Текст книги "Blue Labyrinth"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 28 страниц)

41

The Toyota Hilux turned a corner and came to a screeching stop. The guard sitting in the rear seat opened the door and got out – semi-automatic rifle now pointed toward the ground – and gestured for Pendergast to get out as well.

Pendergast eased himself out of the pickup. The guard nodded at the building directly before them. It had, like those around it, once been a narrow three-story building, but now it was little more than a burned-out hulk, roofless, its upper story caved in, heavy streamers of black soot soiling the stucco above the empty windowsills. The charred remains of the front door were studded with several ragged holes, as if would-be rescuers had tried to punch their way in with battering rams.

“Obrigado,” Pendergast said. The guard nodded, got back into the pickup, and the vehicle moved away.

Pendergast stood in the narrow alley for a moment, watching the vehicle recede into the distance. Then he scanned the surrounding buildings. They resembled the other sections of the Cidade dos Anjos he had seen – haphazardly constructed, wedged tightly together, painted in gaudy colors, rooflines rising and falling crazily with the topography of the mountainside. A few people glanced curiously out of windows at him.

He turned back to the house. While there was no street sign – there were no street signs anywhere in the favela—the ghostly remains of the number 31 could be seen painted over the ruined door. Pendergast pushed the door open – a lock lay on the tiled floor just inside, rusted and covered with soot – stepped slowly in, then closed the door behind him as best he could.

The interior was stifling and, even now, smelled strongly of charred wood and melted plastic. He looked around, giving his eyes time to adjust to the dimness, trying to ignore the pain that washed over him in slow waves. There was a tiny packet of painkillers in a hidden pocket of his jacket – something those who had frisked him had missed – and for a moment he considered chewing and swallowing several, but then rejected the idea. It would not do for what lay ahead.

For now, the pain would have to stay.

He navigated the first floor. The layout of the narrow house resembled the shotgun shacks of the Mississippi Delta. There was a living room, with a table burned to a heap of scorched sticks, a burnt sofa popping open with black springs. A polyester rug had melted into the concrete floor. Beyond lay a small kitchen, with a two-burner enamel stove, a scratched and dented cast-iron sink, some drawers and shelving, all open. The floor was covered with broken crockery, glassware, and cheap, half-melted cutlery. Smoke and fire had left strange, menacing patterns over the walls and ceiling.

Pendergast stood in the doorway of the kitchen. He tried to imagine his son, Alban, entering the house and striding into this room; greeting his wife; engaging in small talk; laughing, discussing their unborn child and plans for the future.

The image refused to form in his head. It was inconceivable. After a moment or two he abandoned the attempt.

There was so much that made no sense. A pity his mind was not clearer. He recalled the details of Fábio’s story. Alban hiding out in a favela, killing some loner and stealing his identity – that he could well believe. Alban, sneaking back into the States, setting in motion some plan of revenge against his father – he could readily believe that, as well. Alban staging a coup and taking over the favela for his own evil purposes. Most believable of all.

You have Alban to thank for this…

But Alban, loving father and family man? Alban, secretly married to the Angel of the Favelas? This he could not see. Nor could he see Alban as benevolent slum leader, ridding it of tyranny and ushering in an age of peace and prosperity. Surely Alban had deceived Fábio as he had deceived everyone else.

And there was the other thing Fábio had said – that before he had gone to America for the second time, Alban had planned to stop off in Switzerland.

Recalling this, Pendergast felt a chill despite the oppressive heat of the ruined house. There was only one reason he could think for Alban to go to Switzerland. But how could he possibly know that his brother, Tristram, was at a boarding school there, under an assumed name? Immediately Pendergast knew the answer: it would be a simple matter for a man of Alban’s gifts to discover Tristram’s whereabouts.

… And yet Tristram was safe. Pendergast knew this for a fact, because, in the wake of Alban’s death, he had made additional arrangements to ensure Tristram’s security.

What had been going through Alban’s mind? What had been his plan? The answers – if there were any answers to be had – might lie in these very ruins.

Pendergast made his way back to the front of the house and the concrete staircase. It was badly charred, missing its railing. He ascended it carefully, one hand trailing against the wall, the blackened treads squeaking ominously under his feet.

