Текст книги "Two Graves"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 34 страниц)

+ Twenty-Six Hours

HORACE ALLERTON WAS PREPARING TO ENJOY HIS FAVORITE activity—a relaxing evening with a cup of coffee and a good scientific journal—when a knock sounded at the front door of his neat Lawrenceville bungalow.

He put down his cup and glanced at the clock with a frown. Quarter past eight: too late for a friend to be calling. He picked up the magazine, Stratigraphy Today, and opened it with a quiet sigh of contentment.

The knock came again, more insistent.

Allerton’s eyes rose from the magazine to the door. Jehovah’s Witnesses, maybe, or one of those annoying kids who went door-to-door, selling magazine subscriptions. Ignore them and they’d go away.

He had just started in on the magazine’s lead article—“Mechanical Stratigraphy Analysis of Depositional Structure,” a promising evening’s reading indeed—when he glanced up and had the shock of his life. A man in an elegant black suit, face as white as Dracula, stood in the center of his living room.

“What on earth—?” Allerton cried, leaping up.

“Special Agent Pendergast. FBI.” A shield and identification card appeared out of nowhere, shoved into his face.

“How, how did you get in? What do you want?”

“Dr. Horace Allerton, the geologist?” the agent asked. His voice was cool but with an underlying shimmer of threat.

Allerton nodded, swallowed.

Without a word, Pendergast stepped over to a chair, and now Allerton noticed the limp and the silver-headed cane. The geologist sat back guardedly in his own wing chair. “What’s this all about?”

“Dr. Allerton,” the FBI agent began as he took a seat, “I’ve come to you for help. You are known for your expertise in analyzing soil composition. And I’ve taken particular note of your knowledge of glacial deposition.”

“And?”

The agent reached into his pocket, took out two sealed plastic bags. He laid them both on the coffee table, separating them.

Allerton hesitated, then bent forward to examine them. One was filled with a sample of micaceous clay mingled with soil, the other with small broken pebbles of porphyritic granite.

“I need two things. First, I would like a distribution map of the type of clay found in sample one.”

Allerton nodded slowly.

“The pebbles in sample two are the product of a gravel crusher, are they not?”

The geologist opened the bag and slid the pebbles into his hand. They were rough, sharp, the edges unworn by time, weathering, or glacial abrasion. “They are.”

“I want to know where they came from.”

Allerton glanced from one bag to the other. “Why come to me at this time of night, sneaking in like this? You should make an appointment, see me at my Princeton office.”

A faint tremor passed over the FBI agent’s sculpted face. “If this were merely an idle request, Doctor, I would not have troubled you at such a late hour. A woman’s life is at stake.”

Allerton put the bags down beside his coffee cup. “What exactly is the, uh, time frame you had in mind?”

“You are known to have a small but quite fine mineralogy laboratory in your basement.”

“You mean… you mean you want these analyzed now?” Allerton asked.

In response, Pendergast merely leaned back in his chair, as if making himself comfortable.

“But that could take hours!” Allerton protested.

Pendergast continued to fix him with a level gaze.

Allerton glanced at the clock. It was now eight thirty. He thought of his magazine, and the article he’d been looking forward to. Then he glanced again at the FBI agent in the opposite chair. There were dark smudges beneath the man’s pale gray eyes, as if he had not slept in a long time. And the look in those eyes made him most uneasy.

“Perhaps if you told me why you needed these particular analyses?”

“I will. They were recovered from a car that had evidently spent some time driving over a crushed-gravel road and a muddy driveway. I need to find that location.”

Allerton scooped up the samples and rose. “Wait here,” he said.

As an afterthought, he took his cup of coffee with him to the basement.

+ Thirty Hours

MIDNIGHT. PENDERGAST SAT IN HIS ROLLS-ROYCE OUTSIDE the house of Dr. Allerton, engine idling.

He had been fortunate: the particular type of granite outcropped in only one area that also contained a gravel pit. This pit was owned by the Reliance Sand and Gravel Company, located just outside Ramapo, New York. They ran a large gravel-crushing operation that supplied an area covering a significant portion of Rockland County. Using his laptop to visit the Reliance website, Pendergast had been able to map the approximate geographic range of Reliance’s customer base, which he duly marked on an atlas of Rockland County.

