroke and with a flick of his arm seized her wrist; she thrashed and strug­gled, and they fell to the floor, the man pin­ning her body un­der his, the let­ter open­er skid­ding across the rug.

The man’s lips moved to with­in an inch of her ear. “Con­stance,” he said in a qui­et voice. “Du calme. Du calme.”

“Cour­tesy!” she cried once again. “How dare you speak of cour­tesy! You mur­der my guardian’s friends, dis­grace him, tear him from his house!” She stopped abrupt­ly and strug­gled. A soft groan rose in her throat: a groan of frus­tra­tion, min­gled with an­oth­er, more com­plex emo­tion.

The man con­tin­ued to speak in a smooth un­der­tone. “Please un­der­stand, Con­stance, I’m not here to hurt you. I’m re­strain­ing you sim­ply to pre­vent harm to my­self.”

She strug­gled again. “Hate­ful man!”

“Con­stance, please. I have some­thing to say to you.”

“I’ll nev­er lis­ten to you!” she gasped.

But he con­tin­ued to pin her to the floor, gen­tly yet firm­ly. Slow­ly her strug­gling ceased. She lay there, heart rac­ing painful­ly. She be­came aware of the beat­ing of his own heart—much slow­er—against her breasts. He was still whis­per­ing calm­ing, sooth­ing words in­to her ear that she tried to ig­nore.

He pulled away slight­ly. “If I re­lease you, will you promise not to at­tack me again? To stay and hear me out?”

Con­stance did not re­ply.

“Even a con­demned man has the right to be heard. And you may learn that ev­ery­thing is not as it seems.”

Still, Con­stance said noth­ing. Af­ter a long mo­ment, the man raised him­self from the floor, then—slow­ly—re­leased his grip on her wrists.

She stood at once. Breath­ing heav­ily, she smoothed down her pinafore. Her eyes dart­ed around the li­brary again. The man was still po­si­tioned strate­gi­cal­ly be­tween her and the door. He raised a hand to­ward her wing chair.

“Please, Con­stance,” he said. “Sit down.”

War­ily, she seat­ed her­self.

“May we speak now, like civ­ilized peo­ple, with­out fur­ther out­bursts?”

“You dare speak of your­self as civ­ilized? You? A se­ri­al killer and thief.” She laughed scorn­ful­ly.

The man nod­ded slow­ly, as if in­gest­ing this. “Nat­ural­ly, my broth­er has tak­en a cer­tain line with you. Af­ter all, it’s worked so well for him in the past. He’s an ex­traor­di­nar­ily per­sua­sive and charis­mat­ic in­di­vid­ual.”

“You can’t pre­sume to imag­ine I’d be­lieve any­thing you say. You’re in­sane—or worse, you do these things as a sane man.” She again glanced past him, to­ward the li­brary ex­it and the re­cep­tion hall be­yond.

The man gazed back at her. “No, Con­stance. I am not in­sane—on the con­trary, like you, I great­ly fear in­san­ity. You see, the sad fact is, we have a great deal in com­mon—and not just that which we fear.”

“We haven’t the slight­est in com­mon.”

“No doubt this is what my broth­er would like you to be­lieve.”

It seemed to Con­stance that the man’s ex­pres­sion had be­come one of in­fi­nite sad­ness. “It’s true that I am far from per­fect and can­not yet ex­pect your trust,” he went on. “But I hope you un­der­stand that I in­tend you no hurt.”

“What you in­tend means noth­ing. You’re like a child who be­friends a but­ter­fly one day to pull off its wings the next.”

“What do you know of chil­dren, Con­stance? Your eyes are so wise and so old. Even from here, I can see the vast ex­pe­ri­ence writ­ten there. What strange and ter­ri­ble things they must have seen! How very pen­etrat­ing your gaze! It fills me with sad­ness. No, Con­stance: I sense—I know—that child­hood was a lux­ury you were de­nied. Just as I my­self was de­nied it.”

Con­stance went rigid.

“Ear­li­er, I said I was here be­cause it’s time we spoke. It is time that you learned the truth. The re­al truth.”

His voice had sunk so low that the words were on­ly just au­di­ble. Against her will, she asked, “The truth?”

“About the re­la­tion­ship be­tween me and my broth­er.”

In the soft light of the dy­ing fire, Dio­genes Pen­der­gast’s pe­cu­liar eyes looked vul­ner­able, al­most lost. Gaz­ing back at her, they bright­ened slight­ly.

“Ah! Con­stance, it must sound im­pos­si­bly strange to you. But gaz­ing on you like this, I feel I would do any­thing in my pow­er to lift from you that bur­den of pain and fear and car­ry it my­self. And do you know why? Be­cause when I look at you, I see my­self.”

Con­stance did not re­ply. She mere­ly sat, mo­tion­less.

“I see a per­son who longs to fit in, to be mere­ly hu­man, and yet who is des­tined al­ways to re­main apart. I see a per­son who feels the world more deeply, more in­tense­ly, than she is will­ing to ad­mit . . . even to her­self.”

Lis­ten­ing, Con­stance be­gan to trem­ble.

“I sense both pain and anger in you. Pain at be­ing aban­doned—not once, but sev­er­al times. And anger at the sheer capri­cious­ness of the gods. Why me? Why again? For it’s true: you’ve been aban­doned once again. Though not, per­haps, in ex­act­ly the way you imag­ined it. Here, too, we are the same. I was aban­doned when my par­ents were burned to death by an ig­no­rant mob. I es­caped the flames. They did not. I’ve al­ways felt that I should have died, not them; that it was my fault. You feel the same way about the death of your own sis­ter, Mary—that it was you, in­stead of she, who should have died. Lat­er, I was aban­doned by my broth­er. Ah: I see the dis­be­lief in your face. But then again, you know so lit­tle about my broth­er. All I ask is that you hear me with an open mind.”

He rose. Con­stance took in a sharp breath, half ris­ing her­self.

“No,” Dio­genes said, and once again Con­stance stopped. There was noth­ing in his tone but weari­ness now. “There’s no need to run. I’ll take my leave of you. In the fu­ture, we’ll speak again, and I’ll tell you more about the child­hood I was de­nied. About the old­er broth­er who took the love I of­fered and flung back scorn and ha­tred. Who took plea­sure in de­stroy­ing ev­ery­thing I cre­at­ed—my jour­nals of child­ish po­et­ry, my trans­la­tions of Vir­gil and Tac­itus. Who tor­tured and killed my fa­vorite pet in a way that, even to­day, I can bare­ly bring my­self to think about. Who made it his mis­sion in life to turn ev­ery­one against me, with lies and in­sin­ua­tions, to paint me as his evil twin. And when in the end none of this could break my spir­it, he did some­thing so aw­ful . . . so, so aw­ful . . .” But at this, his voice threat­ened to break. “Look at my dead eye, Con­stance: that was the least of what he did . . .”

There was a brief si­lence, bro­ken on­ly by the sound of la­bored breath­ing as Dio­genes strug­gled to mas­ter him­self, his opaque eye star­ing not quite at her, but not quite away from her, ei­ther.

He passed one hand across his brow. “I’ll be go­ing now. But you’ll find I’ve left you with some­thing. A gift of kin­ship, a recog­ni­tion of the pain we share. I hope you’ll ac­cept it in the spir­it in which it is of­fered.”

“I want noth­ing from you,” Con­stance said, but the ha­tred and con­vic­tion in her voice had ebbed in­to con­fu­sion.

He held her gaze a mo­ment longer. Then—slow­ly, very slow­ly—he turned and walked away, to­ward the li­brary ex­it. “Good-​bye, Con­stance,” he said qui­et­ly over his shoul­der. “Take care. I’ll see my­self out.”

Con­stance sat root­ed in place as she lis­tened to his de­part­ing foot­steps. On­ly when si­lence had re­turned did she rise from her chair.

As she did so, some­thing moved in the hand­ker­chief pock­et of her crino­line.

She start­ed. The move­ment came again. And then a tiny pink nose ap­peared, be­whiskered and twitch­ing, fol­lowed by two beady black eyes and two soft lit­tle ears. In won­der, she put her hand in her pock­et and cupped it. The lit­tle crea­ture climbed up on it and sat up­right, his lit­tle paws curled as if beg­ging, whiskers trem­bling, his bright eyes look­ing plead­ing­ly up in­to her own. It was a white mouse: sleek, tiny, and per­fect­ly tame—and Con­stance’s heart melt­ed with a sud­den­ness so un­ex­pect­ed that the breath fled from her and tears sprang in­to her eyes.

14

Dust motes drift­ed in the still air of the Cen­tral Archives read­ing room, and it smelled not un­pleas­ant­ly of old card­board, dust, buck­ram, and leather. Pol­ished oak pan­el­ing rose to an elab­orate­ly carved and gild­ed ro­co­co ceil­ing, dom­inat­ed by a pair of heavy chan­de­liers of gilt cop­per and crys­tal. Against the far wall stood a bricked-​up fire­place of pink mar­ble at least eight feet high and as many wide, and the cen­ter of the room was dom­inat­ed by three mas­sive oak­en ta­bles with claw feet, tops laid over with a heavy cov­er­ing of baize. It was one of the most im­pres­sive rooms in the mu­se­um—and one of the least known.

It had been over a year since No­ra was last in this room, and de­spite its grandeur, the mem­ories it evoked were not good. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, it was the on­ly place where she could pe­ruse the mu­se­um’s most im­por­tant his­toric files.

A faint tap came at the door and the stocky form of Os­car Gibbs en­tered, his mus­cu­lar arms piled with an­cient doc­uments tied up with twine.

“There’s quite a lot on this Tomb of Senef,” he said, stag­ger­ing a lit­tle as he laid out the doc­uments on the baize ta­ble. “Fun­ny that I nev­er heard of it un­til yes­ter­day.”

“Very few have.”

“It’s be­come the talk of the mu­se­um overnight.” He shook his head, which was shaved as bald as a bil­liard ball. “On­ly in a joint like this could you hide an Egyp­tian tomb.”

He paused, catch­ing his breath. “You re­mem­ber the drill, right, Dr. Kel­ly? I have to lock you in. Just call ex­ten­sion 4240 when you’re done. No pen­cils or pa­per; you have to use the ones in those leather box­es.” He glanced at her lap­top. “And wear linen gloves at all times.”

“Got it, Os­car.”

“I’ll be in the archives if you need me. Re­mem­ber, ex­ten­sion 4240.”

The huge bronze door closed and No­ra heard the well-​oiled click of the lock. She turned to the ta­ble. The neat bun­dles of doc­uments em­anat­ed a heavy odor of de­cay. She looked them over one by one, get­ting a gen­er­al sense of what there was and how much of it she ac­tu­al­ly need­ed to read. There was no way she could read them all: it would be a ques­tion of triage.

She had asked for ac­ces­sion files to the Tomb of Senef and all re­lat­ed doc­uments in the archives, from its dis­cov­ery in Thebes to its fi­nal 1935 clos­ing as an ex­hi­bi­tion. It looked like Os­car had done a thor­ough job. The old­est doc­uments were in French and Ara­bic, but they switched to En­glish as the tomb’s chain of own­er­ship went from Napoleon’s army to the British. There were let­ters, di­agrams of the tomb, draw­ings, ship­ping man­ifests, in­sur­ance pa­pers, ex­cerpts from jour­nals, old pho­tographs, and sci­en­tif­ic mono­graphs. Once the tomb ar­rived at the mu­se­um, the num­ber of doc­uments ex­plod­ed. A se­ries of fat fold­ers con­tained con­struc­tion di­agrams, plats, blueprints, con­ser­va­tors’ re­ports, var­ious pieces of cor­re­spon­dence, and in­nu­mer­able in­voic­es from the pe­ri­od of the tomb’s con­struc­tion and open­ing; and be­yond that, let­ters from vis­itors and schol­ars, in­ter­nal mu­se­um re­ports, more con­ser­va­tors’ eval­ua­tions. The ma­te­ri­al end­ed with a flur­ry of doc­uments re­lat­ing to the new sub­way sta­tion and the mu­se­um’s re­quest to the City of New York for a pedes­tri­an tun­nel con­nect­ing the 81st Street sub­way sta­tion with a new base­ment en­trance to the mu­se­um. The fi­nal doc­ument was a terse re­port from a long-​for­got­ten cu­ra­tor in­di­cat­ing that the brick­ing-​up of the ex­hi­bi­tion had been com­plet­ed. It was dat­ed Jan­uary 14, 1935.

No­ra sighed, look­ing at the spread of bun­dled doc­uments. Men­zies want­ed a sum­ma­ry re­port of them by the fol­low­ing morn­ing so they could be­gin plan­ning the “script” for the ex­hi­bi­tion, draw­ing up la­bel text and in­tro­duc­to­ry pan­els. She glanced at her watch: 1:00 P.M.

What had she got­ten her­self in­to?

She plugged in her lap­top and boot­ed it up. At the in­sis­tence of her hus­band, Bill, she had re­cent­ly switched from a PC to a Mac, and now the boot-​up pro­cess took a tenth the time—ze­ro to six­ty in 8.9 sec­onds in­stead of two and a half plod­ding min­utes. It had been like trad­ing up from a Ford Fi­es­ta to a Mer­cedes SL. As she watched the Ap­ple lo­go ap­pear, she thought that at least one thing in her life was go­ing right.

She slipped on a pair of crisp linen gloves and be­gan un­ty­ing the twine that held the first bun­dle of pa­pers to­geth­er, but be­fore she could get the cen­tu­ry-​old knot un­done, the twine part­ed with a puff of dust.

With in­fi­nite care, she opened the first fold­er and slipped out a yel­lowed doc­ument, writ­ten in a spi­dery French script, and be­gan the la­bo­ri­ous pro­cess of work­ing her way through it, tak­ing notes on the Power­Book. De­spite her dif­fi­cul­ties with the script and the French lan­guage, she found her­self be­com­ing ab­sorbed in the sto­ry Men­zies had briefly touched on in the tomb the day be­fore.

Dur­ing the Napoleon­ic Wars, Napoleon had con­ceived a quixot­ic plan to fol­low Alexan­der the Great’s route of con­quest across the Mid­dle East. In 1798, he mount­ed a huge in­va­sion of Egypt, in­volv­ing four hun­dred ships and 55,000 sol­diers. In an idea rad­ical­ly mod­ern for the time, Napoleon al­so brought with him more than 150 civil­ian sci­en­tists, schol­ars, and en­gi­neers, to make a com­plete sci­en­tif­ic study of Egypt and its mys­te­ri­ous ru­ins. One of these schol­ars was an en­er­get­ic young ar­chae­ol­ogist named Bertrand Mag­ny de Ca­hors.

Ca­hors was one of the first to ex­am­ine the great­est Egyp­to­log­ical dis­cov­ery of all time: the Roset­ta stone, which Napoleon’s sol­diers had un­earthed while dig­ging a fort along the shore. The stone in­flamed him with the pos­si­bil­ities that lay ahead. He fol­lowed the Napoleon­ic army as it pushed south­ward up the Nile, where they came across the great tem­ples of Lux­or and, across the riv­er, the an­cient desert canyon that be­came the most fa­mous grave­yard in the world: the Val­ley of the Kings.

Most of the tombs in the Val­ley of the Kings were cut out of the liv­ing rock and could not be moved. But there were a few tombs of less­er pharaohs, re­gents, and viziers, built high­er up in the val­ley out of blocks of cut lime­stone. And it was one of these—the Tomb of Senef, vizier and re­gent to Thut­mo­sis IV—that Ca­hors de­cid­ed to dis­as­sem­ble and take back to France. It was an au­da­cious and even dan­ger­ous en­gi­neer­ing feat, since the blocks weighed sev­er­al tons each and had to be in­di­vid­ual­ly low­ered down a two-​hun­dred-​foot cliff in or­der to be cart­ed to the Nile and float­ed down­stream.

The project was plagued with dis­as­ter from the be­gin­ning. The lo­cals re­fused to work on the tomb, be­liev­ing it to be cursed, and so Ca­hors dra­gooned a group of French sol­diers to un­der­take the job. The first calami­ty struck when the in­ner tomb—which had been re­sealed in an­tiq­ui­ty af­ter the tomb was robbed—was broached. Nine men died al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. Lat­er, it was hy­poth­esized that car­bon diox­ide gas from acid ground­wa­ter mov­ing through lime­stone far be­low had filled the tomb, caus­ing the as­phyx­ia­tion of the three sol­diers who first en­tered, along with the half-​dozen oth­ers sent in to res­cue them.

But Ca­hors was sin­gu­lar­ly de­ter­mined, and the tomb was even­tu­al­ly tak­en apart, block by num­bered block, and barged down the Nile to the Bay of Aboukir, where it was laid out on the desert sands in a vast ar­ray, await­ing trans­port to France.

The fa­mous Bat­tle of the Nile end­ed those plans. Af­ter Ad­mi­ral Ho­ra­tio Nel­son met Napoleon’s grand flotil­la—and sound­ly de­feat­ed it—in the most de­ci­sive naval bat­tle in his­to­ry, Napoleon fled in a small ship, leav­ing his armies cut off. Those armies soon ca­pit­ulat­ed, and in the terms of sur­ren­der, the British ap­pro­pri­at­ed their fab­ulous col­lec­tions of Egyp­tian an­tiq­ui­ties, in­clud­ing the Roset­ta stone—and the Tomb of Senef. A day af­ter the sign­ing of the terms of ca­pit­ula­tion, Ca­hors stabbed him­self in the heart with his sword while kneel­ing amid the stacks of blocks on the sands of Aboukir. And yet his fame as the first Egyp­tol­ogist lived on, and it was a de­scen­dant of this same Ca­hors who was bankrolling the mu­se­um’s re­open­ing of the tomb, à la dis­tance.

No­ra put the first sheaf of doc­uments aside and picked up the sec­ond. A Scot­tish of­fi­cer with the Roy­al Navy, Cap­tain Al­is­dair William Arthur Cumyn, lat­er Baron of Rat­tray, man­aged to ac­quire the Tomb of Senef in a murky trans­ac­tion that ap­peared to in­volve a card game and two pros­ti­tutes. Baron Rat­tray had the tomb trans­port­ed and re­assem­bled on his an­ces­tral es­tate in the High­lands of Scot­land, went bankrupt do­ing so, and was forced to sell off most of his an­ces­tral lands. The Barons of Rat­tray limped along un­til the mid-​nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, when the last of the line, in a des­per­ate bid to save what was left of the es­tate, sold the tomb to the Amer­ican rail­road mag­nate William C. Spragg. One of the mu­se­um’s ear­ly bene­fac­tors, Spragg shipped the tomb across the At­lantic and had it re­assem­bled in the mu­se­um, which was un­der con­struc­tion at that time. It was his pet project and he spent months haunt­ing the site, hound­ing the work­ers, and oth­er­wise mak­ing a nui­sance of him­self. In a trag­ic irony, he was crushed un­der the wheels of a horse-​drawn am­bu­lance just two days be­fore the grand open­ing in 1872.

No­ra took a break from her pe­rusal of the doc­uments. It was not quite three o’clock, and she was mak­ing bet­ter progress than she’d ex­pect­ed. If she could get this done by eight, she might have time to share a quick bite with Bill at the Bones. He would love this dark, dusty his­to­ry. And it might make a good piece for the Times’s cul­tur­al or metropoli­tan sec­tion when the tomb’s open­ing neared.

She moved along to the next bun­dle, all mu­se­um doc­uments and in much bet­ter con­di­tion. The first set of pa­pers dealt with the open­ing of the tomb. In it were some copies of the en­graved in­vi­ta­tion:

The Pres­ident of the Unit­ed States of Amer­ica

the Hon­or­able Gen­er­al Ulysses S. Grant

The Gov­er­nor of the State of New York the Hon­or­able John T. Hoff­man

The Pres­ident of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry

Dr. James K. More­ton

The Trustees and the Di­rec­tor of the Mu­se­um

Cor­dial­ly in­vite you to a Din­ner and Ball in hon­or of the open­ing of the

GRAND TOMB OF SENEF

Re­gent and Vizier to the Pharaoh Thut­mo­sis IV,

Ruler of An­cient Egypt

1419-1386 B.C.

The Di­va Eleono­ra de Graff Bolkon­sky will per­form Arias

from the New and Cel­ebrat­ed Opera Aï­da

by Giuseppe Ver­di

Egyp­tian Cos­tume

No­ra held the crum­bling in­vi­ta­tion in her hand. It amazed her that the mu­se­um com­mand­ed such a pres­ence in those days that the pres­ident him­self signed the in­vi­ta­tion. She shuf­fled fur­ther and dis­cov­ered a sec­ond doc­ument—a menu for the din­ner.

Hors d’oeu­vres Var­iés

Con­som­mé Ol­ga

Ke­bab Egyp­tien

Filet Mignon Lili

Veg­etable Mar­row Far­cie

Roast Squab & Cress

Pâté de Foie Gras en Croûte

Ba­ba Ghanouj

Wal­dorf Pud­ding

Peach­es in Chartreuse Jel­ly

There were a dozen blank in­vi­ta­tions in the file. She set one aside, along with the menu, in a “to be pho­to­copied” fold­er. This was some­thing Men­zies should see. In fact, she thought, it would be mar­velous if they could du­pli­cate the orig­inal open­ing—with­out the cos­tume ball, per­haps—and of­fer the same menu.

She be­gan read­ing the press no­tices of the evening. It had been one of those great so­cial events of late-​nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry New York, the likes of which would nev­er be seen again. The guest list read like a roll call at the dawn of the Gild­ed Age: the As­tors and Van­der­bilts, William But­ler Dun­can, Wal­ter Lang­don, Ward McAl­lis­ter, Roy­al Phelps. There were en­grav­ings from Harp­er’s Week­ly show­ing the ball, with ev­ery­one dressed in the most out­landish in­ter­pre­ta­tions of Egyp­tian cos­tume . . .

But she was wast­ing time. She pushed the clip­pings aside and opened the next fold­er. It al­so con­tained a news­pa­per clip­ping, this time from the New York Sun, one of the scan­dal sheets of the time. It had an il­lus­tra­tion of a dark-​haired man in a fez, with liq­uid eyes, dressed in flow­ing robes. Quick­ly she scanned the ar­ti­cle.

Sun Ex­clu­sive

Tomb in New York Mu­se­um Is Ac­cursed!

Egyp­tian Bey Is­sues Warn­ing

The Male­dic­tion of the Eye of Ho­rus

New York—On a re­cent vis­it to New York by His Em­inence Ab­dul El-​Mizar, Bey of Bol­bas­sa in Up­per Egypt, the gen­tle­man from the land of the pharaohs was shocked to find on dis­play at the New York Mu­se­um the Tomb of SENEF.

The Egyp­tian and his en­tourage, who were be­ing giv­en a tour of the mu­se­um, turned away from the tomb in hor­ror and con­ster­na­tion, warn­ing oth­er vis­itors that to en­ter the tomb was to con­sign one­self to cer­tain and ter­ri­ble death. “This tomb car­ries a curse well known in my own coun­try,” El-​Mizar lat­er told the Sun.

No­ra smiled. The ar­ti­cle went on in the same vein, min­gling a stew of dire threats with wild­ly in­ac­cu­rate his­tor­ical pro­nounce­ments, end­ing, nat­ural­ly, with a “de­mand” by the al­leged “Bey of Bol­bas­sa” that the tomb be re­turned forth­with to Egypt. At the con­clu­sion, al­most as an af­terthought, a mu­se­um of­fi­cial was quot­ed as say­ing that sev­er­al thou­sand vis­itors en­tered the tomb ev­ery day and that there had nev­er been an “un­to­ward in­ci­dent.”

This ar­ti­cle was fol­lowed by a flur­ry of let­ters from var­ious peo­ple, many of them clear­ly cranks, de­scrib­ing “sen­sa­tions” and “pres­ences” they had ex­pe­ri­enced while in the tomb. Sev­er­al com­plained of sick­ness af­ter vis­it­ing: short­ness of breath, sweats, pal­pi­ta­tions, ner­vous dis­or­ders. One, which mer­it­ed a file all its own, told of a child who fell in­to the well and broke both his legs, one of which had to be am­pu­tat­ed. An ex­change of let­ters from lawyers re­sult­ed in a qui­et set­tle­ment with the fam­ily for a sum of two hun­dred dol­lars.

She moved to the next file, which was very slen­der, and opened it, sur­prised to find in­side a sin­gle yel­lowed piece of card­board with a la­bel past­ed on it:

Con­tents moved to Se­cure Stor­age

March 22, 1938

Signed: Lu­cien P. Straw­bridge

Cu­ra­tor of Egyp­tol­ogy

No­ra turned this card over in sur­prise. Se­cure Stor­age? That must be what was now known as the Se­cure Area, where the mu­se­um kept its most valu­able ar­ti­facts. What in­side this file could have mer­it­ed be­ing locked away?

She re­placed the piece of card­board and put the file aside, mak­ing a men­tal note to fol­low up on this lat­er. There was just one fi­nal bun­dle to go. Un­seal­ing it, No­ra found it to be full of cor­re­spon­dence and notes on the build­ing of the pedes­tri­an tun­nel con­nect­ing the IND line sub­way sta­tion to the mu­se­um.

The cor­re­spon­dence was vo­lu­mi­nous. As No­ra read through it, she be­gan to re­al­ize that the sto­ry the mu­se­um told—that the tomb had been sealed off be­cause of the con­struc­tion of the tun­nel—was not ex­act­ly true. The truth, in fact, was just the op­po­site: the city want­ed to route the pedes­tri­an walk­way from the front of the sta­tion well past the en­trance of the tomb—a quick­er and cheap­er al­ter­na­tive. But for some rea­son, the mu­se­um wished to sit­uate the tun­nel to­ward the far end of the sta­tion. Then they ar­gued that the new route would cut off the tomb’s en­trance and force its clo­sure. It seemed as if the mu­se­um want­ed to force the clo­sure of the tomb.

She read on. To­ward the end of the file, she found a hand­writ­ten note, from the same Lu­cien P. Straw­bridge who’d placed the ear­li­er file in Se­cure Stor­age, scrib­bled on a memo from a New York City of­fi­cial ask­ing why the mu­se­um want­ed the pedes­tri­an walk­way in that par­tic­ular lo­ca­tion, giv­en the ex­tra costs in­volved.

The margina­lia read:

Tell him any­thing. I want that tomb closed. Let us not miss our last, best chance to rid our­selves of this damnable prob­lem.

L. P. Straw­bridge

Damnable prob­lem? No­ra won­dered just what kind of prob­lem Straw­bridge was re­fer­ring to. She flipped through the file again, but there didn’t seem to be a prob­lem con­nect­ed with the tomb, be­yond the an­noy­ance of the Bey of Bol­bas­sa’s com­ments and the crank let­ters they had gen­er­at­ed.

The prob­lem, she de­cid­ed, must be in the file in Se­cure Stor­age. In the end, it didn’t seem rel­evant, and she had run out of time. When she had time, she might look in­to it. As it was, if she didn’t get start­ed on her re­port, she’d nev­er make din­ner with Bill.

She pulled her lap­top to­ward her, opened a new file, and be­gan typ­ing.

15

The fol­low­ing day, Cap­tain of Homi­cide Lau­ra Hay­ward showed her ID and was def­er­en­tial­ly ush­ered in­to the of­fice of Jack Manet­ti, head of se­cu­ri­ty for the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. Hay­ward liked the fact that, in a mu­se­um where the ad­min­is­tra­tion seemed over­ly con­cerned with sta­tus, the head of se­cu­ri­ty had cho­sen for him­self a small, win­dow­less of­fice in the back of the se­cu­ri­ty pool, and had fur­nished it with ut­ter­ly func­tion­al met­al desks and chairs. It said some­thing pos­itive about Manet­ti—at least she hoped it did.

Manet­ti was clear­ly not hap­py to see her, but he made an at­tempt at cour­tesy, of­fer­ing her a chair and a cup of cof­fee, which she de­clined.

“I’m here on the Green as­sault,” she said. “I won­der if you’d be will­ing to ac­com­pa­ny me to the Sa­cred Im­ages show so we can run through a few ad­di­tion­al ques­tions I have about ingress and egress, ac­cess, se­cu­ri­ty.”

“But we’ve been all over that, weeks ago. I thought the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plete.”

“My in­ves­ti­ga­tion isn’t com­plete yet, Mr. Manet­ti.”

Manet­ti licked his lips. “Did you go through the of­fice of the di­rec­tor? We’re sup­posed to co­or­di­nate all law en­force­ment—”

She cut him off and stood up, grow­ing ir­ri­tat­ed. “I don’t have the time, and nei­ther do you. Let’s go.”

She fol­lowed the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor through a labyrinth of cor­ri­dors and dusty halls, ar­riv­ing at last at the ex­hib­it en­trance. The mu­se­um was still open and the se­cu­ri­ty doors hooked back, but the ex­hib­it it­self was al­most de­sert­ed.

“Let’s be­gin here,” said Hay­ward. “I’ve been go­ing over the set­up again and again, and there are a few things I just don’t get. The perp had to en­ter the hall through this door, am I cor­rect?”

“Yes.”

“The door at the far end could be opened on­ly from the in­side, not from the out­side. Right?”

“That’s right.”

“And the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem was sup­posed to au­to­mat­ical­ly keep a log of all who came and went, be­cause each mag­net­ic card key is cod­ed with the name of the own­er.”

Manet­ti nod­ded.

“But the sys­tem reg­is­tered no en­try oth­er than Mar­go Green. The perp then stole her card and used it to leave by the rear ex­it.”

“That’s the as­sump­tion.”

“Green could have en­tered and left this door hooked open.”

“No. First, that would have been against the rules. Sec­ond, the sys­tem reg­is­tered that she didn’t do that. A few sec­onds af­ter she en­tered, the door reen­gaged. We had an elec­tron­ic log to that ef­fect.”

“So the perp must have been wait­ing in the hall, hid­ing, from the time it closed to vis­itors—five o’clock—un­til the time of the as­sault, two A.M.”

Manet­ti nod­ded.

“Or else the perp man­aged to get around the se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem.”

“We think that’s high­ly im­prob­able.”

“But I think it’s al­most cer­tain. I’ve been through this hall a dozen times since the as­sault. There’s no place for the perp to have hid­den.”

“It was un­der con­struc­tion. Stuff was all over the place.”

“It was two days from open­ing. It was al­most fin­ished.”

“The se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem is fool­proof.”

“Like the Di­amond Hall. Right?”

She watched Manet­ti’s lips tight­en and felt a pang. This wasn’t her style. She was be­com­ing a bitch, and she didn’t like it.

“Thank you, Mr. Manet­ti,” she said. “I’d like to make an­oth­er pass through the hall, if you don’t mind.”

“Be our guest.”

“I’ll be in touch.”

Manet­ti dis­ap­peared and Hay­ward took a thought­ful turn around the room where Green had been at­tacked, pic­tur­ing, yet again, each step of the as­sault in a kind of men­tal stop­mo­tion. She tried to shut out the lit­tle voice in her head that said this was a wild-​goose chase; that she wasn’t like­ly to find any­thing of val­ue here weeks af­ter the at­tack, af­ter a hun­dred thou­sand peo­ple had walked through; that she was do­ing this for all the wrong rea­sons; that she should just get on with her life and ca­reer while she still could.

She took an­oth­er turn around the room, the lit­tle voice dis­ap­pear­ing un­der the rap of her heels against the floor. As she came to the side of the case where the spot of blood had been found, she saw a crouched, dark-​suit­ed fig­ure mov­ing to­ward her from be­hind the case, ready to spring out.

She pulled out her weapon, drew down on the fig­ure. “You! Freeze! NYPD!”

The per­son leaped up with a gar­gled shout, arms wind­milling, an un­ruly cowlick of hair bob­bing. Hay­ward rec­og­nized him as William Smith­back, the Times city desk re­porter.

“Don’t shoot!” the jour­nal­ist cried. “I was just, you know, look­ing around! Je­sus, you’re scar­ing the hell out of me with that thing!”

Hay­ward hol­stered her weapon, feel­ing sheep­ish. “Sor­ry. I’m a bit on edge.” Smith­back squint­ed. “You’re Cap­tain Hay­ward, isn’t that right?”

She nod­ded.

“I’m cov­er­ing the Pen­der­gast case for the Times.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Good. In fact, I’ve been mean­ing to talk to you.”

She glanced at her watch. “I’m very busy. Make an ap­point­ment through my of­fice.” “I al­ready tried that. You don’t speak to the press.”

“That’s right.” She gave him a stern look and took a step for­ward, but he didn’t step aside to let her pass.

“Do you mind?”

“Lis­ten,” he said, talk­ing fast. “I think we can help each oth­er. You know, ex­change in­for­ma­tion, that kind of thing.”

“If you have any in­for­ma­tion of an ev­iden­tiary na­ture, you bet­ter di­vulge it now or get slapped with an ob­struc­tion charge,” she said sharply.

“No, noth­ing like that! It’s just that . . . well, I think I know why you’re here. You’re not sat­is­fied. You think maybe Pen­der­gast isn’t the one who as­sault­ed Mar­go. Am I right?”

“What makes you say that?”

“A busy homi­cide cap­tain doesn’t waste her valu­able time vis­it­ing the scene of the crime when the case is wrapped up. You must have your doubts.”

Hay­ward said noth­ing, con­ceal­ing her sur­prise.

“You won­der if the killer might have been Dio­genes Pen­der­gast, the agent’s broth­er. That’s why you’re here.”

Still, Hay­ward said noth­ing, her sur­prise mount­ing.

“And that hap­pens to be why I’m here, too.” He paused and peered at her cu­ri­ous­ly, as if to gauge the ef­fect of his words.

“What makes you think it wasn’t Agent Pen­der­gast?” asked Hay­ward cau­tious­ly.

“Be­cause I know Agent Pen­der­gast. I’ve been cov­er­ing him—in a man­ner of speak­ing—since the mu­se­um mur­ders sev­en years ago. And I know Mar­go Green. She phoned me from her hos­pi­tal bed. She swears it wasn’t Pen­der­gast. She says her at­tack­er had eyes of two dif­fer­ent col­ors, one green, the oth­er milky blue.”

“Pen­der­gast is known to be a mas­ter of dis­guis­es.”

“Yeah, but that de­scrip­tion fits his broth­er. Why would he dis­guise him­self as his broth­er? And we al­ready know his broth­er pulled the di­amond heist and kid­napped that wom­an, La­dy Maske­lene. The on­ly log­ical an­swer is that Dio­genes al­so as­sault­ed Mar­go and framed his broth­er. QED.”

Once again, Hay­ward had to con­trol her sur­prise, his think­ing so close­ly par­al­lel­ing her own. Fi­nal­ly she al­lowed a smile. “Well, Mr. Smith­back, you seem to be quite the in­ves­tiga­tive re­porter.”

“That I am,” he has­tened to con­firm, smooth­ing down his cowlick, which popped up again, un­re­pen­tant.

She paused a mo­ment, con­sid­er­ing. “All right, then. Maybe we can help each oth­er. My in­volve­ment, nat­ural­ly, will be strict­ly off the record. Back­ground on­ly.”

“Ab­so­lute­ly.”

“And I ex­pect you to bring any­thing you find to me first. Be­fore you bring it to your pa­per. That’s the on­ly way I’ll con­sent to work with you.”

Smith­back nod­ded vig­or­ous­ly. “Of course.”

“Very well. It seems Dio­genes Pen­der­gast has van­ished. Com­plete­ly. The trail stops dead at his hide­out on Long Is­land, the place where he held La­dy Maske­lene pris­on­er. Such an ut­ter dis­ap­pear­ance just doesn’t hap­pen these days, ex­cept for one pos­si­ble cir­cum­stance: he slipped in­to an al­ter ego. A long-​es­tab­lished al­ter ego.”

“Any ideas who?”

“We’ve drawn a blank. But if you were to pub­lish a sto­ry about it . . . well, it just might shake some­thing loose. A tip, a nosy neigh­bor’s ob­ser­va­tion: you un­der­stand? Nat­ural­ly, my name couldn’t ap­pear.”

“I cer­tain­ly do un­der­stand. And—and what do I get in re­turn?”

Hay­ward’s smile re­turned, broad­er this time. “You’ve got it back­ward. I just did you the fa­vor. The ques­tion now is, what do you do for me in re­turn? I know you’re cov­er­ing the di­amond heist. I want to know all about it. Ev­ery­thing, big or small. Be­cause you’re right: I think Dio­genes is be­hind the Green as­sault and the Duchamp mur­der. I need all the ev­idence I can get, and be­cause I am in Homi­cide, it’s dif­fi­cult for me to ac­cess in­for­ma­tion at the precinct lev­el.”

She didn’t say that Sin­gle­ton, the precinct cap­tain han­dling the di­amond theft, was un­like­ly to share in­for­ma­tion with her.

“No prob­lem. We have a deal.”

She turned away, but Smith­back called af­ter her. “Wait!”

She glanced back at him, rais­ing an eye­brow.

“When do we meet again? And where?”

“We don’t. Just call me if—when—some­thing im­por­tant turns up.”

“Okay.”

And she left him in the semi­dark­ness of the ex­hi­bi­tion hall, jot­ting notes hur­ried­ly on­to the back of a scrap of pa­per.

16

Jay Lip­per, com­put­er ef­fects con­sul­tant, paused in the emp­ty buri­al cham­ber, peer­ing about in the dim light. Four weeks had passed since the mu­se­um made the big an­nounce­ment about the new open­ing of the Tomb of Senef; and Lip­per him­self had been on the job three weeks. To­day was the big meet­ing, and he had ar­rived ten min­utes ear­ly, to walk through the tomb and vi­su­al­ize the set­up he’d di­agrammed out: where to lay the fiber-​op­tic ca­bles, where to put the LEDs, where to mount the speak­ers, where to float the spots, where to put the holo­graph­ic screens. It was two weeks be­fore the grand open­ing, and an in­cred­ible amount still had to be done.

He could hear a med­ley of voic­es echo­ing down the mul­ti-​cham­bered tomb from some­where near the en­trance, dis­tort­ed, min­gled with the sound of ham­mer­ing and the whine of Skil­saws. The teams of work­men were go­ing flat out, and no ex­pense was be­ing spared. Es­pe­cial­ly his ex­pense: he was charg­ing $120 an hour, work­ing eighty hours a week, mak­ing a for­tune. On the oth­er hand, he was earn­ing ev­ery pen­ny of it. Es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the clown the mu­se­um had as­signed him as ca­ble-​puller, duct-​ta­per, and all-​around elec­tron­ic gofer. A re­al knuck­le-​drag­ger: if the guy was typ­ical of the mu­se­um’s tech staff, they were in trou­ble. The man was so buffed and toned he looked like a brick of meat, with a bul­let head that con­tained about as much gray mat­ter as a spaniel. The man prob­ably spent his week­ends in the gym in­stead of bon­ing up on the tech­nol­ogy he was sup­posed to un­der­stand.

As if on cue, the clown’s voice rang down the cor­ri­dor. “Dark as a tomb in here, hey, Jayce?” Ted­dy De­Meo came lum­ber­ing around the cor­ner, arms full of an un­tidy bun­dle of rolled elec­tron­ic di­agrams.

Lip­per tight­ened his lips and re­mind­ed him­self once again of that $120 an hour. The worst of it was that, be­fore he’d got­ten to know what De­Meo was like, Lip­per had un­wise­ly men­tioned to him the mas­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er on­line RPG he was in­volved in: Land of Dark­mord. And De­Meo had im­me­di­ate­ly gone on­line and sub­scribed. Lip­per’s char­ac­ter, a de­vi­ous halfelf sor­cer­er with a +5 onyx cape and a full book of of­fen­sive spells, had spent weeks or­ga­niz­ing a mil­itary ex­pe­di­tion to a dis­tant cas­tle stronghold. He’d been re­cruit­ing war­riors—and sud­den­ly, there was De­Meo, in the char­ac­ter of a slope-​faced orc car­ry­ing a club, vol­un­teer­ing for mil­itary ser­vice, act­ing like his best friend, full of asi­nine ques­tions and stupid off-​col­or jokes and em­bar­rass­ing him in front of all the oth­er play­ers.

De­Meo came to a halt be­side him, breath­ing hard, the sweat pour­ing off his brow, smelling like a damp sock.

“All right, let’s see . . .” He un­rolled one of the plats. Nat­ural­ly, De­Meo was hold­ing it up­side down, and it took him sev­er­al sec­onds to right it.

“Give it to me,” said Lip­per, snatch­ing it from him and smooth­ing it out. He glanced at his watch. Still five min­utes be­fore the cu­ra­to­ri­al com­mit­tee was due to ar­rive. No prob­lem—at two dol­lars a minute, Lip­per would wait for Godot.

He sniffed, looked around. “Some­one’s go­ing to have to do some­thing about this hu­mid­ity. I can’t have my elec­tron­ics sit­ting in a sweat­shop.”

“Yeah,” said De­Meo, look­ing around. “And will you look at this weird shit? I mean, what the hell’s that? Gives me the creeps.”

Lip­per glanced over at the fres­co in ques­tion, de­pict­ing a hu­man be­ing with the black head of an in­sect, wear­ing pharaon­ic dress. The buri­al cham­ber was creepy: walls black with hi­ero­glyph­ics, ceil­ing cov­ered with a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the night sky, strange yel­low stars and a moon against a field of deep in­di­go. But the truth was, Lip­per liked be­ing creeped out. It was like be­ing in­side the world of Dark­mord for re­al.

“That’s the god Khep­ri,” he said. “A man with the head of a scarab bee­tle. He helps roll the sun across the sky.” Work­ing on the project had fas­ci­nat­ed Lip­per, and he’d delved deeply in­to Egyp­tian mythol­ogy over the last sev­er­al weeks, look­ing for back­ground and vi­su­al cues.

“The Mum­my meets The Fly,” said De­Meo with a laugh.

Their con­ver­sa­tion was cut short by a ris­ing hub­bub of voic­es as a group en­tered the buri­al cham­ber: the man in charge, Men­zies, fol­lowed by his cu­ra­tors.

“Gen­tle­men! I’m glad you’re al­ready here. We don’t have much time.” Men­zies came for­ward, shook their hands. “You all know each oth­er, of course.”

They all nod­ded. How could they not, hav­ing prac­ti­cal­ly been liv­ing to­geth­er these past few weeks? There was Dr. No­ra Kel­ly, some­one Lip­per could at least work with; the smug Brit named Wicher­ly; and Mr. Per­son­al­ity him­self, the an­thro­pol­ogy cu­ra­tor, George Ash­ton. The com­mit­tee.

As the new ar­rivals talked briefly among them­selves, Lip­per felt a painful dig in his ribs. He looked over to see De­Meo, mouth open, wink­ing and leer­ing. “Man, oh man,” he whis­pered, nod­ding at Dr. Kel­ly. “I’d climb all over that in a heart­beat.”

Lip­per glanced away, rolling his eyes.

“Well!” Men­zies turned to ad­dress them again. “Shall we do the walk-​through?”

“Sure thing, Dr. Men­zies!” said De­Meo.

Lip­per gave him a look he hoped would shut the mo­ron up. This was his plan, his brain­work, his artistry: De­Meo’s job was rack-​mount­ing the equip­ment, pulling ca­ble, and mak­ing sure juice got to all parts of the sys­tem.

“We should start at the be­gin­ning,” Lip­per said, lead­ing them back to the en­trance with an­oth­er warn­ing side glance at De­Meo.

They thread­ed their way back through the half-​built ex­hibits and the con­struc­tion teams. As they ap­proached the en­trance to the tomb, Lip­per felt his an­noy­ance at De­Meo dis­placed by a grow­ing ex­cite­ment. The “script” for the sound-​and-​light show had been writ­ten by Wicher­ly, with var­ious ad­di­tions by Kel­ly and Men­zies, and the end re­sult was good. Very good. In turn­ing it in­to re­al­ity, he’d made it even bet­ter. This was go­ing to be one kick-​ass ex­hi­bi­tion.

Reach­ing the God’s First Pas­sage, Lip­per turned to face the oth­ers. “The sound-​and-​light show will be trig­gered au­to­mat­ical­ly. It’s im­por­tant that peo­ple be let in­to the tomb as a group and move through it to­geth­er. As they pro­ceed, they’ll trip hid­den sen­sors that in turn start each se­quence of the show. When the se­quence ends, they will move to the next part of the tomb and see the next se­quence. Af­ter the show ends, the group will have fif­teen min­utes to look around the tomb be­fore be­ing es­cort­ed out and the next group brought in.”

He point­ed to the ceil­ing. “The first sen­sor will be up there, in the cor­ner. As the vis­itors pass this point, the sen­sor will reg­is­ter, wait thir­ty sec­onds for strag­glers to catch up, and start the first se­quence, which I call act 1.”

“How are you hid­ing the ca­ble?” asked Men­zies.

“No prob­lem,” broke in De­Meo. “We’re run­ning it through black one-​inch con­duit. They’ll nev­er see it.”

“Noth­ing can be af­fixed to the paint­ed sur­face,” said Wicher­ly.

“No, no. The con­duit is steel, self-​sup­port­ing, on­ly needs to be an­chored in the cor­ners. It floats two mil­lime­ters above the sur­face of the paint, won’t even touch it.”

Wicher­ly nod­ded.

Lip­per breathed out, thank­ful that De­Meo hadn’t come across as an id­iot—at least not yet.

Lip­per led the par­ty in­to the next cham­ber. “When the vis­itors reach the cen­ter of the God’s Sec­ond Pas­sage—where we’re stand­ing now—the lights will sud­den­ly dim. There will be the sound of dig­ging, furtive chat­ter, pick­ax­es strik­ing stone—at first just sounds in the dark, no vi­su­als. A voice-​over will ex­plain that this is the tomb of Senef and that it is about to be robbed by the very priests who buried him two months be­fore. The sounds of dig­ging will get loud­er as the rob­bers reach the first sealed door. They’ll at­tack it with pick­ax­es—and then, sud­den­ly, one will break through. That’s when the vi­su­als start.”

“The point where they break through the sealed door is crit­ical,” Men­zies said. “What’s need­ed is a re­sound­ing blow from the pick­ax, a tum­ble of stones in­ward, and a pierc­ing shaft of light like a bolt of light­ning. This is a key mo­ment and it needs to be dra­mat­ic.”

“It will be dra­mat­ic.” Lip­per felt a faint ir­ri­ta­tion. Men­zies, while charm­ing enough, had been in­tru­sive and med­dle­some about cer­tain tech­ni­cal de­tails, and Lip­per was wor­ried he might mi­cro­man­age the in­stal­la­tion as well.

Lip­per con­tin­ued. “Then the lights come up and the voice-​over di­rects the au­di­ence to the well.” He led them through the long pas­sage­way and a broad stair­case. Ahead, a new bridge had been built over the pit, broad enough to hold a large group.

“As they ap­proach the well,” Lip­per went on, “a sen­sor in that cor­ner will pick up their pas­sage and be­gin act 2.”

“Right,” De­Meo in­ter­rupt­ed. “Each act will be in­de­pen­dent­ly con­trolled by a pair of du­al­pro­ces­sor Pow­er­Mac G5s, slaved to a third G5 that will act as back­up and mas­ter con­troller.”

Lip­per rolled his eyes. De­Meo had just quot­ed, word for word, from Lip­per’s own spec sheet.

“Where will these com­put­ers be lo­cat­ed?” asked Men­zies.

“We’re go­ing to ca­ble through the wall—”

“Look here,” said Wicher­ly. “No one’s go­ing to drill any holes in the walls of this tomb.”

De­Meo turned to him. “It just so hap­pens that a long time ago some­body al­ready drilled through the wall—in five places! The holes were ce­ment­ed up, but I found them and cleared them out.” De­Meo crossed his mus­cled arms in tri­umph, as if he’d just kicked sand in the face of a nine­ty-​eight-​pound weak­ling at the beach.

“What’s on the far side?” Men­zies asked.

“A store­room,” said De­Meo, “cur­rent­ly emp­ty. We’re con­vert­ing it to a con­trol room.”

Lip­per cleared his throat, fore­stalling any more in­ter­rup­tions by De­Meo. “In act 2, vis­itors will see the dig­itized im­ages of the rob­bers bridg­ing the well so they can break the sec­ond sealed door. A screen will low­er on the far side of the well—un­seen to the vis­itors, of course. Then a holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tor in the far cor­ner will project im­ages of the rob­bers in the pas­sage­way ahead, car­ry­ing burn­ing torch­es, break­ing the seals of the in­ner door, smash­ing it down, and head­ing for the buri­al cham­ber. The idea here is to make the vis­itors feel like they’re ac­tu­al­ly part of the gang of rob­bers. They’ll fol­low the rob­bers in­to the in­ner tomb—where act 3 be­gins.”

“Lara Croft, watch out!” De­Meo said, look­ing around and laugh­ing at his wit­ti­cism.

The group en­tered the buri­al cham­ber, where Lip­per paused again. “The vis­itors will hear things be­fore they see any­thing—break­age, shout­ing. As they en­ter this end of the buri­al cham­ber, they’ll be stopped by a gate, here. And then the main event be­gins. First, it’s dark, with fright­ened, ex­cit­ed voic­es. Then more smash­ing and break­ing. A sud­den flare, and an­oth­er, and the torch­es are lit up. We see the sweaty, ter­ri­fied, avari­cious faces of the priests. And gold! Ev­ery­where, the gleam of gold.” He turned to Wicher­ly. “Just as you wrote in the script.”

“Ex­cel­lent!”

“As the torch­es are lit, the com­put­er-​con­trolled light­ing will come up, dim­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ing parts of the buri­al cham­ber. The thieves will shove off and smash the stone lid of the sar­coph­agus. Then they’ll hoist up the top of the in­ner sar­coph­agus—the one in sol­id gold—and one of them will leap in and be­gin rip­ping off the linen wrap­pings. Then, with a shout of tri­umph, they’ll hold up the scarab and smash it, thus break­ing its pow­er.”

“That’s the cli­max,” said Men­zies, break­ing in ex­cit­ed­ly. “That’s where I want the peal of thun­der, the strobes sim­ulat­ing flash­es of light­ning.”

“And you’ll have it,” De­Meo said. “We got a com­plete Dol­by Sur­round and Pro Log­ic II sound sys­tem and four Chau­vet Mega II 750-watt strobes, along with a bunch of spots. All con­trolled by a twen­ty-​four-​chan­nel DMX light­ing con­sole, ful­ly au­to­mat­ed.”

He looked around proud­ly, as if he knew what the hell he was talk­ing about in­stead of, once again, quot­ing ver­ba­tim from Lip­per’s care­ful­ly de­signed specs. God, Lip­per couldn’t stand him. He wait­ed a mo­ment be­fore re­sum­ing.

“Af­ter the light and thun­der, the holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tors will switch back on, and we’ll see Senef him­self rise from the sar­coph­agus. The priests will fall back, ter­ri­fied. This is all meant to be in their minds, what they imag­ine, as was writ­ten in the script.”

“But it will be re­al­is­tic?” No­ra asked, frown­ing. “Not hokey?”

“It’ll all be 3-D, and the holo­graph­ic im­ages are a bit like ghosts—you can see through them, but on­ly when there’s strong light be­hind. We’ll ma­nip­ulate the light lev­els very care­ful­ly to ex­ploit that il­lu­sion. Some of it’s video-​based, some of it C.G. Any­way, Senef ris­es, vi­olat­ed, and points a fin­ger. To more flash­es of light­ning and thun­der, he speaks of his life, what he has done, what a great re­gent and vizier he was to Thut­mo­sis, and of course, this is where you slip in the ed­uca­tion­al stuff.”

“Mean­while,” said De­Meo, “we’ve got a 500-watt Jem Glacia­tor hid­den in the sar­coph­agus, pump­ing out an awe­some ground fog. Two thou­sand cu­bic feet a minute.”

“My script doesn’t call for ar­ti­fi­cial smoke,” said Wicher­ly. “This could dam­age the paint­ings.”

“The Jem sys­tem us­es on­ly en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly flu­ids,” Lip­per said. “Guar­an­teed not to chem­ical­ly al­ter any­thing.”

No­ra Kel­ly was frown­ing again. “For­give me for rais­ing this ques­tion, but is this lev­el of the­atri­cal­ity re­al­ly nec­es­sary?”

Men­zies turned to her. “Why, No­ra! This was your idea to be­gin with.”

“I was imag­in­ing some­thing low­er-​key, not strobe lights and fog ma­chines.”

Men­zies chuck­led. “As long as we’re go­ing this route, No­ra, we should do it right. Trust me, we’re cre­at­ing an un­for­get­table ed­uca­tion­al ex­pe­ri­ence. It’s a mar­velous way to slip a lit­tle learn­ing to the vul­gus mo­bile with­out them ev­er re­al­iz­ing it.”

No­ra con­tin­ued to look doubt­ful, but said noth­ing fur­ther.

Lip­per re­sumed. “As Senef speaks, the rob­bers fall to the floor in ter­ror. Then Senef melts back in­to his sar­coph­agus, the rob­bers van­ish, the holo­graph­ic screens re­tract, the lights come up—and sud­den­ly the tomb is as it was, be­fore the rob­bery. A mu­se­um ex­hib­it once again. The gate slides back and the vis­itors are free to tour the buri­al cham­ber as if noth­ing had hap­pened.”

Men­zies raised a fin­ger. “But they will do so hav­ing gained an ap­pre­ci­ation of Senef and been en­ter­tained in the pro­cess. Now for the mil­lion-​dol­lar ques­tion: can you fin­ish by dead­line?”

“We’ve al­ready out­sourced as much of the pro­gram­ming as pos­si­ble,” Lip­per said. “The elec­tri­cal staff are work­ing flat out. I’d say we can have it in­stalled and ready for al­pha test­ing in four days.”

“That’s ex­cel­lent.”

“And then comes the de­bug­ging.”

Men­zies cocked his head ques­tion­ing­ly. “De­bug­ging?”

“That’s the killer. A rule of thumb says the de­bug­ging takes twice as long as the orig­inal pro­gram­ming.”

“Eight days?”

Lip­per nod­ded, un­easy from the sud­den dark­en­ing of Men­zies’s face.

“Four plus eight is twelve—two days be­fore the gala open­ing. Can you fin­ish the de­bug­ging in five?”

Some­thing in Men­zies’s tone led Lip­per to think it was more an or­der than a ques­tion. He swal­lowed: the sched­ule al­ready verged on the in­sane. “We’ll cer­tain­ly try.”

“Good. Now, let’s talk for a minute about the open­ing. Dr. Kel­ly sug­gest­ed we du­pli­cate the orig­inal open­ing in 1872, and I whole­heart­ed­ly con­curred. We are plan­ning a cock­tail re­cep­tion, a bit of opera, and then the guests will be es­cort­ed in­to the tomb for the sound-​an­dlight show. Din­ner will fol­low.”

“How many are we talk­ing about?” Lip­per asked.

“Six hun­dred.”

“Ob­vi­ous­ly we’re not go­ing to fit six hun­dred peo­ple in­to the tomb at one time,” Lip­per said. “I’ve been es­ti­mat­ing two hun­dred at a go for the sound-​and-​light show, which lasts about twen­ty min­utes, but we could up that to, say, three hun­dred for the open­ing.”

“Fine,” said Men­zies. “We’ll di­vide them in­to two groups. The first in, of course, will be the A-​list: the may­or, gov­er­nor, sen­ators and con­gress­men, the mu­se­um’s top brass, the biggest pa­trons, movie stars. With two show­ings, we’ll get guests through the ex­hib­it with­in an hour. Fin­ish off the en­tire crowd.” He looked from Lip­per to De­Meo. “You two are cru­cial. There can’t be any mis­takes. Ev­ery­thing’s rid­ing on you fin­ish­ing that sound-​and-​light show on time. Four days plus five: that’s nine days.”

“I’ve got no prob­lem,” said De­Meo, all smiles and self-​con­fi­dence: gofer and ca­ble-​puller ex­traor­di­naire.

Those dis­qui­et­ing blue eyes now turned back to Lip­per. “And you, Mr. Lip­per?”

“It’ll hap­pen.”

“De­light­ed to hear it. I trust you’ll keep me up-​to-​date with progress re­ports?”

They nod­ded.

Men­zies glanced at his watch. “No­ra, if you’ll ex­cuse me, I have to catch a train. I’ll check in with you lat­er.”

Men­zies and the cu­ra­tors were gone, leav­ing Lip­per alone with De­Meo once again. He glanced at his watch. “We’d bet­ter get go­ing, De­Meo, be­cause I’d like to get to sleep tonight be­fore four A.M. for a change.”

“What about Dark­mord?” De­Meo asked. “You promised to have the band of war­riors ready for the at­tack by mid­night.”

Lip­per groaned. Shit. They would just have to launch the at­tack on Cas­tle Gloam­ing with­out him.

17

When Mar­go Green awoke, a bright af­ter­noon sun was slant­ing in through the win­dows of the Fever­sham Clin­ic. Out­side, puffy cu­mu­lus clouds drift­ed across a lazy blue sky. The dis­tant call of wa­ter­birds came from the di­rec­tion of the Hud­son Riv­er.

She yawned, stretched, then sat up in bed. Glanc­ing at the clock, she no­ticed it was quar­ter to four. The nurse should be in soon with her af­ter­noon cup of pep­per­mint tea.

The hos­pi­tal ta­ble be­side her bed was crowd­ed: back is­sues of Nat­ural His­to­ry, a Tol­stoy nov­el, a portable mu­sic play­er, a lap­top, and a copy of the New York Times. She reached for the news­pa­per, flipped through the C sec­tion. Maybe she could fin­ish the cross­word be­fore Phyl­lis brought her tea.

Now that her con­di­tion was no longer crit­ical, re­cov­ery at the clin­ic had set­tled in­to a kind of rou­tine. She found that she looked for­ward to the af­ter­noon chats with Phyl­lis. She hard­ly had any vis­itors—no vis­itors at all, ac­tu­al­ly, save her moth­er and Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward—and the thing she missed most, oth­er than her ca­reer, was com­pan­ion­ship.

Pick­ing up a pen­cil, she ap­plied her­self to the cross­word. But it was one of those late-​inthe-​week puz­zles, full of coy clues and ob­scure ref­er­ences, and men­tal ex­er­cise still tired her. Af­ter a few min­utes, she put it aside. She found her thoughts stray­ing back to Hay­ward’s re­cent vis­it and the un­pleas­ant mem­ories it had reawak­ened.

It dis­turbed her that her mem­ory of the at­tack re­mained shad­owy. There were bits and pieces, dis­con­nect­ed, as if from a night­mare—but noth­ing co­her­ent. She’d been in­side the Sa­cred Im­ages ex­hi­bi­tion, check­ing the ar­range­ment of some Na­tive Amer­ican masks. While there, she’d be­come aware of a pres­ence: some­body else in the ex­hi­bi­tion, lurk­ing in the shad­ows. Fol­low­ing her. Stalk­ing her. Cor­ner­ing her. She dim­ly re­mem­bered mak­ing a stand, fight­ing with a box cut­ter. Had she wound­ed her pur­suer? The ac­tu­al at­tack it­self was the most frag­men­tary: lit­tle more than a sear­ing pain in her back. And that had been all—un­til she woke up in this room.

She fold­ed up the news­pa­per, put it back on the ta­ble. The most dis­turb­ing thing was that, even though she knew her at­tack­er had spo­ken to her, she couldn’t re­mem­ber any­thing he had said. His words were gone, fall­en in­to the dark­ness. Cu­ri­ous­ly, she did re­mem­ber, seared in­to her mind, the man’s strange eyes and his hideous, dry chuck­le.

She turned rest­less­ly in her bed, won­der­ing where Phyl­lis was, still think­ing of Hay­ward’s vis­it. The cap­tain had asked a lot of ques­tions about Agent Pen­der­gast and his broth­er, a man with the pe­cu­liar name of Dio­genes. It all seemed strange: Mar­go hadn’t seen Pen­der­gast in years, and she had nev­er even known the FBI agent had a broth­er.

Now at last the door to her room opened and Phyl­lis walked in. But she wasn’t car­ry­ing a tray of tea things, and her friend­ly face bore an of­fi­cial ex­pres­sion.

“Mar­go, you have a vis­itor,” she said.

Mar­go bare­ly had time to re­act to this an­nounce­ment be­fore a fa­mil­iar fig­ure ap­peared in the door­way: the chair­man of her de­part­ment at the mu­se­um, Dr. Hugo Men­zies. He was dressed as usu­al in rum­pled el­egance, his thick white hair combed back from his fore­head, his live­ly blue eyes dart­ing briefly around the room be­fore set­tling on her.

“Mar­go!” he cried, com­ing for­ward, pa­tri­cian fea­tures break­ing in­to a smile. “How won­der­ful to see you.”

“Same here, Dr. Men­zies,” she replied. Her sur­prise at hav­ing a vis­itor was quick­ly re­placed by em­bar­rass­ment: she wasn’t ex­act­ly dressed to re­ceive her boss.

But Men­zies, as if sens­ing her dis­com­fort, was quick to put her at ease. He thanked Phyl­lis, wait­ed un­til the nurse had left the room, then took a seat be­side the bed.

“What a beau­ti­ful room!” he ex­claimed. “And with an exquisite view of the Hud­son Riv­er Val­ley. The qual­ity of the light here is sec­ond on­ly to Venice, I think; per­haps that’s why it has drawn so many painters.”

“They’ve been very good to me here.”

“As well they should. You know, my dear, I’ve been ter­ri­bly wor­ried about you. The en­tire An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment has. We can’t wait for your re­turn.”

“Nei­ther can I.”

“Your lo­ca­tion has been al­most a state se­cret. Un­til yes­ter­day, I nev­er even knew this place ex­ist­ed. As it was, I had to charm my way past half the staff.” He smiled.

Mar­go smiled back. If any­one could charm his way in, Men­zies could. She’d been lucky to get him as her su­per­vi­sor: many mu­se­um cu­ra­tors lord­ed it over their min­ions, be­hav­ing like con­ceit­ed philoso­pher-​kings. Men­zies was the ex­cep­tion: af­fa­ble, re­cep­tive to the ideas of oth­ers, sup­port­ive of his staff. It was true—she couldn’t wait to get out of here and back to work. Muse­ol­ogy, the pe­ri­od­ical she edit­ed, was rud­der­less in her ab­sence. If on­ly she didn’t grow tired so eas­ily . . .

She re­al­ized her mind was drift­ing. She roused her­self, glanced at Men­zies. He was look­ing back at her, con­cern on his face.

“Sor­ry,” she said. “I’m still a lit­tle out of it.”

“Of course you are,” he said. “Per­haps that’s why this is still nec­es­sary?” And he nod­ded at the saline drip hang­ing be­side the bed.

“The doc­tor said that’s just a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure. I’m get­ting plen­ty of flu­ids now.”

“Good, very good. The loss of blood must have been a se­vere shock. So much blood, Mar­go. There’s a rea­son they call it the liv­ing liq­uid, don’t you agree?”

A strange cur­rent, al­most like a phys­ical shock, passed through Mar­go. The weak­ness, the feel­ing of tor­por, re­ced­ed. She sud­den­ly felt wide awake. “What did you say?” “I said, have they giv­en you any in­di­ca­tion of when you can leave?”

Mar­go re­laxed. “The doc­tors are very pleased with my progress. An­oth­er two weeks or so.”

“And then bed rest at home, I as­sume?”

“Yes. Dr. Winokur—that’s my pri­ma­ry physi­cian here—said I would need an­oth­er month’s re­cu­per­ation be­fore re­turn­ing to work.”

“He would know best.”

Men­zies’s voice was low and sooth­ing, and Mar­go felt tor­pid­ity re­turn­ing. Al­most with­out re­al­iz­ing it, she yawned.

“Oh!” she said, em­bar­rassed anew. “I’m sor­ry.”

“Think noth­ing of it. I don’t want to over­stay my wel­come, I’ll leave short­ly. Are you tired, Mar­go?”

She smiled faint­ly. “A lit­tle bit.”

“Sleep­ing all right?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I was wor­ried you might have been hav­ing night­mares.” Men­zies glanced over his shoul­der, to­ward the open door and the cor­ri­dor be­yond.

“No, not re­al­ly.”

“That’s my girl! What spunk!”

There: that strange elec­tric tin­gle again. Men­zies’s voice had changed—some­thing about it was both for­eign and dis­qui­et­ing­ly fa­mil­iar. “Dr. Men­zies,” she be­gan, sit­ting up once more.

“Now, now, you just sit back and rest.” And with a gen­tle but firm pres­sure on her shoul­der, he guid­ed her back down on­to the pil­low. “I’m so glad to hear you’re sleep­ing well. Not ev­ery­body could put such a trau­mat­ic event be­hind them.”

“It’s not ex­act­ly be­hind me,” she said. “I just don’t seem to re­mem­ber what hap­pened very well, that’s all.”

Men­zies laid a com­fort­ing hand on hers. “That’s just as well,” he said, slip­ping his oth­er hand in­side his jack­et.

Mar­go felt an in­ex­pli­ca­ble sense of alarm. She was tired—that’s all it was. Much as she liked Men­zies, much as she ap­pre­ci­at­ed this break in the monotony, she need­ed to rest.

“Af­ter all, no­body would want such mem­ories. The nois­es in the emp­ty ex­hi­bi­tion hall. Be­ing fol­lowed. The in­vis­ible foot­falls, the falling of boards. The sud­den dark­ness.”

Mar­go felt an un­fo­cused pan­ic well up with­in her. She stared at Men­zies, un­able to wrap her mind around what he was say­ing. The an­thro­pol­ogist kept on talk­ing in his low, sooth­ing voice.

“Laugh­ter in the black­ness. And then, the plunge of the knife . . . No, Mar­go. No­body would want those mem­ories.”

And then Men­zies him­self laughed. But it wasn’t his voice. No: it was an­oth­er voice, an­oth­er voice en­tire­ly: a hideous, dry chuck­le.

A sud­den dread­ful shock burned through the gath­er­ing lethar­gy. No. Oh, no. It couldn’t be . . .

Men­zies sat in the chair, look­ing at her in­tent­ly, as if gaug­ing the ef­fect of his words.

Then he winked.

Mar­go tried to pull away, opened her mouth to scream. But even as she did so, the feel­ing of las­si­tude in­ten­si­fied, flood­ing her limbs, leav­ing her un­able to speak or move. She had a des­per­ate re­al­iza­tion that the lethar­gy wasn’t nor­mal, that some­thing was hap­pen­ing to her . . .

Men­zies let his hand fall away from hers, and as he did so, she saw—with a thrill of hor­ror—that his oth­er hand had been con­cealed be­neath. It held a tiny sy­ringe, which was in­ject­ing a col­or­less liq­uid in­to the IV tube at her wrist. Even as she watched, he with­drew the sy­ringe, palmed it, then re­placed it in his suit jack­et.

“My dear Mar­go,” he said, sit­ting back, his voice so very dif­fer­ent now. “Did you re­al­ly think you’d seen the last of me?”

Pan­ic, and a des­per­ate de­sire to sur­vive, surged with­in her—yet she felt ut­ter­ly pow­er­less against the drug that was spread­ing through her veins, si­lenc­ing her voice and par­alyz­ing her limbs. Men­zies swept to his feet, placed a fin­ger against his lips, and whis­pered, “Time to sleep, Mar­go . . .”

The hat­ed dark­ness surged in, blot­ting out sight and thought. Pan­ic, shock, and dis­be­lief fell aside as the mere act of draw­ing breath be­came a strug­gle. As she lay par­alyzed, Mar­go saw Men­zies turn and has­ten from the room, heard his faint yelling for a nurse. But then his voice, too, was sub­sumed in­to the hol­low roar that filled her head, and dark­ness gath­ered in her eyes un­til the roar dwin­dled in­to black­ness and eter­nal night, and she knew no more.

18

Four days af­ter their meet­ing with Men­zies, the sound-​and-​light show was fi­nal­ly in­stalled and ready for de­bug­ging, and that night they were pulling the fi­nal ca­bles, hook­ing ev­ery­thing up. Jay Lip­per crouched by the dusty hole near the floor of the Hall of the Char­iots, lis­ten­ing to var­ious sounds emerg­ing from the hole: grunts, heavy breath­ing, mut­tered curs­es. It was the third night in a row they’d worked on the in­stall in­to the wee hours of the morn­ing, and he was dog-​tired. He couldn’t take much more of this. The ex­hi­bi­tion had ba­si­cal­ly tak­en over his life. All his guild­mates in Land of Dark­mord had giv­en up on him and con­tin­ued with the on­line game. By now, they’d lev­eled up once, maybe twice, and he was hope­less­ly be­hind.

“Got it?” came De­Meo’s muf­fled voice from the hole. Lip­per looked down to see the end of a fiber-​op­tic ca­ble pok­ing out of the black­ness.

Lip­per seized the end. “Got it.”

He pulled it through, then wait­ed for De­Meo to come around from the oth­er side. Soon De­Meo’s blocky fig­ure, back­lit and faint in the dim light of the tomb, came huff­ing down the pas­sage­way, ca­bles coiled about his mas­sive shoul­ders. Lip­per hand­ed him the ca­ble end and De­Meo plugged it in­to the back of a Power­Book sit­ting on a near­by work­table. Lat­er, when the ar­ti­facts were all in place, the lap­top would be art­ful­ly hid­den be­hind a gild­ed and paint­ed chest. But for now, it was out in the open, where they could ac­cess it.

De­Meo slapped the dust off his thighs with a grin, then held up his hand. “High five, bro. We did it.”

Lip­per ig­nored the hand, un­able to dis­guise his ir­ri­ta­tion. He had had just about enough of De­Meo. The mu­se­um’s two elec­tri­cians had in­sist­ed on go­ing home at mid­night, and as a re­sult he’d found him­self on his hands and knees, act­ing as De­Meo’s damn as­sis­tant.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” he said in a sulky voice.

De­Meo’s hand dropped. “Yeah, but at least, the ca­bling’s been pulled, the soft­ware’s load­ed, and we’re on sched­ule. You can’t ask for bet­ter than that, right, Jayce?”

Lip­per reached over and turned on the com­put­er, ini­ti­at­ing the boot se­quence. He hoped to hell the com­put­er would see the net­work and the re­mote de­vices, but he knew it wouldn’t. It was nev­er that easy—and be­sides, De­Meo was the one who set up the frig­ging net­work. Any­thing could hap­pen.

The com­put­er fin­ished boot­ing and, with a sink­ing heart, Lip­per be­gan send­ing pings over the net­work, check­ing to see how many of the two dozen re­mote de­vices were miss­ing and would re­quire time-​con­sum­ing trou­bleshoot­ing to lo­cate. He’d be lucky if the com­put­er saw half of the pe­riph­er­als on first boot-​up: it was the na­ture of the busi­ness.

But as he moused his way from one net­work ad­dress to an­oth­er, a sense of dis­be­lief stole over him. Ev­ery­thing seemed to be there.

He ran over his check­list. It was im­pos­si­ble, but true: the en­tire net­work was there, vis­ible and op­er­ational. All the re­mote de­vices, the sound-​and-​light ap­pa­ra­tus, were re­spond­ing and seemed to be per­fect­ly syn­chro­nized. It was as if some­one had al­ready worked out the kinks.

Lip­per rechecked his list, but with the same re­sult. Dis­be­lief gave way to a kind of guard­ed ju­bi­la­tion: he could not re­call a sin­gle job where such a com­pli­cat­ed net­work was up and run­ning on the first try. And it wasn’t just the net­work: the en­tire project had been like that, ev­ery­thing com­ing to­geth­er like a charm. It had tak­en days of seem­ing­ly end­less work, but in the re­al world it would have tak­en even longer. Prob­ably a lot longer. He fetched a deep breath.

“How’s it look?” De­Meo asked, crowd­ing up be­hind him to peer at the small screen. Lip­per could smell his oniony breath.

“Looks good.” Lip­per edged away.

“Sweet!” De­Meo gave a whoop that echoed through the tomb, just about blow­ing out Lip­per’s eardrum. “I am the man! I’m a freak­ing net­work mon­ster!” He danced around the room, do­ing an un­gain­ly buck-​and-​wing, pump­ing his fist in­to the air. Then he glanced over at Lip­per. “Let’s do a test run.”

“I have a bet­ter idea. Why don’t you go out and get us a cou­ple of piz­zas?”

De­Meo looked at him in sur­prise. “What—now? You don’t want to do an al­pha?”

Lip­per cer­tain­ly did want to do a test run. But not with De­Meo breath­ing down his neck, whoop­ing in his ear, and act­ing like an ass. Lip­per want­ed to ad­mire his hand­iwork qui­et­ly, in a fo­cused way. He need­ed a break from De­Meo, and he need­ed one bad.

“We’ll do a run af­ter the piz­zas. On me.”

He watched as De­Meo con­sid­ered this.

“All right,” De­Meo said. “What do you want?”

“The Neapoli­tan. With a large iced tea.”

“I’m go­ing for the Hawai­ian dou­ble pineap­ple with hon­ey-​glazed ham, ex­tra gar­lic, and two Dr Pep­pers.”

It was typ­ical of De­Meo to as­sume Lip­per gave a shit what kind of piz­za he want­ed. Lip­per pulled out two twen­ties, passed them over.

“Thanks, bro.”

He watched De­Meo’s form la­bor up the stone stair­case and van­ish in the gloom. The foot­steps echoed slow­ly away.

Lip­per breathed in the blessed si­lence. Maybe De­Meo would be run over by a bus on the way back.

With that pleas­ant thought in mind, he turned his at­ten­tion back to the com­put­er’s con­trol pan­el. He moused over each pe­riph­er­al de­vice in turn, check­ing to see that it was alive and func­tion­al, sur­prised again that each one re­spond­ed per­fect­ly, on cue, as if some­body had al­ready de­bugged the net­work for them. De­Meo, for all his wise­cracks and shenani­gans, had ac­tu­al­ly done his job—and done it per­fect­ly.

Sud­den­ly he paused, frown­ing. A soft­ware icon was jump­ing fran­ti­cal­ly in the dock. Some­how the main rou­tines for the sound-​and-​light show had load­ed au­to­mat­ical­ly, when, in fact, he had specif­ical­ly pro­grammed them to load man­ual­ly, at least dur­ing the al­pha test­ing, so he could step through the code and check each mod­ule.

So there was a glitch, af­ter all. He’d need to fix it, of course: but not right now. The soft­ware was load­ed, the con­trollers were on­line and ready, the screens in place, the fog ma­chine filled.

He might as well run it.

He drew in an­oth­er breath, sa­vor­ing the peace and qui­et, his fin­ger over the re­turn key, ready to ex­ecute the pro­gram. Then he paused. A sound had drift­ed to­ward him from the deep­er part of the tomb: the Hall of Truth, or maybe even the buri­al cham­ber it­self. Couldn’t be De­Meo, since he’d be com­ing from the op­po­site di­rec­tion. And the piz­zas would take at least half an hour; if he were lucky, maybe even forty min­utes.

Per­haps it was a guard or some­thing.

The sound came again: a strange, dry, scur­ry­ing sound. No guard made a noise like that.

Mice, maybe?

He rose in­de­ci­sive­ly. It was prob­ably noth­ing. Christ, he was let­ting him­self get spooked by all this curse crap the guards had start­ed to whis­per about. It was prob­ably just a mouse. Af­ter all, there’d been plen­ty of mice in the old Egyp­tian gal­leries, enough so the Main­te­nance De­part­ment had need­ed to place glue traps. Still, if some had got­ten in­to the tomb it­self—maybe through one of the ca­ble holes De­Meo had opened up—all it would take was a pair of ro­dent teeth sunk in­to one ca­ble to crash the whole sys­tem and cause a de­lay of hours, maybe even days, while they ex­am­ined each ca­ble. Inch by frig­ging inch.

An­oth­er scur­ry, like wind rustling dead leaves. Leav­ing the lights dimmed, he picked up De­Meo’s coat—ready to throw it over a mouse if he found one—then rose and made his way stealthi­ly in­to the deep­est re­cess­es of the tomb.

Ted­dy De­Meo fum­bled for his key card, swip­ing it through the new­ly in­stalled lock to the Egyp­tian gallery while try­ing not to drop the piz­zas at the same time. The damn pies were cold—the guards at the se­cu­ri­ty en­trance had tak­en their sweet time clear­ing him through, when the same id­iots had checked him out just twen­ty-​five min­utes ear­li­er. Se­cu­ri­ty? More like mo­roni­ty.

The door to the Egyp­tian gallery whis­pered shut and he strode down the length of the hall, turned in­to the an­nex—and was sur­prised to find the doors to the tomb shut be­fore him.

A sus­pi­cion took root in his mind: had Lip­per gone and done the first run with­out him? But he quick­ly dis­missed it. Lip­per, though a fussy artiste type and cranky as hell, was ba­si­cal­ly a cool guy.

He fum­bled out his key card and swiped it, hear­ing the locks dis­en­gage. Still bal­anc­ing the piz­zas and drinks, he got an el­bow in­to the door and shoved it open, then slipped through, the door click­ing shut be­hind him.

The lights had dimmed to lev­el 1—the lev­el they would be at af­ter a run—and once again, De­Meo felt a stab of sus­pi­cion.

“Hey, Jayce!” he called out. “Piz­za de­liv­ery!”

His voice echoed and died away.

“Jayce!”

He de­scend­ed the stair­case, walked down the cor­ri­dor, and went as far as the bridge over the well be­fore paus­ing again.

“Jayce! Piz­za time!”

He lis­tened while the echoes died away. Lip­per wouldn’t have done an ini­tial test run with­out him: not af­ter all the time they’d put in on the project to­geth­er. He wasn’t that much of an ass­hole. He prob­ably had his ear­phones on, check­ing the sound track or some­thing. Or maybe he was lis­ten­ing to his iPod—some­times he did that while work­ing. De­Meo ven­tured across the bridge and en­tered their main work area in the Hall of the Char­iots.

As he did so, he heard a dis­tant foot­step. At least he thought it was a foot­step. But it had made an odd thump­ing sound. It came from deep­er with­in the tomb, prob­ably the buri­al cham­ber.

“That you, Jayce?” For the first time, De­Meo felt a creep­ing sense of alarm. He put the piz­zas down on the work­table and took a few steps to­ward the Hall of Truth and the buri­al cham­ber be­yond. He could see that it was quite dark—still at lev­el 1 light­ing, like the rest of the tomb. He couldn’t see a damn thing, to tell the truth.

He went back to the work­table, looked at the com­put­er. It was ful­ly boot­ed, the soft­ware load­ed and wait­ing in stand­by mode. He moused over to the light­ing icon, try­ing to re­mem­ber how to raise the light lev­els. Lip­per had done it a hun­dred times, but he’d nev­er paid much at­ten­tion. There were some soft­ware slid­ers vis­ible in an open win­dow and he clicked the one la­beled Hall of the Char­iots.

Christ! The lights dimmed, send­ing the dis­qui­et­ing Egyp­tian carv­ings and stone stat­uary even fur­ther in­to gloom. He quick­ly moused the slid­er in the oth­er di­rec­tion, and the lights in­ten­si­fied. Then he be­gan bright­en­ing the lights in the rest of the tomb.

He heard a thump and turned with a jerk. “Jayce?”

It had def­inite­ly come from the buri­al cham­ber.

De­Meo laughed. “Hey, Jayce, c’mere. I got the piz­zas.”

There was that strange noise again: Draaaag-​thump. Draaaag-​thump. As if some­body, or some thing, was drag­ging one limb.

“It sounds just like The Mum­my’s Curse. Ha, ha, Jayce—good one!”

No an­swer.

De­Meo, still chuck­ling, turned from the com­put­er and strode through the Hall of Truth. He turned his eyes away from the squat­ting form of Am­mut—some­thing about the Egyp­tian god, the eater of hearts with a crocodile head and li­on’s mane, creeped him out even worse than the rest of the tomb.

He paused be­yond the door to the buri­al cham­ber. “You’re a fun­ny guy, Jayce.”

He wait­ed for Lip­per’s laugh, for the sight of his skin­ny form emerg­ing from be­hind a pi­laster. But there was noth­ing. The si­lence was ab­so­lute. With a ner­vous swal­low, he ducked in­side, peered about the tomb.

Noth­ing. The oth­er doors lead­ing away from the buri­al cham­ber were dark—they weren’t part of the com­put­er light­ing scheme. Lip­per must be hid­ing in one of those rooms, prepar­ing to jump out and scare him half to death.

“Hey, Jayce, come on. The piz­zas are cold and get­ting cold­er.”

The lights sud­den­ly went out.

“Hey!”

De­Meo spun around, but the tomb dog­legged at the Hall of Truth and he could not see back in­to the Hall of the Char­iots—nor could he see the com­fort­ing blue glow of the LCD screen.

He spun again, hear­ing the strange, drag­ging foot­falls be­hind him, mov­ing clos­er now.

“This isn’t fun­ny, Jay.”

He felt for his flash­light—but of course he wasn’t car­ry­ing it; it was back in the char­iots hall, on the ta­ble. Why couldn’t he see the in­di­rect glow of the LCD? Had the pow­er been cut as well? The dark­ness was to­tal.

“Look, Jay, cut the crap. I’m se­ri­ous.”

He shuf­fled back­ward in the dark, came up against one of the pil­lars, be­gan feel­ing his way around it. The steps drew still clos­er.

Draaaag-​thump. Draaaag-​thump.

“Jay, come on. Cut the bull­shit.”

Sud­den­ly, from clos­er than he ev­er ex­pect­ed, he heard the raspy sound of air es­cap­ing from a dry throat. A rat­tle that was al­most a hiss, full of some­thing like ha­tred.

“Je­sus!” De­Meo took a step for­ward and swiped his heavy fist through the air, strik­ing some­thing that shuf­fled back with an­oth­er snake­like hiss.

“Stop it! Stop it!”

He both heard and felt the thing rush at him with a high keen­ing sound. He tried to twist aside but felt, with as­ton­ish­ment, a ter­ri­ble blow. Sear­ing heat knifed through his chest. With a shriek, he fell back­ward, claw­ing at the dark­ness, and as he hit the ground, he felt some­thing heavy and cold stamp on his throat and bear down with shock­ing weight. He lashed about with his hands as he heard the bones crack­ling in his neck and a sud­den, daz­zling ex­plo­sion of urine-​col­ored light flashed in his eyes—and then noth­ing.

19

The large, el­egant li­brary in Agent Pen­der­gast’s man­sion on River­side Drive was the last room one would ex­pect to call crowd­ed. And yet—D’Agos­ta re­flect­ed mood­ily—there was no oth­er word for it this evening. Ta­bles, chairs, and much of the floor were cov­ered with plats and di­agrams. Half a dozen easels and white­boards had been erect­ed, show­ing schemat­ics, maps, routes of ingress and egress. The low-​tech re­con­nais­sance they had con­duct­ed of Herk­moor a few nights ear­li­er had now been en­hanced by high-​tech re­mote surveil­lance, in­clud­ing false-​col­or satel­lite im­ages in radar and in­frared wave­lengths. Box­es lay shoved against one wall, over­flow­ing with print­outs, da­ta dumps from com­put­er probes of the Herk­moor net­work, and aeri­al pho­tographs of the prison com­plex.

In the mid­dle of the con­trolled chaos sat Glinn, near­ly mo­tion­less in his wheelchair, speak­ing qui­et­ly in his usu­al mono­tone. He had be­gun the meet­ing with a crush­ing­ly de­tailed anal­ysis of Herk­moor’s phys­ical plant and se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures. D’Agos­ta need­ed no con­vinc­ing there: if any prison was es­cape-​proof, it was Herk­moor. The old-​fash­ioned de­fens­es like re­dun­dant guard posts and triple fenc­ing had been bol­stered by cut­ting-​edge in­stru­men­ta­tion, in­clud­ing laser-​beam “lat­tices” at ev­ery ex­it, hun­dreds of dig­ital video­cams, and a net­work of pas­sive lis­ten­ing de­vices set in­to the walls and ground, ready to pick up any­thing from dig­ging to stealthy foot­steps. Ev­ery pris­on­er was re­quired to wear an an­kle bracelet with an em­bed­ded GPS de­vice, which broad­cast the pris­on­er’s lo­ca­tion to a cen­tral com­mand unit. If the bracelet were cut, an alarm would im­me­di­ate­ly sound and an au­to­mat­ic lock­down se­quence would be­gin.

As far as D’Agos­ta was con­cerned, Herk­moor was in­vin­ci­ble.

From there, Glinn had segued to the next step in the es­cape plan. And this was where D’Agos­ta’s sim­mer­ing un­ease had boiled over. Not on­ly did the idea seem sim­plis­tic and in­ept, but, even worse, it turned out that he, D’Agos­ta—and he alone—was the man as­signed to car­ry it out.

He glanced around the li­brary, wait­ing im­pa­tient­ly for Glinn to fin­ish. Wren had ar­rived ear­li­er that evening with a set of ar­chi­tec­tural plans of the prison, “bor­rowed” from the pri­vate records sec­tion of the New York Pub­lic Li­brary, and now he hov­ered around Con­stance Greene. With his lu­mi­nous eyes and al­most translu­cent skin, the man looked like a cave crea­ture, paler even than Pen­der­gast . . . if that were pos­si­ble.

Next, D’Agos­ta’s gaze fell on Con­stance. She sat at a side ta­ble op­po­site Wren, a stack of books be­fore her, lis­ten­ing to Glinn and tak­ing notes. She was wear­ing a se­vere black dress with a row of tiny pearl but­tons in the back, run­ning from the base of her spine up to the nape of her neck. D’Agos­ta found him­self won­der­ing who had but­toned them up for her. More than once, he had caught her pri­vate­ly stroking one hand over the oth­er, or gaz­ing in­to the fire that crack­led on the huge grate, lost in thought.

She’s prob­ably as skep­ti­cal about all this as I am, he thought. Be­cause as he looked around at their lit­tle four­some—Proc­tor, the chauf­feur, was un­ac­count­ably ab­sent—he couldn’t imag­ine a group less suit­ed for such a daunt­ing task. He had nev­er re­al­ly liked Glinn and his smooth ar­ro­gance, and he won­dered if the man had fi­nal­ly met his match with the Herk­moor pen­iten­tiary.

There came a pause in Glinn’s drone, and he turned to­ward D’Agos­ta.

“Do you have any ques­tions or com­ments so far, Lieu­tenant?”

“Yeah. A com­ment: the scheme is crazy.”

“Per­haps I should have phrased the ques­tion dif­fer­ent­ly. Do you have any com­ments of sub­stance to make?”

“You think I can just waltz in, make a spec­ta­cle of my­self, and get out scot-​free? This is Herk­moor we’re talk­ing about. I’ll be lucky not to end up in the cell next to Pen­der­gast.”

Glinn’s ex­pres­sion did not change. “As long as you stick to the script, there will be no prob­lems and you will get off ‘scot-​free.’ Ev­ery­thing has been planned down to the last even­tu­al­ity. We know ex­act­ly how the guards and prison per­son­nel will re­act to your ev­ery move.” Glinn sud­den­ly smiled, his thin lips stretch­ing mirth­less­ly. “That, you see, is Herk­moor’s fa­tal weak­ness. That and those GPS bracelets, which show the po­si­tion of ev­ery in­mate in the en­tire prison at the touch of a key . . . a most fool­ish in­no­va­tion.”

“If I go in there and make a scene, won’t it put them on alert?”

“Not if you fol­low the script. There is some crit­ical in­for­ma­tion which on­ly you can get. And some prep work that on­ly you can do.”

“Prep work?”

“I’ll get to that short­ly.”

D’Agos­ta felt his frus­tra­tion rise. “Par­don my say­ing so, but all your plan­ning isn’t go­ing to mean jack once I’m in­side those walls. This is the re­al world, and peo­ple are un­pre­dictable. You can’t know what they’re go­ing to do.”

Glinn looked at him with­out mov­ing. “You’ll for­give me for con­tra­dict­ing you, Lieu­tenant, but hu­man be­ings are dis­gust­ing­ly pre­dictable. Es­pe­cial­ly in an en­vi­ron­ment like Herk­moor, where the rules of be­hav­ior are mapped out in ex­cru­ci­at­ing de­tail. The scheme may seem sim­ple, even inane, to you. But that’s its pow­er.”

“It’s just go­ing to get me in­to deep­er shit than I am al­ready.”

Af­ter drop­ping this ep­ithet, he glanced at Con­stance. But the young wom­an was star­ing in­to the fire with her strange eyes, not even seem­ing to have heard.

“We nev­er fail,” Glinn said, re­main­ing un­nerv­ing­ly calm and neu­tral. “That’s our guar­an­tee. All you need to do, Lieu­tenant, is fol­low in­struc­tions.”

“I’ll tell you what we re­al­ly need: a pair of eyes on the in­side. You can’t tell me none of those guards can be turned—black­mailed, what­ev­er. Christ, prison guards are one step away from be­ing crim­inals them­selves, at least in my ex­pe­ri­ence.”

“Not these guards. Any at­tempt to turn one would be fool­hardy.” Glinn wheeled him­self over to a desk. “If I told you we had some­body on the in­side, how­ev­er, would it re­as­sure you?”

“Hell, yes.”

“Would it se­cure your co­op­er­ation? Si­lence all these doubts?”

“If the source was re­li­able, yeah.”

“I be­lieve you will find our source to be above re­proach.” And with that, Glinn picked up a sin­gle piece of pa­per and hand­ed it to D’Agos­ta.

D’Agos­ta glanced over the sheet. It con­tained a long col­umn of num­bers, with two cor­re­spond­ing times linked to each num­ber.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“A sched­ule of guard pa­trols in the soli­tary unit dur­ing lock­down, from ten P.M. to six A.M. And this is just one of the many use­ful pieces of in­for­ma­tion that have come our way.”

D’Agos­ta stared in dis­be­lief. “How the hell did you get it?”

Glinn al­lowed him­self a smile—at least D’Agos­ta thought the faint thin­ning of the lips was a smile. “Our in­side source.”

“And who might that be, if you don’t mind my ask­ing?”

“You know him well.”

Now D’Agos­ta was even more sur­prised. “Not—?”

“Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.”

D’Agos­ta slumped in his chair. “How did he get this to you?”

This time a true smile broke over Glinn’s fea­tures. “Why, Lieu­tenant, don’t you re­mem­ber? You brought it out.”

“Me?”

Glinn reached be­hind the desk, pulled out a plas­tic box. Look­ing in­side, D’Agos­ta was sur­prised to see some of the trash he’d col­lect­ed in his re­con of the prison perime­ter—gum wrap­pers and scraps of linen—now care­ful­ly dried, pressed, and mount­ed be­tween sheets of archival plas­tic. When he looked close­ly at the linen scraps, he could just make out faint mark­ings.

“There’s an old drain in Pen­der­gast’s cell—as in most of the old­er cells at Herk­moor—which was nev­er hooked in­to the mod­ern sewage treat­ment sys­tem. It drains in­to a catch­ment basin out­side the prison walls, which in turn emp­ties in­to Herk­moor Creek. Pen­der­gast writes us a mes­sage on a scrap of trash, sticks it in­to the drain, and wash­es it down with wa­ter from the sink, which ends up in the creek. Sim­ple. We dis­cov­ered it be­cause the DEP had re­cent­ly cit­ed Herk­moor for the wa­ter-​qual­ity vi­ola­tion.”

“What about ink? Writ­ing equip­ment? Those are the first things they’d have tak­en away.”

“Frankly, I don’t know how he’s do­ing it.”

There was a short si­lence.

“But you knew he’d com­mu­ni­cate with us,” D’Agos­ta said at last in a qui­et voice.

“Nat­ural­ly.”

De­spite him­self, D’Agos­ta was im­pressed. “Now, if there was on­ly some way to get in­for­ma­tion to Pen­der­gast.”

Wry amuse­ment flick­ered briefly in Glinn’s eyes. “As soon as we knew what cell he was in, that was sim­plic­ity it­self.”

Be­fore D’Agos­ta could re­spond, a sud­den noise rose in the li­brary: a faint, ur­gent squeak­ing, com­ing from the di­rec­tion of Con­stance. D’Agos­ta looked over in time to see her pick­ing up a small white mouse from the car­pet, which had ap­par­ent­ly fall­en from her pock­et. She calmed it with soft words, pet­ting it soft­ly, be­fore re­turn­ing the mouse to its hid­ing place. Sens­ing the si­lence in the room and the eyes up­on her, she looked up, col­or­ing sud­den­ly.

“What a de­light­ful lit­tle pet,” Wren said af­ter a mo­ment. “I didn’t know you were fond of mice.”

Con­stance smiled ner­vous­ly.

“Wher­ev­er did you get it, my dear?” Wren went on, his voice high and tense.

“I . . . found it in the base­ment.”

“Re­al­ly?”

“Yes. Among the col­lec­tions. The place is over­run.”

“It seems aw­ful­ly tame. And one doesn’t usu­al­ly find white mice run­ning around loose.”

“Per­haps it was some­body’s pet that es­caped,” she said with some ir­ri­ta­tion, and rose. “I’m tired. I hope you’ll ex­cuse me. Good night.”

Af­ter she had left, there was a mo­ment of si­lence, and then Glinn spoke again, his voice low. “There was an­oth­er mes­sage from Pen­der­gast in those pa­pers—ur­gent—not re­lat­ing to the mat­ter at hand.”

“What was it about?”

“Her. He asked that you, Mr. Wren, keep a care­ful watch over her dur­ing the day­time—when you are not sleep­ing, of course. And that when you leave for your night­time job at the li­brary, you make sure the house is se­cure, and she in it.”

Wren seemed pleased. “Of course, of course! Glad to, very glad in­deed.”

Glinn’s eye turned to D’Agos­ta. “Even though you’re liv­ing in the house, he asked if you could make it a point to drop in and check on her from time to time dur­ing work­ing hours as well.”

“He seems wor­ried.”

“Very.” Glinn paused, then opened a draw­er and be­gan to re­move items and place them on the desk: a hip flask of whiskey, a com­put­er flash drive, a roll of duct tape, a rolled-​up sheet of mir­rored My­lar plas­tic, a cap­sule of brown liq­uid, a hy­po­der­mic nee­dle, a small pair of wire cut­ters, a pen, and a cred­it card.

“And now, Lieu­tenant, let us go over the prep work you will be ex­pect­ed to ac­com­plish once you are in­side Herk­moor . . .”

Lat­er on—once all the maps and box­es and charts had been packed away, and as D’Agos­ta was see­ing Glinn and Wren out at the man­sion’s front door—the old li­brar­ian lin­gered be­hind.

“Lis­ten a mo­ment, if you would,” he said, pluck­ing at D’Agos­ta’s sleeve.

“Sure,” D’Agos­ta said.

Wren leaned in close, as if to im­part a se­cret. “Lieu­tenant, you are not fa­mil­iar with the—the cir­cum­stances of Con­stance’s past ex­is­tence. Let me just say that they are . . . un­usu­al.”

D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed, sur­prised by the look of ag­ita­tion in the strange man’s eyes. “Okay,” he said.

“I know Con­stance well: I was the per­son who found her in this house, where she’d been hid­ing. She has al­ways been scrupu­lous­ly hon­est—some­times painful­ly so. But tonight, for the first time, she lied.”

“The white mouse?”

Wren nod­ded. “I have no idea what it means, ex­cept that I’m con­vinced she’s in some kind of trou­ble. Lieu­tenant, she’s an emo­tion­al house of cards, just wait­ing for a puff of wind. We both need to keep a close eye on her.”

“Thank you for the in­for­ma­tion, Mr. Wren. I’ll check in as fre­quent­ly as I can.”

Wren held his gaze for a mo­ment, star­ing at him with re­mark­able ur­gen­cy. Then he nod­ded, grasped D’Agos­ta’s hand briefly in his own bony claw, and van­ished in­to the chill dark­ness.

