Текст книги "White Fire"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

52

Three o’clock in the morning, December twenty-fourth. After flitting like a specter past the worn shopfronts and dark windows of Old Town, Pendergast took just seconds to break into the Ideal Saloon, picking the picturesque but ineffectual nineteenth-century lock.

He stepped into the dim space of the bar– cum-museum, its interior illuminated only by several strips of emergency fluorescent lighting, which cast garish shadows about the room. The saloon consisted of a large, central room, with circular tables, chairs, and a plank floor. A long bar ran the entire length of the far end. The walls consisted of wainscoting of vertical beadboard, gleaming with varnish and darkened by time, below flocked velvet wallpaper in a flowery Victorian pattern. The wall was decorated with sconces of copper and cut glass. Behind the bar and to the right, a staircase led up to what had been a small whorehouse. And farther off to the right, in an alcove partly under the staircase, stood some gaming tables. Velvet ropes just inside two swinging doors created a viewing area, preventing visitors from proceeding into the restored saloon.

Moving without noise, Pendergast ducked under the ropes and took a long, thoughtful turn about the room. A whisky bottle and some shot glasses stood on the bar, and several tables were also arrayed with bottles and glasses. Behind the bar stood a large mirrored case of antique liquor bottles filled with colored water.

He moved through the bar and into the gaming area. A poker table stood in one corner, covered with green felt, with hands of five-card stud laid out: four aces against a straight flush. A blackjack table, also artfully arranged with cards, stood beside a splendid antique roulette wheel with ivory, red jasper, and ebony inlay.

Pendergast glided past the gaming area to a door under the stairs. He tried to open it, found it locked, and swiftly picked the lock.

It opened into a small, dusty room, which remained unrestored, with cracked plaster walls and peeling wallpaper, some old chairs, and a broken table. Graffiti, some bearing dates from the 1930s, when Roaring Fork was still a ghost town, were scratched into the wall. A pile of broken whisky bottles lay in one corner. At the back of this room stood a door that led, Pendergast knew, to a rear exit.

He took off his coat and scarf and carefully draped them over one of the chairs, and looked around, slowly and carefully, as if committing everything to memory. He stood, quite still, for a long time, and then finally he stirred. Choosing a vacant spot on the floor, he lay down on the dirty boards and folded his hands over his chest, like a corpse in a coffin. Slowly, very slowly, he closed his eyes. In the silence, he focused on the sounds of the snowstorm: the muffled wind shaking and moaning about the exterior walls, the creaking of the wood, the rattling of the tin roof. The air smelled of dust, dry rot, and mildew. He allowed his respiration and pulse to slow and his mind to relax.

It was in this back room, he felt certain, that the Committee of Seven would have met up. But before he went down that avenue, there was another place he wished to visit first – a visit that would take place entirely within his mind.

Pendergast had once spent time in a remote Tibetan monastery, studying an esoteric meditative discipline known as Chongg Ran. It was one of the least known of the Tibetan mind techniques. The teachings were never put down in writing, and they could only be transmitted directly teacher-to-pupil.

Pendergast had taken the heart of Chongg Ran and combined it with several other mental disciplines, including the concept of a memory palace as described in a sixteenth-century Italian manuscript by Giordano Bruno titled Ars Memoria, Art of Memory. The result was a unique and highly complex form of mental visualization. With training, careful preparation, and a fanatical degree of intellectual discipline, the exercise allowed him to take a complex problem with many thousands of facts and surmises, and mentally stitch them together into a coherent narrative, which could then be processed, analyzed – and, especially, experienced. Pendergast used the technique to help solve elusive problems; to visualize places, via the force of his intellect, that could not be reached physically – far distant places, or even places in the past. The technique was extremely draining, however, and he employed it sparingly.

He lay for many minutes, as still as a corpse, first arranging a hugely complex set of facts into careful order, then tuning his senses to the surrounding environment while simultaneously shutting down the voice in his mind, turning off that incessant running commentary all people carry in their heads. The voice had been especially voluble of late, and it took a great deal of effort to silence it; Pendergast was forced to move his meditative stance from the Third Level to the Fourth Level, doing complex equations in his head, playing four hands of bridge simultaneously. At last, the voice was silenced, and he then began the ancient steps of Chongg Ran itself. First, he blocked every sound, every sensation, one after another: the creaking of the building, the rustling of the wind, the scent of dust, the hard floor beneath him, the seeming infinitude of his own corporal awareness – until at length he arrived at the state of stong pa nyid: the condition of Pure Emptiness. For a moment, there was only nonexistence; even time itself seemed to fall away.