Next he turned to Allerton’s analysis of the mud. It was largely composed of an unusual type of clay, identified as a weathered micaceous halloysite, fortunately not common to the region, although—according to the geologist—somewhat more so in Quebec and northern Vermont. Allerton had given Pendergast a map of its geographic distribution, copied from an online journal.

Pendergast compared this with the distribution region he had marked for the gravel. They intersected in only one area, somewhat less than a square mile in extent, north and east of Ramapo.

Now Pendergast opened Google Earth on his laptop and located the coordinates of that square mile of overlap. Zooming in to the program’s maximum resolution, he examined the terrain. Much of it was heavily wooded, situated along the border of Harriman State Park. A suburban neighborhood took up another section, but it was a recent development and all the roads and driveways appeared neatly paved. There were some dirt roads and houses scattered elsewhere, as well as a few farms, but they showed no areas that looked graveled. Finally he spied a structure that looked promising: a large, isolated warehouse. The place had a long driveway; a small adjacent parking area that showed up in a mottled pale hue that looked very much like gravel spread over muddy ground.

Shutting off the laptop, Pendergast stowed the computer and pulled away from the curb with a screech of rubber, heading for the New Jersey Turnpike.

Ninety minutes later, he parked the Rolls off to the side of the road, half a mile past the Rockland County Solid Waste facility, on a wooded stretch just short of the warehouse. Through the denuded trees, pale in the moonlight, he could make out the building, a single light burning before its heavy corrugated-metal door. For half an hour, he kept the structure under surveillance. Nobody came or went; it appeared deserted.

Taking a penlight from the backseat, but keeping it switched off, he slipped out of the car and approached the building through the trees, moving silently. He circled it cautiously. The lone window was painted black.

Turning the flashlight on, Pendergast knelt, wincing with pain. He took the gravel sample from his pocket and, using the light, compared it with the gravel that lined the driveway. The match was perfect. He reached down and fingered a small sample of mud under the gravel, spreading it between his thumb and forefinger. Perfect as well.

Flitting across the open area around the warehouse, Pendergast pressed himself against the corrugated wall, then made his way around to the front, keeping low. Externally it was decrepit, defunct, without signage of any kind. And yet, for such a shabby building, the padlock on the lone door was expensive and new.

Pendergast hefted the padlock in one hand, let his other hand drift over it in an almost caressing gesture. It did not spring open at once, yielding only after manipulation with a tiny screwdriver and a bump key. He pulled it free of the hasp, then—weapon at the ready—opened the door just enough to peer through. Darkness and silence. He slid the door open a little farther, slipped inside, and closed it behind him.

For perhaps five minutes, he made no movement except to pan his flashlight around, examining the floor, walls, and ceiling. The warehouse was almost completely bare, with a concrete pad floor, metal walls, empty shelves along the surrounding walls. It seemed to offer no more information than the burned-out taxi had.

He made a slow circuit of the interior, pausing now and then to examine something that caught his attention; pluck a bit of something up here; take a photograph there; fill sample bags with almost invisible evidence. Despite the apparent emptiness of the warehouse, under his probing eye a story began to emerge, still little more than a ghostly palimpsest.

An hour later, Pendergast returned to the closed door of the warehouse. Kneeling, he spread out a dozen small sealed plastic envelopes, each containing a fragment of evidence: metal filings; a piece of glass; oil from a stain on the concrete, a bit of dried paint, a broken chip of plastic. His eye roved over each in turn, allowing a mental picture to form.

The warehouse had once been used as a vehicular pool. Judging by the age and condition of the oil spots on the floor, at one time it had seen fairly heavy use. More recently, however, only two vehicles had been stored. One—judging by the faint tread marks on the concrete floor, a Goodyear brand size 215/75-16—belonged to the Ford Escape that had been used as the getaway taxi. Spatters of yellow on one wall, as well as a reverse-image tracing of spray paint on a fragment of wood tossed into a far corner, indicated also that this was the spot where the Escape had been converted into a counterfeit New York City taxi—down to the paint job and fake medallion.

The other recent vehicle was harder to identify. Its tire print was broader than that of the Escape, and most probably a Michelin. It might well belong to a powerful European luxury sedan, such as an Audi A8 or a BMW 750. The faintest of paint scrapings could be seen against the inside of the warehouse door where this vehicle had recently come in contact; Pendergast carefully transferred them to another evidence bag with a set of tweezers. It was automotive paint, metallic, and of an unusual color: deep maroon.