20

The pris­on­er known on­ly as A sat on the bunk in soli­tary 44, deep with­in the Fed­er­al High­Risk Vi­olent Of­fend­er Pre­tri­al De­ten­tion Fa­cil­ity—the Black Hole—of Herk­moor. It was a cell of monas­tic spare­ness, eight feet by ten, with fresh­ly white­washed walls, a ce­ment floor with a cen­tral drain, a toi­let in one cor­ner, a sink, a ra­di­ator, and a nar­row met­al bed. A flu­ores­cent bulb, re­cessed in­to the ceil­ing and pro­tect­ed by a wire cage, pro­vid­ed the cell’s sole light. There was no switch: the bulb went on at 6 A.M. and went off at 10 P.M. High up on the far wall was the room’s on­ly win­dow, deep and barred, two inch­es wide and fif­teen inch­es high.

The pris­on­er, dressed in a neat­ly pressed gray jump­suit, had been sit­ting on the mat­tress for many hours in ut­ter still­ness. His slen­der face was pale and with­out ex­pres­sion, the sil­very eyes half hood­ed, white-​blond hair combed back. Noth­ing moved, not even his eyes, as he lis­tened to the soft, rapid sounds fil­ter­ing from the cell next door: soli­tary 45.

They were the sounds of drum­ming: a tat­too of ex­traor­di­nary rhyth­mic com­plex­ity that rose and fell, sped up and slowed down, mov­ing from met­al bed rail to mat­tress to the walls, toi­let, sink, bars, and back again. At present, the pris­on­er was drum­ming on the iron bed­stead rail with an oc­ca­sion­al slap or turn played out on the mat­tress, while mak­ing rapid pop­ping and cluck­ing sounds with his lips and tongue. The end­less rhythms rose and fell like the wind, work­ing in­to a ma­chine gun-​like fren­zy and then dy­ing back in­to a lazy syn­co­pa­tion. At times, it al­most—but not quite—seemed to come to a stop: ex­cept that a sin­gle os­ti­na­to tap . . . tap . . . tap in­di­cat­ed that the beat went on.

An afi­ciona­do of rhythm might have rec­og­nized the ex­traor­di­nary di­ver­si­ty of rhyth­mi­cal pat­terns and styles com­ing from soli­tary 45: a kas­sagbe Con­go beat segue­ing in­to a down­tem­po funk-​out and then in­to a pop-​and-​lock, mov­ing se­quen­tial­ly through a shake­out, a worm­hole, a glam, then in­to a long pseu­do-​elec­tro­clash riff; then a quick eu­rostomp end­ing in a nasty, fol­lowed by a hip-​hop twist-​stick and a tom club. A mo­ment’s si­lence . . . and then a slow Chica­go blues fill be­gan, evolv­ing in­to in­nu­mer­able oth­er beats both named and name­less, twin­ing and in­ter­twin­ing in an eter­nal braid of sound.

The pris­on­er known as A, how­ev­er, was not an afi­ciona­do of rhythm. He was a man who knew many things—but drum­ming was not one of them.

And yet he lis­tened.

Fi­nal­ly, half an hour be­fore lights-​out, the pris­on­er known as A shift­ed on his cot. He turned to­ward the head­rail, gave it a cau­tious tap with his left in­dex fin­ger, then an­oth­er. He be­gan tap­ping out a sim­ple 4/4 beat. As the min­utes went on, he tried the beat on the mat­tress, then the wall and the sink—as if test­ing them for tim­bre, tone, and am­pli­tude—be­fore mov­ing back to the bed rail. As he con­tin­ued to beat out a 4/4 time with his left fin­ger, he be­gan beat­ing a sec­ond rhythm with his right. As he played this sim­ple rhyth­mic ac­com­pa­ni­ment, he lis­tened in­tent­ly to the out­pour­ing of vir­tu­os­ity next door.

Lights-​out ar­rived, and all went black. An hour went by, and an­oth­er. The pris­on­er’s ap­proach sub­tly changed. Care­ful­ly fol­low­ing the drum­mer’s lead, A picked up an un­usu­al syn­co­pa­tion here, a three-​against-​two beat there, adding them to his sim­ple reper­toire. He meshed his own drum­ming ev­er more close­ly in­to the web of sounds com­ing from next door, tak­ing cues from his neigh­bor, pick­ing up the tem­po or low­er­ing it ac­cord­ing to the drum­mer’s lead.

Mid­night, and the drum­mer in cell 45 con­tin­ued—and so did the pris­on­er named A. A found that drum­ming—which he had al­ways dis­missed as a crude, prim­itive ac­tiv­ity—was cu­ri­ous­ly pleas­ing to the mind. It opened a door from the tight, ug­ly re­al­ity of his cell in­to an ex­pan­sive, ab­stract space of math­emat­ical pre­ci­sion and com­plex­ity. He drummed on, still fol­low­ing the lead of the pris­on­er in 45, all the while in­creas­ing the com­plex­ity of his own rhyth­mi­cal pat­terns.

The night wore on. The few oth­er pris­on­ers in soli­tary—there were not many, and they were far down the hall—were long asleep. Yet still the pris­on­ers in 44 and 45 drummed on to­geth­er. As the pris­on­er named A ex­plored more deeply this strange new world of ex­ter­nal and in­ter­nal rhythm, he be­gan to un­der­stand some­thing about the man next door and his men­tal ill­ness—as had been his in­tent. It was not some­thing that could be put in­to words; it was not ac­ces­si­ble to lan­guage; it was not reach­able by psy­cho­log­ical the­oriz­ing, psy­chother­apy, or even med­ica­tion.

Yet nev­er­the­less—through care­ful em­ula­tion of the com­plex drum­ming—the pris­on­er in 44 be­gan to reach that place, to en­ter the drum­mer’s spe­cial world. On a ba­sic neu­ro­log­ical lev­el, he be­gan to un­der­stand the drum­mer: what mo­ti­vat­ed him, why he did what he did.

Slow­ly, care­ful­ly, A took a mea­sured for­ay in­to al­ter­ing the rhythm along cer­tain ex­per­imen­tal path­ways, to see if he could take the lead, in­duce the drum­mer to fol­low him for a mo­ment. When this ex­per­iment proved suc­cess­ful, he very sub­tly be­gan to al­ter the tem­po, morph the rhythm. There was noth­ing sud­den in his ap­proach: ev­ery new beat, ev­ery al­tered rhythm, was care­ful­ly con­trolled and cal­cu­lat­ed to lead to a de­sired re­sult.

Over the space of an­oth­er hour, the dy­nam­ic be­tween the two pris­on­ers be­gan to change. With­out re­al­iz­ing it, the drum­mer be­came no longer the lead­er, but the fol­low­er.

Pris­on­er A con­tin­ued to al­ter his own drum­ming, slow­ing it down and speed­ing it up by in­fi­nite de­grees, un­til he was cer­tain he was now set­ting the rhythm; that the Drum­mer in the cell next door was un­con­scious­ly fol­low­ing his tem­po and lead. With in­fi­nite care, he then be­gan to slow his own drum­ming: not in a steady way, but through speedups and slow­downs, through riffs and changeovers he had picked up from his neigh­bor, each time end­ing at a slight­ly slow­er tem­po—un­til he was beat­ing out a down-​tem­po as slow and sleepy as mo­lasses.

And then he stopped.

The man in soli­tary 45, af­ter a few ten­ta­tive, lost beats, halt­ed as well.

There was a long si­lence.

And then a breathy, hoarse voice came from cell 45. “Who . . . who are you?”

“I am Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast,” came the re­ply. “And I am pleased to make your ac­quain­tance.”

An hour lat­er, blessed si­lence reigned. Pen­der­gast lay on his bunk, eyes closed but still awake. At a cer­tain mo­ment, he opened his eyes and scru­ti­nized the faint­ly glow­ing di­al of his watch—the one item pris­on­ers were al­lowed, by law, to keep. Two min­utes to four in the morn­ing. He wait­ed, now with his eyes open, and at ex­act­ly four o’clock a bril­liant pin­point of green light ap­peared on the far wall, danc­ing and jit­ter­ing be­fore grad­ual­ly set­tling down. He rec­og­nized it as the out­put of a 532nm green DPSS laser—noth­ing more than the beam from an ex­pen­sive laser pen, aimed through his win­dow from some con­cealed spot far be­yond the prison walls.

When the light had stopped trem­bling, it be­gan blink­ing, re­peat­ing a short in­tro­duc­tion in a sim­ple mono­phon­ic ci­pher, com­pressed to keep trans­mis­sion short. The in­tro­duc­tion was re­peat­ed four times, to make sure Pen­der­gast rec­og­nized the code. Then, af­ter a pause, the ac­tu­al mes­sage be­gan.

TRANS­MIS­SION RE­CEIVED

STILL AN­ALYZ­ING OP­TI­MAL ROUTES FOR EGRESS

CHANGE OF VENUE MAY BE RE­QUIRED ON YOUR END

WILL AD­VISE AS­AP

QUES­TIONS FOL­LOW—COM­MU­NI­CATE VIA PRI­OR PRO­CE­DURE

DE­SCRIBE YARD PRIV­ILEGES AND SCHED­ULE

OB­TAIN MA­TE­RI­AL SAM­PLES OF GUARD UNI­FORM, SLACKS AND SHIRT

The re­quests and ques­tions went on, some strange, some straight­for­ward. Pen­der­gast made no move to take notes, com­mit­ting ev­ery­thing to mem­ory.

At the last ques­tion, how­ev­er, he start­ed slight­ly.

ARE YOU WILL­ING TO KILL?

With that, the laser light van­ished. Pen­der­gast rose to a sit­ting po­si­tion. Feel­ing un­der the mat­tress, he ex­tract­ed a hard, frayed piece of can­vas and a slice of lemon from a re­cent meal. Re­mov­ing one shoe, he car­ried it to the sink, ran the wa­ter, placed a few drops in­to the soap de­pres­sion, and dipped the shoe in­to it. Next, he squeezed the juice of the lemon slice in­to the wa­ter. With the piece of can­vas, he pro­ceed­ed to strip the shoe of some of its pol­ish. Soon, a small amount of dark liq­uid stood in the enam­el de­pres­sion. He paused a mo­ment in the gloom to make sure his move­ments were un­de­tect­ed. Then he un­made the cor­ner of his bed, tore a long strip of sheet from be­neath the tuck, laid it out on the rim of the sink. He re­moved one shoelace, dipped its pre­vi­ous­ly sharp­ened and split met­al edge in­to the liq­uid, and be­gan to write in a fa­nat­ical­ly small, neat hand, leav­ing a pale script on the strip of cot­ton.

By quar­ter to five, he had fin­ished an­swer­ing the ques­tions. He laid the sheet on the ra­di­ator un­til it was bak­ing hot, which dark­ened and fixed the writ­ing; then he be­gan to roll it up. But as he did so, he paused, and then added one more small line at the bot­tom: “Con­tin­ue to keep a close eye on Con­stance. And be of good cheer, my dear Vin­cent.”

He baked on this last part of the mes­sage, rolled it tight, and in­sert­ed it in­to the drain in his cell. Then he filled his slop buck­et at the sink and poured it down the drain, re­peat­ing the pro­cess a dozen times.

One hour to wake-​up. He lay down on the bed, fold­ed his hands across his chest, and went in­stant­ly to sleep.

21

Mary John­son swung open the over­size door to the Egyp­tian gallery and stepped in­side, feel­ing around on the cold mar­ble wall for the light switch­es. Al­though she knew the tech­ni­cians had been work­ing late hours on the tomb re­cent­ly, by six in the morn­ing they were al­ways gone. It was her job to un­lock the area for the sub­con­trac­tors, turn on the lights, and make sure all was well.

She found the bank of switch­es and brushed them on with a plump fore­fin­ger. Rows of old glass and bronze light fix­tures blazed, cast­ing a mel­low in­can­des­cent glow over the part­ly re­fur­bished hall. She paused for a mo­ment in the door­way, fists parked on bulging hips, look­ing around to make sure all was in or­der. Then she be­gan mov­ing down the hall, her gi­ant butt sway­ing as she hummed old dis­co tunes to her­self, twirling a ring of keys in her hand. The jan­gling keys, click­ing heels, and off-​key voice echoed through the large cham­ber, cre­at­ing a re­as­sur­ing co­coon of noise that had seen her through thir­ty years of night­time em­ploy­ment at the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry.

She reached the an­nex, smacked on the bank of lights there, then crossed the echo­ing space and swiped her card in the new se­cu­ri­ty doors lead­ing to the Tomb of Senef. The locks dis­en­gaged and the au­to­mat­ic doors opened with a hum­ming sound, re­veal­ing the tomb be­yond. She stopped, frown­ing. Nor­mal­ly, the tomb should be in black­ness. But de­spite the hour, it was bril­liant­ly lit.

Damn techies left the lights on.

She stood in the door­way, paus­ing. Then she tossed her head and sniffed dis­dain­ful­ly at her own un­cer­tain­ty. Some of the guards who’d had fam­ily work­ing here in the thir­ties had be­gun whis­per­ing about the tomb be­ing cursed; how it had been board­ed up for good rea­son; how it was a big mis­take re­open­ing it. But since when was an Egyp­tian tomb not cursed? And Mary John­son prid­ed her­self on her brisk, mat­ter-​of-​fact ap­proach to her job. Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. No bull­shit, no whin­ing, no ex­cus­es.

Curse, hell.

With a cluck, she de­scend­ed the broad stone stairs in­to the tomb, hum­ming and singing, her voice echo­ing about the close space.

Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive . . .

She walked across the well, her im­mense weight swing­ing the bridge, and passed in­to the cham­ber be­yond. Here, the com­put­er geeks had set up ta­bles of equip­ment, and John­son was care­ful not to trip on the ca­bles snaking across the floor. She glanced dis­ap­prov­ing­ly at the greasy piz­za box­es care­less­ly stacked on one ta­ble, at the Coke cans and can­dy bar wrap­pers ly­ing about. Main­te­nance wouldn’t be through un­til sev­en. Well, it wasn’t her prob­lem.

In her three decades at the mu­se­um, Mary John­son had seen it all. She’d seen them come and go, she’d been through the mu­se­um mur­ders and the sub­way mur­ders, the dis­ap­pear­ance of Dr. Frock, the killing of old Mr. Puck, and the at­tempt­ed mur­der of Mar­go Green. It was the biggest mu­se­um in the world and it had proved to be a chal­leng­ing place to work, in more ways than one. Still, the ben­efits were ex­cel­lent and the leave was de­cent. Not to men­tion the pres­tige.

She moved on, pass­ing in­to the Hall of the Char­iots, stop­ping for a cur­so­ry vi­su­al check, and then stuck her head in­to the buri­al cham­ber. All seemed in or­der. She was on the verge of turn­ing back when she caught the whiff of some­thing sour. Her nose wrin­kled in­stinc­tive­ly as she searched for its source. There, on one of the near­by pil­lars, was a splat­ter of some­thing wet and chunky.

She raised her ra­dio. “M. John­son call­ing Cen­tral. Do you read?”

“This is Cen­tral. Ten-​four, Mary.”

“We need a cleanup crew down here in the Tomb of Senef. Buri­al cham­ber.”

“What’s the prob­lem?”

“Vom­it.”

“Christ. Not the night guards again?”

“Who knows? Maybe the techies, hav­ing them­selves a big old time.”

“We’ll get main­te­nance on it.”

John­son snapped the ra­dio off and did a brisk turn around the perime­ter of the buri­al cham­ber. In her ex­pe­ri­ence, piles of vom­it sel­dom dropped alone: bet­ter to find out the rest of the bad news right away. De­spite her size, she was a very fast walk­er, and she had com­plet­ed more than half the cir­cuit when her left shoe skid­ded on the slick floor and her mo­men­tum car­ried her side­ways and down, land­ing her hard on the pol­ished stone.

“Crap!”

She sat there, shak­en but un­hurt. She’d slipped in a pud­dle of some­thing dark and cop­pery-​smelling, and she’d bro­ken the fall with both hands. When she held her hands up, she im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the sub­stance as blood.

“Lord almighty.”

She rose with care, looked around au­to­mat­ical­ly for some­thing to wipe her hands on, found noth­ing, and de­cid­ed to go ahead and wipe them on her pants, since they were al­ready ru­ined. She un­hooked her ra­dio.

“John­son call­ing Cen­tral, do you read?”

“Roger that.”

“Got a pool of blood here, too.”

“What’s that you say? Blood? How much?”

“Enough.”

A si­lence. From the large pool of blood she’d slipped in, a drib­bling trail of splat­ters led to­ward the huge, open gran­ite sar­coph­agus that stood in the cen­ter of the room. The flank of the sar­coph­agus, en­graved in hi­ero­glyph­ics, had a promi­nent smear of gore along its side, as if some­thing had been hoist­ed over and dropped in­side.

Sud­den­ly, the very last thing in the world John­son want­ed to do was look in­side that sar­coph­agus. But some­thing—per­haps her strong sense of du­ty—made her walk slow­ly for­ward. Her ra­dio, held un­heed­ed in one hand, squawked.

“Enough?” Cen­tral squawked again in a high voice. “What’s that sup­posed to mean, enough?”

She reached the lip of the sar­coph­agus and looked in­side. A body lay on its back. The body was hu­man—that much she knew—but be­yond that, she could tell noth­ing. The face was gashed and scored be­yond recog­ni­tion. The breast­bone was split and the ribs yanked open like a set of dou­ble doors. Where the lungs and oth­er or­gans should be was noth­ing but a red cav­ity. But what would re­al­ly stick with her, and haunt her night­mares for years to come, was the pair of elec­tric-​blue Bermu­da shorts the vic­tim wore.

“Mary?” came the squawk­ing ra­dio.

John­son swal­lowed, un­able to an­swer. Now she no­ticed a small­er trail of blood and gore, drib­bling its way in­to one of the small rooms that branched off from the buri­al cham­ber. The mouth of the room was dark and she couldn’t see in­side.

“Mary? Do you read?”

She slow­ly lift­ed the ra­dio to her lips, swal­lowed again, found her voice. “I read you.”

“What’s go­ing on?”

But Mary John­son was slow­ly back­ing away from the sar­coph­agus, eyes on the lit­tle dark door­way in the far cor­ner. No need to go in there. She’d seen enough. She con­tin­ued back­ing up, then care­ful­ly turned her bulk around. And then, as she ap­proached the ex­it to the buri­al cham­ber, some­thing seemed to go wrong with her legs.

“Mary! We’re send­ing se­cu­ri­ty down right away! Mary!”

John­son took an­oth­er step, wob­bled, then felt her­self sink to the ground, as if borne down by an ir­re­sistible force. She rolled in­to a sit­ting po­si­tion, then top­pled back­ward al­most in slow mo­tion, com­ing to rest against the door lin­tel.

That was how they found her, eight min­utes lat­er, wide awake and star­ing at the ceil­ing, tears rolling out of her eyes.

22

Cap­tain of Homi­cide Lau­ra Hay­ward ar­rived af­ter most of the crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tion work had al­ready been com­plet­ed. She pre­ferred it that way. She had come up through the homi­cide ranks and knew the scene-​of-​crime in­ves­ti­ga­tors didn’t need a cap­tain breath­ing down their necks to do good work.

At the en­trance to the Egyp­tian gallery, where the crime scene perime­ter had been erect­ed, she passed through a knot of po­lice and mu­se­um se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel, talk­ing in hushed, fu­ne­re­al voic­es. She spot­ted the mu­se­um’s se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor, Jack Manet­ti, and nod­ded at him to ac­com­pa­ny her. She stepped up to the tomb’s thresh­old, then paused, breath­ing in the close and dusty air, tak­ing stock.

“Who was here last night, Mr. Manet­ti?” she asked.

“I have a list of all au­tho­rized em­ploy­ees and sub­con­trac­tors. There are quite a few, but it seems all of them checked out of the mu­se­um through se­cu­ri­ty ex­cept two tech­ni­cians: the vic­tim, and the one who’s still miss­ing. Jay Lip­per.”

Hay­ward nod­ded and be­gan walk­ing through the tomb, mak­ing a men­tal note of the pro­gres­sion of the rooms, stairs, pas­sage­ways, build­ing a three-​di­men­sion­al im­age in her head. In a few min­utes, she ar­rived at a large, pil­lared room. She quick­ly took it all in: the ta­bles laden with com­put­er equip­ment, the piz­za box­es, the ca­bles and wires run­ning in all di­rec­tions. Ev­ery­thing was fes­tooned with ev­idence tags.

A sergeant came to greet her, a man old­er than her by a decade. She thought his name was Ed­die Vis­con­ti. He looked com­pe­tent, had a bright, clear eye, dressed neat­ly, def­er­en­tial but on­ly to a point. She knew it was tough for some of the rank and file to re­port to a wom­an younger than they were and twice as ed­ucat­ed. Vis­con­ti looked as if he could han­dle it.

“You’re the first re­spond­ing of­fi­cer, Sergeant?”

“Yes, ma’am. Me and my part­ner.”

“All right. Let’s have a quick sum­ma­ry.”

“Two com­put­er tech­ni­cians worked late: Jay Lip­per and Theodore De­Meo. They’d been work­ing late ev­ery night this week—lot of pres­sure to open the ex­hib­it by dead­line.”

She turned to Manet­ti. “And when’s that?”

“Eight days from to­day.”

“Pro­ceed.”

“De­Meo went out for piz­za at around two, leav­ing Lip­per be­hind. We checked with the pizze­ria—”

“Don’t tell me how you know what you know, Sergeant. Stick to the re­con­struc­tion, please.”

“Yes, Cap­tain. De­Meo re­turned with piz­za and drinks. We don’t know if Lip­per had al­ready left or if he was at­tacked in the in­ter­im, but we do know they didn’t have time to con­sume the food.”

Hay­ward nod­ded.

“De­Meo put down the piz­zas and drinks on that ta­ble and went in­to the buri­al cham­ber. It ap­pears the killer was al­ready there, and sur­prised him.” He walked to­ward the buri­al cham­ber, Hay­ward fol­low­ing.

“Weapon?” Hay­ward asked.

“Un­known at this point. What­ev­er it was, it wasn’t sharp. The cuts and lac­er­ations are very ragged.”

They en­tered the buri­al cham­ber. Hay­ward took in the ex­trav­agant pud­dle of blood, the smear on the stone cof­fin, the trail of gore in­to a side room, the bright yel­low tags ev­ery­where like fall­en au­tumn leaves. She glanced around, lo­cat­ing each fleck of blood in turn, not­ing the shape and size of the droplets.

“A splat­ter anal­ysis in­di­cates the killer came at the vic­tim from the left side with weapon raised, and brought it down in a way that par­tial­ly cut through the vic­tim’s neck and sev­ered the jugu­lar vein. The vic­tim fell but the perp con­tin­ued to slash and cut, far more than nec­es­sary to kill. There were more than a hun­dred cuts to the vic­tim’s neck, head, shoul­ders, ab­domen, legs, and but­tocks.”

“Any sign of a sex­ual mo­tive?”

“No se­men or oth­er bod­ily flu­ids. Sex or­gans un­touched, anal swab clean.”

“Keep go­ing.”

“It ap­pears the perp half chopped, half punched through the vic­tim’s breast­bone with the weapon. Then he pulled out some of the in­ter­nal or­gans and car­ried them in­to the Canopic Room and dumped them in­to a cou­ple of very large jars.”

“Did you say pulled out?”

“The vis­cera were torn away, not cut.”

Hay­ward walked over to the small side cham­ber and looked in. A tech­ni­cian was on his hands and knees, pho­tograph­ing spots on the floor with a macro lens. A row of wet-​ev­idence box­es stood against one wall, wait­ing to be car­ried away.

She looked around, try­ing to vi­su­al­ize the at­tack. She al­ready knew that they were deal­ing with a dis­or­ga­nized killer, a dis­turbed in­di­vid­ual, most like­ly a so­ciopath.

“Af­ter cut­ting out the or­gans,” Sergeant Vis­con­ti con­tin­ued, “the perp re­turned to the body, dragged it to the sar­coph­agus, and heaved it in­side. Then he left by the main tomb door.”

“He must’ve been cov­ered with blood.”

“Yes. And in fact, us­ing a blood­hound, we’ve fol­lowed the trail as far as the fifth floor.” Hay­ward looked up sharply. This was a de­tail she hadn’t heard be­fore. “Not out of the mu­se­um?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“We can’t be sure. But we found some­thing else on the fifth floor. A shoe be­long­ing to the miss­ing tech­ni­cian, Lip­per.”

“Is that so? You think the killer’s hold­ing him hostage?”

Vis­con­ti gri­maced. “Pos­si­ble.”

“Car­ry­ing his dead body?”

“Lip­per was a small guy, five sev­en, about 135. That’s al­so pos­si­ble.”

Hay­ward hes­itat­ed, won­der­ing briefly what or­deal Lip­per was go­ing through now—or per­haps had al­ready gone through. Then she turned to­ward Manet­ti.

“I want this mu­se­um sealed,” she said.

The se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor was sweat­ing. “It’s ten min­utes to open­ing. We’re talk­ing two mil­lion square feet of ex­hi­bi­tion space, two thou­sand staff—you can’t be se­ri­ous.”

Hay­ward spoke soft­ly. “If that’s a prob­lem, I can call Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er. He’ll call the may­or, and the de­ci­sion can come down through of­fi­cial chan­nels—along with the usu­al shit­storm.”

“That won’t be nec­es­sary, Cap­tain. I’ll or­der the mu­se­um sealed. Tem­porar­ily.”

She looked around. “Let’s or­der up a foren­sic psy­cho­log­ical pro­file.”

“Al­ready done,” said the sergeant.

Hay­ward gave him an ap­prais­ing glance. “We haven’t worked to­geth­er be­fore, have we?”

“No, ma’am.”

“It’s a plea­sure.”

“Thank you.”

She turned and walked briskly out of the room and the tomb, the oth­ers fol­low­ing. She crossed the length of the Egyp­tian gallery and ap­proached the knot of peo­ple on the far side of the crime scene tape, ges­tured to Sergeant Vis­con­ti. “Are those blood­hounds still on the premis­es?”

“Yes.”

“I want ev­ery­one here who’s avail­able, po­lice and guards alike, to par­tic­ipate in search­ing this mu­se­um from at­tic to base­ment. Pri­or­ity one: find Lip­per. As­sume he’s alive and a hostage. Pri­or­ity two: I want the killer. I want them both be­fore the end of the day. Clear?”

“Yes, Cap­tain.”

She paused, as if re­mem­ber­ing some­thing. “Who’s in charge of the tomb ex­hib­it?” “A cu­ra­tor named No­ra Kel­ly,” Manet­ti replied.

“Get her on the horn, please.”

Hay­ward’s at­ten­tion was drawn to a sud­den dis­tur­bance in the knot of guards and po­lice, a voice raised in an­guished plead­ing. A thin, slope-​shoul­dered man in a bus driv­er’s uni­form wrenched free of two po­lice­men and made a bee­line for Hay­ward, his face dis­tort­ed by grief.

“You!” he cried. “Help me! Find my son!”

“And you are?”

“Lar­ry Lip­per. I’m Lar­ry Lip­per. My son is Jay Lip­per. He’s miss­ing, and a killer’s on the loose, and I want you to find him!” The man burst in­to sobs. “Find him!”

The very in­ten­si­ty of his grief halt­ed the two po­lice­men pur­su­ing him.

Hay­ward took his hand. “That’s just what we’re go­ing to do, Mr. Lip­per.”

“Find him! Find him!”

Hay­ward looked around, spot­ted an of­fi­cer she rec­og­nized. “Sergeant Casimirovic?”

The wom­an stepped for­ward.

Hay­ward ges­tured with her chin at Lip­per’s fa­ther and mouthed, “Help me out here.”

The of­fi­cer stepped over and, putting her arm around Lar­ry Lip­per, eased him away from Hay­ward. “You come with me, sir, and we’ll find some­place qui­et to sit down and wait.” And Sergeant Casimirovic led him, cry­ing loud­ly but un­re­sist­ing, back through the crowd.

Manet­ti was at her side again, ra­dio in hand. “I’ve got Kel­ly.”

She took the ra­dio, nod­ding her thanks. “Dr. Kel­ly? Cap­tain Hay­ward, NYPD.”

“How can I help?” came the voice.

“The Canopic Room in the Tomb of Senef. What’s that for?”

“That’s where the pharaoh’s mum­mi­fied or­gans were stored.”

“Elab­orate, please.”

“Part of the mum­mi­fi­ca­tion pro­cess is the re­moval of the pharaoh’s in­ter­nal or­gans for sep­arate mum­mi­fi­ca­tion and stor­age in canopic jars.”

“The in­ter­nal or­gans, you say?”

“That’s right.”

“Thank you.” Hay­ward slow­ly passed the ra­dio back to Manet­ti, a thought­ful look on her face.

23

Wil­son Bulke peered down the cor­ri­dor that ran be­neath the roofline of build­ing 12. Dirty brown light strug­gled to pen­etrate the wire-​mesh glass sky­lights, which were coat­ed with at least a cen­tu­ry of New York City soot. Air ducts and pipes ran in thick bun­dles on ei­ther side, where the rooflines al­most touched the floor. Both sides of the long, low space were crammed with old col­lec­tions—jars of an­imals float­ing in preser­va­tive, un­tidy stacks of yel­low­ing jour­nals, plas­ter mod­els of an­imals—leav­ing a nar­row pas­sage down the cen­ter. It was a crazy, crooked space, with rooflines, pitch­es, and floor lev­els that changed half a dozen times just with­in eye­sight. It was like a fun house at the fair, on­ly there was noth­ing fun about it.

“My legs are killing me,” Bulke said. “Let’s take five.” He eased him­self down on an old wood­en crate, the ex­cess adi­pose tis­sue in his thighs stretch­ing the ma­te­ri­al with an au­di­ble creak.

His part­ner, Mor­ris, sat down light­ly be­side him.

“This is bull­shit,” said Bulke. “Day’s al­most over, and we’re still at it. There’s no­body up here.”

Mor­ris, who nev­er saw the point in dis­agree­ing with any­body, nod­ded.

“Lemme have an­oth­er shot of that Jim Beam.”

Mor­ris slipped the hip flask from his pock­et and passed it over. Bulke took a slug, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, passed it back. Mor­ris took a del­icate sip him­self and slid it back in.

“We shouldn’t be work­ing at all to­day,” said Bulke. “This is sup­posed to be our day off. We’re en­ti­tled to a lit­tle re­fresh­ment.”

“That’s the way I look at it, too,” said Mor­ris.

“You were smart to bring that along.”

“Nev­er go any­where with­out it.”

Bulke glanced at his watch. Four-​forty. The light fil­ter­ing in through the sky­lights was slow­ly dy­ing, the shad­ows deep­en­ing in the cor­ners. Night would be com­ing soon. And with this sec­tion of the at­tics un­der­go­ing re­pairs and cur­rent­ly with­out elec­tric­ity, that meant switch­ing to flash­lights, mak­ing their search all the more an­noy­ing.

Bulke felt the creep­ing warmth of the whiskey in his gut. He sighed heav­ily, leaned his el­bows on his knees, looked around. “Look at that shit, will you?” He ges­tured at a se­ries of low met­al shelves be­neath the eaves, filled with count­less glass jars con­tain­ing jel­ly­fish. “You think they ac­tu­al­ly study this crap?”

Mor­ris shrugged.

Bulke reached out, fished a jar off the shelf, took a clos­er look. A whitish blob float­ed in the am­ber liq­uid, amidst drift­ing ten­ta­cles. He gave the jar a quick shake; when the tur­bu­lence set­tled, the jel­ly­fish had been re­duced to swirling shreds.

“Broke in­to a mil­lion pieces.” He showed the jar to Mor­ris. “Hope it wasn’t im­por­tant.” He is­sued a guf­faw and, with a roll of his eyes, shoved the jar back on­to the shelf.

“In Chi­na, they eat ’em,” said Mor­ris. He was a third-​gen­er­ation mu­se­um guard and con­sid­ered he knew a great deal more about the mu­se­um than the oth­er guards.

“Eat what? Jel­ly­fish?”

Mor­ris nod­ded sage­ly.

“Frig­ging Chi­nese’ll eat any­thing.”

“They say they’re crunchy.” Mor­ris sniffed, wiped his nose.

“Gross.” Bulke looked around. “This is bull­shit,” he re­peat­ed. “There’s noth­ing up here.”

“The thing I don’t get,” Mor­ris said, “is why they’re re­open­ing that tomb, any­way. I told you how my grand­dad used to talk about some­thing that hap­pened in there back in the thir­ties.”

“Yeah, you’ve been telling ev­ery­body and his broth­er about that.”

“Some­thing re­al bad.”

“Tell me some oth­er time.” Bulke glanced at his watch again. If they re­al­ly thought there was some­thing up there, they would have sent cops—not two un­armed guards.

“You don’t think the killer dragged the body up here?” Mor­ris asked.

“No way. Why the hell would he do that?”

“But the dogs—”

“How could those blood­hounds smell any­thing up here? The place reeks. They lost the trail down on the fifth floor, any­way—not up here.”

“I sup­pose you’re right.”

“I am right. As far as I’m con­cerned, we’re done up here.” Bulke rose, slapped the dust off his butt.

“What about the rest of the at­tics?”

“We did ’em all, don’t you re­mem­ber?” Bulke winked.

“Right. Oh, right. Yeah.”

“There’s no ex­it up ahead, but there’s a stair­well back a ways. We’ll go down there.”

Bulke turned, be­gan shuf­fling in the di­rec­tion from which they’d come. The at­tic cor­ri­dor wan­dered up and down, so tight in places that he had to turn side­ways to get through. The mu­se­um con­sist­ed of dozens of sep­arate build­ings joined to­geth­er, and where they met the floor lev­els some­times dif­fered so great­ly they had to be linked by met­al stair­cas­es. They passed through a space filled with leer­ing wood­en idols, la­beled Noot­ka Grave­posts; an­oth­er space filled with plas­ter casts of arms and legs; then yet an­oth­er filled with casts of faces.

Bulke paused to catch his breath. A twi­light gloom had de­scend­ed. The face casts hung ev­ery­where on the walls, white faces with their eyes closed, each one with a name at­tached. They all seemed to be In­di­ans: An­te­lope Killer, Lit­tle Fin­ger Nail, Two Clouds, Frost on Grass . . .

“Think all these are death masks?” asked Mor­ris.

“Death masks? What do you mean, death masks?”

“You know. When you’re dead, they take a cast of your face.”

“I wouldn’t know. Say, how about an­oth­er shot of Mr. Beam?”

Mor­ris oblig­ing­ly re­moved the flask. Bulke took a swig, passed it back.

“What’s that?” Mor­ris asked, ges­tur­ing with the flask.

Bulke peered in the in­di­cat­ed di­rec­tion. A wal­let lay tossed in the cor­ner, spread open, cred­it cards spilling out. He went over, picked it up.

“Shit, there must be two hun­dred bucks in here. What do we do?”

“Check out who it be­longs to.”

“What does that mat­ter? Prob­ably one of the cu­ra­tors.” Bulke searched through, pulled out the driv­er’s li­cense.

“Jay Mark Lip­per,” he read, then looked at Mor­ris. “Oh, shit. That’s the miss­ing guy.”

Feel­ing a strange stick­iness, he looked down at his hand. It was smeared with blood.

Bulke dropped the wal­let with a jerk, then kicked it back in­to the cor­ner with his foot. He felt abrupt­ly nau­seous. “Man,” he said in a high, strained voice. “Oh, man . . .”

“You think the killer dropped it?” Mor­ris asked.

Bulke felt his heart thump­ing in his chest. He looked around at all the shad­owy spaces, the shelves cov­ered with the leer­ing faces of the dead.

“We got­ta call Manet­ti,” said Mor­ris.

“Gimme a mo­ment . . . Just gimme a mo­ment here.” Bulke tried to think through a fog of sur­prise and ris­ing fear. “Why didn’t we see this on the way in?”

“Maybe it wasn’t there.”

“So the killer’s up ahead.”

Mor­ris hes­itat­ed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Bulke felt blood pound­ing in his tem­ples. “If he’s in front of us, we’re trapped. There’s no oth­er way out.”

Mor­ris said noth­ing. His face looked yel­low in the dim light. He pulled out his ra­dio.

“Mor­ris call­ing Cen­tral, Mor­ris call­ing Cen­tral. Do you read?”

A steady hiss of stat­ic.

Bulke tried his ra­dio, but the re­sult was the same. “Je­sus, this frig­ging mu­se­um is full of dead spots. You’d think with all the mon­ey they’ve spent on se­cu­ri­ty, they’d put in a few more re­peaters.”

“Let’s start mov­ing. Maybe we’ll get re­cep­tion in an­oth­er room.” And Mor­ris start­ed for­ward.

“Not that way!” Bulke said. “He’s ahead of us, re­mem­ber?”

“We don’t know that. Maybe we missed the wal­let on the way in.”

Bulke looked down at his bloody hand, the nau­sea grow­ing in his gut.

“We can’t just stay here,” Mor­ris said.

Bulke nod­ded. “All right. But move slow­ly.”

It was now twi­light in the at­tics, and Bulke slipped his flash­light out of its hol­ster and flicked it on. They moved through the door­way to the next at­tic, Bulke flash­ing the light around. This space was crammed with elon­gat­ed heads carved from black vol­canic stone, packed so tight­ly that the two could just squeeze down the cen­ter.

“Try your ra­dio,” Bulke said in a low voice.

Again, noth­ing.

The at­tic cor­ri­dor took a nine­ty-​de­gree an­gle in­to a tight war­ren of cu­bi­cle-​like rooms: rust­ed met­al shelves stacked with card­board car­tons, each car­ton over­flow­ing with tiny glass box­es. Bulke shone his light over them. Each con­tained a huge black bee­tle.

As they reached the end of the third cu­bi­cle, a crash came from the dark­ness ahead of them, dy­ing away in a rat­tle of falling glass.

Bulke jumped. “Crap! What was that?”

“I don’t know,” said Mor­ris. His voice was trem­bling and strained.

“He’s ahead of us.”

As they wait­ed, an­oth­er crash came.

“Je­sus, sounds like some­one’s trash­ing the place.”

More shat­ter­ing glass, fol­lowed by a bes­tial, inar­tic­ulate scream.

Bulke backed up, grop­ing for his own ra­dio. “Bulke call­ing Cen­tral! Do you read?”

“This is Cen­tral Se­cu­ri­ty, ten-​four.”

Crash! An­oth­er gar­gled scream.

“Je­sus, we got a ma­ni­ac up here! We’re trapped!”

“Your lo­ca­tion, Bulke?” came the calm voice.

“The at­tics, build­ing 12! Sec­tion 5, maybe 6. Some­one’s up here, tear­ing up the place! We found the miss­ing vic­tim’s wal­let, too. Lip­per’s. What do we do?”

A hiss of stat­ic, the re­ply break­ing up.

“I can’t read you!”

“. . . re­treat . . . do not en­gage . . . back . . .”

“Re­treat where? We’re trapped, didn’t you hear me?”

“. . . do not ap­proach . . .”

An­oth­er deaf­en­ing crash, clos­er this time. The stench of al­co­hol and dead spec­imens waft­ed back through the dark­ness. Bulke backed up, scream­ing in­to the ra­dio. “Send up the cops! Get a SWAT team up here! We’re trapped!”

More stat­ic.

“Mor­ris, try yours!”

When Mor­ris didn’t an­swer, Bulke turned. The ra­dio lay on the floor, and Mor­ris was run­ning like hell down the crooked pas­sage­way, away from the noise, dis­ap­pear­ing in­to the gloom.

“Mor­ris! Wait!” Bulke tried to ship the ra­dio, dropped it in­stead, and heaved along af­ter Mor­ris, putting one huge slow thigh af­ter the oth­er, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to over­come the in­er­tia of his enor­mous body. He could hear the tear­ing, smash­ing, scream­ing thing com­ing up be­hind him, fast.

“Wait! Mor­ris!”

A shelf cov­ered with spec­imen jars went over with a mas­sive crash be­hind him, and there was the sud­den rip­ping stench of al­co­hol and rot­ting fish.

“No!”

Bulke lum­bered for­ward as awk­ward­ly as a wal­rus, groan­ing with both fear and ef­fort, his fleshy arms and chest jig­gling with each foot­fall.

An­oth­er scream, fer­al and chill­ing­ly in­hu­man, tore the dark­ness just be­hind him. He turned but could see noth­ing in the dark­ness ex­cept the flash of met­al, the dim blur of move­ment.

“Noooo!”

He tripped and fell, the flash­light hit­ting the floor and rolling away, the beam wob­bling crazi­ly off the rows of jars be­fore spot­light­ing a gape-​mouthed fish float­ing up­side down in a jar. He strug­gled, claw­ing the floor, try­ing to rise, but the scream­ing thing fell up­on him as swift­ly as a bat. He rolled, swat­ting fee­bly at it, hear­ing the tear­ing of cloth and then feel­ing the sud­den bit­ing sting of his flesh be­ing slashed.

“Noooooooo—!”

24

No­ra sat at a small baize-​cov­ered ta­ble in an open vault of the Se­cure Area, wait­ing. She was sur­prised at how easy it had been to gain ac­cess—Men­zies had been in­stru­men­tal in help­ing her with the pa­per­work. The fact was that very few cu­ra­tors, even the top ones, were al­lowed ac­cess with­out jump­ing through all sorts of bu­reau­crat­ic hoops. The Se­cure Area wasn’t just used for stor­ing the most valu­able and con­tro­ver­sial col­lec­tions—it was al­so where some of the mu­se­um’s most sen­si­tive pa­pers were kept. It was a mark of how im­por­tant the Tomb of Senef was to the mu­se­um that she had got­ten ac­cess so quick­ly—and af­ter five o’clock, at that, even while the mu­se­um was in a state of high alert.

The archivist ap­peared from the gloomy file room car­ry­ing a yel­low­ing fold­er, placed it in front of her. “Got it.”

“Great.”

“Sign here.”

“I’m ex­pect­ing my col­league, Dr. Wicher­ly,” she said, sign­ing the form and hand­ing it back to the archivist.

“I have the pa­per­work for him all ready to go.”

“Thank you.”

The wom­an nod­ded. “I’ll lock you in now.”

The archivist shut the vault door, leav­ing No­ra in si­lence. She stared at the slen­der file, feel­ing a prick­le of cu­rios­ity. It was marked sim­ply Tomb of Senef: cor­re­spon­dence, doc­uments, 1933-35.

She opened it. The first item was a type­writ­ten let­ter, on elab­orate sta­tionery with a gold and red em­boss­ing. It was writ­ten by the Bey of Bol­bas­sa, and it must have been the one de­scribed in the news­pa­per ar­ti­cles No­ra had seen, full of as­ser­tions that the tomb was cursed—an ob­vi­ous ploy to get the tomb back for Egypt.

She turned to the next doc­uments: lengthy po­lice re­ports from one De­tec­tive Sergeant Ger­ald O’Ban­nion, hand­writ­ten in the beau­ti­ful script once stan­dard in Amer­ica. She scanned the re­ports with in­ter­est, then re­viewed the mass of pa­pers be­yond: mem­os and let­ters to city of­fi­cials and the po­lice in what ap­peared to have been a suc­cess­ful ef­fort to squelch the re­al sto­ry de­scribed in the po­lice re­ports and keep it from the press. She paged through the doc­uments, fas­ci­nat­ed by the tale they told, fi­nal­ly un­der­stand­ing why the mu­se­um had been so anx­ious to shut down the tomb.

She jumped when a faint tone an­nounced that the vault door was open­ing. Turn­ing, she saw the sleek, dap­per form of Adri­an Wicher­ly, lean­ing against the met­al jamb, smil­ing.

“Hel­lo, No­ra.”

“Hi.”

He straight­ened up, giv­ing his suit a lit­tle tug, ad­just­ing his al­ready per­fect Wind­sor knot. “What’s a nice girl like you do­ing in a dusty old place like this?”

“Have you signed in?”

“Je su­is en rè­gle,” he said with a lit­tle laugh, com­ing for­ward and lean­ing over her shoul­der. She could smell ex­pen­sive af­ter­shave and mouth­washed breath. “What have we here?”

The archivist looked in. “Ready to be locked in?”

“Do. Lock us in.” And Wicher­ly winked at No­ra.

“Why don’t you take a seat, Adri­an?” she said cool­ly.

“Don’t mind if I do.” He pulled an old wood­en chair up to the ta­ble, dust­ed the seat with a swipe of a silk hand­ker­chief, and eased him­self down.

“Any skele­tons in the clos­et?” he asked No­ra, lean­ing in.

“Def­inite­ly.”

Wicher­ly was a bit too close and No­ra edged away as sub­tly as she could. Al­though Wicher­ly had ini­tial­ly come across as the acme of good breed­ing, late­ly his smarmy winks and fin­ger­tip ca­ress­es had led her to be­lieve he was op­er­at­ing more on the glan­du­lar lev­el than she had ini­tial­ly thought. Still, things had re­mained on a pro­fes­sion­al lev­el and she hoped they would con­tin­ue that way.

“Do tell,” Wicher­ly said.

“I’ve just skimmed the doc­uments, so I don’t have the full sto­ry, but here it is in brief. On the morn­ing of March 3, 1933, the guards ar­riv­ing to open the tomb re­al­ized it had been bro­ken in­to. A lot of ob­jects were van­dal­ized. The mum­my was miss­ing, lat­er found in an ad­ja­cent room, bad­ly mu­ti­lat­ed. When they looked in the sar­coph­agus, they found a dif­fer­ent body in it. A fresh­ly mur­dered body, as it hap­pened.”

“Amaz­ing! Just like that fel­low, what’s-​his-​name. De­Meo.”

“Sort of, ex­cept the re­sem­blance stops there. The body be­longed to Ju­lia Cavendish, a wealthy New York so­cialite. She just hap­pened to be the grand­daugh­ter of William C. Spragg.”

“Spragg?”

“He was the man who bought the tomb from the last Baron Rat­tray and had it shipped to the mu­se­um.”

“I see.”

“Cavendish was a pa­troness of the mu­se­um. She ap­pears to have had a rather no­to­ri­ous rep­uta­tion as—well, for want of a bet­ter term, a fe­male rake.”

“How so?”

“She went to bars and picked up young work­ing-​class men—long­shore­men, steve­dores, and the like.”

“And did what with them?” Wicher­ly asked with a leer.

“Use your imag­ina­tion, Adri­an,” she said dry­ly. “Any­way, her body had been mu­ti­lat­ed, but the pa­pers don’t of­fer de­tails.”

“Strong stuff for the thir­ties, I should say.”

“Yes. The fam­ily and the mu­se­um were des­per­ate to cov­er it up—for dif­fer­ent rea­sons, of course—and it seems they man­aged quite nice­ly.”

“I imag­ine the press was a bit more co­op­er­ative in those days. Not the muck­rak­ing chaps we have to­day.”

No­ra won­dered if Wicher­ly knew her hus­band was a re­porter. “Any­way, the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Cavendish’s mur­der was still on­go­ing when it hap­pened again. This time the mu­ti­lat­ed body be­longed to Mon­gomery Bolt, ap­par­ent­ly a col­lat­er­al de­scen­dant of John Ja­cob As­tor, a re­mit­tance man and a sort of black sheep in the fam­ily. The tomb was now be­ing guard­ed at night, but the mur­der­er sapped the guard be­fore dump­ing Bolt’s body in the sar­coph­agus. A note was found on the body. There’s a copy of it in this file.”

She pulled out a yel­lowed sheet. On it was an Eye of Ho­rus and sev­er­al oth­er hi­ero­glyphs. Wicher­ly looked at it in be­muse­ment.

“‘The Curse of Am­mut Strikes All Who En­ter,’” he in­toned. “Who­ev­er wrote this was ig­no­rant. The chap bare­ly knew his hi­ero­glyphs. They aren’t even drawn prop­er­ly. A crude fake.”

“Yes. They re­al­ized that right away.” She turned over some more pa­pers. “Here’s the po­lice re­port on that crime.”

“The plot thick­ens.” Wicher­ly winked, edged his seat clos­er.

“The po­lice took no­tice of the link to John Ja­cob As­tor. He’d helped fi­nance the in­stal­la­tion of the Tomb of Senef. The po­lice be­gan to won­der if some­one wasn’t tak­ing re­venge on those re­spon­si­ble for bring­ing the tomb to the mu­se­um. Nat­ural­ly, their sus­pi­cions fell on the Bey of Bol­bas­sa.”

“The fel­low who claimed the tomb was cursed.”

“Right. He’d got­ten the news­pa­pers all stirred up against the mu­se­um. Turns out he wasn’t even a re­al bey—what­ev­er that is. There’s a re­port here on his back­ground.”

Wicher­ly picked it up, sniffed. “For­mer car­pet mer­chant, made a lot of mon­ey.”

“Again, the mu­se­um, along with the As­tor fam­ily, was able to suc­cess­ful­ly quash any pub­lic­ity—ex­cept it was im­pos­si­ble to stop the ru­mors cir­cu­lat­ing in­side the mu­se­um it­self. In time, the au­thor­ities es­tab­lished that the Bey of Bol­bas­sa had re­turned to Egypt just be­fore the killings, but they sus­pect­ed he had hired op­er­atives in New York. If he did, though, they were too clever to get caught. And when the third killing oc­curred—”

“An­oth­er?”

“This time it was an el­der­ly la­dy who lived in the neigh­bor­hood. It took them a while to fig­ure out the con­nec­tion—turns out she was dis­tant­ly de­scend­ed from Ca­hors, the man who orig­inal­ly found the tomb. By now, the mu­se­um was boil­ing with ru­mors, and they were spread­ing to the gen­er­al pop­ulace. Ev­ery crank spir­itu­al­ist, medi­um, and tarot-​card read­er was con­verg­ing on the mu­se­um, and New York­ers were on­ly too ea­ger to be­lieve the tomb was re­al­ly cursed.”

“Cred­ulous fools.”

“Per­haps. In any case, it just about emp­tied the mu­se­um. The po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion wasn’t go­ing any­where, and so the mu­se­um de­cid­ed to take pre­emp­tive ac­tion. Us­ing the pre­text of the con­struc­tion of the 81st Street sta­tion pedes­tri­an tun­nel, they closed the tomb and sealed it up. The killings stopped, the ru­mors grad­ual­ly died down, and the Tomb of Senef was most­ly for­got­ten.”

“And the mur­der cas­es?”

“Nev­er solved. Al­though they were con­vinced the bey was be­hind them, they couldn’t get proof.”

Wicher­ly rose from his chair. “That’s quite a sto­ry, No­ra.”

“It cer­tain­ly is.”

“What are you go­ing to do with it?”

“On the one hand, it might make an in­ter­est­ing side­bar to the his­to­ry of the tomb. But I have a sense the mu­se­um wouldn’t be too keen on pub­li­ciz­ing it, and I’m not sure I’d like to, ei­ther. I’d rather fo­cus on the ar­chae­ol­ogy, on teach­ing peo­ple about an­cient Egypt.”

“I agree with you, No­ra.”

“There’s an­oth­er rea­son, maybe even more im­por­tant. This new mur­der in the mu­se­um—it has some re­sem­blances to the old ones. Peo­ple will talk, ru­mors will start.”

“Ru­mors have al­ready start­ed.”

“Well, yes. I’ve been hear­ing quite a few my­self. At any rate, we don’t want any­thing de­rail­ing this open­ing.”

“Very true.”

“Good. I’ll write Men­zies a re­port, with our rec­om­men­da­tion that none of this is rel­evant and that it shouldn’t be pub­li­cized.” She closed the fold­er. “That set­tles it, then.”

There was a si­lence. Wicher­ly had risen from his seat and was once again stand­ing be­hind her, glanc­ing down at the scat­tered pa­pers of the file. He reached over and picked one up, pe­rused it, put it back down. She felt his hand on her shoul­der and stiff­ened. A mo­ment lat­er, she felt his lips on the nape of her neck, bare­ly touch­ing her skin, ca­ress­ing her as light­ly as a but­ter­fly.

She rose abrupt­ly and turned. He stood close to her, blue eyes flash­ing. “I’m sor­ry if I star­tled you.” He smiled, dis­play­ing his porce­lain rack. “I couldn’t help my­self. I find you dev­as­tat­ing­ly at­trac­tive, No­ra.”

He con­tin­ued smil­ing at her, ra­di­at­ing self-​con­fi­dence and charm, el­egant and more hand­some than any man de­served to be.

“In case you hadn’t no­ticed, I’m mar­ried,” she said.

“We’ll have a grand time and no­body need ev­er know.”

“I will know.”

He smiled, put a ca­ress­ing hand on her shoul­der. “I want to make love to you, No­ra.”

She took a deep breath. “Adri­an, you’re a charm­ing and in­tel­li­gent man. I’m sure that many wom­en would like to make love to you, too.”

She could see his smile broad­en­ing.

“But I’m not one of them.”

“But, my love­ly No­ra—”

“Wasn’t that plain enough for you? I haven’t the slight­est in­ter­est in mak­ing love to you, Adri­an—even if I weren’t mar­ried.”

Wicher­ly stood there, dumb­found­ed, his face strug­gling to com­pre­hend the sud­den re­ver­sal of his ex­pec­ta­tions.

“I don’t mean to be in­sult­ing, just un­am­bigu­ous, since my ear­li­er ef­forts to tele­graph my lack of in­ter­est don’t seem to have pen­etrat­ed. Please don’t make me be any more hurt­ful than nec­es­sary.”

She saw the blood drain from his face. His easy self-​pos­ses­sion van­ished for a mo­ment, ex­pos­ing what No­ra had be­gun to sus­pect: a spoiled child blessed with good looks and bril­liance, who had de­vel­oped the firm be­lief that what­ev­er he want­ed, he should get.

He be­gan to stam­mer some­thing that might have been in­tend­ed as an apol­ogy, and No­ra let her voice soft­en. “Look, Adri­an, let’s just for­get it, okay? This nev­er hap­pened. We’ll nev­er men­tion it again.”

“Quite right, yes. Very de­cent of you, thank you, No­ra.”

His face was now flam­ing with em­bar­rass­ment, and he looked crushed. She couldn’t help but feel sor­ry for him. She won­dered if she was per­haps the first wom­an ev­er to turn him down.

“I’ve got a re­port to write for Men­zies,” she said as gen­tly and light­ly as pos­si­ble. “And I be­lieve you need a bit of fresh air. Why not take a brisk turn around the mu­se­um?” “Yes, good sug­ges­tion, thank you.”

“I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Yes.”

And, mov­ing as stiffly as a ma­chine, Wicher­ly went to the in­ter­com and pressed the but­ton to be re­leased. When the vault door opened, he van­ished with­out an­oth­er word, and No­ra was once again left in peace to take notes and make her re­port.

25

D’Agos­ta turned the wheel of the meat van and slowed, guid­ing it out of the woods. Herk­moor rose ahead of him, a bril­liant clus­ter of sodi­um lights bathing the maze of walls, tow­ers, and cell­blocks in an un­re­al topaz light. As he ap­proached the first set of gates, he con­tin­ued to slow, pass­ing a clus­ter of warn­ing signs telling drivers to have their pa­per­work in or­der and to ex­pect a search, fol­lowed by a list of for­bid­den items so long it took two bill­boards to name them all: ev­ery­thing from fire­works to hero­in.

D’Agos­ta took a deep breath, tried to calm his un­set­tled nerves. He’d been in pris­ons be­fore, of course, but al­ways on of­fi­cial busi­ness. Driv­ing in like this, bent on some ex­treme­ly un­of­fi­cial busi­ness, was ask­ing for trou­ble. Re­al trou­ble.

He stopped at the first chain-​link gate. A guard came out of a pill­box and saun­tered over, car­ry­ing a clip­board.

“You’re ear­ly tonight,” he said.

D’Agos­ta shrugged. “It’s my first time up here. Left ear­ly, in case I got lost.”

The guard grunt­ed, shoved the clip­board in the win­dow. D’Agos­ta at­tached his pa­per­work and hand­ed it back. The guard flipped through it with the tip of a pen­cil, nod­ding.

“Know the drill?”

“Not re­al­ly,” D’Agos­ta an­swered truth­ful­ly.

“You’ll get this back on your way out. Show your ID at the next check­point.”

“Gotcha.”

The chain-​link gate with­drew on wheels, mak­ing a rat­tling noise.

D’Agos­ta eased for­ward, feel­ing his heart ham­mer­ing in his chest. Glinn claimed to have planned ev­ery­thing down to the last io­ta—and had, with re­mark­able ease, se­cured his em­ploy­ment un­der an as­sumed name with the meat­pack­ing com­pa­ny and ar­ranged for him to get this route. But the fact was, you could nev­er pre­dict what peo­ple might do. That was where he and Glinn part­ed opin­ion. This lit­tle ad­ven­ture could turn to shit in a heart­beat.

He drove the truck up to the sec­ond gate and, once again, a guard came out.

“ID?”

D’Agos­ta hand­ed him the false driv­er’s li­cense and per­mit. The man looked them over. “New man?”

“Yeah.”

“You fa­mil­iar with the lay­out?”

“It wouldn’t hurt to hear it again.”

“Go straight through, then bear to the right. When you see the load­ing dock, back up to the first bay.”

“Got it.”

“You can ex­it the ve­hi­cle to su­per­vise the un­load­ing. You may not han­dle any of the mer­chan­dise or as­sist prison per­son­nel. Stay with the ve­hi­cle at all times. As soon as you’re un­load­ed, you leave. Un­der­stood?”

“Sure.”

The guard spoke briefly in­to a ra­dio and the fi­nal chain-​link gate rolled up.

As D’Agos­ta eased the van through and made the right turn, he slipped his hand in­to his jack­et pock­et and re­moved a pint of Rebel Yell bour­bon. He un­screwed the cap and took a slug, swish­ing it care­ful­ly around in his mouth be­fore swal­low­ing. He could feel the fiery bo­lus burn down his gul­let in­to his stom­ach. He shook a few drops on his coat for good mea­sure and slipped the bot­tle back in­to his jack­et pock­et.

In a mo­ment, he had backed up to the load­ing dock. Two men in cov­er­alls were al­ready wait­ing, and as soon as he un­locked the back, they be­gan off-​load­ing the box­es and sides of frozen meat.

D’Agos­ta watched, hands in his pock­ets, whistling tune­less­ly. He glanced sur­rep­ti­tious­ly at his watch, then turned to a work­er. “Say, you got a re­stroom around here?”

“Sor­ry. Not al­lowed.”

“But I’ve got­ta go.”

“It’s against the rules.” The work­er heft­ed two box­es of meats to his shoul­ders and dis­ap­peared in­to the back.

D’Agos­ta but­ton­holed the next man. “Look, I’ve re­al­ly got­ta go.”

“You heard him. It’s against the rules.”

“Man, please don’t tell me that.”

The man put down his box and stared at D’Agos­ta with a long, tired look. “When you get out of here, you can piss in the woods. Okay?” He lift­ed the box.

“It ain’t piss­ing I got to do.”

“That’s not my prob­lem.” He hoist­ed up the box and car­ried it off.

As the first man ap­proached again, D’Agos­ta stepped in front of him, block­ing his ac­cess and breath­ing heav­ily in­to the man’s face. “This is no joke. I need to pinch one off, and I mean now.”

The man wrin­kled up his nose and stepped back. He glanced at his fel­low work­er. “He’s been drink­ing.”

“What’s that?” D’Agos­ta said bel­liger­ent­ly. “What did you say?”

The man re­turned the look cool­ly. “I said, you’ve been drink­ing.”

“Bull­shit.”

“I can smell it.” He turned to his co-​work­er. “Get the su­per.”

“What the hell for? You gonna give me a Breath­alyz­er?”

The oth­er work­er dis­ap­peared and a mo­ment lat­er he came back with a tall, grim-​look­ing man in­con­gru­ous­ly dressed in a black blaz­er, with a bel­ly that hung over his belt like a sack of grain.

“What seems to be the prob­lem?” the su­per­vi­sor asked.

“I think he’s been drink­ing, sir,” said the first work­er.

The man hooked up his belt and stepped to­ward D’Agos­ta. “That right?”

“No, it isn’t right!” D’Agos­ta said, get­ting in his face and breath­ing hard with in­dig­na­tion.

The man backed off, un­shipped his ra­dio.

“Look, I’m leav­ing,” D’Agos­ta said, try­ing to make him­self sound sud­den­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ing. “I’ve got a long drive to get back to the ware­house. This place is in the mid­dle of frig­ging nowhere and it’s six o’clock at night.”

“You’re not go­ing any­where, pal.” The su­per­vi­sor spoke briefly in­to the ra­dio, then turned to one of the work­ers. “Take him in­to staff din­ing and have him wait there.”

“Come this way, sir.”

“This is bull­shit. I’m not go­ing any­where.”

“Come this way, sir.”

Grudg­ing­ly, D’Agos­ta fol­lowed the guard through the load­ing dock and in­to a large pantry, emp­ty, dark, and smelling strong­ly of Clorox. They passed through a door in the far wall in­to a small­er room where, it seemed, the kitchen staff took their own meals when they were not on shift.

“Have a seat.”

D’Agos­ta sat down at one of the stain­less-​steel ta­bles. The man took a seat at the next ta­ble, fold­ed his arms, looked away. A few min­utes passed and the su­per­vi­sor re­turned, an armed guard at his side.

“Stand up,” the su­per said.

D’Agos­ta com­plied.

The su­per turned to­ward the guard. “Search him.”

“You can’t do that! I know my rights, and—”

“And this is a fed­er­al prison. It’s all spelled out on the signs in front, if you both­ered to read them. We have the right to search any­one at will.”

“Don’t you frig­ging touch me.”

“Sir, at the mo­ment, you’ve got a medi­um-​sized prob­lem. If you don’t co­op­er­ate, you’re go­ing to have a big prob­lem.”

“Yeah? What kind of a prob­lem?”

“How does re­sist­ing a fed­er­al law en­force­ment of­fi­cer sound? Now, last time: raise your arms.”

Af­ter a mo­ment’s hes­ita­tion, D’Agos­ta did as he was or­dered. A pat-​down quick­ly brought to light the pint bot­tle of Rebel Yell.

The guard pulled out the bot­tle, shak­ing his head sad­ly. He turned to the su­per­vi­sor. “What now?” he asked.

“Call the lo­cal po­lice de­part­ment. Have them pick him up. A drunk driv­er is their prob­lem, not ours.”

“But I just took one sip!”

The su­per­vi­sor turned back. “Sit down and shut up.”

D’Agos­ta sat down again a lit­tle un­steadi­ly, mut­ter­ing to him­self.

“And the truck?” the guard asked.

“Call his com­pa­ny. Have them send some­one to pick it up.”

“It’s af­ter six, there won’t be any man­age­ment there, and—”

“Call them in the morn­ing, then. The truck isn’t go­ing any­where.”

“Yes, sir.”

The su­per­vi­sor glanced at the guard. “Stay here with him un­til the po­lice ar­rive.”

“Yes, sir.”

The su­per­vi­sor left. The guard sat down at the far­thest ta­ble, eye­ing D’Agos­ta bale­ful­ly.

“I got­ta go to the head,” said D’Agos­ta.

The guard sighed heav­ily but said noth­ing.

“Well?”

The guard rose, scowl­ing. “I’ll take you.”

“You gonna hold my hand while I take a dump, or can I do it by my­self?”

The scowl deep­ened. “It’s just down the hall, sec­ond door on the right. Hur­ry it up.”

D’Agos­ta rose with a flab­by sigh and walked slow­ly to the lunch­room door, opened it, and stag­gered through, hold­ing on to the door­knob for sup­port. As soon as the door closed, he turned left and ran silent­ly down a long, emp­ty cor­ri­dor past a se­ries of for­ti­fied lunch-​rooms, barred doors all stand­ing open. He ducked in­to the last one and yanked off the white driv­er’s uni­form, re­veal­ing a light tan shirt, which, with the dark brown pants he was wear­ing, gave him an un­can­ny re­sem­blance to a typ­ical Herk­moor guard. He stuffed the old shirt in­to a trash can at the door. Con­tin­uing down the hall, he passed a lit sta­tion. He nod­ded to the two of­fi­cers as he walked by.

Be­yond the sta­tion, he slipped a spe­cial­ly mod­ified pen from his pock­et, pulled off the cap, and be­gan walk­ing down the cor­ri­dor, hold­ing it in his hand, video­tap­ing. He walked eas­ily, non­cha­lant­ly, like a guard on his rounds, mov­ing the pen this way and that, giv­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to the place­ment of the se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras and oth­er high-​tech sens­ing de­vices.

At last he ducked in­to a men’s room, head­ed to the sec­ond-​to-​last stall, and closed the door. Dig­ging in­to the crotch of his pants, he pulled out a small, sealed plas­tic bag and a small roll of duct tape. He stood on the toi­let, lift­ed a ceil­ing tile, and used the duct tape to af­fix the bag to the up­per side of the tile. Then he low­ered the tile back in place. Score one to Eli Glinn. The man had in­sist­ed the pat-​down would stop as soon as the bot­tle of booze was dis­cov­ered—and he had been right.

Ex­it­ing the bath­room, D’Agos­ta con­tin­ued down the hall. Mo­ments lat­er, he heard an alarm go off—not a loud one, just a high-​pitched beep­ing. He walked to the end of the emp­ty cor­ri­dor, where he was con­front­ed by a set of dou­ble doors with a mag­net­ic se­cu­ri­ty lock. Here, he re­moved his wal­let, took out a cer­tain cred­it card, and swiped it through the door.

A light turned green and he heard the whir and click of the lock dis­en­gag­ing.

Score an­oth­er to Glinn. He quick­ly ducked through.

He was now in a small ex­er­cise yard, emp­ty at this late hour, with high cin­der-​block walls on three sides and a chain-​link fence on the oth­er. He looked around, ver­ify­ing that there was no se­cu­ri­ty cam­era watch­ing him: as Glinn had point­ed out, even a prison as high-​tech as Herk­moor had to lim­it its cam­eras to the most vi­tal ar­eas.

D’Agos­ta strolled around the yard quick­ly, video­tap­ing all the while. Then, re­turn­ing the pen to his pock­et, he stepped to­ward one wall, loos­ened his belt and un­zipped his pants, and re­moved a rolled sheet of My­lar, which had been strapped to the in­side of his leg. He glanced over his shoul­der, then stuffed the My­lar tube in­to a drain­pipe in the cor­ner of the yard, hook­ing it in place with a bent bob­by pin.

This ac­com­plished, he moved to the chain-​link fence, put a hand on it, pulled at it gin­ger­ly. This was the part he re­al­ly, re­al­ly wasn’t look­ing for­ward to.

Pulling a small pair of wire cut­ters from his socks, he snipped a three-​foot ver­ti­cal row of the chain links, di­rect­ly be­hind one of the met­al fence posts. He made sure the cut ends re­joined, the fence look­ing ful­ly in­tact, and then he lobbed the wire cut­ters on­to the near­est roof, where it would be a long time be­fore they were found. He walked along the fence for half a dozen yards, tak­ing a steady­ing breath, then an­oth­er. Look­ing through the chain link, he could see the vague forms of the guard tow­ers in the dark­ness be­yond. He swal­lowed, rubbed his hands to­geth­er. And then he hoist­ed him­self up the chain link and be­gan to climb.

Halfway up, he saw a col­ored wire strip wo­ven through the chain link. As he passed it, a shrill alarm went off in the yard. Half a dozen sodi­um va­por lights snapped on around him. There was an im­me­di­ate re­sponse from the guard tow­ers along the perime­ter: lights swiveled around, and in a mo­ment they lo­cat­ed him on the fence. He con­tin­ued to climb to the top, and then, steady­ing him­self, and con­ceal­ing the move­ment with his arm, he pulled the pen from his pock­et, aimed it through the link, and be­gan video­tap­ing the no-​man’s-​land be­yond and be­low him, now stark­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ed by the lights fo­cused on him.

“You are un­der surveil­lance!” came a bull­horned voice from the near­est tow­er. “Stop im­me­di­ate­ly!”

From over his shoul­der, D’Agos­ta saw six guards burst in­to the yard and run like hell to­ward him. He re­placed the pen in his pock­et and glanced along the top edge of the fence. Two wires ran through the chain link here, one white, the oth­er red. He grasped the red one, yanked as hard as he could.

An­oth­er alarm went off.

“Halt!”

The guards had reached the bot­tom of the fence and were climb­ing up af­ter him. He felt first one, then two, then half a dozen hands grasp­ing at his feet and legs. Af­ter a brief show of strug­gle, he let him­self be dragged back down in­to the yard.

Guns drawn, they sur­round­ed him in a cir­cle. “Who the hell is this?” one barked. “Who are you?”

D’Agos­ta sat up. “I’m the truck driv­er,” he said, slur­ring his words.

“The what?” an­oth­er guard said.

“I just heard about this one. He did the meat de­liv­ery, got pulled off be­cause he was drunk.”

D’Agos­ta groaned and cra­dled his arm. “You hurt me.”

“Je­sus, you’re right. He’s drunk as a lord.”

“I just took one sip.”

“On your feet.”

D’Agos­ta tried to rise, stag­gered. One of them caught his fore­arm and helped him up. There was a snick­er. “He thought he was go­ing to es­cape.”

“Come on, pal.”

The guards es­cort­ed him back to the kitchen, where his guard was stand­ing, red-​faced, along with the su­per­vi­sor.

The su­per round­ed on him. “What the hell do you think you’re do­ing?”

D’Agos­ta slurred his words. “Got lost on the way to the john. De­cid­ed to blow the joint.” He gave a drunk­en laugh.

More snick­ers.

The su­per­vi­sor was not amused. “How did you get out in­to the yard?”

“What yard?”

“Out­side.”

“I dun­no. Door was un­locked, I guess.”

“That’s im­pos­si­ble.”

D’Agos­ta shrugged, slumped down in the chair, and prompt­ly nod­ded off.

“Go check the yard 4 ac­cess,” the su­per­vi­sor snapped at one of the guards. Then he turned back to the first guard. “You stay here with him. Do you un­der­stand? Don’t let him go any­where. Let him shit his pants if nec­es­sary.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank Christ he didn’t make it over the fence and in­to no-​man’s-​land. Do you know what a pa­per­work headache that would have caused?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sor­ry, sir.”

D’Agos­ta no­ticed, to his great re­lief, that in the con­fu­sion and com­mo­tion, no­body no­ticed his shirt was a dif­fer­ent col­or than be­fore. Score three to Glinn.

At that mo­ment, two lo­cal cops came in, look­ing be­wil­dered. “This the guy?”

“Yeah.” The guard prod­ded D’Agos­ta with his ri­ot stick. “Wake up, ass­hole.”

D’Agos­ta roused him­self, stood up.

The po­lice­men seemed at a loss. “So what do we do? We got­ta sign some­thing?”

The su­per­vi­sor wiped his brow. “What do you do? Lock him up for drunk driv­ing.”

One of the po­lice­men re­moved a note­book. “Break any laws on the premis­es? You fil­ing any charges?”

A short si­lence fol­lowed, the guards glanc­ing at each oth­er.

“No,” said the su­per­vi­sor. “Just get him the hell out of here. Af­ter that, he’s your headache. I don’t want to see him around here, ev­er again.”

He shut the note­book. “All right, we’ll take him down­town, give him a Breath­alyz­er. Come on, pal.”

“I’ll pass! I on­ly took one sip!”

“If that’s the case, you don’t have much to wor­ry about, now, do you?” said the cop weari­ly as he led D’Agos­ta out the door.

26

Cap­tain of Homi­cide Lau­ra Hay­ward ar­rived on the scene a minute or two af­ter the paramedics. She could hear the shrieks of the vic­tim ring­ing down through the at­tic rooms, and they warmed her heart: no­body who was go­ing to be dead any time soon could squall that lusti­ly.

She ducked through a se­ries of low doors un­til she ar­rived at the crime scene tape. With re­lief, she saw it was Sergeant Vis­con­ti and his part­ner, an of­fi­cer named Mar­tin.

“Brief me,” she said as she ap­proached.

“We were the clos­est team to the at­tack,” Vis­con­ti replied. “We scared off the perp. He was bent over the vic­tim, work­ing him over. When he saw us ap­proach­ing, he fled back in­to the at­tics.”

“Get a look at him?”

“Just a shad­ow.”

“Weapon?”

“Un­known.”

She nod­ded.

“We al­so found Lip­per’s wal­let.” Vis­con­ti ges­tured with his chin to­ward a plas­tic ev­idence box, lined up with sev­er­al oth­ers just out­side the tape.

Hay­ward leaned over, opened the box. “I want a full bat­tery on the wal­let and ev­ery­thing in­side—DNA, la­tents, trace fibers, the works. And freeze a dozen swabs of blood and a dozen of or­gan­ics for fu­ture workups.”

“Yes, Cap­tain.”

“Is the oth­er guard around, what’s-​his-​name—Mor­ris? I’d like to talk to him.”

Vis­con­ti spoke in­to his ra­dio, and a mo­ment lat­er a cop ap­peared at the far edge of the scene, lead­ing the oth­er guard. The man’s comb-​over was in dis­ar­ray, hang­ing like a flap down the side of his head, and his clothes were di­sheveled. He stank of al­co­hol preser­va­tive.

“You okay?” she asked. “Able to talk?”

“I think so.” His voice was high and breathy.

“Did you see the at­tack?”

“No. I was . . . too far away, and my back was turned.”

“But you must have seen or heard some­thing in the mo­ments be­fore it oc­curred.”

Mor­ris strug­gled to con­cen­trate. “Well, there was this . . . scream­ing. Like an an­imal. And break­ing glass. Then some­thing came rush­ing out from the dark­ness . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Some­thing? It wasn’t a per­son?”

Mor­ris’s eyes slid from side to side. “It was just, like, a scream­ing, rush­ing shape.”

Hay­ward turned to an­oth­er of the of­fi­cers. “Take Mr. Mor­ris down­stairs and have De­tec­tive Sergeant Whit­ti­er ques­tion him fur­ther.”

“Yes, Cap­tain.”

Two EMTs came in­to view from be­hind a moun­tain of stacked box­es, push­ing a stretch­er with an enor­mous, groan­ing mound on top.

“What’s his state?” she asked.

“Lac­er­at­ed with what looks like a crude knife, or maybe a claw.”

“Claw?”

The tech­ni­cian shrugged. “Some of the cuts are pret­ty ragged. Luck­ily, none of them reached vi­tal or­gans—one ad­van­tage to be­ing fat. Some blood loss, shock . . . He’ll re­cov­er.”

“Can he talk?”

“You’re wel­come to give it a shot,” said an EMT. “He’s been se­dat­ed.”

Hay­ward leaned over. The guard’s damp, bulging face stared at the ceil­ing. The smell of liquor, formalde­hyde, and dead fish as­sault­ed her nos­trils.

She spoke gen­tly. “Wil­son Bulke?”

His eyes flick­ered to­ward her, away again.

“I’d like to ask you a few ques­tions.”

No clear re­sponse.

“Mr. Bulke, did you see your at­tack­er?”

The eyes gy­rat­ed in their sock­ets, and his wet mouth opened. “The . . . face.”

“What face? What did it look like?”

“Twist­ed . . . Oh, God . . .”

He groaned, mum­bled some­thing un­in­tel­li­gi­ble.

“Can you be more spe­cif­ic, sir? Male or fe­male?”

A whim­per, a brief shake of the head.

“One, or more than one?”

“One,” came the croaked re­ply.

Hay­ward looked at the EMT. He shrugged.

She turned, ges­tured to a de­tec­tive wait­ing near­by. “Stay with him on the way to the hos­pi­tal. If he be­comes more co­her­ent, get a com­plete de­scrip­tion of his at­tack­er. I want to know what we’re up against.”

“Yes, Cap­tain.”

She straight­ened up, looked around at the small group of po­lice. “Who­ev­er or what­ev­er this is, we’ve got it cor­nered. I want us to go in. Now.”

“Shouldn’t we call for a SWAT team?” said Vis­con­ti.

“It would take hours be­fore a SWAT team could gear up and get over here. And their rules of en­gage­ment are so pon­der­ous they’d slow ev­ery­thing down. There was fresh blood on that wal­let—there’s a chance Lip­per might still be alive and a hostage.” She looked around. “I want you three to come with me: Sergeant Vis­con­ti, Of­fi­cer Mar­tin, and De­tec­tive Sergeant O’Con­nor.”

There was a si­lence. The three of­fi­cers ex­changed glances.

“Is there a prob­lem? It’s four against one.”

More hes­itant looks.

She sighed. “Don’t tell me you boys have bought in­to the ru­mors the mu­se­um guards are spread­ing? What, you think we’re go­ing to get jammed up by a mum­my?”

Vis­con­ti col­ored, and by way of an­swer re­moved his weapon and gave it a quick check. The oth­ers fol­lowed suit.

“Turn off your ra­dios, cell phones, pagers, ev­ery­thing. I don’t want to be creep­ing up on the perp and sud­den­ly hear Beethoven’s Fifth com­ing from your Black­Ber­ry.”

They nod­ded.

Hay­ward took out a pho­to­copy she’d re­quest­ed of the at­tic lay­out of the mu­se­um and pressed it flat on a box. “Okay. This sec­tion of the at­tic is di­vid­ed in­to six­teen nar­row rooms—here—di­vid­ed in­to two long lines un­der par­al­lel roofs, with a con­nect­ing pas­sage at the far end. Think of it as a U. Be­sides the stair­way down, there’s on­ly one pos­si­ble es­cape route: a rooftop ac­ces­si­ble through this row of win­dows, here. I’ve al­ready had it cov­ered. The sky­lights are sup­posed to be barred. Which means the on­ly way for the killer to es­cape is through us . . . He’s cor­nered.”

She paused, looked at them each in turn. “We ad­vance in pairs: quick ob­ser­va­tion of each room and re­treat, then move and cov­er. I’ll part­ner with O’Con­nor. Mar­tin, you and Vis­con­ti stay a half-​room be­hind. Don’t over­com­mit. And re­mem­ber: we’ve got to pro­ceed un­der the as­sump­tion—the hope—that Lip­per’s still alive and be­ing held hostage. We can’t risk killing him. On­ly if you have ver­ifi­ca­tion that Lip­per’s al­ready wast­ed can you use dead­ly force—and then on­ly if ab­so­lute­ly nec­es­sary. Are we clear on this?”

They all nod­ded.

“I’ll lead.”

When none of the three protest­ed or made the usu­al faux-​gal­lant com­ments about its be­ing a job for a man, Hay­ward took it as a sign that wom­en were fi­nal­ly be­ing ac­cept­ed in the force. Or maybe the three were just scared silent.

They stepped care­ful­ly through the crime scene, Hay­ward lead­ing, O’Con­nor at her heels. The floor was smeared with blood, and a shelf of spec­imen jars lay where it had fall­en, shards of glass and the bro­ken, pu­trid re­mains of eels scat­tered in pud­dles of foul-​smelling preser­va­tive. They moved past the guard at the far end of the crime scene and in­to the next room of the at­tic. The tem­po­rary lights set up around the crime scene were fainter here, cloak­ing the room in near-​dark­ness.

Hay­ward and O’Con­nor moved to ei­ther side of the door­way. She gave a quick peek in­side, ducked back, nod­ded to O’Con­nor, then pro­ceed­ed.

Emp­ty. More shelves had been thrown over, the glass lit­ter­ing the floor, fill­ing the room with the chok­ing stench of preser­va­tive. These jars seemed to have been filled with small ro­dents. A pile of pa­pers had been dashed about and nu­mer­ous stored ob­jects flung hel­ter-​skel­ter. It re­mind­ed her, in a way, of the pre­lim­inary au­top­sy re­port on De­Meo: the killer had root­ed about hap­haz­ard­ly among his in­ter­nal or­gans, rip­ping and pulling stuff out with a kind of crazy, dis­or­ga­nized vi­olence. A sick kind of van­dal­ism.

She crept up to the next door, wait­ed un­til the oth­ers were in po­si­tion, ducked around for a vi­su­al. An­oth­er room, like the pre­vi­ous, com­plete­ly trashed. One of the dingy sky­lights had been bro­ken, but the bars above it were still in­tact. No es­cape that way.

She froze, sud­den­ly lis­ten­ing. A faint sound was echo­ing back from the dark at­tics be­yond.

“Hush!” she whis­pered. “Hear that?”

It was a strange kind of stum­bling, limp­ing gait: a drag­ging sound, fol­lowed by an un­set­tling thump: Draaag-​thump. Draaag-​thump.

Hay­ward moved in­to the next room, al­most pitch-​dark now. Pulling out her flash­light, she used it to il­lu­mi­nate the dark cor­ners. The room con­tained thou­sands of plas­ter faces—death masks—star­ing at them from ev­ery square foot of wall sur­face. Some of the masks showed signs of re­cent dam­age: some­one, ap­par­ent­ly the killer, had slashed at the masks, goug­ing out their eyes, leav­ing smears of blood ev­ery­where.

The lights were off in the next room. Crouch­ing be­side the door frame of the next room, Hay­ward ges­tured for the men be­hind to stay put.

She leaned for­ward, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly. The strange sound had ceased: the killer was wait­ing, lis­ten­ing. She sensed, rather than knew, that he was near: very near.

She could feel the lev­el of ten­sion with­in their lit­tle group ris­ing. Bet­ter to keep go­ing: the less think­ing the bet­ter.

Hay­ward ducked for­ward, swept the room with her flash­light, then ducked back again as quick­ly as she could. Some­thing was crouch­ing in the mid­dle of the next room—naked, bes­tial, bloody . . . but def­inite­ly hu­man, and sur­pris­ing­ly small and thin.

She ges­tured to the oth­ers, held one fin­ger up­ward, then ro­tat­ed it slow­ly to­ward the door­way: one perp, in the room be­yond.

There was a tense mo­ment as they gath­ered them­selves. And then Hay­ward spoke in a firm, clear voice: “Po­lice of­fi­cers. Do not move. We’re armed and we’ve got you cov­ered. Walk to the door­way with your hands up.”

She heard a scram­bling noise, a thump­ing and bang­ing like a beast sham­bling on all fours.

“He’s run­ning!”

Gun drawn, Hay­ward ducked around the cor­ner just in time to see a dark fig­ure scut­tle in­to the dark­ness of the room be­yond. This was fol­lowed by a tremen­dous crash.

“Let’s go!”

She ran across the room to the far door­way, paused, gave a quick look in­to the next with the flash­light. There was no sign of the fig­ure, but there were plen­ty of nooks and cran­nies where the killer could hide.

“Again!” They charged in­to the next room, im­me­di­ate­ly spread­ing out and tak­ing cov­er.

This was the largest at­tic room yet, filled with gray met­al shelves tight­ly packed with jars. In each jar resid­ed a sin­gle star­ing eye, the size of a can­taloupe, roots dan­gling like ten­ta­cles. One shelf of jars had been thrown to the ground, and the eye­balls lay rup­tured, ooz­ing jel­ly amid the glass and preser­va­tive.

A quick search dis­closed the room was emp­ty. Hay­ward gath­ered the team.

“Slow­ly but sure­ly,” she said, “we’re driv­ing him in­to a cor­ner. Re­mem­ber that peo­ple, like an­imals, get pro­gres­sive­ly more dan­ger­ous as they be­come cor­nered.”

Nods all around.

She glanced around. “The whale eye­ball col­lec­tion, it seems.”

A few ner­vous, steady­ing laughs.

“Okay. We’ll take it one room at a time. No hur­ry.”

Hay­ward moved to the edge of the next door, lis­tened, then ducked her head around, flashed the light. Noth­ing.

As they moved in­to the room, Hay­ward heard a sud­den, rend­ing scream from be­yond the far door­way, fol­lowed by the tremen­dous crash of glass and the sound of run­ning liq­uid. The men jumped as if they’d been shot. A strong odor of ethyl al­co­hol drift­ed back.

“That stuff is flammable,” Hay­ward said. “If he’s got a match, get ready to run.”

She moved for­ward, rak­ing the next room be­yond with her flash­light.

“I see it!” O’Con­nor cried.

Draaag-​thump! A shriek like a ban­shee, and then a dark fig­ure, scut­tling side­ways but with hor­ri­fy­ing sin­gle-​mind­ed­ness, came rush­ing at them, gray flint knife raised in a fist­ed hand; Hay­ward jumped back as it crossed the thresh­old, knife slash­ing the air.

“Po­lice!” she called out. “Drop your weapon!”

But the fig­ure paid no heed, sham­bling crab­like at them, knife still slash­ing the air.

“Don’t shoot!” Hay­ward cried. “Mace him!”

She dodged the fig­ure, draw­ing it around, while the oth­er three cops flanked it on both sides, hol­ster­ing their guns and pulling out their ri­ot sticks and Mace. Vis­con­ti jumped for­ward and Maced the at­tack­er and he howled like a de­mon, spin­ning and whip­ping the stone knife around blind­ly; Hay­ward deft­ly stepped in and gave a sharp, plung­ing kick to the in­side of one leg, send­ing him sprawl­ing. A sec­ond kick sent the knife skit­ter­ing across the floor.

“Cuff him!”

But Vis­con­ti had al­ready sprung in­to ac­tion, slap­ping the cuffs on one wrist and then, with the help of O’Con­nor, wrestling the oth­er flail­ing arm down and cuff­ing it as well.

He screamed and bucked ma­ni­acal­ly.

“Do his an­kles!” Hay­ward or­dered.

A minute lat­er, the perp lay on his stom­ach, still pinned, writhing and shriek­ing in a voice so high it cut the air like a scalpel.

“Get the EMTs in here,” Hay­ward said. “We need a seda­tive.”

Most sus­pects, when cuffed hand and foot and pinned to the floor, set­tled down. Not this one. He con­tin­ued to writhe and scream, twist­ing, rolling, thrash­ing about, and, small as he was, it was all that Hay­ward and the cops could do to hold him down.

“Must be on an­gel dust,” said one of the cops.

“I’ve nev­er seen an­gel dust do this.”

A minute lat­er, an EMT ar­rived and plunged a nee­dle in­to the shriek­ing man’s but­tock. A few mo­ments lat­er, he be­gan to qui­et down. Hay­ward got up and dust­ed her­self off.

“Je­sus,” said O’Con­nor. “Looks like he’s tak­en a show­er in gore.”

“Yeah, and it’s gone off in this heat. He stinks.”

“Fuck­er’s naked, too.”

Hay­ward stepped back. The perp was still ly­ing on his stom­ach, face pressed to the floor by Vis­con­ti, whim­per­ing and quiv­er­ing in an un­suc­cess­ful at­tempt to fight off the seda­tive.

She bent down. “Where’s Lip­per?” she asked him. “What did you do to him?”

More whim­per­ing.

“Turn him over, I want to see his face.”

Vis­con­ti com­plied. The man’s face and hair were caked with dried blood and of­fal. He was gri­mac­ing strange­ly, his face seized by tics.

“Clean him up.”

The EMT broke out a pack of ster­ile gauze wipes and cleaned up his face.

“Oh, Christ,” Vis­con­ti said in­vol­un­tar­ily.

Hay­ward mere­ly stared. She could bare­ly be­lieve her eyes.

The killer was Jay Lip­per.

27

Spencer Cof­fey set­tled him­self in a chair in War­den Imhof’s of­fice, im­pa­tient­ly flick­ing his trous­er crease. Imhof sat be­hind his desk, look­ing much as he had dur­ing the first meet­ing: cool and neat, with the same blow-​dried hel­met of light brown hair on his head. Nev­er­the­less, Cof­fey could see the un­easy, per­haps even de­fen­sive look in his eye. Spe­cial Agent Ra­bin­er re­mained stand­ing, arms crossed, lean­ing against the wall.

Cof­fey let a strained si­lence build in the of­fice be­fore speak­ing.

“Mr. Imhof,” he be­gan, “you promised you would take care of this per­son­al­ly.” “As I have,” said Imhof in a cold­ly neu­tral voice.

Cof­fey leaned back. “S.A. Ra­bin­er and I have just come from an in­ter­view with the pris­on­er. I’m sor­ry to say there’s been no progress—none—in teach­ing him the val­ue of re­spect. Now, I told you ear­li­er I wasn’t re­al­ly in­ter­est­ed in how you ac­com­plished the task we set for you, that I was on­ly in­ter­est­ed in re­sults. What­ev­er you’re do­ing, it isn’t work­ing. The pris­on­er’s the same cocky, ar­ro­gant bas­tard who first walked in here. Re­fused to an­swer ques­tions. In­so­lent as well. When I asked him how he was en­joy­ing soli­tary con­fine­ment, he said, ‘I rather pre­fer it.’”

“Pre­fer it to what?”

“Be­ing mixed in with ‘for­mer clients’ is how he put it, the sar­cas­tic bas­tard. Re­al­ly em­pha­siz­ing the point that he didn’t want to be mixed with the gen­er­al prison pop­ula­tion. He’s as un­re­pen­tant and com­bat­ive as ev­er.”

“Agent Cof­fey, some­times these things take time.”

“Which is ex­act­ly what we don’t have, Mr. Imhof. We’ve got a sec­ond bail hear­ing com­ing up, and Pen­der­gast’s go­ing to have a day in court. We can keep him from his lawyer on­ly so long. I need him bro­ken by then; I need a con­fes­sion.” What he didn’t add were the grow­ing prob­lems they were hav­ing nail­ing down some of the ev­idence. That would make the bail hear­ing very tricky—where­as a con­fes­sion would make it all so nice and clean.

“As I said, it takes time.”

Cof­fey took a breath, re­mem­ber­ing Imhof’s par­tic­ular but­tons. A lit­tle car­rot, a lit­tle stick.

“Mean­while, our man is down there bad-​mouthing you and Herk­moor to all who will lis­ten: guards, staff, ev­ery­one. And he’s an elo­quent bas­tard, Imhof.”

The war­den re­mained silent, but Cof­fey no­ticed—with sat­is­fac­tion—a slight twitch­ing at one cor­ner of his mouth. And yet the man made no move to sug­gest stronger mea­sures. Maybe there weren’t any stronger mea­sures . . .

And that’s when the idea came to him—the mas­ter­stroke. It was the “for­mer clients” phrase that did it. So Pen­der­gast was afraid of be­ing mixed up with “for­mer clients”?

“Mr. Imhof,” he said—but qui­et­ly, as if to dis­guise the fresh­ness of his brain­storm—“is that com­put­er on your desk linked to the De­part­ment of Jus­tice database?”

“Nat­ural­ly.”

“Well, then. Let’s check up on some of these ‘for­mer clients.’”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

“Ac­cess Pen­der­gast’s ar­rest records. Run them against your cur­rent prison pop­ula­tion, see if you can find any match­es.”

“You mean, see if any of the perps Pen­der­gast ar­rest­ed are cur­rent­ly in Herk­moor?”

“That’s the idea, yes.”

Cof­fey glanced over his shoul­der at Ra­bin­er. The agent had a wolfish smirk on his face.

“Boss, I like the way you think,” he said.

Imhof pulled the key­board to­ward him and be­gan typ­ing. Then he stared at the screen for a long mo­ment while Cof­fey wait­ed in grow­ing im­pa­tience.

“Strange,” Imhof said. “Pen­der­gast’s col­lars seem to have suf­fered a rather high mor­tal­ity rate. Most nev­er made it to tri­al.”

“Sure­ly, there have to be some live ones who made it through the le­gal sys­tem and end­ed up in prison.”

More typ­ing. Then Imhof leaned back from the mon­itor. “There are two cur­rent­ly re­sid­ing in Herk­moor.”

Cof­fey looked at him sharply. “Tell me about them.”

“One is named Al­bert Chich­ester.”

“Go on.”

“He’s a se­ri­al killer.”

Cof­fey rubbed his hands to­geth­er, glanced again at Ra­bin­er.

“Poi­soned twelve peo­ple in the nurs­ing home where he was em­ployed,” Imhof went on. “Male nurse. Sev­en­ty-​three years old.”

As quick­ly as it had come, Cof­fey’s ex­hil­ara­tion fell away. “Oh,” he said.

There was a brief si­lence.

“What about the oth­er one?” S.A. Ra­bin­er asked.

“A se­ri­ous felon named Car­los Lacar­ra. They call him El Pocho.”

“Lacar­ra,” Cof­fey re­peat­ed.

Imhof nod­ded. “For­mer drug king­pin. Re­al hard case. Worked his way up through East L.A. street gangs and then came east. Took over much of the Hud­son Coun­ty and Newark en­force­ment ac­tion.”

“Yeah?”

“Tor­tured a whole fam­ily to death, in­clud­ing three kids. Re­venge for a deal gone bad. Says here Pen­der­gast was the S.A. in charge on that one—fun­ny, I didn’t re­mem­ber that.”

“What’s Lacar­ra’s record here?”

“Leads a gang in here known as the Bro­ken Teeth. A ma­jor pain in the rear for our guards.”

“The Bro­ken Teeth,” Cof­fey mur­mured. The ex­hil­ara­tion was quick­ly re­turn­ing. “Now, tell me, Mr. Imhof. Where does this Pocho Lacar­ra cur­rent­ly en­joy his ex­er­cise priv­ileges?”

“Yard 4.”

“And what would hap­pen if you trans­ferred Agent Pen­der­gast to, ah, yard 4 for his dai­ly ex­er­cise pe­ri­od?”

Imhof frowned. “If Lacar­ra rec­og­nized him, it would be ug­ly. Or even if he didn’t.”

“How so?”

“Lacar­ra . . . Well, there isn’t a del­icate way of putting it: he likes a white boy for his bitch.”

Cof­fey thought for a mo­ment. “I see. Please give the or­der at once.”

Imhof’s frown deep­ened. “Agent Cof­fey, that’s a rather ex­treme step—”

“I’m afraid our man has left us with no choice. I’ve seen hard cas­es in my time, I’ve seen sullen im­pu­dence be­fore, but noth­ing like this. The way he dis­re­spects the le­gal pro­cess, this prison—and you, in par­tic­ular—is shock­ing. It re­al­ly is.”

Imhof drew in a breath. Cof­fey no­ticed, with sat­is­fac­tion, that the man’s nos­trils flared briefly.

“Stick him in there, Imhof,” Cof­fey said qui­et­ly. “Stick him in there, but keep an eye on the sit­ua­tion. Ex­tract him if things get out of hand. But don’t ex­tract him too soon, if you get my mean­ing.”

“If some­thing does hap­pen, there could be fall­out. I’ll need you to back me up.”

“You can count on me, Imhof. I’m be­hind you, in all the way.” And with that, Cof­fey turned, nod­ded to the still-​grin­ning Ra­bin­er, and left the of­fice.

28

Cap­tain of Homi­cide Lau­ra Hay­ward sat at her desk, gaz­ing at the storm of pa­per­work in front of her. She hat­ed dis­or­der; she hat­ed mess; she hat­ed un­squared pa­pers and shab­by piles. And yet it seemed no mat­ter how much she sort­ed and squared and or­ga­nized, it end­ed up this way: the desk a phys­ical man­ifes­ta­tion of the dis­or­der and frus­tra­tion with­in her own mind. By rights, she should be typ­ing up a re­port on the mur­der of De­Meo. Yet she felt par­alyzed. It was damned hard to work on open cas­es when you felt you’d roy­al­ly screwed up on a pre­vi­ous one; that maybe an in­no­cent—or most­ly in­no­cent—man was in prison, un­just­ly charged with a crime that car­ried a po­ten­tial death sen­tence . . .

She made an­oth­er enor­mous ef­fort to im­pose or­der on her mind. She had al­ways or­ga­nized her thoughts in lists: she was for­ev­er mak­ing lists nest­ed with­in lists with­in lists. And she was find­ing it dif­fi­cult to move for­ward with her oth­er cas­es while the Pen­der­gast case re­mained un­re­solved in her mind.

She sighed, fo­cused, and be­gan again.

One: a pos­si­bly in­no­cent man was in prison, charged with a cap­ital crime. Two: his broth­er, long thought dead, had resur­faced, kid­napped a wom­an with ap­par­ent­ly

no con­nec­tion to any­thing, stolen the world’s most valu­able di­amond col­lec­tion . . . and then de­stroyed it. Why?