But then – slowly, very slowly – something began to materialize out of the nothingness. At first it was as miniaturized, as delicate, as beautiful as a Fabergé egg. With that same lack of hurry, it grew larger and clearer. Eyes still shut, Pendergast allowed it to take on form and definition around him. And then, at last, he opened his eyes to find himself within a brightly lit space: a splendid and elegant dining room, refulgent with light and crystal, the clinking of glasses, and the murmur of genteel conversation.

To the smell of cigar smoke and the learned discourse of a string quartet, Pendergast took in the opulent room. His eyes traveled over the tables, finally stopping at one in a far corner. Seated at it were four gentlemen. Two of the men were laughing together over some witticism or other – one wearing a broadcloth frock coat, the other in evening dress. Pendergast, however, was more interested in the other two diners. One was dressed flamboyantly: white kid gloves, a vest and cutaway coat of black velvet, a large frilled necktie, silk knee breeches and stockings, slippers adorned with grosgrain bows. An orchid drooped in his buttonhole. He was in deep descant, speaking animatedly, one hand pressed against his breast, the other pointing heavenward, index finger extended in a travesty of John the Baptist. The man beside him, who seemed to be hanging on his companion’s every word, presented an entirely different appearance, a contrast so strong as to almost be comical. He was a stocky fellow in a somber, sensible English suit, with big mustaches and an awkward bearing.

They were Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Slowly, in his mind, Pendergast approached the table, listening intently, as the conversation – or, more frequently, monologue – became audible.

“Indeed?” Wilde was saying, in a remarkably deep and sonorous voice. “Did you think that – as one who would happily sacrifice himself on the pyre of aestheticism – I do not recognize the face of horror when I stare into it?”

There was no empty seat. Pendergast turned, motioned to a waiter, indicated the table. Immediately, the man brought up a fifth chair, placing it between Conan Doyle and the man Pendergast realized must be Joseph Stoddart.

“I was once told a story so dreadful, so distressing in its particulars and in the extent of its evil, that now I truly believe nothing I hear could ever frighten me again.”

“How interesting.”

“Would you care to hear it? It is not for the faint of heart.”

As he listened to the conversation taking place beside him, Pendergast reached forward, poured himself a glass of wine, found it excellent.

“It was told to me during my lecture tour of America a few years back. On my way to San Francisco, I stopped at a rather squalid yet picturesque mining camp known as Roaring Fork.” Wilde pressed his hand to Doyle’s knee for emphasis. “After my lecture, one of the miners approached me, an elderly chap somewhat the worse – or, perhaps, the better – for drink. He took me aside, said he’d enjoyed my story so much that he had one of his own to share with me.” He paused for a sip of burgundy. “Here, lean in a little closer, that’s a good fellow, and I’ll tell it you exactly as it was told to me.”

Doyle leaned in, as requested. Pendergast leaned in, as well.

“I tried to escape him, but he would have none of it, presuming to approach me in a most familiar way, breathing fumes of the local ubriacant. My first impulse was to push past, but there was something about the look in his eye that stopped me. I confess I was also intrigued – in an anthropological fashion, Doyle, don’t you know – by this leathern specimen, this uncouth bard, this bibulous miner, and I found myself curious as to what he considered a ‘good story.’ And so I listened, and rather attentively, as his American drawl was nigh indecipherable. He spoke of events that had occurred some years earlier, not long after the silver strikes that established Roaring Fork. Over the course of one summer, a grizzled bear – or so it was believed – had taken to roaming the mountains above the town, attacking, killing… andeating…lone miners working their claims.”

Doyle nodded vigorously, his face concentrated with the utmost interest.

“Naturally, the town fell into a state of perfect terror. But the killings went on, as there were many lone men upon the mountain. The bear was merciless, ambuscading the miners outside their cabins, killing and savagely dismembering them – and then feasting upon their flesh.” Wilde paused. “I should have liked to have known whether the, ah, consumptioncommenced while consciousness was still present. Can you imagine what it would be like to be devoured alive by a savage beast? To watch it tear your flesh off, then chew and swallow, with evident satisfaction? That is a contemplation never even considered by Huysmans in his À Rebours. How sadly lacking the aesthete was, in hindsight!”

Wilde glanced over to see what effect his words were having on the country doctor. Doyle had grasped his glass of claret and taken a deep draught. Listening, Pendergast took a sip of his own glass, then signaled a waiter to bring him a menu.

“Many a fellow tried to track the grizzled bear,” Wilde continued, “but none was successful – save for one miner, a man who had learned the fine art of tracking while living among Indians. He conceived a notion that the killings were not the work of a bear.”

“Not the work of a bear, sir?”

“Not the work of a bear, sir. And so, waiting until the next killing, this chap – his name was Cropsey – went a-tracking, and soon discovered that the perpetrators of this outrage were a group of men.”