The second floor was in far worse shape than the first. The acrid stench was stronger here. In places, the third floor had collapsed into the second during the conflagration, causing a dangerous welter of carbonized furniture and charred, splintered beams. In several spots, the roof yawned open, revealing skeletal beams and the blue Brazilian sky above. Slowly picking his way through the rubble, Pendergast determined that the floor had once held three rooms: an office or study of some kind; a bathroom; and a small bedroom that – based on the once-pleasant wallpaper and the ribs of a crib it contained – had been intended as a nursery. Despite the scorched walls and cracked and hanging ceiling, this room had fared better than the others.

The bedroom of Danika – of Danika and Alban – must have been on the third floor. Nothing remained of it. Pendergast stood in the half-light of the nursery, musing. This room would have to do.

He waited there, motionless, for five minutes, then ten. And then – grimacing in pain – he slowly lay down on the floor, ignoring the layer of ash, coal, and dirt that covered the tiles. He folded his hands across his chest and let his eyes flit across the walls and ceilings for a moment before closing them and going utterly still.

Pendergast was one of a tiny handful of practitioners of an esoteric mental discipline known as Chongg Ran, and one of only two masters of it outside of Tibet. With years of training, extensive study, near-fanatical intellectual rigor, and a familiarity with other cerebral exercises such as those in Giordano Bruno’s Ars Memoriae, and the Nine Levels of Consciousness described in the rare seventeenth-century chapbook by Alexandre Carêem, Pendergast had developed the ability to place himself in a state of pure concentration. From this state – utterly removed from the physical world – he could merge in his mind thousands of separate facts, observations, suppositions, and hypotheses. Through this unification and synthesis, he was able to re-create scenes from the past and put himself among places and people that had vanished long ago. The exercise often led to startling insights unobtainable any other way.

The problem at present was the intellectual rigor, the need to clear his mind of distraction, before proceeding. In his current state, this would be exceedingly difficult.

First, he had to isolate and compartmentalize his pain while simultaneously keeping his mind as clear as possible. Shutting everything out, he began with a problem in mathematics: integrating e^−(x2), e raised to the power of minus x squared.

The pain remained.

He moved on to tensor calculus, working out two problems in vector analysis simultaneously in his head.

Still the pain remained.

Another approach was necessary. Breathing shallowly, keeping his eyes gently but completely closed, careful to keep his mind from acknowledging the pain that coursed through his limbs, Pendergast allowed a tiny, perfect orchid to form in his imagination. For a minute it floated there, rotating slowly in perfect blackness. He then allowed the orchid to languorously fall into its component parts: petals, dorsal sepal, lateral sepal, ovary, post-anterior lobe.

He focused his attention on a single part: the labellum. Willing the rest of the flower to vanish into the blackness, he let the labellum grow and grow until it filled the entire field of his mental vision. And still it grew, expanding with geometric regularity, until he could see past the enzymes and strands of DNA and electron shells into its very atomic structure – and still deeper, to the particles at the subatomic level. For a long moment, he looked on with detachment as the deepest and most profound elements of the orchid’s structure moved in their strange and unfathomable courses. And then – with a great effort of will – he stilled the entire atomic engine of the flower, forcing all the countless billions of particles to hang suspended, motionless, in the black vacuum of his imagination.

When he finally let the labellum vanish from his mind, the pain was gone.

Now, still within his mind, he left the would-be nursery, descended the stairs, passed through the closed front door, and found himself on the street. It was night, perhaps six months, perhaps nine months earlier.

Suddenly the house from which he had just exited exploded in flame. As he watched – disembodied, unable to act, powerless to do anything but observe – accelerants quickly carried the flames through the third floor of the residence. Down a back alley, he saw two dark figures racing away.

Almost immediately the crackle of flames became mingled with the sounds of a woman’s screams. A crowd had gathered, shouting, crying hysterically. Several men tried to force open the locked front door with improvised battering rams. It took them at least a minute, and by the time they succeeded the screams had stopped and the third floor of the house was already collapsing into a fiery labyrinth of beams and glowing ceiling tiles. Nevertheless, several of the men – Pendergast recognized Fábio among them – ran into the building, quickly forming a bucket brigade.