Three—

A knock on the door in­ter­rupt­ed her.

Hay­ward had asked her sec­re­tary to make sure she was not dis­turbed, and she strug­gled with a mo­men­tary anger that shocked her with its in­ten­si­ty. She brought her­self back un­der con­trol and said cold­ly, “Come in.”

The door opened slow­ly, ten­ta­tive­ly—and there stood Vin­cent D’Agos­ta.

There was a brief mo­ment of frozen sta­sis.

“Lau­ra,” D’Agos­ta be­gan. Then he fell silent.

She main­tained an ut­ter cool­ness even as she felt the col­or mount­ing in her face. For a mo­ment, she could think of noth­ing to say ex­cept “Please sit down.”

She watched him en­ter the of­fice and take a seat, crush­ing with ruth­less ef­fi­cien­cy the emo­tions that welled up in­side her. He was sur­pris­ing­ly trim and rea­son­ably well dressed in a suit and a twen­ty-​dol­lar side­walk tie, his thin­ning hair combed back.

The mo­ment of awk­ward si­lence length­ened.

“So . . . How’s ev­ery­thing?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“Fine. You?”

“My dis­ci­plinary tri­al is sched­uled for ear­ly April.”

“Good.”

“Good? If they find me guilty, there goes my ca­reer, pen­sion, ben­efits—ev­ery­thing.”

“I meant, it will be good to have it over with,” she said terse­ly. Is that what he’d come here to do—com­plain? She wait­ed for him to get to the point.

“Look, Lau­ra: first, I just want to tell you some­thing.”

“Which is?”

She could see him strug­gling. “I’m sor­ry,” he said. “I’m re­al­ly sor­ry. I know I hurt you, I know you think I treat­ed you like dirt . . . I wish I knew how to make it up.”

Hay­ward wait­ed.

“At the time, I thought, I re­al­ly thought, I was do­ing the right thing. Try­ing to pro­tect you, keep you safe from Dio­genes. I thought that by mov­ing out I could keep the heat off you. I just didn’t fig­ure on how it would look to you . . . I was wing­ing it. Things were hap­pen­ing fast and I didn’t have time to work ev­ery­thing out. But I’ve had plen­ty of time to think about it since. I know that I looked like a cold bas­tard, walk­ing out on you with no ex­pla­na­tion. It must have seemed like I didn’t trust you. But that wasn’t it at all.”

He hes­itat­ed, chew­ing his lip as if work­ing up to some­thing. “Lis­ten,” he be­gan again. “I re­al­ly want us to get back to­geth­er. I still care about you. I know we can work this out . . .”

His voice trailed off mis­er­ably. Hay­ward wait­ed him out.

“Any­way, I just want­ed to say I’m sor­ry.”

“Con­sid­er it said.”

An­oth­er ex­cru­ci­at­ing si­lence.

“Is there any­thing else?” Hay­ward asked.

D’Agos­ta shift­ed un­com­fort­ably. Slats of sun­light came in through the blinds, strip­ing his suit.

“Well, I heard . . .”

“What did you hear?”

“That you were still look­ing in­to the Pen­der­gast case.”

“Re­al­ly?” she said cool­ly.

“Yeah. From a guy I know, works for Sin­gle­ton.” He shift­ed again. “When I heard that, it gave me hope. Hope that maybe I could still help you. There are things that I didn’t tell you be­fore, things that I felt sure you wouldn’t be­lieve. But if you’re re­al­ly still on the case, af­ter all that’s hap­pened . . . well, I thought maybe you should hear some of these things. To, you know, give you as much am­mu­ni­tion as pos­si­ble.”

Hay­ward kept her face neu­tral, not will­ing to give him any­thing but a thun­der­ous si­lence. He was look­ing old­er, a lit­tle drawn, but his clothes were new and his shirt was well ironed. She won­dered, briefly and sear­ing­ly, who was tak­ing care of him. Fi­nal­ly she said, “The case is set­tled.”

“Of­fi­cial­ly, yeah. But this friend said that you were—”

“I don’t know what you heard, and I don’t give a damn. You should know bet­ter than to lis­ten to de­part­men­tal gos­sip from so-​called friends.”

“But, Lau­ra—”

“Re­fer to me as Cap­tain Hay­ward, please.”

An­oth­er si­lence.

“Look, this whole thing—the killings, the di­amond theft, the kid­nap­ping—was all or­ches­trat­ed by Dio­genes. All of it. It was his mas­ter plan. He played ev­ery­one like a vi­olin. He mur­dered those peo­ple, then framed Pen­der­gast for it. He stole the di­amonds, kid­napped Vi­ola Maske­lene—”

“You’ve told me all this be­fore.”

“Yes, but here’s some­thing you don’t know, some­thing I nev­er told you—”

Hay­ward felt a rush of anger that al­most over­whelmed her icy con­trol. “Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta, I don’t ap­pre­ci­ate hear­ing that you’ve con­tin­ued to with­hold in­for­ma­tion from me.”

“I didn’t mean it that—”

“I know ex­act­ly what you meant.”

“Lis­ten, damn it. The rea­son Vi­ola Maske­lene was kid­napped is that she and Pen­der­gast—well, they’re in love.”

“Oh, please.”

“I was there when they met on the is­land of Capra­ia last year. He in­ter­viewed her as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Bullard and the lost Stradi­var­ius. When they met, I could see this con­nec­tion be­tween them. Dio­genes some­how learned of it.”

“They’ve been see­ing each oth­er?”

“Not ex­act­ly. But Dio­genes lured her here us­ing Pen­der­gast’s name.”

“Fun­ny she nev­er men­tioned that dur­ing her de­brief­ing.”

“She was try­ing to pro­tect Pen­der­gast and her­self. If it got out that they had a thing for each oth­er—”

“From one brief meet­ing on an is­land.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. “That’s right.”

“Agent Pen­der­gast and La­dy Maske­lene. In love.”

“I can’t speak one hun­dred per­cent about the strength of Pen­der­gast’s feel­ings. But as for Maske­lene—yeah, I’m con­vinced.”

“And how did Dio­genes dis­cov­er this touch­ing bit of sen­ti­ment?”

“There’s on­ly one pos­si­bil­ity: while Dio­genes was nurs­ing Pen­der­gast back to health in Italy, af­ter res­cu­ing him from Count Fos­co’s cas­tle. Pen­der­gast was deliri­ous, he prob­ably said some­thing. So, you see? Dio­genes kid­napped Vi­ola to en­sure that Pen­der­gast was max­imal­ly dis­tract­ed at pre­cise­ly the mo­ment he un­der­took the di­amond heist.”

D’Agos­ta fell silent. Hay­ward took the time for a long breath and an­oth­er ef­fort at con­trol.

“This,” she said qui­et­ly, “is a sto­ry straight out of a ro­mance nov­el. This isn’t the way things hap­pen in re­al life.”

“What hap­pened with us wasn’t all that dif­fer­ent.”

“What hap­pened with us was a mis­take I’m try­ing to for­get.”

“Lis­ten, please, Lau­ra—”

“Call me Lau­ra again and I’ll have you es­cort­ed out of the build­ing.”

D’Agos­ta winced. “There’s some­thing else you ought to know. Have you heard of the foren­sic pro­fil­ing firm of Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions, down on Lit­tle West 12th Street, run by an Eli Glinn? I’ve been spend­ing most of my time down there re­cent­ly, moon­light­ing.”

“Nev­er heard of it. And I know all the le­git­imate foren­sic pro­fil­ers.”

“Well, they’re more of an en­gi­neer­ing firm, and they’re pret­ty se­cre­tive, but they re­cent­ly did a foren­sic pro­file of Dio­genes. It backs up ev­ery­thing I’ve told you about him.”

“A foren­sic pro­file? At whose re­quest?”

“Agent Pen­der­gast’s.”

“That in­spires con­fi­dence,” she said sar­cas­ti­cal­ly.

“The pro­file in­di­cat­ed that Dio­genes isn’t through.”

“Isn’t through?”

“All of what he’s done so far—the killings, the kid­nap­ping, the di­amond theft—has been lead­ing up to some­thing else. Some­thing big­ger, maybe much big­ger.”

“Such as?”

“We don’t know.”

Hay­ward picked up some files and squared them on the desk with a crack. “That’s quite a sto­ry.”

D’Agos­ta be­gan to get an­gry. “It’s not a sto­ry. Look, this is Vin­nie you’re talk­ing to, Lau­ra. It’s me.”

“That’s it.” Hay­ward pressed an in­ter­com but­ton. “Fred? Please come to my of­fice and es­cort Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta off the premis­es.”

“Don’t do this, Lau­ra . . .”

She turned to him, fi­nal­ly los­ing it. “Yes, I will do it. You lied to me. Played me for a fool. I was will­ing to of­fer you any­thing. Ev­ery­thing. And you—”

“And I am so very sor­ry. God, if on­ly I could turn back the clock, do things dif­fer­ent­ly. I tried my best, tried to bal­ance my loy­al­ty to Pen­der­gast with my . . . loy­al­ty to you. I know I screwed up a won­der­ful thing—and I be­lieve that what we had is worth sav­ing. I want your for­give­ness.”

The door was opened by a po­lice sergeant. “Lieu­tenant?” he said.

D’Agos­ta rose, turned, and ex­it­ed with­out even a look back. The sergeant shut the door, leav­ing Hay­ward be­hind her heaped-​up desk, silent and trem­bling, look­ing at the mess but see­ing noth­ing, noth­ing at all.

29

A dark, chill night had fall­en over the rest­less streets of Up­per Man­hat­tan, but even on the bright­est noon no sun­light ev­er pen­etrat­ed the li­brary of 891 River­side Drive. Met­al shut­ters were closed and fas­tened over mul­lioned win­dows, and drapes of rich bro­cade hid the shut­ters in their turn. The room was lit on­ly by fire: the glow of can­de­labra, the flick­er of em­bers dy­ing on the wide grate.

Con­stance sat in a wing chair of bur­nished leather. She was very erect, as if at at­ten­tion, or per­haps poised for flight. She was look­ing tense­ly at the oth­er oc­cu­pant of the room: Dio­genes Pen­der­gast, who sat on the couch across from her, a book of Rus­sian po­et­ry in his hands. He spoke soft­ly, his voice as liq­uid as hon­ey, the warm ca­dence of the Deep South strange­ly ap­pro­pri­ate to the flow of the Rus­sian. “,” he fin­ished, then laid the book down and looked over at Con­stance. “‘Heart’s mem­ory of sun grows fainter, sal­low is the grass.’” He laughed qui­et­ly. “Akhma­to­va. No one else ev­er wrote about sor­row with the kind of as­trin­gent el­egance she did.”

There was a short si­lence.

“I don’t read Rus­sian,” Con­stance replied at last.

“A beau­ti­ful, po­et­ic lan­guage, Con­stance. It’s a shame, be­cause I sense hear­ing Akhma­to­va speak of her sor­row in her own tongue would help you bear your own.”

She frowned. “I bear no sor­row.”

Dio­genes raised his eye­brows and laid the book aside. “Please, child,” he said qui­et­ly. “This is Dio­genes. With oth­ers, you may put up a brave front. But with me, there’s no rea­son to hide any­thing. I know you. We are so very alike.”

“Alike?” Con­stance laughed bit­ter­ly. “You’re a crim­inal. And me—you know noth­ing about me.”

“I know a great deal, Con­stance,” he said, voice still qui­et. “You are unique. Like me. We are alone. I know you’ve been blessed and cursed with a strange and ter­ri­ble bur­den. How many would wish for such a gift as you were giv­en by my great-​un­cle An­toine—and yet how few could un­der­stand just what it would be like. Not lib­er­ation, not at all. So many, many years of child­hood . . . and yet, to be de­prived of be­ing a child . . .”

He looked at her, the fire il­lu­mi­nat­ing his strange, bi­col­ored eyes. “I have told you. I, too, was de­nied a child­hood—thanks to my broth­er and his ob­ses­sive ha­tred of me.”

Im­me­di­ate­ly, a protest rose to Con­stance’s lips. But this time she sup­pressed it. She could feel the white mouse shift­ing in her pock­et, con­tent­ed­ly curl­ing him­self up for a nap. Un­con­scious­ly she moved a hand over the pock­et, stroking it with slen­der fin­gers.

“But I’ve al­ready spo­ken to you about those years. About my treat­ment at his hands.” A glass of pastis sat at his right hand—he had helped him­self from the side­board ear­li­er—and now he took a slow, thought­ful sip.

“Has my broth­er com­mu­ni­cat­ed with you?” he asked.

“How can he? You know where he is: you put him there.”

“Oth­ers in sim­ilar sit­ua­tions find ways to get word to those they care about.”

“Per­haps he doesn’t want to cause me fur­ther dis­com­fort.” Her voice fell as she spoke. Her eyes dropped to her fin­gers, still ab­sent­ly stroking the sleep­ing mouse, then rose again to look at Dio­genes’s calm, hand­some face.

“As I was say­ing,” he went on af­ter a pause, “there is much else we share.”

Con­stance said noth­ing, stroking the mouse.

“And much that I can teach you.”

Once again, she sum­moned a tart re­tort; once again, it re­mained un­voiced. “What could you pos­si­bly teach me?” she replied in­stead.

Dio­genes broke in­to a gen­tle smile. “Your life—not to put too fine a term to it—is dull. Even stul­ti­fy­ing. You’re trapped in this dark house, a pris­on­er. Why? Aren’t you a liv­ing wom­an? Shouldn’t you be al­lowed to make your own de­ci­sions, to come and go as you please? Yet you’ve been forced to live in the past. And now, you live for oth­ers who on­ly take care of you through guilt or shame. Wren, Proc­tor—that busy­body po­lice­man D’Agos­ta. They’re your jail­ers. They don’t love you.”

“Aloy­sius does.”

A sad smile creased Dio­genes’s face. “You think my broth­er is ca­pa­ble of love? Tell me: has he ev­er told you he loved you?”

“He doesn’t have to.”

“What ev­idence do you have that he loves you?”

Con­stance want­ed to an­swer, but she felt her­self col­or­ing in con­fu­sion. Dio­genes waved a hand as if to im­ply his point was made.

“And yet you don’t have to live this way. There’s a huge, ex­cit­ing world out there. I could show you how to turn your amaz­ing eru­di­tion, your formidable tal­ents, to­ward ful­fill­ing, to­ward pleas­ing, your­self.”

Hear­ing this, Con­stance felt her heart ac­cel­er­ate de­spite her best in­ten­tions. The hand stroking the mouse paused.

“You must live not on­ly for the mind, but for the sens­es. You have a body as well as a spir­it. Don’t let that odi­ous Wren jail you with his dai­ly babysit­ting. Don’t crush your­self any longer. Live. Trav­el. Love. Speak the lan­guages you’ve learned. Ex­pe­ri­ence the world di­rect­ly, and not through the musty pages of a book. Live in col­or, not black and white.”

Con­stance lis­tened in­tent­ly, feel­ing her con­fu­sion mount. The fact was, she felt she knew so lit­tle of the world—noth­ing, in fact. Her en­tire life had been a pre­lude . . . to what? “Speak­ing of col­or, note the ceil­ing of this room. What col­or is it?”

Con­stance glanced up at the li­brary ceil­ing. “Wedg­wood blue.”

“Was it al­ways that col­or?”

“No. Aloy­sius had it re­paint­ed dur­ing—dur­ing the re­pairs.”

“How long do you sup­pose it took him to pick that col­or?”

“Not long, I imag­ine. In­te­ri­or dec­orat­ing is not his forte.”

Dio­genes smiled. “Pre­cise­ly. No doubt he made the de­ci­sion with all the pas­sion of an ac­coun­tant se­lect­ing an item­iza­tion. Such an im­por­tant de­ci­sion, made so flip­pant­ly. But this is the room you spend most of your time in, isn’t it? Very re­veal­ing of his at­ti­tude to­ward you, don’t you think?”

“I don’t un­der­stand.”

Dio­genes leaned for­ward. “Per­haps you will un­der­stand if I tell you how I choose col­or. In my house—my re­al house, the one that is im­por­tant to me—I have a li­brary like this. At first I thought of drap­ing it in blue. And yet af­ter some con­sid­er­ation and ex­per­imen­ta­tion, I re­al­ized blue takes on an al­most green­ish tint in can­dle­light—which is the on­ly light in that room af­ter the sun has set. Fur­ther ex­am­ina­tion re­vealed that a dark blue, such as in­di­go or cobalt, ap­pears black in such light. If pale blue, it fades to gray; if rich, like turquoise, it be­comes heavy and cold. Clear­ly blue, though my first pref­er­ence, would not work. The var­ious pearl grays, my sec­ond choice, were al­so un­ac­cept­able: they lose their bluish gloss and are trans­formed in­to a dead, dusky white. Dark greens re­act like dark blues and turn al­most black. So at length I set­tled on a light sum­mery green: in shim­mer­ing can­dle­light, it gives the dreamy, lan­guorous ef­fect of be­ing un­der­wa­ter.” He hes­itat­ed. “I live near the sea. I can sit in that room, all lights and can­dles ex­tin­guished, lis­ten­ing to the roar of the surf, and I be­come a pearl div­er, with­in, and as one with, the lime-​green wa­ters of the Sar­gas­so Sea. It is the most beau­ti­ful li­brary in the world, Con­stance.”

He fell silent for a mo­ment, as if in con­tem­pla­tion. Then he leaned for­ward and smiled. “And do you know what?”

“What?” she man­aged to say.

“You would love that li­brary.”

Con­stance swal­lowed, un­able to for­mu­late a re­sponse.

He glanced at her. “The presents I brought you last time. The books, the oth­er items . . . have you opened them?”

Con­stance nod­ded.

“Good. They will show you there are oth­er uni­vers­es out there—per­fumed uni­vers­es, full of won­der and de­light, ready to be en­joyed. Monte Car­lo. Venice. Paris. Vi­en­na. Or, if you pre­fer: Kat­man­du, Cairo, Machu Pic­chu.” Dio­genes waved his hand around the walls of leather-​bound books. “Look at the vol­umes you’re sur­round­ed by. Bun­yan. Mil­ton. Ba­con. Vir­gil. Sober­sid­ed moral­ists all. Can an or­chid flow­er if you wa­ter it with qui­nine?” He stroked the copy of Akhma­to­va. “That is why I’ve been read­ing you po­et­ry this evening: to help you see that these shad­ows you sur­round your­self with need not be mere­ly monochrome.”

He picked up an­oth­er slen­der vol­ume from the pile be­side him. “Have you ev­er read Theodore Roethke?”

Con­stance shook her head.

“Ah! Then you are about to ex­pe­ri­ence a most de­li­cious, undis­cov­ered plea­sure.” He opened the book, se­lect­ed a page, and be­gan.

I think the dead are ten­der. Shall we kiss?—

Lis­ten­ing, Con­stance sud­den­ly felt a strange feel­ing blos­som deep with­in her: some­thing faint­ly grasped at in fleet­ing dreams and yet still un­known, some­thing rich and for­bid­den.

We sing to­geth­er; we sing mouth to mouth . . .

She rose abrupt­ly from the chair. The mouse in her frock pock­et right­ed it­self in sur­prise.

“It’s lat­er than I re­al­ized,” she said in a trem­bling voice. “I think you had bet­ter leave.”

Dio­genes glanced at her mild­ly. Then he closed the book with per­fect ease and rose.

“Yes, that would be best,” he said. “The scold­ing Wren will be in short­ly. It would not do for him to find me here—or your oth­er jail­ers, D’Agos­ta and Proc­tor.”

Con­stance felt her­self flush, and im­me­di­ate­ly hat­ed her­self for it.

Dio­genes nod­ded to­ward the couch. “I’ll leave these oth­er vol­umes for you, as well,” he said. “Good night, dear Con­stance.”

Then he stepped for­ward and—be­fore she could re­act—in­clined his head, took her hand, and raised it to his lips.

The ges­ture was ex­ecut­ed with per­fect for­mal­ity and the best of breed­ing. Yet there was some­thing in the way his lips lin­gered just out of con­tact with her fin­gers—some­thing in the warm breath on her skin—that made Con­stance curl in­ward­ly with un­ease . . .

And then he was gone, sud­den­ly, word­less­ly, leav­ing the li­brary emp­ty and silent, save for the low crack­le of the fire.

For a mo­ment, she re­mained mo­tion­less, aware of her own quick­ened breath­ing. He had left noth­ing of him­self be­hind, no trace of his scent, noth­ing—save for the small stack of books on the couch.

She came for­ward and picked up the top vol­ume. It was exquisite­ly bound in silk, with gilt edg­ing and hand-​mar­bled end­pa­pers. She turned it over in her hands, feel­ing the de­li­cious sup­ple­ness of the ma­te­ri­al.

Then, quite sud­den­ly, she placed it back on the pile, picked up the half-​fin­ished glass of pastis, and ex­it­ed the li­brary. Mak­ing her way in­to the back parts of the house, she en­tered the ser­vice kitchen, where she rinsed and dried the glass. Then she re­turned to the cen­tral stair­way.

The old man­sion was silent: Proc­tor was out, as he had been so fre­quent­ly on re­cent nights, as­sist­ing Eli Glinn in his plans; D’Agos­ta had looked in ear­li­er, but on­ly to make sure the house was se­cure, and had left again al­most im­me­di­ate­ly. And “scold­ing Wren” was, as al­ways at this hour, at the New York Pub­lic Li­brary. His tire­some self-​im­posed babysit­ting du­ties were, thank­ful­ly, con­fined to the day­light hours. There was no point in check­ing to see whether the front door was still locked—she knew it would be.

Now, slow­ly, she as­cend­ed the stairs to her suite of rooms on the third floor. Gen­tly re­mov­ing the white mouse from her pock­et, she placed him in his cage. She slipped out of her frock and un­der­gar­ments and fold­ed them neat­ly. Nor­mal­ly, she would have gone through her evening ablu­tions next, donned a night­gown, and read in the chair be­side her bed for an hour or so be­fore re­tir­ing—at present, she was work­ing her way through John­son’s Ram­bler es­says.

But not tonight. Tonight, she drift­ed in­to her bath­room and filled the over­size mar­ble bath with hot wa­ter. Then she turned to a beau­ti­ful­ly pa­pered gift box, rest­ing on a brass serv­er near­by. In­side the box were a dozen small glass bot­tles from a Parisian man­ufac­tur­er of bath oils: a gift from Dio­genes on his last vis­it. Se­lect­ing one, she poured the con­tents in­to the wa­ter. The heady scent of laven­der and patchouli per­fumed the air.

Con­stance walked over to the full-​length mir­ror and re­gard­ed her nude form for a long mo­ment, slid­ing her hands over her sides, along her smooth bel­ly. Then, turn­ing away, she slipped in­to the bath.

This had been Dio­genes’s fourth vis­it. Be­fore, he had of­ten spo­ken of his broth­er and made sev­er­al al­lu­sions to a par­tic­ular Event—Dio­genes seemed to speak the word with a spe­cial em­pha­sis—an Event of such hor­ror that he could not bring him­self to talk of it, ex­cept to say it had left him blind in one eye. He had al­so de­scribed how his broth­er had gone out of his way to poi­son oth­ers against him—her­self in par­tic­ular—by telling lies and in­sin­ua­tions, mak­ing him out to be evil in­car­nate. At first she had ob­ject­ed ve­he­ment­ly to that kind of talk. It was a per­ver­sion of the truth, she’d protest­ed—teased out now for some twist­ed end of his own. But he had been so calm in the face of her anger, so rea­son­able and per­sua­sive in his re­but­tals, that de­spite her­self, she had grown con­fused. It was true that Pen­der­gast was re­mote and aloof at times, but that was just his way . . . wasn’t it? And wasn’t it true the rea­son he’d nev­er con­tact­ed her from prison was to sim­ply spare her ad­di­tion­al anx­iety? She loved him, silent­ly, from afar—a love he nev­er seemed to re­turn or ac­knowl­edge.

It would have meant so much to have heard from him.

Could there be some truth to Dio­genes’s sto­ries? Her head told her he was un­trust­wor­thy, a thief, per­haps a sadis­tic killer . . . but her heart told her dif­fer­ent­ly. He seemed so un­der­stand­ing, so vul­ner­able. So kind. He had even shown her ev­idence—doc­uments, old pho­tographs—that seemed to un­der­cut many of the things Aloy­sius had told her about him. But he hadn’t de­nied ev­ery­thing; he had al­so ac­cept­ed a share of blame, ad­mit­ted to be­ing a lessthan-​per­fect broth­er—a deeply flawed hu­man be­ing.

Ev­ery­thing was so con­fused.

Con­stance had al­ways trust­ed her head, her in­tel­lect—even though, in many ways, she knew her mind was frag­ile and ca­pa­ble of be­tray­ing her. And yet now it was her heart that spoke the loud­est. She won­dered if Dio­genes was telling the truth when he said he un­der­stood her—be­cause, at some deep lev­el she had yet to plumb, she be­lieved him: she felt a con­nec­tion. Most im­por­tant, she was be­gin­ning to un­der­stand him as well.

At last she rose from the bath, dried her­self, and com­plet­ed her prepa­ra­tions for bed. She chose to wear not one of her cot­ton night­gowns, but rather one of fine­ly milled silk that lay, un­worn and half for­got­ten, at the bot­tom of a draw­er. Then she slipped in­to bed, propped up her down pil­lows, and opened the col­lec­tion of Ram­bler es­says.

The words all ran to­geth­er with­out mean­ing, and she grew rest­less. She flipped ahead to the next es­say, scanned its sten­to­ri­an open­ing, then closed the book. Get­ting out of bed again, she walked over to a heavy Dun­can Phyfe ar­moire and opened it. In­side was a vel­vet-​lined box con­tain­ing a small col­lec­tion of oc­ta­vo books Dio­genes had brought on his last vis­it. She car­ried the box back to bed and sort­ed through its con­tents. They were books she had heard about but nev­er read, books that had nev­er been a part of Enoch Leng’s ex­ten­sive li­brary. The Satyri­con of Petro­nius; Huys­mans’s Àu re­bours; Os­car Wilde’s let­ters to Lord Al­fred Dou­glas; the love po­et­ry of Sap­pho; Boc­cac­cio’s De­cameron. Deca­dence, op­ulence, and pas­sion­ate love clung to these pages like musk. Con­stance dipped in­to one and then an­oth­er—at first gin­ger­ly, then cu­ri­ous­ly, then with some­thing like hunger, read­ing late in­to the rest­less night.

30

Ger­ry Fecteau found a sun­ny spot on the walk­way over­look­ing yard 4 and snugged up the zip­per of his guard’s jack­et. A late-​win­ter light fil­tered down from a whiskey sky, not strong enough to melt the patch­es of dirty snow that still edged the yards and build­ing cor­ners. From where he stood, he had a good view of the yard. He glanced over at his part­ner, Doyle, placed strate­gi­cal­ly at the oth­er cor­ner.

The na­ture of their as­sign­ment had not been ex­plained to them, not even hint­ed at. In fact, they had been giv­en on­ly one or­der: watch the yard from above. But Fecteau had been around long enough to read be­tween the lines. The mys­tery pris­on­er, still in soli­tary, had been giv­en yard priv­ileges for good be­hav­ior—in yard 4. Oblig­atory yard priv­ileges. With Pocho and his gang. Fecteau knew very well what was go­ing to hap­pen to the pris­on­er—who was about as white as a white man could get—when he was turned out in yard 4 with Lacar­ra and his thugs. And watch­ing the yard from the walk­way above, like he was do­ing, it would take a cou­ple of min­utes at least to get down to the yard if any trou­ble erupt­ed.

There was on­ly one rea­son for an or­der like that. The drum­mer hadn’t worked—for some in­ex­pli­ca­ble rea­son, he’d ac­tu­al­ly grown qui­et—and now they were on to some­thing new.

He licked his lips and scanned the emp­ty yard: the bas­ket­ball hoop with no net, the par­al­lel bars, the quar­ter acre of as­phalt. Five min­utes un­til the ex­er­cise hour. Fecteau wasn’t ex­act­ly thrilled with the as­sign­ment. If any­body got killed, it would be his ass. And he sure didn’t rel­ish the thought of pulling Lacar­ra off some­one. On the oth­er hand, an­oth­er part of him rel­ished the thought of vi­olence. His heart rate ac­cel­er­at­ed with an­tic­ipa­tion and ap­pre­hen­sion.

At the ap­point­ed time, to the sec­ond, he heard the bolts shoot back, and the dou­ble doors to the yard opened. Two guards stepped in­to the weak sun­light, hooked the doors open, and stood on ei­ther side while Pocho am­bled out—al­ways first—his eyes squint­ing around the ce­ment yard, stroking the tuft of hair un­der his lip. He was wear­ing the stan­dard prison jump­suit, no coat de­spite the win­ter tem­per­ature. He turned as he walked, twist­ing the tuft of hair, mus­cles rip­pling un­der his sleeves. His shaved head gleamed dul­ly in the weak light and across his face, mak­ing his old ac­ne scars look like lu­nar craters.

Lacar­ra saun­tered in­to the cen­ter of the yard as the six oth­er in­mates filed out af­ter him, head­ing off in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions, strik­ing ca­su­al pos­es as they looked around, chew­ing gum, walk­ing aim­less­ly across the tar­mac. One guard tossed out a bas­ket­ball, which bounced to­ward one of the men; he flipped it up with his foot, caught it, then be­gan bounc­ing it idly.

A mo­ment lat­er, the new pris­on­er stepped out, tall and straight. He paused just be­yond the thresh­old, look­ing around, with a de­gree of ca­su­al­ness that made Fecteau tin­gle. The poor guy hadn’t a clue.

Pocho and his boys didn’t even seem to no­tice the new­com­er—ex­cept that they all stopped chew­ing. But on­ly for an in­stant. The ball con­tin­ued its steady bounce, like the slow beat­ing of a drum, bom . . . bom . . . bom. It was as if noth­ing out of the or­di­nary had hap­pened.

The mys­tery pris­on­er be­gan to walk along the cin­der-​block wall of the yard. As he walked, he looked about, face neu­tral, his moves easy and smooth. The oth­ers fol­lowed him with their eyes.

The yard was en­closed on three sides by the ce­ment walls of Herk­moor, with chain link topped by con­certi­na wire form­ing the fourth bar­ri­er at the far end. The pris­on­er walked along­side the wall un­til he came to the chain link, then turned to fol­low the line of the fence, star­ing out through it as he walked. Pris­on­ers, Fecteau had no­ticed, al­ways looked out or up—nev­er back in to­ward the grim build­ing. A guard tow­er dom­inat­ed the mid­dle dis­tance; and be­yond that, the tops of the trees rose above the prison’s out­er wall.

One of the de­liv­ery guards looked up, caught Fecteau’s eye, and shrugged as if to say, “What’s go­ing on?” Fecteau shrugged back and sig­naled them to leave, that the trans­fer of pris­on­ers to the yard was good. The two dis­ap­peared back in­to the build­ing, shut­ting the doors be­hind them.

Fecteau raised the ra­dio to his lips and spoke in a low tone. “You read­ing me, Doyle?”

“I read you.”

“You think­ing what I’m think­ing?”

“Yup.”

“We bet­ter be ready to run down there and break things up.”

“Ten-​four.”

They wait­ed. The sound of the bounc­ing ball con­tin­ued steadi­ly. No­body moved ex­cept the mys­tery pris­on­er, who con­tin­ued his slow per­am­bu­la­tion along the fence.

Bom . . . bom . . . bom, went the ball.

Doyle’s voice crack­led over the ra­dio again. “Hey, Ger­ry, this re­mind you of any­thing?”

“Like what?”

“You re­mem­ber the open­ing scene of The Good, the Bad, and the Ug­ly?”

“Yeah.”

“This is it.”

“Maybe. Ex­cept one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The out­come.”

Doyle snick­ered over the ra­dio. “Don’t wor­ry. Pocho wants his meat alive, on­ly ten­der­ized.”

Now Lacar­ra re­moved his hands from his pock­ets, straight­ened up, and pimp-​rolled over to a point on the fence thir­ty feet ahead of the pris­on­er. He hooked a hand on the chain link and watched the pris­on­er come to­ward him. In­stead of vary­ing his route to avoid Lacar­ra, the pris­on­er con­tin­ued his leisure­ly stroll, not paus­ing for an in­stant, un­til he had come right up to Lacar­ra. And then he spoke to him. Fecteau strained to hear.

“Good af­ter­noon,” said the pris­on­er.

Lacar­ra looked away. “Got a cigarette?”

“I’m sor­ry, I don’t smoke.”

Lacar­ra nod­ded, still look­ing off in­to the dis­tance, his eyes half closed, like two black slits. He be­gan stroking the tuft of hair, pulling his lip down with each stroke, ex­pos­ing a row of yel­low, bro­ken teeth.

“You don’t smoke,” Lacar­ra said qui­et­ly. “Isn’t that healthy.”

“I used to en­joy the oc­ca­sion­al cigar, but I quit when a friend of mine de­vel­oped can­cer. They had to cut off most of his low­er jaw, poor fel­low.”

At this, Lacar­ra’s head swiveled to­ward him, as if in slow mo­tion. “He must’ve been one ug­ly moth­er­fuck­er af­ter that.”

“It’s amaz­ing what they can do with plas­tic surgery these days.”

Lacar­ra turned. “Hey, you hear that, Rafe? This boy’s got a friend with no mouth.”

As if on cue, Lacar­ra’s gang start­ed to move again—all ex­cept the one with the ball. They be­gan drift­ing in, like wolves.

“I think I’ll con­tin­ue my walk now,” said the pris­on­er, mov­ing to one side.

With a ca­su­al step, Lacar­ra moved to block the pris­on­er’s path.

The pris­on­er paused, and fixed a pair of sil­very eyes on Lacar­ra. He said some­thing in a low voice that Fecteau didn’t catch.

Lacar­ra didn’t move, didn’t look at the pris­on­er. Af­ter a mo­ment he replied, “And what’s that?”

The pris­on­er spoke more clear­ly now. “I hope you’re not go­ing to make the sec­ond worst mis­take of your life.”

“What the fuck you talk­ing about, sec­ond mis­take? What’s the first mis­take?”

“Mur­der­ing those three in­no­cent chil­dren.”

There was an elec­tric si­lence. Fecteau shift­ed, stunned by what he had heard. The pris­on­er had bro­ken one of the most sa­cred rules of prison life—and what was more, had done it with Pocho Lacar­ra. And how in hell did he even know Lacar­ra? The man had been in soli­tary since he ar­rived. Fecteau tensed all over. Some­thing ter­ri­ble was go­ing to hap­pen—and it was go­ing to hap­pen soon.

Lacar­ra smiled, look­ing at him for the first time, show­ing more yel­low teeth with a gap in the top, and then, through that gap, he eject­ed a gob­bet of phlegm which hit the toe of the pris­on­er’s shoe with an au­di­ble smack. “Where’d you hear that?” he asked mild­ly.

“You tied them up first, though—big brave ma­cho hom­bre that you are. Wouldn’t want a sev­en-​year-​old girl to leave a scratch on that pret­ty face of yours. Eh, Pocho?”

Fecteau could hard­ly be­lieve his ears. This guy had a death wish for sure. Lacar­ra’s gang seemed equal­ly stu­pe­fied, un­sure how to re­spond, wait­ing for some kind of sig­nal.

Pocho be­gan to laugh: a slow, ug­ly laugh, full of men­ace. “Hey, Rafe,” he called over his shoul­der. “I don’t think this moth­er­fuck­er likes me, know what I mean?”

Rafe saun­tered over. “Oh, yeah?”

The pris­on­er said noth­ing. Now the oth­ers were still drift­ing in, like a pack of wolves. Fecteau felt his heart pound­ing in his chest.

“You hurt my feel­ings, man,” Pocho said to the pris­on­er.

“In­deed,” came the re­ply. “And what feel­ings are those?”

Pocho stepped back and Rafe came in, all slow and non­cha­lant, and then—fast as a spring-​load­ed trap—he swung on the pris­on­er’s gut.

The pris­on­er moved like a blur, one leg flash­ing out, and sud­den­ly Rafe was dou­bled up, on the ground. Then, with a hor­ri­ble suck­ing sound, he vom­it­ed.

“Knock it off!” Fecteau screamed down at them, rais­ing his ra­dio to call Doyle.

The oth­ers moved in fast while Pocho took an­oth­er step away, let­ting the oth­ers do the dirty work. Watch­ing, Fecteau was amazed, con­found­ed, to see the pris­on­er move in a way he nev­er thought pos­si­ble, faster than he thought pos­si­ble, some kind of mar­tial art he wasn’t fa­mil­iar with—but of course, he was up against six gang mem­bers who had spent their en­tire lives street-​fight­ing and no­body could hold up to that. As for the gang it­self, they were so sur­prised by the pris­on­er’s moves they had re­treat­ed, tem­porar­ily at bay. An­oth­er had fall­en be­side Rafe, stunned by a blow to the chin.

Fecteau turned and ran down the walk­way, yelling in­to his ra­dio for back­up. No way was he go­ing to break this up with just Doyle.

Lacar­ra’s voice rose up. “You gonna let this bitch kick your ass?”

The rest moved in and around. One lashed out and the pris­on­er spun, but it was a feint so an­oth­er could move in while a third struck him in the gut—get­ting him good this time. And now they all moved in, fists fly­ing, and the pris­on­er be­gan to strug­gle be­neath the blows.

Fecteau burst through the up­per doors, no longer able to see the yard, ran down the stairs, un­locked an­oth­er door, and dashed along the cor­ri­dor. Doyle was just ar­riv­ing, along with four oth­er back­up guards run­ning from the sta­tion, ri­ot sticks drawn. Fecteau un­locked the dou­ble doors to the yard and they jumped through.

“Hey! Cut the shit!” Fecteau screamed as they ran across the ce­ment to­ward a small knot of Lacar­ra’s men, hunched over an in­vis­ible fig­ure on the ground, kick­ing the crap out of it. Two oth­ers now lay on the ground near­by, while Lacar­ra him­self seemed to have dis­ap­peared.

“Enough!” Fecteau wad­ed in with Doyle and the oth­ers, grab­bing the col­lar of one thug and jerk­ing him back, whack­ing an­oth­er across the ear with his stick.

“Cut it! Enough!”

Doyle charged in be­side him, Taser in hand, and the oth­er guards wad­ed in as well. In less than thir­ty sec­onds, the in­mates had been re­strained. The spe­cial pris­on­er lay on his back, un­con­scious, the blood cov­er­ing his face a strik­ing con­trast to his skin, his pants near­ly torn off at the waist­band, his shirt split down the side.

One of the oth­er pris­on­ers was scream­ing hys­ter­ical­ly some­where in the back­ground. “You seen what that crazy fuck­er do? You seen that, man?”

“What’s hap­pen­ing, Fecteau?” came the war­den’s voice over the ra­dio. “What’s this about a fight?”

As if he didn’t know. “The new pris­on­er got nailed, sir.”

“What hap­pened to him?”

“We need EMTs!” one of the oth­er guards was call­ing in the back­ground. “We got at least three pris­on­ers hurt bad! EMTs!”

“Fecteau, are you there?” came Imhof’s stri­dent voice.

“Yeah, the new pris­on­er’s hurt, don’t know how bad, though.”

“Find out!”

“Yes, sir.”

“An­oth­er thing: I want the EMTs on the new pris­on­er first. You un­der­stand?”

“Copy, sir.”

Fecteau looked around. Where the hell was Pocho?

Then he saw the form of Pocho hud­dled in a frozen cor­ner of the yard, mo­tion­less.

“Oh, God,” he said. “Where are those EMTs? Get them here now!”

“Moth­er­fuck­er!” came the hys­ter­ical voice. “You seen what he done?”

“Se­cure the oth­ers,” Fecteau cried. “Hear me? Cuff them and get them the hell out of here in­to lock­down!”

It was an un­nec­es­sary or­der. The gang mem­bers who could still stand were al­ready be­ing marched to the yard door. The shout­ing fad­ed, leav­ing be­hind the high-​pitched whim­per­ing of one of the in­jured in­mates. Lacar­ra lay in grotesque im­ita­tion of a sup­pli­cant, knees and face in the snow, head twist­ed in an un­nat­ural an­gle. His mo­tion­less­ness creeped out Fecteau most of all.

The EMTs ar­rived, two of them, fol­lowed by two more wheel­ing stretch­ers. Fecteau point­ed to the spe­cial pris­on­er. “War­den wants him tak­en care of first.” “What about that one?” The EMTs had fixed their hor­ri­fied eyes on Lacar­ra. “Take care of the new pris­on­er first.”

Even as they worked on the new pris­on­er, Fecteau couldn’t take his eyes off Lacar­ra. And then, as if in slow mo­tion, Lacar­ra’s body be­gan to move, be­gan to top­ple on its side, where it lay, again un­mov­ing, the grin­ning face and wide-​open eyes now turned to the sky.

Fecteau raised the ra­dio to his lips, won­der­ing just what to tell the war­den. One thing was clear: Pocho Lacar­ra wasn’t like­ly to be mak­ing any­body his bitch, ev­er again.

31

On a cold March day, east­ern Long Is­land did not much look like the play­ground of the rich and fa­mous it was sup­posed to be. At least, that was Smith­back’s im­pres­sion as he cruised past yet an­oth­er mud­dy, stub­ble-​strewn pota­to field, a bedrag­gled flock of crows wheel­ing about over­head.

Since his meet­ing with Hay­ward, Smith­back had tried ev­ery­thing in his jour­nal­is­tic bag of tricks to find out more about Dio­genes. He’d writ­ten sug­ges­tive ar­ti­cles, hint­ing at im­mi­nent break­throughs and so­lic­it­ing tips. He’d poked around the mu­se­um, ask­ing ques­tions and sift­ing ru­mors. Noth­ing. Pen­der­gast re­mained in prison on charges of mur­der. Just as bad, Dio­genes re­mained ut­ter­ly van­ished, free. The im­age of Pen­der­gast’s broth­er at large and no doubt hatch­ing some fresh out­rage both an­gered and fright­ened Smith­back.

He wasn’t sure, ex­act­ly, when the idea had come to him. But come it had . . . and now he was driv­ing east­ward on the is­land, head­ing for a house that he hoped—rather fer­vent­ly hoped—was un­oc­cu­pied.

Chances were, he’d find noth­ing. Af­ter all, what could he find that the po­lice hadn’t? But it was the on­ly thing still left for him to do.

“In five hun­dred feet, turn right on Springs Road,” spoke a mel­liflu­ous fe­male voice from the dash­board.

“Thanks, Lavinia dar­ling,” Smith­back said with a jaun­ti­ness he didn’t feel.

“Turn right on Springs Road.”

Smith­back com­plied, swing­ing on­to a cracked macadam road sand­wiched be­tween more pota­to fields, shut­tered beach hous­es, and bare-​limbed trees. Be­yond lay a marsh of dead cat­tails and saw­grass. He passed a fad­ed wood­en sign in a pic­turesque state of di­lap­ida­tion. Wel­come to the Springs, it told him. This was an un­pre­ten­tious cor­ner of east­ern Long Is­land, on­ly faint­ly per­fumed with the odor of qui­et mon­ey.

“The town, my dear Lavinia, is small and un­re­mark­able, but not whol­ly with­out at­mo­sphere,” said Smith­back. “Wish you could see it.”

“In five hun­dred feet, turn right on Glover’s Box Road.”

“Very well.”

“Turn right on Glover’s Box Road,” came the smooth re­sponse.

“With a voice like that, you could make a for­tune in the phone sex busi­ness, you know that?” Smith­back was glad Lavinia was on­ly a voice in his dash­board. The GPS nav­iga­tion sys­tem couldn’t know just how ner­vous he felt.

He now found him­self on a broad sandy spit of land, beach hous­es on ei­ther side among scrag­gly pines, cat­tail marsh­es, and scrub. A gray sheet of wa­ter lay to his left: Gar­diners Bay. On his right was a bedrag­gled har­bor, shut up for the win­ter, the yachts gone in­to ten­der. “In three hun­dred feet, you will ar­rive at your des­ti­na­tion.”

Smith­back slowed. Ahead, he could see a sandy drive­way lead­ing through a sparse scat­ter­ing of oaks to end at a gray, shin­gled house. Po­lice sawhors­es had been placed across the drive­way, but there was no sign of a po­lice pres­ence. The house was shut up and dark.

The road curved past a few more hous­es, then end­ed in a loop where the spit came to an end. A sign to one side an­nounced a pub­lic beach. Smith­back pulled the car on­to the side of the loop—he was the on­ly one there—and stepped out, in­hal­ing the fresh cold air. He zipped his jack­et against the damp wind, shrugged his arms in­to a back­pack, picked up a rock from the ground, placed it in his pock­et, and strolled out on­to the beach. The small waves slopped and hissed up the strand in a reg­ular ca­dence. Strolling along, he picked up a few shells, tossed them back again, scuffed his sneak­ers along the sand, all the time mak­ing his way down the beach.

The hous­es stood just be­yond the be­gin­ning of the saw­grass and dunes: gray shin­gles and white trim, silent and board­ed up for the win­ter. The house he want­ed was easy to iden­ti­fy: pieces of yel­low crime scene tape still flut­tered from stakes driv­en in­to the un­kempt yard. It was a large house from the twen­ties, weath­er-​beat­en, with pitched roofs, a deep sea-​fac­ing porch, and two gables. Smith­back con­tin­ued past the house, but still there was no sign of any of­fi­cial pres­ence. Still kick­ing sand non­cha­lant­ly, he strolled up through the dunes and saw­grass, hopped over a split rail fence, ducked un­der the po­lice tape, and scoot­ed across the yard in­to the lee of the house.

He pressed him­self against the wall, hid­den from sight be­hind a half-​dead yew, and slipped on a pair of leather gloves. The house would be locked, of course. He edged around un­til he came to a side door, then peered in­side. He made out a tidy, old-​fash­ioned kitchen, de­void of the usu­al uten­sils.

Smith­back re­moved the rock from his pock­et, along with a hand­ker­chief. He wrapped the hand­ker­chief around the rock, gave the win­dow a smart rap.

Noth­ing hap­pened. He struck hard­er, this time mak­ing a fair­ly au­di­ble thump, but still it did not break.

He took a clos­er look at the glass and no­ticed some­thing un­usu­al: it was thick and blue­green in col­or, and the light di­viders were of paint­ed met­al, not wood.

Bul­let­proof glass?

Some­how, Smith­back wasn’t sur­prised. Dio­genes would have retrofitted the house to be im­preg­nable from the out­side as well as es­cape-​proof from the in­side.

He paused, hop­ing he hadn’t just wast­ed a three-​hour drive. Cer­tain­ly Dio­genes would have thought of ev­ery­thing—how could he have for­got­ten that? There was no point in prob­ing for weak­ness­es: there would be none.

On the oth­er hand, the po­lice might have left a door open.

Keep­ing hid­den in the shrub­bery, he crept around to the front porch. The door had crime scene tape stretched across it. He hopped on­to the porch, glanced up and down the road, then turned to ex­am­ine the door. This was how the cops had bro­ken in—the door frame had been bent by crow­bars and the door it­self was bowed, the lock shat­tered. It ap­peared as if a re­mark­able amount of force had been nec­es­sary. Hav­ing de­stroyed the door lock, the po­lice had af­fixed a pad­lock of their own, and this Smith­back ex­am­ined care­ful­ly. It was of case­hard­ened steel, too thick to cut with bolt cut­ters; but the fas­ten­ers had been screwed in­to fresh holes drilled in the met­al door.

Smith­back dipped in­to the leather back­pack and pulled out a Phillips-​head screw­driv­er. In five min­utes, he had un­screwed one side. He pulled the fas­ten­er back and eased open the bad­ly warped met­al door. In a mo­ment, he was in­side, the door shut be­hind him.

He paused for a mo­ment, rub­bing his hands to­geth­er. It was warm in the house—the heat was still on. He was stand­ing in a typ­ical beach-​house liv­ing room, with com­fort­able wick­er fur­ni­ture, braid­ed and hooked rugs scat­tered about the floor, a gam­ing ta­ble set for chess, a grand pi­ano in one cor­ner, and a huge fire­place built from beach stones in the far wall. The light in the house was a cu­ri­ous green from the thick-​glassed win­dows.

What was he look­ing for? He wasn’t sure. Some clue to where Dio­genes might be, per­haps, or un­der what oth­er iden­ti­ty or iden­ti­ties he might be hid­ing. He had a mo­ment’s feel­ing of dis­may, won­der­ing how he could pos­si­bly find some­thing that the po­lice had missed or that—even more im­prob­ably—Dio­genes him­self had over­looked. Of course, the man had left in a hur­ry, leav­ing be­hind a slew of equip­ment and ma­te­ri­al, enough for the po­lice to pos­itive­ly iden­ti­fy him as the mu­se­um di­amond thief. Even so, he had proved him­self to be not on­ly ex­cep­tion­al­ly in­tel­li­gent but al­so ex­cep­tion­al­ly care­ful. Dio­genes wasn’t the type to make mis­takes.

Walk­ing noise­less­ly, Smith­back moved through an arch­way in­to a din­ing room beau­ti­ful­ly pan­eled in oak, with a heavy ta­ble and Chip­pen­dale chairs. Paint­ings and prints hung on the dark red walls. A door in the far wall led to the tiny kitchen, al­so spot­less. The po­lice would not have cleaned the house: he fig­ured this was the way Dio­genes ha­bit­ual­ly kept it.

Back in the liv­ing room, Smith­back wan­dered to the pi­ano, hit a few keys. It was beau­ti­ful­ly in tune, the ham­mers work­ing smooth­ly.

Okay, that was one thing: Dio­genes played the pi­ano.

He looked at the mu­sic open on the stand: Schu­bert’s Im­promp­tus, opus 90. Un­der that, sheet mu­sic for De­bussy’s “Clair de Lune,” a book of Chopin’s noc­turnes. A rel­ative­ly ac­com­plished pi­anist at that, but prob­ably not at the con­cert lev­el.

Next to the pi­ano was an­oth­er arch­way, lead­ing in­to the li­brary. This room was un­ac­count­ably dis­or­dered. Books lay on the floor, some open, with gaps on the shelves. The rug was rum­pled and turned up at one end, and a ta­ble lamp lay bro­ken on the floor. A large ta­ble dom­inat­ed the mid­dle of the space, cov­ered with black vel­vet; above stood a row of bright spot­lights.

In one cor­ner, Smith­back saw some­thing that sent a shiv­er down his spine: a large, fine­ly ma­chined, stain­less-​steel anvil. Next to it lay some rum­pled rags and a strange kind of ham­mer made out of a gray, gleam­ing met­al—ti­ta­ni­um, per­haps?

Smith­back backed out of the li­brary, turned, and as­cend­ed the wood­en stairs. At the top was a land­ing with a long hall, paint­ings of seascapes on both walls. A small, stuffed ca­puchin mon­key crouched on a ta­ble, next to a glass dome un­der which stood a fake tree fes­tooned with but­ter­flies.

The doors to the rooms were all open.

Walk­ing in­to the room di­rect­ly at the top of the stairs, Smith­back re­al­ized it must have been the one where Vi­ola Maske­lene was held pris­on­er. The bed was in dis­ar­ray, there was a bro­ken glass on the floor, and some­one had scraped off the wall­pa­per on one wall, re­veal­ing met­al un­der­neath.

Met­al. Smith­back went over and care­ful­ly peeled off some more wall­pa­per. The walls were made of sol­id steel.

He shiv­ered again, feel­ing a creep­ing sen­sa­tion of alarm. The win­dow was of the same thick blue-​green glass as down­stairs, and was barred. The door, which he ex­am­ined next, was ex­treme­ly heavy, al­so of steel, and it moved noise­less­ly on over­size hinges. He peered at the lock—su­per­heavy ma­chined brass and stain­less steel.

Smith­back’s feel­ing of ner­vous­ness in­creased. What if Dio­genes came back? But of course he wouldn’t come back—that would be crazy. Un­less there was some­thing in the house he had for­got­ten . . .

He made a quick tour of the oth­er bed­rooms. On a hunch, he took his screw­driv­er and poked the wall of an­oth­er room. It, too, was steel.

Did Dio­genes plan to im­prison more than one per­son? Or was the whole house for­ti­fied like this as a mat­ter of course?

He skipped down­stairs, heart pound­ing in his chest. The whole place was giv­ing him the creeps. The day had proved a to­tal waste: he’d come out there with­out a re­al plan, with­out look­ing for any­thing spe­cif­ic. He won­dered if he should take notes—but of what? Maybe he should just for­get it and go vis­it Mar­go Green. He was al­ready out of the city. But that would be an equal­ly use­less jour­ney—she had tak­en an abrupt turn for the worse, he un­der­stood, and was now co­matose and un­re­spon­sive . . .

Sud­den­ly he froze. Soft foot­steps were mov­ing across the porch.

With a sud­den feel­ing of ter­ror, he ducked in­to the coat clos­et at the bot­tom of the stairs. He pushed his way to­ward the back, nestling him­self be­hind the row of cash­mere, camel’shair, and tweed coats. He could hear the rat­tle of the door, and then the groan as it slow­ly opened.

Dio­genes?

The clos­et was thick with the smell of wool. He could hard­ly breathe from fear.

Foot­steps moved qui­et­ly across the car­pet­ed en­try and in­to the liv­ing room, then stopped. Si­lence.

Smith­back wait­ed.

Next, the foot­steps moved in­to the din­ing room, then fad­ed away in­to the kitchen.

Should he run for it?

But even be­fore he could con­sid­er, the steps re­turned: slow, soft, de­lib­er­ate steps. Now they moved to­ward the li­brary, back out, and up the stairs.

Now. Smith­back flit­ted out of the clos­et, scur­ried across the liv­ing room, and dashed out the open door. As he round­ed the cor­ner of the porch, he saw that a cop car was stand­ing in the drive­way, en­gine run­ning, door open.

He skipped through the back­yard of the house next door and ran down on­to the beach, al­most laugh­ing with re­lief. What he had as­sumed was Dio­genes was on­ly a cop, com­ing to check on the place.

He got back in his car and spent a mo­ment re­cov­er­ing his breath. A wast­ed day. But at least he’d ex­it­ed the house in one piece.

He start­ed the car, turned on the nav­iga­tor.

“Where would you like to go?” came the smooth, sexy voice. “Please en­ter the ad­dress.”

Smith­back punched up the menu and chose the “Of­fice” op­tion. He knew his way back, but he liked lis­ten­ing to Lavinia.

“We are go­ing to the lo­ca­tion called Of­fice,” came the voice. “Pro­ceed north on Glover’s Box Road.”

“Righty-​o, dar­ling.”

He drove slow­ly and non­cha­lant­ly past the house. The cop was now out­side, stand­ing next to his cruis­er with a mike in his hand. He watched Smith­back drive by but made no move to stop him.

“In five hun­dred feet, turn left on Springs Road.”

Smith­back nod­ded. He raised a hand to brush away a wisp of tweed wool from his face. As he did so, he stiff­ened with an al­most elec­tric shock.

“That’s it, Lavinia!” he cried. “The coats in the clos­et!”

“Turn left on Springs Road.”

“There were two kinds of coats! Su­per-​ex­pen­sive cash­mere and mo­hair, and then a bunch of heavy, hairy, itchy tweed coats. Do you know of any­one who wears both? Hell, no!”

“Pro­ceed for one mile on Springs Road.”

“Dio­genes is the cash­mere-​and-​mo­hair type, for sure. That means his al­ter ego wears tweeds. He’s dis­guised as a pro­fes­so­ri­al type. It’s per­fect, Lavinia, it feels right. He’s a pro­fes­sor. No, wait! Not a pro­fes­sor, not ex­act­ly. Af­ter all, he knows the mu­se­um so well . . . The po­lice are say­ing the di­amond heist had to have had in­side help—but can you imag­ine Dio­genes en­list­ing help? Hell, it’s star­ing us right in the face. Holy shit, Lavinia: we nailed it! I nailed it!”

“In five hun­dred feet, take a left on the Old Stone High­way,” came the placid re­sponse.

32

What re­pelled Hay­ward most about the Belle­vue psych ward wasn’t the dingy, tiled cor­ri­dors, or the locked steel doors, or the min­gled smell of dis­in­fec­tant, vom­it, and ex­cre­ment. It was the sounds. They came from ev­ery­where—a ca­copho­ny of mut­ter­ings, shrill out­bursts, mono­ton­ic rep­eti­tions, glot­tal ex­plo­sions, whin­ing, soft high-​speed bab­blings: a sym­pho­ny of mis­ery, now and then punc­tu­at­ed by a cry so hideous, so full of de­spair, that it wrenched her heart.

Mean­while, Dr. Goshar Singh walked be­side her, speak­ing in a calm, ra­tio­nal voice as if he heard noth­ing—and maybe, she thought, he didn’t. If he did, he would no longer be sane him­self. It was that sim­ple.

Hay­ward tried to fo­cus on the doc­tor’s words. “In all my years of clin­ical psy­chi­atry,” he was say­ing, “I’ve nev­er seen any­thing quite like it. We’re try­ing to get a han­dle on it. We’ve made some progress, al­though not yet as much as I’d like.”

“It seems to have hap­pened so sud­den­ly.”

“The sud­den on­set is a puz­zling fea­ture, in­deed. Ah, yes, Cap­tain Hay­ward: here we are.” Singh un­locked a door and held it open, ush­er­ing Hay­ward in­to an al­most bare room, di­vid­ed in half by a long counter, a thick plate-​glass win­dow above sep­arat­ing it from the oth­er half—ex­act­ly like a vis­itors’ room at a prison. An in­ter­com was set in­to the glass.

“Dr. Singh,” said Hay­ward, “I re­quest­ed a face-​to-​face meet­ing.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be pos­si­ble,” Singh replied al­most sad­ly.

“I’m afraid it will be pos­si­ble. I can’t ques­tion a sus­pect un­der these con­di­tions.” Again, Singh shook his head sad­ly, his plump cheeks wag­ging. “No, no, we’re in charge

here, Cap­tain. And I think when you see the pa­tient, you’ll re­al­ize that it wouldn’t make a dif­fer­ence, no dif­fer­ence at all.”

Cap­tain Hay­ward said noth­ing. Now was not the time to fight with the doc­tors. She would eval­uate the sit­ua­tion and, if nec­es­sary, re­turn un­der her own con­di­tions.

“If you would care to have a seat?” Singh asked so­lic­itous­ly.

Hay­ward seat­ed her­self at the counter and the doc­tor set­tled in­to the seat be­side her. He glanced at his watch.

“The pa­tient will be out in five min­utes.”

“What kind of pre­lim­inary re­sults do you have?”

“As I say, it is a most puz­zling case. Most puz­zling in­deed.”

“Can you elab­orate?”

“The pre­lim­inary EEG showed sig­nif­icant fo­cal tem­po­ral ab­nor­mal­ities, and an MRI re­vealed a se­ries of small le­sions to the frontal cor­tex. It is these le­sions that seem to have trig­gered se­vere cog­ni­tive de­fects and psy­chopathol­ogy.”

“Can you trans­late that in­to En­glish?”

“The pa­tient seems to have suf­fered se­vere dam­age to the part of the brain that con­trols be­hav­ior, emo­tions, and plan­ning. The dam­age is most pro­nounced in an area of the brain we psy­chi­atrists some­times call the Hig­gin­bot­tom re­gion.”

“Hig­gin­bot­tom?”

Singh smiled at what was ev­ident­ly an in­side psy­chi­atric joke. “Eu­ge­nie Hig­gin­bot­tom worked on an as­sem­bly line in a ball-​bear­ing fac­to­ry in Lin­den, New Jer­sey. One day in 1913, there was a boil­er ex­plo­sion in the fac­to­ry. Blew apart the stam­per. It was as if a huge shot­gun shell had gone off: ball bear­ings flew ev­ery­where. Six peo­ple were killed. Eu­ge­nie Hig­gin­bot­tom mirac­ulous­ly sur­vived: but with some two dozen ball bear­ings em­bed­ded in the frontal cor­tex of her brain.”

“Go on.”

“Well, the poor wom­an suf­fered a com­plete per­son­al­ity change. She was in­stant­ly trans­formed from a kind, gen­tle per­son to a foul­mouthed slat­tern, giv­en to out­bursts of pro­fan­ity and vi­olence, a drunk­ard, and, ah, sex­ual­ly promis­cu­ous. Her friends were as­tound­ed. It un­der­scored the med­ical the­ory that per­son­al­ity is hard­wired in the brain and that dam­age can lit­er­al­ly trans­form one per­son in­to an­oth­er. The ball bear­ings, you see, de­stroyed Hig­gin­bot­tom’s ven­tro­me­di­al frontal cor­tex—the same area that is af­fect­ed in our pa­tient.”

“But there are no ball bear­ings in this man’s brain,” Hay­ward said. “What could have caused it?”

“This is the crux of the mat­ter. Ini­tial­ly, I hy­poth­esized a drug over­dose, but no drug residues were found in his sys­tem.”

“A blow to the head? A fall?”

“No. No ev­idence of coup/con­tre­coup, no ede­ma or bruis­ing. We’ve al­so ruled out a stroke: the dam­age was si­mul­ta­ne­ous in sev­er­al wide­ly sep­arat­ed ar­eas. The on­ly pos­si­ble ex­pla­na­tion I can come up with is an elec­tri­cal shock ad­min­is­tered di­rect­ly to the brain. If on­ly we had a dead body—an au­top­sy would show so much more.”

“Wouldn’t a shock leave burn marks?”

“Not a low-​volt­age, high-​am­per­age shock—such as one gen­er­at­ed by elec­tron­ic or com­put­er equip­ment. But there’s no dam­age any­where but to the brain. It’s hard to see how such a shock might have oc­curred, un­less our pa­tient was per­form­ing some kind of bizarre ex­per­iment on him­self.”

“The man was a com­put­er tech­ni­cian in­stalling an ex­hib­it at the mu­se­um.”

“So I’ve heard.”

An in­ter­com chimed, and a voice sound­ed soft­ly. “Dr. Singh? The pa­tient is ar­riv­ing.”

Be­yond the glass win­dow, a door opened, and a mo­ment lat­er Jay Lip­per was wheeled in. He sat in a wheelchair, re­strained. He was mak­ing slow cir­cles with his head, and his lips were mov­ing, but no sound came out.

His face was shock­ing. It was as if it had caved in, the skin gray and slack and hang­ing in leath­ery folds, the eyes jit­tery and un­fo­cused, the tongue hang­ing out, as long and pink and wet as that of an over­heat­ed re­triev­er.

“Oh my God . . . ,” Hay­ward said in­vol­un­tar­ily.

“He’s heav­ily se­dat­ed, for his own safe­ty. We’re still try­ing to ad­just the meds, find the right com­bi­na­tion.”

“Right.” Hay­ward looked at her notes. Then she leaned for­ward, pressed the talk switch on the in­ter­com. “Jay Lip­per?”

The head con­tin­ued its slow or­bit.

“Jay? Can you hear me?”

Was there a hes­ita­tion there? Hay­ward leaned for­ward, speak­ing soft­ly in­to the in­ter­com.

“Jay? My name is Lau­ra Hay­ward. I’m here to help you. I’m your friend.”

More slow rolling.

“Can you tell me what hap­pened at the mu­se­um, Jay?”

The rolling con­tin­ued. A long gob­bet of sali­va, which had gath­ered on the tip of his tongue, dripped to the floor in a foamy thread.

Hay­ward leaned back and looked to­ward the doc­tor. “Have his par­ents been in?”

Singh bowed. “Yes, they were here. And a very painful scene it was.”

“Did he re­spond?”

“That was the on­ly time he’s re­spond­ed, and then on­ly briefly. He emerged from his in­ner world for less than two sec­onds.”

“What did he say?”

“‘This isn’t me.’”

“‘This isn’t me?’ Any idea what he meant by that?”

“Well . . . I imag­ine he re­tains some faint rec­ol­lec­tion of who he was, along with a vague re­al­iza­tion of what he’s be­come.”

“And then?”

Singh seemed em­bar­rassed. “He be­came sud­den­ly vi­olent. He said he was go­ing to kill them both and . . . rip out their guts. He had to be fur­ther se­dat­ed.”

Hay­ward glanced at him a mo­ment longer. Then, thought­ful­ly, she turned back to­ward Lip­per, still rolling his head, his glassy eyes a mil­lion miles away.

33

He got in­to a fight with Car­los Lacar­ra,” Imhof told Spe­cial Agent Cof­fey as they strode down the long, echo­ing cor­ri­dors of Herk­moor. “Lacar­ra’s friends weighed in, and by the time the guards broke it up, a cer­tain amount of dam­age had been done.”

Cof­fey lis­tened to the pub­lic recita­tion of events with Ra­bin­er at his side. Two prison guards walk­ing be­hind com­plet­ed the en­tourage. They round­ed a cor­ner and con­tin­ued down an­oth­er long cor­ri­dor.

“What kind of dam­age?”

“Lacar­ra’s dead,” said the war­den. “Bro­ken neck. Don’t know what hap­pened, ex­act­ly—not yet. None of the pris­on­ers are talk­ing.”

Cof­fey nod­ded.

“Your pris­on­er got pret­ty banged up—mild con­cus­sion, con­tu­sions, bruised kid­ney, a cou­ple of cracked ribs, and a shal­low punc­ture wound.”

“Punc­ture wound?”

“Seems some­body shanked him. That was the on­ly weapon re­cov­ered at the scene of the fight. All in all, he’s lucky to be alive.” Imhof coughed del­icate­ly and added, “He cer­tain­ly didn’t look like a fight­er.”

“And my man is back in his cell, as per my or­ders?”

“Yes. The doc­tor wasn’t hap­py.”

They cleared a se­cu­ri­ty gate, and Imhof keyed an el­eva­tor for them. “At any rate,” he said, “I ex­pect he’ll be a lot more amenable to ques­tion­ing now.”

“You didn’t se­date him, did you?” Cof­fey asked as the el­eva­tor chimed open.

“We don’t ha­bit­ual­ly dis­pense seda­tives here at Herk­moor—po­ten­tial for abuse and all that.”

“Good. We don’t want to waste our time with a nod­ding veg­etable.”

The el­eva­tor rose to the third floor, open­ing on­to a pair of steel doors. Imhof swiped a card and punched in a code and they slid back, re­veal­ing a cin­der-​block cor­ri­dor, paint­ed stark white, with white doors on ei­ther side. Each door had a tiny square win­dow and a foot slot.

“Herk­moor Soli­tary,” Imhof said. “He’s in cell 44. Nor­mal­ly, I’d es­cort him to a vis­it­ing room, but in this case he’s not ex­act­ly mo­bile.”

“I’d rather speak to him in his cell, any­way. With the guards on hand . . . in case he should be­come ag­gres­sive.”

“Not much chance of that.” Imhof leaned for­ward and low­ered his voice. “I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, Agent Cof­fey, but I would imag­ine that any sug­ges­tion that he might be put back in yard 4 for ex­er­cise would get him talk­ing a mile a minute.” Cof­fey nod­ded.

They ap­proached the cell door and one of the guards gave it sev­er­al whacks with his ri­ot stick. “Make your­self pret­ty, you got a vis­itor!”

Whang, whang! went the night­stick against the door. The guard re­moved his weapon and stood aside while the oth­er un­locked the door and glanced in. “All clear,” he said.

The first guard hol­stered his weapon and stepped in­side.

“How much time do you need?” Imhof asked.

“An hour should do it. I’ll have the guard call you when we’re done.”

Cof­fey wait­ed un­til Imhof was gone, then he stepped in­to the small im­mac­ulate cell, fol­lowed by Ra­bin­er. The sec­ond guard closed the door from the out­side and locked it, prepar­ing to stand watch.

The pris­on­er lay on the nar­row bed, propped up on a thin pil­low, dressed in a fresh jump­suit so or­ange it al­most glowed. Cof­fey was shocked by his ap­pear­ance—head ban­daged, one eye swollen shut and the oth­er dark, the en­tire face a palette of black, blue, and green. Be­hind the puffy slit in the pris­on­er’s good eye, Cof­fey could see the glit­ter of sil­ver.

“Agent Cof­fey?” the guard asked. “Do you want a chair?”

“No, I’ll stand.” He turned to Ra­bin­er. “Ready?”

Ra­bin­er had re­moved a mi­cro­cas­sette recorder. “Yes, sir.”

Cof­fey fold­ed his arms and looked down at the bat­tered and ban­daged pris­on­er. He grinned. “What hap­pened to you? Try to kiss the wrong guy?”

No an­swer, but then, Cof­fey ex­pect­ed none.

“Let’s get down to busi­ness.” He took out a sheet of pa­per with his no­ta­tions. “Roll the tape. This is Spe­cial Agent Spencer Cof­fey, in prison cell num­ber C3-44 at Herk­moor Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al and Hold­ing Fa­cil­ity, in­ter­view­ing the pris­on­er iden­ti­fied as A. X. L. Pen­der­gast. The date is March 20.”

A si­lence.

“Can you talk?”

To Cof­fey’s sur­prise, the man said, “Yes.” His voice was bare­ly a whis­per and a lit­tle thick on ac­count of his puffy lips.

Cof­fey smiled. This was a promis­ing be­gin­ning. “I’d like to get this over with as soon as pos­si­ble.”

“Like­wise.”

It seemed the soft­en­ing up had worked even bet­ter than he had an­tic­ipat­ed.

“All right, then. I’m go­ing to re­turn to my pre­vi­ous line of ques­tion­ing. This time I ex­pect a re­sponse. As I’ve al­ready ex­plained, the ev­idence puts you in Deck­er’s house at the time of the killing. It pro­vides means, mo­tive, and op­por­tu­ni­ty, and a di­rect link be­tween you and the mur­der weapon.”

The pris­on­er said noth­ing, so Cof­fey con­tin­ued.

“Point one: the foren­sic team re­cov­ered half a dozen long black fibers at the crime scene, which we found came from a high­ly un­usu­al cash­mere/meri­no blend­ed Ital­ian fab­ric made in the 1950s. An anal­ysis of the suits in your wardrobe in­di­cate that all of them were made from the same fab­ric, even the very same bolt of cloth.

“Point two: at the scene of the crime, we found three hairs, one with root. A PCR anal­ysis proved it matched your DNA to a prob­abil­ity of er­ror of one in six­teen bil­lion.

“Point three: a wit­ness, a neigh­bor of Deck­er’s, ob­served a pale-​com­plect­ed in­di­vid­ual in a black suit en­ter­ing Deck­er’s house nine­ty min­utes be­fore the mur­der. In no less than three pho­to line­ups, he pos­itive­ly and cat­egor­ical­ly iden­ti­fied you as that per­son. As a mem­ber of the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, he is about as unim­peach­able a wit­ness as you could find.”

If the pris­on­er sneered mo­men­tar­ily, it hap­pened so fast that Cof­fey wasn’t sure he had seen it at all. He took a mo­ment to read the man’s face, but it was im­pos­si­ble to dis­cern any kind of emo­tion in a face so swollen and ban­dage-​cov­ered. All he could re­al­ly see of the man was the sil­ver glit­ter be­hind the slit­ted eye. It made him un­easy.

“You’re an FBI agent. You know the ropes.” He shook the piece of pa­per at Pen­der­gast. “You’re go­ing to be con­vict­ed. If you want to avoid the nee­dle, you’d bet­ter start co­op­er­at­ing, and co­op­er­at­ing now.”

He stood there, breath­ing hard, star­ing at the ban­daged pris­on­er.

The pris­on­er gazed back. Af­ter a mo­ment, he spoke.

“I con­grat­ulate you,” he said. His slurred voice sound­ed sub­mis­sive, even ob­se­quious.

“May I make a sug­ges­tion, Pen­der­gast? Con­fess and throw your­self at the mer­cy of the court. It’s your on­ly op­tion—and you know it. Con­fess, and save us the shame of see­ing one of our own dragged through a pub­lic tri­al. Con­fess, and we’ll get you trans­ferred out of yard 4.”

An­oth­er brief si­lence.

“Would you con­sid­er a plea bar­gain?” Pen­der­gast asked.

Cof­fey grinned, feel­ing a flush of tri­umph. “With ev­idence like this? Not a chance. Your on­ly hope, Pen­der­gast—and I re­peat—is to store up a bit of good­will with a nice, round con­fes­sion. It’s now or nev­er.”

Pen­der­gast seemed to con­sid­er this for a mo­ment. Then he stirred on the cot. “Very well,” he said.

Cof­fey broke in­to a smile.

“Spencer Cof­fey,” Pen­der­gast went on, hon­eyed voice drip­ping with ob­se­quious­ness, “I have watched your progress in the Bu­reau for al­most ten years, and I con­fess I’ve been amazed by it.”

He paused to breathe in.

“I knew from the be­gin­ning you were a spe­cial, even unique in­di­vid­ual. You—what is the term?—nailed me.”

Cof­fey felt his smile broad­en. This was good; this was the mo­ment of hu­mil­ia­tion against a hat­ed ri­val that most peo­ple on­ly dreamed about.

“Re­mark­able work, Spencer. May I call you Spencer? Peer­less, I might even say.”

Cof­fey wait­ed for the con­fes­sion he was now cer­tain was com­ing. The poor bas­tard thought flat­ter­ing him would gain some sym­pa­thy. That’s what they all did: Oh, you’re so clever to have caught me. He ges­tured be­hind his back for Ra­bin­er to move clos­er with the recorder, not to miss a word. The beau­ty of it was, Pen­der­gast was on­ly dig­ging his own grave deep­er. There would be no mer­cy, even with a con­fes­sion: not for the man re­spon­si­ble for mur­der­ing a top FBI agent. A con­fes­sion would shave ten years off his death-​penal­ty ap­peals—that was all.

“I’ve been lucky enough to wit­ness some of your work in per­son. For ex­am­ple, your per­for­mance dur­ing that har­row­ing night of the mu­se­um mas­sacre many years ago, man­ning the mo­bile com­mand sta­tion. That was tru­ly un­for­get­table.”

Cof­fey felt a stir­ring of un­ease. He didn’t re­mem­ber much from that aw­ful night—to be truth­ful, it hadn’t been his best mo­ment. But then, maybe he was just be­ing too hard on him­self, as usu­al.

“I re­mem­ber that night vivid­ly,” Pen­der­gast went on. “You were in the thick of it, nerves of steel, bark­ing or­ders.”

Cof­fey shift­ed. He wished the man would get on with the con­fes­sion. This was get­ting a bit maudlin. Pa­thet­ic how quick­ly the man had been re­duced to grov­el­ing.

“I felt bad about what hap­pened af­ter­ward. You didn’t de­serve that re­as­sign­ment to Wa­co. It wasn’t fair. And then, when you mis­took that teenag­er car­ry­ing home a prize cat­fish for a Branch Da­vid­ian ter­ror­ist with an RPG—well, that could have hap­pened to any­body. Luck­ily, your first shot missed and your part­ner was able to tack­le you be­fore you squeezed off a sec­ond—al­though per­haps the teenag­er was in lit­tle dan­ger, since I un­der­stand you came in dead last in your Firearms Train­ing Unit at the Acade­my.”

The segue had hap­pened so smooth­ly, Pen­der­gast’s tone of voice nev­er vary­ing from its whin­ing sub­mis­sive­ness, that it took Cof­fey a mo­ment to re­al­ize the ef­fu­sive praise had mor­phed in­to some­thing else. The sti­fled snick­er of the guard stung him to the quick. “I hap­pened up­on a Bu­reau study of the Wa­co field of­fice while it was un­der your benev­olent lead­er­ship. It seems your of­fice en­joyed be­ing at the top of sev­er­al lists. For ex­am­ple, the small­est num­ber of cas­es suc­cess­ful­ly closed for three years run­ning. The largest num­ber of agents re­quest­ing trans­fers. The most in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions for in­com­pe­tence or ethics vi­ola­tions. One could ar­gue that your be­ing trans­ferred back to New York could not have come at a more con­ve­nient time. So nice to have an ex-​U.S. sen­ator for a fa­ther-​in-​law, Spencer, is it not?”

Cof­fey turned to Ra­bin­er and said, as calm­ly as pos­si­ble, “Turn it off.”

“Yes, sir.”

Pen­der­gast didn’t pause, al­though his voice changed in tone to cool sar­casm. “How’s the PTSD treat­ment com­ing, by the way? I un­der­stand they’ve got a new ap­proach that works won­ders.”

Cof­fey ges­tured to the guard and said, with an ef­fort at de­tach­ment, “I can see that fur­ther ques­tion­ing of the pris­on­er is point­less. Open the door, please.”

Even as the guard out­side fum­bled with the door, Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued speak­ing.

“On an­oth­er note, know­ing your love of great lit­er­ature, I rec­om­mend to you Shake­speare’s mar­velous com­edy Much Ado About Noth­ing. Par­tic­ular­ly the char­ac­ter of Con­sta­ble Dog­ber­ry. You could learn much from him, Spencer. Much.”

The cell door opened. Cof­fey glanced at the two guards, their ex­pres­sions stu­dious­ly neu­tral. Then, straight­en­ing his back, he pro­ceed­ed down the cor­ri­dor to­ward the soli­tary con­fine­ment se­cu­ri­ty doors, Ra­bin­er and the guards fol­low­ing in si­lence.

It took al­most ten min­utes of walk­ing through end­less cor­ri­dors to reach Imhof’s of­fice, lo­cat­ed in a sun­ny cor­ner of the ad­min­is­tra­tive build­ing. By that time, some of the col­or had re­turned to Cof­fey’s face.

“Wait out­side,” he told Ra­bin­er, then marched stiffly past the ob­nox­ious sec­re­tary, en­tered Imhof’s of­fice, and shut the door.

“How did it—?” Imhof be­gan, but fell silent when he saw Cof­fey’s face.

“Put him back in yard 4,” Cof­fey said. “To­mor­row.”

Sur­prise blos­somed on the war­den’s face. “Agent Cof­fey, when I men­tioned that ear­li­er, it was sug­gest­ed mere­ly as a threat. If you put him back there, they’ll kill him.”

“So­cial con­flicts among pris­on­ers are their busi­ness, not ours. You as­signed this pris­on­er to ex­er­cise in yard 4, and yard 4 is where he will stay. To move him now would be to let him win.”

Imhof be­gan to speak, but Cof­fey cut him off with a sharp ges­ture. “Lis­ten to me well, Imhof. I’m giv­ing you a di­rect, of­fi­cial de­mand. The pris­on­er stays in yard 4. The FBI will take full re­spon­si­bil­ity.”

There was a si­lence.

“I’ll need that in writ­ing,” said Imhof at last. Cof­fey nod­ded. “Just tell me where to sign.”

34

Dr. Adri­an Wicher­ly walked through the de­sert­ed Egyp­tian gallery, feel­ing a cer­tain smug sat­is­fac­tion at the spe­cial as­sign­ment Men­zies had charged him with—him, and not No­ra Kel­ly. He flushed at the thought of the way she had led him on and then hu­mil­iat­ed him; he had heard that Amer­ican wom­en liked to burst one’s bol­locks, and now he’d had a taste of it, good and prop­er. The wom­an was as com­mon as muck.

Well, he would be back in Lon­don soon enough, his C.V. nice­ly buffed up from this plum lit­tle as­sign­ment. His thoughts strayed to all the young, ea­ger do­cents who vol­un­teered at the British Mu­se­um—they had al­ready proved to be de­light­ful­ly flex­ible in their think­ing. A pox on Amer­ican wom­en and their hyp­ocrit­ical pu­ri­tan­ical moral­ism.

On top of that, No­ra Kel­ly was bossy. Al­though he was the Egyp­tol­ogist, she had nev­er re­lin­quished the rid­ing crop; she had al­ways re­mained firm­ly in charge. Al­though he had been hired to write the script for the sound-​and-​light ex­trav­agan­za, she had in­sist­ed on proof­read­ing it, mak­ing changes, and in gen­er­al mak­ing a bloody nui­sance of her­self. What was she do­ing work­ing in a big mu­se­um, any­way, when she re­al­ly should be tucked away in some semide­tached house in the sub­urbs with a pack of squalling brats? Who was this hus­band she was al­leged­ly so loy­al to? Maybe the prob­lem was she was roger­ing some­one on the side al­ready. Yes, that was prob­ably it . . .

Wicher­ly ar­rived at the an­nex and paused. It was very late—Men­zies had been quite in­sis­tent on the time—and the mu­se­um was al­most un­nat­ural­ly silent. He lis­tened to that si­lence. There were some sounds—but what, ex­act­ly, he couldn’t say. A faint sigh­ing some­where of . . . what? Forced-​air ducts? And then a slow, me­thod­ical tick­ing: tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . ev­ery two or three sec­onds, like a mori­bund clock. There were al­so faint thumps and groans, which could be ducts or some­thing to do with the mu­se­um’s me­chan­ical sys­tems.

Wicher­ly smoothed down his thatch of hair, glanc­ing around ner­vous­ly. They had caught the killer the day be­fore and there was noth­ing to wor­ry about. Noth­ing. Strange, though, what had hap­pened to Lip­per . . . typ­ical smart-​ar­sed New York­er, one wouldn’t have thought he would snap like that. Well, they were all a lit­tle tense. These Amer­icans worked them­selves half to death—he couldn’t be­lieve the hours they worked. Back at the British Mu­se­um, such de­mands would be looked on as down­right un­civ­ilized, if not il­le­gal. Look at him now, for ex­am­ple: three o’clock in the bloody morn­ing. Of course, giv­en the na­ture of Men­zies’s as­sign­ment, it was un­der­stand­able.

Wicher­ly swiped his card through the read­er at­tached to the wall, punched in his code, and the gleam­ing new stain­less-​steel doors to the Tomb of Senef opened with a whis­per of well-​ma­chined met­al. The tomb ex­haled the scent of dry stone, epoxy glue, dust, and warm elec­tron­ics. The lights came up au­to­mat­ical­ly. Noth­ing had been left to chance; ev­ery­thing was now ful­ly pro­grammed. A back­up tech to suc­ceed poor Lip­per had al­ready re­port­ed for du­ty, but so far had proved su­per­flu­ous. The grand open­ing was on­ly five days away, and al­though the tomb’s col­lec­tions were on­ly par­tial­ly in­stalled, the light­ing, elec­tron­ics, and the sound-​and-​light show were ready to go.

Still, Wicher­ly hes­itat­ed. His eye strayed down the long, slop­ing stair­case to the cor­ri­dor be­yond. He felt a small tin­gle of ap­pre­hen­sion. Try­ing to shake it off, he stepped in­side and walked down the stairs, his ox­fords mak­ing a chuff-​chuff sound on the worn stones.

At the first door, he paused, al­most against his will, glance ar­rest­ed by the great Eye of Ho­rus and the hi­ero­glyphs be­low. To any who cross this thresh­old, may Am­mut swal­low his heart. It was a stan­dard enough curse; he had en­tered a hun­dred tombs un­der a sim­ilar threat, and nev­er once had it put the wind up him. But the im­age of Am­mut on the far wall was un­usu­al­ly hideous. And then, there was the strange, dark his­to­ry of the tomb, not to men­tion the busi­ness with Lip­per . . .

The an­cient Egyp­tians be­lieved in the mag­ical pow­ers of the in­can­ta­tions and im­ages writ­ten on tomb walls, es­pe­cial­ly in the Book of the Dead. These were not mere dec­ora­tion: they had a pow­er against which the liv­ing were help­less. In study­ing Egypt for so long, in learn­ing to read hi­ero­glyph­ics flu­ent­ly, in im­mers­ing him­self in their an­cient be­liefs, Wicher­ly had come to half be­lieve them him­self. Of course, they were all rub­bish, but at one lev­el he un­der­stood them so thor­ough­ly they al­most seemed re­al.

And nev­er had they seemed more re­al than at that mo­ment: es­pe­cial­ly the squat­ting, grotesque form of Am­mut, its slaver­ing crocodile jaws open and glis­ten­ing, the scaly head mor­ph­ing in­to a leop­ard’s spot­ted body, which in turn segued in­to the hindquar­ters of a hip­po. Those hindquar­ters were the most vile of all: a bloat­ed, slimy, mis­shapen fun­da­ment spread­ing over the ground. All three an­imals, Wicher­ly knew, were com­mon killers of peo­ple dur­ing the time of the pharaohs, and great­ly feared. A mon­strous amal­ga­ma­tion of all three was the worst crea­ture the an­cient Egyp­tians could imag­ine.

Shak­ing his head and forc­ing a rue­ful chuck­le, Wicher­ly walked on. He was let­ting him­self get spooked by his own eru­di­tion, by all the ridicu­lous talk and sil­ly ru­mors cir­cu­lat­ing through the mu­se­um. Af­ter all, this was not some tomb lost in the wastes of the Up­per Nile: one of the biggest, most mod­ern cities in the world was sit­ting right on top of him. Even as he stood there, he heard the dis­tant, muf­fled rum­ble of a late-​night sub­way. It an­noyed him: de­spite all their ef­forts, they had been un­able to block out to­tal­ly the sound of the Cen­tral Park West sub­way.

He crossed the well and glanced up at the dense script from the Book of the Dead, his eye ar­rest­ed by the odd in­scrip­tion that he had so cav­alier­ly dis­missed dur­ing his first vis­it:

The place which is sealed. That which li­eth down in the closed place is re­born by the Ba­soul which is in it; that which walketh in the closed space is dis­pos­sessed of the Ba-​soul. By the Eye of Ho­rus I am de­liv­ered or damned, O great god Osiris.

Like many in­scrip­tions from the Book of the Dead, it was well-​nigh opaque. But as he read it a sec­ond time, a glim­mer of un­der­stand­ing came to him. The an­cients be­lieved peo­ple had five dis­tinct souls. The Ba-​soul was the in­ef­fa­ble pow­er and per­son­al­ity each per­son pos­sessed: this soul flew back and forth be­tween the tomb and the un­der­world, and it was the means by which the de­ceased kept in touch with the un­der­world. But the Ba-​soul had to re­unite with the mum­mi­fied corpse ev­ery night, or the de­ceased would die again: this time per­ma­nent­ly.

The pas­sage, it seemed to Wicher­ly, im­plied that those who in­vad­ed the place which was sealed—the tomb—would be de­prived of their Ba-​soul and thus damned by the Eye of Ho­rus. In an­cient Egypt, the in­sane were con­sid­ered to be peo­ple who had some­how lost their Ba­soul. In oth­er words, those who de­filed the tomb would be driv­en in­sane.

Wicher­ly shiv­ered. Isn’t that just what had hap­pened to that poor bug­ger Lip­per? Sud­den­ly he found him­self laugh­ing out loud, his voice echo­ing un­pleas­ant­ly in the close con­fines of the tomb. What was the mat­ter with him? He was be­com­ing as su­per­sti­tious as a bloody Irish­man. He gave his head an­oth­er, more vig­or­ous shake and pro­ceed­ed in­to the in­ner tomb. He had work to do. He had a spe­cial er­rand to run for Dr. Men­zies.

35

No­ra un­locked her of­fice door, laid her lap­top and mail on the desk, then shrugged out of her coat and hung it up. It was a cold, sun­ny late-​March morn­ing, and yel­low light streamed in the win­dow, mak­ing an al­most hor­izon­tal bar of gold light, rak­ing the spines of the books crowd­ing the shelves along the op­po­site wall.

Four more days un­til the open­ing, she thought with sat­is­fac­tion, and then she could get back to her pot­sherds—and her hus­band, Bill. Be­cause of her long hours at the mu­se­um, their love­mak­ing had been so scarce of late he’d even stopped both­er­ing to com­plain. Four more days. It had been a long, stress­ful haul—and bizarre even by mu­se­um stan­dards—but it was al­most over. And who knew? The open­ing might ac­tu­al­ly be fun. She’d be tak­ing Bill, and she knew how much he liked a good gorge—and the mu­se­um, for all its short­com­ings, knew how to throw a par­ty.

She set­tled at her desk and had just be­gun slit­ting open the let­ters when a knock sound­ed at the door.

“Come in,” she said, won­der­ing who else would be in so ear­ly—it was bare­ly eight o’clock.

The avun­cu­lar form of Men­zies ap­peared in the door­way, his blue eyes wor­ried, his brow fur­rowed with con­cern.

“May I?” he asked, ges­tur­ing at the guest chair.

“Please.”

He came in and sat down, fold­ing one leg over the oth­er and tug­ging at the crease in his her­ring­bone slacks. “You haven’t seen Adri­an, have you?”

“No. But it’s very ear­ly, he prob­ably isn’t in yet.”

“That’s just the thing. He did come in: at three this morn­ing. Checked in through se­cu­ri­ty and ac­cessed the tomb, ac­cord­ing to the elec­tron­ic se­cu­ri­ty logs. Then he left the tomb at three-​thir­ty, locked it up tight. Strange thing is, he didn’t leave the mu­se­um—he hasn’t checked out. Se­cu­ri­ty shows him as still on the premis­es, but he’s not in his of­fice or lab. In fact, I can’t find him any­where. I thought per­haps he might have said some­thing to you.”

“No, noth­ing. Do you know why he came in at three?”

“He might have want­ed to get a head start on the day: as you know, we have to start mov­ing in the fi­nal ar­ti­facts at nine. I’ve got the car­pen­ters, the Ex­hi­bi­tion De­part­ment, and the con­ser­va­tion staff all mo­bi­lized. But no Adri­an. I can’t be­lieve he would just van­ish like this.”

“He’ll show up. He’s al­ways been re­li­able.”

“I should hope so.”

“I should hope so, too,” came an­oth­er voice.

No­ra glanced up, star­tled. Wicher­ly stood in the door­way, look­ing at her.

Men­zies seemed star­tled him­self and then smiled with re­lief. “There you are! I was start­ing to get wor­ried.”

“No need to wor­ry about me.”

Men­zies rose. “Well then, much ado about noth­ing. Adri­an, I’d like to have a chat with you in my of­fice about the ar­ti­fact place­ments. We have a big day ahead of us.”

“Mind if I have a word with No­ra first? I’ll see you in a few min­utes.”

“Fine.” Men­zies left and shut the door be­hind him.

Wicher­ly sat him­self down, un­in­vit­ed, in the wing chair Men­zies had just va­cat­ed. No­ra felt a twitch of an­noy­ance. She hoped he wasn’t go­ing to re­peat his asi­nine be­hav­ior of the pre­vi­ous week.

When he spoke again, his voice was laced with sar­casm. “Wor­ry­ing that I might try to slip some­thing un­wel­come in­to your knick­ers?”

“Adri­an, I don’t have time for this. I’ve got a busy day ahead of me, and so do you. Give it a rest.”

“Not af­ter your abom­inable be­hav­ior.”

“My be­hav­ior?” No­ra took a breath: this was not the time to get in­to it. “The door is over there. Please use it.”

“Not un­til we set­tle this thing.”

No­ra looked at Wicher­ly more close­ly, feel­ing a twinge of alarm. She was sud­den­ly struck by how tired he looked—wiped out, even. His face was white; gray pouch­es had formed un­der his blue eyes; and his hair was damp and dis­or­dered. Most sur­pris­ing of all, his suit and tie, al­ways im­mac­ulate, looked un­tidy, even di­sheveled. Beads of sweat stood on his brow.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine!” But as he spoke, one side of his face sud­den­ly con­tract­ed in a grotesque twitch.

“Adri­an, I hon­est­ly think you need a break. You’ve been work­ing too hard.” She kept her voice calm and cool. As soon as he left, she would call Men­zies and sug­gest he or­der Wicher­ly home for the day. Much as they need­ed his ex­per­tise—and de­spite his ob­nox­ious be­hav­ior, he’d proved in­valu­able—they couldn’t af­ford a crack-​up just be­fore the open­ing.

His face twitched again, a hor­ri­ble mus­cu­lar con­trac­tion that screwed his hand­some fea­tures in­to a brief gri­mace be­fore al­low­ing them to spring back in­to nor­mal­cy.

“Why did you ask me that, No­ra? Don’t I seem all right?”

His voice had risen in vol­ume. She no­ticed his hands were grip­ping the arm of the chair so hard that the fin­ger­nails were dig­ging in­to the fab­ric.

No­ra rose from her seat. “You know, with all your hard work, I re­al­ly think you’ve earned a day off.” She de­cid­ed she wouldn’t even check with Men­zies: she was the cu­ra­tor of the show, and she was go­ing to send him home. Wicher­ly was in no con­di­tion to be su­per­vis­ing the mov­ing of mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of ar­ti­facts.

An­oth­er hideous twitch. “You still haven’t an­swered my ques­tion.”

“You’re ex­haust­ed, that’s all. I’m giv­ing you the day off. This is not op­tion­al, Adri­an. I want you to go home and get some rest.”

“Not op­tion­al? And since when have you been my boss?”

“Since the day you ar­rived here. Now, please go home or I’ll be forced to call se­cu­ri­ty.”

“Se­cu­ri­ty? They’re a rud­dy joke!”

“Please re­move your­self from my of­fice.” And No­ra reached for the phone.

But sud­den­ly Wicher­ly—ris­ing—lunged for­ward and swept it from the desk to the floor, stomped on the cra­dle, yanked the wire out the back, and tossed it aside.

No­ra froze. Some­thing ter­ri­ble was hap­pen­ing to Wicher­ly, some­thing ut­ter­ly be­yond her ex­pe­ri­ence.

“Look, Adri­an,” she said calm­ly. “Let’s just cool down here.” She stood up, then be­gan edg­ing along the desk.

“You bloody tart,” he said in a low, men­ac­ing tone.

No­ra could see his fin­gers twitch­ing now, con­tract­ing a lit­tle more with each twitch un­til they formed a spas­ti­cal­ly clutch­ing fist. She could al­most smell the air of vi­olence gath­er­ing around him. She came around the desk, not fast, but with slow de­ter­mi­na­tion.

“I’m leav­ing,” she said as firm­ly as she could. At the same time, she braced for a fight. If he came at her, she’d go straight for his eyes.

“The fuck you are.” Wicher­ly stepped across her path while at the same time reach­ing be­hind his back and turn­ing the lock in the door.

“Get away from me now!”

He stood his ground, eyes blood­shot, pupils like tiny black bul­lets. She strug­gled against a ris­ing pan­ic. What would work: calm per­sua­sion or stern com­mand? She could smell his sweat, al­most as strong as urine. His face had screwed it­self up again in a se­ries of spas­tic jerks, his right fist clench­ing and un­clench­ing. He looked ex­act­ly as if he’d been pos­sessed by de­mon­ic forces.

“Adri­an, ev­ery­thing’s okay,” she said, work­ing a sooth­ing note in­to her trem­bling voice. “You just need help. Let me call for a doc­tor.”

More twitch­ing, his neck mus­cles knot­ting and bulging.

“I think you might be hav­ing a seizure of some kind,” she said. “Do you un­der­stand, Adri­an? You need a doc­tor im­me­di­ate­ly. Please let me help you.”

He tried to say some­thing but in­stead he splut­tered, spit­tle drool­ing down his chin.

“Adri­an, I’m go­ing to step out­side now and call you a doc­tor—”

His right hand jerked up like a shot, strik­ing her hard across the face, but she had been tens­ing for just such an at­tack and she man­aged to sidestep the main force of the blow. She fell back­ward. “Some­body help me! Guards! Call the guards!”

“Shut up, bitch!” He shuf­fled for­ward, drag­ging one leg, and struck at her again, wild­ly. She stum­bled against the side of her desk, off bal­ance, and he leaped on top of her im­me­di­ate­ly, slam­ming her down and send­ing her lap­top crash­ing to the floor.

“Help! I’m be­ing at­tacked!”

She stabbed at his eyes with the rigid fin­gers of her hand, but he swat­ted her arm away and dealt her a blow across the side of her head, while his oth­er hand grabbed the top of her blouse and ripped down­ward, scat­ter­ing but­tons.

She screamed again and tried to twist away from his grip, but his free hand came around and wrapped around her neck with shock­ing force, cut­ting off the sound. She scrab­bled with her legs, try­ing to find a pur­chase, but he scis­sored them in his own.