At this, Doyle leaned back rather abruptly. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Wilde. Do you mean to say that these men were…cannibals?”

“Indeed I do. American cannibals.”

Doyle shook his head. “Monstrous. Monstrous.”

“Quite so,” Wilde said. “They have none of the good manners of your English cannibals.”

Doyle stared at his fellow guest in shock. “This is no matter for levity, Wilde.”

“Perhaps not. We shall see. In any case, our Cropsey tracked these cannibals to their lair, an abandoned mine shaft somewhere on the mountain, at a place called Smuggler’s Wall. There was no constabulary in the town, of course, and so this fellow organized a small group of local vigilantes. They cognominated themselves the Committee of Seven. They would scale the mountain in the dark of night, surprise the cannibals, and administer the rough justice of the American West.” Wilde toyed with his boutonnière. “The very next night, at midnight, this group gathered at the local saloon to discuss strategy and no doubt fortify themselves for the coming ordeal. They then departed by a back door, heavily armed, and equipped with lanterns, rope, and a torch. This, my dear Doyle, is where the story turns…well, not to put too fine a point on it, rather ghastly. Do steady yourself, there’s a good chap.”

The waiter brought over a menu, and Pendergast turned his attention to it. Three or four minutes later, he was jarred from his perusal by Doyle’s sudden violent rise from the table – knocking his chair over in his agitation – and subsequent flight from the dining room, his face a mixture of shock and disgust.

“Why, whatever’s the matter?” Stoddart said, frowning, as Doyle disappeared in the direction of the gentlemen’s lounge.

“I suspect it must be the prawns,” Wilde replied, and he dabbed primly at his mouth with a napkin…

* * *

…As slowly as it had come, the voice began to fade from Pendergast’s mind. The sumptuous interior of the Langham Hotel began to waver, as if dissolving into mist and darkness. Slowly, slowly, a new scene materialized – a very different scene. It was the smoke-filled, whisky-redolent back room of a busy saloon, the sounds of gambling, drinking, and argument penetrating the thin wooden walls. A back room, in fact, remarkably similar to the one in which Pendergast was – in the Roaring Fork of the present – currently situated. After a brief exchange of determined voices, a group of seven men rose from a large table: men carrying lanterns and guns. Following their leader, one Shadrach Cropsey, they made their way out the back door of the little room and into the night.

Pendergast followed them, his incorporeal presence hovering in the cool night air like a ghost.

53

The group of miners walked down the dirt main street of town, casually and without hurry, until they reached the far end, where settlement ceased and the forests mounted upward into the mountains. It was a moonless night. The scent of wood fires was in the air, and in the nearby corrals, horses were moving restlessly about. Silently, the group lit their lanterns and proceeded along a rough mining road, which made its way by switchbacks up, and then farther up, passing beneath the dark fir trees.

The night was cool and the sky was pricked with stars. A lone wolf howled somewhere in the great bowl of mountains, quickly answered by another. As the men gained altitude, the fir trees grew smaller, shorter, twisted into grotesque shapes by incessant winds and deep snows. Gradually the trees thinned out into matted thickets of krummholz, and then the cart path broached the tree line.

In his mind, Pendergast followed the group.

The line of yellow lanterns advanced up the barren, rock-strewn slopes approaching Smuggler’s Cirque. They were now entering a recently abandoned mining zone, and around the men appeared ghostly tailings, like pyramids, spilling down the sides of the ridge, the gaping holes of the mines above, punctuated by rickety ore chutes, trestles, sluice boxes, and flumes.

Looming in the darkness to the right was an immense wooden structure, set into the flat declivity at the base of Smuggler’s Cirque: the main entrance to the famed Sally Goodin Mine, still in operation now, in the early fall of 1876. The building housed the machines and pulley works used to raise and lower the cages and buckets; it also enclosed the two-hundred-ton Ireland Pump Engine, capable of pumping over a thousand gallons per minute, used to dewater the mine complex.

Now all the lanterns went out but one: a red-glass lamp that cast a bloody gleam in the murky night. The cart path divided into many winding tracks cut into the hillsides rising above the cirque. Their objective lay above, the highest of the abandoned tunnels high on the slope known as Smuggler’s Wall, situated at an altitude close to thirteen thousand feet. A single track led in that direction, carved by hand out of the scree, switchbacking sharply as it climbed. It came over a ridge and skirted a small glacial tarn, the water black and still, its shore dotted with rusted pumping machinery and old flume gates.

Still the group of seven men climbed upward. Now the dark, square hole of the Christmas Mine became visible in the faint starlight against the upper scree slope. A trestle ran from the hole, and below it stood a tailings pile of lighter color. A jumble of wrecked machinery was strewn about the slope below.