Pendergast watched the frantic activity, a spectral composite of intellect and memory. Within half an hour the fire was out – but the damage had been done. He now saw a new figure come running up the Rio Paranoá. It was a figure he recognized: his son, Alban. But it was an Alban that Pendergast had never seen before. Instead of the usual haughty, scornful, bored visage, this Alban was frantic with worry. He looked as if he had run a long way. Gasping with breath, he pushed through the crowds, forcing his way toward the door of number 31.

He was met in the doorway by his lieutenant, Fábio. His face was a mess of soot and sweat. Alban tried to push his way past but Fábio barred the doorway, shaking his head violently, pleading with Alban in a low, fast voice not to attempt to enter.

At last, Alban staggered back. He placed one hand on the plaster façade for support. To Pendergast, watching from his mind’s eye, it seemed as if Alban’s world was about to fall asunder. He tore at his hair; he struck the smoke-blackened wall, emitting a half moan, half wail of despair. It was an expression of grief as profound as any Pendergast had ever seen – and never would have expected from Alban.

And then – quite suddenly – Alban changed. He grew calm, almost preternaturally so. He glanced up at the ruined house, still smoking, its ruined upper floors dropping glowing embers. He turned to Fábio, asked him pointed questions in a low, urgent tone. Fábio listened, nodded. And then the two turned and melted away down a side alley.

* * *

For a moment the scene playing out in Pendergast’s head vanished. When it became visible again, the location had changed. He was now outside the compound at the very summit of the Ciudad dos Anjos: the gated, fenced complex from which he had come not an hour before. Now, however, it looked more like an armed camp than a residence. There were two guards patrolling the fence; dogs with handlers wearing heavy leather gloves moved back and forth across the courtyard beyond. The windows of the upper story of the central building were brilliantly lighted; talk and harsh laughter floated down from them. From his vantage point in the shadows across the street, Pendergast saw the silhouette of a large, heavyset man move briefly before one of the windows. O Punho – The Fist.

Pendergast glanced over his shoulder, down at the favela that sprawled over the flanks of the mountainside. A faint glow rose out of a crabbed warren of streets about half a mile below: Alban’s house was still smoldering.

And now there came a new sound: the low throb of an engine. Pendergast saw a battered jeep, its headlights out, approach, then pull over to the side of the road about a quarter mile away. A single figure got out of the driver’s seat: Alban.

Pendergast squinted through the darkness of his mind’s eye for a clearer look. Alban had a large pack slung over his shoulder, and a weapon in each hand. He shrank against the façade of the nearest house, and then – making sure he wasn’t spotted – moved rapidly up the darkened street to the gated entrance to the compound.

And then something surprising happened. Just as he reached it, Alban stopped, turned, and looked directly at Pendergast.

Of course, Pendergast could not be seen. His corporeal form was not there, but rather in the ruined nursery, and all this was a creation inside his own mind. And yet the piercing, strangely knowing gaze of Alban disconcerted him, threatened to dissolve the already-fragile memory crossing…

… Then Alban looked away. He crouched, checking his weapons: twin TEC-9s, each equipped with silencers and thirty-two-round magazines.

One of the guards outside the fence had turned away and was lighting a cigar. Alban crept swiftly forward and waited for the other guard to come to his location. In a peculiar way he seemed to anticipate the man’s movement. As the guard strolled along, Alban removed a knife from his belt, waited for the guard to pause and ignite his lighter, and then slit his throat just as the man was concentrating on touching the flame to the tip of the cigarette. A wet sigh of air was the only sound as he let the man’s body down gently and the second guard, his cigarillo now lit, turned back. The guard reached for his weapon but Alban – again with his preternatural gift of foresight – anticipated his movements by seizing the barrel and twisting the weapon from the guard’s hands even as he buried the knife in his heart.

Satisfying himself that both guards were dead, Alban retreated once more to his initial vantage point. Removing the bulky pack and placing it on the ground, he pulled out something long and villainous looking. As he fitted the pieces together, Pendergast recognized an RPG-7 grenade launcher.

Alban paused, preparing himself. Then, reslinging the pack over his shoulder and tucking the TEC-9s into his waistband, he approached the compound again. As Pendergast watched out of the darkness of memory, Alban positioned himself some distance from the gate, balanced the grenade launcher on his shoulder, sighted it in, and fired.