“So, you think you’re the boss?” He raised his oth­er hand and to­geth­er they be­gan squeez­ing her neck hard­er. She flailed, tore at his hair, pound­ed his back, but he seemed not even to no­tice, so fix­at­ed was he on the grip of his hands, his sweaty, stink­ing, twitch­ing face shoved in­to hers.

“I’ll show you who’s boss around here.”

No­ra punched and clawed help­less­ly, her di­aphragm heav­ing to suck in air that wouldn’t come. Her lar­ynx felt near­ly crushed un­der the aw­ful pres­sure. He’d blocked the blood flow to her brain and she felt the strength drain­ing away like wa­ter from a burst hose; her eyes were sud­den­ly flecked with a mil­lion ex­plod­ing stars, and a spread­ing stain of dark­ness be­gan cloud­ing the edges of her vi­sion like ink poured in­to wa­ter.

“How does it feel, bitch?”

She heard sounds in the back­ground, as if from far away; a vi­olent ham­mer­ing and splin­ter­ing of wood; and then, from the fur­thest edge of con­scious­ness, she felt the iron grip of his hands loosen and fall away. She was still swim­ming in a sea of dim­ness when she was jolt­ed by a burst of shout­ing and an in­cred­ibly loud bang.

She rolled over, cough­ing vi­olent­ly and hold­ing her bruised neck . . . and sud­den­ly Men­zies was there, cradling her in his arms and call­ing for a doc­tor. She felt ut­ter con­fu­sion. There seemed to be a ter­rif­ic com­mo­tion be­yond the desk, a knot of mu­se­um guards, shout­ing . . . and then she saw a riv­er of blood spread­ing out across the floor. What had hap­pened?

“I had to do it, he came at me with a knife!” came a des­per­ate voice, edg­ing in­to her re­turn­ing con­scious­ness.

“. . . just a let­ter open­er, you id­iot!”

“. . . a doc­tor! Now!”

“. . . tried to stran­gle her . . .”

The ca­copho­ny of loud, pan­icky voic­es con­tin­ued, the shat­tered phras­es sound­ing in her head as it all be­gan to come back . . . She coughed, try­ing to block it all out, try­ing not to think, while Men­zies eased her down in­to the wing chair, whis­per­ing all the time: “You’re all right, my dear, ev­ery­thing’s fine, the doc­tor’s on his way. No, don’t look over there . . . Close your eyes and all will be fine . . . Don’t look, don’t look . . .”

36

Cap­tain Hay­ward looked down at the huge pud­dle of blood on the linoleum floor of the of­fice, all smeared about by the fran­tic and use­less ef­forts of the EMTs try­ing to restart a heart that had been oblit­er­at­ed by a point-​blank 9mm round fired from a Brown­ing Hi. The scene was now be­ing care­ful­ly ex­am­ined, sort­ed, tagged, and bot­tled by the foren­sic teams and a va­ri­ety of spe­cial­ized crime scene in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

She backed out of the of­fice, leav­ing it to the ex­perts to make sense of what was clear­ly a sense­less, trag­ic act. She had an­oth­er as­sign­ment: to speak with the vic­tim be­fore she was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal.

She found No­ra Kel­ly wait­ing in the staff lounge, with her hus­band, Bill Smith­back; the chair­man of the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment, Hugo Men­zies; and sev­er­al EMTs, po­lice of­fi­cers, and mu­se­um guards. The EMTs were ar­gu­ing with Kel­ly about whether she would go to the hos­pi­tal for a check­up and treat­ment.

“I want the guards and mu­se­um staff out,” said Hay­ward. “Ex­cept Drs. Kel­ly and Men­zies.” “I’m not go­ing,” said Smith­back. “I’m not leav­ing my wife.”

“You can stay, then,” said Hay­ward.

One of the EMTs, who had ob­vi­ous­ly been ar­gu­ing with No­ra for a while, leaned in for one

last try. “Lis­ten here, miss, your neck is bruised and you might have a con­cus­sion. The ef­fects can be de­layed. We’ve got to take you in for tests.”

“Don’t ‘miss’ me. I’m a Ph.D.”

“The paramedic’s right,” Smith­back added. “You need to go for at least a quick ex­am.”

“Quick? I’ll be in the emer­gen­cy room all day. You know what St. Luke’s is like!”

“No­ra, we can get along quite well with­out you to­day,” Men­zies said. “You’ve had a ter­ri­ble shock—”

“With all due re­spect, Hugo, you know as well as I do that with Dr. Wicher­ly . . . Oh, God, this is ter­ri­ble!” She choked up for a mo­ment, and Hay­ward used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak.

“I know this is a bad time, Dr. Kel­ly, but can I ask you a few ques­tions?”

No­ra wiped her eyes. “Go ahead.”

“Can you tell me what hap­pened lead­ing up to the at­tack?”

No­ra took a deep, steady­ing breath. Then she pro­ceed­ed to re­late the events that had oc­curred in her of­fice just ten min­utes be­fore, as well as the pass Wicher­ly had made at her a few days be­fore. Hay­ward lis­tened with­out in­ter­rupt­ing, as did her hus­band, Smith­back, his face dark­en­ing with anger.

“Bas­tard,” he mut­tered.

No­ra waved an im­pa­tient hand at him. “Some­thing hap­pened to him to­day. He wasn’t the same per­son. It was like he had . . . a seizure of some kind.”

“Why were you in the mu­se­um so ear­ly?” Hay­ward asked.

“I had—have—a busy day ahead of me.”

“And Wicher­ly?”

“I un­der­stand he came in at three A.M.”

Hay­ward was sur­prised. “What for?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Did he go in­to the tomb?”

It was Men­zies who an­swered. “Yes, he did. The se­cu­ri­ty log shows he en­tered the tomb just af­ter three, spent half an hour in there, then left. Where he was be­tween then and the at­tack, we don’t know. I looked all over for him.”

“I as­sume you checked his back­ground be­fore you hired him. Did he have a crim­inal record, a his­to­ry of ag­gres­sion?”

Men­zies shook his head. “Ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing like that.”

Hay­ward looked around and saw to her re­lief that Vis­con­ti had been as­signed to the mu­se­um that day. She mo­tioned him over.

“I want you to take state­ments from Dr. Men­zies and the guard who shot Wicher­ly,” she said. “We can get Dr. Kel­ly’s when she re­turns from the hos­pi­tal.”

“No way,” No­ra said. “I’m ready to give a state­ment now.”

Hay­ward ig­nored her. “Where’s the M.E.?”

“Went to the hos­pi­tal with the body.”

“Get him on the ra­dio.”

A mo­ment lat­er, Vis­con­ti hand­ed her a ra­dio. Then he led Men­zies off to take a state­ment.

“Doc­tor?” Hay­ward spoke in­to the ra­dio. “I want an au­top­sy per­formed as soon as pos­si­ble. I want you to look for le­sions to the tem­po­ral lobe of the brain, par­tic­ular­ly to the ven­tro­me­di­al frontal cor­tex . . . No, I’m not a neu­ro­sur­geon. I’ll ex­plain lat­er.”

She hand­ed the ra­dio back to Vis­con­ti, then cast a firm eye on No­ra. “You’re go­ing to the hos­pi­tal. Now.” She ges­tured to the EMTs. “Help her to her feet and get mov­ing.”

Then she turned to Smith­back. “I want to talk to you pri­vate­ly, in the hall.”

“But I want to go with my wife—”

“We’ll have a po­lice car take you af­ter we speak, sirens, the works. You’ll get there at the same time as the am­bu­lance.”

She ex­changed a brief word with No­ra, gave her a re­as­sur­ing pat on her shoul­der, and then nod­ded Smith­back in­to the hall. They found a qui­et cor­ner and Hay­ward faced the jour­nal­ist.

“We haven’t spo­ken in a while,” she said. “I was hop­ing you might have some­thing to share with me.”

At the ques­tion, Smith­back looked a lit­tle un­com­fort­able. “I pub­lished that sto­ry we talked about. Two, even. They didn’t shake free any leads—at least none that I heard about.”

Hay­ward nod­ded, wait­ing. Smith­back glanced at her, then glanced away. “Ev­ery trail I tried turned cold. That’s when I . . . paid a vis­it to the house.”

“House?”

“You know. His house. The one where he held Vi­ola Maske­lene.”

“You snuck in? I didn’t know they’d fin­ished the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. When did the crime scene tape come down?”

Now Smith­back looked even more un­com­fort­able. “It wasn’t down.”

“What?” Hay­ward raised her voice. “You tres­passed on an ac­tive crime scene?”

“It wasn’t all that ac­tive!” Smith­back said quick­ly. “I on­ly saw one cop the whole time I was there!”

“Look, Mr. Smith­back, I don’t want to hear any more. I can’t and won’t have you op­er­at­ing ex­trale­gal­ly—”

“But it was in the house that I found it.”

Hay­ward stopped and looked at him.

“Well, it’s noth­ing I can prove. It’s just a the­ory, re­al­ly. At first I re­al­ly thought it was some­thing, but lat­er on . . . Any­way, that’s why I didn’t call you about it ear­li­er.”

“Out with it.”

“In a coat clos­et, I found a bunch of Dio­genes’s coats.”

Hay­ward crossed her arms, wait­ing.

“Three were very ex­pen­sive cash­mere or camel’s-​hair, el­egant, Ital­ian-​de­signed. Then there were a cou­ple of big, bulky, itchy tweed jack­ets, al­so ex­pen­sive but of a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent style—you know, stodgy En­glish pro­fes­sor.”

“And?”

“I know this sounds strange, but some­thing about those tweeds—well, they al­most seemed like a dis­guise. Al­most as if Dio­genes—”

“Has an al­ter ego,” Hay­ward said. She re­al­ized where this was go­ing, and she was sud­den­ly very in­ter­est­ed.

“Right. And what kind of al­ter ego would wear tweeds? A pro­fes­sor.”

“Or a cu­ra­tor,” Hay­ward said.

“Ex­act­ly. And then it dawned on me he’s prob­ably a cu­ra­tor in the mu­se­um. I mean, they’re all say­ing the di­amond heist had to have been an in­side job. He didn’t have a part­ner—maybe he him­self was the in­side man. I know it sounds a lit­tle crazy . . .” His voice trailed off, un­cer­tain.

Hay­ward looked at him in­tent­ly. “Ac­tu­al­ly, I think it’s far from crazy.”

Smith­back stopped to glance at her in sur­prise. “You do?”

“Ab­so­lute­ly. It fits the facts bet­ter than any oth­er the­ory I’ve heard. Dio­genes is a cu­ra­tor in this mu­se­um.”

“But it just doesn’t make sense. Why would Dio­genes steal the di­amonds . . . and then pound them in­to dust and mail them back here?”

“Maybe he has some per­son­al grudge against the mu­se­um. We won’t know for sure un­til we catch him. Good job, Mr. Smith­back. There’s just one more thing.”

Smith­back’s gaze nar­rowed. “Let me guess.”

“That’s right. This con­ver­sa­tion nev­er took place. And un­til I say oth­er­wise, these spec­ula­tions are to go no fur­ther. Not even to your wife. And cer­tain­ly not to the New York Times. Are we clear?”

Smith­back sighed, nod­ded.

“Good. Now I need to track down Manet­ti. But first, let me get that squad car to take you to the hos­pi­tal.” She smiled. “You’ve earned it.”

37

In the great pan­eled of­fice of Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy, di­rec­tor of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry, a si­lence reigned. Ev­ery­one had ar­rived: Beryl Dar­ling, the mu­se­um’s gen­er­al coun­sel; Josephine Roc­co, head of PR; Hugo Men­zies. The short list of Col­lopy’s most trust­ed staff. They were all seat­ed and look­ing in his di­rec­tion, wait­ing for him to be­gin.

At last Col­lopy laid a hand on his leather-​topped desk and looked around. “Nev­er in its long his­to­ry,” he be­gan, “has the mu­se­um faced a cri­sis of these pro­por­tions. Nev­er.”

He let that sink in. The si­lence, the im­mo­bil­ity, of his au­di­ence held.

“In short or­der, we have been dealt sev­er­al blows, any one of which could crip­ple an in­sti­tu­tion such as ours. The theft and de­struc­tion of the di­amond col­lec­tion. The mur­der of Theodore De­Meo. The in­ex­pli­ca­ble at­tack on Dr. Kel­ly, and the sub­se­quent killing of the as­sailant—the very dis­tin­guished Dr. Adri­an Wicher­ly of the British Mu­se­um—by a trig­ger-​hap­py guard.”

A pause.

“And in four days, one of the biggest open­ings in the mu­se­um’s his­to­ry is sched­uled. The very open­ing that was to put the di­amond theft be­hind us. The ques­tion I pose to you now is this: how do we re­spond? Do we post­pone the open­ing? Do we hold a press con­fer­ence? I’ve got­ten calls from twen­ty trustees so far this morn­ing, and ev­ery sin­gle one has a dif­fer­ent idea. And in ten min­utes, I have to face a homi­cide cap­tain named Hay­ward who—I have no doubt—will de­mand that we post­pone the open­ing. It’s up to us four, at this mo­ment, to set a course and stick with it.”

He fold­ed his hands on the desk. “Beryl? Your thoughts?”

Col­lopy knew that Beryl Dar­ling, the mu­se­um’s gen­er­al coun­sel, would speak with bru­tal clar­ity.

Dar­ling leaned for­ward, pen­cil poised in her hand. “The first thing I’d do, Fred­er­ick, is dis­arm ev­ery mu­se­um guard in the build­ing.”

“Al­ready done.”

Dar­ling nod­ded with sat­is­fac­tion. “Next, in­stead of a press con­fer­ence—which can spin out of con­trol—I would im­me­di­ate­ly is­sue a state­ment.”

“Say­ing?”

“It will be an un­var­nished recita­tion of the facts, fol­lowed by a mea cul­pa and an ex­pres­sion of pro­found sym­pa­thy to the fam­ilies of the vic­tims—De­Meo, Lip­per, and Wicher­ly—”

“Ex­cuse me. Lip­per and Wicher­ly? Vic­tims?”

“The ex­pres­sion of re­gret will be strict­ly neu­tral. The mu­se­um doesn’t want to get in the busi­ness of throw­ing stones. Let the po­lice sort out the facts.”

A frosty si­lence.

“And the open­ing?” Col­lopy asked.

“Can­cel it. Shut the mu­se­um down for two days. And make sure no­body—and I mean no­body—at the mu­se­um talks to the press.”

Col­lopy wait­ed a mo­ment, then turned to Josephine Roc­co, head of pub­lic re­la­tions.

“Your com­ments?”

“I’m in agree­ment with Ms. Dar­ling. We’ve got to show the pub­lic that it’s not busi­ness as usu­al.”

“Thank you.” Col­lopy turned to Men­zies. “Do you have any­thing to add, Dr. Men­zies?” He was amazed at how cool, col­lect­ed, and com­posed Men­zies looked. He wished he had the same sangfroid.

Men­zies nod­ded to­ward Dar­ling and Roc­co. “I would like to com­mend Ms. Dar­ling and Ms. Roc­co for their well-​con­sid­ered com­ments, which un­der al­most any oth­er cir­cum­stances would be ex­cel­lent ad­vice.”

“But you dif­fer?”

“I do. Most de­cid­ed­ly.” Men­zies’s blue eyes, so full of calm self-​as­sur­ance, im­pressed Col­lopy.

“Let’s hear it, then.”

“I hes­itate to con­tra­dict my col­leagues, whose wis­dom and ex­pe­ri­ence in these mat­ters ex­ceeds my own.” Men­zies glanced around humbly.

“I’ve asked for your un­var­nished opin­ion.”

“Well, then. Six weeks ago, the di­amond col­lec­tion was stolen and de­stroyed. Now an out­side con­trac­tor—not a mu­se­um em­ploy­ee—kills a co-​work­er. Then a mu­se­um con­sul­tant—a tem­po­rary hire, not an em­ploy­ee—as­saults one of our top cu­ra­tors and is killed by a guard in the en­su­ing melee. Now, I ask you: what do these events have in com­mon?” Men­zies looked around in­quir­ing­ly.

No one an­swered.

“Ms. Dar­ling?” Men­zies per­sist­ed.

“Well, noth­ing.”

“Ex­act­ly. Dur­ing the same six-​week pe­ri­od, New York City had six­ty-​one homi­cides, fif­teen hun­dred as­saults, and count­less felonies and mis­de­meanors. Did the may­or shut down the city? No. What did he do in­stead? He an­nounced the good news: the crime rate is down four per­cent from the pre­vi­ous year!”

“So,” drawled Dar­ling, “what ‘good news’ would you an­nounce, Dr. Men­zies?”

“That de­spite re­cent events, the grand open­ing of the Tomb of Senef is still on sched­ule and will go off ex­act­ly as planned.”

“And just ig­nore the rest?”

“Of course not. By all means, is­sue a state­ment. But be sure to point out that this is New York City and that the mu­se­um is a vast place cov­er­ing twen­ty-​eight acres of Man­hat­tan with two thou­sand em­ploy­ees and five mil­lion vis­itors a year, and that un­der these cir­cum­stances it’s sur­pris­ing that more ran­dom crimes don’t hap­pen. Be sure to em­pha­size the lat­ter point: the crimes are not con­nect­ed, they’re ran­dom, and they’ve all been solved. The per­pe­tra­tors have been caught. A run of bad luck, that’s all.”

He paused. “And there’s one fi­nal point to con­sid­er.”

“What’s that?” Col­lopy asked.

“The may­or is com­ing and plans to give an im­por­tant speech. It’s pos­si­ble he might just use the aus­pi­cious oc­ca­sion to an­nounce his bid for re-​elec­tion.”

Men­zies smiled and fell silent, his bright blue eyes sur­vey­ing the room, chal­leng­ing them all to re­spond.

The first to stir was Beryl Dar­ling. She un­crossed her legs, tapped the pen­cil on the ta­ble. “I must say, Dr. Men­zies, that’s a rather in­ter­est­ing take on things.”

“I don’t like it,” said Roc­co. “We can’t just dis­miss all this, sweep it un­der the rug. We’ll be cru­ci­fied.”

“Who sug­gest­ed sweep­ing any­thing un­der the rug?” said Men­zies. “On the con­trary, we’ll re­lease all the facts. We’ll hide noth­ing. We’ll beat our breasts and take full re­spon­si­bil­ity. The facts work in our fa­vor be­cause they clear­ly demon­strate the ran­dom na­ture of the crimes. And the per­pe­tra­tors are ei­ther dead or be­hind bars. Case closed.”

“What about the ru­mors?” asked Roc­co.

Men­zies turned a pair of sur­prised blue eyes on her. “Ru­mors?”

“All the talk about the tomb be­ing cursed.”

Men­zies chuck­led. “The mum­my’s curse? It’s mar­velous. Now ev­ery­one will want to come.”

Roc­co’s bright red lips tight­ened, crack­ing her heavy lip­stick.

“And let’s not for­get the orig­inal pur­pose of the Tomb of Senef—to re­mind the city that we are still the great­est nat­ural his­to­ry mu­se­um in the world. We need this dis­trac­tion more than ev­er.”

A long si­lence set­tled on the group. Col­lopy fi­nal­ly stirred. “That’s damned per­sua­sive, Hugo.”

“I find my­self in the cu­ri­ous po­si­tion of chang­ing my mind,” said Dar­ling. “I be­lieve I con­cur with Dr. Men­zies.”

Col­lopy looked at the PR head. “Josephine?”

“I still have my doubts,” she replied slow­ly. “But it’s worth a try.”

“Then that’s set­tled,” said Col­lopy.

As if on cue the door opened, with no knock, no an­nounce­ment. A po­lice­wom­an stood there, dressed in a smart gray suit, brass on her col­lar. Col­lopy glanced at his watch—she was on time to the sec­ond.

He rose. “May I in­tro­duce Cap­tain of Homi­cide Lau­ra Hay­ward. This is—”

“We’re all ac­quaint­ed,” she said crisply. She turned a pair of vi­olet eyes on him. She was dis­con­cert­ing­ly young and at­trac­tive. Col­lopy won­dered if she was some kind of af­fir­ma­tive-​ac­tion type, ad­vanced be­yond her com­pe­tence. Some­how, look­ing at those eyes, he doubt­ed it.

“I’d like to speak with you pri­vate­ly, Dr. Col­lopy,” she said.

“Of course.”

The door closed af­ter Men­zies—the last to leave—had said his good-​byes. Col­lopy turned his at­ten­tion on Hay­ward. “Would you like to take a seat, Cap­tain?”

Af­ter the briefest of hes­ita­tions, she nod­ded. “I think I will.” She sank down in a wing chair and Col­lopy not­ed that her skin was pale and she looked ex­haust­ed. And yet her vi­olet eyes were any­thing but dull.

“What can I do for you, Cap­tain?” he asked.

She with­drew a sheaf of fold­ed pa­pers from her pock­et. “I’ve got here the re­sults of the au­top­sy on Wicher­ly.”

Col­lopy raised his eye­brows. “Au­top­sy? Is there some mys­tery about how he died?”

By way of an­swer, she with­drew an­oth­er piece of pa­per. “And here’s a di­ag­nos­tic re­port on Lip­per. The bot­tom line is they both suf­fered iden­ti­cal, sud­den brain dam­age to the ven­tro­me­di­al cor­tex of the brain.”

“In­deed?”

“Yes. In oth­er words, they both went in­sane in ex­act­ly the same way. The dam­age pro­duced a sud­den, vi­olent psy­chosis in each of them.”

Col­lopy felt a cold sen­sa­tion along the base of his spine. This was ex­act­ly what they had dis­missed—that the in­ci­dents were some­how con­nect­ed. This could ru­in ev­ery­thing.

“The ev­idence sug­gests there’s some kind of en­vi­ron­men­tal cause, and that it may be in or around the Tomb of Senef.”

“The tomb? Why do you say that?”

“Be­cause that’s where both of them were im­me­di­ate­ly pri­or to the on­set of symp­toms.”

Col­lopy swal­lowed painful­ly, pulled at his col­lar. “This is as­ton­ish­ing news.”

“The M.E. thinks the cause could be any­thing: elec­tri­cal shock to the head, poi­son, fumes or per­haps a mal­func­tion in the ven­ti­la­tion sys­tem, an un­known virus or bac­teri­um . . . We don’t know. This is, by the way, con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion.”

“I’m glad of that.” Col­lopy felt the sen­sa­tion of cold be­gin to spread. If this got out, it could put the lie to their state­ment and de­stroy all they had worked so hard for.

“Since I re­ceived this in­for­ma­tion two hours ago, I’ve put a spe­cial tox­ico­log­ical foren­sic team in­to the tomb. They’ve been at it for an hour and so far haven’t found any­thing. Of course, it’s ear­ly in their search.”

“This is very dis­turb­ing, Cap­tain,” Col­lopy replied. “Is there any way the mu­se­um could be of as­sis­tance?”

“That’s ex­act­ly why I’m here. I want you to post­pone the open­ing un­til we can lo­cate the source.”

This was pre­cise­ly what Col­lopy had been afraid of. He let a beat pass. “Cap­tain, for­give me for say­ing so, but it seems you’ve jumped to two huge con­clu­sions here: first, that the brain dam­age was caused by a tox­in, and sec­ond, that this tox­in is present in the tomb. It could have been any­thing—and hap­pened any­where.”

“Per­haps.”

“And you for­get that oth­ers—many oth­ers—have spent sig­nif­icant­ly more time in the Tomb of Senef than Lip­per and Wicher­ly. They’ve man­ifest­ed no symp­toms.”

“I didn’t for­get that, Dr. Col­lopy.”

“In any case, the open­ing isn’t for four days. Sure­ly, that’s enough time to check out the tomb.”

“I’m not tak­ing any chances.”

Col­lopy took a long, deep breath. “I un­der­stand what you’re say­ing, Cap­tain, but the fact is, we sim­ply can’t de­lay the open­ing. We’ve in­vest­ed mil­lions. I’ve got a new Egyp­tol­ogist ar­riv­ing in less than an hour, flown in all the way from Italy. The in­vi­ta­tions have been mailed and ac­cep­tances re­turned, the cater­ing paid for, the mu­si­cians hired—ev­ery­thing’s done. To back out now would cost a for­tune. And it would send the wrong mes­sage to the city: that we’re fright­ened, that we’re stymied, that the mu­se­um is a dan­ger­ous place to vis­it. I can’t al­low that.”

“There’s some­thing else. It’s my be­lief that Dio­genes Pen­der­gast, the per­son who at­tacked Mar­go Green—and who stole the di­amond col­lec­tion—has a sec­ond iden­ti­ty as a mu­se­um em­ploy­ee. Most like­ly a cu­ra­tor.”

Col­lopy looked at her, shocked. “What?”

“I al­so be­lieve this per­son is some­how con­nect­ed with what’s hap­pened to Lip­per and Wicher­ly.”

“These are very se­ri­ous ac­cu­sa­tions. Who’s your sus­pect?”

Hay­ward hes­itat­ed. “I don’t have one. I asked Mr. Manet­ti to comb the per­son­nel records—with­out telling him what I was look­ing for, of course—but no crim­inal his­to­ries or any oth­er red flags came to light.”

“Nat­ural­ly not. Our em­ploy­ees all have spot­less records, es­pe­cial­ly the cu­ra­to­ri­al staff. I find this whole line of spec­ula­tion to be per­son­al­ly of­fen­sive. And it cer­tain­ly doesn’t change my po­si­tion about the open­ing. A post­pone­ment would be fa­tal to the mu­se­um. Ab­so­lute­ly fa­tal.”

Hay­ward looked at him a long time, her vi­olet eyes weary yet alert. They seemed al­most sad, as if she had al­ready known the con­clu­sion was fore­gone. “By not post­pon­ing, you risk putting many lives in dan­ger,” she said qui­et­ly. “I must in­sist on it.”

“Then we are at an im­passe,” said Col­lopy sim­ply.

Hay­ward rose. “This isn’t over.”

“Cor­rect, Cap­tain. A high­er pow­er than us will have to make the de­ci­sion.”

She nod­ded and left the of­fice with­out fur­ther com­ment. Col­lopy watched the door close be­hind her. He knew, and she knew, that it would boil down to a de­ci­sion by the may­or him­self. And in that case, Col­lopy knew ex­act­ly how the chips would fall.

The may­or wasn’t one to miss the op­por­tu­ni­ty for a good par­ty and speech.

38

Mrs. Doris Green paused at the open door­way to the in­ten­sive-​care room. The af­ter­noon light fil­tered through the part­ly screened win­dows, throw­ing peace­ful stripes of light and shad­ow across her daugh­ter’s bed. Her eye moved across the bank of med­ical equip­ment, which sighed and beeped soft­ly in a reg­ular ca­dence, and came to rest on her daugh­ter’s face it­self. It was pale and thin, a stray lock of hair run­ning over the fore­head and cheek. Mrs. Green took a few steps in­side and gen­tly moved the lock to its prop­er place.

“Hel­lo, Mar­go,” she said soft­ly.

The ma­chines con­tin­ued to beep and sigh.

She eased her­self down on the side of the bed and took her daugh­ter’s hand. It was cool

and light as a feath­er. She gave it a gen­tle squeeze.

“It’s a beau­ti­ful day out­side. The sun’s shin­ing, and the cold weath­er seems to have

bro­ken. The cro­cus­es are al­ready com­ing up in my gar­den, just pok­ing their lit­tle green shoots

out of the ground. Do you re­mem­ber when you were a lit­tle girl, just five years old—you

couldn’t re­sist pick­ing them? You brought me a fist­ful of half-​crushed flow­ers one day,

cleaned out the whole gar­den. I was so up­set at the time . . .”

Her voice fal­tered and she fell in­to si­lence. A mo­ment lat­er, the nurse en­tered, her cheer­ful, rustling pres­ence adding a sud­den ef­fi­cien­cy to the gauzy at­mo­sphere of bit­ter­sweet

mem­ory.

“How are you, Mrs. Green?” she asked, straight­en­ing up some flow­ers in a vase. “All right, thank you, Jonet­ta.”

The nurse checked the ma­chines, jot­ting quick notes on a clip­board. She ad­just­ed the IV,

ex­am­ined the breath­ing tube, then bus­tled about, plump­ing up more flow­ers and ad­just­ing

some of the get-​well cards that cov­ered the ta­ble and shelves.

“The doc­tor should be in at any mo­ment, Mrs. Green,” she said, smil­ing and head­ing for

the door.

“Thank you.”

Peace de­scend­ed once more. Doris Green stroked her daugh­ter’s hand ev­er so light­ly.

The mem­ories came back, crowd­ing in with no dis­cernible or­der: div­ing with her daugh­ter off

the dock at the lake; open­ing the en­ve­lope con­tain­ing her SAT scores; roast­ing Thanks­giv­ing

turkey; stand­ing hand in hand be­side her hus­band’s grave . . .

She swal­lowed, con­tin­ued to stroke Mar­go’s hand. And then she felt a pres­ence be­hind

her.

“Good af­ter­noon, Mrs. Green.”

She turned. Dr. Winokur was stand­ing there, a dark, hand­some man in crisp white, ex­ud­ing self-​con­fi­dence and sym­pa­thy. Doris Green knew it wasn’t just his bed­side man­ner: this

doc­tor re­al­ly cared.

“Would you care to talk in the wait­ing room?” he asked.

“I’d pre­fer to stay here. If Mar­go could hear—and who knows, maybe she can—she’d want

to know ev­ery­thing.”

“Very well.” He paused, seat­ed him­self in the vis­itor’s chair, rest­ed his hands on his knees.

“The bot­tom line is this: we sim­ply don’t have a di­ag­no­sis. We’ve per­formed ev­ery test we can

think of and then some; we’ve con­sult­ed with the coun­try’s top co­ma and neu­rol­ogy spe­cial­ists, at Doc­tors’ Hos­pi­tal in New York and Mount Auburn Hos­pi­tal in Boston—and we just

don’t have a han­dle on it yet. Mar­go is in a deep co­ma, and we don’t know why. The good

news is that there’s no ev­idence of per­ma­nent brain dam­age. On the oth­er hand, her vi­tal

signs are not im­prov­ing, and some im­por­tant ones are slow­ly de­clin­ing. She sim­ply isn’t re­spond­ing to the nor­mal treat­ments and ther­apies. I could load you down with a dozen the­ories

we’ve had, a dozen treat­ments we’ve tried, but they all add up to one fact: she’s not re­spond­ing. We could move her to South­ern Westch­ester. But to tell you the truth, there isn’t any­thing

down there that we don’t have here, and the move might not be good for her.” “I’d pre­fer she stay here.”

Winokur nod­ded. “I have to say, Mrs. Green, you’ve been a won­der­ful pa­tient’s moth­er. I

know this is ex­treme­ly hard on you.”

She shook her head slow­ly. “I thought I had lost her. I thought I’d buried her. Af­ter that,

noth­ing could be worse. I know she’s go­ing to re­cov­er—I know it.”

Dr. Winokur gave a small smile. “You could be right. Medicine doesn’t have all the an­swers, es­pe­cial­ly in a case like this. Doc­tors are more fal­li­ble—and ill­ness a great deal more

com­plex—than most peo­ple re­al­ize. Mar­go is not alone. There are thou­sands like her all over

the coun­try, very ill and with­out a di­ag­no­sis. I’m not telling you this to com­fort you so much as

to give you all the in­for­ma­tion I have. I sense that is how you’d pre­fer it.”

“It is.” She glanced from the doc­tor to Mar­go and back again. “Fun­ny, I’m not much of a

re­li­gious per­son, but I find my­self pray­ing for her ev­ery day.”

“The longer I’m a doc­tor, the more I be­lieve in the heal­ing pow­er of prayer.” He paused.

“Do you have any ques­tions? Is there any­thing I can do?”

She hes­itat­ed. “There is one thing. I got a call from Hugo Men­zies. Do you know him?” “Yes, of course—her em­ploy­er at the mu­se­um. He was with her when she had her

seizure?”

“That’s right. He called me to tell me what had hap­pened, what he’d seen—he knew I’d

want to know.”

“Of course.”

“Have you spo­ken to him?”

“Yes, cer­tain­ly. He’s been very good—he’s dropped in to check on Mar­go’s con­di­tion more

than once since her re­lapse. He seems most con­cerned.”

Mrs. Green smiled faint­ly. “Hav­ing such a car­ing em­ploy­er is a bless­ing.” “It most cer­tain­ly is.” The doc­tor rose.

“I’ll just stay here a lit­tle while with her, Doc­tor, if you don’t mind,” Doris Green said.

39

Thir­ty hours be­fore the grand open­ing, the Tomb of Senef was boil­ing like a nest of an­gry hor­nets. And the swarm was no longer com­prised of sim­ply cu­ra­tors, elec­tri­cians, car­pen­ters, and tech­ni­cians: a new el­ement had been added to the mix. As No­ra walked down the God’s Sec­ond Pas­sage to­ward the Hall of the Char­iots, she was met with the glare of tele­vi­sion lights and a knot of men set­ting up cam­eras and mikes at the far end of the hall.

“Over there, dear boy, over there!”

A slen­der man with clenched but­tocks, wear­ing a camel’s-​hair sport jack­et and yel­low pin­point bow tie, stood to one side. He was ges­tur­ing fu­ri­ous­ly with slen­der hands to­ward a burly sound­man. No­ra re­al­ized he must be the di­rec­tor Ran­dall Lof­tus, whom Men­zies had re­cent­ly spo­ken to her about. He had won huge ac­claim for his doc­umen­tary se­ries The Last Cow­boy on Earth, and since then had pro­duced a string of award-​win­ning doc­umen­taries for pub­lic tele­vi­sion.

As she ap­proached, the ba­bel of over­lap­ping voic­es grew more shrill. “Test­ing. Test­ing . . .”

“Ugh! We’ve got the acous­tics of a barn in here!”

Lof­tus and his crew were set­ting up to broad­cast the pre­miere of the sound-​and-​light show on the night of the open­ing. The lo­cal PBS sta­tion planned to cov­er the open­ing live, and they had en­er­get­ical­ly syn­di­cat­ed the show to en­sure it would not on­ly go out to most PBS af­fil­iates across the na­tion, but al­so be car­ried by the BBC and the CBC. It was a pub­lic re­la­tions coup that Men­zies him­self had worked hard to ar­range. The re­sult­ing in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion, No­ra knew, could go a long way to­ward sav­ing the mu­se­um’s ba­con. But at the mo­ment, they were caus­ing ut­ter chaos—and at the worst pos­si­ble time. Their ca­bles lay all over the ground, trip­ping up as­sis­tants car­ry­ing price­less Egyp­tian an­tiq­ui­ties. The bril­liant lights on­ly added to the heat gen­er­at­ed by hot elec­tron­ics and the dozens of fran­tic peo­ple rush­ing about in a kind of con­trolled pan­ic: the air-​con­di­tion­ing sys­tem ducts were roar­ing in a fu­tile ef­fort to low­er the ex­hib­it’s tem­per­ature.

“I want two six-​inch, one-​kilo­watt Mole Ba­bies in the cor­ner, there,” Lof­tus was say­ing. “Will some­body move that jar?”

No­ra quick­ly stepped up. “Mr. Lof­tus?”

He turned to her, squint­ing over the tops of his John Mitchell glass­es. “Yes?”

She game­ly stuck out her hand. “I’m Dr. No­ra Kel­ly, cu­ra­tor of the ex­hi­bi­tion.”

“Oh! Of course. Ran­dall Lof­tus. De­light­ed.” He be­gan to turn away.

“Ex­cuse me, Mr. Lof­tus? You men­tioned some­thing about mov­ing a jar. I’m sure you’ll un­der­stand that noth­ing can be moved—or even touched—ex­cept by mu­se­um staff.” “Noth­ing moved! How am I sup­posed to set up?”

“You’ll just have to work around things, I’m afraid.”

“Work around things! I’ve nev­er been asked to per­form in such con­di­tions. This tomb is like a strait­jack­et. I can’t get any good an­gles or dis­tance. It’s im­pos­si­ble!”

She gave him a bril­liant smile. “I’m sure, with your tal­ent, you’ll find a way to make it work.”

The smile had no ef­fect, but at the word tal­ent Lof­tus seemed to pause.

“I’ve ad­mired your work,” No­ra con­tin­ued, sens­ing her open­ing. “I’m per­son­al­ly thrilled that you agreed to di­rect the show. And I know that, if any­one can make it work, you can.”

Lof­tus touched his bow tie. “Thank you in­deed. Flat­tery will get you ev­ery­where.”

“I want­ed to in­tro­duce my­self, see if there’s any­thing I can do to help.”

Lof­tus spun abrupt­ly, shout­ed to some­one in a dim cor­ner tee­ter­ing on a lad­der, “Not that one, the oth­er light, the LTM Pep­per spot! I want it mount­ed on that ceil­ing rack on a three­six­ty.”

He turned back to her. “You’re a dear, but we sim­ply must move that jar.”

“I’m sor­ry,” said No­ra. “There’s no time to move any­thing even if we want­ed to. That jar is three thou­sand years old and in­valu­able—you can’t just pick it up and move it. It takes spe­cial equip­ment, spe­cial­ly trained con­ser­va­tors . . . As I said, you’ll just have to work with what’s here. I’ll help you any way I can, but that’s one thing I can’t do. I’m sor­ry.”

Lof­tus drew in a long breath. “I can’t work around that jar. It’s so fat and hor­ri­ble.”

When No­ra didn’t re­ply, the di­rec­tor waved his hand. “I’ll talk to Men­zies about it. Re­al­ly, this is im­pos­si­ble.”

“I’m sure you’re as busy as I am, so I’ll leave you,” she replied. “As I said, if you need any­thing, let me know.”

He turned away in­stant­ly, ze­ro­ing in on an­oth­er hap­less pro­duc­tion as­sis­tant la­bor­ing in the shad­ows. “The low cranko­va­tor goes where the tape is. On the floor. You’re stand­ing on it! Look down, it’s be­tween your legs, for heav­en’s sake!”

No­ra moved out of the Hall of the Char­iots to­ward the buri­al cham­ber, leav­ing the ges­tic­ulat­ing Lof­tus be­hind. The con­ser­va­tors had fin­ished plac­ing all the ob­jects in the cham­ber—the last to be done—and No­ra want­ed to check the la­bel copy against her mas­ter de­sign. A knot of tech­ni­cians was work­ing on the fog ma­chines in­side the great stone sar­coph­agus. Ear­li­er in the day, they’d run through a dress re­hearsal of the en­tire sound-​and-​light show, and No­ra had to ad­mit that it was more than good. Wicher­ly may have been an ass, and pos­si­bly de­ranged, but he was al­so a bril­liant Egyp­tol­ogist and—what was more—an ex­cel­lent writ­er. The script was an amaz­ing tour de force; and the fi­nale, when Senef came sud­den­ly to life, ris­ing out of a bub­bling pool of mist, hadn’t seemed hokey at all. Wicher­ly had man­aged to slip quite a lot of good, sol­id in­for­ma­tion in­to the show. Peo­ple would leave not just en­ter­tained, but ed­ucat­ed.

She paused. It was strange how such a com­pe­tent ar­chae­ol­ogist could crack up so quick­ly. Un­con­scious­ly, she rubbed her throat, still raw and bruised. She still felt un­com­fort­able go­ing back in­to her lab af­ter what had hap­pened. It was bizarre, trag­ic, in­ex­pli­ca­ble . . . But once again, she tried to push the at­tack from her mind. She would di­gest it all af­ter the open­ing.

She felt a light tap on her shoul­der.

“Dr. Kel­ly, I pre­sume?” The voice was a dusky, cul­tured En­glish con­tral­to.

She turned to find her­self face-​to-​face with a tall wom­an with long, glossy black hair, dressed in old can­vas pants, sneak­ers, and a dusty work shirt. One of the work­ers, ev­ident­ly, but one she hadn’t seen be­fore: she would have re­mem­bered some­one with such strik­ing looks. And yet, as she looked at this stranger, she sensed she had seen her be­fore.

“That’s me,” No­ra said. “And you are—?”

“Vi­ola Maske­lene. I’m an Egyp­tol­ogist and the new vis­it­ing cu­ra­tor for the show.” She stuck out her hand, seized No­ra’s, and gave it a very vig­or­ous shake. The grip was strong, the hand a lit­tle cal­lused. This was some­one who spent a lot of time out­doors—judg­ing from her tan and her lean, one might even say weath­er-​beat­en, look.

“Very glad to meet you,” No­ra said. “I hadn’t ex­pect­ed you so soon.”

“I’m very pleased to meet you,” Maske­lene said. “Dr. Men­zies has spo­ken so high­ly of you, and ev­ery­one just adores you! Dr. Men­zies is tied up at present, but I want­ed to come down and meet you right away . . . and see this mar­velous ex­hib­it!”

“As you can see, we’re down to the wire.”

“I’m sure you’ve got ev­ery­thing un­der con­trol.” Maske­lene looked around with rel­ish. “I was so sur­prised to re­ceive the mu­se­um’s in­vi­ta­tion, and I can’t tell you how de­light­ed I am to be here. XIX Dy­nasty tombs are my spe­cial­ty. And, in­cred­ibly, the Tomb of Senef has nev­er been stud­ied or pub­lished, al­though it ap­par­ent­ly con­tains one of the most com­plete texts to the Book of the Dead ev­er found. Very few schol­ars even knew it ex­ist­ed! I’d al­ways thought it was mere ru­mor, an ur­ban myth like the al­li­ga­tors in your sew­ers. This is an in­cred­ible op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

No­ra smiled and nod­ded, study­ing the wom­an in­tent­ly. The speed with which Wicher­ly had been re­placed—he’d been dead on­ly a few days—sur­prised her. But then, she re­flect­ed, the open­ing was loom­ing and the mu­se­um ab­so­lute­ly had to have an Egyp­tol­ogist in res­idence for the run of the show.

Vi­ola, obliv­ious to the sound and chaos be­yond, was look­ing around at the tomb with won­der. “What a trea­sure!”

No­ra found her­self lik­ing the wom­an’s high-​spir­it­ed at­ti­tude. Her open, frank en­thu­si­asm was in­finite­ly prefer­able to the pon­tif­ica­tions of some dusty old pro­fes­sor.

“I’ve just been check­ing the place­ment of the ar­ti­facts and do­ing a fi­nal run-​through on the la­bel copy,” she said. “Care to come along? You might catch some er­rors.”

“I’d adore it,” she said, prac­ti­cal­ly beam­ing. “Al­though with Adri­an hav­ing done the work, I’m sure it’s sol­id.”

No­ra turned. “You knew him?”

Vi­ola’s face cloud­ed. “We Egyp­tol­ogists are a rather small club. Dr. Men­zies told me what hap­pened. I can’t un­der­stand it. How ter­ri­bly fright­en­ing for you.”

No­ra sim­ply nod­ded.

“I knew Adri­an pro­fes­sion­al­ly,” Vi­ola said, her voice more qui­et now. “He was a bril­liant Egyp­tol­ogist, al­though he rather fan­cied him­self God’s gift to wom­en. Still, I nev­er would have thought that . . . What a ter­ri­ble shock.” She broke off.

For a mo­ment, an awk­ward si­lence set­tled over them. Then No­ra roused her­self.

“He left a fine lega­cy be­hind him,” she said. “In his work for the ex­hi­bi­tion. And I know it sounds crass, but the show must go on.”

“I sup­pose so,” Vi­ola replied. Then she bright­ened a lit­tle. “I hear the sound-​and-​light show is quite spec­tac­ular.”

“It has just about ev­ery­thing, even a talk­ing mum­my.”

Vi­ola laughed. “That sounds de­li­cious!”

They walked on, No­ra check­ing her clip­board. She took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­am­ine Vi­ola Maske­lene more close­ly out of the cor­ner of her eye as the Egyp­tol­ogist looked over the cas­es full of an­tiq­ui­ties.

They paused at one spec­tac­ular canopic jar. “I’m afraid this is XVI­II Dy­nasty,” Vi­ola said. “It’s a bit anachro­nis­tic, com­pared to the oth­er ob­jects.”

No­ra smiled. “I know. We didn’t quite have all the XIX Dy­nasty ob­jects we need­ed, so we ex­pand­ed—fudged—the time pe­ri­od a bit. Adri­an ex­plained that an­tiques, even at the time of the pharaohs, were of­ten put in buri­als.”

“Quite true! Sor­ry for bring­ing it up—I’m a bit of a stick­ler for de­tails.”

“Be­ing a stick­ler for de­tails is ex­act­ly what we need.”

They cir­cled the buri­al cham­ber, No­ra check­ing items off her list, Vi­ola pars­ing the la­bel copy and ex­am­in­ing the ob­jects.

“Can you read hi­ero­glyph­ics?” No­ra asked.

Vi­ola nod­ded.

“What do you make of the curse above the door, the one with the Eye of Ho­rus?” A laugh. “One of the nas­ti­est I’ve ev­er seen.”

“Re­al­ly? I thought they were all nasty.”

“On the con­trary. Many Egyp­tian tombs aren’t even pro­tect­ed with curs­es. They didn’t need to be—ev­ery­one knew that to rob a pharaoh’s tomb was to steal from the gods them­selves.”

“So why put a curse in this tomb?”

“I imag­ine it was be­cause, un­like a pharaoh, Senef wasn’t a god. He may have felt that the ad­di­tion­al pro­tec­tion of the curse might be war­rant­ed. That paint­ing of Am­mut . . . whew!” Vi­ola shud­dered. “Goya couldn’t do bet­ter.”

No­ra glanced at the paint­ing, nod­ding grim­ly.

“I un­der­stand word of this curse has got­ten around,” Vi­ola said.

“The guards start­ed it. Now the whole mu­se­um is abuzz. A few of the main­te­nance staff flat-​out refuse to go in­to the tomb af­ter hours.”

They came around a pi­laster, on­ly to find a wom­an in a gray suit kneel­ing on the stone floor, scrap­ing dust out of a crack and putting it in a test tube. Near­by, a man in a white lab coat was or­ga­niz­ing what looked like sam­ples in a portable chem­ical lab­ora­to­ry.

“What in the world is she do­ing?” Vi­ola whis­pered.

No­ra had nev­er seen the wom­an be­fore. She cer­tain­ly didn’t look much like a mu­se­um em­ploy­ee. In fact, she looked like a cop.

“Let’s find out.” No­ra walked over. “Hel­lo. I’m No­ra Kel­ly, cu­ra­tor of the ex­hi­bi­tion.”

The wom­an rose. “I’m Su­san Lom­bar­di, with the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

“May I ask what you’re do­ing?”

“We’re test­ing for any en­vi­ron­men­tal haz­ards—tox­ins, mi­crobes, that sort of thing.”

“Re­al­ly? And why is that nec­es­sary?”

She shrugged. “All I know is, the re­quest came from the NYPD. A rush job.”

“I see. Thank you.”

No­ra turned away and the wom­an went back to work.

“That’s odd,” said Vi­ola. “Are they wor­ried about some kind of in­fec­tious dis­ease, per­haps, en­dem­ic to the tomb it­self? Some Egyp­tian tombs have been known to har­bor an­cient virus­es and fun­gus spores.”

“I sup­pose so. Strange that no one told me.”

But Vi­ola had turned away. “Oh, look—what a fab­ulous unguent con­tain­er! It’s bet­ter than any­thing in the British Mu­se­um!” And she rushed over to a large glass case con­tain­ing an ar­ti­fact carved in white al­abaster and dec­orat­ed with paint, a li­on crouch­ing on the lid. “Why, it has the car­touche of Thut­mo­sis him­self on it!” She knelt, ex­am­in­ing it with rapt at­ten­tion.

There was some­thing re­fresh­ing­ly spon­ta­neous, even re­bel­lious, about Vi­ola Maske­lene. No­ra took in the wom­an’s beat­en-​up can­vas pants, lack of make­up, and dusty work shirt, won­der­ing if this was go­ing to be her stan­dard mu­se­um uni­form. She looked just the op­po­site of a stuffy British ar­chae­ol­ogist.

Vi­ola . . . Vi­ola Maske­lene. It was a strange name, and it rang a bell . . . Had Men­zies men­tioned her be­fore? No, not Men­zies . . . some­body else . . .

And then, quite sud­den­ly, she re­mem­bered.

“You were the one kid­napped by the jew­el thief!” It came out in a rush, be­fore she’d had time to think, and No­ra im­me­di­ate­ly col­ored.

Vi­ola rose qui­et­ly from the case and brushed off her knees. “Yes. That was me.”

“I’m sor­ry. I didn’t mean to fling it out like that.”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, I’m glad you men­tioned it. Bet­ter to get it out in the open and get past it.”

No­ra felt her cheeks flam­ing.

“It’s fine, No­ra—re­al­ly. Ac­tu­al­ly, all that was just an­oth­er rea­son I was glad to take this job and re­turn to New York.”

“Re­al­ly?”

“To me, it’s sort of like falling off a horse—you’ve got to get right back on if you ev­er hope to ride again.”

“That’s a good way to look at it.” No­ra paused. “So you’re Agent Pen­der­gast’s friend.”

Now it was time for Vi­ola Maske­lene to col­or. “You might say that.”

“My hus­band, Bill Smith­back, and I are well ac­quaint­ed with Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast.”

Vi­ola looked at her with fresh in­ter­est. “Re­al­ly? How did you meet?”

“I helped with a case of his a few years ago. I feel ter­ri­ble about what’s hap­pened to him.” She didn’t men­tion her hus­band’s ac­tiv­ities, which he had in­sist­ed on keep­ing con­fi­den­tial.

“Agent Pen­der­gast is the oth­er rea­son I re­turned,” Vi­ola said in a low voice. Then she fell in­to si­lence.

Af­ter they had fin­ished up in the buri­al cham­ber, they fol­lowed with a quick check of the side cham­bers. Then No­ra glanced at her watch. “One o’clock. You want some lunch? We’re go­ing to be here un­til af­ter mid­night, and you don’t want to be caught run­ning on emp­ty. Come on—the shrimp bisque in the staff cafe­te­ria is ac­tu­al­ly worth mak­ing a trip for.”

At this, Vi­ola Maske­lene bright­ened. “Lead the way, No­ra.”

In the close dark­ness of cell 44, high with­in the iso­la­tion cell­block of Herk­moor Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Fa­cil­ity, Spe­cial Agent Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast lay at rest, his eyes open and star­ing at the ceil­ing. The dark was not ab­so­lute: an un­chang­ing bar of light from the lone win­dow streaked across the ceil­ing, formed by the harsh glare of the il­lu­mi­nat­ed yards and grounds out­side. From the next cell, the soft sounds of the drum­mer con­tin­ued, mut­ed and thought­ful now, a mourn­ful ada­gio which Pen­der­gast found cu­ri­ous­ly con­ducive to con­cen­tra­tion.

Oth­er sounds reached his sen­si­tive ears: the clang of steel against steel; a dis­tant gar­gled cry of anger; the end­less rep­eti­tion of a cough, com­ing in groups of three; foot­steps of a guard on his rounds. The great prison of Herk­moor was rest­ing but not sleep­ing—a world un­to its own, with its own rules, food chain, rit­uals, and cus­toms.

As Pen­der­gast lay there, a trem­bling green dot ap­peared on the op­po­site wall: the beam of a laser, shot in through the win­dow from a great dis­tance. It quick­ly stead­ied it­self. Then, af­ter a mo­ment, the dot be­gan to blink off and on. Pen­der­gast watched as it spelled out its cod­ed mes­sage. The on­ly sign of his com­pre­hen­sion was a slight quick­en­ing of breath to­ward the end of the mes­sage.

And then, as abrupt­ly as it had come, the dot van­ished. The faint­ly mur­mured word “Ex­cel­lent” could be heard in the dark­ened cell.

Pen­der­gast closed his eyes. To­mor­row at two o’clock he would once again have to face Lacar­ra’s gang, the Bro­ken Teeth, in yard 4. And then—as­sum­ing he sur­vived the en­counter—an even greater task would fol­low.

Right now, he re­quired sleep.

Em­ploy­ing a spe­cial­ized and se­cre­tive form of med­ita­tion known as Chongg Ran, Pen­der­gast iden­ti­fied and iso­lat­ed the pain in his bro­ken ribs; then he turned the pain off, one rib at a time. His con­scious­ness moved to the torn ro­ta­tor cuff in his shoul­der, the punc­ture wound in his side, the dull ache of his cut and bruised face. One by one, with cold men­tal dis­ci­pline, he iso­lat­ed and ex­tin­guished the pain in each part.

Such dis­ci­pline was nec­es­sary. A most chal­leng­ing day lay ahead.

The an­cient Beaux Arts man­sion at 891 River­side Drive boast­ed many spa­cious halls, but none were grander than the broad gallery that ran across the en­tire front por­tion of the sec­ond floor. The wall fac­ing the street was com­posed of a se­ries of floor-​to-​ceil­ing win­dows, sealed and shut­tered. At each end of the hall, arched door­ways led back to oth­er parts of the man­sion. Be­tween the two doors, along the in­side wall, stretched an un­bro­ken suc­ces­sion of life-​sized oil por­traits. The gallery was lit by dim elec­tric can­de­labra, which threw lam­bent light over the heavy gilt frames. Pi­ano mu­sic sound­ed from hid­den speak­ers: dense, lush, and de­mon­ical­ly com­plex.

Con­stance Greene and Dio­genes Pen­der­gast walked slow­ly down the gallery, paus­ing at each por­trait while Dio­genes mur­mured the his­to­ry of its sub­ject. Con­stance wore a pale blue dress, set off by a black lace front whose but­tons ran up to the low neck­line that sur­round­ed her throat. Dio­genes wore dark trousers and a sil­ver-​gray cash­mere jack­et. Both held tulip­shaped cock­tail glass­es.

“And this,” Dio­genes said as he stopped be­fore a por­trait of a splen­did­ly dressed no­ble­man whose air of dig­ni­ty was strange­ly off­set by a rak­ish mus­tache, “is le Duc Gas­pard de Mous­que­ton de Pren­dregast, the largest land­hold­er in Di­jon dur­ing the late six­teenth cen­tu­ry. He was the last re­spectable mem­ber of the no­ble line which be­gan with Sieur de Monts Pren­dregast, who won his ti­tle fight­ing in Eng­land with William the Con­queror. Gas­pard was some­thing of a tyrant: he was forced to flee Di­jon when the peas­ants and villeins work­ing his lands re­volt­ed. He took his fam­ily to the roy­al court, but a scan­dal en­sued and they were forced to leave France. Ex­act­ly what next hap­pened to the fam­ily re­mains some­thing of a mys­tery, but there was a dread­ful split. One branch moved to Venice, while the oth­er—those left with­out fa­vor, ti­tle, or mon­ey—fled to Amer­ica.”

He moved to the next por­trait, of a young man with flax­en hair, gray eyes, and a weak chin, whose full and sen­su­al lips seemed al­most the mir­ror of Dio­genes’s own. “This is the scion of the Venice branch of the fam­ily, the duke’s son, Comte Lunéville—the ti­tle was by this point, alas, al­ready hon­orary. He sank in­to idle­ness and dis­si­pa­tion, and for sev­er­al gen­er­ations his de­scen­dants fol­lowed suit. For a time, in fact, the lin­eage was sad­ly re­duced. It did not re­gain its full flow­er for an­oth­er hun­dred years, when the two fam­ily lines were re­unit­ed by mar­riage in Amer­ica . . . but even that, of course, proved a fleet­ing glo­ry.”

“Why fleet­ing?” Con­stance asked.

Dio­genes looked at her a mo­ment. “The Pen­der­gast fam­ily has been in a long, slow de­cline. My broth­er and I are the last. Al­though my broth­er mar­ried, his charm­ing wife . . . met an un­time­ly end be­fore she could re­pro­duce. I have nei­ther wife nor child. If we die with­out is­sue, the Pen­der­gast line will van­ish from the earth.”

They pro­ceed­ed to the next paint­ing.

“The Amer­ican branch of the fam­ily end­ed up in New Or­leans,” he con­tin­ued. “They moved com­fort­ably in the wealthy cir­cles of an­te­bel­lum so­ci­ety. There, the last of the Vene­tian branch of the fam­ily, il Mar­quese Orazio Pal­adin Pren­der­gast, mar­ried Eloise de Braquilanges in a wed­ding so lav­ish and bril­liant it was talked about for gen­er­ations. Their on­ly child, how­ev­er, be­came fas­ci­nat­ed with the peo­ples, and the prac­tices, of the sur­round­ing bay­ous. He took the fam­ily in a whol­ly un­ex­pect­ed di­rec­tion.” He ges­tured at the por­trait, dis­play­ing a tall, goa­teed man in a bril­liant white suit with a blue as­cot. “Au­gus­tus Robe­spierre St. Cyr Pen­der­gast. He was the first fruit of the re­unit­ed fam­ily lines, a doc­tor and a philoso­pher, who dropped an r from the last name to make it more Amer­ican. He was the cream of old New Or­leans so­ci­ety—un­til he mar­ried a rav­ish­ing­ly beau­ti­ful wom­an from the deep bay­ou who spoke no En­glish and was giv­en to strange noc­tur­nal prac­tices.” Dio­genes paused a mo­ment, as if re­flect­ing on some­thing. Then he chuck­led.

“It’s re­mark­able,” Con­stance breathed, fas­ci­nat­ed de­spite her­self. “All these years I’ve stared at these faces, try­ing to put names and his­to­ries to them. A few of the most re­cent ones I could guess at, but the rest . . .” She shook her head.

“Great-​Un­cle An­toine nev­er told you of his an­ces­try?”

“No. He nev­er spoke of it.”

“I’m not sur­prised, re­al­ly—he left the fam­ily on bad terms. As, in fact, did I.” Dio­genes hes­itat­ed. “And it’s clear my broth­er nev­er spoke much of the fam­ily to you, ei­ther.”

Con­stance took a sip from her glass in lieu of re­ply.

“I know a great deal about my fam­ily, Con­stance. I have tak­en pains to learn their se­cret his­to­ries.” He glanced at her again. “I can’t tell you how hap­py it makes me to be able to share this with you. I feel I can talk to you . . . like no oth­er.”

She met his eyes on­ly briefly be­fore re­turn­ing them to the por­trait.

“You de­serve to know it,” he con­tin­ued. “Be­cause af­ter all, you’re a mem­ber of the fam­ily, too—in a way.”

Con­stance shook her head. “I’m on­ly a ward,” she said.

“To me, you are more than that—much more.”

They had hes­itat­ed be­fore the por­trait of Au­gus­tus. Now, to break a si­lence that threat­ened to grow awk­ward, Dio­genes said, “How do you like the cock­tail?”

“In­ter­est­ing. It has an ini­tial bit­ter­ness that blos­soms on the tongue in­to . . . well, some­thing else en­tire­ly. I’ve nev­er tast­ed any­thing like it.”

She looked at Dio­genes for ap­proval and he smiled. “Go on.”

She took an­oth­er small sip. “I de­tect licorice and aniseed, eu­ca­lyp­tus, fen­nel per­haps—and notes of some­thing else I can’t iden­ti­fy.” She low­ered the glass. “What is it?”

Dio­genes smiled, sipped from his own glass. “Ab­sinthe. Hand-​mac­er­at­ed and dis­tilled, the finest avail­able. I have it flown in from Paris for my per­son­al con­sump­tion. Di­lut­ed slight­ly with sug­ar and wa­ter, as is the clas­sic prepa­ra­tion. The fla­vor you can’t iden­ti­fy is thu­jone.”

Con­stance stared at the glass in sur­prise. “Ab­sinthe? Made from worm­wood? I thought it was il­le­gal.”

“We should not be con­cerned with such tri­fles. It is pow­er­ful, mind-​ex­pand­ing: which is why great artists from Van Gogh to Mon­et to Hem­ing­way made it their drink of choice.”

Con­stance took an­oth­er, cau­tious sip.

“Look in­to it, Con­stance. Have you ev­er seen a drink of such a pure and unadul­ter­at­ed col­or? Hold it up to the light. It’s like gaz­ing at the moon through a flaw­less emer­ald.”

For a mo­ment, she re­mained mo­tion­less, as if search­ing for an­swers in the green depths of the liqueur. Then she took an­oth­er, slight­ly less ten­ta­tive sip.

“How does it make you feel?”

“Warm. Light.”

They con­tin­ued slow­ly down the gallery.

“I find it re­mark­able,” she said af­ter a mo­ment, “that An­toine fit­ted up this in­te­ri­or in­to a per­fect repli­ca of the fam­ily man­sion in New Or­leans. Down to the last de­tail—in­clud­ing these paint­ings.”

“He had them re-​cre­at­ed by a fa­mous artist of the day. He worked with the artist for five years, re­con­struct­ing the faces from mem­ory and a few fad­ed en­grav­ings and draw­ings.”

“And the rest of the house?”

“Al­most iden­ti­cal to the orig­inal, save for his choice of vol­umes in the li­brary. The use he de­vot­ed all the sub-​base­ment cham­bers to, how­ev­er, was . . . unique, to say the least. The New Or­leans man­sion was ef­fec­tive­ly be­low sea lev­el and so had its base­ments lined with sheets of lead: that wasn’t nec­es­sary here.” He sipped his drink. “Af­ter my broth­er took over this house, a great many changes were made. It is no longer the place Un­cle An­toine called home. But then, you know that all too well.”

Con­stance did not re­ply.

They reached the end of the gallery, where a long, back­less set­tee await­ed, cush­ioned in plush vel­vet. Near­by lay an el­egant En­glish game bag by John Chap­man in which Dio­genes had brought the bot­tle of ab­sinthe. Now he low­ered him­self grace­ful­ly on­to the set­tee and mo­tioned for Con­stance to do the same.

She sat down be­side him, plac­ing the glass of ab­sinthe on a near­by salver. “And the mu­sic?” she asked, nod­ding as if to in­di­cate the shim­mer­ing pi­ano scales that freight­ed the air.

“Ah, yes. That is Alkan, the for­got­ten mu­si­cal ge­nius of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry. You will nev­er hear a more lux­uri­ant, cere­bral, tech­ni­cal­ly chal­leng­ing artist—nev­er. When his pieces were first played—a rare event, by the way, since few pi­anists are up to the chal­lenge—peo­ple thought them to be di­abol­ical­ly in­spired. Even now Alkan’s mu­sic in­spires strange be­hav­ior in lis­ten­ers. Some think they smell smoke while lis­ten­ing; oth­ers find them­selves trem­bling or grow­ing faint. This piece is the Grande Sonate, ‘Les Qua­tre Âges.’ The Hamelin record­ing, of course: I’ve nev­er heard more as­sured vir­tu­os­ity or more com­mand­ing fin­ger tech­nique.” He paused, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly a mo­ment. “This fu­gal pas­sage, for in­stance: if you count the oc­tave dou­blings, it has more parts than a pi­anist has fin­gers! I know you must ap­pre­ci­ate it, Con­stance, as few do.”

“An­toine was nev­er a great ap­pre­ci­ator of mu­sic. I learned the vi­olin en­tire­ly on my own.”

“So you can ap­pre­ci­ate the in­tel­lec­tu­al and sen­su­al heft of the mu­sic. Just lis­ten to it! And thank God the great­est mu­si­cal philoso­pher was a ro­man­tic, a deca­dent—not some smug Mozart with his puerile false ca­dences and pre­dictable har­monies.”

Con­stance lis­tened a mo­ment in si­lence. “You seem to have worked rather hard to make this mo­ment agree­able.”

Dio­genes laughed light­ly. “And why not? I can think of few pas­times more re­ward­ing than to make you hap­py.”

“You seem to be the on­ly one,” she said af­ter a pause, in a very low voice.

The smile left Dio­genes’s face. “Why do you say that?”

“Be­cause of what I am.”

“You are a beau­ti­ful and bril­liant young wom­an.”

“I’m a freak.”

Very quick­ly—yet with ex­cep­tion­al ten­der­ness—Dio­genes took her hands. “No, Con­stance,” he said soft­ly and ur­gent­ly. “Not at all. Not to me.”

She looked away. “You know my his­to­ry.”

“Yes.”

“Then sure­ly you, of all peo­ple, would un­der­stand. Know­ing how I’ve lived—the way in which I’ve lived, here in this house, all these years . . . don’t you find it bizarre? Re­pug­nant?” Sud­den­ly she looked back at him, eyes blaz­ing with strange fire. “I am an old wom­an, trapped in the body of a young wom­an. Who would ev­er want me?”

Dio­genes drew clos­er. “You have ac­quired the gift of ex­pe­ri­ence—with­out the aw­ful cost of age. You are young and vi­brant. It may feel a bur­den to you now, but it doesn’t have to be. You can be free of it any­time you choose. You can be­gin to live when­ev­er you want. Now, if you choose.”

She looked away again.

“Con­stance, look at me. No one un­der­stands you—ex­cept me. You are a pearl be­yond price. You have all the beau­ty and fresh­ness of a wom­an of twen­ty-​one, yet you have a mind re­fined by a life­time . . . no, life­times . . . of in­tel­lec­tu­al hunger. But the in­tel­lect can take you on­ly so far. You are like an un­wa­tered seed. Lay your in­tel­lect aside and rec­og­nize your oth­er hunger—your sen­su­al hunger. The seed cries for wa­ter—and on­ly then will it sprout, rise, and blos­som.”

Con­stance, re­fus­ing to look back, shook her head vi­olent­ly.

“You have been clois­tered here—shut up like a nun. You’ve read thou­sands of books, thought deep thoughts. But you haven’t lived. There is an­oth­er world out there: a world of col­or and taste and touch. Con­stance, we will ex­plore that world to­geth­er. Can’t you feel the deep con­nec­tion be­tween us? Let me bring that world here, to you. Open your­self to me, Con­stance: I am the one who can save you. Be­cause I’m the on­ly per­son who tru­ly un­der­stands you. Just as I am the one per­son who shares your pain.”

Now, abrupt­ly, Con­stance tried to pull her hands away. They re­mained gen­tly—but firm­ly—clasped in Dio­genes’s own. But in the brief strug­gle, her sleeve drew back from her wrist, ex­pos­ing sev­er­al slash­ing scars: scars that had healed im­per­fect­ly.

See­ing this se­cret re­vealed, Con­stance froze: un­able to move, even to breathe.

Dio­genes al­so seemed to go very still. And then he gen­tly re­leased one hand and held out his own arm, slid­ing up the cuff from his wrist. There lay a sim­ilar scar: old­er but un­mis­tak­able.

Star­ing at it, Con­stance drew in a sharp breath.

“You see now,” he mur­mured, “how well we un­der­stand each oth­er? It is true—we are alike, so very alike. I un­der­stand you. And you, Con­stance—you un­der­stand me.”

Slow­ly, gen­tly, he re­leased her oth­er hand. It fell limply to her side. Now, rais­ing his hands to her shoul­ders, he turned her to face him. She did not re­sist. He raised a hand to her cheek, stroking it very light­ly with the backs of his fin­gers. The fin­gers drift­ed soft­ly over her lips, then down to her chin, which he grasped gen­tly with his fin­ger­tips. Slow­ly, he brought her face clos­er to his. He kissed her once, ev­er so light­ly, and then again, some­what more ur­gent­ly.

With a gasp that might have been re­lief or de­spair, Con­stance leaned in­to his em­brace and al­lowed her­self to be fold­ed in­to his arms.

Adroit­ly Dio­genes shift­ed his po­si­tion on the set­tee and eased her down on­to the vel­vet cush­ions. One of his pale hands strayed to the lacy front of her dress, un­do­ing a row of pearl but­tons be­low her throat, the slen­der fin­gers glid­ing down, grad­ual­ly ex­pos­ing the swelling curve of her breasts to the dim light. As he did so, he mur­mured some lines in Ital­ian:

Ei s’im­merge ne la notte,

Ei s’aderge in vèr’ le stelle …

As his form moved over her, nim­ble as a bal­let dancer, a sec­ond sigh es­caped her lips and her eyes closed.

Dio­genes’s eyes did not close. They re­mained open and fixed up­on her, wet with lust and tri­umph—

Two eyes: one hazel, one blue.

42

Ger­ry sheathed his ra­dio and cast a dis­be­liev­ing look in Ben­jy’s di­rec­tion. “You won’t frig­ging be­lieve this.”

“What now?”

“They’re still bring­ing that spe­cial pris­on­er in­to yard 4 for the two o’clock ex­er­cise shift.”

Ben­jy stared. “Bring­ing him back? You’re shit­tin’ me.”

Ger­ry shook his head.

“It’s mur­der. And they’re do­ing it on our watch.”

“Tell me about it.”

“On whose or­ders?”

“Straight from the horse’s ass: Imhof.”

A si­lence gath­ered in the long emp­ty hall of Herk­moor’s build­ing C.

“Well, two o’clock is in fif­teen min­utes,” Ben­jy said at last. “We’d bet­ter get our butts in gear.”

He led the way as they ex­it­ed the cell­block in­to the weak sun­light of yard 4. A smell of spring­like de­cay and damp­ness drift­ed on the air. The sod­den grass of the out­er yards was still mat­ted and brown, and a few bare branch­es could be seen ris­ing be­yond the perime­ter walls. They took up po­si­tions, not on the cat­walk above this time, but in the ac­tu­al yard.

“I’m not go­ing to see my cor­rec­tions ca­reer get flushed down the toi­let,” said Ger­ry dark­ly. “I swear, if any of Pocho’s gang makes a move to­ward the guy, I’ll use the Taser. I wish to hell they gave us guns.”

They took up po­si­tions on ei­ther side of the yard, wait­ing for the pris­on­ers in iso­la­tion to be es­cort­ed out for their lone hour of ex­er­cise. Ger­ry checked his Taser, his pep­per spray, ad­just­ed his side-​han­dle ba­ton. He wouldn’t wait to see what hap­pened, like he’d done last time.

A few min­utes lat­er, the doors opened and the es­cort guards filed out with their pris­on­ers, who si­dled out in­to the yard, blink­ing in the bright light, look­ing as shit-​stupid as they were.

The last pris­on­er to come out was the spe­cial one. He was as pale as a mag­got and looked a mess: face bruised and ban­daged, one eye near­ly swollen shut. De­spite be­ing numbed by years of work­ing in pens, Ger­ry felt a creep­ing sense of out­rage that the man had been put back in the yard. Pocho was dead, true enough; but that had been an open-​and-​shut case of self-​de­fense. This was dif­fer­ent. This was cold-​blood­ed mur­der. And if it didn’t hap­pen to­day, it would hap­pen to­mor­row or the next day, on their watch or some­one else’s. It was one thing to stick the guy in a cell next to the drum­mer, or put him in soli­tary, or take away his books, but this was out of line. Way out of line.

He braced him­self. Pocho’s boys were spread­ing out, do­ing their slow pimp-​roll, hands in their pock­ets. The tall one, Rafael Borges, was bounc­ing the usu­al bas­ket­ball, mov­ing in a slow arc to­ward the hoop. Ger­ry glanced at Ben­jy and saw his part­ner was equal­ly on edge. The es­cort guards made a ges­ture to­ward him and he ges­tured back, sig­ni­fy­ing the hand­off was com­plete: they would take over the pris­on­ers. The es­cort guards filed out, clos­ing the dou­ble met­al doors be­hind them.

Ger­ry kept his eye on the spe­cial pris­on­er. The man was strolling along the brick wall to­ward the chain-​link fence, mov­ing alert­ly but with­out un­due alarm. Ger­ry won­dered if he was all right in the head. If it were him out there, he’d have stained his shorts by now.

He watched as the spe­cial pris­on­er si­dled over be­hind the bas­ket­ball back­board and placed a ca­su­al hand on the chain-​link fence, lean­ing against it. He looked up, then peered from side to side, al­most as if wait­ing for some­thing. The oth­er pris­on­ers slow­ly cir­cled, none even look­ing in his di­rec­tion, act­ing as if he didn’t ex­ist.

When a call came over his ra­dio with a burst of stat­ic, Ger­ry jumped. “Fecteau here.”

“This is Spe­cial Agent Spencer Cof­fey, FBI.”

“Who?”

“Wake up, Fecteau, I don’t have all day. As I un­der­stand it, you and the oth­er one, Doyle, are in yard 4 on ex­er­cise du­ty.”

“Yes, yes, sir,” Ger­ry stam­mered. Why the hell was Agent Cof­fey talk­ing di­rect­ly to him? It must be true what they were whis­per­ing, that the spe­cial pris­on­er was a fed—al­though he sure didn’t look like one.

“I want both of you up here in Main Se­cu­ri­ty, on the dou­ble.”

“Yes, sir, as soon as we hand over yard du­ty—”

“I said, on the dou­ble. That means right now.”

“But, sir, there’s just the two of us guard­ing the yard—”

“I gave you a di­rect or­der, Fecteau. If I don’t see you in nine­ty sec­onds, I swear to God you’ll be in North Dako­ta to­mor­row, on the mid­night shift at Black Rock.”

“But you’re not—”

His re­ply was drowned out by a short blast of stat­ic as the FBI agent signed off. He looked over at Ben­jy, who had, of course, heard ev­ery­thing over his own ra­dio. Ben­jy walked over, shrug­ging his shoul­ders faint­ly.

“We don’t re­port to that bas­tard,” Ger­ry said. “Do you think we have to do what he says?”

“You want to take that kind of chance? Let’s get go­ing.”

Ger­ry re­placed the ra­dio, feel­ing sick to his stom­ach. It was mur­der, pure and sim­ple. But at least they wouldn’t be there when it hap­pened—and they couldn’t be blamed for that, now, could they?

Nine­ty sec­onds . . . He moved swift­ly across the yard and opened the met­al doors. Then he turned and threw one last glance back at the spe­cial pris­on­er. The man was still lean­ing against the chain-​link fence be­hind the back­board. Pocho’s gang was al­ready start­ing to close in, pack­like.

“God help him,” he mur­mured to Ben­jy as the doors swung shut be­hind them with a deep metal­lic boom.

43

Jug­gy” Ochoa saun­tered across the as­phalt of the yard, glanc­ing at the sky, the fence, the bas­ket­ball back­board, his broth­ers scat­tered about. His eye turned back to the met­al doors that had just clanged shut. The two guards had split. Just like that. He could hard­ly be­lieve they’d put “Al­bi­no” back in the yard—and left him there.

There the suck­er was, lean­ing against the fence, cool­ly re­turn­ing his gaze. Ochoa glanced around again through slit­ted eyes. His prison in­stincts told him some­thing was go­ing on. It was some kind of set­up. Ochoa knew the oth­ers felt the same way. They didn’t need to talk; ev­ery­one knew al­ready what ev­ery­one else was think­ing. The guards hat­ed Al­bi­no as much as they did. Some­body in high places want­ed him dead.

Ochoa was on­ly too ea­ger to oblige.

He spit on the as­phalt and scuffed it in with his shoe while he watched Borges pound the bas­ket­ball on the ground with his fist, once, twice, as he made a slow round to­ward the hoop. Borges was go­ing to reach Al­bi­no first, and Ochoa knew Borges could be re­lied on to be cool and sit tight. There would be plen­ty of time to take care of the prob­lem, nice and qui­et, in a way that no­body got sin­gled out. Sure, it would mean a few months in soli­tary, loss of priv­ileges—but they were all lif­ers, any­way. And this was sanc­tioned. What­ev­er the con­se­quences, they’d be mild.

He glanced up at the dis­tant tow­er. No­body was look­ing their way: the tow­er guards most­ly looked to the side and out, to­ward the perime­ter fences. Their view of the in­te­ri­or of yard 4 was lim­it­ed.

He turned his gaze back to Al­bi­no, dis­con­cert­ed to see the man was still star­ing at him. Let him stare. In five min­utes, he’d be dead, ready to be rinsed off and shipped out.

Jug­gy glanced around at the her­manos. They, too, were tak­ing it slow. Al­bi­no was a fight­er, a moth­er­fuck­ing dirty fight­er, but this time they’d be more care­ful. And he was banged up; he’d be slow­er. They’d take him down as a pack.

They con­tin­ued to slide in, tight­en­ing the ring.

Borges had reached the three-​point line. With a smooth­ly prac­ticed mo­tion, he tossed the ball up and it swished through the hoop, drop­ping down—in­to the wait­ing hands of the Al­bi­no, who had stepped for­ward with a sud­den deft move­ment to catch it.

They all stood and stared at him, hard. He held the ball, re­turn­ing their looks, his stitchedup face ut­ter­ly neu­tral. Jug­gy felt a surge of rage at the raw chal­lenge in his look.

He glanced over his shoul­der. Still no guards.

Borges stepped for­ward and the Al­bi­no said some­thing to him, talk­ing in a rapid un­der­tone, so low Jug­gy couldn’t hear what he said. As he ap­proached, Jug­gy reached down and pulled the lit­tle shank out of the crotch seam of his un­der­wear. The time was now: shank the bas­tard and have it done.

“Hold on, man,” said Borges, ges­tur­ing with his palm out as Ochoa stepped for­ward. “I want to hear this.”

“Hear what?”

“You know you’re be­ing set up,” Al­bi­no was say­ing. “They want you to kill me. And you know it—ev­ery sin­gle one of you. Do you know why?”

He stared in turn at the group that now en­cir­cled him.

“Who the fuck cares?” said Jug­gy, tak­ing a step for­ward and ready­ing the shank.

“Why?” said Borges, hold­ing his arm out to­ward Jug­gy again.

“Be­cause I know how to es­cape from here.”

An elec­tric si­lence.

“Bull­shit,” said Jug­gy, dart­ing for­ward with the shank. But the Al­bi­no was ready and shot the ball at him, tak­ing him by sur­prise, and in dodg­ing it Jug­gy lost his stride. The ball bounced off and rolled away.

“Are you go­ing to kill me and then spend the rest of your lives in here, nev­er know­ing if I was telling the truth?”

“He’s full of shit,” said Jug­gy. “He did Pocho, re­mem­ber?” He lunged for­ward again, but the Al­bi­no skipped side­ways and turned, like a mata­dor. Borges grabbed Jug­gy’s arm with a grip of steel.

“He fuck­ing did Pocho!”

“Let the man talk.”

“Free­dom,” Al­bi­no con­tin­ued, his drawl­ing ac­cent mak­ing the word sound de­li­cious. “Have you been caged up so long you’ve for­got­ten what the word means?”

“Borges, no­body gets out of here,” Jug­gy said. “Let’s fin­ish this.”

“Jug, don’t fuck­ing do any­thing.”

Jug­gy looked around and saw that the oth­ers were star­ing at him. He felt in­cred­ulous: the Al­bi­no was sweet-​talk­ing his way out of a shank.

“Hear the man out,” said an­oth­er gang mem­ber, Roany. The oth­ers nod­ded.

“This is the guy that waxed Pocho,” Jug­gy said again, feel­ing the con­vic­tion be­gin to drain out of his voice.

“So?” said Borges. “Maybe Pocho need­ed a lit­tle wax­ing.”

The Al­bi­no con­tin­ued, speak­ing in a low voice. “Borges is go­ing out first,” he said. “He be­lieved me first. Jug, if you’re ready, you’re next.”

“Go­ing out? When?” Borges asked.

“Right now, while the guards are gone.”

“The hell with this,” Jug­gy snarled.

“Okay, in­stead of Jug, I’ll take you.” And the Al­bi­no point­ed to Roany. “Are you ready?” “You know I am.”

“Wait a god­damn minute.” Ochoa took an­oth­er lunge with the shank, but there was a sud­den flash­ing move­ment that took him ut­ter­ly by sur­prise, and when it was over, Al­bi­no held the shank.

Ochoa backed up. “You son of a bitch—”

“He’s just wast­ing our time,” said Al­bi­no. “An­oth­er word out of him and I’ll cut out his tongue. Any ob­jec­tions?” He looked around the group.

No­body re­spond­ed.

Ochoa stood there, breath­ing hard, say­ing noth­ing. The bas­tard had killed Pocho and tak­en over, just like that. How could it have hap­pened so fast?

“Any­one who doubts me, look at this.” Al­bi­no reached over to the fence and grasped the links at a weld­ed seam at a post, giv­ing a sharp tug. The links part­ed ef­fort­less­ly. He drew them back a bit more, stretch­ing out an open­ing just large enough to ad­mit a hu­man be­ing.

They stared in dis­be­lief.

“Fol­low my in­struc­tions and you’ll all get out of here—even you, Mr. Jug. To prove my sin­cer­ity, I’ll go last. I’ve worked it out to the fi­nal de­tail. On the far side of the fence, you will scat­ter, each go­ing out by a dif­fer­ent route. Here’s the plan . . .”

44

Pen­der­gast wait­ed un­til the last one, Jug, had climbed through the slit in the fence and dis­ap­peared, all of them tum­bling through the gap so quick­ly they hard­ly cared whether he fol­lowed or not—which was pre­cise­ly what Pen­der­gast had hoped. They would each be fol­low­ing sep­arate es­cape routes, exquisite­ly chore­ographed by Eli Glinn to cre­ate a max­imal up­roar and re­sponse.

Af­ter Jug had dis­ap­peared, Pen­der­gast grasped the cut fence, which had sprung back in­to place, and pulled it as wide as he could, stretch­ing and bend­ing the met­al to leave the gap ob­vi­ous for the guards who would soon be com­ing. He stepped back and ex­am­ined the dig­ital watch on his wrist, which in Pen­der­gast’s case had far more so­phis­ti­cat­ed guts in­side than its cheap plas­tic cas­ing sug­gest­ed. Those guts in­clud­ed a re­ceiv­er unit that down­load­ed ACTS satel­lite time sig­nals, which would be of the ut­most im­por­tance for the im­pend­ing op­er­ation. He wait­ed un­til the pre­cise ap­point­ed time, then pressed a but­ton on the watch, ac­ti­vat­ing a timer. The dis­play be­gan count­ing down from 900 sec­onds.

Pen­der­gast stepped back and wait­ed.

At 846 sec­onds, the sud­den howl of emer­gen­cy sirens filled the air. Pen­der­gast turned and walked swift­ly across the yard in­to the an­gle of the build­ing clos­est to the door, where two shab­by ce­ment walls came to­geth­er at a right an­gle. There, he reached down in­to a drain­pipe and re­trieved a long, thin tube: the same tube D’Agos­ta had placed in­side it a few days ear­li­er. He re­leased the catch­es at both ends, un­rolled it like a flag, and gave it a sharp shake. Im­me­di­ate­ly, it popped out in­to its in­tend­ed shape: two equal squares of fab­ric about three feet per side, joined along one edge by plas­tic stays to cre­ate a V shape. The squares were coat­ed in very thin sheets of bril­liant­ly re­flec­tive My­lar. The en­tire con­struc­tion, in fact, had been mod­ified by Glinn from a stan­dard portable light re­flec­tor such as those used in out­door ad­ver­tis­ing shoots.

Now Pen­der­gast moved in­to the cor­ner, putting his back against the bricks and crouch­ing low to the ground. He po­si­tioned the de­vice in front, snug­ging it up close to him and mak­ing sure the out­er two edges of the V-​shaped re­flec­tor were tight against the walls on each side, form­ing a nine­ty-​de­gree an­gle.

It was a sim­ple but high­ly re­fined ap­pli­ca­tion of one of the old­est stage il­lu­sions of mag­ic: us­ing care­ful­ly an­gled mir­rors to make some­one van­ish. It had been used as ear­ly as the 1860s, when Pro­fes­sor John Pep­per’s “Pro­teus Cab­inet” and Colonel Sto­dare’s “Sphinx” act—in which a wom­an was placed in a box that was sub­se­quent­ly shown to be emp­ty—were the rage of Broad­way. Pressed in­to the cor­ner of the prison yard, the re­flec­tor ac­com­plished the same ef­fect: cre­at­ing in essence a mir­rored box that Pen­der­gast could hide be­hind. Its mir­rored sur­faces re­flect­ed the ce­ment walls on ei­ther side, cre­at­ing the il­lu­sion of a va­cant cor­ner where the two walls came to­geth­er. On­ly some­one ac­tu­al­ly walk­ing over to ex­am­ine the cor­ner would dis­cov­er the de­cep­tion—and the cur­rent pan­ic was cal­cu­lat­ed to pre­vent that.

At 821, Pen­der­gast heard the elec­tron­ic bolts dis­en­gage; the doors were flung open, and four “first re­spon­der” guards from near­by guard sta­tion 7 charged in­to yard 4, Tasers at the ready.

“Fence is cut!” one cried, point­ing to the gap­ing hole at the far end.

As the four sprint­ed across the as­phalt to­ward the gap, Pen­der­gast stood, snapped the two sides of the My­lar re­flec­tor to­geth­er, rolled it back in­to a com­pact tube, and re­turned it to the drain­pipe. Then he slipped through the doors in­to the prison, sprint­ing around a cor­ner and in­to the near­by bath­room. Quick­ly, he en­tered the sec­ond-​to-​last stall, stood on the toi­let, and lift­ed the acous­tic ceil­ing tile over­head. There, taped to the up­per side, he found a plas­tic bag con­tain­ing a slim four-​gi­ga­byte flash-​mem­ory chip, a cred­it card, a small hy­po­der­mic nee­dle and sy­ringe, some duct tape, and a tiny cap­sule of brown liq­uid. Pock­et­ing the items, he ex­it­ed the bath­room and dart­ed down the hall to guard sta­tion 7. Just as Glinn had pre­dict­ed: of the five guards on du­ty, four had re­spond­ed to the es­cape call, leav­ing the lone com­mand­ing guard at the con­sole, sur­round­ed by a wall of live video feeds. The man was shout­ing or­ders in­to a mi­cro­phone and punch­ing up feed af­ter feed, fran­ti­cal­ly search­ing for the loose in­mates. An over­whelm­ing re­sponse had been mo­bi­lized to deal with the mass es­cape at­tempt. Based on the guard’s ex­cit­ed chat­ter, al­ready one of the in­mates had been run down and re­cap­tured.

As Glinn had an­tic­ipat­ed, the door to guard sta­tion 7 had been left un­locked in the hasty de­par­ture of the first re­spon­ders.

Pen­der­gast slipped in­side, then threw an arm around the guard’s neck and in­ject­ed him. The guard slumped with­out a word and Pen­der­gast laid him out on the floor, then half cov­ered the guard’s comm mike with his hand and yelled hoarse­ly in­to it, “I see one of them! I’m go­ing af­ter him!”

He quick­ly un­dressed the un­con­scious guard while a burst of shout­ed coun­ter­mands came over the speak­er, or­der­ing him to re­main at his sta­tion. In less than a minute, Pen­der­gast was dressed in the guard’s uni­form, equipped with badge, Mace, Taser, stick, ra­dio, and emer­gen­cy call unit. He was more slen­der than the un­con­scious guard, but a few mi­nor ad­just­ments ren­dered the dis­guise quite ac­cept­able.

Next, he reached be­hind the large rack of servers un­til he had lo­cat­ed the cor­rect port. Then, tak­ing the flash drive from the plas­tic bag, he in­sert­ed it in­to the port. He then turned his at­ten­tion back to the guard, tap­ing his mouth shut, his hands be­hind his back, and his knees to­geth­er. He dragged the drugged guard back to the near­by men’s room, seat­ed him on a toi­let, taped his tor­so to the toi­let tank to keep him from falling over, locked the stall, and crawled out be­neath the door.

Mov­ing to a mir­ror, Pen­der­gast pulled the ban­dages from his face and stuffed them in­to the waste can. He broke the glass cap­sule over a sink and mas­saged the dye in­to his hair, turn­ing it from white blond to an un­re­mark­able dark brown. Ex­it­ing the men’s room, he walked down the hall, made a right turn, and—just be­fore com­ing to the first video cam­era—he paused to glance at his watch: 660 sec­onds.

He wait­ed un­til the dis­play read 640, then con­tin­ued on, mov­ing at an easy pace, all the while keep­ing one eye fixed on his watch. He knew that many eyes would be watch­ing the video feeds. Even though he was dressed in a guard’s uni­form, he was walk­ing in the wrong di­rec­tion—away from the break­out—and his face was still bat­tered and bruised. They knew him well in build­ing C. Any­one catch­ing a glimpse of him would rec­og­nize him.

But he al­so knew that for ten sec­onds—from 640 to 630—this par­tic­ular video feed would be con­trolled by the flash drive he had plugged in­to the se­cu­ri­ty com­put­er. The drive would tem­porar­ily store the pre­vi­ous ten sec­onds of feed from that cam­era and play it back again. It would then leapfrog to the next video cam­era in the chain and re­peat the pro­cess. The loop would run on­ly once for each cam­era: Pen­der­gast had a ten-​sec­ond win­dow, no more, to pass through each field of view. The tim­ing had to be per­fect.

He walked past the cam­era with­out in­ci­dent and con­tin­ued down the long, va­cant cor­ri­dors of build­ing C—the guards had been drawn off to oth­er ar­eas by the es­capees. Some­times he quick­ened his step, some­times he slowed it, pass­ing each cam­era at the pre­cise mo­ment in which its video sig­nal would be re­played. Fre­quent­ly his ra­dio blared. Once, he was passed by a knot of run­ning guards, and he quick­ly dropped to tie a shoe, turn­ing his swollen, bruised face away from them. They tore by with­out a glance, their in­ter­est oth­er­wise en­gaged.

He passed the din­ing hall and kitchen of build­ing C, the smell of dis­in­fec­tant strong in the air. He took an­oth­er turn, then an­oth­er, at last reach­ing the fi­nal stretch of cor­ri­dor be­fore the check­point and se­cu­ri­ty door be­tween Herk­moor Build­ing C/Fed­er­al and Herk­moor Build­ing B/State.

Pen­der­gast’s face was well known in build­ing C. He was not known at all in build­ing B.

He ap­proached the se­cu­ri­ty door, swiped the cred­it card, placed his hand on the fin­ger­ma­trix screen, and wait­ed.

His heart was beat­ing at rather more than its cus­tom­ary rate. This was the mo­ment of truth.

At ex­act­ly 290 sec­onds, the se­cu­ri­ty light glowed green and the met­al locks dis­en­gaged. Pen­der­gast stepped through in­to build­ing B. He walked around the first bend in the cor­ri­dor, then paused in the dark cor­ner made by the dog­leg of the hall­way. He reached up to the deep­est cut on his cheek and, with a vi­cious tug, pulled out the row of stitch­es. When the warm blood be­gan to run, he smeared it over his face, neck, and hands. Then he pulled up his shirt, ex­am­in­ing the stitched wound in his side where the shank had pen­etrat­ed. He took a deep breath. Then he yanked that wound open as well.

They had to look as fresh as pos­si­ble.

At 110 sec­onds, he heard run­ning foot­steps, and, as pre­vi­ous­ly planned, one of the es­capees ran by—Jug—who had du­ti­ful­ly fol­lowed the es­cape plan laid out for him by Glinn. Of course, it would not be suc­cess­ful—he would be ap­pre­hend­ed at the ex­it to build­ing B if not be­fore—but this, too, was part of the plan. Pocho’s gang was a smoke screen—that was all. None would ac­tu­al­ly es­cape.

As soon as Jug passed him, Pen­der­gast screamed and threw him­self down on­to the floor of the cor­ri­dor, while at the same time press­ing the emer­gen­cy but­ton on his comm unit:

“Of­fi­cer down! Im­me­di­ate re­sponse! Of­fi­cer down!”

45

Staff Nurse Ralph Kid­der kneeled over the supine form of the guard—who was sob­bing like a ba­by, bab­bling about be­ing at­tacked, be­ing afraid of dy­ing—and tried to fo­cus on the prob­lem at hand. He checked the man’s heart with a stetho­scope—strong and fast—ex­am­ined the neck and limbs for any bro­ken bones, took the blood pres­sure—ex­cel­lent—ex­am­ined the cut on the face: nasty but su­per­fi­cial.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked again, ex­as­per­at­ed. “Where are your in­juries? Talk to me!”

“My face, he cut my face!” the man shrieked, fi­nal­ly gain­ing a mea­sure of co­her­ence.

“I see that. Where else?”

“He stabbed me! Oh, my chest, it hurts!”

The nurse gen­tly felt the ribs, not­ing the swelling and faint grav­el­ly feel of a cou­ple of bro­ken ones, not dis­placed. There was in­deed a stab wound, bleed­ing co­pi­ous­ly, but a quick check in­di­cat­ed a rib had de­flect­ed the blade and pre­vent­ed it from pierc­ing the pleu­ra.

“It’s noth­ing that a con­va­les­cence won’t fix,” Kid­der said sharply, turn­ing to the two re­spond­ing EMTs. “Load him and take him down to in­fir­mary B. We’ll do a blood workup, an Xray se­ries, stitch up a few of those cuts. Tetanus boost­er and a course of amox­icillin. I don’t see any­thing so far that’ll re­quire a trans­fer to an out­side hos­pi­tal.”

One of the EMTs snort­ed. “Noth­ing’s go­ing in or out un­til the es­capees are ap­pre­hend­ed and all pris­on­ers ac­count­ed for, any­way. They’ve had a morgue-​mo­bile idling out­side the gate for half an hour al­ready.”

“The morgue-​mo­bile’s nev­er in a rush,” said Kid­der dry­ly. He wrote down the guard’s name and badge num­ber on his clip­board. He didn’t rec­og­nize the man—but then, he was from build­ing C and his face was cut up pret­ty bad.

As they were load­ing the pa­tient on­to the stretch­er, Kid­der heard a sud­den up­roar of shout­ing from down the cor­ri­dor as an­oth­er pris­on­er was ap­pre­hend­ed. Kid­der had been work­ing at Herk­moor for al­most twen­ty years and this was the biggest es­cape at­tempt yet. Of course it had no chance of suc­ceed­ing. He just hoped the guards weren’t beat­ing hell out of too many would-​be es­capees.

The EMTs raised the stretch­er and trun­dled the whim­per­ing guard off to the in­fir­mary, Kid­der fol­low­ing. These guards act­ed so tough when ev­ery­thing was un­der con­trol, he thought, but knock them around a bit and they fell apart like so much over­cooked meat.

The in­fir­mary in build­ing B, like the oth­er in­fir­maries in Herk­moor, was di­vid­ed in­to two com­plete­ly sep­arate, walled-​off ar­eas: the free area for staff and guards, and the in­car­cer­ation area for pris­on­ers. They wheeled the guard to the free area and cov­ered him with a blan­ket. Kid­der worked up the man’s chart, or­dered some X-​rays. He was start­ing to prep the guard for stitch­ing when his ra­dio beeped. He lift­ed it to his ear, lis­tened, spoke briefly. Then he turned to the pa­tient. “I’ve got to leave you for a while.”

“Alone?” the in­jured guard cried in a pan­ic.

“I’ll be back in about half an hour, maybe forty-​five min­utes, with the ra­di­ol­ogist. We have some in­jured in­mates—”

“Tak­ing care of in­mates be­fore me?” the man whined.

“They’re in need of rather more ur­gent care.” Kid­der didn’t tell him about the call he’d just re­ceived. It was as he feared: the guards had beat the crap out of sev­er­al of the es­capees.

“How long will I have to wait?”

Kid­der sighed ir­ri­ta­bly. “Like I said, maybe forty-​five min­utes.” He read­ied a nee­dle with a mild seda­tive and painkiller.

“Don’t stick me with that!” the man cried. “I’ve an aw­ful fear of nee­dles!”

Kid­der made an ef­fort to con­trol his an­noy­ance. “This’ll ease the pain.”

“It’s not that bad! Turn on the TV for me. That’ll dis­tract me.”

Kid­der shrugged. “Have it your way.” He put away the sy­ringe and hand­ed the pa­tient the re­mote. The man im­me­di­ate­ly turned it to an asi­nine game show and cranked up the vol­ume. Kid­der left, shak­ing his head, his al­ready low opin­ion of prison guards hav­ing sunk even low­er.

Fifty min­utes lat­er, Kid­der re­turned to the in­fir­mary in a fe­ro­cious­ly bad mood. Some of the guards had jumped at the chance to set­tle scores with a par­tic­ular­ly un­sa­vory group of in­mates, break­ing half a dozen bones in the pro­cess.