The group paused, and Pendergast heard a low murmur of voices. And then they silently divided. One man made his way up, hiding among boulders above the entrance. A second took up a covered position among the scree just below the entrance.

Lookouts in place, the rest – four men led by Cropsey, now holding the lantern himself – entered the abandoned tunnel. Pendergast followed. The shutter on the red lamp was adjusted to produce only the faintest glow. Arms at the ready, the men walked single-file along the iron rails leading into the tunnel, making no noise. One carried a torch of pitch, ready to be lit.

As they proceeded, a smell came toward them, a smell that became ever more awful in the hot, moist, stifling atmosphere.

The Christmas Mine tunnel opened into a crosscut: a horizontal tunnel driven at right angles to the main tunnel. The group paused before the crosscut and readied their weapons. The torch was lowered, a match was struck, and the pitch set afire. In that moment, the men rounded the corner, weapons aimed down the tunnel. The smell was now almost overwhelming.

Silence. The flickering flames disclosed something in the darkness at the end of the tunnel. The group cautiously moved forward. It was an irregular, lumpy shape. When they drew close, the men saw that it was a heap of soft things: rotting burlap, old gunnysacks, leaves and pine needles, chunks of moss. Mingled into the material were pieces of gnawed bone, broken skulls, and strips of what looked like dried rawhide.

Skin. Hairless skin.

All around the heap lay a broad ring of human feces.

One of the men spoke hoarsely. “What… is this?”

The question was initially answered with silence. Finally, one of the others replied. “It’s an animal den.”

“It ain’t animal,” said Cropsey.

“God Almighty.”

“Where are they?”

Now their voices were rising, echoing, as fear and uncertainty began to set in.

“The bastards must be out. Killing.”

The torch sputtered and burned as their voices rose, discussing what to do. The guns were put away. There was disagreement, conflict.

Suddenly Cropsey held up his hand. The others fell silent, listening. There were sounds of shuffling, along with guttural, animalistic breathing. The noises stopped. Quickly the man carrying the torch doused it in a puddle of water, while Cropsey shut the lantern down. But now all was deathly silent: it seemed likely the killers had seen the light or heard their voices – and knew they were here.

“Give us some light, for Jesus’s sake,” whispered one of the men, his voice tight with anxiety.

Cropsey opened the lantern a fraction. The others were crouching, rifles and pistols at the ready. The dim glow barely penetrated the gloom.

“ Morelight,” someone said.

The lantern now threw light to the edge of the cross tunnel. All was silent. They waited, but nothing came around the corner. Nor were there sounds of flight.

“We go get ’em,” Cropsey announced. “Afore they get away.”

No one moved. Finally Cropsey himself began stalking forward. The others followed. He crept to the crosscut. The rest waited behind. Holding up the lantern, he paused, crouched, then suddenly swung around the corner, wielding the rifle like a pistol in one hand, the lantern in the other. “ Now!”

It happened with incredible speed. A flash of something darting forward; a gargling scream; and then Cropsey spun around, dropping his rifle and writhing in agony. A naked, filthy man was astride his back, tearing at his throat, more like a beast than a human being. None of the other four could fire; the combatants were too close together. Cropsey screamed again, staggering about, trying to shake off the man who tore at him with nails and teeth, ripping away anything he could reach: ears, lips, nose; there was a sudden spurt of arterial blood from the neck and Cropsey went down, the monster still on top of him, the lantern falling to the ground and shattering.

Simultaneously, as with a single mind, the other four began to shoot, aiming wildly into the darkness. From the muzzle flashes more figures could be seen, bellowing like bulls, running toward them from around the corner of the crosscut, a melee amid the wild eruption of gunfire. The two lookouts came charging down the tunnel, aroused by the din, and joined in with their own weapons. The guns roared again and again, the flashes of light blooming within clouds of ugly gray smoke – and then all went silent. For a moment, there was only darkness. Then came the sound of a match, scraping against rock; another lantern was lit – and its feeble light illuminated a splay of corpses, the four cannibals now just ruined bodies scattered about the tunnel, taken apart by heavy-caliber bullets, lying like so much ropy waste atop the sundered carcass of Shadrach Cropsey.

It was over.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Pendergast opened his eyes. The room was cool and quiet. He rose, brushed off his black suit, bundled himself up, and let himself out the back door of the saloon. The storm was in full blast, the fury of it thundering down Main Street and shaking the Christmas decorations like so many cobwebs. Bundling his coat around himself, wrapping his scarf tighter, and lowering his head against the wind, he made his way through the storm-shaken town back to his hotel.