There was a huge explosion, followed by a tremendous boiling cloud of orange flame and smoke. In the distance, Pendergast could hear shouts, barking, and a clattering rain of metal as pieces of the fence began falling all around. Dogs and their human handlers came running out of the smoke. Slinging the RPG over his other shoulder and plucking the TEC-9s from his waistband, Alban dispatched one team after another with bursts of automatic fire, even before they emerged from the cloaking smoke.

When no more guards came, Alban reached into the pack, pulled out another rocket-propelled grenade, and fitted it to the RPG-7. He moved cautiously through the ruins of the fence, smoke still drifting here and there in thick pockets, weapons at the ready. Pendergast followed.

The courtyard was empty. There was much activity and consternation in the central building. Seconds later a stream of machine-gun fire came from an upper window. But Alban had positioned himself in cover, outside the field of fire. Aiming his RPG again, he fired a grenade at the windows of the upper floor. They flew apart in a storm of glass, cinder block, and wood. As the thunder echoed away, screams of pain could be heard within. Alban fitted another grenade into the launcher; fired again.

Now armed men began boiling out of the buildings to the left and right. Dropping the RPG, Alban began firing at them in controlled bursts from the TEC-9s, moving from one pool of darkness to another, one cover to another, avoiding their volleys even before they started.

Within minutes, the deadly ballet was over. A dozen more men lay dead, their bodies draped in doorways or splayed over the cobbles of the courtyard.

And now Alban approached the central building, automatic handguns at the ready. He entered the front door. Pendergast followed. Alban glanced around briefly, hesitating, before stealthily moving up the staircase.

At the top of the stair, a man burst out of a darkened room, handgun raised, but with that strange sixth sense of his Alban had anticipated the move and his own weapon was already raised; he fired even before the man had fully appeared, the fatal rounds ripping through the door frame to kill the man as he emerged. Alban paused to eject the magazines of the TEC-9s, slap two more home. And then he crept up the stairway to the third floor.

The office – the office Pendergast had visited himself, just an hour before, but at the same time half a year later – lay in ruins. Furniture was burning; two grenade entry holes punctured the walls. Alban moved to the center of the office, weapons at the ready, and slowly looked around. At least four bloody figures lay motionless: some sprawled across overturned chairs, one actually pinned to the wall by a massive splinter of blown-apart wooden furniture.

A heavyset man lay across the desk, rivulets of blood running from his mouth and nose. O Punho. He twitched slightly. Alban turned toward him and let a stream of at least a dozen bullets stitch their way through the gang lord’s body. There was a dreadful convulsing; a gargling sound; and then nothing. Blood ran across the floor and streamed out the hole in the side of the building.

Alban paused, listening. But all was silent. O Punho’s lieutenants and personal guards – all of them – were dead.

For a moment Alban remained standing amid the blood and the devastation. And then – very slowly – he crumpled onto the floor, sinking into the running sheets of blood.

Watching him, Pendergast recalled the words of Fábio. You do not understand at all. Something in him changed when his wife and child were killed.

From the doorway, in his mind’s eye, Pendergast watched his son: sunken to the floor, silent and motionless, the blood wicking into his clothes, surrounded by ruination of his own causing. Had Fábio been telling the truth? Was this more than mere violent retribution that Pendergast was now witnessing? Was it possible this was remorse? Or a kind of justice? Had Alban learned what evil—true evil – really was? Was he changing?

Suddenly the walls of the ruined office flickered; went black briefly; came back into view in his mind’s eye; flickered again. Desperately, Pendergast tried to keep the memory crossing alive in his head: to observe his son, to learn the answer to his questions. But then the pain burst through again, all the worse for having been suppressed, and the entire tableau – the burning compound, the bloody bodies, and Alban – vanished from Pendergast’s mind.

For a moment, Pendergast simply lay where he was in the burnt nursery, motionless. Then he opened his eyes and – with difficulty – raised himself to his feet. He dusted himself off, looked around with wavering eyes. As if in a dream, he left the nursery, made his way down the staircase, and stepped out of dimness into the bright sunlight of the grimy street.