He checked his watch, won­der­ing about the guard he’d left be­hind. Fact was, in any of the big New York emer­gen­cy rooms the man would have had to wait at least twice as long. He pulled back the cur­tain and gazed at the guard, all bun­dled up and turned to­ward the wall, sleep­ing heav­ily de­spite the ex­ces­sive­ly loud game show play­ing on the tele­vi­sion.

Are you sure, Joy, that door num­ber 2 is your choice? All right, then, let’s open it up! Be­hind door num­ber 2 is . . . (huge groan from the au­di­ence) . . .

“Time for your X-​rays, Mr.—” Kid­der glanced at the clip­board. “Mr. Sidesky.”

No re­sponse.

. . . a cow! Now, isn’t that the most beau­ti­ful Hol­stein cow you’ve ev­er seen, ladies and gen­tle­men? Fresh milk ev­ery morn­ing, Joy, think of it!

“Mr. Sidesky?” Kid­der said, rais­ing his voice. He reached for the re­mote, turned off the TV. A sud­den, blessed si­lence.

“X-​ray time!”

No re­sponse.

Kid­der reached over and gave the man’s shoul­der a gen­tle push—then jerked back with a muf­fled cry. Even through the cov­ers, the body felt cold.

It wasn’t pos­si­ble. The man had been brought in an hour ago, alive and healthy.

“Hey, Sidesky! Wake up!” With a trem­bling hand, he reached out again, pressed on the shoul­der—and once again felt that hideous muf­fled cold.

With a feel­ing of dread, he grasped the cor­ner of the cov­ers and drew them back, ex­pos­ing a naked corpse, pur­ple and grotesque­ly bloat­ed. The stench of death and dis­in­fec­tants rose up, en­velop­ing him like a mi­as­ma.

He stag­gered, hand over his mouth, chok­ing, mind reel­ing in con­fu­sion and dis­be­lief. The man had not on­ly died, he had start­ed to de­cay. How was it pos­si­ble? He looked around wild­ly but there was no oth­er pa­tient in the ward. There had been some ter­ri­ble mis­take, some crazy mix-​up . . .

Kid­der took a steady­ing breath. Then he grasped the fig­ure by the shoul­der and pulled him over on­to his back. The head flopped around, eyes star­ing, tongue lolling like a dog, face hor­ri­bly blue and bloat­ed, mouth drain­ing some kind of yel­low mat­ter.

“God!” he moaned, back­ing up. It wasn’t the in­jured guard at all. It was the dead pris­on­er he had worked on just the day be­fore, help­ing the ra­di­ol­ogist pro­duce a se­ries of foren­sic Xrays.

Try­ing to keep his voice nor­mal, he paged the Herk­moor chief physi­cian. A mo­ment lat­er the man’s ir­ri­tat­ed voice came over the in­ter­com.

“I’m busy, what is it?”

For a mo­ment, Kid­der didn’t quite know what to say. “You know that dead pris­on­er in the morgue—”

“Lacar­ra? They cart­ed him away fif­teen min­utes ago.”

“No. No, they didn’t.”

“Of course they did. I signed the trans­fer my­self, I saw them load the body bag in­to the morgue-​mo­bile. It was wait­ing out­side the gate for the all-​clear so it could come in for the corpse.”

Kid­der swal­lowed. “I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think what? What the hell are you talk­ing about, Kid­der?”

“Pocho Lacar­ra . . .” He swal­lowed, licked dry lips: “. . . is still here.”

Twen­ty miles to the south, the mor­tu­ary ve­hi­cle was on the Tacon­ic State Park­way, head­ing to­ward New York City through light traf­fic. With­in min­utes, it pulled over at a rest area and cruised to a stop.

Vin­cent D’Agos­ta tore off his white morgue uni­form, climbed in­to the rear, and un­zipped the body bag. In­side was the long, white, nude form of Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast. The agent sat up, blink­ing.

“Pen­der­gast! Damn, we did it! We frig­ging did it!”

The agent held up a hand. “My dear Vin­cent, please—no ef­fu­sive demon­stra­tions of af­fec­tion un­til I am show­ered and dressed.”

46

At 6:30 that evening, William Smith­back Jr. stood on the side­walk of Mu­se­um Drive, look­ing up at the bril­liant­ly lit fa­cade of the New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry. A broad vel­vet car­pet had been un­rolled down the great gran­ite steps. A seething crowd of rub­ber­neck­ers and jour­nal­ists was held back by vel­vet ropes and pha­lanx­es of mu­se­um guards, while one limou­sine af­ter an­oth­er rolled up, dis­gorg­ing movie stars, city of­fi­cials, kings and queens of high fi­nance, so­ci­ety ma­trons, gaunt va­cant-​eyed fash­ion mod­els du jour, man­ag­ing part­ners, uni­ver­si­ty pres­idents, and sen­ators—a stu­pen­dous pa­rade of mon­ey, pow­er, and in­flu­ence.

The great and pow­er­ful as­cend­ed the mu­se­um steps in a mea­sured flow of black, white, and glit­ter, look­ing nei­ther left nor right, head­ing through the pil­lared fa­cade and vast bronze doors in­to a great blaze of light—while the rab­ble, held back by vel­vet and brass, gaped, squealed, and pho­tographed. Above, a four-​sto­ry ban­ner draped over the mu­se­um’s neo­clas­si­cal fa­cade bil­lowed in a light breeze. It de­pict­ed a gi­gan­tic Eye of Ho­rus with words in faux Egyp­tian script writ­ten un­der­neath:

GRAND OPEN­ING

THE GREAT TOMB OF SENEF

Smith­back ad­just­ed the silk tie of his tuxe­do and smoothed his lapels. Hav­ing ar­rived in a

cab in­stead of a limo, he had been forced to get out a block shy of the mu­se­um and had pushed his way through the crowd un­til he’d ar­rived at the ropes. He showed his in­vi­ta­tion to a sus­pi­cious guard, who called over an­oth­er, and af­ter sev­er­al min­utes of con­fab­ula­tion they grudg­ing­ly al­lowed him through—right in the per­fumed wake of Wan­da Meur­sault, the ac­tress who had made such a fuss at the Sa­cred Im­ages open­ing. Smith­back con­sid­ered how dis­tress­ing it must have been when she lost out in her bid for Best Ac­tress at the re­cent Acade­my Awards. With a thrill of plea­sure, he marched in the pa­rade of pow­er and passed through the shin­ing gates.

This was go­ing to be the moth­er of all open­ings.

The vel­vet car­pet led across the Great Ro­tun­da, with its brace of mount­ed di­nosaurs, through the mag­nif­icent African Hall, and from there wound its way through half a dozen musty halls and half-​for­got­ten cor­ri­dors to ar­rive at a set of el­eva­tors, where the crowd had backed up. It was quite a dis­tance from the en­trance, Smith­back thought as he wait­ed in line for the next el­eva­tor—but the Tomb of Senef was lo­cat­ed in the very bow­els of the mu­se­um, about as far from the front en­trance as you could get. He ad­just­ed the knot of his tie. The hike might just pump a lit­tle blood through some of these dried-​out old husks, he thought. Do them good.

A chime an­nounced the ar­rival of the next car and he filed in with the rest of them, packed in like black and white sar­dines, wait­ing for the el­eva­tor to make the crawl to the base­ment. The doors opened again at last and they were greet­ed with an­oth­er blaze of light, the swirling sounds of an or­ches­tra, and be­yond, the great Egyp­tian Hall it­self, its nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry mu­rals beau­ti­ful­ly re­stored. Along the walls, gold, jew­els, and faience glit­tered from ev­ery case, while exquisite­ly laid tea ta­bles and din­ing ta­bles, flick­er­ing with thou­sands of can­dles, cov­ered the mar­ble floors. Most im­por­tant, Smith­back thought as his eye roved about, were the long ta­bles along the walls groan­ing with smoked stur­geon and salmon, crusty home­made breads, huge plat­ters of hand-​cut San Daniele prosci­ut­to, sil­ver tubs of pearly-​gray sevru­ga and bel­uga caviar. Mas­sive sil­ver caul­drons heaped with shaved ice stood at ei­ther end, bristling with bot­tles of Veuve Clic­quot like so many bat­ter­ies of ar­tillery, wait­ing to be fired and poured.

And these, Smith­back thought, were mere­ly the hors d’oeu­vres—the din­ner was yet to come. He rubbed his hands to­geth­er, sa­vor­ing the splen­did sight and look­ing about for his wife, No­ra, whom he had hard­ly seen in the past week, and shiv­er­ing slight­ly at the thought of oth­er, more in­ti­mate plea­sures to be en­joyed lat­er, once this par­ty—and this whole hec­tic and dread­ful week—had fi­nal­ly come to a close.

He was con­tem­plat­ing which of the food ta­bles to as­sault first when he felt an arm slip through his from be­hind.

“No­ra!” He turned to em­brace her. She was dressed in a sleek black gown, taste­ful­ly em­broi­dered with sil­ver thread. “You look rav­ish­ing!”

“You don’t look so bad your­self.” No­ra reached up and smoothed his un­re­pen­tant cowlick, which prompt­ly sprang up again, de­fy­ing grav­ity. “My hand­some over­grown boy.”

“My Egyp­tian queen. How’s your neck feel­ing, by the way?”

“It’s fine, and please stop ask­ing.”

“This is amaz­ing. Oh, God, what a spread.” Smith­back looked around. “And to think—you’re the cu­ra­tor. This is your show.”

“I had noth­ing to do with the par­ty.” She glanced over at the en­trance to the Tomb of Senef, closed and draped with a red rib­bon, wait­ing to be cut. “My show’s in there.”

A slim wait­er came sweep­ing by, bear­ing a sil­ver tray load­ed with flutes of cham­pagne, and Smith­back snagged two as the man passed, hand­ing one to No­ra.

“To the Tomb of Senef,” he said.

They clinked glass­es and drank.

“Let’s get some food be­fore the crush,” said No­ra. “I’ve on­ly got a few min­utes. At sev­en, I’ve got to say a few words, and then there’ll be oth­er speech­es, din­ner, and the show. You won’t see much of me, Bill. I’m sor­ry.”

“Lat­er, I’ll see more.”

As they ap­proached the ta­bles, Smith­back no­ticed a tall, strik­ing, ma­hogany-​haired wom­an stand­ing near­by, dressed in­con­gru­ous­ly in black slacks and a gray silk shirt, open at the neck, set off by a sim­ple string of pearls. It was down-​dress­ing in the ex­treme, and yet some­how she man­aged to pull it off, make it look classy, even el­egant.

“This is the mu­se­um’s new Egyp­tol­ogist,” said No­ra, turn­ing to the wom­an. “Vi­ola Maske­lene. This is my hus­band, Bill Smith­back.”

Smith­back was tak­en aback. “Vi­ola Maske­lene? The one who . . . ?” He quick­ly re­cov­ered, ex­tend­ing his hand. “Very pleased to meet you.”

“Hul­lo,” the wom­an said in a cul­tured, faint­ly amused ac­cent. “I’ve en­joyed work­ing with No­ra these past few days. What a mu­se­um!”

“Yes,” said Smith­back. “Quite the no­ble pile. Vi­ola, tell me . . .” Smith­back could hard­ly re­strain his cu­rios­ity. “How, er, did you hap­pen to end up here in the mu­se­um?”

“It was a last-​minute thing. With Adri­an’s trag­ic death, the mu­se­um need­ed an Egyp­tol­ogist right away, some­one with ex­per­tise on the New King­dom and the tombs in the Val­ley of the Kings. Hugo Men­zies knew of my work, it seems, and sug­gest­ed my name. I was de­light­ed to take the job.”

Smith­back was about to open his mouth to ask an­oth­er ques­tion when he caught No­ra cast­ing him a warn­ing look: now was not the time to start pump­ing her for in­for­ma­tion about the kid­nap­ping. Still, he re­flect­ed, it was mighty strange that Maske­lene was so sud­den­ly back in New York—and at the mu­se­um, no less. All Smith­back’s jour­nal­ism bells were ring­ing: this was far too much a co­in­ci­dence. It bore look­ing in­to . . . to­mor­row.

“Quite a spread,” Vi­ola said, turn­ing to the food ta­bles. “I’m starv­ing. Shall we?”

“We shall,” said Smith­back.

They el­bowed up to the teem­ing ta­bles, and Smith­back, gen­tly eas­ing aside a meek cu­ra­tor, reached out and load­ed up a plate with a good two ounces of caviar, a tall stack of bli­nis, and a dol­lop of crème fraîche. Out of the cor­ner of his eye, he saw, with sur­prise, that Vi­ola was heap­ing her plate with an even more un­seem­ly amount of food, ap­par­ent­ly as dis­mis­sive of deco­rum as he was.

She caught his eye, col­ored slight­ly, then winked. “Haven’t eat­en since last night,” she said. “They’ve had me work­ing non­stop.”

“Go right ahead!” Smith­back said, scoop­ing up a sec­ond mound of caviar, de­light­ed to have a part­ner in crime.

A sud­den burst of mu­sic came from the small or­ches­tra at the end of the hall, and there was a smat­ter­ing of ap­plause as Hugo Men­zies, mag­nif­icent in white tie and tails, mount­ed a podi­um next to the or­ches­tra. A hush fell on the hall as his glit­ter­ing blue eyes sur­veyed the crowd.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men!” he said. “I won’t in­flict a long speech on you tonight, be­cause we have far more in­ter­est­ing en­ter­tain­ment planned. Let me just read you an e-​mail I re­ceived from the Count of Ca­hors, who made this all pos­si­ble with his ex­traor­di­nar­ily gen­er­ous do­na­tion:

My dear Ladies and Gen­tle­men,

I am des­olate not to join you in these fes­tiv­ities cel­ebrat­ing the re­open­ing of the Tomb of Senef. I am an old man and can no longer trav­el. But I shall raise a glass to you and wish you a spec­tac­ular evening.

With kind­est re­gards,

Le Comte Thier­ry de Ca­hors

A thun­der of ap­plause greet­ed this short mis­sive from the reclu­sive count. When it died down, Men­zies re­sumed.

“And now,” he said, “I have the plea­sure of in­tro­duc­ing to you the great so­pra­no An­tonel­la da Ri­mi­ni as Aï­da, joined by tenor Gilles de Mont­par­nasse as Radamès, who will sing for you arias from the fi­nal scene of Aï­da, ‘La fa­tal pietra sovra me si chiuse,’ which will be sung in En­glish, for the ben­efit of those of you who do not speak Ital­ian.”

More ap­plause. An enor­mous­ly fat wom­an, heav­ily paint­ed and eye­lined, and squeezed to burst­ing in­to a faux Egyp­tian cos­tume, stepped on­to the stage, fol­lowed by an equal­ly large man in sim­ilar garb.

“Vi­ola and I have to go,” No­ra whis­pered to Smith­back. “We’re on next.” She gave his hand a squeeze, then left with Vi­ola Maske­lene in tow, dis­ap­pear­ing in­to the crowd.

An­oth­er round of ap­plause shook the hall as the con­duc­tor mount­ed the stage. Smith­back mar­veled at the en­thu­si­asm of the guests—they had hard­ly had time to get lu­bri­cat­ed. Glanc­ing around while munch­ing a bli­ni, he was sur­prised at the num­ber of no­table faces: sen­ators, cap­tains of in­dus­try, movie stars, pil­lars of so­ci­ety, for­eign dig­ni­taries, and of course, the full spread of mu­se­um trustees and as­sort­ed big­wigs. If some­body nuked the joint, he re­flect­ed ghoul­ish­ly, the reper­cus­sions wouldn’t be just na­tion­al—they’d be glob­al.

The lights dimmed and the con­duc­tor raised his ba­ton, the au­di­ence falling in­to si­lence. Then the or­ches­tra be­gan a do­lor­ous mo­tif as Radamès sang:

The fa­tal stone above has sealed my doom,

Here is my tomb! The light of day

I shall nev­er see again . . . Nor shall I see Aï­da.

Aï­da, my love, where are you? May you live hap­pi­ly,

My hideous fate for­ev­er un­known!

But what is that sound? A slith­er­ing ser­pent? A ghoul­ish vi­sion?

No! A dim hu­man form I see.

By the gods! Aï­da!

And now the di­va sang out:

Yes, it is I.

Smith­back, a con­firmed opera-​hater, made an ef­fort to shut out the shriek­ing voice while he re­turned his at­ten­tion to the load­ed ta­bles. Shoul­der­ing his way through the crowd, he took ad­van­tage of the tem­po­rary lull in the feed­ing fren­zy to scoop up half a dozen oys­ters; on top of this, he laid two thick slabs cut from an an­cient, moldy round of French cheese, added a stack of pa­per-​thin slices of prosci­ut­to and two slices of tongue. Bal­anc­ing the tot­tery stack, he moved to the next ta­ble and snagged a sec­ond flute of cham­pagne, ask­ing the bar­tender to top it off for ef­fi­cien­cy’s sake so he wouldn’t have to re­turn as quick­ly for a re­fill. Then he made his way to one of the can­dlelit ta­bles to en­joy his booty.

A free feed like this came on­ly rarely, and Smith­back was de­ter­mined to make the most of it.

47

Eli Glinn was wait­ing for the morgue ve­hi­cle at the anony­mous door to the EES build­ing. Send­ing some­one to deal with the ve­hi­cle, he whisked Pen­der­gast off for a show­er and change of clothes and as­signed D’Agos­ta to a robot­ical­ly silent, white-​coat­ed tech­ni­cian. The tech­ni­cian had D’Agos­ta wait while he made a few brief phone calls; then he led the way through the cav­ernous, echo­ing space that com­prised the heart of the Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions build­ing. The large room was qui­et, as one would ex­pect at half past sev­en on a weeknight: even so, sev­er­al sci­en­tists could be seen scrib­bling on white­boards or peer­ing at com­put­er mon­itors, amidst an air of stu­dious ef­fi­cien­cy. As he walked past the lab ta­bles, the sci­en­tif­ic equip­ment, and the mod­els, he won­dered just how many of the em­ploy­ees knew that their build­ing cur­rent­ly har­bored one of the fed’s top fugi­tives.

D’Agos­ta fol­lowed the tech­ni­cian in­to a wait­ing el­eva­tor in the rear wall. The man in­sert­ed a key in­to a con­trol pan­el and pressed the down but­ton. The car de­scend­ed for a sur­pris­ing­ly long in­ter­val be­fore the doors opened on­to a pale blue cor­ri­dor. Mo­tion­ing D’Agos­ta to fol­low, the tech­ni­cian strode down it, stop­ping at last be­fore a door. He smiled, nod­ded, then turned and walked back in the di­rec­tion of the el­eva­tor.

D’Agos­ta stared at the re­treat­ing form. Then he glanced back at the un­marked door. Af­ter a mo­ment, he gave a ten­ta­tive knock.

It was im­me­di­ate­ly opened by a short, cheer­ful-​look­ing man with a florid face and a close­ly cropped beard. He ush­ered D’Agos­ta in and closed the door be­hind him.

“You are Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta, yes?” he asked in an ac­cent D’Agos­ta as­sumed to be Ger­man. “Please have a seat. I am Dr. Rolf Kras­ner.”

The of­fice had the spare, clin­ical air of a doc­tor’s con­sul­ta­tion room, with gray car­pets, white walls, and anony­mous fur­nish­ings. A rose­wood ta­ble stood in the mid­dle, bril­liant­ly pol­ished. In its cen­ter sat what looked like a tech­ni­cal man­ual—thick as the Man­hat­tan tele­phone book and bound in black plas­tic. Eli Glinn had al­ready wheeled him­self in­to po­si­tion at the far side of the ta­ble. He nod­ded silent­ly to D’Agos­ta and ges­tured to­ward an emp­ty chair.

As D’Agos­ta seat­ed him­self, a door in the back of the room opened and Pen­der­gast ap­peared. His wounds had been fresh­ly dressed and his hair, still damp from be­ing washed, had been combed back. He was dressed, most in­con­gru­ous­ly, in a white turtle­neck and gray wool pants, which—dif­fer­ent as they were from his ha­bit­ual black suit—al­most had the ef­fect of a dis­guise.

D’Agos­ta rose in­stinc­tive­ly.

Pen­der­gast’s eyes met his, and af­ter a mo­ment he smiled. “I fear I ne­glect­ed to ex­press my grat­itude to you for free­ing me from prison.”

“You know you don’t have to do that,” said D’Agos­ta, col­or­ing.

“But I will. Thank you very much, my dear Vin­cent.” He spoke soft­ly, tak­ing D’Agos­ta’s hand in his own and giv­ing it a curt shake. D’Agos­ta felt strange­ly moved by this man who some­times found even the sim­plest hu­man cour­te­sies awk­ward.

“Please sit down,” said Glinn in the same neu­tral voice—de­void of any hu­man feel­ing—that had so an­noyed D’Agos­ta on their first meet­ing.

He com­plied. Pen­der­gast slipped in­to a seat op­po­site—a lit­tle stiffly, D’Agos­ta thought, yet with his usu­al fe­line grace. “And I owe an enor­mous debt of grat­itude to you as well, Mr. Glinn,” Pen­der­gast went on. “A most suc­cess­ful op­er­ation.”

Glinn nod­ded curt­ly.

“Al­though I deeply re­gret hav­ing to kill Mr. Lacar­ra to do so.”

“As you know,” Glinn replied, “there was no oth­er way. You had to kill an in­mate in or­der to es­cape in his body bag, and that in­mate, fur­ther­more, had to take his ex­er­cise in yard 4, the ide­al spot for an abortive es­cape. We were for­tu­nate—if I may be per­mit­ted that ex­pres­sion—to iden­ti­fy a yard 4 in­mate who was so thor­ough­ly evil that some might say he de­served to die: a man who tor­tured three chil­dren to death in front of their moth­er. It was then a sim­ple mat­ter to hack in­to the Jus­tice De­part­ment database and change Lacar­ra’s ar­rest records to iden­ti­fy him as one of your ‘col­lars’—thus bait­ing the trap for Cof­fey. Fi­nal­ly, I might point out that you were forced to kill him: it was self-​de­fense.”

“No amount of sophistry will change the fact it was a pre­med­itat­ed killing.”

“Strict­ly speak­ing, you are cor­rect. But as you know your­self, his death was nec­es­sary to save more lives—per­haps many more lives. And our mod­el in­di­cat­ed his death sen­tence ap­peals would have been de­nied, any­way.”

Pen­der­gast silent­ly in­clined his head.

“Now, Mr. Pen­der­gast, let us lay triv­ial eth­ical dilem­mas aside. We have ur­gent busi­ness to take care of, re­lat­ing to your broth­er. I as­sume no news from the out­side world reached you while in soli­tary con­fine­ment?”

“None what­so­ev­er.”

“Then it would be a sur­prise to learn that your broth­er de­stroyed all the di­amonds he stole from the mu­se­um.”

D’Agos­ta saw Pen­der­gast stiff­en vis­ibly.

“That’s right. Dio­genes pul­ver­ized the di­amonds and re­turned them to the mu­se­um as a sack of pow­der.”

Af­ter a si­lence, Pen­der­gast said, “Once again, his ac­tions were be­yond my abil­ity to pre­dict or com­pre­hend.”

“If it’s any con­so­la­tion to you, they sur­prised us as well. It meant our as­sump­tions about him were wrong. We be­lieved that af­ter be­ing cheat­ed of Lu­cifer’s Heart—the one di­amond he most de­sired—your broth­er would go to ground for a pe­ri­od, lick his wounds, plot his next move. Clear­ly, that was not the case.”

Kras­ner broke in, his cheer­ful voice in stark con­trast to Glinn’s mono­tone. “By de­stroy­ing the very di­amonds he had spent many years plan­ning to steal, di­amonds that he both de­sired and need­ed, Dio­genes was de­stroy­ing a part of him­self. It was a sui­cide of sorts. He was aban­don­ing him­self to his demons.”

“When we learned what hap­pened to the di­amonds,” Glinn went on, “we re­al­ized our pre­lim­inary psy­cho­log­ical pro­file was woe­ful­ly in­suf­fi­cient. And so we went back to the draw­ing board, re­an­alyzed ex­ist­ing da­ta, gath­ered ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion. That is the re­sult.” He nod­ded to the thick vol­ume. “I’ll spare you the de­tails. It boils down to one thing.”

“And that is?”

“The ‘per­fect crime’ which Dio­genes spoke of was not the theft of the di­amonds. Nor was it the out­rage he per­pe­trat­ed on you: killing your friends and then fram­ing you for the crimes. What­ev­er his orig­inal in­tent was we are in no po­si­tion to spec­ulate. But the fact re­mains that his ul­ti­mate crime has yet to be com­mit­ted.”

“But the date in his let­ter?”

“An­oth­er lie, or at least di­ver­sion. The theft of the di­amonds was part of his plan, but their de­struc­tion was ap­par­ent­ly a more spon­ta­neous act. That doesn’t change the fact that his se­ries of crimes was care­ful­ly planned to keep you oc­cu­pied, to mis­lead you, to stay one step ahead of you. I must say, the depth and com­plex­ity of your broth­er’s plan is quite breath­tak­ing.”

“So the crime is yet to come,” Pen­der­gast said in a dry, qui­et voice. “Do you know what it is, or when it will take place?”

“No—ex­cept that all in­di­ca­tions are that this crime is im­mi­nent. Per­haps to­mor­row. Per­haps tonight. Hence the need for your im­me­di­ate lib­er­ation from Herk­moor.”

Pen­der­gast was silent a mo­ment. “I fail to see how I can be of any help,” he said, his voice tinged with bit­ter­ness. “As you see, I’ve been wrong at ev­ery turn.”

“Agent Pen­der­gast, you are the one per­son—the on­ly per­son—who can help. And you know how.”

When Pen­der­gast did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond, Glinn went on. “We had hoped our foren­sic pro­file would have pre­dic­tive pow­er—that it would pro­vide a sense of what Dio­genes’s fu­ture ac­tion would be. And it has . . . to a point. We know he’s mo­ti­vat­ed by a pow­er­ful feel­ing of vic­tim­iza­tion, the sense that a ter­ri­ble wrong was done to him. We be­lieve his ‘per­fect crime’ will at­tempt to per­pe­trate a sim­ilar wrong on a large num­ber of peo­ple.”

“That is cor­rect,” Kras­ner broke in. “Your broth­er wants to gen­er­al­ize this wrong, to make it pub­lic, to force oth­ers to share his pain.”

Glinn leaned over the ta­ble and stared at Pen­der­gast. “And we know some­thing else. You are the per­son who in­flict­ed this pain on your broth­er—at least, that’s how he per­ceives it.”

“That is ab­surd,” said Pen­der­gast.

“Some­thing hap­pened be­tween you and your broth­er at an ear­ly age: some­thing so dread­ful it twist­ed his al­ready warped mind and set in mo­tion the events he’s play­ing out now. Our anal­ysis is miss­ing a vi­tal piece of in­for­ma­tion: what hap­pened be­tween you and Dio­genes. And the mem­ory of that event is locked up there.” Glinn point­ed at Pen­der­gast’s head.

“We’ve been through this be­fore,” Pen­der­gast replied stiffly. “I’ve al­ready told you ev­ery­thing of im­por­tance that has passed be­tween my broth­er and my­self. I even sub­mit­ted to a rather cu­ri­ous in­ter­view with the good Dr. Kras­ner here—with­out re­sult. There is no hid­den atroc­ity. I would re­mem­ber: I have a pho­to­graph­ic mem­ory.”

“For­give my dis­agree­ing with you, but this event hap­pened. It must have. There’s no oth­er ex­pla­na­tion.”

“I’m sor­ry, then. Be­cause even if you’re right, I have no rec­ol­lec­tion of any such event—and there’s clear­ly no way for me to re­call it. You’ve al­ready tried and failed.”

Glinn tent­ed his hands, looked down at them. For a mo­ment, the room went still.

“I think there is a way,” he said with­out look­ing up.

When there was no re­sponse, Glinn raised his head again. “You’re schooled in a cer­tain an­cient dis­ci­pline, a se­cret mys­ti­cal phi­los­ophy prac­ticed by a tiny or­der of monks in Bhutan and Ti­bet. One facet of this dis­ci­pline is spir­itu­al. An­oth­er is phys­ical: a com­plex se­ries of rit­ual­ized move­ments not un­like the ka­ta of Shotokan karate. And still an­oth­er is in­tel­lec­tu­al: a form of med­ita­tion, of con­cen­tra­tion, that al­lows the prac­ti­tion­er to un­leash the full po­ten­tial of the hu­man mind. I re­fer to the se­cret rit­uals of the Dzogchen and its even more rar­efied prac­tice, the Chongg Ran.”

“How did you come by this in­for­ma­tion?” Pen­der­gast asked in a voice so cold D’Agos­ta felt his blood freeze.

“Agent Pen­der­gast, please. The ac­qui­si­tion of knowl­edge is our pri­ma­ry stock-​in-​trade. In try­ing to learn more about you—for pur­pos­es of bet­ter un­der­stand­ing your broth­er—we have spo­ken to a great many peo­ple. One of them was Cor­nelia De­lamere Pen­der­gast, your greataunt. Cur­rent res­idence: the Mount Mer­cy Hos­pi­tal for the Crim­inal­ly In­sane. Then there was a cer­tain as­so­ciate of yours, Miss Cor­rie Swan­son, en­rolled as a se­nior at Phillips Ex­eter Acade­my. She was a rather more dif­fi­cult sub­ject, but we ul­ti­mate­ly learned what we need­ed to.”

Glinn re­gard­ed Pen­der­gast with his Sphinx-​like gaze. Pen­der­gast re­turned the look, his pale cat’s eyes hard­ly blink­ing. The ten­sion in the con­fer­ence room in­creased rapid­ly; D’Agos­ta felt the hairs on his arms stand­ing on end.

At last Pen­der­gast spoke. “This pry­ing in­to my pri­vate life goes far be­yond the bounds of your em­ploy.”

Glinn did not re­ply.

“I use the mem­ory cross­ing in a strict­ly im­per­son­al way—as a foren­sic tool, to re-​cre­ate the scene of a crime or a his­tor­ical event. That is all. It would have no val­ue with such a . . . per­son­al mat­ter.”

“No val­ue?” A dry tone of skep­ti­cism crept in­to Glinn’s voice.

“On top of that, it is a very dif­fi­cult tech­nique. At­tempt­ing to ap­ply it here would be a waste of time. Just like the lit­tle game that Dr. Kras­ner tried to play with me.”

Glinn leaned for­ward again in his wheelchair, still star­ing at Pen­der­gast. When he spoke, his voice car­ried a sud­den ur­gen­cy.

“Mr. Pen­der­gast, isn’t it pos­si­ble that the same event which has marred your broth­er so ter­ri­bly—which turned him in­to a mon­ster—scarred you as well? Isn’t it pos­si­ble you have walled up its mem­ory so com­plete­ly that you no longer have any con­scious rec­ol­lec­tion of it?”

“Mr. Glinn—”

“Tell me,” Glinn said, his voice grow­ing loud­er. “Isn’t it pos­si­ble?”

Pen­der­gast looked at him, gray eyes glint­ing. “I sup­pose it is re­mote­ly pos­si­ble.”

“If it is pos­si­ble, and if this mem­ory does ex­ist, and if this mem­ory will help us find that last miss­ing piece, and if by do­ing so we can save lives and de­feat your broth­er . . . isn’t it at least worth try­ing?”

The two men held each oth­er’s gaze for less than a minute, but to D’Agos­ta it seemed to last for­ev­er. Then Pen­der­gast looked down. His shoul­ders slumped vis­ibly. Word­less­ly he nod­ded.

“Then we must pro­ceed,” Glinn went on. “What do you re­quire?”

Pen­der­gast did not re­ply for a mo­ment. Then he seemed to rouse him­self. “Pri­va­cy,” he said.

“Will the Berggasse stu­dio suf­fice?”

“Yes.”

Pen­der­gast placed both hands on the arms of the chair and pushed him­self up­right. With­out a glance at the oth­ers in the room, he turned and made his way back to­ward the room from which he’d emerged.

“Agent Pen­der­gast . . . ?” Glinn said.

Hand on the door­knob, Pen­der­gast half turned.

“I know how dif­fi­cult this or­deal will be. But this is not the time for half mea­sures. There can be no hold­ing back. What­ev­er it is, it must be faced—and con­front­ed—in its to­tal­ity. Agreed?”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded.

“Then good luck.”

A win­try smile passed briefly over the agent’s face. Then, with­out an­oth­er word, he opened the door to the study and slipped out of sight.

48

Cap­tain of Homi­cide Lau­ra Hay­ward stood to the left of the Egyp­tian Hall en­trance, gaz­ing du­bi­ous­ly over the crowd. She had dressed in a dark suit, the bet­ter to blend in with the crowd, the on­ly sign of her au­thor­ity the tiny gold cap­tain’s bars pinned to her lapel. Her weapon, a ba­sic Smith & Wes­son .38, was in its hol­ster un­der her suit jack­et.

The scene that greet­ed her eyes was one of text­book se­cu­ri­ty. Her peo­ple, plain­clothed and uni­formed, were all at their ap­point­ed sta­tions. They were the best she had—tru­ly New York’s finest. The mu­se­um guard pres­ence was there as well, de­lib­er­ate­ly ob­tru­sive, adding at least a psy­cho­log­ical sense of se­cu­ri­ty. Manet­ti had so far been ful­ly co­op­er­ative. The rest of the mu­se­um had been painstak­ing­ly se­cured. Hay­ward had run dozens of dis­as­ter sce­nar­ios through her head, draw­ing up plans to deal with ev­ery con­tin­gen­cy, even the most un­like­ly: sui­cide bomber, fire, se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem mal­func­tion, pow­er fail­ure, com­put­er fail­ure.

The on­ly weak­ness was the tomb it­self—it had on­ly one ex­it. But it was a large ex­it, and at the in­sis­tence of the NYC fire mar­shals, the tomb and all its con­tents had been spe­cial­ly fire­proofed. She her­self had made sure the tomb’s se­cu­ri­ty doors could be opened or closed from the in­side or out­side, man­ual­ly or elec­tron­ical­ly, even in the case of a to­tal pow­er fail­ure. She had stood in the con­trol room, oc­cu­py­ing the emp­ty room next to the tomb, and had op­er­at­ed the soft­ware that opened and closed the doors.

The tox­ico­log­ical teams had made not one sweep, not two, but three—the re­sults uni­form­ly neg­ative. And now she stood, sur­vey­ing the crowd, ask­ing her­self, What could pos­si­bly go wrong?

Her in­tel­lect an­swered loud and clear: Noth­ing.

But her gut sensed oth­er­wise. She felt al­most phys­ical­ly sick with un­ease. It was ir­ra­tional; it made no sense.

Once more, she delved deep in­to her cop in­stincts, try­ing to dis­cov­er the source of the feel­ing. As usu­al, her thoughts formed al­most au­to­mat­ical­ly in­to a list. And this time the list was all about Dio­genes Pen­der­gast.

Dio­genes was alive.

He had kid­napped Vi­ola Maske­lene.

He had at­tacked Mar­go.

He had stolen the di­amond col­lec­tion—and then de­stroyed it.

He had prob­ably been re­spon­si­ble for at least some of the killings as­cribed to Pen­der­gast.

He spent a great deal of time in the mu­se­um in some un­known ca­pac­ity, most like­ly pos­ing as a cu­ra­tor.

Both perps—Lip­per and Wicher­ly—had been in­volved with the Tomb of Senef, and both had sud­den­ly gone mad af­ter be­ing in the tomb. And yet a metic­ulous ex­am­ina­tion of the tomb and the hall had pro­duced no ev­idence what­so­ev­er of any kind of en­vi­ron­men­tal or elec­tri­cal prob­lem—cer­tain­ly noth­ing that could trig­ger psy­chot­ic breaks or brain dam­age. Was Dio­genes some­how to blame? What on earth was he plan­ning?

Against her will, her mind re­turned to the con­ver­sa­tion she’d had with D’Agos­ta in her of­fice days be­fore. All of what he’s done so far—the killings, the kid­nap­ping, the di­amond theft—has been lead­ing up to some­thing else. Those had been his words. Some­thing big­ger, maybe much big­ger.

She shiv­ered. Her con­jec­tures, her ques­tions about Dio­genes—it was all linked, it had to be. It was part of a plan.

But what was the plan?

Hay­ward hadn’t the slight­est idea. And yet her gut told her it would hap­pen tonight. It couldn’t be co­in­ci­dence. This was the “some­thing else” D’Agos­ta had talked about.

Her eyes trav­eled around the room, mak­ing con­tact with her peo­ple, one by one. As she did so, she picked out the many fa­mous faces in the hall: the may­or, the speak­er pro tem of the House, the gov­er­nor, at least one of the state’s two sen­ators. And there were many oth­ers: CEOs of For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­ers, a smat­ter­ing of ac­tors and tele­vi­sion per­son­al­ities. Then there were the mu­se­um staff she knew: Col­lopy, Men­zies, No­ra Kel­ly . . .

Her eyes moved to the PBS tele­vi­sion crew, which had set up at one end of the hall and was film­ing the gala live. A sec­ond crew had set up in­side the as-​yet-​un­opened tomb, ready to film the first VIP tour of the ex­hi­bi­tion and the sound-​and-​light show that would be part of it.

Yes—that would be part of the plan. What­ev­er was go­ing to hap­pen would hap­pen live, with mil­lions watch­ing. And if Dio­genes’s al­ter ego was a cu­ra­tor, or some­body else high­ly placed in the mu­se­um, he would have the pow­er and the ac­cess nec­es­sary to en­gi­neer al­most any­thing. But who could he be? Manet­ti’s care­ful prob­ing of the mu­se­um’s per­son­nel files turned up noth­ing. If on­ly they had a pic­ture of Dio­genes that was less than twen­ty-​five years old, a fin­ger­print, a bit of DNA . . .

What was the plan?

Her eye end­ed up at the closed door to the tomb, the steel now cov­ered with a faux stone fin­ish, a huge red rib­bon stretched across its front.

Her feel­ing of sick­ness in­creased. And along with it came a des­per­ate feel­ing of iso­la­tion. She had done ev­ery­thing in her pow­er to stop, or at least post­pone, this open­ing. But she had con­vinced no­body. Even Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Rock­er, her al­ly in the past, had de­murred.

Was it all in her mind? Had the pres­sure fi­nal­ly got­ten to her? If on­ly she had some­one who saw things her way, who un­der­stood the back­ground, the true na­ture of Dio­genes. Some­one like D’Agos­ta.

D’Agos­ta. He had been ahead of her at ev­ery step of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion. He knew what was go­ing to hap­pen be­fore it hap­pened. Long be­fore any­one else, he’d known the kind of crim­inal they were up against. He had in­sist­ed Dio­genes was alive even when she and ev­ery­one else had “proved” he was dead.

And he knew the mu­se­um—knew it cold. He’d been in­volved in cas­es con­nect­ed to the mu­se­um go­ing back half a dozen years or more. He knew the play­ers. God, if on­ly he were here now . . . Not D’Agos­ta the man—that was over—but D’Agos­ta the cop.

She con­trolled her breath­ing. No point wish­ing for the im­pos­si­ble. She had done all she could. There was noth­ing left now but to wait, watch, and be ready to act.

Once again her eye roved the crowd, gauged the flow, ex­am­ined each face for un­nat­ural ten­sion, ex­cite­ment, anx­iety.

Sud­den­ly she froze. There, stand­ing by the group of dig­ni­taries near the podi­um, stood the tall fig­ure of a wom­an: a wom­an she rec­og­nized.

All her alarm bells went off. Mak­ing an ef­fort to con­trol her voice, she raised her ra­dio. “Manet­ti, Hay­ward here, do you read?”

“Copy.”

“Is that Vi­ola Maske­lene I’m look­ing at? Over by the podi­um.”

A pause. “That’s her.”

Hay­ward swal­lowed. “What’s she do­ing here?”

“She was hired to re­place that Egyp­tol­ogist, Wicher­ly.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. A day or two ago.”

“Who hired her?”

“An­thro­pol­ogy, I think.”

“Why wasn’t her name on the guest list?”

A hes­ita­tion. “I’m not sure. Prob­ably be­cause she was such a re­cent hire.”

Hay­ward want­ed to say more. She want­ed to curse in­to the ra­dio. She want­ed to de­mand to know why she hadn’t been told. But it was too late for all that. In­stead, she mere­ly said, “Over and out.”

The pro­file in­di­cat­ed that Dio­genes isn’t through.

The whole gala open­ing looked like a metic­ulous set­up—but for what?

D’Agos­ta’s words rang in her ears like a Klax­on. Some­thing big­ger, maybe much big­ger.

Je­sus, she need­ed D’Agos­ta—she need­ed him right now. He had the an­swers she didn’t.

She pulled out her per­son­al phone, tried his cel­lu­lar. No re­sponse.

She glanced at her watch: 7:15. The evening was still young. If she could find him, get him back here . . . Where the hell could he be? Once again, his words echoed in her mind:

There’s some­thing else you ought to know. Have you heard of the foren­sic pro­fil­ing firm of Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions, down on Lit­tle West 12th Street, run by an Eli Glinn? I’ve been spend­ing most of my time down there re­cent­ly, moon­light­ing . . .

It was just a chance—but it was bet­ter than noth­ing. It sure beat wait­ing here, twid­dling her thumbs. With luck, she could be there and back in less than forty min­utes.

She lift­ed her ra­dio again. “Lieu­tenant Gault?”

“Copy.”

“I’m head­ing out briefly. You’re in charge.”

“There’s some­body I need to speak with. If any­thing—any­thing—out of the or­di­nary hap­pens, you have my au­thor­ity to shut this down. To­tal­ly. You un­der­stand?”

“Yes, Cap­tain.”

She pock­et­ed the ra­dio and walked briskly out of the hall.

49

Pen­der­gast stood in the small study, back pressed against the door, mo­tion­less. His eyes took in the rich fur­nish­ings: the couch cov­ered with Per­sian rugs, the African masks, the side ta­ble, book­shelves, cu­ri­ous ob­jets d’art.

He took a steady­ing breath. With a great ef­fort of will, he made his way to the couch, lay down up­on it slow­ly, fold­ed his hands over his chest, crossed his an­kles, and closed his eyes.

Over his pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer, Pen­der­gast had found him­self in many dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous cir­cum­stances. And yet none of these equaled what he now faced in this lit­tle room.

He be­gan with a se­ries of sim­ple phys­ical ex­er­cis­es. He slowed his breath­ing and de­cel­er­at­ed his heart­beat. He blocked out all ex­ter­nal sen­sa­tion: the rus­tle of the forced-​air heat­ing sys­tem, the faint smell of fur­ni­ture pol­ish, the pres­sure of the couch be­neath him, his own cor­po­re­al aware­ness.

At last—when his res­pi­ra­tion was bare­ly dis­cernible and his pulse hov­ered close to forty beats per minute—he al­lowed a chess­board to ma­te­ri­al­ize be­fore his mind’s eye. His hands drift­ed over the well-​worn pieces. A white pawn was moved for­ward on the board. A black pawn re­spond­ed. The game con­tin­ued, mov­ing to stale­mate. An­oth­er game be­gan, end­ing the same way. Then an­oth­er game, and an­oth­er . . .

. . . but with­out the ex­pect­ed re­sult. Pen­der­gast’s mem­ory palace—the store­house of knowl­edge and in­for­ma­tion in which he kept his most per­son­al se­crets, and from which he car­ried out his most pro­found med­ita­tion and in­tro­spec­tion—did not ma­te­ri­al­ize be­fore him.

Men­tal­ly, Pen­der­gast switched games, mov­ing from chess to bridge. Now, in­stead of set­ting two play­ers against each oth­er, he posit­ed four, play­ing as part­ners, with the in­fin­ity of strat­egy, sig­nals both missed and made, and plays of the hand that could re­sult. Quick­ly he played through a rub­ber, then an­oth­er.

The mem­ory palace re­fused to ap­pear. It re­mained out of reach, shift­ing, in­sub­stan­tial.

Pen­der­gast wait­ed, re­duc­ing his heart­beat and res­pi­ra­tion still fur­ther. Such a fail­ure had nev­er oc­curred be­fore.

Now, delv­ing in­to one of the most dif­fi­cult of the Chongg Ran ex­er­cis­es, he men­tal­ly de­tached his con­scious­ness from his body, then rose above it, float­ing in­cor­po­re­al in space. With­out open­ing his eyes, he re-​cre­at­ed a vir­tu­al con­struct of the room in which he lay, imag­in­ing ev­ery ob­ject in its place, un­til the en­tire room had ma­te­ri­al­ized in his mind, com­plete to the last de­tail. He lin­gered over it for sev­er­al mo­ments. And then, piece by piece, he pro­ceed­ed to re­move the fur­nish­ings, the car­pet­ing, the wall­pa­per, un­til at last ev­ery­thing was gone once again.

But he did not stop there. Next, he pro­ceed­ed to re­move all the bustling city that sur­round­ed the room: ini­tial­ly, struc­ture by struc­ture, then block by block, and then neigh­bor­hood by neigh­bor­hood, the act of in­tel­lec­tu­al obliv­ion gain­ing speed as it raced out­ward in all di­rec­tions. Coun­ties next; then states; na­tions, the world, the uni­verse, all fell away in­to black­ness.

With­in min­utes, ev­ery­thing was gone. On­ly Pen­der­gast him­self re­mained, float­ing in an in­fi­nite void. He then willed his own body to dis­ap­pear, con­sumed by dark­ness. The uni­verse was now en­tire­ly emp­ty, stripped clean of all thought, all pain and mem­ory, all tan­gi­ble ex­is­tence. He had reached the state known as Sun­ya­ta: for a mo­ment—or was it an eter­ni­ty?—time it­self ceased to ex­ist.

And then at last, the an­cient man­sion on Dauphine Street be­gan to ma­te­ri­al­ize in his mind: the Mai­son de la Rochenoire, the house in which he and Dio­genes had grown up. Pen­der­gast stood on the old cob­bled street be­fore it, gaz­ing through the high wrought-​iron fence to the man­sion’s mansard roofs, oriel win­dows, wid­ow’s walk, bat­tle­ments, and stone pin­na­cles. High brick walls on one side hid lush, in­te­ri­or parterre gar­dens.

In his mind, Pen­der­gast opened the huge iron gates and walked up the front drive, paus­ing on the por­ti­co. The white­washed dou­ble doors lay open be­fore him, giv­ing on­to the grand foy­er.

Af­ter a mo­ment of un­char­ac­ter­is­tic in­de­ci­sion, he stepped through the doors and on­to the mar­ble floor of the hall. A huge crys­tal chan­de­lier sparkled bril­liant­ly over­head, hov­er­ing be­neath the trompe l’oeil ceil­ing. Ahead, a dou­ble curved stair­case with elab­orate­ly bead­ed newels swept up to­ward the sec­ond-​floor gallery. On the left, closed doors led in­to the long, low-​ceilinged ex­hi­bi­tion hall; on the right lay the open door­way in­to a dim, wood-​pan­eled li­brary.

Al­though the re­al fam­ily man­sion had been burned to the ground by a New Or­leans mob many years be­fore, Pen­der­gast had re­tained this vir­tu­al man­sion with­in his mem­ory ev­er since: an in­tel­lec­tu­al ar­ti­fact, per­fect down to the last de­tail; a store­house in which he kept not on­ly his own ex­pe­ri­ences and ob­ser­va­tions, but in­nu­mer­able fam­ily se­crets as well. Nor­mal­ly, en­ter­ing in­to this palace of mem­ory was a tran­quil­iz­ing, calm­ing ex­pe­ri­ence: each draw­er of each cab­inet of each room held some past event, or some per­son­al re­flec­tion on his­to­ry or sci­ence, to be pe­rused at leisure. To­day, how­ev­er, Pen­der­gast felt a pro­found un­ease, and it was on­ly with the great­est men­tal ef­fort he was able to keep the man­sion co­he­sive in his mind.

He crossed the foy­er and mount­ed the stairs to the wide sec­ond-​floor hall­way. Hes­itat­ing on­ly briefly at the land­ing, he moved down the tapestried cor­ri­dor, the broad sweep of the rose-​col­ored walls bro­ken at in­ter­vals by mar­ble nich­es or an­cient gilt frames con­tain­ing por­traits in oils. The smell of the man­sion now swept over him: a com­bi­na­tion of old fab­ric and leather, fur­ni­ture pol­ish, his moth­er’s per­fume, his fa­ther’s Latakia to­bac­co. Near the cen­ter of this hall­way lay the heavy oak door to his own room. But he did not pro­ceed that far. In­stead, he stopped at the door just be­fore it: a door that, strange­ly, had been sealed in lead and cov­ered with a sheet of ham­mered brass, its edges nailed in­to the sur­round­ing door frame.

This was the room of his broth­er, Dio­genes. Pen­der­gast him­self had men­tal­ly sealed this door years be­fore, lock­ing the room for­ev­er in­side the mem­ory palace. It was the one room in­to which he had promised him­self nev­er again to en­ter.

And yet—if Eli Glinn was right—he must en­ter it. There was no choice.

As Pen­der­gast paused out­side the door, hes­itat­ing, he be­came aware that his pulse and res­pi­ra­tion were in­creas­ing at an alarm­ing rate. The walls of the man­sion around him flick­ered and glowed, grow­ing brighter, then fad­ing, like the fil­ament of a light­bulb fail­ing un­der too much cur­rent. He was los­ing his elab­orate men­tal con­struct. He made a supreme ef­fort to con­cen­trate, to calm his mind, and man­aged to steady the im­age around him.

He had to move quick­ly: the mem­ory cross­ing could shat­ter at any mo­ment un­der the force of his own emo­tions. He could not main­tain the nec­es­sary con­cen­tra­tion in­def­inite­ly.

He willed a pry bar, chis­el, and mal­let to ap­pear in his hands. He wedged the pry bar un­der the brass sheet, pulling it away from the door frame, mov­ing around the four sides un­til he had pried it off. Drop­ping the bar, he took up the chis­el and mal­let and be­gan ham­mer­ing loose the soft lead that had been packed in the cracks be­tween the door and the frame, dig­ging and carv­ing it out in chunks. He worked rapid­ly, try­ing to lose him­self in the task, think­ing of noth­ing but the job at hand.

With­in min­utes, curls of lead lay over the car­pet­ing. Now the on­ly im­ped­iment to what lay on the far side of the door was its heavy lock.

Pen­der­gast stepped for­ward, tried the han­dle. Nor­mal­ly, he would have picked it with the set of tools he al­ways car­ried with him. But there was no time even for this: any pause, how­ev­er brief, might be fa­tal. He stepped back, raised his foot, aimed at a point just be­low the lock, and gave the door a sav­age kick. It flew back, slam­ming against the in­te­ri­or wall with a crash. Pen­der­gast stood in the door­way, breath­ing heav­ily. The room of Dio­genes, his broth­er, lay be­yond.

And yet there was noth­ing vis­ible. The mel­low light of the hall­way did not pen­etrate the in­fi­nite gloom. The door­way was a rect­an­gle of black­ness.

Pen­der­gast tossed aside the chis­el and mal­let. A mo­ment’s thought brought a pow­er­ful flash­light in­to his hand. He snapped on the light and point­ed the beam in­to the gloom, which seemed to suck the very light out of the air.

Pen­der­gast tried to take a step for­ward but found he could not will his limbs to move. He stood there, on the thresh­old, for what seemed like an eter­ni­ty. The house be­gan to wob­ble, the walls evap­orat­ing as if made of air, and he re­al­ized he was once again los­ing the mem­ory palace. He knew if he lost it now, he’d nev­er re­turn. Ev­er.

It was on­ly by a fi­nal act of supreme will—the most fo­cused, drain­ing, and dif­fi­cult mo­ment he had ev­er faced—that Pen­der­gast forced him­self over the thresh­old.

He stopped again just be­yond, pre­ma­ture­ly ex­haust­ed, play­ing the flash­light around, forc­ing the beam to lick ev­er far­ther in­to the dark­ness. It was not the room he ex­pect­ed to find. In­stead, he was at the top of a nar­row stair­way of un­dressed stone, wind­ing down in­to the liv­ing rock, twist­ing deeply in­to the earth.

At this sight, some­thing dark stirred with­in Pen­der­gast’s mind: a rough beast that had slum­bered, undis­turbed, for over thir­ty years. For a mo­ment, he felt him­self fal­ter and his will fail. The walls trem­bled like a can­dle flame in the wind.

He re­cov­ered. He had no choice now but to go for­ward. Tak­ing a fresh grip on the flash­light, he be­gan to de­scend the worn, slip­pery steps of stone: deep­er, ev­er deep­er, in­to a maw of shame, re­gret—and in­fi­nite hor­ror.

50

Pen­der­gast de­scend­ed the stair­case, the smell of the sub-​base­ment com­ing up to him: a cloy­ing odor of damp, mold, iron rust, and death. The stair­case end­ed in a dark tun­nel. The man­sion had one of the few be­low­ground base­ments in New Or­leans—cre­at­ed at great ex­pense and la­bor by the monks who orig­inal­ly built the struc­ture, and who had lined the walls with sheets of ham­mered lead and care­ful­ly fit­ted stone to make cel­lars for ag­ing their wines and brandies.

The Pen­der­gast fam­ily had con­vert­ed it to an­oth­er use en­tire­ly.

In his mind, Pen­der­gast made his way down the tun­nel, which opened on­to a broad, low open space, the ir­reg­ular floor part earth, part stone, with a groined ceil­ing. The walls were en­crust­ed with niter, and dim mar­ble crypts, elab­orate­ly carved in Vic­to­ri­an and Ed­war­dian style, filled the ex­panse, sep­arat­ed from one an­oth­er by nar­row walk­ways of brick.

Sud­den­ly he be­came aware of a pres­ence in the room: a small shad­ow. Then he heard the shad­ow speak with a sev­en-​year-​old voice: “Are you sure you want to keep go­ing?”

With an­oth­er shock, Pen­der­gast re­al­ized there was a sec­ond fig­ure in the dim space: taller, more slen­der, with white-​blond hair. He felt chilled to the bone—it was him­self, nine years old. He heard his own smooth, child­ish voice speak: “You’re not afraid?”

“No. Of course not,” came the small, de­fi­ant re­turn—the voice of his broth­er, Dio­genes.

“Well, then.”

Pen­der­gast watched as the two dim fig­ures made their way through the necrop­olis, can­dles in hand, the taller one lead­ing the way.

He felt a ris­ing dread. He didn’t re­mem­ber this at all—and yet he knew some­thing fear­ful was about to hap­pen.

The fair-​haired fig­ure be­gan ex­am­in­ing the carved fronts of the tombs, read­ing the Latin in­scrip­tions in a high, clear voice. They had both tak­en to Latin with great en­thu­si­asm. Dio­genes, Pen­der­gast re­mem­bered, had al­ways been the bet­ter Latin stu­dent; his teach­er thought him a ge­nius.

“Here’s an odd one,” said the old­er boy. “Take a look, Dio­genes.”

The small­er fig­ure crept up and read:

ERAS­MUS LONGCHAMPS PEN­DER­GAST

1840 - 1932

De mor­ti­is aut bene aut ni­hil

“Do you rec­og­nize the line?”

“Ho­race?” said the younger fig­ure. “‘Of the dead’ . . . hm­mm . . . ‘speak well or say noth­ing.’”

Af­ter a si­lence, the old­er boy said, with a touch of con­de­scen­sion, “Bra­vo, lit­tle broth­er.” “I won­der,” asked Dio­genes, “what it was about his life he didn’t want talked about?”

Pen­der­gast re­mem­bered his youth­ful ri­val­ry with his broth­er over Latin . . . one in which he was even­tu­al­ly left far be­hind.

They moved on to an elab­orate dou­ble crypt, a sar­coph­agus in the Ro­man style topped with a man and wom­an in mar­ble, both laid out in death with hands crossed on their breasts.

“Louisa de Nemours Pren­der­gast. Hen­ri Pren­der­gast. Nemo nisi mors,” read the old­er boy. “Let’s see . . . That must be ‘Till death do us part.’”

The small­er boy had al­ready moved to an­oth­er tomb­stone. Crouch­ing, he read, “Mul­ta fer­unt an­ni ve­nientes com­mo­da se­cum, Mul­ta rece­dentes adim­iunt.” He looked up. “Well, Aloy­sius, what do you make of that?”

A si­lence fol­lowed, and then the re­sponse came, brave­ly but a lit­tle un­cer­tain. “‘Many years come to make us com­fort­able, many re­ced­ing years di­min­ish us.’”

The trans­la­tion was greet­ed with a sar­cas­tic snick­er. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Of course it does.”

“No, it doesn’t. ‘Many re­ced­ing years di­min­ish us’? That’s non­sense. I think it means some­thing like ‘The years, as they come, bring many com­forts. As they re­cede, they . . .’” He paused. “Adim­iunt?”

“Just what I said: di­min­ish,” said the old­er boy.

“‘As they re­cede, they di­min­ish us,’” fin­ished Dio­genes. “In oth­er words, when you’re young, the years bring good. But as you grow old, the years take it all away again.”

“That makes no more sense than mine,” said Aloy­sius, an­noy­ance in his voice. He moved on to­ward the back of the necrop­olis, down an­oth­er nar­row row of crypts, read­ing more names and in­scrip­tions. At the end of the cul-​de-​sac, he paused at a mar­ble door set in­to the back wall, a rust­ed met­al grate over it.

“Look at this tomb,” he said.

Dio­genes came up close, peered at it with his can­dle. “Where’s the in­scrip­tion?”

“There isn’t one. But it’s a crypt. It’s got to be a door.” Aloy­sius reached up, gave the grate a pull. Noth­ing. He pushed at it, pulled it, and then picked up a stray frag­ment of mar­ble and be­gan tap­ping around its edges. “Maybe it’s emp­ty.”

“Maybe it’s meant for us,” the younger boy said, a ghoul­ish gleam ap­pear­ing in his eyes.

“It’s hol­low back there.” Aloy­sius re­dou­bled his tap­ping and gave the grate an­oth­er tug—and then sud­den­ly, with a grind­ing sound, it opened. The two stood there, fright­ened.

“Oh, the stink!” said Dio­genes, back­ing up and hold­ing his nose.

And now Pen­der­gast, deep with­in his men­tal con­struct, smelled it, too—an in­de­scrib­able odor, foul, like a rot­ten, fun­gus-​cov­ered liv­er. He swal­lowed as the walls of the mem­ory palace wa­vered, then came back in­to so­lid­ity.

Aloy­sius shone his can­dle in­to the fresh­ly ex­posed space. It wasn’t a crypt at all, but rather a large stor­age room, set in­to the rear of the sub-​base­ment. The flick­er­ing light played off an ar­ray of strange con­trap­tions made of brass, wood, and glass.

“What’s in there?” Dio­genes said, creep­ing back up be­hind his broth­er.

“See for your­self.”

Dio­genes peered in. “What are they?”

“Ma­chines,” the old­er broth­er said pos­itive­ly, as if he knew.

“Are you go­ing in?”

“Nat­ural­ly.” Aloy­sius stepped through the door­way and turned. “Aren’t you com­ing?”

“I guess so.”

Pen­der­gast, from the shad­ows, watched them go in.

The two boys stood in the room. The lead walls were streaked with whitish ox­ides. The space was packed floor-​to-​ceil­ing with con­trap­tions: box­es paint­ed with gri­mac­ing faces; old hats, ropes, and moth-​eat­en scarves; rust­ed chains and brass rings; cab­inets, mir­rors, capes, and wands. Cob­webs and thick lay­ers of dust draped ev­ery­thing. At one end, propped up side­ways, stood a sign, paint­ed in gar­ish col­ors and em­bel­lished with curlicues, a pair of point­ing hands, and oth­er nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry Amer­ican car­ni­val flour­ish­es.

Late from the Great Halls of Eu­rope

The Il­lus­tri­ous and Cel­ebrat­ed Mes­merist

Pro­fes­sor Com­stock Pen­der­gast

Presents

THE GRAND THE­ATRE AND IL­LU­MI­NAT­ED PHAN­TAS­MAGO­RIA

Of

Mag­ick, Il­lu­sion, and Pres­tidig­ita­tion

Pen­der­gast stood in the shad­ows of his own mem­ory, filled with the help­less fore­bod­ing of night­mare, watch­ing the scene un­fold. At first the two boys ex­plored cau­tious­ly, their can­dle­light throw­ing elon­gat­ed shad­ows among the box­es and piles of bizarre de­vices.

“Do you know what all this is?” whis­pered Aloy­sius.

“What?”

“We’ve found all the stuff from Great-​Grand-​Un­cle Com­stock’s mag­ic show.”

“Who’s Great-​Grand-​Un­cle Com­stock?”

“On­ly the most fa­mous ma­gi­cian in the his­to­ry of the world. He trained Hou­di­ni him­self.”

Aloy­sius touched a cab­inet, ran his hand down to a knob, and cau­tious­ly pulled out a draw­er: it con­tained a pair of man­acles. He opened an­oth­er draw­er, which seemed to stick, and then it gave with a sud­den pop! A pair of mice shot out of the draw­er and scur­ried off.

Aloy­sius moved on to the next item, his younger broth­er fol­low­ing close be­hind. It was a cof­fin-​like box stand­ing up­right, with a scream­ing man paint­ed on the lid, nu­mer­ous bloody holes pierc­ing his body. He opened it with a groan of rusty hinges to re­veal an in­te­ri­or stud­ded with wrought-​iron spikes.

“That looks more like tor­ture than mag­ic,” said Dio­genes.

“There’s dried blood on those spikes.”

Dio­genes peered close­ly, fear tem­porar­ily over­come by a strange ea­ger­ness. Then he stepped back again. “That’s just paint.”

“Are you sure?”

“I know dried blood when I see it.”

Aloy­sius moved on. “Look at that.” He point­ed to an ob­ject in the far cor­ner. It was a huge box, much larg­er than the oth­ers, ris­ing from floor to ceil­ing, the size of a small room it­self. It was gar­ish­ly paint­ed in red and gold with a grin­ning de­mon’s face on the front. Flank­ing the de­mon were odd things—a hand, a blood­shot eye, a fin­ger—float­ing against the crim­son back­ground al­most like sev­ered body parts loosed in a tide of blood. Arched over a door cut in­to the side was a leg­end paint­ed in gold and black:

The Door­way to Hell

“If it were my show,” said Aloy­sius, “I would have giv­en it a much grander name, some­thing more like ‘The Gates of the In­fer­no.’ ‘The Door­way to Hell’ sounds bor­ing.” He turned to Dio­genes. “Your turn to go first.”

“How do you fig­ure that?”

“I went first last time.”

“Then you can go first again.”

“No,” said Aloy­sius. “I don’t care to.” He put his hand on the door and gave Dio­genes a nudge with his el­bow.

“Don’t open it. Some­thing might hap­pen.”

Aloy­sius opened it to re­veal a dim, sti­fling in­te­ri­or, lined with what looked like black vel­vet. A brass lad­der stood just in­side, dis­ap­pear­ing up through a hatch in a low false ceil­ing set in­to the box.

“I could dare you to go in there,” Aloy­sius went on, “but I’m not go­ing to. I don’t be­lieve in child­ish games. If you want to go in, go in.”

“Why don’t you go in?”

“I freely ad­mit it to you: I’m ner­vous.”

With a creep­ing feel­ing of shame, Pen­der­gast could see his knack for psy­cho­log­ical per­sua­sion, al­ready de­vel­oped as a boy, com­ing in­to play. He want­ed to see what was in there—but he want­ed Dio­genes to go in first.

“You’re scared?” Dio­genes asked.

“That’s right. So the on­ly way we’re ev­er go­ing to know what’s in there is if you go in first. I’ll be right be­hind you, I promise.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Scared?”

“No.” The qua­ver in his high-​pitched voice said oth­er­wise.

Pen­der­gast re­flect­ed bit­ter­ly that Dio­genes, who was on­ly sev­en, hadn’t yet learned that truth is the safest lie.

“Then what’s stop­ping you?”

“I . . . I don’t feel like it.”

Aloy­sius snick­ered dry­ly. “I ad­mit­ted I was scared. If you’re scared, say so, and we’ll go back up­stairs and for­get all about it.”

“I’m not scared. It’s just some stupid fun house.”

Pen­der­gast watched, hor­ri­fied, as his child­ish dop­pel­ganger reached over and grasped Dio­genes by the shoul­ders. “Go ahead, then.”

“Don’t touch me!”

Firm­ly and gen­tly, Aloy­sius urged him through the lit­tle door­way of the box and crowd­ed in be­hind him, block­ing his re­treat. “As you said, it’s just some stupid fun house.”

“I don’t want to stay in here.”

They were both in­side the first com­part­ment in the box, jammed up against each oth­er. Clear­ly, the fun house was meant to ad­mit one adult at a time, not two half-​grown chil­dren.

“Get go­ing, brave Dio­genes. I’ll be right be­hind.”

Word­less­ly, Dio­genes be­gan to climb the lit­tle brass lad­der, and Aloy­sius fol­lowed.

Pen­der­gast watched them dis­ap­pear as the hinged box door closed au­to­mat­ical­ly be­hind them. His heart was beat­ing so hard in his chest he thought it might ex­plode at any mo­ment. The walls of his mem­ory con­struct flick­ered and shook. It was al­most un­bear­able.

But he could not stop now. Some­thing ter­ri­ble was about to hap­pen, but what ex­act­ly he still hadn’t the slight­est idea. He had not yet ex­ca­vat­ed that deeply in­to old, re­pressed mem­ories. He had to keep go­ing.

In his mind, he opened the box door and climbed the brass lad­der him­self, pass­ing in­to a crawl space above, which turned hor­izon­tal­ly and gave on­to a low cham­ber above the false ceil­ing but be­low the top of the box. The two boys were there ahead of him, Dio­genes in the lead. He was crawl­ing to­ward a cir­cu­lar port­hole in the far wall of the crawl space. Dio­genes hes­itat­ed at the en­trance to the port­hole.

“Go on!” Aloy­sius urged.

The lit­tle boy glanced back once at his broth­er, a strange ex­pres­sion in his eyes. Then he crawled through the port­hole and dis­ap­peared.

Mov­ing to­ward the port­hole him­self, Aloy­sius paused, peer­ing round with the can­dle, ap­par­ent­ly notic­ing for the first time that the walls seemed to be cov­ered with pho­tographs shel­lacked to the wood.

“Aren’t you com­ing?” came a small, scared, an­gry voice from the dark­ness be­yond. “You promised you would stay right be­hind me.”

Pen­der­gast, watch­ing, felt him­self be­gin to shake un­con­trol­lably.

“Yes, yes. I’m com­ing.”

The young Aloy­sius crept up to the round, dark por­tal, looked in­side—but went no far­ther.

“Hey! Where are you?” came the muf­fled cry from the dark­ness be­yond. Then sud­den­ly: “What’s hap­pen­ing? What’s this?” A shrill boy­ish scream cut through the lit­tle cham­ber like a scalpel. Ahead, through the port­hole, Pen­der­gast saw a light ap­pear; saw the floor tip; saw Dio­genes slide to the far end of a small room and tum­ble in­to a light­ed pit be­low. There was a sud­den low sound, like the rum­ble of an an­imal—and dread­ful, un­speak­able im­ages ap­peared with­in the pit—and then with a swift thunk! the port­hole snapped shut, block­ing his view.

“No!” screamed Dio­genes from deep with­in. “Nooooooo!”

And then quite sud­den­ly, Pen­der­gast re­mem­bered all. It came rush­ing back in per­fect, exquisite de­tail, ev­ery hideous sec­ond, ev­ery mo­ment of the most ter­ri­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in his life.

He re­mem­bered the Event.

As the mem­ory crashed over him like a tidal wave, he felt his brain over­load, his neu­rons shut down—and he lost con­trol of the mem­ory cross­ing. The man­sion trem­bled, shiv­ered, and ex­plod­ed in his mind, the walls ig­nit­ing and fly­ing apart, a huge roar fill­ing his head, the great palace of mem­ory blaz­ing off in­to the dark­ness of in­fi­nite space, dis­solv­ing in­to glit­ter­ing shards of light like me­te­ors streak­ing in­to the void. For a brief mo­ment, the an­guished cries of Dio­genes con­tin­ued from out of the lim­it­less gulf—then they, too, fell away and all was qui­et once again.

51

War­den Gor­don Imhof glanced around the ta­ble of the spar­tan con­fer­ence room deep with­in Herk­moor’s Com­mand Block, mi­cro­phone clipped to his lapel. All things con­sid­ered, he felt good. The re­sponse to the break­out had been im­me­di­ate and over­whelm­ing. Ev­ery­thing had worked like clock­work, by the book: as soon as the Code Red was giv­en, the en­tire com­plex had been elec­tron­ical­ly locked down, all ingress and egress halt­ed. The es­capees had run around for a time like head­less chick­ens—theirs had been a to­tal­ly sense­less es­cape plan—and with­in forty min­utes they had all been round­ed up and put back ei­ther in their cells or in the in­fir­mary. The oblig­atory an­klet sen­sor check, which ran au­to­mat­ical­ly ev­ery time a Code Red was sus­pend­ed, con­firmed that all pris­on­ers in the com­plex were ac­count­ed for.

In the cor­rec­tions busi­ness, Imhof mused, the way to get no­ticed was through a cri­sis. A cri­sis cre­at­ed vis­ibil­ity. De­pend­ing on how the cri­sis was han­dled, it cre­at­ed an ad­vance­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty or a ru­ined ca­reer. This par­tic­ular one had been han­dled flaw­less­ly: a sin­gle guard hurt (and not bad­ly at that), no hostages tak­en, no­body killed or se­ri­ous­ly in­jured. Un­der his lead­er­ship, Herk­moor had re­tained its flaw­less no-​es­cape record.

Imhof glanced at the clock, wait­ed for the sec­ond hand to sweep around to ex­act­ly 7:30. Cof­fey hadn’t shown up, but he wasn’t go­ing to wait. The truth was, the smug FBI agent and his lack­ey had re­al­ly be­gun to get on his nerves.

“Gen­tle­men,” he be­gan, “let me start this meet­ing by say­ing to all of you: well done.” A mur­mur­ing and a vague shift­ing greet­ed this open­ing.

“To­day, Herk­moor faced an ex­traor­di­nary chal­lenge—a mass es­cape at­tempt. At twoeleven P.M., nine in­mates cut the fence in one of the build­ing C ex­er­cise yards and fanned out through the in­ner perime­ter fields. One got as far as the se­cu­ri­ty sta­tion at the south end of build­ing B. The cause of the break­out is still un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Suf­fice to say, it ap­pears that the pris­on­ers in yard 4 were not un­der di­rect guard su­per­vi­sion at the time of the es­cape, for rea­sons that re­main un­clear.”

He paused, giv­ing the group around the ta­ble a stern look. “We will be ad­dress­ing that fail­ure in the course of this de­brief­ing.”

Then he re­laxed his fea­tures. “Over­all, the re­sponse to the es­cape at­tempt was im­me­di­ate and by the book. First re­spon­ders were at the scene at two-​four­teen and a Code Red was im­me­di­ate­ly sound­ed. More than fifty guards were mo­bi­lized for the re­sponse. In well un­der an hour, ev­ery sin­gle es­capee had been re­cap­tured and all pris­on­ers had been ac­count­ed for. By three-​oh-​one, the Code Red had end­ed. Herk­moor re­turned to busi­ness as usu­al.”

He paused for a mo­ment. “Once again, I of­fer my con­grat­ula­tions to all in­volved. Ev­ery­one can re­lax, this is mere­ly a pro for­ma meet­ing—as you know, a for­mal de­brief­ing is re­quired by reg­ula­tion to oc­cur with­in twelve hours of any Code Red. I apol­ogize for keep­ing you here past your nor­mal work­day: let’s see if we can’t tie up any loose ends quick­ly so we can all get home to din­ner. I urge any of you with ques­tions to ask them as we pro­ceed. Do not stand on cer­emo­ny.”

He looked around the room. “I call first on build­ing C se­cu­ri­ty man­ag­er James Rol­lo. Jim, could you talk about the role of Of­fi­cer Sidesky? There seems to be some con­fu­sion about that.”

A man with a pour-​over bel­ly arose with the sound of jin­gling keys, ad­just­ed his belt with more jin­gling. His face had as­sumed a stol­id look of high se­ri­ous­ness.

“Thank you, sir. As you men­tioned, the Code Red was sound­ed at two-​four­teen. The first re­spon­ders came from guard sta­tion 7. Four re­spond­ed, leav­ing Of­fi­cer Sidesky to man the guard sta­tion. It ap­pears one of the es­capees over­pow­ered Of­fi­cer Sidesky, drugged him, tied him up, and left him in the near­by men’s room. He’s still dis­ori­ent­ed, but as soon as he is lu­cid we’ll get a state­ment.”

“Very well.”

At this point, a rest­less-​look­ing man in a nurse’s uni­form rose. “I’m Staff Nurse Kid­der, sir, in charge of the build­ing B in­fir­mary.”

Imhof looked at him. “Yes?”

“There seems to have been some kind of mix-​up. Ear­ly in the es­cape at­tempt, the EMTs brought down an in­jured guard claim­ing to be Sidesky, in uni­form with his badge and ID. He then dis­ap­peared.”

“That’s eas­ily ex­plained,” said Rol­lo. “We found Sidesky with­out his uni­form and badge. He must have left the in­fir­mary. And then, ev­ident­ly, one of the pris­on­ers must have stripped Sidesky af­ter knock­ing him out.”

“That sounds log­ical to me,” said Imhof. He hes­itat­ed. “On­ly thing is, all the es­capees were ap­pre­hend­ed in their prison garb. None were wear­ing uni­forms.”

Rol­lo rubbed his wat­tle. “The pris­on­er who stripped Sidesky prob­ably didn’t have time to put on the uni­form.”

“That must be it,” said Imhof. “Mr. Rol­lo, please record those items as miss­ing: uni­form, badge, and ID be­long­ing to Sidesky. I ex­pect they’ll be found in the trash or in a dark cor­ner some­where. Can’t have them falling in­to pris­on­er hands.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mys­tery solved. Con­tin­ue, Mr. Rol­lo.”

“For­give me for in­ter­rupt­ing,” said Kid­der, “but I’m not sure the mys­tery is solved. This man claim­ing to be Sidesky was left in the in­fir­mary await­ing the ra­di­ol­ogist while I at­tend­ed to some of the es­capees. He had sev­er­al bro­ken ribs, con­tu­sions, a fa­cial lac­er­ation, a—” “We don’t need the com­plete di­ag­no­sis, Kid­der.”

“Right, sir. Any­way, he was in no con­di­tion to go any­where. And when I re­turned, Sidesky—I mean, the guy claim­ing to be Sidesky—had dis­ap­peared, and in his bed was the corpse of the pris­on­er, Car­los Lacar­ra.”

“Lacar­ra?” Imhof frowned. He hadn’t heard this part be­fore.

“That’s right. Some­one had moved his ca­dav­er and stuck him in Sidesky’s bed.”

“Some­body’s idea of a joke?”

“I don’t know, sir. I was won­der­ing if . . . well, if it could be in­volved with the es­cape at­tempt some­how.”

There was a si­lence.

“If so,” Imhof fi­nal­ly said, “then we’re deal­ing with a more so­phis­ti­cat­ed plan than we ini­tial­ly as­sumed. But the bot­tom line is this: ev­ery sin­gle es­capee was re­cap­tured and is ac­count­ed for. We’ll be in­ter­ro­gat­ing them in the days ahead to un­rav­el ex­act­ly what hap­pened.”

“One oth­er thing trou­bles me,” Kid­der went on. “Dur­ing the es­cape, a morgue-​mo­bile ar­rived to take Lacar­ra’s body away. It was kept wait­ing out­side the gates un­til the Code Red came down.”

“And?”

“When the code was called off, the am­bu­lance came in and load­ed the body. The chief physi­cian wit­nessed the load­ing and signed the pa­pers.”

“I don’t see the prob­lem.”

“The prob­lem, sir, is that it wasn’t un­til fif­teen min­utes lat­er that I found Lacar­ra’s body in Sidesky’s bed.”

Imhof raised his eye­brows. “So the wrong stiff got picked up in the con­fu­sion. That’s un­der­stand­able. Don’t be too hard on your­self, Kid­der. Just call the hos­pi­tal and sort it out.”

“I did that, sir. And when I called the hos­pi­tal, they said our call to pick up the body this morn­ing was can­celed right af­ter it came in. They swear they nev­er even sent a morgue­mo­bile.”

Imhof snort­ed. “That damn hos­pi­tal is al­ways screw­ing up, a dozen lay­ers of ad­min­is­tra­tors who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground. Call them back in the morn­ing, tell them we sent them the wrong stiff and they should go look for it.” He shook his head in dis­gust.

“But that’s just the prob­lem, sir. We didn’t have any oth­er corpse at Herk­moor. I can’t fig­ure out what ca­dav­er went to the hos­pi­tal.”

“You say the chief physi­cian signed the pa­pers?”

“Yes. He went home at the end of his shift.”

“We’ll get a state­ment from him to­mor­row. No doubt we’ll straight­en out this con­fu­sion in the morn­ing. Any­way, it’s tan­gen­tial to the es­cape at­tempt. Let’s get on with the de­brief­ing.”

Kid­der fell silent, his face trou­bled.

“All right. The next ques­tion is why the yard seemed to have no su­per­vi­sion at the time of the break­out. My time sheets show Fecteau and Doyle were on yard 4 du­ty at the time of the es­cape. Fecteau, could you please ex­plain your ab­sence?”

A very ner­vous guard at the far end of the ta­ble cleared his voice. “Yes, sir. Of­fi­cer Doyle and I had yard du­ty that day—”

“The nine pris­on­ers were es­cort­ed to the yard on sched­ule?”

“Yes, sir. They ar­rived at two P.M. sharp.”

“Where were you?”

“At our yard posts, just as re­quired.”

“So what hap­pened?”

“Well, about five min­utes lat­er, we got the call from Spe­cial Agent Cof­fey.”

“Cof­fey called you?” Imhof was tru­ly as­ton­ished. This was way out of line. He glanced around: Cof­fey still hadn’t shown up.

“Tell us about the call, Fecteau.”

“He said he need­ed us right away. We ex­plained we were on yard du­ty, but he in­sist­ed.”

Imhof felt his anger ris­ing. Cof­fey had told him noth­ing about this. “Tell us Agent Cof­fey’s ex­act words, please.”

Fecteau hes­itat­ed, col­ored. “Well, sir, he said some­thing like ‘If you’re not here in nine­ty sec­onds, I’ll have you trans­ferred to North Dako­ta.’ Some­thing like that, sir. I tried to ex­plain that we were the on­ly two on yard du­ty, but he cut me off.”

“He threat­ened you?”

“Ba­si­cal­ly, yes.”

“And so you left the yard unat­tend­ed, with­out check­ing with ei­ther the chief of se­cu­ri­ty or me?”

“I’m sor­ry, sir. I thought he must have au­tho­rized it with you.”

“Why in hell, Fecteau, would I au­tho­rize the re­moval of the on­ly two guards on yard du­ty, leav­ing a gang of pris­on­ers to their own de­vices?”

“I’m sor­ry, sir. I as­sumed it was . . . be­cause of the spe­cial pris­on­er.”

“The spe­cial pris­on­er? What are you talk­ing about?”

“Well . . .” Fecteau had be­gun to stum­ble over his words. “The spe­cial pris­on­er who had ex­er­cise priv­ileges in yard 4.”

“Yes, but he nev­er made it to yard 4. He re­mained in his cell.”

“Um, no, sir. We saw him in yard 4.”

Imhof took a deep breath. Things were more screwed up than he had thought. “Fecteau, you’re get­ting con­fused. The pris­on­er re­mained in his cell all day and was nev­er es­cort­ed to yard 4. I checked on it per­son­al­ly dur­ing the code—I have the elec­tron­ic logs right here. The an­klet scans show he nev­er left soli­tary.”

“Well, sir, my best rec­ol­lec­tion is that the spe­cial pris­on­er was there.” He cast an in­quir­ing glance to­ward the oth­er guard, Doyle, who looked equal­ly flum­moxed.

“Doyle?” Imhof asked sharply.

“Yes, sir?”

“Don’t ‘yes, sir’ me, I want to know: did you see the spe­cial pris­on­er in yard 4 to­day?”

“Yes, sir. I mean, that’s my rec­ol­lec­tion, sir.”

A long si­lence. Imhof screwed his eye around to Rol­lo, but the man was al­ready mur­mur­ing in­to his ra­dio. It took on­ly mo­ments for the se­cu­ri­ty man­ag­er to put it aside and look up again. “Ac­cord­ing to the elec­tron­ic mon­itor, the spe­cial pris­on­er’s still in his cell. Nev­er left it.”

“Bet­ter send some­one to do a cell check, just to make sure.” Imhof boiled with fury at Cof­fey. Where the hell was he? This was all his fault.

As if on cue, the door flew open and there was Spe­cial Agent Cof­fey, trailed by Ra­bin­er.

“It’s about time,” said Imhof dark­ly.

“It cer­tain­ly is about time,” said Cof­fey, strid­ing in­to the room, face red. “I left spe­cif­ic or­ders for the spe­cial pris­on­er to be put in­to yard 4, and now I find out it was nev­er done. Imhof, when I give an or­der, I ex­pect it to be—”

Imhof rose. He’d had it with this ass­hole, and he wasn’t go­ing to let him bul­ly him, es­pe­cial­ly in front of his staff. “Agent Cof­fey,” he said in an icy voice, “we had a se­ri­ous es­cape at­tempt to­day, as you sure­ly know.”

“That’s no con­cern of—”

“We are con­duct­ing a de­brief­ing re­lat­ed to said es­cape. You are in­ter­rupt­ing. If you will sit down and await your turn to speak, we will con­tin­ue.”

Cof­fey re­mained stand­ing, look­ing at him, face turn­ing red. “I don’t ap­pre­ci­ate be­ing ad­dressed in that tone of voice.”

“Agent Cof­fey, I am ask­ing you one more time to sit down and al­low this de­brief­ing to con­tin­ue. If you con­tin­ue to speak out of turn, I will have you re­moved from the premis­es.”

A thun­der­struck si­lence en­sued. Cof­fey’s face con­tort­ed with fury and he turned to Ra­bin­er. “You know what? I think our pres­ence at this meet­ing is no longer re­quired.” He swiveled back to Imhof. “You’ll be hear­ing from me.”

“Your pres­ence cer­tain­ly is re­quired. I have two guards here who say you gave them or­ders and threat­ened them with ter­mi­na­tion if they didn’t obey—de­spite the fact that you have ab­so­lute­ly no au­thor­ity here. As a re­sult, pris­on­ers were left unat­tend­ed and at­tempt­ed es­cape. You, sir, are re­spon­si­ble for the es­cape at­tempt. I make this state­ment for the record.”

An­oth­er elec­tric si­lence. Cof­fey looked around, the im­pe­ri­ous look on his face soft­en­ing as he be­gan to ab­sorb the se­ri­ous­ness of the ac­cu­sa­tion. His eyes locked on the tape recorder in the mid­dle of the ta­ble, the mi­cro­phones in front of each seat.

Stiffly Cof­fey sat down, swal­lowed. “I’m sure we can straight­en out this, ah, mis­un­der­stand­ing, Mr. Imhof. There’s no need to make rash ac­cu­sa­tions.”

In the en­su­ing si­lence, Rol­lo’s ra­dio chimed—he was re­ceiv­ing the call­back about the cell check for the spe­cial pris­on­er. As Imhof watched, the se­cu­ri­ty man­ag­er lift­ed the ra­dio to his ear and lis­tened, his face grad­ual­ly turn­ing a slack, dead white.

52

Glinn glanced down at Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast. He lay un­mov­ing on the couch of bur­gundy-​col­ored leather, arms over his chest, an­kles crossed. He had been like that for al­most twen­ty min­utes. With his un­nat­ural­ly pale com­plex­ion and gaunt fea­tures, the man looked re­mark­ably like a corpse. The on­ly signs of life were the beads of sweat that had sprung out across Pen­der­gast’s fore­head and a faint trem­bling in his hands.

His body jerked once, sud­den­ly, then fell still. The eyes slow­ly opened—re­mark­ably blood­shot, the pupils like pin­pricks in the sil­very iris­es.

Glinn wheeled for­ward, leaned close. Some­thing had hap­pened. The mem­ory cross­ing was over.

“You stay. Alone,” Pen­der­gast said in a husky whis­per. “Send Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta and Dr. Kras­ner away.”

Glinn closed the door qui­et­ly be­hind him, turned the lock. “Done.”

“What is to come . . . must take the form of an in­ter­roga­to­ry. You will ask ques­tions. I will an­swer them. There is no oth­er way. I . . .” And here the whis­per stopped for a long mo­ment. “I am un­able to speak about what I have just wit­nessed—vol­un­tar­ily.”

“Un­der­stood.”

Pen­der­gast lay silent. Af­ter a mo­ment, Glinn spoke again. “You have some­thing to tell me.”

“Yes.”

“About your broth­er, Dio­genes.”

“Yes.”

“The Event.”

A pause. “Yes.”

Glinn glanced at the ceil­ing, where a tiny cam­era and high-​gain mi­cro­phone were con­cealed. Reach­ing in­to his pock­et, he pressed a small re­mote con­trol, de­ac­ti­vat­ing them. Some in­ner sense told him that what­ev­er was to come should re­main sole­ly the province of their col­lec­tive mem­ory.

He inched his wheelchair for­ward. “You were there.”

“Yes.”

“You and your broth­er. No oth­ers.”

“No oth­ers.”

“What was the date?”

An­oth­er pause. “The date is not im­por­tant.”

“Let me de­cide that.”

“It was spring. The bougainvil­lea was in bloom out­side. Be­yond that, I don’t know.” “How old were you?”

“Nine.”

“And your broth­er must have been sev­en, cor­rect?”

“Yes.”

“Lo­ca­tion?”

“Mai­son de la Rochenoire, our an­ces­tral home on Dauphine Street, New Or­leans.” “And what were you do­ing?”

“Ex­plor­ing.”

“Go on.”

Pen­der­gast was silent. Glinn re­mem­bered his words: You will ask ques­tions. I will an­swer them.

He cleared his throat qui­et­ly. “Did you fre­quent­ly ex­plore the house?”

“It was a large man­sion. It had many se­crets.”

“How long had it been in the fam­ily?”

“It had orig­inal­ly been a monastery, but an an­ces­tor pur­chased it in the 1750s.”

“And which an­ces­tor was that?”

“Au­gus­tus Robe­spierre Pen­der­gast. He spent decades re­fash­ion­ing it.”

Glinn knew most of this, of course. But it had seemed bet­ter to keep Pen­der­gast talk­ing for a bit—and an­swer­ing the easy ques­tions—be­fore ven­tur­ing deep­er. Now he would pen­etrate.

“And where were you ex­plor­ing on this par­tic­ular day?” he asked.

“The sub-​base­ments.”

“Were they one of the se­crets?”

“My par­ents didn’t know we had found our way in­to them.”

“But you had dis­cov­ered a way.”

“Dio­genes did.”

“And he shared it with you.”

“No. I—fol­lowed him once.”

“That’s when he told you.”

A pause. “I made him tell me.”

The sweat was thick­er on Pen­der­gast’s brow now, and Glinn did not press this point. “De­scribe the sub-​base­ments to me.”

“They were reached through a false wall in the base­ment.”

“And be­yond, a stair­case lead­ing down?”

“Yes.”

“What was at the bot­tom of the stair­case?”

An­oth­er pause. “A necrop­olis.”

Glinn paused a mo­ment to mas­ter his sur­prise. “And you were ex­plor­ing this necrop­olis?” “Yes. We were read­ing in­scrip­tions on the fam­ily tombs. That is how . . . how it start­ed.” “You found some­thing?”

“The en­trance to a se­cret cham­ber.”

“And what was in­side?”

“The mag­ical equip­ment of my an­ces­tor, Com­stock Pen­der­gast.”

Glinn paused again. “Com­stock Pen­der­gast, the ma­gi­cian?”

“Yes.”

“So he stored his stage equip­ment in the sub-​base­ment?”

“No. My fam­ily hid it there.”

“Why did they do that?”

“Be­cause much of the equip­ment was dan­ger­ous.”

“But while you were ex­plor­ing the room, you didn’t know that.”

“No. Not at first.”

“At first?”

“Some of the de­vices looked strange. Cru­el. We were young, we didn’t ful­ly un­der­stand . . .” Pen­der­gast hes­itat­ed.

“What hap­pened next?” Glinn asked gen­tly.

“In the back, we found a large box.”

“De­scribe it.”

“Very large—al­most the size of a small room it­self—but portable. It was gar­ish. Red and gold. The face of a de­mon was paint­ed on its side. There were words above the face.”

“What did the words say?”

“‘The Door­way to Hell.’”

Pen­der­gast was trem­bling slight­ly now, and Glinn let some more time pass be­fore speak­ing again. “Did the box have an en­trance?”

“Yes.”

“And you went in­side.”

“Yes. No.”

“You mean, Dio­genes went first?”

“Yes.”

“Will­ing­ly?”

An­oth­er long pause. “No.”

“You goad­ed him,” Glinn said.

“That, and . . .” Pen­der­gast stopped once more.

“You used force?”

“Yes.”

Glinn now kept ut­ter­ly still. He did not al­low even the slight­est squeak of the wheelchair to break the tense at­mo­sphere.

“Why?”

“He had been sar­cas­tic, as usu­al. I was an­gry with him. If there was some­thing a lit­tle fright­en­ing . . . I want­ed him to go first.”

“So Dio­genes crawled in­side. And you fol­lowed him.”

“Yes.”

“What did you find?”

Pen­der­gast’s mouth worked, but it was some time be­fore the words emerged. “A lad­der. Lead­ing up to a crawl space above.”

“De­scribe it.”

“Dark. Sti­fling. Pho­tographs on the walls.”

“Go on.”

“There was a port­hole in the rear wall, lead­ing in­to an­oth­er room. Dio­genes went first.”

Watch­ing Pen­der­gast, Glinn hes­itat­ed, then said, “You made him go first?”

“Yes.”

“And you fol­lowed.”

“I . . . I was about to.”

“What stopped you?”

Pen­der­gast gave a sud­den, spas­mod­ic twitch, but did not an­swer.

“What stopped you?” Glinn pressed sud­den­ly.

“The show be­gan. In­side the box. In­side, where Dio­genes was.”

“A show of Com­stock’s de­vis­ing?”

“Yes.”

“What was its pur­pose?”

An­oth­er twitch. “To fright­en some­one to death.”

Glinn leaned back slow­ly in his wheelchair. He had, as part of his re­search, stud­ied Pen­der­gast’s an­ces­try, and among his many col­or­ful an­tecedents Com­stock stood out. He had been the agent’s great-​grand-​un­cle, in his youth a famed ma­gi­cian, mes­merist, and cre­ator of il­lu­sions. As he grew old, how­ev­er, he be­came in­creas­ing­ly bit­ter and mis­an­throp­ic. Like so many of his rel­atives, he end­ed his days in an asy­lum.

So this was where Com­stock’s mad­ness had led.

“Tell me how it be­gan,” he said.

“I don’t know. The floor tilt­ed or col­lapsed be­neath Dio­genes. He fell in­to a low­er cham­ber.”

“Deep­er in­to the box?”

“Yes, back down to the first lev­el. That was where the . . . show took place.”

“De­scribe it,” Glinn said.

Sud­den­ly Pen­der­gast moaned—a moan of such an­guish, such long-​re­pressed suf­fer­ing, that Glinn was for a mo­ment left speech­less.

“De­scribe it,” he urged again as soon as he could speak.

“I on­ly had a glimpse, I didn’t re­al­ly see it. And then . . . they closed around me.”

“They?”

“Mech­anisms. Driv­en by se­cret springs. One be­hind me, shut­ting off es­cape. An­oth­er that locked Dio­genes in­side the in­ner cham­ber.”

Pen­der­gast fell silent again. The pil­low be­neath his head was now soaked in per­spi­ra­tion.

“But for a mo­ment . . . you saw what Dio­genes saw.”

Pen­der­gast lay still. Then—very slow­ly—he in­clined his head. “On­ly for a mo­ment. But I heard it all. All of it.”

“What was it?”

“A mag­ic-​lantern show,” Pen­der­gast whis­pered. “A phan­tas­mago­ria. Op­er­at­ed by volta­ic cell. It was . . . Com­stock’s spe­cial­ty.”

Glinn nod­ded. He knew some­thing of this. Mag­ic-​lanterns were de­vices that passed light through sheets of glass on­to which im­ages had been etched. Pro­ject­ed on­to a slow­ly ro­tat­ing wall with un­even sur­faces to re­in­force the il­lu­sion, and sup­ple­ment­ed by sin­is­ter mu­sic and rep­eti­tious voic­es, it was the nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry equiv­alent of the hor­ror movie.

“Well then, what did you see?”

Abrupt­ly the agent leaped from the couch, sud­den­ly full of fever­ish ac­tion. He paced the room, hands clench­ing and un­clench­ing. Then he turned to­ward Glinn. “I beg you, do not ask me that.”

He mas­tered him­self with a supreme ef­fort, still pac­ing the room like a caged beast.

“Go on, please,” said Glinn tone­less­ly.

“Dio­genes shrieked and screamed from with­in the in­ner cham­ber. Again and again . . . and again. I heard a ter­ri­ble scrab­bling as he tried to claw his way out—I could hear his nails break­ing. Then there was a long si­lence . . . And then—I don’t know how much lat­er—I heard the shot.”

“Gun­shot?”

“Com­stock Pen­der­gast had fur­nished his . . . house of pain with a sin­gle-​shot der­ringer. He gave his vic­tim a choice. You could go mad; you could die of fright—or you could take your life.”

“And Dio­genes chose the last.”

“Yes. But the bul­let didn’t . . . didn’t kill him. It on­ly dam­aged him.”

“How did your par­ents re­act?”

“At first they said noth­ing. Then they pre­tend­ed Dio­genes was sick, scar­let fever. They kept it se­cret. They were afraid of the scan­dal. They told me the fever had al­tered his vi­sion, his sense of taste and smell. That it dead­ened one eye. But now I know it must have been the bul­let.”

Glinn felt a chill hor­ror set­tle over him, and he felt an il­log­ical need to wash his hands. The thought of some­thing so aw­ful, so ut­ter­ly ter­ri­fy­ing, that a sev­en-​year-​old could pos­si­bly be in­duced to . . . He forced the thought away.

“And the small cham­ber you were im­pris­oned in,” he said. “These pho­tographs you men­tion—what were they of?”

“Of­fi­cial crime scene pho­tographs and po­lice sketch­es of the world’s most ter­ri­ble mur­ders. Per­haps a way to pre­pare for the . . . the hor­ror be­yond.”

An aw­ful si­lence set­tled over the small room.

“And how long was it be­fore you were res­cued?” Glinn asked at last.

“I don’t know. Hours, a day per­haps.”

“And you awak­ened from this liv­ing night­mare un­der the im­pres­sion Dio­genes had be­come sick. And that ac­count­ed for his long ab­sence.”

“Yes.”

“You had no idea of the truth.”

“No, none.”

“And yet Dio­genes nev­er re­al­ized that you had re­pressed the mem­ory.”

Abrupt­ly Pen­der­gast stopped in his pac­ing. “No. I sup­pose he didn’t.”

“As a re­sult, you nev­er apol­ogized to your broth­er, tried to make it up to him. You nev­er even men­tioned it, be­cause you had ut­ter­ly blocked out all mem­ory of the Event.”

Pen­der­gast looked away.

“But to Dio­genes, your si­lence meant some­thing else en­tire­ly. A stub­born re­fusal to ad­mit your mis­take, to ask for­give­ness. And that would ex­plain . . .”

Glinn fell silent. Slow­ly he pushed his wheelchair back. He did not know ev­ery­thing—that would await the com­put­er anal­ysis—but he knew enough to see it now, clear­ly, in its broad­est brush­strokes. Al­most from birth, Dio­genes had been a strange, dark, and bril­liant crea­ture, as had many Pen­der­gasts be­fore him. He might have swung ei­ther way, if the Event had not oc­curred. But the per­son who emerged from the Door­way to Hell—rav­aged emo­tion­al­ly as well as phys­ical­ly—had turned in­to some­thing else en­tire­ly. Yes, it all made sense: the grue­some im­ages of crime, of mur­der, that Pen­der­gast had en­dured . . . Dio­genes’s ha­tred of the broth­er who re­fused to speak of the or­deal he had caused . . . Pen­der­gast’s own un­nat­ural at­trac­tion to patho­log­ical crimes . . . Both broth­ers now made sense. And Glinn now knew why Pen­der­gast had re­pressed the mem­ory so ut­ter­ly. It was not sim­ply be­cause it was so aw­ful. No—it was be­cause the guilt was so over­whelm­ing it threat­ened his very san­ity.

Re­mote­ly, Glinn be­came aware that Pen­der­gast was look­ing at him. The agent was stand­ing as stiff as a stat­ue, his skin like gray mar­ble.

“Mr. Glinn,” he said.

Glinn raised his eye­brows in silent query.

“There is noth­ing more I can or will say.”

“Un­der­stood.”

“I will now re­quire five min­utes alone, please. With­out in­ter­rup­tions of any kind. And then we can . . . pro­ceed.”

Af­ter a mo­ment, Glinn nod­ded. Then he turned the wheelchair around, opened the door, and ex­it­ed the stu­dio with­out an­oth­er word.

53

With sirens shriek­ing, Hay­ward was able to get down to Green­wich Vil­lage in twen­ty min­utes. On the way, she had tried the few oth­er con­tact num­bers she had for D’Agos­ta—none con­nect­ed. She had tried to find a list­ing for Ef­fec­tive En­gi­neer­ing So­lu­tions or Eli Glinn, with­out suc­cess. Even the NYPD tele­phone and Man­hat­tan busi­ness databas­es didn’t have a num­ber, al­though EES was reg­is­tered as a le­git­imate busi­ness, as re­quired by law.

She knew the com­pa­ny ex­ist­ed, and she knew its ad­dress on Lit­tle West 12th Street. Be­yond that, noth­ing.

Sirens still blar­ing, she pulled off the West Side High­way on­to West Street, and from there turned in­to a nar­row lane, crowd­ed on both sides by dingy brick build­ings. She shut off her sirens and crawled along, glanc­ing at the build­ing num­bers. Lit­tle West 12th, once the cen­ter of the meat­pack­ing dis­trict, was a sin­gle block in length. The EES build­ing had no num­ber, but she de­duced it must be the cor­rect one by the num­bers on ei­ther side. It was not ex­act­ly what she imag­ined: per­haps a dozen sto­ries tall, with the fad­ed name of some long-​de­funct meat­pack­ing com­pa­ny on the side—ex­cept it be­trayed it­self by tiers of ex­pen­sive new win­dows on the up­per floors and a pair of met­al doors at the load­ing dock that looked sus­pi­cious­ly high-​tech. She dou­ble-​parked in front, block­ing the nar­row street, and went up to the en­trance.

A small­er door sat be­side the load­ing dock, an in­ter­com with a buzzer its on­ly adorn­ment. She pressed the in­ter­com and wait­ed, her heart rac­ing with frus­tra­tion and im­pa­tience.

Al­most im­me­di­ate­ly a fe­male voice an­swered. “Yes?”

She flashed her badge, not sure where the cam­era was but cer­tain there was one. “Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward, NYPD Homi­cide. I de­mand im­me­di­ate ac­cess to these premis­es.”

“Do you have a war­rant?” came the pleas­ant an­swer.

“No. I’m here to see Lieu­tenant Vin­cent D’Agos­ta. I’ve got to see him im­me­di­ate­ly—it’s a mat­ter of life and death.”

“We don’t have a Vin­cent D’Agos­ta on staff here,” came the fe­male voice, still main­tain­ing a tone of bu­reau­crat­ic pleas­ant­ness.

Hay­ward took a breath. “I want you to car­ry a mes­sage to Eli Glinn. If this door isn’t opened with­in thir­ty sec­onds, here’s what’ll hap­pen: the NYPD will stake out the en­trance, we’ll pho­to­graph ev­ery­one com­ing in or out, and we’ll get a search war­rant look­ing for a meth lab and bust a lot of glass. You un­der­stand me? The count­down just be­gan.”

It took on­ly fif­teen sec­onds. There came a faint click and the doors sprang open noise­less­ly.

She stepped in­to a dim­ly lit cor­ri­dor that end­ed in doors of pol­ished stain­less steel. They opened si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, re­veal­ing a heav­ily mus­cled man in a warm-​up suit em­bla­zoned with the lo­go of Har­vey Mudd Col­lege. “This way,” he said, and turned un­cer­emo­ni­ous­ly.

She fol­lowed him through a cav­ernous room to an in­dus­tri­al el­eva­tor, which led via a short as­cent to a maze of white cor­ri­dors, fi­nal­ly end­ing up at a pair of pol­ished cher­ry doors. They opened on­to a small, el­egant con­fer­ence room.

Stand­ing at the far end was Vin­cent D’Agos­ta.

“Hi, Lau­ra,” he man­aged af­ter a mo­ment.

Hay­ward sud­den­ly found her­self at a loss for words. She’d been so in­tent on get­ting to see him that she hadn’t thought ahead to what she would say if she suc­ceed­ed. D’Agos­ta, too, was silent. It seemed that be­yond a greet­ing, he was al­so un­able to speak.

Hay­ward swal­lowed, found her voice. “Vin­cent, I need your help.”

An­oth­er long si­lence. “My help?”

“At our last meet­ing, you spoke about Dio­genes plan­ning some­thing big­ger. You said, ‘He’s got a plan which he’s put in mo­tion.’”

Si­lence. Hay­ward found her­self col­or­ing; this was a lot hard­er than she’d thought. “That plan is tonight,” she went on. “At the mu­se­um. At the open­ing.”

“How do you know?”

“Let’s call it a gut feel­ing—a pret­ty damn strong gut feel­ing.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

“I think Dio­genes works at the mu­se­um, in some kind of al­ter ego. All the ev­idence shows the di­amond theft had in­side help, right? Well, he was the in­side help.”

“That isn’t what you and Cof­fey and all the oth­ers con­clud­ed—”

She waved her hand im­pa­tient­ly. “You said Vi­ola Maske­lene and Pen­der­gast were ro­man­ti­cal­ly in­volved. That’s why Dio­genes kid­napped her. Right?”

“Right.”

“Guess who’s at the open­ing.”

An­oth­er si­lence—this one not awk­ward, but sur­prised.

“That’s right. Maske­lene. Hired at the last minute to be Egyp­tol­ogist for the show. To re­place Wicher­ly, who died in the mu­se­um un­der very strange cir­cum­stances.”

“Oh, Je­sus.” D’Agos­ta glanced at his watch. “It’s sev­en-​thir­ty.”

“The open­ing’s go­ing on as we speak. We need to go right now.”

“I—” D’Agos­ta hes­itat­ed again.

“Come on, Vin­nie, there’s no time to waste. You know the place bet­ter than I do. The brass isn’t go­ing to do any­thing—I have to do it my­self. That’s why I need you there.”

“You need more than me,” he said, his voice now qui­et.

“Who else did you have in mind?”

“You need Pen­der­gast.”

Hay­ward laughed mirth­less­ly. “Bril­liant. Let’s send a chop­per up to Herk­moor and see if we can’t bor­row him for the evening.”

An­oth­er si­lence. “He isn’t at Herk­moor. He’s here.”

Hay­ward stared at him, un­com­pre­hend­ing.

“Here?” she re­peat­ed at last.

D’Agos­ta nod­ded.

“You bust­ed him out of Herk­moor?”

An­oth­er nod.

“My God, Vin­nie. Are you frig­ging crazy? You’re al­ready hip-​deep in shit . . . and now this?” With­out think­ing, she sank in­to one of the chairs at the con­fer­ence ta­ble, then sprang im­me­di­ate­ly back to her feet. “I can’t be­lieve it.”

“What are you go­ing to do about it?” D’Agos­ta asked.

Hay­ward stood there, star­ing at him. Slow­ly the enor­mi­ty of the choice she had to make be­came clear to her. It was a choice be­tween play­ing it by the book—tak­ing Pen­der­gast in­to cus­tody, call­ing in back­up and trans­fer­ring cus­tody, then get­ting back to the mu­se­um—or . . .

Or what? There was no oth­er op­tion. That was what she should do—what she had to do. Ev­ery­thing she had learned as a cop, ev­ery fiber of her cop’s soul, told her so.

She took out her ra­dio.

“Call­ing for back­up?” D’Agos­ta asked in a low voice.

She nod­ded.

“Think about what you’re about to do, Lau­ra. Please.”

But fif­teen years of train­ing had al­ready thought for her. She raised the ra­dio to her lips. “This is Cap­tain Hay­ward call­ing Homi­cide One, come in.”

She felt D’Agos­ta’s hand gen­tly touch her shoul­der. “You need him.”

“Homi­cide One? This is a Code 16. I’ve got a fugi­tive and need back­up . . .” Her voice trailed off.

In the si­lence, she could hear the dis­patch­er’s in­evitable ques­tion. “Your lo­ca­tion, Cap­tain?”

Hay­ward said noth­ing. Her eyes met D’Agos­ta’s.

“Cap­tain? I need your lo­ca­tion.”

There was a si­lence bro­ken on­ly by the crack­le of the ra­dio.

“I read you, over,” Hay­ward said.

“Your lo­ca­tion?”

An­oth­er si­lence. Then she said, “Can­cel that Code 16. Sit­ua­tion re­solved. This is Cap­tain Hay­ward, over and out.”

54

Hay­ward tore away from the curb, made a U-​turn, and drove the wrong way down Lit­tle West 12th, peeled right on­to West Street, and rock­et­ed up­town, cars brak­ing and pulling off to the left and right as she flashed past, sirens scream­ing. If all went well, they would be at the mu­se­um no lat­er than 8:20 P.M. D’Agos­ta sat in the pas­sen­ger’s seat next to her, say­ing noth­ing. She glanced at Pen­der­gast in the rearview mir­ror—face bad­ly bruised, a fresh­ly dressed cut along one cheek. He wore a ghost­ly ex­pres­sion, one she had nev­er seen on his face be­fore—or any­body else’s, for that mat­ter. He had the look of some­body who had just peered in­to his own per­son­al hell.

Hay­ward re­turned her gaze to the street ahead. She knew, in some pro­found way, that she had just crossed the Ru­bi­con. She had done some­thing that went against all her train­ing, ev­ery­thing she knew about what it meant to be a good cop.

Fun­ny how, at the mo­ment, she didn’t seem to care.

A strange, un­com­fort­able si­lence hung over the three. She would have ex­pect­ed Pen­der­gast to be pep­per­ing her with ques­tions, or at least thank­ing her for not turn­ing him in. In­stead, he sat there word­less­ly, the same aw­ful ex­pres­sion on his bruised fea­tures.

“Okay,” she said. “Here it is. Tonight’s the big open­ing of the new ex­hi­bi­tion at the mu­se­um. Ev­ery­one’s there: top mu­se­um brass, may­or, gov­er­nor, celebri­ties, ty­coons. Ev­ery­one. I tried to stop it, post­pone it, but I got ve­toed. Prob­lem is, I didn’t—still don’t—have any re­al­ly hard in­for­ma­tion. All I know is this: some­thing’s com­ing down. And your broth­er, Dio­genes, is be­hind it.”

She glanced at Pen­der­gast again. But he did not re­spond, did not re­turn the glance. He just sat there, with­drawn, de­tached. He might have been a mil­lion miles away.

The wheels squealed a lit­tle as she ne­go­ti­at­ed a city bus, then ac­cel­er­at­ed on­to the West Side High­way.

“Af­ter the di­amond heist,” she went on, “Dio­genes van­ished. I fig­ure he al­ready had an al­ter ego pre­pared and just stepped in­to it. I’ve done some sniff­ing around, and so has that jour­nal­ist Smith­back. We’re both con­vinced Dio­genes’s al­ter ego is a staff mem­ber of the mu­se­um, prob­ably a cu­ra­tor. Think about it: the di­amond heist had to be an in­side job, but he’s not the kind of guy to take in part­ners. That’s al­so how he man­aged to pen­etrate the se­cu­ri­ty of the Sa­cred Im­ages ex­hi­bi­tion and at­tack Mar­go Green. Vin­nie, you’d told me from the start Dio­genes was work­ing up to some­thing big. You were right all along. And it’s go­ing to hap­pen tonight, at the open­ing.”

“You’d bet­ter bring Pen­der­gast up to speed on the new ex­hi­bi­tion,” D’Agos­ta said.

“Af­ter the fi­as­co with the di­amonds, the mu­se­um an­nounced it was go­ing to re­open an old Egyp­tian tomb in its base­ment—the Tomb of Senef. Some French count gave them a ton of mon­ey to do it. It was ob­vi­ous­ly a way to dis­tract pub­lic at­ten­tion from the de­struc­tion of the di­amond col­lec­tion. Tonight’s the open­ing gala.”

“Name?” Pen­der­gast asked. His voice was bare­ly au­di­ble, as if emerg­ing from deep with­in a sep­ul­cher.

It was the first word Hay­ward had heard him ut­ter. “I’m sor­ry?” she replied.

“The name of the count?”

“Thier­ry de Ca­hors.”

“Did any­one ac­tu­al­ly meet this count?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

When Pen­der­gast lapsed back in­to si­lence, she con­tin­ued. “Over the past six weeks, there’ve been two deaths as­so­ci­at­ed with the re­open­ing of the tomb, sup­pos­ed­ly un­con­nect­ed with each oth­er. The first was a com­put­er tech­ni­cian work­ing in­side the tomb, killed by his part­ner. The guy went crazy, mur­dered his pal, stuffed his or­gans in­to near­by cer­emo­ni­al jars, and fled to the mu­se­um at­tics. At­tacked a guard when they tried to flush him out. The sec­ond death was a cu­ra­tor named Wicher­ly, a Brit brought in spe­cial­ly to cu­rate the show. He went nuts, tried to stran­gle No­ra Kel­ly—you know her, Vin­nie, right?”

“She all right?”

“She’s fine—in fact, she’s han­dling the open­ing tonight. Wicher­ly, on the oth­er hand, was shot and killed by a pan­icked mu­se­um guard dur­ing the at­tack on Kel­ly. Now here’s the kick­er: au­top­sies showed both ag­gres­sors suf­fered the ex­act same kind of brain dam­age.”

D’Agos­ta looked over at her. “What?”

“Both were work­ing in the tomb just be­fore they went psy­cho. But we went over ev­ery­thing with a fine-​tooth comb, found noth­ing—no en­vi­ron­men­tal or oth­er cause. As I said, the of­fi­cial line is that the two deaths are un­con­nect­ed. But I’m not buy­ing the co­in­ci­dence. Dio­genes is plan­ning some­thing—I’ve felt it all evening. And when I saw her at the open­ing, I knew I was right.”

“Who?” Pen­der­gast mur­mured.

“Vi­ola Maske­lene.”

Hay­ward sensed a sud­den still­ness be­hind her.

“Did you in­quire as to how she hap­pened to be there?” came the very cool voice from the back­seat.

Hay­ward swerved around a lum­ber­ing garbage truck. “She was hired by the mu­se­um at the last minute to re­place Wicher­ly.”

“Hired by whom?”

“The head of the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment. Men­zies. Hugo Men­zies.”

An­oth­er pause, much briefer, be­fore Pen­der­gast spoke again. “Tell me, Cap­tain, what’s the pro­gram for this evening?”

Pen­der­gast seemed, in a way, to be wak­ing up.

“Hors d’oeu­vres and cock­tails, sev­en to eight. The rib­bon cut­ting and open­ing of the tomb, eight to nine. Din­ner at nine-​thir­ty.”

“Open­ing of the tomb—I as­sume that in­cludes a tour?”

“A tour with a sound-​and-​light show. Na­tion­al­ly tele­vised.”

“A sound-​and-​light show?”

“Yes.”

Pen­der­gast’s voice—which had been so hol­low and re­mote—was now laced with ur­gen­cy. “For God’s sake, Cap­tain, hur­ry!”

Hay­ward shot be­tween two cabs that were stub­born­ly re­fus­ing to let her pass, clip­ping one bumper in the pro­cess. Glanc­ing in the rearview mir­ror, she saw it fly up­ward, bounc­ing and flip­ping in a show­er of sparks.

“What am I miss­ing here?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“Cap­tain Hay­ward is right,” Pen­der­gast said. “This is it—the ‘per­fect crime’ Dio­genes boast­ed about.”

“Are you sure?”

“Lis­ten care­ful­ly,” Pen­der­gast said. He hes­itat­ed briefly. “I will on­ly speak of this once. A wrong was done to my broth­er, many years ago. He was ex­posed—in­ad­ver­tent­ly, but ex­posed nev­er­the­less—to a sadis­tic de­vice. It was a ‘house of pain,’ its sole pur­pose to drive its vic­tim in­sane or kill him from sheer fright. And now Dio­genes—in the per­son of Men­zies, whom he is no doubt pos­ing as—will, through some hid­den means of his own, re-​cre­ate this at the open­ing tonight. Eli Glinn said it: Dio­genes is mo­ti­vat­ed by a feel­ing of vic­tim­iza­tion. My broth­er wants to per­pe­trate the wrong done to him, but on a large scale. And, with a live tele­vi­sion broad­cast, the scale could be large in­deed. This is what he has been build­ing up to. All the rest was mere­ly sideshow.”

He sank back in the rear seat and fell silent once again.

The car ca­reened off the West Side High­way at the 79th Street ex­it ramp, then ac­cel­er­at­ed east­ward to­ward the rear of the mu­se­um. In the dis­tance ahead, all seemed calm—there were no flash­ing po­lice lights, no hov­er­ing he­li­copters.

Maybe it hasn’t hap­pened yet.

She tore right on Colum­bus, made the dog­leg around 77th Street with a screech­ing of rub­ber, and flew on­to Mu­se­um Drive, jam­ming on her brakes be­fore a crush of idling limousines, taxis, and spec­ta­tors. The squad car slewed side­ways be­fore the crowd and she leaped out, wav­ing her badge, D’Agos­ta al­ready in the lead, a one-​man fly­ing wedge.

“Cap­tain Hay­ward, NYPD Homi­cide!” she cried. “Make way!”

The crowds part­ed in con­fu­sion, the slow­er ones scat­tered by D’Agos­ta, and in a mo­ment they were at the vel­vet ropes. With­out even paus­ing, D’Agos­ta knocked down a guard who had stepped in front of them. Hay­ward flashed her shield at the as­ton­ished po­lice of­fi­cers on du­ty and they sprint­ed up the car­pet­ed steps to­ward the huge bronze doors of the mu­se­um.

55

No­ra Kel­ly stepped down from the podi­um in­to a sea of ap­plause, enor­mous­ly re­lieved that her short speech had gone well. She had been the last speak­er, di­rect­ly fol­low­ing George Ash­ton, the may­or, and Vi­ola Maske­lene, and now the main event was about to be­gin: the cut­ting of the rib­bon and the open­ing of the Tomb of Senef.

Vi­ola joined up with her. “Bril­liant speech,” she said. “You were ac­tu­al­ly in­ter­est­ing.” “As were you.”

She saw Hugo Men­zies ges­tur­ing for them to come over. She pushed through the crowd,

Vi­ola fol­low­ing. Men­zies’s face was florid, his blue eyes sparkling, his white tie and tails giv­ing him the air of an im­pre­sario. His arm was linked with that of the may­or of New York, Si­mon Schuyler, a bald­ing, owlish man with spec­ta­cles, whose ap­pear­ance be­lied an in­te­ri­or of slick and ut­ter­ly lethal po­lit­ical ge­nius. He was sched­uled to give a short speech at din­ner, and he looked the part. He was stand­ing next to a brunet who was so well put to­geth­er she could on­ly have been a politi­cian’s wife.

“No­ra, my dear, you know May­or Schuyler, of course,” Men­zies said. “And this is Mrs. Schuyler. Si­mon, this is Dr. No­ra Kel­ly, head cu­ra­tor of the Tomb of Senef and one of our most bril­liant and in­ter­est­ing young sci­en­tists. And this is Dr. Vi­ola Maske­lene, the formidable British Egyp­tol­ogist.”

“I’m de­light­ed to meet you,” said Schuyler, eye­ing Vi­ola with in­ter­est through his thick lens­es, then trans­fer­ring that in­ter­est to No­ra and back again, high­ly ap­prov­ing. “Mar­velous talk you gave, Ms. Maske­lene, es­pe­cial­ly that part about weigh­ing the heart af­ter death. I’m dread­ful­ly afraid my heart has got­ten rather heavy these last few years, thanks to New York City pol­itics.” He laughed mer­ri­ly and No­ra and Vi­ola du­ti­ful­ly laughed along with him, joined by Men­zies. Schuyler was known for his huge ap­pre­ci­ation of his own wit, an ap­pre­ci­ation not shared by many of his ac­quain­tances. Tonight he seemed in high good hu­mor. Fun­ny how, just six weeks ago, he’d been call­ing for Col­lopy’s res­ig­na­tion. So it was in big-​city pol­itics.

“No­ra,” said Men­zies, “the may­or and his wife would love to have you and Dr. Maske­lene ac­com­pa­ny them in the tomb.”

“De­light­ed,” said Vi­ola, smil­ing.

No­ra nod­ded. “It would be our plea­sure.” It was stan­dard mu­se­um prac­tice, she knew, for VIP guests at open­ings to get mu­se­um staff as pri­vate tour guides. And while May­or Schuyler was not the high­est-​rank­ing politi­cian at the open­ing, he was the most im­por­tant, hold­er of the mu­se­um’s purse strings, who had been loud­est in de­cry­ing the de­struc­tion of the di­amonds.

“Yes, how love­ly,” said his wife, who seemed less than en­thu­si­as­tic about be­ing es­cort­ed by two such at­trac­tive guides.

Men­zies bus­tled off. No­ra watched as he paired up the gov­er­nor with the mu­se­um’s as­so­ciate di­rec­tor, a New York sen­ator with George Ash­ton, and var­ious VIPs with oth­er staff to en­sure that ev­ery­one felt spe­cial.

“That fel­low’s a reg­ular match­mak­er,” said the may­or, fol­low­ing him with his eyes, chuck­ling. “I could use him on my staff.” The hall’s warm over­head light­ing shone off his bald pate, il­lu­mi­nat­ing it like a bil­liard ball.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men, may I have your at­ten­tion!” came the rich, aris­to­crat­ic voice of Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy, the mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor, who had po­si­tioned him­self in front of the tomb doors, wield­ing the same tire­some pair of gi­gan­tic scis­sors that were trot­ted out at ev­ery open­ing. With a lit­tle help from an as­sis­tant, he got them po­si­tioned and ready to cut.

The tym­pa­nist in the small or­ches­tra let fly a tol­er­able drum­roll.

“I here­by of­fi­cial­ly re­open, af­ter more than half a cen­tu­ry of dark­ness, the Grand Tomb of Senef!”

With a mighty heave, Col­lopy shut the scis­sors, and the two ends of the cut rib­bon flut­tered to the floor. With a rum­ble, the faux stone doors slid open. The or­ches­tra im­me­di­ate­ly sound­ed the fa­mous theme of Aï­da once again and those in the crowd with pass­es to the first of the two shows surged to­ward the dim­ly lit rect­an­gle of dark­ness.

The may­or’s wife shiv­ered. “I don’t like tombs. Is it re­al­ly three thou­sand years old?”

“Three thou­sand three hun­dred and eighty,” said Vi­ola.

“My good­ness, you know so much!” said Mrs. Schuyler, turn­ing to her.

“We Egyp­tol­ogists are ver­ita­ble founts of use­less knowl­edge.”

The may­or chuck­led at this.

“Is it true what they say, that it’s cursed?” Mrs. Schuyler went on.

“In a man­ner of speak­ing,” said Vi­ola. “Many Egyp­tian tombs had in­scrip­tions that threat­ened harm to those who dis­turbed them. This one has a stronger curse than most—but that’s prob­ably be­cause Senef wasn’t a pharaoh.”

“Oh, dear, I hope noth­ing hap­pens to us. Who was this Senef?”

“They don’t re­al­ly know—prob­ably the un­cle of Thut­mo­sis IV. Thut­mo­sis be­came pharaoh at age six, and Senef act­ed as re­gent while Thut­mo­sis grew up.”

“Thut­mo­sis? You mean King Tut?”

“Oh, no,” said Vi­ola. “Tut was Tu­tankhamen, an­oth­er pharaoh—far less im­por­tant than Thut­mo­sis.”

“I get so con­fused,” said the wife.

They passed through the doors, in­to the slop­ing cor­ri­dor.

“Watch your step, dear,” said the may­or.

“This is the God’s First Pas­sage,” said Vi­ola, and launched in­to a brief de­scrip­tion of the tomb’s lay­out. As she lis­tened, No­ra re­called the en­thu­si­as­tic tour Wicher­ly had giv­en on­ly a few weeks be­fore. De­spite the warmth, she shiv­ered.

They moved for­ward slow­ly to­ward the first stop on the sound-​and-​light show, hemmed in on all sides by the crowd. In a few min­utes, the three hun­dred guests were all in­side and she heard the rum­ble as the tomb doors closed, end­ing with a hol­low clang. A sud­den si­lence fell on the crowd and the lights dimmed even fur­ther.

Out of the dark­ness came the faint sound of a shov­el dig­ging in sand. Then an­oth­er—and then a cho­rus of picks, all strik­ing the soil. Then came the furtive voic­es of the tomb rob­bers, speak­ing in tense, muf­fled tones. No­ra glanced over and saw, in the far cor­ner, the PBS cam­era crew film­ing.

The sound-​and-​light show had be­gun, and mil­lions were watch­ing.

56

Hay­ward ar­rived in the hall just be­hind D’Agos­ta, step­ping in­to a blaze of light and col­or. To her dis­may, she saw that the doors to the Tomb of Senef were closed, the dec­ora­tive red rib­bon ly­ing cut on the floor. The most im­por­tant guests were al­ready in­side, while the oth­ers were scat­tered about the hall, seat­ed at cock­tail ta­bles or clus­tered in knots by the food and liquor.

“We’ve got to get those doors open—now,” said Pen­der­gast, com­ing up be­side her. “The com­put­er con­trol room is this way.”

They ran across the hall—re­ceiv­ing star­tled glances from some of the guests—and burst

through a door at the far end.

The com­put­er con­trol room for the Tomb of Senef was small. At one end was a long ta­ble on which stood sev­er­al com­put­er mon­itors and key­boards. On ei­ther side rose up racks of equip­ment: hard drives, con­trollers, syn­the­siz­ers, video equip­ment. A mut­ed tele­vi­sion was tuned to the lo­cal PBS af­fil­iate, cur­rent­ly simul­cast­ing the open­ing. Two tech­ni­cians sat at the ta­ble, ob­serv­ing a brace of mon­itors dis­play­ing video feeds from in­side the tomb, as well as a third mon­itor, on which scrolled a long se­ries of num­bers. They turned, sur­prised at the sud­den en­try.

“What’s the sta­tus of the sound-​and-​light show?” Hay­ward asked.

“Go­ing like clock­work,” said one of the tech­ni­cians. “Why?”

“Shut it down,” Hay­ward said. “Open the tomb doors.”

The tech­ni­cian re­moved a pair of ear­phones. “I can’t do that with­out au­tho­riza­tion.” Hay­ward stuck her badge in his face. “Cap­tain Hay­ward, NYPD Homi­cide. How’s that?” The tech­ni­cian hes­itat­ed, star­ing at the badge. Then he shrugged and turned to the oth­er.

“Lar­ry, ini­ti­ate the door re­lease se­quence, please.”

Hay­ward glanced at the sec­ond tech­ni­cian and not­ed it was Lar­ry En­der­by, a staff mem­ber she had ques­tioned about the at­tempt­ed mur­der of Mar­go Green, and again about the di­amond theft. He seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time a lot these days.

“If you say so,” En­der­by said a lit­tle du­bi­ous­ly.

He had just be­gun to type when Manet­ti charged in, his face red, fol­lowed by two guards. “What’s go­ing on?” he said.

“We’ve got a prob­lem,” said Hay­ward. “We’re stop­ping the show.”

“You aren’t stop­ping any­thing with­out a damn good rea­son.”

“No time to ex­plain.”

En­der­by had paused in his typ­ing, his fin­gers hov­er­ing over the key­board, look­ing from

Hay­ward to Manet­ti and back.

“I’ve been as ac­com­mo­dat­ing as I can, Cap­tain Hay­ward,” Manet­ti said. “But now you’ve gone too far. This open­ing is crit­ical to the mu­se­um. Ev­ery­one who counts is here and we’ve got a live au­di­ence of mil­lions. No way am I go­ing to al­low any­thing or any­body to dis­rupt that.”

“Stand down, Manet­ti,” Hay­ward said in a clipped voice. “I’ll take full re­spon­si­bil­ity.

Some­thing is about to go ter­ri­bly wrong.”

“No go, Cap­tain,” Manet­ti said brusque­ly. He ges­tured at the tele­vi­sion. “See for your­self.

Ev­ery­thing’s fine.” He reached over and turned up the sound:

In the fifth year of the reign of the pharaoh Thut­mo­sis IV . . .

Hay­ward turned back to En­der­by. “Open those doors now.”

“Hold off on that or­der, En­der­by,” Manet­ti said.

The tech­ni­cian’s hands, still poised above the key­board, be­gan to trem­ble. Manet­ti glanced past Hay­ward and abrupt­ly caught sight of Pen­der­gast. “What the hell?

Aren’t you sup­posed to be in prison?”

“I said, open the god­damn doors,” Hay­ward barked.

“Some­thing’s not right.” Manet­ti be­gan to fum­ble for his ra­dio.

Pen­der­gast moved smooth­ly for­ward. He turned his bruised face to Manet­ti and said in a

cour­te­ous voice, “My sin­cer­est apolo­gies.”

“What for?”

The blow came so fast that it was lit­tle more than a blur, and with a muf­fled oof! Manet­ti

dou­bled over. With a smooth, swift ges­ture, Pen­der­gast whisked Manet­ti’s sidearm out of its

hol­ster and point­ed it at the two guards.

“Weapons, ba­tons, pep­per spray, ra­dios, on the floor,” he said.

The two guards obeyed.

Pen­der­gast plucked one of their guns from its hol­ster and hand­ed it to D’Agos­ta. “Watch

them.”

“Right.”

Pen­der­gast took the sec­ond guard’s gun and tucked it in his waist­band as a spare. Then

he turned back to Manet­ti, who was on his knees, one hand cradling his midriff, try­ing to suck

in air.

“I am tru­ly sor­ry. There’s a con­spir­acy un­der way to de­stroy ev­ery­body in the tomb. We’re

go­ing to try to stop it, whether you like it or not. Now: where is Hugo Men­zies?” “You’re in big trou­ble, pal,” Manet­ti gasped. “Even big­ger than you were be­fore.” And he

be­gan to rise.

D’Agos­ta raised the gun threat­en­ing­ly, and Manet­ti froze. “Men­zies is in the tomb with the

rest,” he said af­ter a mo­ment.

Pen­der­gast turned to the tech­ni­cians and spoke, his voice icy and laced with men­ace. “Mr.

En­der­by? You heard the or­der: open the doors.”

The tech­ni­cian, thor­ough­ly fright­ened, nod­ded and be­gan to type on the key­board. “No

prob­lem, sir, I’ll have them open in a jiffy.”

A mo­men­tary si­lence.

An­oth­er stac­ca­to bunch of keystrokes, then an­oth­er pause. En­der­by frowned. “Seems we got a glitch here . . .”

57

In the fifth year of the reign of the pharaoh Thut­mo­sis IV, Senef—the grand vizier and for­mer re­gent to the young pharaoh—died of un­known caus­es. He was buried in a grand tomb in the Val­ley of the Kings that had been un­der con­struc­tion for twelve years. Al­though Senef had nev­er been a pharaoh him­self, he was buried in the Val­ley of the Kings as be­fit­ted one who act­ed as re­gent to a pharaoh and who prob­ably re­tained pharaon­ic-​like pow­er af­ter the as­sump­tion to the throne of his for­mer ward. The Great Tomb of Senef was filled with all the rich­es an­cient Egypt could pro­vide: grave goods in gold and sil­ver, lapis, car­nelian, al­abaster, onyx, gran­ite, and adamant, as well as fur­ni­ture, food­stuffs, stat­ues, char­iots, games, and weapons. No ex­pense was spared.

In the tenth year of his reign, Thut­mo­sis fell ill. His son, Amen­hotep III, was de­clared pharaoh by a fac­tion of the army, op­posed by the priest­hood. There was a re­bel­lion in Up­per Egypt, and the Land of the Two King­doms fell in­to strife and chaos.

It was a good time to rob a tomb.

And so, one morn­ing at dawn, the high priests as­signed to guard the Great Tomb of Senef be­gan to dig . . .

The voice-​over paused. No­ra stood in the dark­ened cor­ri­dor of the God’s Sec­ond Pas­sage, shoul­der-​to-​shoul­der with the may­or and his wife. Vi­ola Maske­lene stood just be­yond them. The sounds of dig­ging grew loud­er, the chuff-​chuff of the shov­els ris­ing in crescen­do with the ex­cit­ed voic­es of the tomb rob­bers. A muf­fled cheer, the scrap­ing of shov­el on stone, and then the sharp crack of plas­ter seals be­ing struck off with a pick, one by one. All around her, the au­di­ence—three hun­dred hand­picked VIPs, the movers and shak­ers of New York—watched, en­thralled.

As the show con­tin­ued, there was a rum­ble and grind­ing of stone: the rob­bers were drag­ging aside the out­er tomb door. A crack of light ap­peared, throw­ing a bril­liant beam in­to the dim space. A mo­ment lat­er, the dig­itized faces of the tomb rob­bers ap­peared, ea­ger­ly scur­ry­ing in and light­ing torch­es. They were dressed in the garb of an­cient Egyp­tians. Al­though No­ra had seen this all be­fore, she was still amazed at how re­al­is­tic the holo­graph­ic rob­bers looked.

A new set of pro­jec­tors took over seam­less­ly, throw­ing im­ages on­to art­ful­ly placed screens, and the tomb rob­bers ap­peared to creep fear­ful­ly along the pas­sage­way ahead of the vis­itors. With ges­tures and hiss­es, the ghost­ly rob­bers turned and urged the au­di­ence to fol­low along be­hind them—in­clud­ing them as ac­com­plices. This helped as­sure that the crowd would now move on to the next stage of the sound-​and-​light show—which took place in the Hall of the Char­iots.

As she moved with the crowd, No­ra felt a shiv­er of pride. It was an ex­cel­lent script—Wicher­ly had done a mas­ter­ful job. For all his per­son­al fail­ings, he had been abun­dant­ly tal­ent­ed. She was al­so proud of her own cre­ative con­tri­bu­tion. Hugo Men­zies had guid­ed the over­all project with a sub­tle and sure hand, while prov­ing equal­ly clever with the nuts and bolts of bring­ing the show to­geth­er. The tech­ni­cians and A/V crew had done a splen­did job with the vi­su­als. Judg­ing from the mes­mer­ized au­di­ence, so far it was go­ing very well.

As the crowd walked down the cor­ri­dor to­ward the well, fol­low­ing the video im­ages of the tomb rob­bers, lights placed be­hind hid­den pan­els flick­ered, sim­ulat­ing the ef­fect of torch­light on the walls. The crowd flow was work­ing per­fect­ly, the au­di­ence au­to­mat­ical­ly mov­ing at the pace of the rob­bers.

At the well, the rob­bers paused, their voic­es raised in dis­cus­sion of how to bridge the dan­ger­ous pit. Sev­er­al of them car­ried thin tree trunks over their shoul­ders, which they pro­ceed­ed to lash to­geth­er. Us­ing a crude pul­ley and winch sys­tem, they low­ered the logs and swung them across the well to make a bridge. The pro­ject­ed im­ages then inched across the sway­ing, creak­ing bridge as if on a tightrope. A cry rang out as one of the fig­ures slipped from the bridge, plung­ing with a hideous scream in­to the dark­ness of the pit—cut off sud­den­ly in a sick­en­ing smack of meat hit­ting stone. The au­di­ence gasped.

“Good­ness,” said the may­or’s wife. “That was rather . . . re­al­is­tic.”

No­ra glanced around. Ini­tial­ly, she had been against that lit­tle piece of dra­ma, but she had to ad­mit that—judg­ing by the ex­cit­ed mur­murs and gasps of the au­di­ence—it had been ef­fec­tive. Even the may­or’s wife, de­spite her faint ob­jec­tion, seemed en­thralled.

More in­vis­ible holo­graph­ic screens now de­scend­ed as oth­ers rose, and the com­put­er-​con­trolled video pro­jec­tors seam­less­ly trans­ferred the im­ages of the rob­bers from one screen to the next, giv­ing them the il­lu­sion of three-​di­men­sion­al mo­tion. The ef­fect was ex­traor­di­nar­ily re­al. And yet—the mo­ment the last vis­itor left the tomb—the screens would all re­tract and the im­ages of death and de­struc­tion would be cut off, leav­ing the hall in its orig­inal pris­tine shape and ready for the next per­for­mance.

The guests fol­lowed the holo­graph­ic fig­ures in­to the Hall of the Char­iots. Here, the rob­bers fanned out, awestruck at the in­cred­ible wealth spread out be­fore them—heaped-​up gold and sil­ver, lapis, and gem­stones, all gleam­ing dul­ly by torch­light. The au­di­ence it­self was halt­ed by a low­ered bar­ri­er at the far end of the hall, and the sec­ond sec­tion of the show be­gan with an­oth­er voice-​over:

The Tomb of Senef, like many an­cient Egyp­tian tombs, con­tained an in­scrip­tion that cursed those who would de­spoil it. But an even greater de­ter­rent than a curse was the rob­bers’ own ter­ror of the pow­er of the pharaoh. For these high priests, al­though greedy and cor­rupt, were al­so be­liev­ers. They be­lieved in the di­vin­ity of the pharaoh and in his ev­er­last­ing life. They be­lieved in the mag­ical prop­er­ties which had been in­vest­ed in the ob­jects buried in the tomb with him. The mag­ic in these ob­jects was ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous and would do the rob­bers great harm if it were not can­celed.

For this rea­son, the first thing the rob­bers did was de­stroy all the grave goods in the tomb, as a way to ex­punge their mag­ical pow­ers.

The rob­bers, hav­ing re­cov­ered from their ini­tial awe, be­gan to pick up ob­jects and hurl them about—ten­ta­tive­ly at first, then work­ing up to an or­gy of de­struc­tion, smash­ing fur­ni­ture, vas­es, ar­mor, and stat­ues, hurl­ing them against the walls, dash­ing them on­to the stone floors, or swing­ing them in­to square pil­lars, send­ing ghost­ly pro­jec­tions of gem­stones, gold, and frag­ments of al­abaster skit­ter­ing and rat­tling ev­ery­where. They screamed and cursed as they worked. Oth­er rob­bers scram­bled about on their hands and knees, sort­ing through the de­struc­tion for things of val­ue and stuff­ing them in­to sacks.

Once again, the il­lu­sion was re­mark­able.

Ev­ery­thing would be de­stroyed. The on­ly things of val­ue tak­en from the tomb would be tak­en in pieces and fur­ther re­duced as soon as pos­si­ble. Met­als would be melt­ed down in­to bul­lion; jew­els, in­laid lapis, turquoise, and jasper would be pried from their set­tings and re­cut. All this trea­sure would then be quick­ly ex­port­ed from Egypt, where any resid­ual pow­er of the god­like pharaoh still re­sid­ing in the ob­jects would be lost.

That would be the fate of all the beau­ti­ful and pre­cious ob­jects in the tomb—to­tal an­ni­hi­la­tion. The work of thou­sands of crafts­men over years, re­duced in a sin­gle day to bro­ken shards.

The fren­zy of curs­ing, scream­ing, and de­struc­tion grew. No­ra glanced at the may­or and his wife; both were star­ing at the scene, mouths open, as­ton­ished and ut­ter­ly cap­ti­vat­ed. It was the same for the rest of the crowd. Even the po­lice of­fi­cers and the cam­era crew looked spell­bound. Vi­ola Maske­lene caught her eye. The Egyp­tol­ogist nod­ded and gave her a thumbs-​up.

No­ra shiv­ered once again. The Tomb of Senef was go­ing to be a suc­cess—a huge suc­cess. And—she couldn’t help but think—she was the chief cu­ra­tor of the tomb. This was to her cred­it. Men­zies had been right: this would make her ca­reer.

The voice-​over re­sumed:

And now, hav­ing de­stroyed the Hall of the Char­iots and gleaned all trea­sure of val­ue, the rob­bers moved in­to the deep­est sec­tion of the tomb: the so-​called House of Gold, the buri­al cham­ber it­self. This was the rich­est—and most dan­ger­ous—part of the tomb. Be­cause here is where the pharaoh him­self rest­ed, his body—it was be­lieved—mum­mi­fied but not dead.

Still clutch­ing their torch­es, sweaty and fren­zied from their spree of de­struc­tion, the holo­graph­ic fig­ures moved through the far arch­way and in­to the buri­al cham­ber. The re­tain­ing gates opened and the crowd fol­lowed them across the Hall of the Char­iots and in­to the buri­al cham­ber, gath­er­ing be­hind an­oth­er bar­ri­er that de­scend­ed from the ceil­ing. The voice-​over con­tin­ued as the show be­gan to move to­ward its cli­max:

The buri­al cham­ber was the rest­ing place of the mum­mi­fied body of the pharaoh, which con­tained the pharaoh’s Ba-​soul, one of the five souls of the dead.

The rob­bery was planned for broad day­light. That was de­lib­er­ate: ac­cord­ing to Egyp­tian be­lief, the pharaoh’s Ba-​soul was ab­sent from the tomb dur­ing the day, jour­ney­ing with the sun across the sky. At sun­set, the Ba-​soul would re­unite with the pharaoh’s mum­my. Woe to the rob­ber caught in the tomb af­ter dark, when the mum­my came back to life!

But these rob­bers have not been care­ful. Clocks did not yet ex­ist, and in the dark­ness of the tomb a sun­di­al was use­less. They have no way of keep­ing track of time. And lit­tle do they know that, out­side the tomb, the sun is al­ready set­ting . . .

Once again, the rob­bers flung them­selves in­to an or­gy of vi­olence, smash­ing the canopic jars, scat­ter­ing Senef’s mum­mi­fied or­gans, break­ing open bas­kets of grains and breads, toss­ing about mum­mi­fied food­stuffs and pets, de­cap­itat­ing stat­ues. Then they set to work on the great stone sar­coph­agus it­self, jam­ming cedar poles un­der one side, slow­ly dis­lodg­ing the one-​ton lid and wedg­ing it back, mil­lime­ter by mil­lime­ter, un­til it top­pled from the sar­coph­agus and broke in two on the floor. Through the mag­ic of holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tion, the ef­fect was again re­mark­ably re­al.

No­ra felt some­body touch her el­bow, and she glanced down to see the may­or smil­ing at her. “This is ut­ter­ly fan­tas­tic,” he whis­pered with a wink. “It looks like the curse of Senef has fi­nal­ly been lift­ed.”

Look­ing at his bald pate and round, shiny face, No­ra had to smile to her­self. He was eat­ing it up, just like an over­grown kid. They all were.

There was no longer any doubt in her mind: the show was a huge—a mon­ster—suc­cess.

58

D’Agos­ta watched in sick dis­be­lief as the tech­ni­cians, both of them now work­ing fran­ti­cal­ly, con­tin­ued to type com­mands on their key­boards.

“What’s wrong?” Hay­ward de­mand­ed.

En­der­by wiped his fore­head ner­vous­ly. “I don’t know. The ter­mi­nal isn’t ac­cept­ing my com­mands.”

“Man­ual over­ride?” Hay­ward asked.

“Tried that al­ready.”

Hay­ward turned to Manet­ti. “No­ti­fy the guards in the tomb. Tell them we’re shut­ting down the show.” She pulled out her ra­dio, prepar­ing to talk to her own of­fi­cers on the in­side. Then she paused, star­ing at Manet­ti, who had gone pale. “What is it?”

“That’s just it. I’m try­ing to con­tact my men in the tomb. There’s no com­mu­ni­ca­tion. None.”

“How can that be? They’re less than fifty yards away!”

“The tomb has been shield­ed against ra­dio fre­quen­cies,” said Pen­der­gast qui­et­ly.

Hay­ward put down her ra­dio. “Use the P.A. sys­tem. It’s hard­wired, right?”

More fu­ri­ous typ­ing from En­der­by. “That’s down, too.”

Hay­ward stared at him. “Cut pow­er to the doors. In the event of a to­tal pow­er fail­ure, they can be lev­ered open by hand.”

En­der­by typed some more, then raised his hands in a ges­ture of fu­til­ity.

Sud­den­ly, Pen­der­gast point­ed at one of the mon­itors dis­play­ing a live feed of the hall. “Did you see that? Rewind it, please.”

One of the tech­ni­cians dig­ital­ly re­wound the im­age.

“There.” And Pen­der­gast in­di­cat­ed the blur­ry out­line of a fig­ure, off to one side in the shad­ows.

“Can you sharp­en the im­age?” he asked ur­gent­ly. “Mag­ni­fy it?”

D’Agos­ta stared as the feed jumped in­to clear­er fo­cus. They all watched as the man slipped a hand in­side his din­ner jack­et, ca­su­al­ly ex­tract­ed a black eye-​mask, and put it on. A pair of earplugs fol­lowed.

“Men­zies,” Hay­ward mur­mured.

“Dio­genes,” Pen­der­gast said, al­most to him­self, his voice as cold as ice.

“We need to call for back­up,” said Manet­ti. “Get a SWAT team in here, and—”

“No!” Pen­der­gast broke in. “We don’t have time. That will de­lay ev­ery­thing—they’ll want to set up a mo­bile com­mand unit, there will be rules of en­gage­ment to fol­low. We’ve got ten min­utes—at the out­side.”

“I can’t be­lieve these doors won’t open!” En­der­by said, bang­ing at the key­board. “We pro­grammed two com­plete­ly in­de­pen­dent back­ups. This doesn’t make sense. Noth­ing’s re­spond­ing—”

“And noth­ing will re­spond,” said Pen­der­gast. “Those doors aren’t go­ing to open no mat­ter what you do. Men­zies—Dio­genes—has no doubt hi­jacked the sys­tems con­trol­ling both the show and the hall.” Pen­der­gast turned back to En­der­by. “Can you get a list of all run­ning pro­cess­es?”

“Yes.” En­der­by typed a se­ries of com­mands. D’Agos­ta glanced over: a small win­dow had opened on the screen, filled with a list of mys­te­ri­ous low­er­case words like asm­comp, ru­til, sys­log, kcron.

“Ex­am­ine all the pro­cess names,” Pen­der­gast said. “Es­pe­cial­ly the sys­tem pro­cess­es. See any­thing un­usu­al?”

“No.” En­der­by peered at the screen. “Yes. This one called ker­nel_con_fund_o.”

“Any idea what it’s for?”

En­der­by blinked. “Judg­ing by the name, it’s some kind of con­sole file that ac­cess­es the sys­tem ker­nel. That ze­ro at the end al­so im­plies it’s a be­ta ver­sion.”

“Re­verse-​en­gi­neer the code if you can, get a sense of what it does.” Pen­der­gast turned to­ward Hay­ward and D’Agos­ta. “Al­though I’m afraid I al­ready know the an­swer.”

“What’s that?” Hay­ward asked.

“That’s not a ze­ro at the end—it’s the let­ter o. Con­fun­do in Latin means to trou­ble, dis­tress, throw in­to con­fu­sion. It’s no doubt a sys­tem rou­tine added by Dio­genes to hi­jack the show.” He ges­tured at the room full of equip­ment. “I would guess all this equip­ment—ev­ery­thing—is now un­der Dio­genes’s con­trol.”

Mean­while, En­der­by was peer­ing at his screen. “There seems to be an­oth­er serv­er ac­tu­al­ly run­ning the show, and it’s in­side the tomb it­self. All the sys­tems in the con­trol room, here, are slaved to it.”

Pen­der­gast leaned over the tech­ni­cian’s shoul­der. “Can you at­tack it, dis­able it?”

More fu­ri­ous typ­ing. “No. Now it isn’t even ac­cept­ing my in­put any­more.”

“Cut all pow­er to the tomb,” Pen­der­gast said.

“It’ll just switch to back­up—”

“Cut that, too.”

“That’ll leave them in dark­ness.”

“Do it.”

More typ­ing, fol­lowed by a frus­trat­ed curse. “Noth­ing.”

Pen­der­gast looked around. “In that case, the break­er box.” He strode over, flung open the box, and threw the main cir­cuit break­er.

Al­though the lit­tle room was im­me­di­ate­ly plunged in­to dark­ness, the com­put­ers re­mained on­line. With­in sec­onds, there was a sharp click as the back­up pow­er sys­tem kicked in, rows of emer­gen­cy flu­ores­cent tubes flick­ing on.

En­der­by stared at the mon­itors in dis­be­lief. “In­cred­ible. There’s still full pow­er in the tomb. The show’s go­ing on like noth­ing’s hap­pened. There must be an in­ter­nal gen­er­ator some­where in­side. But that wasn’t on any of the plans I—”

“Where’s the back­up pow­er source for this room?” Pen­der­gast in­ter­rupt­ed.

Manet­ti nod­ded to­ward a large gray met­al cab­inet in the cor­ner. “That con­tains the re­lays con­nect­ing the tomb’s main pow­er ca­bles to the mu­se­um’s aux­il­iary gen­er­ator.”

Pen­der­gast stepped back and point­ed Manet­ti’s weapon at the cab­inet. He emp­tied a full clip in­to it—the gun­shots in­cred­ibly loud in the sound­proofed space—walk­ing the rounds from one side of the cab­inet to the oth­er, each round punch­ing a large dark hole in the met­al and send­ing chips of gray paint fly­ing. There was a sound of crack­ling elec­tric­ity, a mas­sive blue arc, and the lights flick­ered and went out—leav­ing on­ly the glow of the com­put­er screens and the stench of cordite and melt­ed in­su­la­tion.

“These com­put­ers are still on,” said Pen­der­gast. “Why?”

“They’ve got their own lo­cal bat­tery back­up.”

“Force a hard re­boot, then. Pull the pow­er cords and plug them back in.”

En­der­by crawled un­der the ta­ble and be­gan yank­ing out cords, throw­ing the room in­to ut­ter dark­ness and si­lence. There was a snap, then a sud­den glow of light as Hay­ward switched on her flash­light.

The door was abrupt­ly flung open and a tall man with a red as­cot and round black glass­es ad­vanced. “What is go­ing on here?” he asked in a shrill voice. “I’m di­rect­ing a live simul­cast to mil­lions of peo­ple, and you can’t even keep the pow­er on? Lis­ten, my back­up pow­er won’t last more than fif­teen min­utes.”

D’Agos­ta rec­og­nized Ran­dall Lof­tus, the fa­mous di­rec­tor, his face mot­tled with anger.

Pen­der­gast turned to D’Agos­ta, leaned in close. “You know what has to be done, Vin­cent?”

“Yes,” D’Agos­ta said. Then he turned to­ward the di­rec­tor. “Let me help you.”

“I should hope so.” And Lof­tus turned and walked stiffly out of the room, D’Agos­ta fol­low­ing.

In the hall be­yond, guests were milling around in a dark­ness re­lieved on­ly by the glow from hun­dreds of tea can­dles set on the ta­bles, ex­cit­ed but not yet alarmed, ap­par­ent­ly treat­ing it as an ad­ven­ture. Mu­se­um guards were cir­cu­lat­ing, re­as­sur­ing peo­ple that the pow­er would be re­stored at any mo­ment. D’Agos­ta fol­lowed the di­rec­tor to the far end of the hall, where his crew was set up. They were all work­ing quick­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly, mur­mur­ing in­to mikes or ob­serv­ing small cam­era-​mount­ed mon­itors.

“We’ve lost touch with the crew in­side,” said one. “But it seems their pow­er is still on. They’re still broad­cast­ing, and the feed to the up­link is good. In fact, I don’t even think they know we’ve lost pow­er out here.”

“Thank God for that,” said Lof­tus. “I’d rather die than de­liv­er dead air­time.”

“This feed you men­tion,” D’Agos­ta asked. “Where is it?”

Lof­tus nod­ded to­ward a thick ca­ble that snaked its way out of the hall, cov­ered with a strip of rub­ber and se­cured by gaffer tape.

“I see,” said D’Agos­ta. “And if that ca­ble got cut?”

“God for­bid,” said Lof­tus. “We’d lose our simul­cast. But it won’t be cut, be­lieve me. It would take more than an ac­ci­den­tal kick to dam­age that ca­ble.”

“You don’t have a back­up ca­ble?”

“No need. That ca­ble’s got a rub­ber-​and-​epoxy-​clad sheath, with wo­ven steel—it’s in­de­struc­tible. Well, Of­fi­cer . . . ?”

“Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta.”

“It ap­pears we don’t need you, af­ter all.” Lof­tus turned his back and point­ed to an­oth­er crew mem­ber. “You nin­ny, nev­er leave an open mon­itor unat­tend­ed like that!”

D’Agos­ta looked around. At the far end of the hall, near the en­trance, was the oblig­atory fire sta­tion case, con­tain­ing a coiled hose and a mas­sive Pu­las­ki axe be­hind a sheet of break­able glass. He strode over, gave the glass a sharp kick, and ex­tract­ed the Pu­las­ki. Then he walked over to where the taped-​down ca­ble turned the cor­ner, braced him­self, and raised the axe above his head.

“Hey!” called one of the crew mem­bers. “What the hell!”

D’Agos­ta brought the axe down smart­ly, neat­ly chop­ping the ca­ble in half with a show­er of sparks.

An inar­tic­ulate howl of rage went up from Ran­dall Lof­tus.

A mo­ment lat­er, D’Agos­ta was back in the con­trol room. Pen­der­gast and the tech­ni­cians were still la­bor­ing over the new­ly re­boot­ed com­put­er sys­tem, which was still re­fus­ing to ac­cept com­mands.

Pen­der­gast turned to­ward him. “Lof­tus?”

“Be­side him­self with anger at the mo­ment.”

Pen­der­gast nod­ded, his lips twitch­ing in a brief sem­blance of a smile.

Sud­den­ly a bar­rage of flash­ing lights on one of the live mon­itors at­tract­ed D’Agos­ta’s no­tice.

“What’s that?” Pen­der­gast asked sharply.

“The strobes are fir­ing up,” said En­der­by, hunched over the key­board.

“There are strobe lights in the show?”

“In the lat­er part, yeah. You know, for spe­cial ef­fects.”

Pen­der­gast turned his at­ten­tion to the mon­itor, the blue glow re­flect­ing his in­tense gray eyes. More strobe lights flashed on, fol­lowed by a strange rum­ble.

En­der­by sud­den­ly sat up. “Wait. That’s not how it’s sup­posed to go.”

The au­dio feed from the tomb con­tin­ued over the mon­itor, car­ry­ing a ris­ing mur­mur from the au­di­ence along with it. Pen­der­gast turned to Hay­ward. “Cap­tain, dur­ing your se­cu­ri­ty re­view, you con­sult­ed a set of plans to the tomb and ad­ja­cent ar­eas, I as­sume?”

“I did.”

“If you had to, what would the best point be to force an en­try in­to the tomb from out­side?”

Hay­ward thought for a mo­ment. “There’s a cor­ri­dor that con­nects the 81st Street sub­way sta­tion to the mu­se­um’s sub­way en­trance. It goes be­hind the back of the tomb, and there’s a point where the ma­son­ry’s on­ly twen­ty-​four inch­es thick be­tween the walk­way and the buri­al cham­ber.”

“Twen­ty-​four inch­es of what?”

“Con­crete and re­bar. It’s a load-​bear­ing wall.”

“Twen­ty-​four inch­es of con­crete,” D’Agos­ta mur­mured. “Might as well be a hun­dred feet. We can’t shoot through that, and we can’t chop through it. Not in time.”

A dread­ful hush fell over the lit­tle room, punc­tu­at­ed on­ly by the strange boom­ing from in­side the hall, and the ac­com­pa­ny­ing mur­mur of the crowd. As D’Agos­ta watched, Pen­der­gast’s shoul­ders sank vis­ibly. It’s hap­pen­ing, he thought with a thrill of hor­ror. Dio­genes is win­ning. He’s thought of ev­ery­thing and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

But then, as he watched, he saw Pen­der­gast start vis­ibly. The agent’s eyes grew bright, and he breathed in sharply. Then he turned to­ward one of the guards.

“You—your name?”

“Rivera, sir.”

“You know where the Taxi­dermy De­part­ment is?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go down there and find me a bot­tle of glyc­erol.”

“Glyc­erol?”

“It’s a chem­ical used for soft­en­ing an­imal skins—there’s cer­tain to be some down there.” Next, Pen­der­gast turned to Manet­ti. “Send a cou­ple of your guards down to the chem­istry lab. I need bot­tles of sul­fu­ric acid and ni­tric acid. They’ll find them where the haz­ardous chem­icals are stored.”

“May I ask—?”

“No time to ex­plain. I’m al­so go­ing to need a sep­ara­tion fun­nel with a stop­cock on the bot­tom, as well as dis­tilled wa­ter. And a ther­mome­ter, if they can find one.” Pen­der­gast looked around, found a sheet of pa­per and a pen­cil, scrib­bled some quick notes, and hand­ed the pa­per to Manet­ti. “Have them ask a lab tech­ni­cian if they have any prob­lems.”

Manet­ti nod­ded.

“In the mean­time, clear the hall, please. I want ev­ery­one out ex­cept NYPD and mu­se­um guards.”

“Done.” Manet­ti mo­tioned to the two guards and they ex­it­ed the con­trol room.

Pen­der­gast turned to the tech­ni­cians. “There’s noth­ing more you can do here. Evac­uate with the oth­ers.”

They both jumped up, on­ly too ea­ger to get out.

Now Pen­der­gast turned to D’Agos­ta. “Vin­cent? I have a job for you and Cap­tain Hay­ward. Go to the sub­way sta­tion. Help her iden­ti­fy that weak point in the wall.”

D’Agos­ta ex­changed glances with Hay­ward. “Right.”

“And Vin­cent? That ca­ble you just cut?” Pen­der­gast ges­tured to­ward one of the screens. “Dio­genes must have ar­ranged a hid­den back­up: the simul­cast is con­tin­uing. Please take care of it.”

“We’re on it.” And D’Agos­ta left the room, Hay­ward at his side.

59

This is just mar­velous!” said the may­or, whis­per­ing loud­ly in No­ra’s ear. The holo­graph­ic tomb rob­bers, hav­ing trashed the buri­al cham­ber, were now ap­proach­ing the open sar­coph­agus it­self. They trem­bled, hes­itat­ed—un­til one fi­nal­ly dared look in.

“Gold!” the man’s record­ed voice gasped. “Sol­id gold!”

The voice-​over in­toned:

And now comes the mo­ment of truth. The rob­bers are gaz­ing in­side the sar­coph­agus at

the sol­id gold cof­fin of Senef. To the an­cient Egyp­tians, gold was more than a pre­cious met­al. They wor­shiped it as sa­cred. It was the on­ly sub­stance they knew that didn’t tar­nish, fade, or cor­rode. They con­sid­ered it to be im­mor­tal, the sub­stance mak­ing up the very skin of the gods them­selves. The cof­fin rep­re­sent­ed the im­mor­tal pharaoh, res­ur­rect­ed in his skin of gold: the same skin that Ra, the Sun God, wore on his jour­ney across the sky, show­er­ing his gold­en light over the earth.

Ev­ery­thing else they have stolen is mere­ly a pre­lude to this: the heart of the tomb. The show con­tin­ued as the rob­bers threw up a makeshift tri­pod of wood­en tim­bers over the sar­coph­agus, rigged with a block and tack­le, to lift off the top of the heavy gold cof­fin. Two of them climbed in­to the sar­coph­agus and be­gan af­fix­ing ropes to the cof­fin in­side—and then, with a shout of tri­umph, the oth­ers be­gan to heave and the huge gold cof­fin lid rose in­to the light, glit­ter­ing and mag­nif­icent. The au­di­ence gasped.

The nar­ra­tor’s record­ed voice be­gan again:

Un­be­knownst to the rob­bers, the sun has now set. The Ba-​soul of Senef will be re­turn­ing to in­hab­it his mum­my for the night, where it will re­an­imate his dry bones dur­ing the hours of dark­ness.

Here it was: the un­leash­ing of the Ba-​soul, the cul­mi­na­tion of the curse of Senef. No­ra, know­ing what was about to come, braced her­self.

There was a noise from in­side the cof­fin—a muf­fled groan. The rob­bers paused in their work, the gold cof­fin lid swing­ing from the ropes. And then the fog ma­chines kicked in and a whitish mist be­gan bub­bling up out of the sar­coph­agus and slid­ing down its sides. A gasp went up from the au­di­ence. No­ra smiled to her­self. A tri­fle hokey, per­haps, but ef­fec­tive.

Now a roll of thun­der sound­ed, and through the ris­ing fog the strobes in the cor­ners of the ceil­ing be­gan to flash, to the ac­com­pa­ni­ment of omi­nous rum­blings. The strobes be­gan to speed up . . . and then all four went out of sync, flash­ing at dif­fer­ent rates.

Damn, a glitch. No­ra looked around for a tech­ni­cian be­fore re­al­iz­ing they were, of course, all in the con­trol room, mon­itor­ing the show by re­mote. No doubt they would fix it in a mo­ment.

As the strobes con­tin­ued to ac­cel­er­ate and de­cel­er­ate at op­pos­ing rates, a sec­ond rum­ble sound­ed—an in­cred­ibly low and deep vi­bra­tion, just at the thresh­old of hu­man hear­ing. Now it seemed the sound sys­tem was mal­func­tion­ing, too. The deep sound was joined by an­oth­er, and then an­oth­er: more like phys­ical vi­bra­tions in the gut than ac­tu­al sound.

Oh, no, she thought. The com­put­ers are roy­al­ly mess­ing up. And it was all go­ing so well . . .

She glanced around again, but the crowd hadn’t no­ticed the glitch—they as­sumed it was just part of the show. If the tech­ni­cians could fix it soon, maybe no­body would know. She hoped they were on the ball.

Now the strobes were speed­ing up even fur­ther, ex­cept for one—par­tic­ular­ly bright—that kept flash­ing, not quite in time . . . the lights blend­ed to form a kind of vi­su­al Doppler ef­fect that al­most made No­ra dizzy.

With a deep groan­ing sound, the mum­my abrupt­ly rose from the sar­coph­agus. The holo­graph­ic rob­bers fell back with shrieks of ter­ror—at least that part of the show was still work­ing—some drop­ping their torch­es in fright, the light flick­er­ing off their star­ing faces as they cringed in fear.

Senef!

But some­how the mum­my didn’t look right to No­ra—it was big­ger, dark­er, some­how more men­ac­ing. Then a bony arm broke free of its ban­dages—some­thing not even in the script—and, claw­ing and twitch­ing, reached up to its own swathed face. The arm was dis­tort­ed, as elon­gat­ed as an ape’s. The bony fin­gers sank in­to the linen wrap­pings and ripped them away, re­veal­ing a vis­age of such hor­ror that No­ra gasped, back­ing up in­stinc­tive­ly. This was over-​the-​top—way over-​the-​top. Was this some joke of Wicher­ly’s? Ob­vi­ous­ly, some­thing this dread­ful, this ef­fec­tive, had to be care­ful­ly pro­grammed—it wasn’t a mere glitch.

There were au­di­ble gasps from the au­di­ence. “Oh, my good­ness!” the may­or’s wife said.

No­ra looked around. The crowd con­tin­ued to stare at the still-​ris­ing mum­my as if mes­mer­ized, sway­ing, un­com­fort­able now. She could feel their fear ris­ing like a mi­as­ma, their voic­es tight and hushed. Vi­ola caught her eye, gave her a ques­tion­ing frown. Be­yond, No­ra could make out the face of Col­lopy, the mu­se­um di­rec­tor. He looked pale.

The mal­func­tion­ing strobe lights kept flash­ing, flash­ing, flash­ing in her pe­riph­er­al vi­sion, so very bright­ly, and No­ra felt a re­al twinge of dizzi­ness. An­oth­er gut-​twist­ing low note sound­ed, and she closed her eyes mo­men­tar­ily against the com­bined as­sault of the bril­liant lights and the deep sounds. She heard more gasps around her, then a scream, choked off al­most be­fore it start­ed. What the hell was this? Those sounds—she had nev­er heard any­thing like them. They were like the sound­ing of the last trump, full of dread and hor­ror, so loud it seemed to vi­olate her very be­ing.

The mum­my now be­gan to open its jaw, the dry lips crack­ing and flak­ing off as they drew back from a rack of brown, rot­ting teeth. The mouth be­came a sink­hole of black slime, which be­gan to seethe and wrig­gle. Then, as she watched in hor­ror, it mor­phed in­to a swarm of greasy black cock­roach­es, which be­gan rustling and crawl­ing their way out of the ru­ined ori­fice. An­oth­er hor­ri­ble groan­ing, and then there was a sec­ond ex­plo­sion of strobe flash­es of such in­cred­ible in­ten­si­ty that, when she closed her eyes, she could still see them flash­ing through her eye­lids . . .

. . . but a hideous buzzing sound forced her to open her eyes again. It now looked as if the mum­my were vom­it­ing black­ness—the swarm of in­sects had tak­en flight, the cock­roach­es mor­ph­ing in­to fat lu­bri­cious wasps, their mandibles click­ing like knit­ting nee­dles as they flew to­ward the au­di­ence with a hor­ri­ble be­liev­abil­ity.

She felt a sud­den wave of ver­ti­go, and she swayed, in­stinc­tive­ly grab­bing the per­son next to her—the may­or—who was him­self stum­bling and un­steady.

“Oh my God—!”

She heard some­one vom­it­ing, a cry for help—and then a flur­ry of short screams as the crowd surged back, try­ing to es­cape the in­sects. Al­though No­ra knew they had to be holo­graph­ical­ly gen­er­at­ed, like ev­ery­thing else, they looked amaz­ing­ly re­al as they came straight at her, each with a vi­cious stinger ex­trud­ed from its ab­domen, gleam­ing with ven­om. She stum­bled back­ward in­stinc­tive­ly, felt her­self falling, with no bot­tom, falling like the rob­ber in the well, to a cho­rus of wails around her like the shrieks of the damned be­ing sucked in­to hell it­self.

60

Con­stance was awak­ened by a dis­creet rap­ping on her bed­room door. With­out open­ing her eyes, she turned over with a sigh, nuz­zling gen­tly at the down pil­low.

The knock came again, a lit­tle loud­er now. “Con­stance? Con­stance, is ev­ery­thing all right?” It was the voice of Wren—shrill, wor­ried.

Con­stance stretched lan­guorous­ly—de­li­cious­ly—then sat up in bed. “I’m fine,” she said with a twinge of ir­ri­ta­tion.

“Is any­thing the mat­ter?”

“Noth­ing’s the mat­ter, thank you.”

“You’re not ill?”

“Cer­tain­ly not. I’m fine.”

“You’ll for­give my in­tru­sion. It’s just that I’ve nev­er known you to sleep all day like this. It’s eight-​thir­ty, past time for sup­per, and you’re still abed.”

“Yes,” was all Con­stance said in re­turn.

“Would you care for your usu­al break­fast, then? Green tea and a piece of but­tered toast?”

“Not the usu­al break­fast, thank you, Wren. If you could man­age it, I’d like poached eggs, cran­ber­ry juice, kip­pers, half a dozen rash­ers of ba­con, a grape­fruit half, and a scone with a pot of jam, please.”

“I—very well.” She heard Wren fuss­ing his way back down the hall to­ward the stairs.

Con­stance set­tled back in­to the pil­lows, clos­ing her eyes again. Her sleep had been long and deep and com­plete­ly dream­less—most un­usu­al for her. She re­called the bot­tom­less emer­ald green of the ab­sinthe, the strange feel­ing of light­ness it gave her—as if she were watch­ing her­self from a dis­tance. A pri­vate smile flit­ted across her face, van­ished, then re­turned again, as if prompt­ed by some rec­ol­lec­tion. She set­tled deep­er in­to the pil­lows, let­ting her limbs re­lax be­neath the soft sheets.

Grad­ual­ly, very grad­ual­ly, she be­came aware of some­thing. There was a scent in the room, an un­usu­al scent.

She sat up in bed again. It was not the scent of—of him; it was some­thing she didn’t think she’d ev­er smelled be­fore. It was not un­pleas­ant, re­al­ly . . . just dif­fer­ent.

She looked around for a mo­ment, try­ing to trace the source. She checked the bed­side ta­ble with­out suc­cess.

It was on­ly as an af­terthought that she slipped a hand be­neath the pil­lows.

There she found some­thing: an en­ve­lope, and a long box, wrapped in an an­tique pa­per and tied with a black rib­bon. These were the source of the scent: a musky smell redo­lent of the deep woods. Quick­ly, she pulled them out.

The en­ve­lope was of cream-​laid linen pa­per, and the box was just large enough to hold a di­amond chok­er, or per­haps a bracelet. Con­stance smiled, then flushed deeply.

She opened the en­ve­lope ea­ger­ly. Out fell three pages of dense, el­egant hand­writ­ing. She be­gan to read.

I hope you slept well, my dear­est Con­stance: the sweet sleep of the in­no­cent.

There is a good chance it will be your last such sleep for some time. Then again—if you take the ad­vice in this let­ter—sleep may come again, and very soon.

As I’ve whiled away these pleas­ant hours with you, I must ad­mit to hav­ing won­dered some­thing. What has it been like, all these many years, to live un­der the same roof as Un­cle An­toine, the man you called Enoch Leng: the man who bru­tal­ly mur­dered your sis­ter, Mary Greene?

Did you know this, Con­stance? That An­toine killed and vivi­sect­ed your sis­ter? Sure­ly you must have. Per­haps at first it was just a sup­po­si­tion, a strange twinge of dark fan­cy. No doubt you as­cribed it to your own per­verse cast of mind. But over time—and you two had so very much time—it must have come to seem, first a pos­si­bil­ity, then a cer­tain­ty. Yet no doubt this was all sub­con­scious, buried so deep as to be al­most undis­cov­er­able. And yet you knew it: of course you did.

What a de­li­cious­ly iron­ic sit­ua­tion. This man, An­toine Pen­der­gast, killed your very own sis­ter—for the fur­ther­ing of his own mor­tal life . . . and ul­ti­mate­ly yours as well! This is the man to whom you owe ev­ery­thing! Do you know how many chil­dren had to die so that he could de­vel­op his elixir, so that you could en­joy your ab­nor­mal­ly ex­tend­ed child­hood? You were born nor­mal, Con­stance; but thanks to Un­cle An­toine, you be­came a freak of na­ture. That was your word, wasn’t it? Freak.

And now, my dear, duped Con­stance, you can no longer shove this idea aside. You can no more dis­miss it as a flight of imag­ina­tion, or a dark ir­ra­tional fear on those nights when the thun­der rum­bles and you can­not sleep. Be­cause the worst is, in fact, true: this is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened. Your sis­ter was mur­dered to pro­long your life. I know, be­cause be­fore he died, Un­cle An­toine told me so him­self.

Oh, yes: I had sev­er­al chats with the old gen­tle­man. How could I not seek out a dear rel­ative with such a col­or­ful his­to­ry, with a world­view so sim­ilar to my own? The very pos­si­bil­ity that he might still be alive af­ter all those decades added ex­cite­ment to my search, and I did not rest un­til I at length tracked him down. He quick­ly sensed my own true na­ture, and nat­ural­ly be­came most anx­ious that your path should nev­er cross mine—but in re­turn for my promise nev­er to meet you, he seemed hap­py enough to dis­cuss his, shall we say, unique so­lu­tion for a bro­ken world. And he con­firmed ev­ery­thing: the ex­is­tence of his con­coc­tion for the pro­lon­ga­tion of life—al­though he with­held from me the man­ner of its prepa­ra­tion. Dear Un­cle An­toine, I was sor­ry to see him go; the world was a most in­ter­est­ing place with him in it. But at the time of his mur­der, I was too close­ly in­volved in my own plans to help him es­cape his fate.

So I ask one more time: what was it like for you to live in this house for so many, many years as help­mate to your sis­ter’s killer? I can’t even be­gin to imag­ine it. No won­der your psy­che is so frail—no won­der my broth­er fears for the sound­ness of your mind. To­geth­er, alone, in this house: was it pos­si­ble that you even grew to be­come, shall we say, on in­ti­mate terms with An­toine? But no, not that: I am the first man to be­come mas­ter of that shrine, dear­est Con­stance: the phys­ical ev­idence was in­con­tro­vert­ible. But you loved him—no doubt you loved him.

And so what now is left for you, my poor pitiable Con­stance? My pre­cious fall­en an­gel? Hand­maid­en to frat­ri­cide, con­sort to your sis­ter’s mur­der­er? The very air you breathe you owe to her, and to An­toine’s oth­er vic­tims. Do you de­serve to con­tin­ue this per­verse ex­is­tence? And who will mourn your pass­ing? My broth­er, sure­ly not: you would be a guilty bur­den to him no more. Wren? Proc­tor? How ris­ible. I shall not mourn you: you were a toy; a mys­tery eas­ily solved; a dull box forced and found emp­ty; an an­imal spasm. So let me give you a piece of ad­vice, and please be­lieve this to be the one hon­est, al­tru­is­tic thing I have ev­er told you.

Do the no­ble thing. End your un­nat­ural life.

Ev­er your

Dio­genes

P.S. I was sur­prised to see how ju­ve­nile your ear­li­er at­tempt at sui­cide was. Sure­ly, you now know not to slash willy-​nil­ly across your wrists; the knife is ar­rest­ed by the ten­dons. For a more sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sult, cut length­wise, be­tween the ten­dons: just one cut: slow, force­ful, and above all, deep. As for my own scar: isn’t it re­mark­able what one can do with a bit of grease­paint and wax?

A long, un­fath­omable mo­ment passed.

Then, Con­stance turned her at­ten­tion to the small present. She picked it up and un­wrapped it, slow­ly, gin­ger­ly, as one might a bomb. In­side was a hinged box of beau­ti­ful­ly pol­ished rose­wood.

Just as slow­ly, she opened the box. With­in, nes­tled on pur­ple vel­vet, rest­ed an an­tique scalpel. The han­dle was of yel­lowed ivory; the blade it­self was pol­ished to great bril­liance. Ex­tend­ing an in­dex fin­ger, she stroked the han­dle of the scalpel. It was cool and smooth. Care­ful­ly she drew the scalpel out of the box, bal­anc­ing it in the palm of her hand, turn­ing it in the light, star­ing at the mir­rored blade that flashed like a di­amond in the fire­light.

61

When the lights went out, Smith­back paused, a raw oys­ter halfway to his mouth. There was a mil­lisec­ond of ut­ter dark­ness be­fore a deep clunk sound­ed some­where and the emer­gen­cy lights came on, rows of flu­ores­cent tubes in the ceil­ing, bathing ev­ery­thing in a hideous green­ish-​white light.

He looked around. Most of the VIPs in the crowd had gone in­to the tomb, but the sec­ond shift re­mained, with plen­ty of se­ri­ous drinkers and eaters, stand­ing around or sit­ting at ta­bles. They re­mained calm, tak­ing the pow­er fail­ure in stride.

Shrug­ging, he tipped the oys­ter shell in­to his mouth and sucked in the briny, still-​liv­ing slith­ery bo­lus, smacked his lips in en­joy­ment, and plucked a sec­ond oys­ter from the plate, ready­ing it for the same op­er­ation.

And then he heard the shots: six muf­fled re­ports from the dark­ness be­yond the far end of the hall: a heavy-​cal­iber hand­gun fir­ing in a mea­sured ca­dence, one shot af­ter an­oth­er. With a dy­ing crack­le, the emer­gen­cy lights went out—and Smith­back knew im­me­di­ate­ly that some­thing big was go­ing down, that there was a sto­ry hap­pen­ing. The on­ly light in the hall now came from the hun­dreds of tea can­dles spread out on the din­ner ta­bles. There were mur­mur­ings from the re­main­ing crowd, a ris­ing sense of alarm.

Smith­back looked in the di­rec­tion of the gun­shots. He re­called see­ing var­ious tech­ni­cians and staff go­ing in and out of a door in the rear of the hall as the evening pro­gressed, and he fig­ured it must lead to the con­trol room for the Tomb of Senef. As he watched, some­body he rec­og­nized—Vin­cent D’Agos­ta—came through that door. Not in uni­form at the mo­ment, but still look­ing ev­ery inch the cop. With him was some­body else Smith­back rec­og­nized: Ran­dall Lof­tus, the well-​known di­rec­tor. He watched them make their way to­ward the small knot of tele­vi­sion cam­eras.

A stab of un­easi­ness struck Smith­back as he re­al­ized his wife, No­ra, was in­side the tomb. Prob­ably stuck in ut­ter dark­ness. But the tomb had a full com­ple­ment of guards and cops, so she was cer­tain­ly safe. Some­thing was hap­pen­ing here, and it was his job as a re­porter to find out just what it was. He watched D’Agos­ta cross the hall, break the glass in an emer­gen­cy fire sta­tion, and re­move an axe.

He pulled out his note­book and pen­cil, not­ed the time, and jot­ted down what he was see­ing. D’Agos­ta walked over to a ca­ble, po­si­tioned the axe, and brought it down with a clunk, elic­it­ing a roar of protest from Lof­tus and the PBS tech­ni­cians. Ig­nor­ing them, D’Agos­ta walked calm­ly back, axe in hand, to the small door in the rear of the hall, which he then closed be­hind him.

The ten­sion in the hall in­creased by an or­der of mag­ni­tude.

What­ev­er was hap­pen­ing, it was big.

Smith­back swift­ly fol­lowed in D’Agos­ta’s wake. Reach­ing the door to the con­trol room, he

put his hand on the knob. Then he paused. If he barged in there, he was like­ly to be eject­ed. Bet­ter to hang back, min­gle with the crowd, and wait for the oth­er shoe to drop.

It didn’t take long. With­in min­utes, D’Agos­ta, still car­ry­ing the axe, and Cap­tain Hay­ward burst out the door, jogged down the hall, and dis­ap­peared out the main ex­it. A mo­ment lat­er, Manet­ti, the di­rec­tor of se­cu­ri­ty, came out, climbed on­to the dark­ened podi­um, and ad­dressed the re­main­ing par­ty­go­ers.

Again, Smith­back not­ed the time and be­gan to take notes.

“Ladies and gen­tle­men!” he cried out, his voice bare­ly pen­etrat­ing the vast murky in­te­ri­or. A hush fell.

“We’re ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some pow­er prob­lems, some tech­ni­cal prob­lems. Noth­ing to be

alarmed about, but we’re go­ing to have to clear the hall. The guards will es­cort you out the way you came in and up to the ro­tun­da. Please fol­low their in­struc­tions.”

A mur­mur of dis­ap­point­ment rose up. Some­one shout­ed out, “What about the peo­ple in the tomb?”

“The peo­ple in the tomb will be es­cort­ed out as soon as we open the doors. There’s noth­ing to be con­cerned about.”

“Are the doors stuck?” Smith­back yelled.

“Mo­men­tar­ily, yes.”

More rest­less­ness. It was clear peo­ple did not want to go, leav­ing their friends or loved ones be­hind in the tomb.

“Please move to­ward the ex­it!” Manet­ti shout­ed. “The guards will es­cort ev­ery­one out. There is noth­ing to be alarmed about.” There were some mur­murs of protest from guests clear­ly un­used to be­ing told what to do.

Bull­shit, thought Smith­back. If there was noth­ing to be alarmed about, why was there a qua­ver in Manet­ti’s voice? There was no way in hell he was go­ing to al­low him­self to be “es­cort­ed” out of the build­ing just as the sto­ry was break­ing—and es­pe­cial­ly with No­ra still stuck in the tomb.

He looked around, then ducked out­side the hall. The vel­vet ropes ran down the base­ment cor­ri­dor, lit on­ly by the bat­tery-​op­er­at­ed ex­it signs. An­oth­er cor­ri­dor sat at right an­gles to the main hall­way, roped off, run­ning in­to dark­ness. Guards with flash­lights were al­ready herd­ing groups of protest­ing peo­ple to­ward the ex­it.

Smith­back sprint­ed on ahead to where the cor­ri­dor branched off, vault­ed the vel­vet rope, ran through the dark­ness, and ducked in­to an en­try­way marked Al­co­holic Stor­age, Genus Rat­tus.

He flat­tened him­self against the shal­low door frame and wait­ed.

62

Vin­cent D’Agos­ta and Lau­ra Hay­ward sprint­ed be­tween the vel­vet ropes, down the front steps of the mu­se­um, and along Mu­se­um Drive. The en­trance to the sub­way stood at the cor­ner of 81st Street, a dingy met­al kiosk with a cop­per roof, perched on the cor­ner. Parked near it, just be­yond the seething crowd of rub­ber­neck­ers, D’Agos­ta spot­ted the PBS tele­vi­sion van, ca­bles snaking from it across the lawn and through a win­dow in­to the mu­se­um. A white satel­lite dish was set atop the van.

“Over here!” D’Agos­ta be­gan to push his way through the crowd to­ward the van, grip­ping the axe. Hay­ward was at his side, hand up dis­play­ing her shield.

“NYPD!” she cried. “Make way, please!”

When the crowd seemed re­luc­tant to part, D’Agos­ta raised the axe over his head with both hands and be­gan to pump it up and down. The crowd part­ed be­fore them, ex­pos­ing a thin path to the van.

They ran around to the rear of the ve­hi­cle. Hay­ward held back the crowd while D’Agos­ta stepped up on­to the bumper. Grasp­ing the rack on top of the van, he pulled him­self on­to the roof.

A man leaped out of the van. “What the hell are you do­ing?” he cried. “We’ve got a live broad­cast in ses­sion!”

“NYPD Homi­cide,” said Hay­ward, po­si­tion­ing her­self be­tween him and the bumper.

D’Agos­ta stead­ied him­self on top of the van, legs apart. Then he raised the axe above his head again.

“Hey! You can’t do that!”

“Watch me.” With one tremen­dous swing, D’Agos­ta struck through the met­al posts sup­port­ing the satel­lite dish, pop­ping the bolts and send­ing them fly­ing. Then he swung the flat end of the axe against the dish: once, twice. With a creak­ing groan of met­al, it top­pled over the edge of the roof and crashed to the street be­low.

“Are you crazy—?” the tech­ni­cian be­gan.

Ig­nor­ing him, D’Agos­ta leaped off, tossed the axe aside, and he and Hay­ward shoved their way through the fringes of the crowd, head­ing for the sub­way en­trance.

Dim­ly, D’Agos­ta was aware it was Lau­ra Hay­ward at his side: his own Lau­ra, who’d had him es­cort­ed out of her of­fice just days be­fore. He thought he had lost her ir­re­triev­ably—and yet, she had sought him out.

She had sought him out. It was a de­li­cious thought. He re­mind­ed him­self to re­turn to it if he sur­vived the rest of the night.

Reach­ing the en­trance to the sub­way, they ran down the stairs and sprint­ed over to the tick­et booth. Hay­ward flashed her shield at the wom­an in­side.

“Cap­tain Hay­ward, NYPD Homi­cide. There’s a sit­ua­tion in the mu­se­um and we need to clear this sta­tion. Call Tran­sit Au­thor­ity HQ and have them flag the sta­tion as a skip un­til fur­ther no­tice. I don’t want any trains stop­ping. Un­der­stand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

They jumped the turn­stiles, ran down the cor­ri­dor, and en­tered the sta­tion prop­er. It was still ear­ly—not yet nine—and there were sev­er­al dozen peo­ple wait­ing for the train. Hay­ward trot­ted along the plat­form, and D’Agos­ta fol­lowed. At the far end, a cor­ri­dor branched off, with a large tiled sign above:

New York Mu­se­um of Nat­ural His­to­ry

Walk­way to En­trance

Open Dur­ing Mu­se­um Hours On­ly

An ac­cor­dion grille of dingy, rust­ed met­al sealed off the cor­ri­dor, se­cured with a mas­sive pad­lock.

“Bet­ter talk to those peo­ple,” mur­mured Hay­ward, pulling out her gun and point­ing it at the lock.

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. He walked back along the plat­form, wav­ing his shield. “NYPD! Clear the sta­tion! Ev­ery­body out!”

Peo­ple looked over at him dis­in­ter­est­ed­ly.

“Out! Po­lice ac­tion, clear the sta­tion!”

The sound of two gun­shots thun­dered down the plat­form, wak­ing ev­ery­one up. They be­gan to move back to­ward the ex­its, sud­den­ly alarmed, and amidst the con­fused hub­bub of the in­creas­ing­ly rapid re­treat D’Agos­ta heard the words ter­ror­ist and bomb drift­ing to­ward him.

“I want ev­ery­one to leave in a calm and or­der­ly fash­ion!” he called af­ter them.

A third rip­ping gun­shot cleared the sta­tion com­plete­ly. D’Agos­ta ran back to find Hay­ward wrestling with the grille. He helped push it back and to­geth­er they ducked through.

Ahead of them, the cor­ri­dor stretched for a hun­dred yards be­fore tak­ing a sharp turn to­ward the mu­se­um’s sub­way en­trance. Tile­work along the walls showed im­ages of mam­mal and di­nosaur skele­tons, and there were framed posters an­nounc­ing up­com­ing mu­se­um ex­hi­bi­tions, in­clud­ing sev­er­al for the Grand Tomb of Senef. Hay­ward pulled a small set of plans from her pock­et and un­rolled them on the ce­ment floor. The plans were cov­ered with scrib­bled no­ta­tions—it looked to D’Agos­ta as if she had gone over them many times.

“That’s the tomb,” said Hay­ward, point­ing at the map. “And there’s the sub­way tun­nel. And look—right over here, there’s on­ly about two feet of con­crete be­tween the cor­ner of the tomb and this tun­nel.”

D’Agos­ta squat­ted, ex­am­ined the plat. “I don’t see any ex­act mea­sure­ments on the sub­way side.”

“There aren’t any. They on­ly sur­veyed the tomb, es­ti­mat­ing the rest.”

D’Agos­ta frowned. “The scale is ten feet to the inch. That doesn’t give us much pre­ci­sion.” “No.”

She con­sult­ed the map a mo­ment longer, then, gath­er­ing it up, she paced off about a hun­dred feet down the cor­ri­dor be­fore stop­ping again. “My best guess is that this is the thin spot, right here.”

The rum­ble of a sub­way car be­gan to fill the air, fol­lowed by a roar as it passed the sta­tion with­out stop­ping, the noise quick­ly fad­ing.

“You’ve been in the tomb?” said D’Agos­ta.

“Vin­nie, I’ve prac­ti­cal­ly been liv­ing in the tomb.”

“And you can hear the sub­way in there?”

“All the time. They couldn’t get rid of it.”

D’Agos­ta pressed his ear to the tiled wall. “If they can hear out, we should be able to hear in.”

“They’d have to be mak­ing a lot of noise in there.”

He straight­ened up, looked at Hay­ward. “They are.”

Then he pressed his ear to the wall again.

63

From his hid­ing place in the dim door­way, Smith­back watched the mur­mur­ing, com­plain­ing crowds be­ing ush­ered out of the hall to­ward the el­eva­tors. He lin­gered a few min­utes af­ter the last had passed by, then crept for­ward, ducked un­der the vel­vet rope, and inched along the wall to the cor­ner, where he could peer in­to the Egyp­tian Hall. It wasn’t dif­fi­cult to stay hid­den: the on­ly light came from the hun­dreds of can­dles still flick­er­ing in the hall, leav­ing much of the an­techam­ber in dark­ness.

Pressed in­to the shad­ows be­side the en­trance, he watched a small knot of peo­ple emerge from the side door lead­ing to the con­trol room. He rec­og­nized Manet­ti, in his usu­al ug­ly brown suit, sport­ing an im­pres­sive comb-​over. The rest were mu­se­um guards ex­cept for one man who, in par­tic­ular, at­tract­ed his at­ten­tion. He was tall and brown-​haired, wear­ing a white turtle­neck and slacks. Al­though his face was turned away, a large ban­dage was clear­ly vis­ible on one cheek. What at­tract­ed Smith­back’s at­ten­tion wasn’t so much the man’s ap­pear­ance as the way he moved: so smooth­ly and grace­ful­ly it seemed al­most fe­line. It re­mind­ed him of some­one . . .

He watched as the man strode to a huge sil­ver caul­dron of crushed ice. Dozens of cham­pagne bot­tles had been pressed in­to the ice, their snouts point­ing up­ward.

“Help me get rid of these bot­tles,” Smith­back heard the man say to Manet­ti—and the in­stant he spoke, Smith­back rec­og­nized that hon­eyed voice.

Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast. Out of prison? What’s he do­ing here? He felt a sud­den thrill of ex­cite­ment and sur­prise: here was the man whose name he’d been work­ing to clear, walk­ing around as ca­su­al­ly as if he owned the place. But along with the ex­cite­ment came a sud­den sink­ing feel­ing—in his ex­pe­ri­ence, Pen­der­gast ap­peared on­ly when the shit was re­al­ly hit­ting the fan.

Two of the guards jogged up to the tomb en­trance, and Smith­back watched as they made an at­tempt to lever open the doors with a wreck­ing bar and a sledge­ham­mer, with­out suc­cess.

Smith­back felt the sink­ing feel­ing in­crease. Peo­ple were trapped in­side the tomb—he knew that—but why this sud­den des­per­ate ef­fort to get them out? Was some­thing go­ing wrong in­side?

His blood ran cold with spec­ula­tion. Fact was, the tomb pre­sent­ed a per­fect op­por­tu­ni­ty to launch a ter­ror­ist at­tack. An in­cred­ible con­cen­tra­tion of mon­ey, pow­er, and in­flu­ence was in­side: dozens of po­lit­ical big­wigs, along with an elite slice of the coun­try’s cor­po­rate, le­gal, and sci­en­tif­ic lead­er­ship—not to men­tion ev­ery­body of im­por­tance at the mu­se­um it­self.

He re­turned his at­ten­tion to Pen­der­gast, who was pulling the bot­tles of cham­pagne out of the ice and hurl­ing them in­to a trash can. In an­oth­er mo­ment, he’d emp­tied the caul­dron, leav­ing on­ly a heap of crushed and melt­ing ice. Now he stepped to an ad­join­ing food ta­ble and, with a great sweep of his hand, cleared it of its con­tents, send­ing plat­ters of oys­ters, mounds of caviar, cheeses, prosci­ut­to, and breads crash­ing to the floor. Aghast, Smith­back watched a mas­sive Brie roll like a white wheel all the way across the hall be­fore com­ing to a gluey rest in a dark cor­ner.

Next, Pen­der­gast went from ta­ble to ta­ble, col­lect­ing dozens of tea can­dles and ar­rang­ing them in a cir­cle around the cleared area to pro­vide il­lu­mi­na­tion.

What the hell is he do­ing?

A man came in­to the hall at a dead run, car­ry­ing a bot­tle of some­thing, which Pen­der­gast im­me­di­ate­ly snatched up, checked, then shoved in­to the mound of crushed ice. Two more men ar­rived, one push­ing a cart crammed with bot­tles and lab­ora­to­ry equip­ment—beakers and flasks—which were al­so shoved in­to the ice.

Pen­der­gast straight­ened and, his back to Smith­back’s hid­ing place, be­gan rolling up his sleeves. “I need a vol­un­teer,” he said.

“What ex­act­ly are you do­ing?” asked Manet­ti.

“Mak­ing ni­tro­glyc­erin.”

There was a si­lence.

Manet­ti cleared his throat. “This is crazy. Sure­ly there’s a bet­ter way to get in­to the tomb than blow­ing your way in.”

“No vol­un­teers?”

“I’m call­ing for a SWAT team,” said Manet­ti. “We need pro­fes­sion­als to break in there. We can’t just blow it up willy-​nil­ly.”

“Well, then,” said Pen­der­gast, “how about you, Mr. Smith­back?”

Smith­back froze in the black­ness, hes­itat­ed, looked around. “Who, me?” he said in a small voice.

“You’re the on­ly Smith­back here.”

Smith­back emerged from the shad­ows of the door­way and stepped in­to the hall, and on­ly now did Pen­der­gast turn and look him in the eye.

“Well, sure,” Smith­back stam­mered. “Al­ways hap­py to help a— Wait. Did you say ni­tro?”

“I did.”

“Will it be dan­ger­ous?”

“Giv­en my in­ex­pe­ri­ence at the syn­the­sis, and the im­pu­ri­ty of the for­mu­la­tion that will in­evitably re­sult, I’d es­ti­mate our chances are slight­ly bet­ter than fifty per­cent.”

“Chances at what?”

“En­dur­ing a pre­ma­ture det­ona­tion.”

Smith­back swal­lowed. “You must . . . be wor­ried about what’s hap­pen­ing in the tomb.” “I am, in fact, ter­ri­fied, Mr. Smith­back.”

“My wife’s in there.”

“Then you have a spe­cial in­cen­tive to help.”

Smith­back stiff­ened. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Thank you.” Pen­der­gast turned to Manet­ti. “See to it that ev­ery­one leaves the hall and takes cov­er.”

“I’m call­ing for a SWAT team, and I strong­ly sug­gest—”

But the look on Pen­der­gast’s face si­lenced the se­cu­ri­ty di­rec­tor. The guards has­tened out of the hall, Manet­ti fol­low­ing, his ra­dio crack­ling.

Pen­der­gast glanced back at Smith­back. “Now, if you will kind­ly fol­low my in­struc­tions to the let­ter, we will have a fair chance of pulling this off.”

He went back to set­ting up the equip­ment: ro­tat­ing the bot­tles in the ice to chill them more quick­ly; tak­ing a flask, shov­ing it deep in­to the ice, set­ting a glass ther­mome­ter with­in it. “The prob­lem, Mr. Smith­back, is that we have no time to do this prop­er­ly. We need to mix the chem­icals quick­ly. And that some­times pro­vokes an un­de­sir­able re­sult.”

“Look, what’s hap­pen­ing in the tomb?”

“Let us con­cen­trate on the prob­lem at hand, please.”

Smith­back swal­lowed again, try­ing to get a grip on him­self. All thought of a big sto­ry had van­ished. No­ra is in there, No­ra is in there—the phrase pound­ed in his head like a drum­beat.

“Hand me the bot­tle of sul­fu­ric acid, but wipe it off first.”

Smith­back lo­cat­ed the bot­tle, pulled it out of the ice, wiped it down, and hand­ed it to Pen­der­gast, who poured it care­ful­ly in­to the chilled flask. A nasty, acrid smell arose. When the agent was sat­is­fied he had poured in the req­ui­site amount, he stepped back and capped the bot­tle. “Check the tem­per­ature.”

Smith­back peered down at the glass ther­mome­ter, pulled it from the flask, held it close enough to a can­dle to read.

“Need­less to say,” said Pen­der­gast dry­ly, “you will take exquisite care with that can­dle flame. I should al­so men­tion these acids will dis­solve hu­man flesh in a mat­ter of sec­onds.”

Smith­back’s hand jerked away.

“Give me the ni­tric acid. Same pro­ce­dure, please.”

Smith­back wiped off the bot­tle and hand­ed it to Pen­der­gast. The agent un­screwed the top and held it up, ex­am­in­ing the la­bel.

“As I pour this in, I want you to stir the so­lu­tion with the ther­mome­ter, read­ing off the tem­per­ature at thir­ty-​sec­ond in­ter­vals.”

“Right.”

Pen­der­gast mea­sured the acid in­to a grad­uat­ed cylin­der, then be­gan pour­ing it, a tiny amount at a time, in­to the chilled flask while Smith­back stirred.

“Ten de­grees,” said Smith­back.

More exquisite­ly slow pour­ing.

“Eigh­teen . . . twen­ty-​five . . . Go­ing up fast . . . Thir­ty . . .”

The mix­ture be­gan to foam and Smith­back could feel the heat of it on his face, along with a hideous stench. The ice be­gan melt­ing around the beaker.

“Don’t breathe those fumes,” said Pen­der­gast, paus­ing in his pour­ing. “And keep stir­ring.”

“Thir­ty-​five . . . thir­ty-​six . . . thir­ty-​four . . . thir­ty-​one . . .”

“It’s sta­bi­liz­ing,” said Pen­der­gast, re­lief au­di­ble in his voice. He re­sumed pour­ing in the ni­tric acid, a tiny bit at a time.

In the si­lence, Smith­back thought he could hear some­thing. He lis­tened in­tent­ly: it was the sound of dis­tant scream­ing, muf­fled to a faint whis­per. And then a thud sound­ed from the di­rec­tion of the tomb, and then an­oth­er, which rapid­ly be­came a dull pound­ing.

He straight­ened sud­den­ly. “Je­sus, they’re pound­ing on the tomb door!”

“Mr. Smith­back! Con­tin­ue read­ing the tem­per­atures.”

“Right. Thir­ty . . . twen­ty-​eight . . . twen­ty-​six . . .”

The muf­fled pound­ing con­tin­ued. Pen­der­gast was pour­ing so slow­ly Smith­back thought he would be driv­en mad.

“Twen­ty.” Smith­back tried to con­cen­trate. “Eigh­teen. Please, hur­ry.” He found his hand shak­ing, and as he re­moved the ther­mome­ter to read it, he fum­bled and splashed some drops of the sul­fu­ric-​ni­tric acid mix on the back of his hand.

“Oh, shit!”

“Keep stir­ring, Mr. Smith­back.”

It felt like his hand had been splat­tered with molten lead, and he could see smoke ris­ing from the black spots where the acid had fall­en on his skin.

Pen­der­gast fin­ished pour­ing. “I’ll take over. Put your hand in the ice.”

Smith­back plunged his hand in­to the ice while Pen­der­gast grabbed a small box of bak­ing so­da, ripped off the top. “Give me your hand.”

He ex­tract­ed it from the ice. Pen­der­gast shook bak­ing pow­der over the burn marks with one hand while stir­ring with the oth­er. “The acids are neu­tral­ized now. It’ll be a nasty scar—no more. Please re­sume stir­ring while I pre­pare for the next ad­di­tion.”

“Right.” Smith­back’s hand felt like it was on fire, but the thought of No­ra trapped in the tomb re­duced the pain to in­signif­icance.

Pen­der­gast re­moved an­oth­er bot­tle from the ice, wiped it off, and mea­sured some of the con­tents care­ful­ly in­to a small beaker.

The pound­ing, the scream­ing, seemed to be get­ting even more fran­tic.

“While I pour, you slow­ly ro­tate the flask in its ice bath like a ce­ment mix­er, keep­ing it tilt­ed, and read off the tem­per­ature ev­ery fif­teen sec­onds. Do not stir—don’t even knock the ther­mome­ter against the glass. Un­der­stand?”

“Yes.”

With ex­cru­ci­at­ing slow­ness, Pen­der­gast poured while Smith­back kept ro­tat­ing.

“The tem­per­ature, Mr. Smith­back?”

“Ten . . . twen­ty . . . It’s shoot­ing up . . . Thir­ty-​five . . .” The sweat ap­pear­ing now on Pen­der­gast’s fore­head fright­ened Smith­back al­most more than any­thing else. “Thir­ty-​five still . . . Hur­ry, please, for God’s sake!”

“Keep ro­tat­ing,” the agent said, his calm voice in sharp con­trast to his damp brow.

“Twen­ty-​five . . .” The dis­tant pound­ing con­tin­ued un­abat­ed. “Twen­ty . . . twelve . . . ten . . .”

Pen­der­gast poured an­oth­er small amount in, and once again, the tem­per­ature shot up. They wait­ed for what seemed an eter­ni­ty.

“Look, can’t you just mix it all up now?”

“If we blow our­selves up, there’s no hope for them, Mr. Smith­back.”

Smith­back forced down his im­pa­tience, read­ing off the tem­per­ature and ro­tat­ing the flask, while Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued pour­ing bit by bit, paus­ing be­tween pours. At last he tipped up the beaker.

“First stage com­plete. Now grab that sep­ara­to­ry fun­nel and pour in some dis­tilled wa­ter from that jug, there.”

Smith­back picked up the fun­nel, which looked like a drawn-​out glass bulb, a long glass tube with a stop­cock an­gling away from its bot­tom. Tak­ing the glass plug from its top, he filled the fun­nel with wa­ter from a jug sit­ting in the ice.

“Shove it up­right in­to the ice, if you please.”

Smith­back pushed the fun­nel in­to the ice.

Pen­der­gast picked up the flask and, with in­fi­nite care, poured the con­tents in­to the sep­ara­to­ry fun­nel. As Smith­back looked on ap­pre­hen­sive­ly, the agent per­formed the last sev­er­al steps. Now a white paste lay in the beaker. Pen­der­gast held up the beaker, ex­am­ined it briefly, then turned to Smith­back. “Let’s go.”

“That’s it? We’re done?” Smith­back could still hear the pound­ing: ris­ing to a crescen­do now, backed up by ev­er-​more-​hys­ter­ical scream­ing.

“Yes.”

“Well, let’s hur­ry up and blow the door!”

“No—that door’s too heavy. Even if we could, we’d kill peo­ple: they’re all as­sem­bled just on the oth­er side, by the sound of it. I’ve got a bet­ter en­try point.”

“Where?”

“Fol­low me.” Pen­der­gast had al­ready turned and was head­ing out the door, break­ing in­to a cat­like run, cradling the beaker pro­tec­tive­ly. “It’s out­side, in the sub­way sta­tion. To get there, we’ll have to leave the mu­se­um and run the gaunt­let of by­standers out­side. Your job, Mr. Smith­back, is to get me through that crowd.”

64

With a su­per­hu­man ef­fort, No­ra stead­ied her­self, tried to fo­cus her mind. She re­al­ized she was not falling in­to the well: that the sen­sa­tion of falling was, in fact, an il­lu­sion. The holo­graph­ic in­sects had scat­tered the crowd, in­duc­ing a grow­ing pan­ic. The dread­ful low throb­bing sounds were get­ting loud­er, like an in­fer­nal drum­beat, and the strobe lights were brighter and more painful than any she had ev­er ex­pe­ri­enced. These were not the strobes she had seen in the equip­ment tests: these flashed so vi­olent­ly that they seemed to be pen­etrat­ing in­to her very brain.

She swal­lowed, looked around. The holo­graph­ic im­age of the mum­my had van­ished, but the fog ma­chines had ac­cel­er­at­ed and mist was boil­ing out of the sar­coph­agus, fill­ing the buri­al cham­ber like ris­ing wa­ter. The strobes were flash­ing in­to the ris­ing fog with ex­treme ra­pid­ity, and each flash blos­somed hor­ri­bly in the mist.

Be­side her, No­ra felt Vi­ola stum­ble, and she reached out and grasped the Egyp­tol­ogist’s hand. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“No, I’m not. What in bloody hell is go­ing on, No­ra?”

“I . . . I don’t know. Some kind of ter­ri­ble mal­func­tion.”

“Those in­sects were no mal­func­tion. Those had to be pro­grammed. And these lights . . .” Vi­ola winced, avert­ing her eyes.

The fog had reached their waists and was still ris­ing. Star­ing in­to it, No­ra felt an in­de­scrib­able pan­ic welling up in her. Soon it would fill the room, en­gulf­ing them all . . . It felt as if they were about to drown in the mist and the wel­ter of flash­ing lights. There were shouts, scat­tered screams, as the crowd pan­icked.

“We’ve got to get this crowd out,” she gasped.

“Yes, we must. But, No­ra, I can hard­ly think straight . . .”

Not far away, No­ra saw a man ges­tic­ulat­ing mad­ly. In one hand, he held a shield that flashed bril­liant­ly in the wink­ing strobes. “If ev­ery­body would please stay calm!” he cried. “I’m a New York City po­lice of­fi­cer. We’re go­ing to get you out of here. But please, ev­ery­body, stay calm!”

No­body paid the slight­est at­ten­tion.

Clos­er at hand, No­ra heard a fa­mil­iar voice cry out for help. Turn­ing, she saw the may­or a few feet away, bent over, grop­ing down­ward in­to the fog. “My wife—she fell! Eliz­abeth, where are you?”

The crowd sud­den­ly surged back­ward in a vi­olent crush, ac­com­pa­nied by a rip­ple of screams, and No­ra felt her­self borne along against her will. She saw the un­der­cov­er cop go down be­neath the press of bod­ies.

“Help!” cried the may­or.

No­ra strug­gled to reach him, but the enor­mous press of the crowd car­ried her far­ther away, and a fresh rum­ble from the sound sys­tem drowned out the may­or’s fran­tic calls.

I’ve got to do some­thing.

“Lis­ten!” she cried at the top of her lungs. “Lis­ten to me! Ev­ery­one lis­ten!”

A less­en­ing of the cries close around her proved that at least some peo­ple had heard.

“We have to work to­geth­er if we’re go­ing to get out. Un­der­stand? Ev­ery­one join hands and move to­ward the ex­it! Do not run or push! Fol­low me!”

To her amaze­ment and re­lief, her lit­tle speech seemed to have a calm­ing ef­fect. The cries less­ened fur­ther, and she felt Vi­ola grasp her hand.

The fog was now up to her chest, its sur­face roiled and ten­dril-​strewn. In a mo­ment, they would be cov­ered, blind­ed.

“Pass the word along! Keep hold­ing hands! Fol­low me!”

No­ra and Vi­ola moved for­ward, guid­ing the crowd. An­oth­er enor­mous boom that was more a sen­sa­tion than sound—and the crowd surged again in ut­ter pan­ic, aban­don­ing any pre­tense to or­der.

“Hold hands!” she cried.

But it was too late: the crowd had lost its mind. No­ra felt her­self borne along, crushed in the press, the air lit­er­al­ly squeezed from her lungs.

“Stop push­ing!” she cried, but no one was lis­ten­ing any longer. She heard Vi­ola be­side her, al­so call­ing for calm, but her voice was swal­lowed up in the pan­ic of the crowd and the deep boom­ing sounds that filled the tomb. The strobes kept flash­ing, each flash caus­ing a brief, bril­liant ex­plo­sion of light in the fog. And with each flash, she seemed to feel stranger, heavy . . . al­most drugged. This wasn’t just fear she was feel­ing: it was some­thing else. What was hap­pen­ing to her head?

The crowd surged to­ward the Hall of the Char­iots, pos­sessed by a mind­less, an­imal pan­ic. No­ra clung to Vi­ola’s hand with all her might. Sud­den­ly a new sound cut in over the deep boom­ing—a high keen­ing at the thresh­old of au­di­bil­ity, ris­ing and falling like a ban­shee. The ra­zor-​sharp shriek seemed to rid­dle her con­scious­ness like a shot­gun blast, in­creas­ing the strange sen­sa­tion of ali­en­ness. An­oth­er surge in the crowd caused her to lose her grip on Vi­ola’s hand.

“Vi­ola!”

If there was an an­swer­ing cry, it was lost in the tu­mult.

All of a sud­den, the pres­sure around her re­lent­ed, as if a cork had been re­leased. She gasped, suck­ing air in­to her lungs, shak­ing her head in an at­tempt to clear it. The fog with­out seemed mir­rored by an­oth­er fog, grow­ing with­in her mind.

A pi­laster loomed in­to view through the gloom ahead. She clung to it, rec­og­nized a bas­re­lief: and sud­den­ly knew where she was. The door to the Hall of the Char­iots was just up ahead. If they could just get through it and away from the in­fer­nal fog . . .

She flat­tened her­self against the wall, then felt her way along it, keep­ing out of the pan­icked crowd, un­til she could make out the door ahead. Peo­ple were squeez­ing through, fight­ing and claw­ing, rip­ping at one an­oth­er’s clothes, form­ing a bloody bot­tle­neck of in­san­ity and pan­ic. More grotesque, deep groan­ing from the hid­den speak­ers, along with an in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion of the ban­shee­like wail. Un­der this as­sault of noise, No­ra felt a sud­den ver­ti­go, as if she were sink­ing; the kind of aw­ful swoon she some­times ex­pe­ri­enced in the throes of a fever. She stag­gered, fought to keep her feet: to fall now might mean the end.

She heard a cry and saw, through the swirling mist, a wom­an near­by, ly­ing on one side, be­ing tram­pled by the crowd. In­stinc­tive­ly, she bent for­ward, grabbed an up­raised hand, and hauled her to her feet. The wom­an’s face was bloody, one leg crooked and ob­vi­ous­ly bro­ken—but she was still alive.

“My leg,” the wom­an groaned.

“Put your arm around my shoul­der!” No­ra yelled.

She forced her­self in­to the stream of peo­ple and the two were borne along through the door­way in­to the Hall of the Char­iots. A dread­ful, grow­ing pres­sure . . . and then sud­den­ly there was space, peo­ple milling about, dis­ori­ent­ed, their clothes torn and bloody, weep­ing, shriek­ing for help. The wom­an sagged on her shoul­der like a dead weight, whim­per­ing. At least here they would be rid of the mur­der­ous bar­rage . . .

And yet, strange­ly, they were not. She had not es­caped the sound, or the fog, or the strobe lights. No­ra looked around, dis­be­liev­ing. The fog was still ris­ing fast, and more lights flashed from the ceil­ing—re­lent­less, blind­ing bursts that each seemed to cloud her brain a lit­tle fur­ther.

Vi­ola’s right, she thought in a vague, con­fused way. This was no mal­func­tion. The script didn’t call for strobes or fog in the Hall of the Char­iots; on­ly in the buri­al cham­ber it­self.

This was some­thing planned—de­lib­er­ate.

She clutched her throb­bing head with one hand, urg­ing the wom­an along, plod­ding slow­ly for­ward to­ward the God’s Sec­ond Pas­sage and the tomb ex­it that lay be­yond. But once again, a seething mass blocked the nar­row door at the far end.

“One at a time!” No­ra screamed.

Di­rect­ly ahead of her, a man was try­ing to beat his way through the crowd. With her free arm, she seized him by his tuxe­do col­lar, yank­ing him off bal­ance. He looked around wild­ly, took a swing at her.

“Bitch!” he yelled. “I’ll kill you!”

No­ra backed off in hor­ror and the man turned back, grab­bing and tear­ing at the peo­ple be­fore him. But it wasn’t just him: all around, peo­ple were scream­ing, boil­ing with rage, eyes rolling in their sock­ets—ut­ter bed­lam, a Boschean vi­sion of hell.

She felt it even with­in her­self: over­whelm­ing ag­ita­tion; a mud­dy, un­fo­cused fury; an im­pend­ing sense of doom. Yet noth­ing had ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened. There was no fire, no mass mur­der—noth­ing to jus­ti­fy this kind of mass in­san­ity . . .

No­ra spot­ted the mu­se­um’s di­rec­tor, Fred­er­ick Wat­son Col­lopy. His face looked shat­tered and he was stag­ger­ing for­ward to­ward the door­way, one dead-​look­ing leg trail­ing be­hind him: Draaaag-​thump! Draaaag-​thump!

He spied her and his rav­aged face grew bright and hun­gry. He stag­gered to­ward her through the crush. “No­ra! Help me!”

He seized the in­jured wom­an. No­ra was about to thank him for his help, when he tossed her rough­ly to the ground.

No­ra looked at him in hor­ror. “What the hell are you do­ing?” She stepped for­ward to help the wom­an but Col­lopy seized her with in­cred­ible force, his hands claw­ing and grasp­ing at her like a drown­ing man. She tried to twist free, but his des­per­ate strength was shock­ing. In his fren­zy, he twist­ed one arm around her neck.

“Help me!” he screamed again. “I can’t walk!”

No­ra jabbed him in the so­lar plexus with her el­bow and he stag­gered, but still clung to her.

There was a sud­den flash by her side and No­ra saw Vi­ola, kick­ing Col­lopy fierce­ly in the shins. With a shriek, Col­lopy re­leased his grip and col­lapsed to the floor, writhing and spit­ting curs­es.

No­ra grabbed Vi­ola and to­geth­er they backed away from the writhing crowd, stag­gered to­ward the rear wall of the Hall of the Char­iots. There was a crash and the sound of shat­ter­ing glass as a dis­play case top­pled over.

“My head, my head!” Vi­ola groaned, press­ing her hands to her eyes. “I can’t think straight.”

“It’s like ev­ery­one’s gone crazy.”

“I feel like I’m go­ing crazy.”

“I think it’s the strobe lights,” No­ra said, cough­ing. “And the sounds . . . or maybe some chem­ical in the fog.”

“What do you mean?”

And then a swirling im­age ap­peared above them—a huge three-​di­men­sion­al spin­ning spi­ral. With a thud­ding groan of sound, it twist­ed slow­ly . . . and then a pierc­ing tone sound­ed, and an­oth­er a quar­ter tone away, and an­oth­er, throb­bing and beat­ing in dis­so­nance, as the spi­ral be­gan to ro­tate faster. No­ra stared at it, in­stant­ly mes­mer­ized. It was a holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tion, it had to be. And yet it was re­al . . . it was like noth­ing she had ev­er seen be­fore. It drew her for­ward, suck­ing her in, pulling her down in­to a mael­strom of in­san­ity.

With a huge ef­fort, she tore her eyes away. “Don’t look at it, Vi­ola!”

Vi­ola trem­bled all over, her eyes still fix­at­ed on the swirling im­age.

“Stop it!” No­ra slapped her across the face with her free hand.

Vi­ola just shook her head to clear the blow, her eyes wild, still star­ing.

“The show!” No­ra said, shak­ing her. “It’s do­ing some­thing to our minds!”

“What . . . ?” Vi­ola’s voice sound­ed drugged. And when she looked at No­ra, her eyes were blood­shot—just like Wicher­ly’s had been.

“The show. It’s af­fect­ing our minds. Don’t look at it, don’t lis­ten!”

“I don’t . . . un­der­stand.” Vi­ola’s eyes rolled back­ward in her head.

“Down on the floor! Cov­er your eyes and your ears!”

No­ra tore a strip off her gown and blind­fold­ed Vi­ola. Just as she was about to blind­fold her­self, she caught a glimpse of a man stand­ing in an al­cove in the far cor­ner, dressed in white tie and tails, ut­ter­ly calm, an eye-​mask over his face, head tilt­ed up, hands clasped in front, stand­ing stock-​still, as if wait­ing. Men­zies.

An­oth­er il­lu­sion?

“Fin­gers in your ears!” No­ra cried, hunch­ing down next to Vi­ola.

They hud­dled in the cor­ner, eyes squeezed shut, ears stopped, try­ing to shut out the hideous, grotesque show of death.

65

Smith­back fol­lowed Pen­der­gast at a dead run through the emp­tied mu­se­um halls, the beam from the agent’s flash­light lick­ing its way along the vel­vet ropes. With­in min­utes, they had reached the ro­tun­da, their foot­steps clat­ter­ing on the white mar­ble, and sec­onds lat­er, they emerged on­to the grand, red-​car­pet­ed stair­case be­fore the mu­se­um. Po­lice cars were ar­riv­ing in force along Mu­se­um Drive now, sirens wail­ing and brakes screech­ing. Smith­back could hear the thud­ding of he­li­copters over­head.

Many of the po­lice were en­gaged in crowd con­trol, try­ing to clear Mu­se­um Drive of the pan­icked guests, on­look­ers, and press. Nu­mer­ous oth­er po­lice of­fi­cers were clus­tered to­geth­er at the foot of the great steps, where they were set­ting up a mo­bile com­mand cen­ter. There was push­ing and shov­ing, and a hub­bub of shout­ing filled the air. The flash­es of pho­tog­ra­phers ex­plod­ed like a fire­works dis­play.

Pen­der­gast hes­itat­ed at the top of the stairs, then turned to Smith­back. “That’s the sub­way en­trance we need,” he said, point­ing to the far end of Mu­se­um Drive. Their route was blocked by a seething mass of guests and on­look­ers.

“It’s go­ing to take twen­ty min­utes to force our way through that crowd,” Smith­back said. “And for sure some­body’s go­ing to knock that beaker out of your hands along the way.”

“That would be un­ac­cept­able.”

A hell of an un­der­state­ment, Smith­back thought. “What do you plan to do about it, then?”

“We shall sim­ply have to part the crowds.”

“How?” But even as he asked the ques­tion, Smith­back saw a gun ap­pear in Pen­der­gast’s hand. “Je­sus, don’t tell me you’re go­ing to use that.”

“I’m not go­ing to use it. You are. I wouldn’t dare fire a gun while car­ry­ing this—the prox­im­ity of the dis­charge could set it off.”

“But I’m not go­ing to—”

Smith­back felt the gun placed in his hand. “Fire in­to the air, high up in­to the air. Aim out over Cen­tral Park.”

“But I’ve nev­er used this mod­el—”

“All you need to do is pull the trig­ger. It’s a Colt .45 Mod­el 1911, kicks like a mule, so wrap both hands on the grip and keep your el­bows slight­ly bent.”

“Look, I’ll car­ry the ni­tro.”

“I’m afraid not, Mr. Smith­back. Now, get mov­ing, if you please.”

Re­luc­tant­ly, Smith­back ad­vanced to­ward the crowd. “FBI!” he said un­con­vinc­ing­ly. “Make way!”

The crowds didn’t even no­tice him.

“Make way, damn it!”

Now some of the crowd stared back at him like a herd of cows, placid, un­mov­ing. “The soon­er you fire, the soon­er you will have their at­ten­tion,” Pen­der­gast said. “Make way!” Smith­back raised the gun. “Emer­gen­cy!”

A few at the front per­ceived what was com­ing, and there was a flur­ry of ac­tion, but the mass of the crowd be­tween them and the sub­way en­trance just stood there dumb­ly.

Brac­ing him­self, Smith­back squeezed the trig­ger. Noth­ing. He squeezed hard­er—and the gun went off with a ter­rif­ic boom, jolt­ing him.

A cho­rus of screams erupt­ed and the crowd part­ed like the Red Sea.

“What the hell you think you’re do­ing?” Two cops start­ed run­ning to­ward them from where they’d been push­ing back the crowd near­by, their own guns drawn.

“FBI!” Pen­der­gast shout­ed as they rushed for­ward in­to the breach. “This is an emer­gen­cy fed­er­al ac­tion. Do not in­ter­fere!”

“Let’s see your shield, sir!”

The back of the crowd was al­ready co­alesc­ing and Smith­back re­al­ized his mis­sion was not yet ac­com­plished. “Make way!” he yelled, fir­ing the gun again while walk­ing for­ward, to dra­mat­ic ef­fect.

A se­ries of screams, and a fresh path­way ap­peared al­most mirac­ulous­ly be­fore them.

“You crazy bas­tard!” some­body shout­ed. “Fir­ing a gun like that!”

Smith­back broke in­to a run, Pen­der­gast fol­low­ing as quick­ly as he dared be­hind him. The cops at­tempt­ed to give chase, but the crowd had al­ready drawn to­geth­er be­hind them. Smith­back could hear the cops curs­ing as they tried to fight their way through.

A minute lat­er, they’d reached the en­trance to the sub­way, and here Pen­der­gast went ahead, tak­ing the stairs quick­ly yet with re­mark­able smooth­ness, still cradling the small flask. They trot­ted along the de­sert­ed plat­form, ducked around a cor­ner at the far end, in­to the mu­se­um’s sub­way en­trance. Halfway down it, Smith­back could see two fig­ures: D’Agos­ta and Hay­ward.

“Where’s our en­try point?” Pen­der­gast called out as he ar­rived.

“Be­tween those lines,” said Hay­ward, in­di­cat­ing two lines that had been marked on the tiles with lip­stick.

Pen­der­gast knelt and placed the flask care­ful­ly against the wall, po­si­tion­ing it be­tween the lines. Then he stood and turned to face the lit­tle group. “If you would all please with­draw around the cor­ner? My sidearm, Mr. Smith­back?”

As Smith­back hand­ed the gun to the agent, he heard the sound of feet charg­ing down the stair­well in­to the sta­tion. He fol­lowed Pen­der­gast back around the cor­ner on­to the plat­form prop­er, where they crouched against the wall.

“NYPD!” came a shout­ed com­mand from the far end of the sta­tion. “Drop your weapons and freeze!”

“Stay back!” Hay­ward shout­ed, wav­ing her badge. “Po­lice ac­tion in progress!”

“Iden­ti­fy your­self!”

“Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward, Homi­cide!”

That seemed to flum­mox them.

Smith­back saw Pen­der­gast tak­ing care­ful aim. He shrank clos­er to the wall.

“Stand down, Cap­tain!” one of the po­lice­men yelled.

“Take cov­er now!” came Hay­ward’s re­ply.

“Ready?” Pen­der­gast asked qui­et­ly. “On the count of three. One . . .”

“I re­peat, Cap­tain, stand down!”

“Two . . .”

“And I re­peat, you id­iots: take cov­er!”

“Three.”

There was an­oth­er gun­shot, fol­lowed im­me­di­ate­ly by a ter­rif­ic, earth­shak­ing roar, and then a con­cus­sive blast that smacked Smith­back hard against the chest and knocked him to the ce­ment floor. In­stant­ly the en­tire sta­tion filled with ce­ment dust. Smith­back lay on his back, dazed, the wind tem­porar­ily knocked from him. Chips of ce­ment pat­tered down around him like rain.

“Holy shit!” It was D’Agos­ta’s voice, but the man him­self was in­vis­ible in the sud­den gloom.

Vague­ly, Smith­back could hear con­fused shout­ing from the oth­er end of the sta­tion. He pulled him­self to a sit­ting po­si­tion, chok­ing and splut­ter­ing, ears ring­ing, and felt a re­as­sur­ing hand on his shoul­der. Then Pen­der­gast’s voice was in his ear.

“Mr. Smith­back? We’re go­ing in now, and I’ll need your help. Stop the show—rip out wires, rip down screens, smash lights, but stop the show. We must do that be­fore we do any­thing else—even be­fore we help the peo­ple. Do you un­der­stand?”

“Call for back­up!” came the chok­ing cry from some­where at the far end of the plat­form.

“Do you un­der­stand?” Pen­der­gast asked ur­gent­ly.

Smith­back coughed, nod­ded. The agent pulled him to his feet.

“Now!” Pen­der­gast whis­pered.

They bolt­ed around the cor­ner, D’Agos­ta and Hay­ward at their heels. The dust had cleared just enough to show a gap­ing hole in the wall. From it gushed bil­lows of fog, bril­liant­ly il­lu­mi­nat­ed by the ma­ni­acal flash­ing of strobe lights.

Smith­back held his breath, read­ied him­self. Then he ducked in­side.

66

Just in­side the breach, they paused. The heavy mist was pour­ing out of the gap like wa­ter from a bro­ken dam, fill­ing the tun­nel and the sub­way sta­tion be­yond; with­in the tomb it­self, it was al­ready sub­sid­ing be­low eye lev­el, al­low­ing them to see the up­per por­tions of the tomb. Smith­back im­me­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized it, from No­ra’s de­scrip­tions, as the buri­al cham­ber. Strobe lights of ex­traor­di­nary, even painful in­ten­si­ty were flash­ing from ev­ery cor­ner, and an un­holy rum­ble filled the tomb, over­laid by a throb­bing, nerve-​shred­ding, high-​pitched shriek.

“What the hell is go­ing on?” D’Agos­ta asked be­hind him.

Pen­der­gast moved for­ward with­out an­swer­ing, wav­ing away the swirling ten­drils of fog. As they ap­proached the huge stone sar­coph­agus in the cen­ter of the cham­ber, the agent paused, looked around at the ceil­ing, took aim, and fired: a fix­ture in the cor­ner ex­plod­ed in a flash of sparks and stream­ers of glass. He ro­tat­ed his stance, fired again, and then again, un­til all the strobes were dead—al­though flash­ing could still be seen com­ing through the door­way to the next room of the tomb, and the hideous sounds con­tin­ued.

They moved for­ward again. Smith­back felt a sud­den lurch in his gut: as the fog cleared, he could see bod­ies on the ground, mov­ing fee­bly. The floor was slick with blood.

“Oh, no.” Smith­back looked around wild­ly. “No­ra!”

But it was im­pos­si­ble to hear any­thing over the mad­den­ing wall of noise that seemed to pen­etrate his very bones. He took a few more steps, fran­ti­cal­ly wav­ing away the mist. An­oth­er ex­plo­sion from Pen­der­gast’s gun, fol­lowed by the hol­low screech of feed­back and an elec­tric arc as an au­dio speak­er crashed to the floor. Still, the sound throbbed on, un­abat­ed. Smith­back grabbed some loose wires, yanked.

A plain­clothes po­lice­man ap­proached them, stag­ger­ing as if half drunk. His face was scratched and bleed­ing, and his shirt was torn and hang­ing in strips. His shield flapped on his belt as he moved, and his ser­vice piece dan­gled from one hand like a for­got­ten ap­pendage.

Hay­ward frowned in sur­prise. “Roger­son?” she asked.

The cop’s eyes swiveled to­ward her briefly, then swiveled away. Af­ter a sec­ond, he turned his back on them and be­gan stag­ger­ing off. Hay­ward reached over and plucked the gun from the man’s un­re­sist­ing hand.

“What the hell hap­pened here?” D’Agos­ta cried, look­ing around at the scat­ter­ing of torn clothes, shoes, blood, and in­jured guests.

“There’s no time to ex­plain,” Pen­der­gast said. “Cap­tain Hay­ward, you and Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta head up to the front of the tomb. You will find most of the guests up there, clus­tered at the en­trance. Lead them back here and out through the gap in the wall. But be care­ful: many of them have un­doubt­ed­ly be­come un­hinged as a re­sult of this sound-​and-​light show. They may be vi­olent. Take care not to cause a stam­pede.” He turned to Smith­back. “We must find that gen­er­ator.”

“The hell with that. I’m find­ing No­ra.”

“You won’t be able to find any­one un­til we stop this in­fer­nal show.”

Smith­back stopped. “But—”

“Trust me, I know what I’m do­ing.”

Smith­back hes­itat­ed, then nod­ded re­luc­tant­ly.

Pen­der­gast slipped a sec­ond flash­light out of his pock­et and hand­ed it to him, and they moved for­ward in­to the fog, side by side. It was a hor­ri­fy­ing scene of car­nage—wound­ed were sprawled across the mar­ble floor, groan­ing, and more than one body lay mo­tion­less in a grotesque, un­nat­ural po­si­tion . . . ap­par­ent­ly tram­pled to death. The floor was lit­tered with shards of pot­tery. Smith­back swal­lowed and tried to con­trol his wild­ly beat­ing heart.

Pen­der­gast shone his light across the ceil­ing, the beam fi­nal­ly com­ing to rest on a long stone mold­ing. He aimed his gun, fired, and blew off a cor­ner of the mold­ing, ex­pos­ing a pow­er ca­ble that smoked and sparked.

“They would not have been al­lowed to bury the ca­bles in the walls of the tomb,” he ex­plained. “We need to search for more false mold­ings.”

Slow­ly, he traced his light along the mold­ing, which had been plas­tered, tex­tured, and paint­ed to look like stone. It ran to a cor­ner, where it was joined by a sec­ond mold­ing, and from there a larg­er mold­ing head­ed through the door­way to the ad­join­ing room.

They picked their way over sev­er­al bod­ies piled be­fore the door and en­tered the next cham­ber of the tomb. Smith­back winced at the blind­ing strobes, which Pen­der­gast dis­patched with four well-​placed shots.

As the last shot re­ver­ber­at­ed through the gloom, a fig­ure emerged from the dis­si­pat­ing fog, sham­bling, pick­ing up and drop­ping its feet as if shack­led with heavy weights. The mouth moved as if in vi­olent speech, but Smith­back could hear noth­ing over the thun­der­ing sound.

“Look out!” Smith­back cried as the man abrupt­ly lunged at Pen­der­gast. The agent stepped aside deft­ly, trip­ping the stum­bling fig­ure and push­ing him to one side. The man fell heav­ily to the ground and rolled, un­able to get up.

They moved in­to a third room, Pen­der­gast fol­low­ing the lines of mold­ing with his flash­light. They ap­peared to all con­verge at a fake half-​pi­laster set in­to the far wall. Be­neath stood a large XX Dy­nasty chest, gild­ed and in­tri­cate­ly carved. It was set with­in a glass dis­play case, un­bro­ken de­spite the car­nage.

“There!” Pen­der­gast walked over, picked up a bro­ken char­iot wheel, and swung it in­to the case, shat­ter­ing the glass. He stepped back and, rais­ing his gun again, shot the an­cient bronze lock off the chest. Af­ter hol­ster­ing his weapon, he swept away the lock and the bro­ken glass and lift­ed the lid from the heavy chest. In­side, a large gen­er­ator hummed and vi­brat­ed. Pen­der­gast slipped a knife out of his pock­et, reached in, and cut a wire; the gen­er­ator coughed, choked, and died—plung­ing the tomb in­to ut­ter dark­ness and si­lence.

And yet the si­lence was not com­plete. Smith­back could now hear a ca­copho­ny of cries and shrieks from the front sec­tion of the tomb: a mob­like hys­te­ria. He stood up, prob­ing the dark­ness with his own flash­light.

“No­ra!” he cried out. “No­ra!”

Sud­den­ly the beam of his light was ar­rest­ed by a fig­ure stand­ing, half hid­den, in a far al­cove. Smith­back stared in sur­prise. Al­though the man was dressed in im­pec­ca­ble white tie and tails, he wore a black mask over his face, and a set of head­phones cov­ered his ears. A small de­vice that looked like a re­mote con­trol was in his hand. He was stand­ing so still Smith­back won­dered if per­haps he was just an­oth­er holo­graph­ic pro­jec­tion, but then, as if on cue, he reached up and pulled off the mask.

Pen­der­gast had been star­ing at the man, and the ef­fect of his un­mask­ing was re­mark­able. He stiff­ened and jerked, like a man who has re­ceived an elec­tric shock. His face, nor­mal­ly so pale, flushed crim­son.

It seemed to Smith­back that the tuxe­doed fig­ure’s re­ac­tion was even stronger. He went in­to a sud­den, in­stinc­tive crouch, like a man poised to spring. Then he gath­ered him­self to­geth­er and slow­ly rose to his full height.

“You!” he said. For a mo­ment, he went still again. And then—with a long, spi­dery hand—he re­moved the head­phones and earplugs, and slow­ly and de­lib­er­ate­ly dropped them to the floor.

Fresh sur­prise blos­somed over Smith­back. He rec­og­nized this man: it was No­ra’s boss, Hugo Men­zies. And yet he looked so dif­fer­ent. His eyes were flam­ing red, his limbs quiv­ered. His face was flushed as deeply as Pen­der­gast’s was—he was filled with rage.

Pen­der­gast’s hand went for his gun. Then he stopped, weapon half drawn, as if par­alyzed.

“Dio­genes . . . ,” he said in a stran­gled voice.

At the same time, Smith­back heard his own name be­ing called from a far cor­ner. He looked over to see No­ra stag­ger­ing to her feet, sup­port­ed by Vi­ola Maske­lene. Pen­der­gast glanced over, notic­ing them as well.

In that mo­ment, Men­zies dart­ed to one side with in­cred­ible speed and van­ished in­to the dark­ness. Pen­der­gast turned, tensed for pur­suit—and then he turned back again to­ward Vi­ola, face con­tort­ed with in­de­ci­sion.

Smith­back dashed over to the two wom­en and helped them to their feet. A mo­ment lat­er, Pen­der­gast was be­side him, tak­ing Vi­ola in­to his arms.

“Oh my God,” she said, gasp­ing and half weep­ing. “Oh my God, Aloy­sius . . .”

But Smith­back bare­ly heard. His arms were around No­ra, one hand ca­ress­ing her smudged and blood­ied face. “Are you all right?” he asked.

She winced. “A headache. A few scratch­es. It was so hor­ri­ble.”

“We’ll get you out.” Smith­back turned back to Pen­der­gast. The agent was still hold­ing Vi­ola in his em­brace, his hands rest­ing on her shoul­ders, but again, his gaze had dart­ed to­ward the dark­ness in­to which Hugo Men­zies had van­ished.

Be­hind, from the buri­al cham­ber, Smith­back heard the muf­fled blar­ing of po­lice ra­dios. Flash­light beams lanced through the murk, and the po­lice were there, a dozen or more uni­formed of­fi­cers look­ing con­fused, mov­ing in­to the Hall of the Char­iots, guns drawn.

“What the hell’s go­ing on?” said the com­man­der, a lieu­tenant. “What is this place?”

“You’re in the Tomb of Senef,” said Pen­der­gast.

“What about the ex­plo­sion?”

“Nec­es­sary to gain en­try, Lieu­tenant,” said Cap­tain Hay­ward, walk­ing to­ward them and show­ing her shield. “Now, lis­ten care­ful­ly. We have in­jured in here, and a lot more up ahead. We’re go­ing to need EMTs, mo­bile first-​aid sta­tions, am­bu­lances. Do you un­der­stand? Lieu­tenant D’Agos­ta is in the front of the tomb, about to es­cort the trapped vic­tims back here to the ex­it. He needs help.”

“Un­der­stood, Cap­tain.” The lieu­tenant turned to his of­fi­cers and be­gan bark­ing or­ders. Sev­er­al of them hol­stered their weapons and be­gan mov­ing deep­er in­to the tomb, flash­light beams bob­bing. Be­yond them, Smith­back could hear the ap­proach of the crowd, the sounds of moan­ing, sob­bing, and cough­ing, punc­tu­at­ed now and again by an­gry, in­co­her­ent cries. It sound­ed like an in­sane asy­lum on the move.

Pen­der­gast was al­ready help­ing Vi­ola to­ward the ex­it. Smith­back put his arm around No­ra, and they fell in be­hind, head­ed for the gap blown in the cor­ner of the buri­al cham­ber. Mo­ments lat­er, they were out of the mephitic tomb and in­side the bright­ly lit sub­way sta­tion. A group of EMTs came run­ning down the plat­form to­ward them, some car­ry­ing col­lapsi­ble stretch­ers.

“We’ll take them, gen­tle­men,” one of the med­ical tech­ni­cians said as they came up, while the rest rushed through the gap in­to the tomb.

In mo­ments, Vi­ola and No­ra were strapped in­to stretch­ers and be­ing car­ried up the stairs. Pen­der­gast led the way. The flush had gone from his face, leav­ing it ashen and un­read­able. Smith­back walked be­side No­ra.

She smiled and reached up to grasp his hand. “I knew you’d come,” she said.

67

We serve break­fast be­gin­ning at six, sir,” the porter said to the hand­some, im­pec­ca­bly dressed gen­tle­man in the pri­vate com­part­ment.

“I would pre­fer to be served in my bed­room. Thank you in ad­vance for oblig­ing me.”

The porter glanced down at the twen­ty-​dol­lar bill be­ing pressed in­to his hand. “No prob­lem, sir, not a prob­lem at all. Is there any­thing else I can do for you?”

“Yes. You could bring me a chilled glass, some crushed ice, a bot­tle of cold spring wa­ter, and a tin of sug­ar cubes.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll be back in a jiffy.” The man stepped out of the com­part­ment, smil­ing and bow­ing, and shut the door with al­most rev­er­en­tial cau­tion.

Dio­genes Pen­der­gast watched the dwarfish man dis­ap­pear down the cor­ri­dor and out of sight. He heard the foot­steps pat­ter away, heard the clunk of the heavy door at the end of the rail­road car. He heard the myr­iad sounds of Penn Sta­tion, com­min­gled and yet dis­parate in his mind: the ebb and flow of con­ver­sa­tion out­side the train, the sonorous dron­ing of the sta­tion­mas­ter’s an­nounce­ments.

He shift­ed his gaze to the win­dow, looked idly out at the plat­form. A land­scape in shades of gray greet­ed him. A port­ly con­duc­tor stood there, pa­tient­ly giv­ing di­rec­tions to a young wom­an, ba­by in her arms. A com­muter trot­ted by, brief­case in hand, hur­ry­ing to catch the last Mid­town Ex­press to Dover on the ad­join­ing track. An el­der­ly wom­an tot­tered slow­ly by, frail and thin. She stopped to stare at the train, then at her tick­et, be­fore con­tin­uing on her pre­car­ious way.

Dio­genes saw them all, yet he paid them lit­tle heed. They were sim­ply vi­su­al ephemera, a dis­trac­tion for his mind . . . to keep it from drift­ing to­ward oth­er, more mad­den­ing thoughts.

Af­ter the first few min­utes—mo­ments of an­guish, dis­be­lief, and white-​hot rage—he had more or less man­aged to keep the thought of his fail­ure at arm’s length. The fact was, un­der the cir­cum­stances he had man­aged quite well: he al­ways had mul­ti­ple ex­it plans in place, and this evening he’d fol­lowed the most ap­pro­pri­ate one to the let­ter. Bare­ly half an hour had passed since he’d fled the mu­se­um. And yet al­ready he was safe­ly aboard the Lake Cham­plain, the overnight Am­trak train to Mon­tre­al. It was an ide­al train for his pur­pos­es: it stopped at Cold Spring, on the Hud­son, to change from elec­tric to diesel, and all pas­sen­gers were giv­en thir­ty min­utes to stretch their legs.

Dio­genes would use the time to pay a fi­nal vis­it to his old friend Mar­go Green.

The hy­po was al­ready filled and lov­ing­ly nes­tled in its gift box, beau­ti­ful­ly wrapped and berib­boned. It was tucked safe­ly away in his valise along with his most pre­cious items—his scrap­books, his per­son­al phar­ma­copoeia of hal­lu­cino­gens and opi­oids, his ghast­ly lit­tle trin­kets and play­things of which no­body who’d ev­er caught sight had been per­mit­ted to live—all stowed in the over­head com­part­ment. Enough cloth­ing and dis­guis­es to get him safe­ly home were hang­ing in the gar­ment bag in­side the small clos­et by the door. And safe­ly tucked in­to his pock­et were his doc­uments and pass­ports.

Now all that re­mained was to think as lit­tle as pos­si­ble about what had hap­pened. He did this by turn­ing again, con­tem­pla­tive­ly, to Mar­go Green.

In his ex­haus­tive, dis­ci­plined prepa­ra­tions for the sound-​and-​light show, she was the one in­dul­gence he al­lowed him­self. She was the on­ly car­ry­over from the ear­li­er stage of his plan. Un­like the oth­ers, she was a sit­ting duck, to be played with and dis­patched with lit­tle risk, time, or ef­fort.

What about her, in par­tic­ular, had drawn him back—more than, say, William Smith­back, No­ra Kel­ly, Vin­cent D’Agos­ta, or Lau­ra Hay­ward? He wasn’t sure, but he guessed it was her long con­nec­tion to the mu­se­um—to the pon­tif­icat­ing, pedes­tri­an, whore­son, di­dac­tic, beg­gar­ly, je­june, os­si­fied, shit-​en­crust­ed minds amongst whom he had been buried—as Hugo Men­zies—for more years than he cared to count. It had been an in­suf­fer­ably ex­tend­ed tor­ture. The whole lot of them would have been dis­patched by the sound-​and-​light show—ex­cept for her. He had failed with the oth­ers, but he would not fail with her.

It had pleased him to pay her fre­quent sym­pa­thet­ic vis­its in her co­matose state—which he had been at pains to ex­tend, keep­ing her on the brink of ex­pi­ra­tion, teas­ing out her wid­owed moth­er’s pain to the great­est pos­si­ble ex­tent. It was a brew of suf­fer­ing from which he drank deep, and whose as­trin­gent taste re­newed his own thirst for the liv­ing death that was his life.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” Dio­genes said.

The porter en­tered rolling a portable bar, which he set up on an ad­join­ing ta­ble. “Any­thing else, sir?”

“Not at the mo­ment. You may make up my bed in an hour.”

“Very good, sir. I’ll get your break­fast or­der then.” The man re­treat­ed with an­oth­er def­er­en­tial bow.

Dio­genes sat for a mo­ment, once again glanc­ing out at the plat­form. Then, slow­ly, he drew a sil­ver flask from his breast pock­et. Open­ing it, he poured sev­er­al ounces of a bril­liant green liq­uid—which to him looked pale gray—in­to the glass on the portable bar. Then he re­trieved a spoon from his leather valise: a sil­ver spoon with the Pen­der­gast fam­ily crest stamped on its han­dle, some­what melt­ed at one cor­ner. He han­dled it as one might han­dle one’s new­born child. Care­ful­ly, lov­ing­ly, he laid the spoon across the top of the glass and placed a sug­ar cube in­side it. Then, tak­ing the chilled wa­ter, he poured it on­to the cube, drop by drop. Spilling over the edges of the spoon like a sug­ary foun­tain, the sweet­ened wa­ter fell in­to the liqueur be­low, turn­ing it first a milky green, then a beau­ti­ful opales­cent jade—if his eyes could on­ly see in col­or.

All of this was done with­out the slight­est trace of hur­ry.

Dio­genes put the spoon care­ful­ly aside and lift­ed the glass to his lips, sa­vor­ing the faint­ly bit­ter taste. He screwed the cap back on the flask and re­turned it to his pock­et. It was the on­ly mod­ern ab­sinthe he had found that had the same high pro­por­tion of essences of worm­wood as the old nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry brands. As such, it de­served to be drunk in the tra­di­tion­al man­ner.

He took an­oth­er sip, set­tling back com­fort­ably in­to the chair. What was it Os­car Wilde had said of drink­ing ab­sinthe? “The first stage is like or­di­nary drink­ing, the sec­ond when you be­gin to see mon­strous and cru­el things, but if you can per­se­vere you will en­ter in up­on the third stage, where you see things that you want to see, won­der­ful cu­ri­ous things.”

Strange how, no mat­ter how much he drank, Dio­genes nev­er seemed to get past the sec­ond stage—nor did he par­tic­ular­ly care to.

A small speak­er set high up in the wall came to life.

Ladies and gen­tle­men, this is the con­duc­tor speak­ing. Wel­come aboard the Lake Cham­plain, mak­ing stops at Yonkers, Cold Spring, Pough­keep­sie, Al­bany, Sarato­ga Springs, Platts­burg, St.-Lam­bert, and Mon­tre­al. This is your fi­nal board­ing call. All vis­itors, please ex­it the train at this time . . .

Lis­ten­ing, Dio­genes smiled faint­ly. The Lake Cham­plain was one of on­ly two lux­ury pas­sen­ger trains still op­er­at­ed by Am­trak. By tak­ing two ad­join­ing first-​class bed­rooms and hav­ing the par­ti­tion be­tween them un­locked, Dio­genes had se­cured him­self a pass­ably com­fort­able suite. It was a crim­inal dis­grace the way politi­cians had al­lowed Amer­ica’s pas­sen­ger train sys­tem, once the en­vy of the world, to fall in­to in­sol­ven­cy and dis­re­pair. But this, too, was but a pass­ing in­con­ve­nience: he would soon be back in Eu­rope, where peo­ple un­der­stood how to trav­el in dig­ni­ty and com­fort.

Out­side the win­dow, a heavy­set wom­an wob­bled quick­ly by, a porter bur­dened down with suit­cas­es trot­ting in her wake. Dio­genes held up his glass, stir­ring the pearly liq­uid gen­tly. The train would de­part with­in mo­ments. And now for the first time—cau­tious­ly, like a man ap­proach­ing a dan­ger­ous an­imal—he al­lowed him­self a brief mo­ment of re­flec­tion.

It was al­most too dread­ful to con­tem­plate. Fif­teen years of plan­ning, care­ful dis­guise, art­ful in­trigue, in­ge­nious con­trivance . . . all for naught. The thought of all the work and time he had put in­to Men­zies alone—fash­ion­ing his back­sto­ry, learn­ing his trade, ob­tain­ing em­ploy­ment, work­ing for years and years, at­tend­ing va­pid meet­ings and lis­ten­ing to the asi­nine mut­ter­ings of des­ic­cat­ed cu­ra­tors—was al­most enough to send him spi­ral­ing in­to a pit of mad­ness. And then there was the fi­nal ex­trav­agan­za, in all its in­tri­cate and fear­some glo­ry: the metic­ulous med­ical re­search in­to how one could con­trive to trans­form or­di­nary peo­ple in­to mur­der­ous so­ciopaths us­ing noth­ing more than sound and light—the ab­la­tion of the in­hibito­ry cere­bral path­way by laser light, trau­ma­tiz­ing the en­torhi­nal cor­tex and amyg­dala and al­low­ing for dis­in­hi­bi­tion of rudi­men­ta­ry func­tion . . . And then, there had been the painstak­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion of his own spe­cial sound-​and-​light show hid­den with­in the mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion ev­ery­body else had slaved over—and the test­ing of it on the tech­ni­cian and that ass, Wicher­ly . . .

It had all been so per­fect. Even the tomb’s curse, which he’d ex­ploit­ed so beau­ti­ful­ly, added an exquisite touch: soft­en­ing peo­ple up, prepar­ing them psy­cho­log­ical­ly for the ter­ror of his sound-​and-​light show. It would have worked. In fact, it did work—ex­cept for the one el­ement he could nev­er have pre­dict­ed: his broth­er es­cap­ing from Herk­moor. How had he man­aged that? And then he had ap­peared on the scene just in time to once again ru­in ev­ery­thing.

How very like Aloy­sius. Aloy­sius, who—as the less gift­ed broth­er—had al­ways tak­en grim plea­sure in tear­ing down those things he him­self lov­ing­ly con­struct­ed. Aloy­sius who, re­al­iz­ing he would al­ways be best­ed in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly, had tak­en the ul­ti­mate step of sub­ject­ing him to an Event that would en­sure . . .

But here the hand hold­ing the glass be­gan to shake, and Dio­genes im­me­di­ate­ly shut down this line of thought. Nev­er mind: he would leave his broth­er one more gift for the delec­ta­tion of his con­science: the grue­some death of Mar­go Green.

There was a hiss of brakes; an­oth­er an­nounce­ment from the con­duc­tor; and then, with a squeal­ing of met­al wheels, the train be­gan to creep for­ward along the plat­form. He was on his way: Cold Spring, Cana­da, Eu­rope, and home.

Home. Just the thought of be­ing back in his li­brary, among his trea­sured pos­ses­sions, with­in the em­brace of a struc­ture lov­ing­ly de­signed to spoil his ev­ery whim, helped re­store his equa­nim­ity. It was from home that, over many years, he’d planned his per­fect crime. From there he could do it again. He was still rel­ative­ly young. He had many years left, more than enough to de­vel­op a plan—a bet­ter plan.

He took a deep­er sip of ab­sinthe. In his rage and shock, he was for­get­ting some­thing. He had suc­ceed­ed, at least in part. He had hurt his broth­er ter­ri­bly. Aloy­sius had been pub­licly hu­mil­iat­ed, charged with the mur­ders of his own friends, sent to prison. He might be free, tem­porar­ily, but he was still a want­ed man: the prison break would on­ly deep­en the hole he was in. He could nev­er rest, nev­er take an easy breath. He would be hunt­ed end­less­ly. For some­body so pri­vate, the prison or­deal must have been mor­ti­fy­ing.

Yes, he had ac­com­plished much. He had struck his broth­er in a most vi­tal, most sen­si­tive spot. While Aloy­sius had been lan­guish­ing in prison, he had se­duced his broth­er’s ward. What an abom­inable, de­li­cious plea­sure it had been. Re­mark­able: a hun­dred years of child­hood . . . and yet still so fresh, so in­no­cent and naive. Ev­ery web he had spun, ev­ery cyn­ical lie he had told, had been a joy: es­pe­cial­ly his long and windy dis­qui­si­tions on col­or. She would be dead by now, ly­ing in a pool of her own blood. Yes, mur­der was one thing: but sui­cide, gen­uine sui­cide, struck the hard­est blow of all.

He took an­oth­er slow sip and watched the plat­form glide by over the rim of the glass. He was ap­proach­ing Os­car Wilde’s sec­ond stage of ab­sinthe drink­ing, the con­tem­pla­tion of mon­strous and cru­el things—and he want­ed to hold in his mind, like a sooth­ing balm, one par­tic­ular im­age: his broth­er stand­ing over the dead body of Con­stance, read­ing the let­ter. This was the im­age that would com­fort, nour­ish, and sus­tain him un­til he reached home . . .

The door to his state­room rolled back with a clat­ter. Dio­genes sat up, smooth­ing his shirt­front and slip­ping a hand in­to his jack­et pock­et for the tick­et. But it was not the con­duc­tor who stood in the cor­ri­dor be­yond: it was the frail old wom­an he had seen walk past on the plat­form a few min­utes ear­li­er.

He frowned. “This is a pri­vate room,” he said in a clipped tone.

The wom­an did not an­swer. In­stead, she took a step for­ward in­to the com­part­ment.

In­stant­ly, Dio­genes grew alarmed. It was noth­ing he could im­me­di­ate­ly put his fin­ger on, but some sixth sense abrupt­ly screamed dan­ger. And then, as the wom­an reached in­to her hand­bag, he re­al­ized what it was: these were no longer the slow, hes­itant move­ments of an old la­dy. They were lithe and quick—and they seemed to have a dread­ful pur­pose. But be­fore he could move, the hand came out of the bag hold­ing a gun.

Dio­genes froze. The gun was an­cient, prac­ti­cal­ly a rel­ic: dirty, webbed with rust. Al­most against his will, Dio­genes found his eyes trav­el­ing up the wom­an’s form un­til they reached her face—and he rec­og­nized the bot­tom­less, ex­pres­sion­less eyes that looked back at him from be­neath the wig. Rec­og­nized them well.

The bar­rel rose to­ward him.

Dio­genes leaped to his feet, ab­sinthe slosh­ing over his shirt and spat­ter­ing the front of his pants, and flung him­self back­ward as she squeezed the trig­ger.

Noth­ing.

Dio­genes straight­ened, heart beat­ing mad­ly. It dawned on him that she had nev­er fired a weapon be­fore—she did not know how to aim, she had not yet turned off the safe­ty. He sprang at her, but even as he did so, he heard the click of a safe­ty be­ing re­leased, and a shat­ter­ing ex­plo­sion filled the com­part­ment. A bul­let punched a hole in the skin of the train car above his head as he twist­ed and fell side­ways.

He scram­bled to his feet as the wom­an took a step for­ward, wraith­like in the bil­lows of cordite and dust. Once again—with per­fect, ter­ri­ble com­po­sure—she lev­eled the gun, took aim.

Dio­genes threw him­self at the door to the ad­join­ing com­part­ment, on­ly to find that the porter had not yet un­locked it.

An­oth­er deaf­en­ing ex­plo­sion, and splin­ters flew from the mold­ing mere inch­es from his ear.

He turned around to face her, his back against the win­dow. Per­haps he could rush her, knock her from the door . . . But once again, with a de­lib­er­ation so slow it was un­speak­ably aw­ful, she lev­eled the old pis­tol, took aim.

He jerked to one side as a third bul­let shat­tered the win­dow where just a mo­ment be­fore he had been stand­ing. As the echoes of the shot died away, the clank of the train wheels drift­ed in. There were shouts and screams in the cor­ri­dor of the train now. Out­side, the end of the plat­form was in sight. Even if he over­came her, wres­tled away the gun—it would be all over. He would be caught, ex­posed.

In­stant­ly, with­out con­scious thought, Dio­genes whirled around and dived out through the shat­tered win­dow, land­ing heav­ily on the con­crete plat­form and rolling once, twice, a con­fused wel­ter of dust amidst bits of safe­ty glass. He picked him­self up, half dazed, heart beat­ing mad­ly, just in time to see the last car of the train dis­ap­pear be­yond the plat­form and in­to the dark mouth of the tun­nel.

He stood there, stunned. And yet, through his daze, through his shock and pain and fear, an im­age per­sist­ed: the ter­ri­ble calm with which she—Con­stance—had cor­rect­ed her aim. There had been a lack of emo­tion, ex­pres­sion, any­thing, in those strange eyes . . .

Ex­cept ut­ter con­vic­tion.

68

Any­one ob­serv­ing the gen­tle­man go­ing through se­cu­ri­ty at ter­mi­nal E in Boston’s Lo­gan Air­port would have no­ticed a dap­per man in his mid-​six­ties, with brown hair gray­ing at the tem­ples, a neat­ly trimmed salt-​and-​pep­per beard, wear­ing a blue blaz­er with a white shirt open at the col­lar and a red silk hand­ker­chief pok­ing from his breast pock­et. His eyes were a sparkling blue, his cheek­bones broad, and his face open, rud­dy, and cheer­ful. A black cash­mere over­coat was slung over his arm, and he laid it on the se­cu­ri­ty belt along with his shoes and watch.

Past se­cu­ri­ty, the gen­tle­man strode vig­or­ous­ly down the ter­mi­nal cor­ri­dor, paus­ing on­ly at a Bor­ders near gate 7. He ducked in­side, pe­rused the shelves of thrillers, and was de­light­ed to find that a new James Rollins had been pub­lished. He took up the book, plucked a Times from the rack, and brought them to the cashier, greet­ing her with a cheery “Good day,” be­tray­ing in ac­cent and dic­tion his Aus­tralian ori­gins.

The gen­tle­man then chose a seat near the gate, seat­ed him­self, and un­fold­ed the pa­per with a snap. He took in the world and na­tion­al news, turn­ing the pages with a crisp, prac­ticed mo­tion. In the New York Re­port, his no­tice fell on a small item: Mys­te­ri­ous Shoot­ing on Am­trak Train.

A sweep of his eyes took in the salient de­tails: a man had been shot at on the Lake Cham­plain out of Penn Sta­tion; wit­ness­es de­scribed the shoot­er as an el­der­ly wom­an; the would-​be tar­get threw him­self off the train and dis­ap­peared in the tun­nels un­der­neath Penn Sta­tion; a thor­ough search failed to iden­ti­fy the as­sailant or re­cov­er the weapon. The po­lice were still in­ves­ti­gat­ing.

He turned the page and scanned the ed­ito­ri­als, a slight frown gath­er­ing over some point he ap­par­ent­ly dis­agreed with, soon clear­ing up.

A metic­ulous ob­serv­er—and, in fact, there was one—would have seen noth­ing more re­mark­able than a wealthy Aus­tralian read­ing the Times while wait­ing for his flight. But the pleas­ant, some­what va­cant ex­pres­sion on his face was no more than skin-​deep. In­side, his head was a boil­ing stew of fury, dis­be­lief, and sav­age self-​re­proach. His world was up­end­ed, his care­ful plan­ning de­stroyed. Noth­ing had suc­ceed­ed. The Door­way to Hell: ru­ined. Mar­go Green: still alive. His broth­er: free. And most un­ac­cept­able of all: Con­stance Greene, un­dead.

Smil­ing, he turned to the sports sec­tion.

Con­stance, un­sui­cid­ed. With her, he had mis­cal­cu­lat­ed dis­as­trous­ly. Ev­ery­thing he knew of hu­man na­ture in­di­cat­ed that she would take her own life. She was a freak, men­tal­ly un­sta­ble—hadn’t she been stum­bling blind­fold­ed along the cliff’s edge of san­ity for decades? He had giv­en her a push—a hard shove. Why hadn’t she fall­en? He had de­stroyed ev­ery pil­lar in her life, ev­ery sup­port she had—un­der­mined her ev­ery be­lief. He had drowned her ex­is­tence with ni­hilism.

With rude haste the bloomy girl de­flow’r’d,

Ten­der, de­fence­less, and with ease o’er­pow­er’d.

In her long, shel­tered, un­event­ful life, Con­stance had al­ways drift­ed hes­itant­ly, un­cer­tain what she was in­tend­ed for, con­fused about the mean­ing of her life. With bit­ter clar­ity, Dio­genes now saw that he had cleared up her con­fu­sion and giv­en her the one thing no one else could have: some­thing to live for. She had found a new, shin­ing pur­pose in life.

To kill him.

Nor­mal­ly, this would not be a prob­lem. Those who in­ter­fered with him—there had been sev­er­al—hadn’t sur­vived long enough to make a sec­ond at­tempt. He had washed away his sins in their blood. But al­ready he could see that she was not like the oth­ers. He could not un­der­stand how she had iden­ti­fied him on the train—un­less she had some­how phys­ical­ly fol­lowed him from the mu­se­um. And he was still un­nerved from the ut­ter self-​pos­ses­sion of mind with which she had shot at him. She had forced him to leap out a win­dow, flee in undig­ni­fied pan­ic, aban­don­ing his valise with its trea­sured con­tents.

For­tu­nate­ly, he had re­tained his var­ious pass­ports, wal­let, cred­it cards, and iden­ti­fi­ca­tions. The po­lice would trace the valise and lug­gage back to Men­zies; but they could not iden­ti­fy his trav­el­ing al­ter ego from them: Mr. Ger­ald Boscomb of South Pen­rith, Syd­ney, NSW. Now it was time to put aside all ex­tra­ne­ous thoughts, all the lit­tle vol­un­tary and in­vol­un­tary men­tal tics and flour­ish­es and whis­pered voic­es that made up his in­ter­nal land­scape—and iden­ti­fy a plan of ac­tion.

Clos­ing the sports sec­tion, he turned to busi­ness.

No thought of right and wrong—on­ly her fury

With all her be­ing speed­ed to­ward re­venge.

Con­stance Greene alone could iden­ti­fy him. She was an un­ac­cept­able dan­ger. As long as she pur­sued him, he could not re­treat to his bolt-​hole and re­group. And yet all was not lost. He had failed this time, at least in part, but he had many years of life left to es­tab­lish and ex­ecute a new plan, and he would not fail a sec­ond time.

But as long as she lived, he would nev­er be safe.

Con­stance Greene had to die.

Mr. Ger­ald Boscomb picked up the nov­el he’d pur­chased, cracked it, and be­gan read­ing.

Killing her would re­quire a fine­ly tuned plan. His thoughts turned to the Cape buf­fa­lo—the most dan­ger­ous an­imal hunt­ed by man. The Cape buf­fa­lo em­ployed a pe­cu­liar strat­egy when hunt­ed: alone among an­imals, it knew how to turn the hunter in­to the hunt­ed.

As he read, a plan formed in his mind. He thought it over, con­sid­ered var­ious lo­ca­tions for its ex­ecu­tion, and dis­card­ed each in turn, be­fore ar­riv­ing—at chap­ter 6—at the per­fect set­ting. The plan would work. He would turn Con­stance’s very ha­tred for him against her.

He placed a book­mark in the nov­el, shut it, and tucked it un­der his arm. The first part of the plan was to show him­self to her, to be in­ten­tion­al­ly seen—if she had man­aged to fol­low him here. But he could take no more chances, make no more as­sump­tions.

He rose, slung his coat over his arm, and strolled down the ter­mi­nal, glanc­ing ca­su­al­ly left and right, ob­serv­ing the mass­es of hu­man­ity as they ebbed and flowed on their fu­tile busi­ness, a tidal flow of grays and more grays: lay­ers of gray, an in­fini­tude of gray. As he passed the Bor­ders once again, his eye paused fleet­ing­ly on a dowdy wom­an buy­ing a copy of Vogue; she was dressed in a brown woolen skirt of African de­sign with a white shirt, a cheap scarf wrapped around her neck. Her brown, un­washed hair fell limply to her shoul­ders. She car­ried a small black leather back­pack.

Dio­genes passed slow­ly by the book­store and went in­to the Star­bucks next door, shocked that Con­stance had made such a poor ef­fort to dis­guise her­self. Shocked, al­so, that she had man­aged to fol­low him.

Or had she?

She must have. To find him any oth­er way would take a mind read­er.

He pur­chased a small or­gan­ic green tea and crois­sant and made his way back to his seat, tak­ing care not to look at the wom­an again. He could kill her here—it would be easy—but he would not be able to es­cape the lay­ers of air­port se­cu­ri­ty. Would she make an at­tempt on his life in this ex­posed place? Did she care enough about her own life to take greater care—or was her sole aim to end his?

He had no an­swer.

Mr. Ger­ald Boscomb fin­ished his tea and crois­sant, brushed the crumbs off the tips of his fin­gers, dust­ed his coat, and re­sumed read­ing his new­ly ac­quired thriller. A mo­ment lat­er, the first-​class cab­in of his flight was called to board. As he prof­fered his board­ing pass to the gate at­ten­dant, his eye swept the ter­mi­nal aisle again, but the wom­an had dis­ap­peared.

“G’day,” he said cheer­ily, as he took the tick­et stub and en­tered the jet­way.

69

Vin­cent D’Agos­ta en­tered the li­brary of 891 River­side Drive, paus­ing in the door­way. A fire blazed on the hearth, the lights were up, and the room was a hive of con­cen­trat­ed ac­tiv­ity. The chairs had been pushed back against the book­cas­es, and a large ta­ble cov­ered with pa­pers dom­inat­ed the cen­ter of the room. Proc­tor was at one side, mur­mur­ing in­to a cord­less phone, while Wren, his hair even wilder than usu­al, pored over a stack of books at a desk in the cor­ner. The lit­tle man looked pinched and an­cient.

“Vin­cent. Please come in.” Pen­der­gast called D’Agos­ta over with a curt ges­ture.

D’Agos­ta com­plied, shocked at the agent’s un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly hag­gard ap­pear­ance. It was the on­ly time he re­mem­bered ev­er see­ing Pen­der­gast un­shaven. And, for once, the man’s suit jack­et was un­but­toned.

“I got the de­tails you want­ed,” D’Agos­ta said, hold­ing up a mani­la fold­er. “Thanks to Cap­tain Hay­ward.” He dropped it on the ta­ble, flipped it open.

“Pro­ceed.”

“Wit­ness­es say the shoot­er was an old wom­an. She got on the train with a first-​class tick­et to Yonkers, paid in cash. Gave the name Jane Smith.” He snort­ed. “Just as the train was pulling out of Penn Sta­tion, while it was still un­der­ground, she en­tered the first-​class berth of a pas­sen­ger named . . . Eu­gene Hof­stad­er. Pulled a gun and fired four shots. Foren­sics re­cov­ered two .44-40 rounds em­bed­ded in the walls and an­oth­er on the tracks out­side. Get this: they were an­tique rounds—prob­ably shot from a nine­teenth-​cen­tu­ry re­volver, a Colt per­haps.”

Pen­der­gast turned to Wren. “Check to see if we’re miss­ing a Colt Peace­mak­er or sim­ilar re­volver from the col­lec­tion, along with any .44-40 rounds, please.”

Word­less­ly, Wren stood up and left the room. Pen­der­gast glanced back at D’Agos­ta. “Go on.”

“The old wom­an van­ished, al­though no one saw her get off the train, which was sealed al­most im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the shoot­ing. If she was wear­ing a dis­guise and dis­card­ed it, it was nev­er found.”

“Did the man leave any­thing be­hind?”

“You bet: a valise and a gar­ment bag full of clothes. No pa­pers or doc­uments, or even a clue to his true iden­ti­ty. All la­bels had been care­ful­ly ra­zored off the cloth­ing. But the valise . . .”

“Yes?”

“They brought it in­to the ev­idence room, and when the war­rant came down, they opened it up. Ap­par­ent­ly, the ev­idence of­fi­cer took one look and, well, what­ev­er hap­pened next he had to be se­dat­ed. A haz­mat team was called in, and the stuff is now un­der lock and key—no­body seems to know where.”

“I see.”

“I guess we’re talk­ing about Dio­genes here,” said D’Agos­ta, slight­ly an­noyed that he’d been sent out on the as­sign­ment with less-​than-​com­plete in­for­ma­tion.

“That is cor­rect.”

“So who’s this old la­dy who shot at him?”

The agent ges­tured to­ward the ta­ble at the cen­ter of the room. “When Proc­tor re­turned here last night, he found Con­stance miss­ing, along with a few ar­ti­cles of cloth­ing. In her room, he found her pet mouse, its neck bro­ken. Along with that note and the rose­wood box.”

D’Agos­ta walked over, picked up the in­di­cat­ed note, read it quick­ly. “Je­sus. Oh, Je­sus, what a sick fuck . . .”

“Open the box.”

He opened the small an­tique box a lit­tle gin­ger­ly. It was emp­ty, a long dim­ple left in the pur­ple vel­vet in­te­ri­or by some ob­ject, now gone. A fad­ed la­bel on the in­side cov­er read Sweitzer Sur­gi­cal In­stru­ment Com­pa­ny.

“A scalpel?” he asked.

“Yes. For Con­stance to cut her wrists with. She seems to have tak­en it for an­oth­er pur­pose.”

D’Agos­ta nod­ded. “I think I’m get­ting the pic­ture. The old wom­an was Con­stance.”

“Yes.”

“I hope she suc­ceeds.”

“The thought of their meet­ing again is too ter­ri­ble to con­tem­plate,” Pen­der­gast replied, his face grim. “I must catch up with her—and stop her. Dio­genes has been prepar­ing for this es­cape for years, and we have no hope of trac­ing him . . . un­less, of course, he wish­es to be traced. Con­stance, on the oth­er hand, will not be try­ing to con­ceal her tracks. I must fol­low her . . . and there is al­ways a chance that, in find­ing her, I will find him as well.”

He turned to an iBook sit­ting open on the ta­ble, be­gan typ­ing. A few min­utes lat­er, he looked over. “Con­stance board­ed a flight to Flo­rence, Italy, at five o’clock this af­ter­noon, out of Lo­gan Air­port in Boston.” He turned. “Proc­tor? Pack my things and book a tick­et to Flo­rence, if you please.”

“I’m com­ing with you,” said D’Agos­ta.

Pen­der­gast looked back at him, his face gray. “You may ac­com­pa­ny me to the air­port. But as for go­ing with me—no, Vin­cent, you will not. You have a dis­ci­plinary hear­ing to pre­pare for. Be­sides, this is a . . . fam­ily mat­ter.”

“I can help you,” said D’Agos­ta. “You need me.”

“Ev­ery­thing you say is true. And yet I must, and I will, do this alone.”

His tone was so cold and fi­nal that D’Agos­ta re­al­ized any re­ply was use­less.

70

Dio­genes Pen­der­gast, a.k.a. Mr. Ger­ald Boscomb, passed the Palaz­zo Anti­nori and turned in­to the Via Tornabuoni, breath­ing in the damp win­ter air of Flo­rence with a cer­tain bit­ter nos­tal­gia. So much had hap­pened since he was last here, mere months ago, when he had been filled with plans. Now he had noth­ing—not even his clothes, which he had aban­doned on the train.

Not even his trea­sured valise.

He strolled pass Max Mara, re­mem­ber­ing with re­gret when it was once the fine old Li­bre­ria See­ber. He stopped in at Pinei­der, bought some sta­tionery, pur­chased lug­gage at Bel­tra­mi, and picked up a rain­coat and um­brel­la at Al­le­gri—all of which he had sent over to his ho­tel, keep­ing on­ly the rain­coat and um­brel­la, for which he had paid cash. He stopped at Pro­cac­ci, set­tled him­self at a tiny ta­ble in the crowd­ed shop, and or­dered a truf­fle sand­wich with a glass of ver­nac­cia. He sipped his drink thought­ful­ly, watch­ing passers­by through the win­dow.

Four­mil­lante cité, cité pleine de rêves

Où le spec­tre en plein jour rac­croche le pas­sant

The sky was threat­en­ing rain, the city dark and nar­row. Per­haps that was why he had al­ways liked Flo­rence in win­ter—it was monochro­mat­ic, the build­ings pale, the sur­round­ing hills gray humps spiked with cy­press trees, the riv­er a slug­gish rip­ple of dull iron, its bridges al­most black.

He dropped a bill on the ta­ble and left the café, con­tin­uing his stroll down the street. He paused to ex­am­ine the dis­play win­dow at Valenti­no, us­ing the re­flec­tion of the glass to ob­serve the oth­er side of the street. He went in­side and pur­chased two suits, one in silk and the oth­er a black dou­ble-​breast­ed com­ple­to with a broad pin­stripe, which he fa­vored be­cause of its faint thir­ties gang­ster­ish fla­vor—and had them, as well, sent to his ho­tel.

Back on the street, he turned his foot­steps to­ward the grim me­dieval fa­cade of the Palaz­zo Fer­roni, an im­pos­ing cas­tle of dressed stone with tow­ers and crenel­lat­ed bat­tle­ments, now the world head­quar­ters of Fer­rag­amo. He crossed the small pi­az­za in front of the cas­tle, past the Ro­man col­umn of gray mar­ble. Just be­fore he en­tered the cas­tle prop­er, a swift, side­long glance iden­ti­fied the dowdy wom­an with brown hair—her—just at that mo­ment en­ter­ing the church of San­ta Trinità.

Sat­is­fied, he en­tered Fer­rag­amo and spent a good deal of time look­ing over shoes, buy­ing two pairs, and then com­plet­ing his wardrobe with pur­chas­es of un­der­wear, socks, night­shirt, un­der­shirts, and bathing suit. As be­fore, he sent his pur­chas­es over to his ho­tel and ex­it­ed the store, en­cum­bered with noth­ing more than the furled um­brel­la and the rain­coat.

He walked to­ward the riv­er and paused along the lun­gar­no, con­tem­plat­ing the per­fect curve of the arch­es of the Ponte San­ta Trinità, de­signed by Am­ma­nati: curves that had con­found­ed the math­emati­cians. His yel­lowed eye ex­am­ined the stat­ues of the four sea­sons that crowned both ends.

None of it gave him plea­sure any­more. It was all use­less, fu­tile.

The Arno be­low, swollen by win­ter rains, shud­dered along like the back of a snake, and he could hear the roar of wa­ter go­ing over the pesca­ia a few hun­dred yards down­riv­er. He felt a faint rain­drop on his cheek, then an­oth­er. Black um­brel­las im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan ap­pear­ing among the bustling crowds, and they bobbed over the bridge like so many black lanterns . . .

e di­etro le venìa sì lun­ga trat­ta

di gente, ch’i’ non averei cre­du­to

che morte tan­ta n’avesse dis­fat­ta.

He put on his own rain­coat, belt­ed it tight­ly, un­furled the um­brel­la, and ex­pe­ri­enced a cer­tain ni­hilis­tic fris­son as he joined the crowds cross­ing the bridge. On the far side, he paused at the em­bank­ment, look­ing back over the riv­er. He could hear the tick-​tick of rain­drops on the fab­ric of the um­brel­la. He could not see her, but he knew she was there, some­where un­der that mov­ing sea of um­brel­las, fol­low­ing him.

He turned and strolled across the small pi­az­za at the far end of the bridge, then took a right on Via San­to Spir­ito and an im­me­di­ate left on­to Bor­go Tego­laio. There he paused to look in the rear dis­play win­dow of one of the fine an­tique shops that front­ed on Via Mag­gio, stuffed with gilt can­dle­sticks, old sil­ver salt­cel­lars, and dark still lifes.

He wait­ed un­til he was sure that she had ob­served him—he caught just a glimpse of her through a dou­ble re­flec­tion in the shop win­dow. She was car­ry­ing a Max Mara bag, and for all the world looked like one of the swin­ish Amer­ican tourists who vis­it­ed Flo­rence in mind­less shop­ping herds.

Con­stance Greene, just where he want­ed her.

The rain slack­ened. He furled his um­brel­la but re­mained at the shop win­dow, ex­am­in­ing the ob­jects with ap­par­ent in­ter­est. He watched her dis­tant, al­most un­read­able re­flec­tion, wait­ing for her to move for­ward in­to the sea of um­brel­las and thus lose sight of him for a mo­ment.

As soon as she did so, he burst in­to a run, sprint­ing silent­ly up Bor­go Tego­laio, his rain­coat fly­ing be­hind him. He ducked across the street and dart­ed in­to a nar­row al­ley, Sdruc­ci­olo de’ Pit­ti; tore along its length; then took an­oth­er left, rac­ing down Via Toscanel­la. Then he ran across a small pi­az­za and con­tin­ued down Via del­lo Sprone un­til he had made a com­plete cir­cuit and come back around to Via San­to Spir­ito, some fifty yards be­low the an­tique shop where he had dal­lied mo­ments ear­li­er.

He paused just short of the in­ter­sec­tion with Via San­to Spir­ito, catch­ing his breath.

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

He forced his mind back to busi­ness, an­gry at the whis­pered voice that nev­er gave him peace. When she saw he was no longer on the street, she would as­sume—she would have to as­sume—that he had tak­en a right turn down the tiny al­ley just be­yond the an­tique shop: Via dei Coverel­li. She would think him ahead of her, walk­ing in the op­po­site di­rec­tion to­ward her. But, like the Cape buf­fa­lo, he was now be­hind her, their po­si­tions re­versed.

Dio­genes knew Via dei Coverel­li well. It was one of the dark­est, nar­row­est streets in Flo­rence. The me­dieval build­ings on both sides had been built out over the street on arch­es of stone, which blocked the sky and made the al­ley, even on a sun­ny day, as dim as a cave. The al­ley made a pe­cu­liar dog­leg as it wormed past the back of the San­to Spir­ito church, two nine­ty-​de­gree turns, be­fore join­ing Via San­to Spir­ito.

Dio­genes trust­ed in Con­stance’s in­tel­li­gence and her un­can­ny re­search abil­ities. He knew she would have stud­ied a map of Flo­rence and con­sid­ered deeply the mo­men­to gius­to in which to launch her at­tack on him. He felt sure that she would see the Coverel­li al­ley­way as an ide­al point of am­bush. If he had turned down Coverel­li, as she must be­lieve, then this would be her chance. All she had to do was back­track, en­ter Coverel­li from the oth­er end, and then wait in the crook of the dog­leg for Dio­genes to ar­rive. A per­son lurk­ing in that dark an­gle could not be seen from ei­ther open­ing of the al­ley­way.

All this Dio­genes had al­ready thought out, the day be­fore, on the plane ride to Italy.

She did not know that he had al­ready an­tic­ipat­ed her ev­ery ac­tion. She did not know that his flank­ing dash in the oth­er di­rec­tion would turn the ta­bles. He would now be ap­proach­ing her from be­hind, in­stead of from the front.

The hunter is now the hunt­ed.

The Rolls tore across the up­per deck of the Tri­bor­ough Bridge, the sky­line of Man­hat­tan ris­ing to the south, slum­ber­ing in the predawn. Proc­tor drove ef­fort­less­ly through the traf­fic—heavy even at 4:00 A.M.—leav­ing drivers in his wake, their an­gry horns Doppler-​shift­ing down­ward as he passed.

Pen­der­gast sat in the back, in dis­guise as an in­vest­ment banker on a busi­ness trip to Flo­rence, equipped with the ap­pro­pri­ate doc­uments sup­plied by Glinn. Next to him sat D’Agos­ta, silent and grim.

“I don’t get it,” D’Agos­ta said at last. “I just don’t un­der­stand how Dio­genes could call this a per­fect crime.”

“I do un­der­stand—and rather too late,” Pen­der­gast replied bit­ter­ly. “It’s as I ex­plained on the ride to the mu­se­um last night. Dio­genes want­ed to in­flict on the world the pain that had been in­flict­ed on him. He want­ed to re-​cre­ate the . . . the ter­ri­ble Event that ru­ined his life. You re­call I men­tioned he had been vic­tim­ized by a sadis­tic de­vice, a ‘house of pain’? The Tomb of Senef was noth­ing less than a re-​cre­ation of that house of pain. On a grand and ter­ri­ble scale.”

The Rolls slowed for the toll­booth, then ac­cel­er­at­ed again.

“So what was go­ing on in the tomb, then? What hap­pened to all those peo­ple?”

“I’m not yet sure pre­cise­ly. But did you no­tice that some of the vic­tims were walk­ing with a pe­cu­liar, shuf­fling gait? It put me in mind of the neu­ro­log­ical ef­fect known as drop foot, which some­times af­flicts peo­ple suf­fer­ing from brain in­flam­ma­tion. Their abil­ity to walk is im­paired in a very spe­cif­ic man­ner, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to low­er their feet smooth­ly to the ground. And if you ask Cap­tain Hay­ward to in­spect the tomb, I feel cer­tain she will find pow­er­ful lasers hid­den among the strobe lights. Not to men­tion a su­per­fluity of fog ma­chines and sub­woofers far be­yond any­thing the orig­inal de­sign called for. It seems Dio­genes en­gi­neered a com­bi­na­tion of strobe light, laser, and sound to in­duce le­sions in a very par­tic­ular part of the brain. The flash­ing lasers and sound over­whelmed the ven­tro­me­di­al cor­tex of the brain, which in­hibits vi­olent and atavis­tic be­hav­ior. Vic­tims would lose all in­hi­bi­tion, all sense of re­straint, prey to ev­ery pass­ing im­pulse. The id un­leashed.”

“It’s hard to be­lieve that light and sound could ac­tu­al­ly cause brain dam­age.”

“Any neu­rol­ogist will tell you that ex­treme fear, pain, stress, or anger can dam­age the hu­man brain, kill brain cells. Post-​trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der in its ex­treme form does, in fact, cause brain dam­age. Dio­genes sim­ply brought that to its ul­ti­mate con­clu­sion.”

“It was a set­up from the very be­gin­ning.”

“Yes. There was no Count of Ca­hors. Dio­genes front­ed the mon­ey for the restora­tion of the tomb. And the an­cient curse it­self pro­vid­ed just the kind of flour­ish that Dio­genes de­lights in. Clear­ly, he se­cret­ly in­stalled his own ver­sion of the show, a hid­den ver­sion un­known to the tech­ni­cians and pro­gram­mers. He test­ed it first on Jay Lip­per, then on the Egyp­tol­ogist, Wicher­ly. And re­call, Vin­cent, his ul­ti­mate aim was not just the peo­ple in the tomb: a live feed was go­ing out over pub­lic tele­vi­sion. Mil­lions could have been af­fect­ed.”

“Un­be­liev­able.”

Pen­der­gast bowed his head. “No. Ut­ter­ly log­ical. His aim was to re-​cre­ate the ter­ri­ble, un­for­giv­able Event . . . for which I was re­spon­si­ble.”

“Don’t start blam­ing your­self.”

Pen­der­gast looked up again, the sil­very eyes sud­den­ly dark in his bruised face. He spoke in a low voice, al­most as if he were talk­ing to him­self. “I am my broth­er’s cre­ator. And all this time, I nev­er knew it—I nev­er apol­ogized or atoned for what I did. That is some­thing I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.”

“For­give me for say­ing it, but that’s a load of crap. I don’t know much about it, but I do know what hap­pened to Dio­genes was an ac­ci­dent.”

Pen­der­gast went on, voice even low­er, al­most as if he hadn’t heard. “Dio­genes’s en­tire rea­son for ex­is­tence is I. And, per­haps, my rea­son for ex­is­tence is him.”

The Rolls en­tered JFK Air­port and drove along the cir­cu­la­tion ramp to­ward ter­mi­nal 8. As it pulled up to the curb, Pen­der­gast leaped out and D’Agos­ta fol­lowed.

Pen­der­gast heft­ed his suit­case, grasped D’Agos­ta’s hand. “Good luck on the hear­ing, Vin­cent. If I don’t re­turn, Proc­tor will han­dle my af­fairs.”

D’Agos­ta swal­lowed. “Speak­ing of re­turn­ing, there’s some­thing I’ve been mean­ing to ask you.”

“Yes?”

“It’s . . . a dif­fi­cult ques­tion.”

Pen­der­gast paused. “What is it?”

“You re­al­ize there’s on­ly one way to take care of Dio­genes.”

Pen­der­gast’s sil­very eyes hard­ened.

“You know what I’m talk­ing about, right?”

Still, Pen­der­gast said noth­ing, but the look in his eyes was so cold that D’Agos­ta al­most had to look away.

“When the mo­ment comes, if you hes­itate . . . he won’t. So I need to know if you’ll be able to . . .” D’Agos­ta couldn’t fin­ish the sen­tence.

“And your ques­tion, Vin­cent?” came the icy re­ply.

D’Agos­ta looked back at him, say­ing noth­ing. Af­ter a beat, Pen­der­gast turned abrupt­ly and dis­ap­peared in­to the ter­mi­nal.

Dio­genes Pen­der­gast strolled around the cor­ner of the Via del­lo Sprone and back in­to Via San­to Spir­ito. Con­stance Greene was gone, hav­ing ducked in­to the Via dei Coverel­li as he’d an­tic­ipat­ed. And now she would be wait­ing for him, in am­bush, to round the cor­ner.

To con­firm this, he walked briskly down Via San­to Spir­ito and paused just be­fore the en­trance to Coverel­li, flat­ten­ing him­self against the an­cient sgraf­fi­to fa­cade of some long­for­got­ten palace. With enor­mous cau­tion, he peered around the cor­ner.

Ex­cel­lent. She was still not to be seen—she had al­ready turned the first an­gle of the dog­leg and was no doubt wait­ing for him to come from the op­po­site di­rec­tion.

His hand slipped in­to his pock­et and re­moved a leather case, from which he took an ivory­han­dled scalpel iden­ti­cal to the one he had left be­neath her pil­low. The cool weight of it com­fort­ed him. Count­ing out the sec­onds, he opened his um­brel­la and made the turn. Then he be­gan walk­ing bold­ly down Via dei Coverel­li, his shoes echo­ing on the cob­ble­stones in the con­fined al­ley­way, his up­per body hid­den be­neath the black um­brel­la. Dis­guise was un­nec­es­sary: she would not look back around the cor­ner to see who was com­ing from the oth­er di­rec­tion. She would not ex­pect his ap­proach from that side.

He strode on bold­ly, in­hal­ing the scent of urine and dog fe­ces, of vom­it and wet stone—the an­cient al­ley­way re­tained even the smell of me­dieval Flo­rence. Keep­ing the scalpel poised in his gloved hand, he ap­proached the first cor­ner of the dog­leg. As he did so, he pre­vi­su­al­ized his strike. She would have her back to him; he would come up from the side, grab her neck with his left arm while aim­ing the scalpel for that sweet spot just be­low the right clav­icle; the length of the scalpel blade would be suf­fi­cient to sev­er the bra­chio­cephal­ic artery at the point where it di­vid­ed in­to the carotid and sub­cla­vian ar­ter­ies. She would not even have time to cry out. He would then hold her while she died; he would cra­dle her; he would al­low her blood to flow over him as it had done once be­fore . . . un­der very dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances . . .

. . . and then he would leave both her and his rain­coat in the al­ley.

He ap­proached the cor­ner. Fif­teen feet, ten, eight, now . . .

He turned the cor­ner and paused, tense and then as­ton­ished. There was no one there. The dog­leg was emp­ty.

He quick­ly looked around, for­ward and back: no one. And now he was in the dog­leg, blind, un­able to see who was com­ing from ei­ther di­rec­tion.

He felt a twinge of pan­ic. Some­where he had mis­cal­cu­lat­ed. Where had she gone? Had she tricked him in some way? It didn’t seem pos­si­ble.

He paused, re­al­iz­ing that he was now stuck in the blind spot. If he walked around the cor­ner ahead of him, out in­to Bor­go Tego­laio, a much broad­er and more vis­ible street, and she was there, she would see him—and all his ad­van­tage would be lost. On the oth­er hand, if she was be­hind him, and he went back, that would al­so de­stroy his ad­van­tage.

He stood mo­tion­less, think­ing fu­ri­ous­ly. The sky con­tin­ued to dark­en, and now he re­al­ized that it wasn’t mere­ly the rain, but the evening was falling like a dead hand over the city. He couldn’t stay there for­ev­er: he would have to move, to turn ei­ther one cor­ner or the oth­er.

De­spite the chill, he felt him­self grow­ing warm un­der the rain­coat. He had to aban­don his plan, turn around, and walk back the way he had come—to un­wind, so to speak, his flank­ing ma­neu­ver as if it had nev­er hap­pened. That would be best. Some­thing had hap­pened. She had tak­en an­oth­er turn some­where and he had lost her—that was it. He would then have to think of an­oth­er at­tack. Per­haps he should go to Rome and al­low her to fol­low him in­to the Cat­acombs of St. Cal­lix­tus. That pop­ular tourist site, with its anony­mous dead ends and dou­bling-​backs, would be an ex­cel­lent place to kill her.

He turned and walked back along Via dei Coverel­li, cau­tious­ly round­ing the first dog­leg. The al­ley­way was emp­ty. He strode down it—and then sud­den­ly, out of the cor­ner of his eye, he saw a flash of move­ment from one of the arch­ways above; he in­stinc­tive­ly threw him­self side­ways even as a shad­ow dropped up­on him and he felt the re­sist­less swipe of a scalpel cut­ting through the lay­ers of his rain­coat and suit, fol­lowed by the sear­ing burn of cut flesh.

With a cry, he twist­ed around and—even as he fell—drove his own scalpel in a glit­ter­ing arc to­ward her, aim­ing for the neck. His greater ex­pe­ri­ence with the blade, com­bined with su­pe­ri­or speed, paid off as his scalpel met flesh in a mist of blood; but as he con­tin­ued to fall, he re­al­ized she had twist­ed her head at the last mo­ment and his blade, in­stead of cut­ting her throat, had mere­ly slashed the side of her head.

He fell hard on­to the cob­ble­stones, his mind swept clean by as­ton­ish­ment, rolled over, and leaped up, scalpel in hand—but she was al­ready gone, van­ished.

In that mo­ment, he un­der­stood her plan. Her poor dis­guise had been no ac­ci­dent. She had been show­ing her­self to him, just as he had been re­veal­ing him­self to her. She had al­lowed him to lead her to a point of am­bush, and she had then used it against him. She had coun­tered his coun­ter­move.

The sim­ple bril­liance of it as­tound­ed him.

He stood there, look­ing up at the crowd­ed stone arch­es above him. He made out the crum­bling ledge of pietra ser­ena from which she had no doubt launched her at­tack. Far above he could see the tini­est sliv­er of steel-​gray sky, out of which were spin­ning rain­drops.

He took a step, stag­gered.

He felt a wave of faint­ness as the burn­ing sen­sa­tion in his side in­creased. He dared not open his coat and in­spect; he could not af­ford to get blood on the out­side of his cloth­ing—it would draw at­ten­tion. He belt­ed his rain­coat as tight­ly as pos­si­ble, try­ing to bind the wound. Blood would draw at­ten­tion.

As the feel­ing of faint­ness re­ced­ed and his brain emerged from the shock of the at­tack, he re­al­ized that an open­ing had pre­sent­ed it­self to him. He had cut her head, and no doubt it was bleed­ing co­pi­ous­ly, as all such cuts did. She could not hide such a cut and the blood, not even with a scarf. She could not pur­sue him around Flo­rence with blood pour­ing down her face. She would have to re­treat some­where, clean her­self up. And that gave him the win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty he need­ed to es­cape from her, to shake her off—for­ev­er.

Now was the mo­ment. If he could es­cape from her clean­ly, he could as­sume an­oth­er iden­ti­ty, and from there pro­ceed to his fi­nal des­ti­na­tion. She would nev­er find him there—nev­er.

He strolled as ca­su­al­ly as pos­si­ble through the streets to­ward the taxi stand at the end of Bor­go San Ja­copo. As he walked, he could feel the blood soak­ing through his clothes, trick­ling down his leg. The pain was mi­nor, and he was sure the cut had mere­ly sliced along his rib cage with­out pen­etrat­ing his vi­tals.

He had to do some­thing about the blood, how­ev­er—and fast.

He turned in­to a lit­tle café at the cor­ner of Tego­laio and San­to Spir­ito, went up to the bar, and or­dered an espres­so and a spre­mu­ta. He downed both, one af­ter the oth­er, dropped a five-​eu­ro bill on the zinc, and went in­to the bath­room. He locked the door and opened his rain­coat. The amount of blood was shock­ing. He quick­ly probed the wound, con­firm­ing that it hadn’t pierced his peri­toneum. Us­ing pa­per tow­els, he mopped up as much blood as he could; and then, tear­ing away the low­er half of his blood-​soaked shirt, he tied the strips around his tor­so, clos­ing the wound and stanch­ing the flow of blood. Then he washed his hands and face, put on his rain­coat, combed his hair, and left.

He felt the blood pool­ing now in­to his shoe, and he looked down to see that his heel was leav­ing a bloody quar­ter-​moon on the side­walk. But it was not fresh blood, and he could sense that the bleed­ing had slowed. A few more steps and he ar­rived at the taxi stand, slid in­to the back­seat of a Fi­at.

“Speak En­glish, mate?” he asked, smil­ing.

“Yes,” came the gruff re­ply.

“Good man! The rail­road sta­tion, please.”

The cab shot for­ward and he lay back in the seat, feel­ing the blood sticky in his groin, his mind sud­den­ly loos­en­ing it­self in a tu­mult of thoughts, a show­er of bro­ken mem­ories, a ca­copho­ny of voic­es:

Be­tween the idea

And the re­al­ity

Be­tween the mo­tion

And the act

Falls the Shad­ow

73

In the con­vent of the Suore di San Gio­van­ni Bat­tista in Gav­inana, Flo­rence, twelve nuns presid­ed over a parochial school, a chapel, and a vil­la with a pen­sione for re­li­gious-​mind­ed vis­itors. As night gath­ered over the city, the suo­ra be­hind the front desk not­ed with un­ease the re­turn of the young vis­itor who had ar­rived that morn­ing. She had come back from her tour of the city cold and wet, her face bun­dled up in a woolen scarf, body hunched against the weath­er.

“Will the sig­no­ra be hav­ing din­ner?” she be­gan, but the wom­an si­lenced her with a ges­ture so brusque the suo­ra closed her mouth and sat back.

In her small, sim­ply fur­nished room, Con­stance Greene fu­ri­ous­ly flung off her coat on her way to the bath­room. She bent over the sink, turn­ing on the hot wa­ter tap. As the sink filled, she stood be­fore the mir­ror and un­wound the woolen scarf from her face. Be­neath it was a silk scarf, stiff with blood, which she gin­ger­ly un­wrapped.

She peered close­ly at the wound. She could not see much; her ear and the side of her head were crust­ed with clot­ted blood. She dipped a wash­cloth in the warm wa­ter, wrung it out, and gen­tly placed it over her skin. Af­ter a mo­ment, she re­moved, rinsed, and reap­plied it. With­in min­utes, the blood had soft­ened enough for her to cleanse the cut and ex­am­ine it more clear­ly.

It wasn’t as bad as it had looked at first. The scalpel had scored deeply across her ear but had on­ly nicked her face. She gen­tly probed with her fin­gers, not­ing that the cut was ex­ceed­ing­ly sharp and clean. It was noth­ing, al­though it had bled like a stuck pig—it would heal with hard­ly a scar.

Scar. She al­most laughed out loud as she threw the bloody wash­cloth in­to the sink.

She leaned over and ex­am­ined her face in the mir­ror. It was thin and hag­gard, her eyes hol­low, lips cracked.

The nov­els she had read made pur­suit sound easy. Char­ac­ters fol­lowed oth­er char­ac­ters halfway around the world, all the while re­main­ing well rest­ed, fed, re­freshed, and groomed. In re­al­ity, it was an ex­haust­ing, bru­tal busi­ness. She had hard­ly slept since she first picked up his trail at the mu­se­um; she had bare­ly eat­en; she looked like a derelict.

On top of that, the world had proved to be a night­mare be­yond all imag­in­ing: noi­some, ug­ly, chaot­ic, and bru­tal­ly anony­mous. It was not at all like the com­fort­able, pre­dictable, moral world of lit­er­ature. The great wel­ter of hu­man be­ings she had en­coun­tered were hideous, ve­nal, and stupid—in­deed, mere words failed to de­scribe their true loath­some­ness. And chas­ing Dio­genes had proved ex­pen­sive: through in­ex­pe­ri­ence, be­ing cheat­ed, and rash ex­pen­di­ture, she had run through al­most six thou­sand eu­ros in the past forty hours. She had on­ly two thou­sand left—and no way of get­ting more.

For forty hours, she had fol­lowed him re­lent­less­ly. But now he had es­caped her. His wound would not slow him down: it was un­doubt­ed­ly a tri­fle, like hers. She was cer­tain she had lost his trail for good—he would see to that. He was gone, on to a new iden­ti­ty, and no doubt head­ing for the safe place he had pre­pared for just such a flight, years ago.

She had come so close to killing him—twice. If she had a bet­ter hand­gun . . . if she had known how to shoot . . . if she had been a mil­lisec­ond quick­er with the blade . . . he would be dead.

But now he had es­caped her. She had lost her chance.

She gripped the sink, star­ing in­to her blood­shot eyes. She knew with a cer­tain­ty the trail would end here. He would flee by taxi, train, or plane, cross a dozen bor­ders, criss­cross Eu­rope, be­fore end­ing up in a place and in a per­sona he had care­ful­ly cul­ti­vat­ed. It would be some­where in Eu­rope, she was sure of that—but the cer­tain­ty was of lit­tle help. It might take a life­time to find him—or even more.

Nev­er­the­less, a life­time was what she had. And when she found him, she would know him. His dis­guis­es had been good—but no dis­guise would de­ceive her. She knew him. He could al­ter ev­ery­thing pos­si­ble about his ap­pear­ance: his face, clothes, eyes, voice, body lan­guage. But there were two things he could not al­ter. His stature was the first. The sec­ond, the more im­por­tant, was some­thing she was sure Dio­genes had not thought of: and that was his pe­cu­liar scent. That scent she re­mem­bered so well, strange and heady, like a mix­ture of licorice un­der­scored by the keen, dark smell of iron.

A life­time . . . She felt a wave of de­spair so over­whelm­ing that she swayed over the sink.

Could he have left some clue be­hind in his hasty de­par­ture? But that would mean re­turn­ing to New York, and by the time she did so, the trail would have grown too cold.

Per­haps he had dropped some un­con­scious ref­er­ence, then, in her pres­ence? It seemed most un­like­ly—he had been so care­ful. But per­haps, be­cause he had ex­pect­ed her to die, he might have been less than vig­ilant.

She walked out of the bath­room, sat down on the edge of the bed. She paused a mo­ment to clear her mind as best she could. Then she thought back to their ear­li­est con­ver­sa­tions in the li­brary of 891 River­side. It was a mor­ti­fy­ing ex­er­cise, ex­cru­ci­at­ing­ly painful, like peel­ing back a raw ban­dage of mem­ory: and yet she forced her­self to con­tin­ue, sum­mon­ing up their first ex­changes, his whis­pered words.

Noth­ing.

She then went over their lat­er meet­ings, the books he had giv­en her, his deca­dent dis­qui­si­tions on sen­su­al liv­ing. But there was still noth­ing, not even the hint of a ge­ograph­ical lo­ca­tion.

In my house—my re­al house, the one that is im­por­tant to me—I have a li­brary . . . That was what he had told her once. Was it, like ev­ery­thing else, just a cyn­ical lie? Or was there per­haps a glim­mer of truth?

I live near the sea. I can sit in that room, all lights and can­dles ex­tin­guished, lis­ten­ing to the roar of the surf, and I be­come a pearl div­er . . .

A li­brary, in a house by the sea. That wasn’t much help. She ran over the words again and again. But he had been so care­ful to hide any per­son­al de­tails, ex­cept for those lies he had so care­ful­ly craft­ed, such as the sui­cide scars.

The sui­cide scars. She re­al­ized that, in her rec­ol­lec­tions, she had been un­con­scious­ly avoid­ing the one event that held out the great­est chance of re­veal­ing some­thing. And yet she could not bear to think of it again. Re­liv­ing those fi­nal hours to­geth­er—the hours in which she gave her­self to him—would be al­most as painful as first read­ing the let­ter . . .

But once again a cold­ness de­scend­ed over her. Slow­ly she lay back on the bed and stared up­ward in­to the dark­ness, re­mem­ber­ing ev­ery exquisite and painful de­tail.

He had mur­mured lines of po­et­ry in her ear as his pas­sion mount­ed. They had been in Ital­ian:

Ei s’im­merge ne la notte,

Ei s’aderge in vèr’ le stelle.

He plunges in­to the night,

He reach­es for the stars.

She knew that the po­em was by Car­duc­ci, but she had nev­er made a care­ful study of it. Per­haps it was time that she did.

She sat up too quick­ly and winced from a sud­den throb­bing in her ear. She went back in­to the bath­room and went to work on the in­jury, clean­ing it thor­ough­ly, cov­er­ing it with an­tibi­ot­ic oint­ment, and then ban­dag­ing it as un­ob­tru­sive­ly as pos­si­ble. When she was done, she un­dressed, took a quick bath, washed her hair, put on fresh clothes. Next, she stuffed the wash­cloth, tow­el, and bloody clothes in­to a garbage bag she found stored in the back of the room’s ar­moire. She gath­ered up her toi­letries and re­turned them to her suit­case. Pulling out a fresh scarf, she wrapped it care­ful­ly around her face.

She closed the suit­case, buck­led and strapped it. Then she took the garbage bag and de­scend­ed to the greet­ing room of the con­vent. The sis­ter was still there, and she looked al­most fright­ened by this sud­den reap­pear­ance.

“Sig­no­ra, is there some­thing not to your lik­ing?”

Con­stance opened her wal­let. “Quan­to cos­ta? How much?”

“Sig­no­ra, if there is a prob­lem with your room, sure­ly we can ac­com­mo­date you.” She pulled out a rum­pled hun­dred-​eu­ro bill, placed it on the counter. “That is too much for not even one night . . .”

But Con­stance had al­ready van­ished in­to the cold, rainy dark. Two days lat­er, Dio­genes Pen­der­gast stood on the port rail of the traghet­to as it plowed through the heav­ing blue wa­ters of the south­ern Mediter­ranean. The boat was pass­ing the rocky head­land of Capo di Mi­laz­zo, crowned by a light­house and a ru­ined cas­tle; be­hind him, sink­ing in­to the haze, stood the great hump of Sici­ly, the blue out­line of Mount Et­na thrust­ing in­to the sky, a plume of smoke trail­ing off. To his right lay the dark spine of the Cal­abri­an coast. Ahead lay his des­ti­na­tion, far, far out to sea.

The great eye of the set­ting sun had just dipped be­hind the cape, cast­ing long shad­ows over the wa­ter, limn­ing the an­cient cas­tle in gold. The boat was head­ing north, to­ward the Ae­olian is­lands, the most re­mote of all the Mediter­ranean is­lands—the dwelling place, or so the an­cients be­lieved, of the Four Winds.

Soon he would be home.

Home. He rolled the bit­ter­sweet word around in his mind, won­der­ing just what it meant. A refuge; a place of re­treat, of peace. He re­moved a pack­et of cigarettes from his pock­et, took shel­ter in the lee of the deck cab­in, and lit one, in­hal­ing deeply. He had not smoked in more than a year—not since he had last re­turned home—and the nico­tine helped calm his ag­itat­ed mind.

He thought back to the two days of hec­tic trav­el­ing he had just com­plet­ed: Flo­rence, Mi­lan, Lucerne—where he’d had his wound stitched at a free clin­ic—Stras­bourg, Lux­em­bourg, Brus­sels, Am­ster­dam, Berlin, War­saw, Vi­en­na, Ljubl­jana, Venice, Pescara, Fog­gia, Naples, Reg­gio di Cal­abria, Messi­na, and fi­nal­ly Mi­laz­zo. A forty-​eight-​hour or­deal of train trav­el that had left him weak, sore, and ex­haust­ed.

But now, as he watched the sun dy­ing in the west, he felt strength and pres­ence of mind re­turn­ing. He had shak­en her in Flo­rence; she had not, could not have, fol­lowed him. From there, he had changed iden­ti­ties sev­er­al times, con­fused his trail to such an ex­tent that nei­ther she nor any­one else could hope to un­tan­gle it. The open bor­ders of the EU, com­bined with the cross­ing in­to Switzer­land and re-​en­try in­to the EU un­der a dif­fer­ent iden­ti­ty, would con­found even the most per­sis­tent and sub­tle pur­suer.

She would not find him. Nor would his broth­er. Five years, ten years, twen­ty—he had all the time in the world to plan his next—his fi­nal—move.

He stood at the rail, in­hal­ing the breath of the sea, feel­ing a mod­icum of peace steal over him. And for the first time in months, the in­ter­minable, dry, mock­ing voice in his head fell to a susurrus, al­most in­audi­ble amid the sound of the bow plow­ing the sea:

Good­night Ladies: Good­night sweet Ladies: Good­night, good­night.

Spe­cial Agent Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast got off the bus at Viale Gi­an­not­ti and walked through a small park of sycamore trees past a shab­by mer­ry-​go-​round. He was dressed as him­self—now that he was safe­ly out of the Unit­ed States, there was no need for dis­guise. At Via di Ripoli, he took a left, paus­ing be­fore the huge iron gates that led in­to the con­vent of the Sis­ters of San Gio­van­ni Bat­tista. A small sign iden­ti­fied it on­ly as Vil­la Mer­lo Bian­co. Be­yond the gates, he could hear the min­gled cries of schoolchil­dren at re­cess.

He pressed the buzzer and, af­ter a mo­ment, the gates opened au­to­mat­ical­ly, lead­ing in­to a grav­eled court­yard be­fore a large ocher vil­la. The side door was open, and a small sign iden­ti­fied it as guest re­cep­tion.

“Good morn­ing,” he said in Ital­ian to the small, plump nun at the desk. “Are you the Suor Clau­dia I spoke to?”

“Yes, I am.”

Pen­der­gast shook her hand. “Pleased to know you. As I men­tioned over the phone, the guest we spoke of—Miss Mary Ul­cis­cor—is my niece. She has run away from home, and the fam­ily is ex­treme­ly wor­ried about her.”

The plump nun was al­most breath­less. “Yes, sig­nore, in fact I could see she was a very trou­bled young la­dy. When she ar­rived, she had the most haunt­ed look in her face. And then she didn’t even stay the night—ar­rived in the morn­ing, then re­turned that evening and in­sist­ed on leav­ing—”

“By car?”

“No, she came and left on foot. She must have tak­en the bus, be­cause taxis al­ways come in through the gates.”

“What time would that have been?”

“She re­turned about eight o’clock, sig­nore. Soak­ing wet and cold. I think she might have been sick.”

“Sick?” Pen­der­gast asked sharply.

“I couldn’t be sure, but she was hunched over a bit, and her face was cov­ered.”

“Cov­ered? With what?”

“A dark blue woolen scarf. And then not two hours lat­er, she came down with her lug­gage, paid too much mon­ey for a room she hadn’t even slept in, and left.”

“Dressed the same?”

“She’d changed her clothes, had on a red woolen scarf this time. I tried to stop her, I re­al­ly did.”

“You did all you could, Suo­ra. Now, may I see the room? You needn’t both­er com­ing—I’ll take the key my­self.”

“The room’s been cleaned, and there’s noth­ing to see.”

“I would pre­fer to check it my­self, if you don’t mind. One nev­er knows. Has any­one else stayed there?”

“Not yet, but to­mor­row a Ger­man cou­ple . . .”

“The key, if you would be so kind.”

The nun hand­ed him the key. Pen­der­gast thanked her, then walked briskly through the pi­ano no­bile of the vil­la and mount­ed the stair.

He found the room at the end of a long hall. It was small and sim­ple. He closed the door be­hind him, then im­me­di­ate­ly dropped to his knees. He ex­am­ined the floor, searched un­der the bed, searched the bath­room. To his great dis­ap­point­ment, the room had been fa­nat­ical­ly cleaned. He stood up, looked around thought­ful­ly for a minute. Then he opened the ar­moire. It was emp­ty—but a care­ful look re­vealed a small, dark stain in the far cor­ner. He dropped to his knees again, reached in, and touched it, scratch­ing a bit up with his fin­ger­nail. Blood—dry now, but still rel­ative­ly fresh.

Back in the re­cep­tion room, the nun was still deeply con­cerned.

“She seemed trou­bled, and I can’t imag­ine where she went at ten o’clock at night. I tried to talk to her, sig­nore, but she—”

“I’m sure you did all you pos­si­bly could,” Pen­der­gast re­peat­ed. “Thank you again for your help.”

He ex­it­ed the vil­la on­to Via di Ripoli, deep in thought. She had left at night, in the rain . . . but for where?

He en­tered a small café at the cor­ner of Viale Gi­an­not­ti, or­dered an espres­so at the bar, still pon­der­ing. She had en­coun­tered Dio­genes in Flo­rence, that much was cer­tain. They had fought; she had been wound­ed. It seemed in­cred­ible that she was on­ly hurt, for nor­mal­ly, those who came with­in Dio­genes’s or­bit did not leave it alive. Clear­ly, Dio­genes had un­der­es­ti­mat­ed Con­stance. Just as he him­self had done. She was a wom­an of vast, un­ex­pect­ed depths.

He fin­ished the cof­fee, bought an ATAF tick­et at the bar, and stepped across the viale to wait for the bus in­to the city cen­ter. When it ar­rived, he made sure he was the last one on. He held up a fifty-​eu­ro note to the driv­er.

“You don’t pay me, stamp your tick­et at the ma­chine,” the driv­er said cross­ly, pulling rough­ly out of the bus stop, his ham­my arms swing­ing the wheel around.

“I want in­for­ma­tion.”

The driv­er con­tin­ued to ig­nore the mon­ey. “What kind of in­for­ma­tion?”

“I’m look­ing for my niece. She got on this bus around ten o’clock two nights ago.” “I drive the day bus.”

“Do you have the name of the night driv­er and his cell num­ber?”

“If you weren’t a for­eign­er, I’d say you were a sbir­ro, a cop.”

“It’s not a po­lice mat­ter. I’m just an un­cle look­ing for his niece.” Pen­der­gast soft­ened his voice. “Please help me, sig­nore. The fam­ily is fran­tic.”

The driv­er ne­go­ti­at­ed a turn, then said, his tone more sym­pa­thet­ic, “His name is Pao­lo Bar­toli, 333-662-0376. Put your mon­ey away—I don’t want it.”

Pen­der­gast got off the bus at Pi­az­za Fer­ruc­ci, pulled out the cell phone he had ac­quired on ar­rival, di­aled the num­ber. He found Bar­toli at home.

“How could I for­get her?” the bus driv­er said. “Her head was swad­dled in a scarf, you couldn’t see her face, her voice all muf­fled. She spoke an old-​fash­ioned Ital­ian, used the voi form with me—I haven’t heard that since the days of the Fas­cists. She was like a ghost from the past. I thought maybe she was crazy.”

“Do you re­mem­ber where she got off?”

“She asked me to stop at the Bib­liote­ca Nazionale.”

It was a long walk from Fer­ruc­ci to the Na­tion­al Li­brary, which stood across the Arno Riv­er, its brown baroque fa­cade ris­ing in sober el­egance from a dirty pi­az­za. In the cold, echo­ing read­ing room, Pen­der­gast found a li­brar­ian who re­mem­bered her as well as the bus driv­er had.

“Yes, I was work­ing the night shift,” the li­brar­ian told him. “We have few vis­itors at that hour—and she looked so lost, so des­olate, I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. She stared at a par­tic­ular book for over an hour. Nev­er turn­ing the pages, al­ways on the same page, mur­mur­ing to her­self like a crazy wom­an. It got on to­ward mid­night and I was get­ting ready to ask her to leave so I could close. But then all of a sud­den, she jumped up, con­sult­ed an­oth­er book—”

“What oth­er book?”

“An at­las. She pored over it for per­haps ten min­utes—scrib­bling fu­ri­ous­ly in a small note­book as she did so—and then ran out of the li­brary as if the hounds of hell were af­ter her.”

“Which at­las?”

“I didn’t no­tice—it’s one of those on the far ref­er­ence shelf, she didn’t have to fill out a slip to look at them. But let’s see, I do still have the slip she filled out for the book she stared at for so long. Just a mo­ment, I’ll col­lect it for you.”

A few min­utes lat­er, Pen­der­gast was seat­ed where Con­stance had sat, star­ing at the same book she had stared at: a slim vol­ume of po­ems by Gio­suè Car­duc­ci, the Ital­ian po­et who had won the No­bel Prize for Lit­er­ature in 1906.

The vol­ume sat in front of him, un­opened. Now, with in­fi­nite care, he up­end­ed it and al­lowed it to fall open nat­ural­ly; hop­ing, as books will some­times do, that it would open to the last page that had been read. But it was an old, stiff book, and it mere­ly fell open to the front end­pa­pers.

Pen­der­gast reached in­to the pock­et of his suit jack­et, drew out a mag­ni­fy­ing glass and a clean tooth­pick, and be­gan turn­ing the pages of the book. For each page he turned, he gen­tly dragged the tooth­pick along the gut­ter, then ex­am­ined the dirt, hair, and fibers that had been ex­posed with his mag­ni­fy­ing glass.

An hour lat­er, on page 42, he found what he was look­ing for: three red fibers of wool, curled as if from a knit­ted scarf.

The po­em that strad­dled both pages was called “La Leggen­da di Teodori­co,” the Leg­end of Theodor­ic.

He be­gan to read:

Su ’l castel­lo di Verona

Bat­te il sole a mez­zo­giorno,

Da la Chiusa al pi­an rin­trona

Soli­tario un suon di corno . . .

Above the great cas­tle of Verona,

Beats the bru­tal mid­day sun,

From the Moun­tains of Chiusa, across the plains,

Re­sounds the dread­ed horn of doom . . .

The po­em re­count­ed the strange death of the Visig­oth­ic king Theodor­ic. Pen­der­gast read it once, and then again, fail­ing to see what mo­men­tous im­por­tance Con­stance could have at­tached to it. He read it again slow­ly, re­call­ing the ob­scure leg­end.

Theodor­ic was one of the ear­li­est of the great bar­bar­ian rulers. He carved a king­dom for him­self from the corpse of the Ro­man Em­pire, and among oth­er bru­tal acts he ex­ecut­ed the bril­liant states­man and philoso­pher Boethius. Theodor­ic died in 526. Leg­end had it that a holy her­mit, liv­ing alone on one of the Ae­olian is­lands off the coast of Sici­ly, swore that in the very hour of Theodor­ic’s death, he wit­nessed the king’s shriek­ing soul be­ing cast in­to the throat of the great vol­cano of Strom­boli, be­lieved by the ear­ly Chris­tians to be the en­trance of hell it­self.

Strom­boli. The Door­way to Hell. In a flash, Pen­der­gast un­der­stood.

He rose, walked over to the shelf of at­lases, and se­lect­ed the one of Sici­ly. Re­turn­ing to his seat, he care­ful­ly opened it to the page dis­play­ing the Ae­olian is­lands. The out­er­most of these was the is­land of Strom­boli, which was es­sen­tial­ly the peak of a live vol­cano that rose abrupt­ly from the sea. A lone vil­lage hugged its surf-​pound­ed shore. The is­land was ex­ceed­ing­ly re­mote and dif­fi­cult to reach, and the vol­cano of Strom­boli it­self had the dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the most ac­tive in Eu­rope, in al­most con­tin­ual erup­tion for at least three thou­sand years.

He care­ful­ly wiped the page with a fold­ed white linen hand­ker­chief, then ex­am­ined it with his mag­ni­fy­ing glass. There, stuck to the linen weft, was an­oth­er curled red wool fiber.

76

Dio­genes Pen­der­gast stood on the ter­race of his vil­la. Be­low him, the tiny white­washed vil­lage of Pisc­ità crowd­ed down to the broad, black-​sand beach­es of the is­land. A wind came in from the sea, bring­ing with it the scent of brine and flow­er­ing gines­tra. A mile out to sea, the au­to­mat­ic light­house on the im­mense rock of Strom­bol­ic­chio had be­gun wink­ing in the gath­er­ing dusk.

He sipped a glass of sher­ry, lis­ten­ing to the dis­tant sounds from the town be­low—a moth­er call­ing her chil­dren in to din­ner, a dog bark­ing, the buzz of a three-​wheeled Ape, the on­ly kind of pas­sen­ger ve­hi­cle used on the is­land. The wind was ris­ing, along with the surf—it was go­ing to be an­oth­er roar­ing night.

And be­hind him, he heard the thun­der­ous rum­ble of the vol­cano.

Here, at the very edge of the world, he felt safe. She could not fol­low him here. This was his home. He had first come here twen­ty years be­fore, and then al­most ev­ery year since, al­ways ar­riv­ing and de­part­ing with the ut­most care. The three hun­dred or so year-​round res­idents of the is­land knew him as an ec­cen­tric and iras­ci­ble British pro­fes­sor of clas­sics who came pe­ri­od­ical­ly to work on his mag­num opus—and who did not look with fa­vor on be­ing dis­turbed. He avoid­ed the sum­mer and the tourists, al­though this is­land, be­ing six­ty miles from the main­land and in­ac­ces­si­ble for days at a time due to vi­olent seas and the lack of a port, was far less vis­it­ed than most.

An­oth­er rolling boom. The vol­cano was ac­tive tonight.

He turned, glanc­ing up its steep, dark slopes. An­gry clouds writhed and twist­ed across the vol­canic crater, tow­er­ing more than a half mile above his vil­la, and he could see the faint flash­es of or­ange in­side the jagged cone, like the flick­er­ing of a de­fec­tive lamp.

The last gleam of sun­light died on Strom­bol­ic­chio and the sea turned black. Great rollers creamed in long white lines up the black beach, one af­ter an­oth­er, ac­com­pa­nied by a monotonous low roar.

Over the past twen­ty-​four hours, with enor­mous men­tal ef­fort, Dio­genes had ex­punged from his mind the raw mem­ory of re­cent events. Some­day—when he had ac­quired a lit­tle dis­tance—he would sit down and dis­pas­sion­ate­ly an­alyze what had gone wrong. But for now he need­ed to rest. Af­ter all, he was in his prime; he had all the time in the world to plan and ex­ecute his next at­tack.

But at my back I al­ways hear

Time’s wingèd char­iot hur­ry­ing near

He gripped the del­icate glass so tight­ly it snapped, and he dashed the stem to the ground and went in­to the kitchen, pour­ing him­self an­oth­er. It was part of a sup­ply of amon­til­la­do he had laid down years be­fore, and he hat­ed to waste a drop.

He took a sip, calm­ing him­self, then strolled back on­to the ter­race. The town was set­tling down for the night: a few more faint calls, a wail­ing ba­by, the slam­ming of a door. And the buzz of the Ape, clos­er now, in one of the crooked streets that rose to­ward his vil­la.

He put the glass down on the para­pet and lit a cigarette, draw­ing in the smoke, ex­hal­ing in­to the twilit air. He peered down in­to the streets be­low. The Ape was def­inite­ly com­ing up the hill, prob­ably on Vi­co­lo San Bar­to­lo . . . The tin­ny whine drew still clos­er, and for the first time Dio­genes felt a twinge of ap­pre­hen­sion. The din­ner hour was an un­usu­al time for an Ape to be out and about, es­pe­cial­ly in the up­per vil­lage—un­less it was the is­land taxi tak­ing some­one some­where. But it was ear­ly spring and there were no tourists: the fer­ry he had tak­en from Mi­laz­zo had car­ried no vis­itors, on­ly pro­duce and sup­plies; and be­sides, it had de­part­ed hours ago.

He chuck­led at him­self. He had grown too wary, al­most para­noid. This de­mon­ic pur­suit—com­ing hard on the heels of such a huge fail­ure—had left him shak­en, un­nerved. What he re­al­ly need­ed was a long pe­ri­od of read­ing, study, and in­tel­lec­tu­al re­ju­ve­na­tion. In­deed, now would be the per­fect time to be­gin that trans­la­tion of Au­reus As­inus by Apuleius that he had al­ways in­tend­ed.

He drew in more smoke, ex­haled eas­ily, turned his eyes to the sea. The run­ning lights of a ship were just round­ing Pun­ta Lena. He went in­side, brought out his binoc­ulars, and—look­ing to sea again—was able to make out the dim out­line of an old wood­en fish­ing boat, a re­al scow, head­ing away from the is­land to­ward Li­pari. That puz­zled him: it had not been out fish­ing, not in this weath­er at this time of day. It had prob­ably been mak­ing a de­liv­ery.

The sound of the Ape ap­proached and he re­al­ized it was now com­ing up the tiny lane lead­ing to his vil­la—hid­den by the high walls sur­round­ing his grounds. He heard the en­gine slow as it came to a stop at the bot­tom of his wall. He put down the binoc­ulars and strode to the side ter­race, from where he had a view down the lane; but by the time he got there, the Ape was al­ready turn­ing around—and its pas­sen­ger, had there been one, was nowhere to be seen.

He paused, his heart sud­den­ly beat­ing so hard he could hear the roar of blood in his ears. His was the on­ly res­idence at the end of the lane. That old fish­ing scow hadn’t brought car­go—it had brought a pas­sen­ger. And that pas­sen­ger had tak­en the Ape to the very gates of his vil­la.

He ex­plod­ed in­to silent ac­tion, run­ning in­side, dash­ing from room to room, shut­ter­ing and bar­ring the win­dows, turn­ing off the lights, and lock­ing the doors. The vil­la, like most on the is­land, was built al­most like a fortress, with heavy wood­en shut­ters and doors bolt­ed with hand­wrought iron and heavy locks. The ma­son­ry walls them­selves were al­most a me­ter thick. And he had made sev­er­al sub­tle im­prove­ments of his own. He would be safe in the house—or at least he could gain enough time to think, to con­sid­er his po­si­tion.

In a few min­utes, he had fin­ished lock­ing him­self in. He stood in his dark li­brary, breath­ing hard. Once again he had the feel­ing he had re­act­ed out of sheer para­noia. Just be­cause he’d seen a boat, heard the taxi . . . It was ridicu­lous. There was sim­ply no way for her to have found him—cer­tain­ly not this quick­ly. He had ar­rived on the is­land on­ly the evening be­fore. It was ab­surd, im­pos­si­ble.

He dabbed his brow with a pock­et hand­ker­chief and be­gan to breathe eas­ier. He was be­ing ut­ter­ly fool­ish. This busi­ness had un­nerved him even more than he re­al­ized.

He was just feel­ing around for the light when the knock came: slow—mock­ing­ly slow—each boom on the great wood­en door echo­ing through the vil­la.

He froze, his heart wild once again.

“Chi c’è?” he asked.

No an­swer.

With trem­bling fin­gers, he felt along the li­brary draw­ers, found the one he was look­ing for, un­locked it, and re­moved his Beretta Px4 Storm. He eject­ed the mag­azine, checked that it was full, and eased it back in­to place. In the next draw­er, he found a heavy torch.

How? How? He choked down the rage that threat­ened to over­whelm him. Could it re­al­ly be her? If not, why hadn’t there been an an­swer to his call?

He turned on the torch and shone it around. Which was the like­li­est en­try point? It would prob­ably be the door on the side ter­race, clos­est to the lane and eas­iest to get to. He crept over to it, un­locked it silent­ly, then care­ful­ly bal­anced the met­al key on top of the wrought-​iron door han­dle. Then he re­treat­ed to the cen­ter of the dark room and knelt in fir­ing stance, let­ting his eyes ad­just to the dark, gun aimed at the door. Wait­ing.

It was silent with­in the thick walls of the house. The on­ly sound that pen­etrat­ed was the pe­ri­od­ic deep-​throat­ed rum­ble of the vol­cano. He wait­ed, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly.

Five min­utes passed, then ten.

And then he heard it: the clink of the falling key. He in­stant­ly fired four shots through the door, cov­er­ing it in a di­amond-​shaped pat­tern. The 9mm rounds would have no trou­ble pen­etrat­ing even the thick­est part of the door with plen­ty of ve­loc­ity left to kill. He heard a gasp of pain; a thud; a scrab­bling noise. An­oth­er gasp—and then si­lence. The door, now ajar, creaked open an inch in a gust of wind.

It sound­ed as if he had killed her. And yet he doubt­ed it. She was too smart. She would have an­tic­ipat­ed that.

Or would she? And on the oth­er hand, was it even her? He might have just killed some hap­less bur­glar or de­liv­ery boy.

Crouch­ing low, he crept to­ward the door. As he drew close, he lay flat on the floor and crawled the fi­nal few feet. He stopped, his gaze on the nar­row crack be­low the door­jamb. He need­ed to ease the door open an­oth­er inch be­fore he could see whether a body lay on the ter­race be­yond—or whether it was a trick.

He wait­ed—and, when an­oth­er gust of wind came, he used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to creak the door a lit­tle far­ther open to ex­pose the ter­race to view.

In­stant­ly, two shots rang out, slam­ming through the door just inch­es above his head, show­er­ing him with splin­ters. He rolled quick­ly away, heart pound­ing. The door was now open a foot, and each gust of wind pushed it far­ther ajar. She had fired very low—ex­pect­ing him to be crouch­ing. If he hadn’t been com­plete­ly prone, he would have been hit.

He stared at the holes her rounds had torn in the wood­work. She had man­aged to get her hands on a mid-​cal­iber semi­au­to­mat­ic, a Glock from the sound of it. And she had learned at least the ba­sics of how to shoot.

An­oth­er, heav­ier gust of wind blew the door wide open, and it slammed against the wall, then swung to, creak­ing loud­ly. Slow­ly he ma­neu­vered around to its far side, and then with one swift move­ment kicked the door shut, rolled to a sit­ting po­si­tion, and shot the bolt. As he rolled away again, an­oth­er shot blew a hole in the wood inch­es from his ear, prick­ling him with splin­ters.

As he lay on the floor, breath­ing hard, he re­al­ized now the dis­ad­van­tage of shut­ting him­self up in the house. He could not see out; he could not know from what di­rec­tion she would come. Al­though the house had been some­what hard­ened against en­try, he had seen no need to arouse lo­cal sus­pi­cion by mak­ing it as se­cure as the Long Is­land struc­ture: with a gun, she could shoot the locks or bolts off any door and win­dow. No—it would be bet­ter to fight her out­side, where his su­pe­ri­or strength, his ex­pert shoot­ing abil­ity, and his knowl­edge of the ter­rain would put him at a de­cid­ed ad­van­tage.

Had the gun­shots been heard? Peo­ple in town might be call­ing the po­lice, and that could be awk­ward. But had they heard? With the wind com­ing off the wa­ter and roar­ing up through the figs and olive groves—not to men­tion the pe­ri­od­ic booms from the rest­less vol­cano—per­haps the sound of the gun­shots would not be not­ed. And as for the po­lice, the on­ly law en­force­ment on the is­land dur­ing the win­ter was a nu­cleo in­ves­tiga­ti­vo head­ed by a lone mares­cial­lo of the cara­biniere—who spent his evenings play­ing brisco­la at the bar in Ficogrande.

He felt a rush of limb-​trem­bling rage. She had in­vad­ed his home, his bolt-​hole, his ul­ti­mate refuge. This was it: he had nowhere else to go, no oth­er iden­ti­ty to as­sume. Flushed from here, he would be put to flight like a dog, pur­sued re­lent­less­ly. Even if he even­tu­al­ly es­caped, it would take years to find a new safe haven, es­tab­lish a se­cure iden­ti­ty.

No: he had to fin­ish it here and now.

Three shots sound­ed in rapid suc­ces­sion, and he heard one of the shut­ters in the break­fast nook hurl open, slam­ming against the wall with a shud­der­ing crash. He jumped up and, scut­tling ahead at a crouch, took cov­er be­hind a half-​wall of ma­son­ry sep­arat­ing the kitchen from the din­ing area. The wind howled through the open win­dow, bang­ing the shut­ter.

Had she got­ten in­side?

He scram­bled around the half-​wall, jumped up at a run, and swept the torch across the kitchen: noth­ing. Still run­ning, he slid in­to the din­ing room, braced him­self against a wall. The key was to keep mov­ing . . .

Three more shots re­sound­ed, this time from the di­rec­tion of the li­brary, and he could hear an­oth­er shut­ter be­gin to swing wild­ly in the wind.

That was her game, then: punch holes in his de­fens­es, one by one, un­til the house was no pro­tec­tion at all. He wouldn’t play that game. He had to seize the ini­tia­tive. He, not she, would choose the ter­rain for the fi­nal con­fronta­tion.

He had to get out­side—and not on­ly out­side, but up the moun­tain. He knew ev­ery switch­back of the steep and dan­ger­ous trail. She was com­par­ative­ly weak and would be weak­er af­ter her long and ex­haust­ing pur­suit. On the moun­tain, ev­ery ad­van­tage would be his—in­clud­ing the use of a hand­gun in the dark. Nev­er­the­less, he re­mind­ed him­self that he had un­der­es­ti­mat­ed her at each turn. That could not be per­mit­ted to hap­pen again. He was up against the most de­ter­mined, and per­haps most dead­ly, ad­ver­sary of his ca­reer.

His thoughts re­turned to the moun­tain. The an­cient trail had been built al­most three thou­sand years ago by Greek priests to of­fer sac­ri­fices to the god Hep­haes­tus. About halfway up, the trail branched. A new­er trail ran to the sum­mit along the Bas­ti­men­to Ridge. The an­cient Greek trail con­tin­ued west­ward, where it had been cut cen­turies ear­li­er by the Scia­ra del Fuo­co, the leg­endary Slope of Fire. The Scia­ra was a con­tin­uous avalanche of red-​hot la­va blocks forced from the crater, which tum­bled down a vast ravine a mile broad and three thou­sand feet deep, to ul­ti­mate­ly crash in­to the sea in ex­plo­sions of steam. The cliff edge of the Scia­ra was a hellish, dizzy­ing place, like no oth­er on earth, swept by rag­ing winds of heat­ed air com­ing off the la­va flow.

The Scia­ra del Fuo­co. A per­fect so­lu­tion to his prob­lem. A body that fell in there would vir­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pear.

Ex­it­ing the house would be his point of great­est vul­ner­abil­ity. But she could not be ev­ery­where at once. And even if she was wait­ing, ex­pect­ing his ex­it, she had lit­tle chance of hit­ting him if he kept mov­ing in the dark. It took years to de­vel­op hand­gun skills at that lev­el.

Dio­genes crept up to the side door, paused briefly. And then, in one ex­plo­sive move­ment, he kicked it open and charged in­to the dark­ness. The shots came, as he knew they would, miss­ing him by inch­es. He dived for cov­er and re­turned the shots, sup­press­ing her fire. Then he jumped up, sprint­ed through the gate, and turned sharply right, rac­ing up a se­ries of an­cient la­va steps at the top of the lane, which would con­nect to the trail that wound up the side of the vol­cano of Strom­boli to­ward the Slope of Fire.

77

Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast leaped off the sway­ing fish­ing boat on­to the quay at Ficogrande, the boat al­ready back­ing its en­gines to get away from the heavy surf along the ex­posed shore. He stood for a mo­ment on the cracked ce­ment, look­ing up at the is­land. It rose abrupt­ly from the wa­ter like a black pil­lar against the dim night sky, il­lu­mi­nat­ed by a fit­ful quar­ter­moon. He saw the red­dish play of lights in the clouds cap­ping the moun­tain, heard the boom and roll of the vol­cano, min­gling with the roar of surf at his back and the howl­ing of wind from the sea.

Strom­boli was a small, round is­land, two miles in di­am­eter and con­ical in shape: bar­ren and for­bid­ding. Even the vil­lage—a scat­ter­ing of white­washed hous­es stretched out along a mile of shore­line—looked bat­tered, windswept, and aus­tere.

Pen­der­gast breathed in the moist, sea-​laden air and drew his coat more close­ly around his neck. At the far end of the quay, across the nar­row street that par­al­leled the beach, a row of crooked stuc­coed build­ings sat crowd­ed to­geth­er: one was ev­ident­ly a bar, al­though the fad­ed sign that rocked in the wind had lost its elec­tric light.

He hur­ried up the quay, crossed the street, and en­tered.

A thick at­mo­sphere of cigarette smoke greet­ed him. At a ta­ble sat a group of men—one in the uni­form of the cara­biniere—smok­ing and play­ing cards, each with a tum­bler of wine in front of him.

He went to the bar, or­dered an espres­so com­ple­to. “The wom­an who ar­rived on the char­tered fish­ing boat ear­li­er this evening . . . ?” he said in Ital­ian to the bar­tender, and then paused, wait­ing ex­pec­tant­ly.

The man gave the zinc a swipe with a damp cloth, served the espres­so, tipped in a mea­sure of grap­pa. He didn’t seem in­clined to an­swer.

“Young, slen­der, her face swathed in a red scarf?” Pen­der­gast added.

The bar­tender nod­ded.

“Where did she go?”

Af­ter a si­lence, he said, in Si­cil­ian-​ac­cent­ed Ital­ian, “Up to the pro­fes­sor’s.”

“Ah! And where does the pro­fes­sor live?”

No an­swer. He sensed that the card game be­hind him had paused.

Pen­der­gast knew that, in this part of the world, in­for­ma­tion was nev­er giv­en out freely: it was ex­changed. “She’s my niece, poor thing,” he of­fered. “My sis­ter’s heart is just about bro­ken, her daugh­ter chas­ing af­ter that worth­less man, that so-​called pro­fes­sor, who se­duced her and now re­fus­es to do the right thing.”

This had the de­sired ef­fect. These were Si­cil­ians, af­ter all—an an­cient race with an­tique no­tions of hon­or. From be­hind him, Pen­der­gast heard the scrape of a chair. He turned to see the cara­biniere draw­ing him­self up.

“I am the mares­cial­lo of Strom­boli,” he said grave­ly. “I will take you up to the pro­fes­sor’s house.” He turned. “Ste­fano, bring up the Ape for this gen­tle­man and fol­low me. I will take the mo­tori­no.”

A dark, hairy man rose from the ta­ble and nod­ded at Pen­der­gast, who fol­lowed him out­side. The three-​wheeled mo­tor­ized cart stood at the curb and Pen­der­gast got in. Ahead, he could see the cara­biniere kick-​start­ing his mo­to. In a mo­ment, they were off, driv­ing along the beach road, the surf roar­ing on their right, pound­ing up beach­es that were as dark as the night.

Af­ter a short drive, they swung in­land, wind­ing through the im­pos­si­bly nar­row lanes of the town, ris­ing steeply up the side of the moun­tain. The lanes grew even steep­er, now run­ning through dark vine­yards and olive groves and kitchen gar­dens, en­closed by walls made of mortared la­va cin­ders. A few sprawl­ing vil­las ap­peared, dot­ting the up­per slopes. The last one stood hard against the ris­ing moun­tain, sur­round­ed by a high la­va-​stone wall.

The win­dows were dark.

The cara­biniere parked his mo­tor­bike at the gate and the Ape stopped be­hind it. Pen­der­gast jumped out, look­ing up at the vil­la. It was large and aus­tere, more like a fortress than a res­idence, graced with sev­er­al ter­races, the one fac­ing the sea colon­nad­ed with old mar­ble columns. Be­yond the la­va wall stood a lush and ex­ten­sive gar­den of trop­ical plants, birds of par­adise, and gi­ant ex­ot­ic cac­ti. It was the very last house on the moun­tain­side, and from Pen­der­gast’s van­tage point be­low, it al­most seemed as if the vol­cano were lean­ing above the house, its rum­bling, flick­er­ing peak re­flect­ing a men­ac­ing bloody or­ange against the low­er­ing clouds.

De­spite ev­ery­thing—de­spite the ex­trem­ity of the mo­ment—Pen­der­gast con­tin­ued to stare. This is my broth­er’s house, he thought.

With an of­fi­cious swag­ger, the cara­biniere went to the iron gate—which stood open—and pressed the buzzer. And now, spell bro­ken, Pen­der­gast brushed past him, ducked through the gate, and ran at a crouch to­ward the side door on the ter­race, which was bang­ing in the wind.

“Wait, sig­nore!”

Pen­der­gast slipped out his Colt 1911 and pressed him­self on the wall against the door, catch­ing it in his hand as it swung to. It was rid­dled with bul­let holes. He glanced around: a shut­ter out­side the kitchen was al­so open, swing­ing in the wind.

The cara­biniere came puff­ing up be­side him. He eyed the door. “Minchia!” His own firearm came out im­me­di­ate­ly.

“What is it, An­to­nio?” said the Ape driv­er, com­ing up, the tip of his cigarette danc­ing in the roar­ing dark.

“Go back, Ste­fano. This does not look good.”

Pen­der­gast pulled out a flash­light, ducked in­to the house, shone it around. Splin­ters of wood lay scat­tered across the floor. The beam of the flash­light il­lu­mined a large liv­ing room in the Mediter­ranean style, with cool plas­tered sur­faces, a tiled floor, and heavy an­tique fur­ni­ture: spare and sur­pris­ing­ly aus­tere. He had a glimpse, be­yond an open door, of an ex­traor­di­nary li­brary, ris­ing two sto­ries, done up in a sur­re­al pearl gray. He ducked in­side, not­ing that a sec­ond shut­ter in the li­brary had been shot open.

Still, no signs of a strug­gle.

He strode back to the side door, where the cara­biniere was ex­am­in­ing the bul­let holes. The man straight­ened up.

“This is a crime scene, sig­nore. I must ask you to leave.”

Pen­der­gast ex­it­ed on­to the ter­race and squint­ed up the dim moun­tain. “Is that a trail?” he asked the Ape driv­er, who was still stand­ing there, gap­ing.

“It goes up the moun­tain. But they would not have tak­en that trail—not at night.”

The cara­biniere ap­peared a mo­ment lat­er, ra­dio in hand. He was call­ing the cara­biniere caser­ma on the is­land of Li­pari, thir­ty miles away.

Pen­der­gast ex­it­ed through the gate and walked up to the end of the lane. A ru­ined stair­case in stone ran up the side of the hill, join­ing a larg­er, very an­cient trail on the slope just above. Pen­der­gast knelt, shone his light on the ground. Af­ter a mo­ment, he rose and took a dozen steps up the trail, ex­am­in­ing it with his light.

“Do not go up there, sig­nore! It is ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous!”

He knelt again. In a thin lay­er of dust pro­tect­ed from the wind by an an­cient stone step, he could make out the im­pres­sion of a heel—a small heel. The im­pres­sion was fresh.

And there, above it, an­oth­er small, faint print, ly­ing on top of a larg­er one. Dio­genes, pur­sued by Con­stance.

Pen­der­gast rose and gazed up the dizzy­ing slope of the vol­cano. It was so black he could see noth­ing ex­cept the faint flick­er of muf­fled or­ange light around its cloud-​shroud­ed sum­mit.

“This trail,” he called back to the po­lice­man. “Does it go to the top?”

“Yes, sig­nore. But once again, it is very dan­ger­ous and is for ex­pert climbers on­ly. I can as­sure you, they did not go up there. I have called the cara­binieri on Li­pari, but they can­not come un­til to­mor­row. And maybe not even then, with this weath­er. There is noth­ing more I can do, aside from search­ing the town . . . where sure­ly your niece and the pro­fes­sor have gone.”

“You won’t find them in the town,” Pen­der­gast said, turn­ing and walk­ing up the trail. “Sig­nore! Do not take that trail! It leads to the Scia­ra del Fuo­co!”

But the man’s voice was car­ried away in the wind as Pen­der­gast climbed with all the speed he could muster, his left hand grip­ping the flash­light, his right the hand­gun.

78

Dio­genes Pen­der­gast jogged along a windswept shoul­der of la­va 2,500 feet up the side of the moun­tain. The wind blew de­mon­ical­ly, lash­ing the dense gines­tra brush that crowd­ed the trail. He paused to catch his breath. Look­ing down, he could just bare­ly see the dim sur­face of the sea, flecked with bits of lighter gray that were white­caps. The light­house of Strom­bol­ic­chio sat alone on its rock, sur­round­ed by a gray ring of surf, blink­ing its mind­less, steady mes­sage out to an emp­ty sea.

His eye fol­lowed the sea in to­ward land. From his van­tage point, he could make out ful­ly a third of the is­land, a great swerve of shore­line from Pisc­ità to the cres­cent beach be­low Le Schioc­ci­ole, where the sea raged in a broad band of white surf. The dim il­lu­mi­na­tion of the town lay sprin­kled along the shore: dirty, wa­ver­ing points of light, an un­cer­tain strip of hu­man­ity cling­ing to an in­hos­pitable land. Be­yond and above, the vol­cano rose mas­sive­ly, like the ribbed trunk of a gi­ant man­grove, in great par­al­lel ridges, each with its own name: Ser­ra Adorno, Roisa, Le Man­dre, Ri­na Grande. He turned, looked up. Above him loomed the im­mense black fin of the Bas­ti­men­to Ridge, be­hind which lay the Scia­ra del Fuo­co—the Slope of Fire. That ridge ran up to the sum­mit it­self: still shroud­ed in fast-​mov­ing clouds, bloom­ing with the lurid glow of each fresh erup­tion, the thun­der­ous booms shak­ing the ground.

A few hun­dred me­ters up, Dio­genes knew, the trail split. The left fork cut east­ward and switch­backed to the sum­mit crater up the broad cin­der slopes of the Lis­cione. The right fork, the an­cient Greek trail, con­tin­ued west­ward, climb­ing the Bas­ti­men­to and end­ing abrupt­ly where it was cut by the Scia­ra del Fuo­co.

She would be at least fif­teen, twen­ty min­utes be­hind him by now—he had been push­ing him­self to the ut­most, climb­ing at max­imum speed up the crum­bling stone stair­cas­es and cob­bled switch­backs. It was phys­ical­ly im­pos­si­ble for her to have kept up. That gave him time to think, to plan his next step—now that he had her where he want­ed her.

He sat down on a crum­bling wall. The ob­vi­ous mode of at­tack would be an am­bush from the al­most im­pen­etra­ble brush that crowd­ed each side of the trail. It would be sim­ple: he could hide him­self in the gines­tra at, say, one of the switch­back turns, and shoot straight down the trail as she came up. But this plan had the great dis­ad­van­tage of be­ing the ob­vi­ous one, a plan she would most cer­tain­ly an­tic­ipate. And the brush was so thick he won­dered if he could even push in­to it with­out leav­ing a ragged hole be­hind or, at the least, signs of dam­age vis­ible to a keen eye—and she had a damnably keen eye.

On the oth­er hand, she did not know the trail—could not know the trail. She had ar­rived at the is­land and come straight to his vil­la. No map could con­vey the steep­ness, the dan­ger, the rough­ness of the trail. There was a spot ahead, just be­low the fork, where the trail ran close un­der a bluff of hard­ened la­va, looped back around, and then topped the bluff. There were cliffs all around it—there was no way for her to get off the trail at that point. If he wait­ed for her on the bluff above, she would have to pass al­most di­rect­ly un­der­neath him. There was sim­ply no oth­er way for her to go. And be­cause she did not know the trail, she could not an­tic­ipate that it dou­bled back over the bluff.

Yes. That would serve nice­ly.

He con­tin­ued up the moun­tain and in an­oth­er ten min­utes had reached the fi­nal switch­back and gained the top of the bluff. But as he looked around for a hid­ing place, he saw there was an even bet­ter po­si­tion—in­deed, it was near­ly per­fect. She would see the bluff as she ap­proached and might an­tic­ipate a strike from it. But well be­fore the bluff it­self was an­oth­er am­bush point—in the deep shad­ows be­low it, half ob­scured by rocks—that looked to be far sub­tler; in­deed, it was com­plete­ly in­vis­ible from far­ther down the trail.

With an un­ut­ter­able feel­ing of re­lief that it would soon be over, he care­ful­ly took up a po­si­tion in the shad­ow of the switch­back and pre­pared to wait. It was a per­fect spot: the deep dark­ness of the night and the nat­ural lines of the ter­rain mak­ing it ap­pear there was no break at all in the rocks be­hind which he hid. With­in fif­teen min­utes or so, she should ap­pear. Af­ter he killed her, he would throw her body in­to the Scia­ra, where it would van­ish for­ev­er. And he would once again be free.

The fif­teen min­utes that passed next were the longest of his life. As they ticked on in­to twen­ty, he be­came in­creas­ing­ly un­easy. Twen­ty-​five min­utes passed . . . thir­ty . . .

Dio­genes found his mind rac­ing with spec­ula­tion. She could not pos­si­bly know that he was there. He was cer­tain she could not have been alert­ed to his pres­ence.

Some­thing else might be wrong.

Was she too weak to have climbed this high up the moun­tain? He had as­sumed her ha­tred would car­ry her far past the point of nor­mal ex­haus­tion. But she was on­ly hu­man; she had to have a break­ing point. She had been fol­low­ing him for days, hard­ly eat­ing and sleep­ing. On top of that, she would have lost a fair amount of blood. To then climb al­most three thou­sand ver­ti­cal feet up an un­known and ex­ceed­ing­ly dan­ger­ous trail at night . . . maybe she just couldn’t make it. Or per­haps she’d been hurt. The de­crepit cob­bled path was strewn with loose stones and erod­ed blocks, and the steep­est parts—where the an­cients had built stone stair­cas­es—were slick with rub­ble and miss­ing many steps, a ver­ita­ble death trap.

A death trap. It was en­tire­ly pos­si­ble—in­deed, even prob­able—that she had slipped and hurt her­self; fall­en and twist­ed an an­kle; per­haps even been killed. Did she have a flash­light? He didn’t think so.

He checked his watch: thir­ty-​five min­utes had now passed. He won­dered what to do. Of all the pos­si­bil­ities, the like­li­est was that she had been hurt. He would go back down the trail and see for him­self. If she was ly­ing there with a bro­ken an­kle, or col­lapsed in ex­haus­tion, killing her would be sim­ple . . .

He paused. No, that would not do. That was, per­haps, her game plan: to make him be­lieve she’d been hurt, to lure him back down—and then am­bush him. A bit­ter smile passed across his face. That was it, wasn’t it? She was wait­ing him out, wait­ing for him to de­scend. But he would not fall in­to that trap. He would wait her out. Even­tu­al­ly her ha­tred would force her up the moun­tain.

Ten more min­utes passed, and once again he was be­set by doubts. What if he wait­ed for her all night? What if she had de­clined to bring the bat­tle in­to the ter­rain of the moun­tain it­self? What if she had gone back to town and was ly­ing low, plan­ning some­thing new? What if she had alert­ed the po­lice?

He couldn’t bear the thought that this might con­tin­ue. He could not go on in this man­ner. It must end this very night. If she would not come to him, he had to force the is­sue by com­ing to her.

But how?

He lay on the hard ground, peer­ing down in­to the murk, his ag­ita­tion in­creas­ing. He tried to think as she would, an­tic­ipate what she would do. He could not af­ford to un­der­es­ti­mate her again.

I es­cape the house, run up the trail. She stands there, won­der­ing if she should fol­low. What would she do? She knew he would be go­ing up the moun­tain; she knew he would wait for her, that he in­tend­ed to fight her on his own ground, on his own terms.

What would she do?

The an­swer came to him in a flash: find an­oth­er route. A short­er route. And cut him off. But of course there wasn’t an­oth­er route—

With a sud­den, dread­ful prick­ling sen­sa­tion along his neck, he re­called an old sto­ry he had heard told around the is­land. Back in the eighth cen­tu­ry, the Sara­cens had at­tacked the is­land. They had land­ed at Per­tu­so, a cove on the far side, and made a bold and dan­ger­ous cross­ing, which re­quired climb­ing up one side of the vol­cano and down the oth­er. But they had not tak­en the Greek trail down—they had blazed their own route in or­der to fall up­on the town from an un­ex­pect­ed di­rec­tion.

Could she have tak­en the Sara­cen trail up?

His mind worked fever­ish­ly. He hadn’t paid any at­ten­tion to the old sto­ry, treat­ing it as yet an­oth­er col­or­ful leg­end, like so many oth­ers at­tached to the is­land. Did any­one even know to­day where the Sara­cen trail went? Did it still ex­ist? And how could Con­stance have known about it? There prob­ably weren’t more than half a dozen peo­ple in the world who would know the ac­tu­al route.

He cursed sav­age­ly, racked his brains, try­ing to re­mem­ber more of the sto­ry. Where did the Sara­cen trail go?

There was some­thing in the leg­end about the Sara­cens los­ing men in­to the Fi­lo del Fuo­co, a nar­row gorge that split off from the Scia­ra. If that were the case, the trail must have hugged the edge of the Scia­ra all the way down the Bas­ti­men­to Ridge—or up it, as the case may be—

He rose abrupt­ly. He knew—he knew!—this was what Con­stance had done. She was a con­sum­mate re­searcher; she had got­ten hold of some old at­las of the is­land. She’d stud­ied it, mem­orized it. She’d flushed him from his house, like a bad­ger from a bolt-​hole, driv­en him up the more fa­mil­iar trail. Al­low­ing him to think that it was his own plan all the time . . . And mean­while, she would have cut to the west and tak­en the se­cret trail up, flank­ing him as he’d wait­ed in am­bush, wast­ing minute af­ter pre­cious minute. And now she was above. Wait­ing for him.

A cold sweat broke out on his brow. He could see the breath­tak­ing sub­tle­ty of her plan. She had worked it all out ahead of time. She had ex­pect­ed him to flee his house, run up the trail. And she had ex­pect­ed him to pause some­where along the trail and wait in in­ter­minable am­bush, giv­ing her—the weak­er one—all the time she need­ed to get up the Sara­cen trail to the Bas­ti­men­to Ridge—

He stood abrupt­ly in hor­ror, eyes fo­cus­ing on the great black fin of the Bas­ti­men­to above him. The clouds were tum­bling across the peak, the moun­tain groan­ing and shak­ing with each ex­plo­sion—and then they part­ed, ex­pos­ing the ridge to the glare of the erup­tions: and in that mo­ment he spied, sil­hou­et­ted against the hor­rid lam­bent glow, a fig­ure in white, danc­ing . . . And de­spite the roar of the wind and the rum­bling of the moun­tain, he was sure he could hear a shrill, man­ic laugh­ter echo­ing down to­ward him . . .

In a con­vul­sion of fury, he aimed his gun and fired again and again, the bright flash­es blind­ing his own night vi­sion. Af­ter a mo­ment, he cursed and low­ered the gun, his heart pound­ing. The ridge was bare, the fig­ure gone.

It was now or nev­er. The end was up­on them. He tore up the trail, mov­ing as fast as he could, know­ing that she could nev­er hit him in the dark. The fork in the trail loomed ahead, the new­er trail run­ning off to the left on a grad­ed path. The right fork was blocked by a fence, rusty con­certi­na wire rat­tling in the wind, marked by a weath­er-​beat­en sign in two lan­guages:

Scia­ra del Fuo­co!

Peri­colo­sis­si­mo!

Vi­eta­to a Pas­sare!

Ac­tive La­va Flow Ahead!

Ex­treme Dan­ger!

Do Not Pass!

He leaped over the fence and scram­bled up the an­cient trail to­ward the top of the Bas­ti­men­to Ridge. There was on­ly one pos­si­ble out­come. One of them would walk back down the moun­tain; the oth­er would be thrown in­to the Scia­ra.

It re­mained to be seen who, in the end, would pre­vail.

79

Aloy­sius Pen­der­gast paused at the fork in the trail, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly. Not five min­utes be­fore, he had dis­tinct­ly heard shots—ten of them in all—over the thun­der­ing of the vol­cano. He knelt and ex­am­ined the ground with his light, quick­ly de­ter­min­ing that Dio­genes—and Dio­genes alone—had tak­en the fork blocked by a fence.

There was much about this sit­ua­tion that he had not yet un­tan­gled, enig­mas wrapped in mys­ter­ies. There had been very few foot­prints—on­ly where dust or sand had blown in­to pock­ets of the rock—but even so, Con­stance’s prints had ceased, al­most at the be­gin­ning of the trail. And yet Dio­genes had con­tin­ued on. Why? Pen­der­gast had been forced to make a choice: search for Con­stance’s prints or fol­low Dio­genes’s. And this was no choice at all—Dio­genes was the dan­ger, he need­ed to be found first.

And then, there had been gun­shots—but whose? And why so many? On­ly a per­son in the grip of pan­ic would fire ten shots in a row like that.

Pen­der­gast scaled the fence and con­tin­ued up the an­cient trail, which had fall­en in­to dan­ger­ous ru­in. The top of the ridge was per­haps a quar­ter mile dis­tant, and be­yond that he could see on­ly the sky, stained by an an­gry or­ange glow. He had to move fast—but with care.

The trail came to a steep part of the ridge, carved in­to a stair­case that ran up the rough la­va it­self. But the stair­case was bad­ly erod­ed, and Pen­der­gast was forced to hol­ster his sidearm and use both hands to climb it. Just be­fore crest­ing the top, he leaned in­to the slope, paused, and re­moved his gun again, lis­ten­ing. But it was hope­less: the roar and bel­low of the vol­cano was even loud­er here, and the wind howled ev­er more fierce­ly.

He crawled to the top of the ridge, in­to the sting­ing wind, and paused once again to re­con­noi­ter. The ex­posed trail ran along the crest be­fore turn­ing and dis­ap­pear­ing around a spike of frozen la­va. He jumped to his feet, ran across the ex­posed ground, and took cov­er be­hind the la­va, peer­ing ahead. He could see now that a great chasm must lie to his right—no doubt the Scia­ra del Fuo­co. The red­dish glow com­ing up from it pro­vid­ed an ex­cel­lent back­drop against which to iden­ti­fy a fig­ure.

He edged around the la­va spike, and the Scia­ra sud­den­ly ap­peared on his right: a sheer cliff falling away in­to a steeply pitched chasm, like a huge cleft in the side of the is­land: half a mile broad, plung­ing pre­cip­itous­ly in­to a churn­ing, boil­ing sea hun­dreds of feet be­low. Heat­ed air came roar­ing up the chasm, scream­ing di­ag­onal­ly over the ridge, car­ry­ing with it sting­ing par­ti­cles of ash and clouds of sul­furous fumes. And now, in ad­di­tion to the roar from the moun­tain, Pen­der­gast could hear a new sound: the crack­ling and rum­bling of huge blocks of liv­ing la­va, some glow­ing red-​hot, that came bound­ing down from the crater above, leap­ing and tum­bling in­to the sea be­low, where they blos­somed in­to dim white flow­ers.

He stag­gered for­ward in­to the tear­ing wind, find­ing his bal­ance while com­pen­sat­ing for the hellish force push­ing him back from the brink of the cliff. He ex­am­ined the ground, but all pos­si­ble tracks had been scoured away by the wind. He sprint­ed along the ragged trail, tak­ing cov­er be­hind old blocks of la­va when­ev­er pos­si­ble, keep­ing his cen­ter of grav­ity low. The trail con­tin­ued, still climb­ing the ridge­line. Ahead stood an enor­mous pile of la­va blocks, an ar­rest­ed rock­fall, which the trail skirt­ed around, mak­ing a sharp right to­ward the cliff’s edge.

He crouched in the shel­ter of the la­va fall, gun at the ready. If there was any­one on this trail, they would be di­rect­ly ahead of him, at the edge of the cliff.

He spun around the edge of the rock, gun in both hands—and saw a ter­ri­fy­ing sight.

At the very edge of the chasm, he could see two fig­ures, sil­hou­et­ted against the dull glow of the vol­cano. They were locked in a cu­ri­ous, al­most pas­sion­ate em­brace. And yet these were not lovers—these were en­emies, joined in mor­tal strug­gle, heed­less of the wind, or the roar of the vol­cano, or the ex­treme per­il of the cliff edge on which they stood.

“Con­stance!” he cried, rac­ing for­ward. But even as he ran, they be­gan to tip off bal­ance, each rak­ing and claw­ing at the oth­er, each pulling the oth­er in­to the abyss—

And then, with a si­lence worse than any cry, they were gone.

Pen­der­gast rushed up to the edge, al­most blown on­to his back by the force of the wind. He dropped to his knees, shield­ing his eyes, try­ing to peer in­to the abyss. A thou­sand feet be­low, hard­ened blocks of dull red la­va the size of hous­es rolled and bounced like peb­bles, shed­ding clouds of or­ange sparks, the wind scream­ing up from the vol­cano’s flanks like the wail of the col­lec­tive damned. He re­mained on his knees, the wind whip­ping salt tears from his eyes.

He could bare­ly com­pre­hend what he had seen. It was in­cred­ible to him, an im­pos­si­bil­ity, that Con­stance—shel­tered, frag­ile, con­fused Con­stance—could have pur­sued his broth­er to the very ends of the earth, driv­en him up this vol­cano, and flung her­self in­to it with him . . .

He swiped sav­age­ly at his eyes, made a sec­ond at­tempt to peer down in­to the hellish cleft, in the faint hope that some­thing, any­thing, might be left—and there, not two feet be­low him, he saw a hand, com­plete­ly cov­ered with blood, clutch­ing at a small pro­jec­tion of rock with al­most su­per­hu­man strength.

Dio­genes.

And now he heard D’Agos­ta’s voice in his head: You re­al­ize there’s on­ly one way to take care of Dio­genes. When the mo­ment comes . . .

With­out a sec­ond thought, Pen­der­gast reached down to save his broth­er, grasped the wrist with one hand and clutched the fore­arm with the oth­er, and with a mighty heave leaned back, pulling him up and away from the lip of the in­fer­no. A ragged, wild face ap­peared over the crest of the rock—not that of his broth­er, but of Con­stance Greene.

Sec­onds lat­er, he had pulled her away from the brink. She rolled on­to her back, her chest heav­ing, arms spread, ragged white dress whip­ping in the wind.

Pen­der­gast bent over her. “Dio­genes . . . ?” he man­aged to ask.

“He’s gone!” A laugh tore from her blood­ied lips and was in­stant­ly whisked away by the wind.

80

The wait­ing area for hear­ing room B con­sist­ed of an im­promp­tu col­lec­tion of sev­en­ties-​era Bauhaus bench­es lin­ing an anony­mous hall­way on the twen­ty-​first floor of One Po­lice Plaza. D’Agos­ta sat on one of these bench­es, breath­ing in the stale air of the hall­way: the min­gled smells of bleach and am­mo­nia from the near­by men’s room; stale per­fume; per­spi­ra­tion; and old cigarette smoke, which had per­me­at­ed the walls too deeply to ev­er be com­plete­ly erad­icat­ed. Un­der­ly­ing all was the acrid, om­nipresent tang of fear.

Fear, how­ev­er, was the last thing on his own mind. D’Agos­ta was about to un­der­go a for­mal dis­ci­plinary hear­ing that would de­cide if he could ev­er serve in law en­force­ment again—and all he felt was a weary empti­ness. For months, this tri­al had been hang­ing over his head like the sword of Damo­cles—and now, for bet­ter or worse, it was al­most over.

Be­side him, Thomas Shoul­ders, his union-​ap­point­ed lawyer, shift­ed on the bench. “Any­thing else you’d like to re­view one last time?” he asked in his thin, reedy voice. “Your state­ment, or their like­ly line of ques­tion­ing?”

D’Agos­ta shook his head. “Noth­ing more, thanks.”

“The de­part­ment ad­vo­cate will be pre­sent­ing the case for the NYPD. We might have caught a break there. Kagel­man’s tough but fair. He’s old-​school. The best ap­proach is to play it straight: no eva­sions, no bull. An­swer the ques­tions with a sim­ple yes or no, don’t elab­orate un­less asked. Present your­self along the lines we dis­cussed—a good cop caught in a bad sit­ua­tion, do­ing the best he could to see that jus­tice was served. If we can keep it at that lev­el, I’m guard­ed­ly op­ti­mistic.”

Guard­ed­ly op­ti­mistic. Whether spo­ken by an air­plane pi­lot, a sur­geon, or one’s own lawyer, the words were not ex­act­ly en­cour­ag­ing.

He thought back to that fate­ful day in the fall, when he had run in­to Pen­der­gast at the Grove es­tate, toss­ing bread to the ducks. It was on­ly six months ago, but what a long strange jour­ney it had been . . .

“Hold­ing up?” Shoul­ders asked.

D’Agos­ta glanced at his watch. “I just want the damn thing to be over with. I’m tired of sit­ting here, wait­ing for the axe to drop.”

“You shouldn’t think about it that way, Lieu­tenant. A dis­ci­plinary hear­ing is just like a tri­al in any oth­er Amer­ican court. You’re in­no­cent un­til proven guilty.”

D’Agos­ta sighed, shift­ed dis­con­so­late­ly. And in so do­ing, he caught a glimpse of Cap­tain Lau­ra Hay­ward, walk­ing down the busy cor­ri­dor.

She was com­ing to­ward them with that mea­sured, pur­pose­ful stride of hers, wear­ing a gray cash­mere sweater and a pleat­ed skirt of navy wool. Sud­den­ly the drab cor­ri­dor seemed charged with life. And yet the last thing he want­ed was for her to see him like this: parked on a bench like some tru­ant await­ing a whip­ping. Maybe she’d walk on, just walk on, like she’d done that day back in the po­lice sub­sta­tion be­neath Madi­son Square Gar­den.

But she did not walk on. She stopped be­fore the bench, nod­ded non­cha­lant­ly to him and Shoul­ders.

“Hi,” D’Agos­ta man­aged. He felt him­self blush­ing with em­bar­rass­ment and shame and felt fu­ri­ous for do­ing so.

“Hey, Vin­nie,” she replied in her dusky con­tral­to. “Have a minute?”

There was a mo­ment of sta­sis.

“Sure.” He turned to Shoul­ders. “Could you spare me for a sec?”

“Don’t go far—we’re up soon.”

D’Agos­ta fol­lowed Hay­ward down to a qui­eter sec­tion of the hall­way. She paused, look­ing at him, one hand un­con­scious­ly smooth­ing down her skirt. Glanc­ing at her shape­ly legs, D’Agos­ta felt his heart ac­cel­er­ate fur­ther. He searched his mind for some­thing to say, came up with noth­ing.

Hay­ward, too, seemed un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly at a loss for words. Her face looked cloud­ed, con­flict­ed. She opened her hand­bag, fum­bled in it a mo­ment, closed it, tucked it un­der her arm. They stood there an­oth­er mo­ment in si­lence as po­lice of­fi­cers, tech­ni­cians, and court per­son­nel passed by.

“Are you here to give a state­ment?” D’Agos­ta fi­nal­ly asked.

“No. I gave my de­po­si­tion over a month ago.”

“Noth­ing more to say, then?”

“No.”

A pe­cu­liar thrill went through D’Agos­ta as he re­al­ized the im­pli­ca­tions of this. So she’s kept qui­et about my role in the Herk­moor break­out, he thought. She hasn’t told any­body.

“I got a call from an ac­quain­tance in the Jus­tice De­part­ment,” she said. “The word’s just come down. As far as the feds are con­cerned, Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast has been for­mal­ly cleared of all charges. Homi­cide’s of­fi­cial­ly re­opened the case on our end, and it looks as though we’re go­ing to drop all charges against him, too. Based on ev­idence re­trieved from Dio­genes Pen­der­gast’s valise, fresh war­rants have been is­sued for Dio­genes. Thought you’d want to know.”

D’Agos­ta slumped with re­lief. “Thank God. So he’s com­plete­ly cleared.”

“Of crim­inal charges, yes. But it’s safe to say he hasn’t made any new friends in the Bu­reau.”

“Pop­ular­ity nev­er was Pen­der­gast’s strong suit.”

Hay­ward smiled faint­ly. “He’s been giv­en a six-​month leave. Whether re­quest­ed by him or de­mand­ed by the Bu­reau, I don’t know.”

D’Agos­ta shook his head.

“I thought you might al­so like to hear about Spe­cial Agent Spencer Cof­fey.” “Oh?”

“In ad­di­tion to roy­al­ly screw­ing up the Pen­der­gast case, he got em­broiled in some kind of scan­dal at Herk­moor. Seems he was bust­ed down to GS-11 and had a no­tice of cen­sure placed in his jack­et. They’ve re­as­signed him to the North Dako­ta field of­fice in Black Rock.”

“He’s gonna need a new pair of long un­der­wear,” D’Agos­ta said.

Hay­ward smiled, and an awk­ward si­lence set­tled over them again.

The deputy com­mis­sion­er of tri­als ap­proached them from the el­eva­tor bank, along with the de­part­ment spe­cial pros­ecu­tor. They passed by D’Agos­ta and Hay­ward, nod­ding dis­tant­ly, then turned and pro­ceed­ed in­to the court­room.

“With Pen­der­gast cleared, you should be, too,” Hay­ward said.

D’Agos­ta looked down at his hands. “It’s a dif­fer­ent bu­reau­cra­cy.”

“Yes, but when—”

Abrupt­ly she stopped. D’Agos­ta looked up to see Glen Sin­gle­ton walk­ing down the hall, im­mac­ulate­ly dressed as usu­al. Cap­tain Sin­gle­ton was of­fi­cial­ly still D’Agos­ta’s boss and was there, no doubt, to tes­ti­fy. When he saw Hay­ward, he paused in sur­prise.

“Cap­tain Hay­ward,” he said stiffly. “What are you do­ing here?”

“I came to watch the pro­ceed­ings,” she replied.

Sin­gle­ton frowned. “A dis­ci­plinary hear­ing is not a spec­ta­tor sport.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“You’ve al­ready been de­posed. Your show­ing up here in per­son, with­out be­ing called to pro­vide fresh in­for­ma­tion, may im­ply . . .” Sin­gle­ton hes­itat­ed.

D’Agos­ta flushed at the in­sin­ua­tion. He stole a glance at Hay­ward and was sur­prised by what he saw. The cloudi­ness had left her face, and she sud­den­ly looked calm. It was as if, af­ter strug­gling for a long time, she had reached some pri­vate de­ci­sion.

“Yes?” she asked mild­ly.

“Might im­ply a lack of im­par­tial­ity on your part.”

“Why, Glen,” Hay­ward said, “don’t you wish the best for Vin­nie, here?”

Now it was Sin­gle­ton’s turn to col­or. “Of course. Of course I do. In fact, that’s why I’m here—to bring to the at­ten­tion of the pros­ecu­tor cer­tain new de­vel­op­ments that have re­cent­ly come to our at­ten­tion. It’s just that we wouldn’t want any hint of any im­prop­er . . . well, in­flu­ence.”

“Too late,” she replied briskly. “I’ve al­ready been in­flu­enced.”

And then—very de­lib­er­ate­ly—she clasped D’Agos­ta’s hand in her own.

Sin­gle­ton stared at them for a mo­ment. He opened his mouth, closed it again, at a loss for words. Fi­nal­ly he gave D’Agos­ta a sud­den smile and laid a hand on his shoul­der. “See you in court, Lieu­tenant,” he said, giv­ing the word lieu­tenant spe­cial em­pha­sis. Then he turned and was gone.

“What was that sup­posed to mean?” D’Agos­ta asked.

“If I know Glen, I’d say you’ve got a friend in court.”

D’Agos­ta felt his heart ac­cel­er­ate again. De­spite the im­mi­nent or­deal, he sud­den­ly felt ab­surd­ly hap­py. It was as if a great weight had just been lift­ed from him: a weight he hadn’t even been ful­ly con­scious he was car­ry­ing.

He turned to­ward her in a rush. “Lis­ten, Lau­ra—”

“No. You lis­ten.” She wrapped her oth­er hand around his, squeezed it tight­ly. “It doesn’t mat­ter what hap­pens in that room. Do you un­der­stand me, Vin­nie? Be­cause what­ev­er hap­pens, hap­pens to both of us. We’re in this to­geth­er.”

He swal­lowed. “I love you, Lau­ra Hay­ward.”

At that mo­ment, the door of the court­room opened and the court clerk called his name. Thomas Shoul­ders rose from the bench, caught D’Agos­ta’s gaze, nod­ded.

Hay­ward gave D’Agos­ta’s hand a fi­nal squeeze. “Come on, big boy,” she said, smil­ing. “It’s show­time.”

81

Af­ter­noon sun bronzed the hills of the Hud­son Val­ley and turned the wide, slow-​mov­ing riv­er in­to an ex­panse of bril­liant aqua­ma­rine. The forests that cov­ered Sug­ar­loaf Moun­tain and Break­neck Ridge were just leaf­ing out in new bloom, and the en­tire High­lands wore a feath­ery man­tle of spring.

No­ra Kel­ly sat in a deck chair on the broad porch of the Fever­sham Clin­ic, look­ing down over Cold Spring, the Hud­son Riv­er, and the red brick build­ings of West Point be­yond. Her hus­band prowled back and forth at the edge of the porch, now and then gaz­ing out over the vista, oth­er times dart­ing glances up at the gen­teel lines of the pri­vate hos­pi­tal.

“It makes me ner­vous, be­ing back here,” he mut­tered. “You know, No­ra, I haven’t been in this place since I was a pa­tient here my­self. Oh, God. I don’t know if I’ve ev­er told you, but when the weath­er changes, I can some­times still feel an ache in my back where the Sur­geon—”

“You’ve told me, Bill,” she said with mock weari­ness. “Many times.”

The turn­ing of a knob, the soft squeak of hinges, and a door opened on­to the porch. A nurse in crisp whites stuck out her head. “You can come in now,” she said. “She’s wait­ing for you in the west par­lor.”

No­ra and Smith­back fol­lowed the nurse in­to the build­ing and down a long cor­ri­dor. “How is she?” Smith­back asked the nurse.

“Much im­proved, thank good­ness. We were all so wor­ried for her—such a dear thing. And she’s get­ting bet­ter ev­ery day. Even so, she gets tired eas­ily: you’ll have to re­strict your vis­it to fif­teen min­utes.”

“The dear thing,” Smith­back whis­pered in No­ra’s ear. She poked him play­ful­ly in the ribs.

The west par­lor was a large, semi­cir­cu­lar room that re­mind­ed No­ra of an Adiron­dack lodge: pol­ished ceil­ing beams, pine wain­scot­ing, pa­per-​birch fur­ni­ture. Oils of syl­van land­scapes hung on the walls. A mer­ry fire leaped and crack­led in the mas­sive stone fire­place.

And there—propped in a wheelchair in the cen­ter of it all—sat Mar­go Green.

“Mar­go,” said No­ra, and stopped, al­most afraid to speak. Be­side her, she heard Smith­back draw in his breath sharply.

The Mar­go Green who sat be­fore them was a mere shad­ow of the feisty wom­an who had been both aca­dem­ic ri­val and friend to her at the mu­se­um. She was fright­en­ing­ly thin, and her white skin lay like tis­sue pa­per over her veins. Her move­ments were slow and con­sid­ered, like some­one long un­fa­mil­iar with the use of their limbs. And yet her brown hair was rich and glossy, and in her eye was the same spark of life No­ra well re­called. Dio­genes Pen­der­gast had sent her to a dark and dan­ger­ous place—had al­most end­ed her life—but she was on her way back now.

“Hel­lo, you two,” she said in a thin, sleepy voice. “What day is it?”

“It’s Sat­ur­day,” No­ra said. “April 12.”

“Oh, good. I hoped it was still Sat­ur­day.” She smiled.

The nurse came in and bus­tled around Mar­go a mo­ment, prop­ping her up more com­fort­ably in the wheelchair. Then she walked around the room, open­ing cur­tains and fluff­ing pil­lows be­fore leav­ing them again. Shafts of ra­di­ant light streamed in­to the par­lor, falling over Mar­go’s head and shoul­ders and gild­ing her like an an­gel. Which in a way, No­ra thought, she was: hav­ing been brought al­most to the brink of death by an un­usu­al cock­tail of drugs ad­min­is­tered to her by Dio­genes.

“We brought you some­thing, Mar­go,” Smith­back said, reach­ing in­to his coat and bring­ing out a mani­la en­ve­lope. “We thought you might get a kick out of it.”

Mar­go took it, opened it slow­ly. “Why, it’s a copy of my first is­sue of Muse­ol­ogy!”

“Look in­side, it’s been signed by ev­ery cu­ra­tor of the An­thro­pol­ogy De­part­ment.”

“Even Char­lie Prine?” Mar­go’s eyes twin­kled.

No­ra laughed. “Even Prine.”

They pulled two seats up be­side the wheelchair and sat down.

“The place is just plain dull with­out you, Mar­go,” No­ra said. “You have to hur­ry up and get well.”

“That’s right,” said Smith­back, smil­ing, his ir­re­press­ible good hu­mor re­turn­ing. “The old pile needs some­one to shake it up from time to time, raise some fos­sil dust.”

Mar­go laughed qui­et­ly. “From what I’ve been read­ing, the last thing the mu­se­um needs right now is more con­tro­ver­sy. Is it true four peo­ple died in the crush at that Egyp­tian open­ing?”

“Yes,” No­ra said. “And an­oth­er six­ty were in­jured, a dozen of them severe­ly.”

She ex­changed glances with Smith­back. The sto­ry that had come out in the two weeks since the open­ing was that a glitch in the sys­tem soft­ware caused the sound-​and-​light show to go out of con­trol, in turn trig­ger­ing a pan­ic. The truth—that it could have been much, much worse—was so far known on­ly to a se­lect few in the mu­se­um and in law en­force­ment cir­cles.

“Is it true the di­rec­tor was among the in­jured?” Mar­go asked.

No­ra nod­ded. “Col­lopy suf­fered a seizure of some kind. He’s un­der psy­chi­atric ob­ser­va­tion at New York Hos­pi­tal, but he’s ex­pect­ed to make a full re­cov­ery.”

This was true—as far as it went—but of course it wasn’t the full sto­ry. Col­lopy, among sev­er­al oth­ers, had fall­en vic­tim to Dio­genes’s sound-​and-​light show, driv­en half psy­chot­ic by the laser puls­ing and the low-​fre­quen­cy au­dio waves. The same might have hap­pened to No­ra had she not closed her eyes and cov­ered her ears. As it was, she had suf­fered night­mares for a week. Pen­der­gast and the oth­ers had stopped the show be­fore it could run its full course and in­flict per­ma­nent dam­age: and as a re­sult, the prog­no­sis was ex­cel­lent for Col­lopy and the oth­ers—much bet­ter than for the un­for­tu­nate tech, Lip­per.

No­ra shift­ed in her chair. Some­day she would tell Mar­go ev­ery­thing—but not to­day. The wom­an still had a lot of re­cov­ery ahead of her.

“What do you think it means for the mu­se­um?” Mar­go asked. “This tragedy at the open­ing, com­ing on the heels of the di­amond theft?”

No­ra shook her head. “At first ev­ery­body as­sumed it was the fi­nal straw, es­pe­cial­ly since the may­or’s wife was among the in­jured. But it turns out that just the op­po­site has hap­pened. Thanks to all the con­tro­ver­sy, the Tomb of Senef is the hottest show in town. Re­quests for tick­et reser­va­tions have been pour­ing in at an un­be­liev­able rate. I even saw some­body hawk­ing I Sur­vived the Curse T-​shirts on Broad­way this morn­ing.”

“So they’re go­ing to re­open the tomb?” Mar­go asked.

Smith­back nod­ded. “Fast-​track­ing it, too. Most of the ar­ti­facts were spared. They hope to have it up and run­ning with­in the month.”

“Our new Egyp­tol­ogist is re­cast­ing the show,” No­ra said. “She’s re­vis­ing the orig­inal script, re­mov­ing some of the cheesi­er spe­cial ef­fects but keep­ing much of the sound-​and-​light show in­tact. She’s a great per­son, won­der­ful to work with, fun­ny, un­pre­ten­tious—we’re lucky to have her.”

“The news re­ports men­tioned some FBI agent as in­stru­men­tal in the res­cue,” Mar­go said. “That wouldn’t hap­pen to be Agent Pen­der­gast, by any chance?”

“How did you guess?” No­ra asked.

“Be­cause Pen­der­gast al­ways man­ages to get in­to the thick of things.”

“You’re telling me,” Smith­back said, smile fad­ing. No­ra no­ticed him un­con­scious­ly mas­sag­ing the hand that had been burned by acid.

The nurse ap­peared in the door­way. “Mar­go, I’ll need to take you back to your room in an­oth­er five min­utes.”

“Okay.” She turned back to them. “I sup­pose he’s been haunt­ing the mu­se­um ev­er since, ask­ing ques­tions, in­tim­idat­ing bu­reau­crats, and mak­ing a nui­sance of him­self.”

“Ac­tu­al­ly, no,” No­ra said. “He dis­ap­peared right af­ter the open­ing. No­body has seen or heard from him since.”

“Re­al­ly? How strange.”

“Yes, it is,” No­ra said. “It’s very strange in­deed.”

82

In late May, on the is­land of Capra­ia, two peo­ple—a man and a wom­an—sat on a ter­race at­tached to a neat white­washed house over­look­ing the Mediter­ranean. The ter­race stood near the edge of a bluff. Be­low the bluff, surf crawled around pil­lars of black vol­canic rock, wreathed in cir­cling gulls. Be­yond lay a blue im­men­si­ty, stretch­ing as far as the eye could see.

On the ter­race, a ta­ble of weath­er-​beat­en wood was spread with sim­ple food: a round of coarse bread, a plate of small salamis, a bot­tle of olive oil and a dish of olives, glass­es of white wine. The scent of flow­er­ing lemons lay heavy in the air, min­gling with the per­fume of wild rose­mary and sea salt. Along the hill­side above the ter­race, rows of grapevines were shoot­ing out of coil­ing ten­drils of green. The on­ly sound was the faint cry of gulls and the breeze that rus­tled through a trel­lis of pur­ple bougainvil­lea.

The two sat, sip­ping wine and speak­ing in low voic­es. The clothes the wom­an wore—bat­tered can­vas pants and an old work shirt—stood in con­trast to her fine­ly cut fea­tures and the glossy ma­hogany hair that spilled down her back. The man’s dress was as for­mal as the wom­an’s was in­for­mal: black suit of Ital­ian cut, crisp white shirt, un­der­stat­ed tie.

Both were watch­ing a third per­son—a beau­ti­ful young wom­an in a pale yel­low dress—who was strolling aim­less­ly through an olive grove be­side the vine­yard. From time to time, the young wom­an stopped to pick a flow­er, then con­tin­ued on, twist­ing the flow­er in her hands, pluck­ing it to pieces in an ab­sent­mind­ed way.

“I think I un­der­stand ev­ery­thing now,” the wom­an on the ter­race was say­ing, “ex­cept there’s one thing you didn’t ex­plain: how in the world did you re­move the GPS an­klet with­out set­ting off the alarm?”

The man made a dis­mis­sive ges­ture. “Child’s play. The plas­tic cuff had a wire in­side it that com­plet­ed a cir­cuit. The idea was that, in re­mov­ing the cuff, you’d need to cut the wire—thus break­ing the cir­cuit and trig­ger­ing an alarm.”

“So what did you do?”

“I scratched away the plas­tic in two places along the cir­cuit to ex­pose the wire. Then I at­tached a loop of wire to each spot, cut the bracelet in be­tween—and took it off. El­emen­tary, my dear Vi­ola.”

“Ah, je vois! But where did you get the loop of wire?”

“I made it with foil gum wrap­pers. I was, un­for­tu­nate­ly, ob­li­gat­ed to mas­ti­cate the gum, since I need­ed it to af­fix the wire.”

“And the gum? Where did you get that?”

“From my ac­quain­tance in the cell next door, a most tal­ent­ed young man who opened a whole new world for me—that of rhythm and per­cus­sion. He gave me one of his pre­cious packs of gum in re­turn for a small fa­vor I did him.”

“What was that?”

“I lis­tened.”

The wom­an smiled. “What goes around comes around.”

“Per­haps.”

“Speak­ing of prison, I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to get your wire. I was afraid you wouldn’t be per­mit­ted to leave the coun­try for ages.”

“Dio­genes left be­hind enough ev­idence in his valise to clear me of the mur­ders. That left on­ly three crimes of sub­stance: steal­ing Lu­cifer’s Heart; kid­nap­ping the gemol­ogist, Ka­plan; and break­ing out of prison. Nei­ther the mu­se­um nor Ka­plan cared to press charges. As for the prison, they would like noth­ing more than to for­get their se­cu­ri­ty was fal­li­ble. And so here I am.”

He paused to sip his wine. “That leads me to a ques­tion of my own. How is it that you didn’t rec­og­nize Men­zies as my broth­er? You’d seen him in dis­guise be­fore.”

“I’ve won­dered about that,” Vi­ola replied. “I saw him as two dif­fer­ent peo­ple, but nei­ther one was Men­zies.”

There was a si­lence. Vi­ola let her gaze drift again to­ward the younger wom­an in the olive grove. “She’s a most un­usu­al girl.”

“Yes,” the man replied. “More un­usu­al than you could even imag­ine.”

They con­tin­ued to watch the younger wom­an drift aim­less­ly through the twist­ed trees, like a rest­less ghost.

“How did she come to be your ward?”

“It’s a long and rather com­pli­cat­ed sto­ry, Vi­ola. Some­day I’ll tell you—I promise.”

The wom­an smiled, sipped her wine. For a mo­ment, si­lence set­tled over them.

“How do you like the new vin­tage?” she asked. “I broke it out es­pe­cial­ly for the oc­ca­sion.”

“As de­light­ful as the old one. It’s from your grapes, I as­sume?”

“It is. I picked them my­self, and I even stomped out the juice with my own two feet.”

“I don’t know whether to be hon­ored or hor­ri­fied.” He picked up a small sala­mi, ex­am­ined it, quar­tered it with a par­ing knife. “Did you shoot the boar for these, as well?”

Vi­ola smiled. “No. I had to draw the line some­where.” She looked at him, her gaze grow­ing con­cerned. “You’re mak­ing a valiant ef­fort to be amus­ing, Aloy­sius.”

“Is that all it ap­pears to be—an ef­fort? I am sor­ry.”

“You’re pre­oc­cu­pied. And you don’t look es­pe­cial­ly good. Things aren’t go­ing well for you, are they?”

He hes­itat­ed a mo­ment. Then, very slow­ly, he shook his head.

“I wish there was some­thing I could do.”

“Your com­pa­ny is ton­ic enough, Vi­ola.”

She smiled again, her gaze re­turn­ing to the young wom­an. “Strange to think that mur­der—and there’s re­al­ly no oth­er word for it, is there?—could have been such a cathar­tic ex­pe­ri­ence for her.”

“Yes. Even so, I fear she re­mains a dam­aged hu­man be­ing.” He hes­itat­ed. “I re­al­ize now it was a mis­take to keep her shut up in the house in New York. She need­ed to get out and see the world. Dio­genes ex­ploit­ed that need. I made a mis­take there, too—al­low­ing her to be vul­ner­able to him. The guilt, and the shame, are with me al­ways.”

“Have you spo­ken of this to her? Your feel­ings, I mean. It might be good for both of you.”

“I’ve tried. More than once, in fact. But she vi­olent­ly re­jects any pos­si­bil­ity of a dis­cus­sion on that top­ic.”

“Per­haps that will change with time.” Vi­ola shook out her hair. “Where do you plan to go next?”

“We’ve al­ready toured France, Spain, and Italy—she seems in­ter­est­ed in the ru­ins of an­cient Rome. I’ve been do­ing ev­ery­thing I can to take her mind off what hap­pened. Even so, she’s pre­oc­cu­pied and dis­tant—as you can see.”

“I think what Con­stance needs most is di­rec­tion.”

“What sort of di­rec­tion?”

“You know. The kind of di­rec­tion a fa­ther would give a daugh­ter.”

Pen­der­gast shift­ed in his chair, ill at ease. “I’ve nev­er had a daugh­ter.”

“You’ve got one now. And you know what? I think this whole Grand Tour you’ve been tak­ing her on isn’t work­ing.”

“The same thought had oc­curred to me.”

“You need heal­ing—both of you. You need to get over this, to­geth­er.”

Pen­der­gast was silent for a mo­ment. “I’ve been think­ing about re­treat­ing from the world for a time.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a monastery I once spent some time at. A very se­clud­ed one, in west­ern Ti­bet, ex­ceed­ing­ly re­mote. I thought we might go there.”

“How long would you be gone?”

“As long as it takes.” He took a sip of wine. “A few months, I’d imag­ine.”

“That might be most ben­efi­cial. And it brings me to some­thing else. What’s next . . . for us?”

He slow­ly put down the glass. “Ev­ery­thing.”

There was a brief si­lence. “How do you mean?” Her voice was low.

“Ev­ery­thing is open to us,” said Pen­der­gast slow­ly. “When I have set­tled Con­stance, then it will be our turn.”

She reached out and touched his hand. “I can help you with Con­stance. Bring her to Egypt this win­ter. I’ll be re­sum­ing work in the Val­ley of the Kings. She could as­sist me. It’s a rugged, ad­ven­tur­ous life, work­ing as an ar­chae­ol­ogist.”

“Are you se­ri­ous?”

“Of course.”

Pen­der­gast smiled. “Ex­cel­lent. I think she would like that.”

“And you?”

“I sup­pose . . . I would like that, too.”

Con­stance had drift­ed clos­er, and they fell silent.

“What do you think of Capra­ia?” Vi­ola called over as the girl stepped on­to the ter­raz­zo.

“Very nice.” She walked to the balustrade, tossed over a man­gled flow­er, and rest­ed her arms on the warm stone, star­ing out to sea.

Vi­ola smiled, nudged at Pen­der­gast. “Tell her the plan,” she whis­pered. “I’ll be in­side.”

Pen­der­gast stood and walked over to Con­stance. She re­mained at the rail­ing, look­ing out to sea, the air stir­ring her long hair.

“Vi­ola’s of­fered to take you to Egypt this win­ter, to as­sist her with her ex­ca­va­tions in the Val­ley of the Kings. You could not on­ly learn about his­to­ry, you could touch it with your own hands.”

Con­stance shook her head, still star­ing out to sea. A long si­lence fol­lowed, filled by the dis­tant cries of the seag­ulls, the muf­fled whis­per of the surf be­low.

Pen­der­gast drew clos­er. “You need to let go, Con­stance,” he said. “You’re safe now: Dio­genes is dead.”

“I know,” she replied.

“Then you know there’s noth­ing more to fear. All that’s past. Fin­ished.”

Still she said noth­ing, her blue eyes re­flect­ing the vast azure empti­ness of the sea. Fi­nal­ly she turned to­ward him. “No, it isn’t,” she said.

Pen­der­gast looked back at her, frown­ing. “What do you mean?”

For a mo­ment, she did not an­swer.

“What do you mean?” he re­peat­ed.

At last Con­stance spoke. And when she did, her voice was so weary, so cold, that it chilled him de­spite the warm May sun­shine.

“I’m preg­nant.”

THE PRE­STON-​CHILD NOV­ELS

A WORD FROM THE AU­THORS

We are fre­quent­ly asked in what or­der, if any, our books should be read. The ques­tion is most ap­pli­ca­ble to the nov­els that fea­ture Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast. Al­though most of our nov­els are writ­ten to be stand-​alone sto­ries, very few have turned out to be set in dis­crete worlds. Quite the op­po­site: it seems the more nov­els we write to­geth­er, the more “bleed-​through” oc­curs be­tween the char­ac­ters and events that com­prise them all. Char­ac­ters from one book might ap­pear in a lat­er one, for ex­am­ple, or events in one nov­el could spill in­to a sub­se­quent one. In short, we have slow­ly been build­ing up a uni­verse in which all the char­ac­ters in our nov­els, and the ex­pe­ri­ences they have, take place and over­lap.

Read­ing the nov­els in a par­tic­ular or­der, how­ev­er, is rarely nec­es­sary. We have worked hard to make al­most all of our books in­to sto­ries that can be en­joyed with­out read­ing any of the oth­ers, with a few ex­cep­tions.

Here, then, is our own break­down of our books.

THE PEN­DER­GAST NOV­ELS

Rel­ic was our first nov­el, and the first to fea­ture Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast, and as such has no an­tecedents.

Reli­quary is the se­quel to Rel­ic.

The Cab­inet of Cu­riosi­ties is our third Pen­der­gast nov­el, and it stands com­plete­ly on its own.

Still Life with Crows is next. It is al­so a self-​con­tained sto­ry (al­though peo­ple cu­ri­ous about Con­stance Greene will find a lit­tle in­for­ma­tion here as well as in The Cab­inet of Cu­riosi­ties).

Brim­stone is next, and is the first nov­el in what we in­for­mal­ly call the Pen­der­gast tril­ogy. Al­though it is al­so self-​con­tained, it does pick up some threads be­gun in The Cab­inet of Cu­riosi­ties.

Dance of Death is the mid­dle nov­el of the Pen­der­gast tril­ogy. While it can be read as a stand-​alone book, read­ers may wish to read Brim­stone be­fore Dance of Death.

The Book of the Dead is the last, cul­mi­nat­ing nov­el in the Pen­der­gast tril­ogy. For great­est en­joy­ment, the read­er should read at least Dance of Death first.

THE NON-​PEN­DER­GAST NOV­ELS

We have al­so writ­ten a num­ber of self-​con­tained tales of ad­ven­ture that do not fea­ture Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast. They are, by date of pub­li­ca­tion, Mount Drag­on, Rip­tide, Thun­der­head, and The Ice Lim­it.

Thun­der­head in­tro­duces the ar­chae­ol­ogist No­ra Kel­ly, who ap­pears in all the lat­er Pen­der­gast nov­els. The Ice Lim­it in­tro­duces Eli Glinn, who ap­pears in Dance of Death and The Book of the Dead.

In clos­ing, we want to as­sure our read­ers that this note is not in­tend­ed as some kind of oner­ous syl­labus, but rather as an an­swer to the ques­tion In what or­der should I read your nov­els? We feel ex­traor­di­nar­ily for­tu­nate that there are peo­ple like you who en­joy read­ing our nov­els as much as we en­joy writ­ing them.

With our best wish­es,

Dou­glas Pre­ston

Lin­coln Child

Ref­er­ences

Page num­bers here re­fer to the print edi­tion.

Orig­inal Rus­sian po­et­ry on page 169 is from “Heart’s Mem­ory of Sun” by An­na Akhma­to­va, 1911. Trans­la­tion by Stan­ley Ku­nitz © 1967-1973.

Orig­inal po­et­ry on page 173 is from “She” by Theodore Roethke © 1958.

Orig­inal Ital­ian po­et­ry on pages 243, 406, and 414 is from “La Leggen­da di Teodori­co” (The Leg­end of Theodor­ic) by Gio­suè Car­duc­ci, 1896. Trans­la­tions on pages 406 and 414 by Dou­glas J. Pre­ston © 2006.

Orig­inal lyrics on page 266 are from Ai­da. Opera writ­ten by Giuseppe Ver­di from Ital­ian li­bret­to by An­to­nio Ghis­lanzoni; first per­formed 1871. Trans­la­tion by Dou­glas J. Pre­ston © 2006.

Orig­inal po­et­ry on page 385 is from “Meta­mor­phoses” by Ovid, 43 BC to cir­ca AD 17. Trans­la­tion un­der the di­rec­tion of Sir Samuel Garth, 1717.

Orig­inal po­et­ry on page 386 is from “Meta­mor­phoses” by Ovid, 43 BC to cir­ca AD 17. Trans­la­tion by Ho­race Gre­go­ry © 1958.

Orig­inal French po­et­ry on page 391 is from “Les Fleurs du Mal” by Charles Baude­laire, 1857.

Orig­inal Ital­ian po­et­ry on page 393 is from “In­fer­no” from The Di­vine Com­edy by Dante Alighieri, 1308-1320.

Orig­inal po­et­ry on page 394 and page 402 is from “The Hol­low Men” by T.S. Eliot © 1925.

Orig­inal Greek quote on page 400 is from “Agamem­non,” part one of The Oresteia by Aeschy­lus. First per­formed 458 BC.

Orig­inal quote on page 409 is from Ham­let by William Shake­speare, 1600-1602.

Orig­inal po­et­ry on page 417 is from “To His Coy Mis­tress” by An­drew Mar­vell, 1649-1660.