And then, as he examined the paint, his eye noted—in the narrow channel of the sliding door—a tiny freshwater pearl.

His heart almost stopped.

After a moment, recovering, he picked it up with tweezers and stared at it. In his mind’s eye, he could visualize—roughly twenty-four hours before—the taxi returning here. It would have contained four people: the driver, two men dressed in jogging suits, and an unwilling companion—Helen. Here she was transferred to the maroon foreign car. As they prepared to leave, there was a struggle; she tried to escape, forcing open the door of the car—that accounted for the scratch of paint—and in the process of subduing her, Helen’s abductors snapped her necklace, scattering small pearls all over the passenger compartment and, no doubt, the floor of the warehouse. There would have been oaths, perhaps a punishment, and a hurried scuffle to pick up the explosion of pearls lying across the concrete.

Pendergast glanced at the tiny, lustrous bead held between the tips of the tweezers. This was the one they missed.

With Helen safely secured in the second car, the vehicles would have gone their separate ways, the counterfeit taxi to its fiery end in New Jersey, the maroon vehicle to…?

Pendergast remained, still kneeling, deep in thought, for another ten minutes. Then, rising stiffly, he exited the warehouse, padlocked it behind him, and walked noiselessly back to the waiting Rolls.

+ Thirty-Seven Hours

THOMAS PURVIEW WAS ALWAYS FASTIDIOUS ABOUT GETTING to his law office promptly at seven o’clock, but this morning someone else had been even more punctual: he found a man waiting in his outer office. He had the look of someone who had just arrived. In fact, it almost appeared as if he were about to try the door to the inner office, but of course Purview realized this was unlikely. As he walked in, the man turned, then limped toward him, one hand holding a cane, the other extended.

“Good morning,” Purview said, shaking the proffered hand.

“That remains to be seen,” the stranger replied in a southern accent. He was thin, almost gaunt, and he did not respond to Purview’s professional smile. Purview prided himself on his ability to read the trouble in a new client’s face—but this one was unreadable.

“Are you here to see me?” Purview asked. “Normally I require an appointment.”

“I have no appointment, but the matter is urgent.”

Purview stifled a knowing smile. He had never known a client who didn’t have an urgent matter.

“Please step into my office. Would you care for some coffee? Carol isn’t in yet, but it will only take me a minute to make.”

“Thank you, nothing.” The man walked into Purview’s office, looking carefully around at the walls of books, the row of filing cabinets.

“Please have a seat.” Normally, Purview enjoyed reading the Wall Street Journalbetween the hours of seven and eight in the morning, but he wasn’t about to turn away a prospective client—especially not in this recession.

The man took a seat in one of the several chairs in Purview’s spacious office, while the lawyer seated himself behind the desk. “How can I help you?” Purview asked.

“I’m looking for information.”

“What kind of information?”

The man seemed to recollect something. “Forgive me for not introducing myself. Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, FBI.” He reached into his coat pocket, removed his ID, and placed it on Purview’s desk.

Purview looked at the ID without touching it. “Are you here on official business, Agent Pendergast?”

“I am here on the investigation of a crime, yes.” The agent paused to once again glance around the office. “Are you familiar with the property located on Two Ninety-Nine Old County Lane, Ramapo, New York?”

Purview hesitated. “It doesn’t ring a bell. Then again, I’ve been involved in a great many real estate transactions in Nanuet and the surrounding area.”

“The property in question consists of an old warehouse, now empty and by all appearances abandoned. Your address is listed for the LLC that holds the deed to this property, and you are the attorney of record.”

“I see.”

“I want to know who the real owners are.”

Purview considered this for a moment. “I see,” he repeated. “And do you have a court order requiring me to produce those records for you?”

“I do not.”

Purview allowed the faintest smile of lawyerly superiority to settle over his features. “Then surely you, as a federal officer, know that I can’t possibly violate attorney-client privilege by giving you that information.”

Pendergast leaned forward in his chair. The face remained disturbingly neutral, unreadable. “Mr. Purview, you are in a position to do me a very large favor, for which you will be handsomely rewarded. Ecce signum.” Reaching into his pocket again, he withdrew a small envelope that he laid on the desk, taking back his ID at the same time.

Purview just couldn’t help himself; he thumbed open the envelope and saw that inside was a brick of hundred-dollar bills.

“Ten thousand dollars,” the agent said.

An awful lot of money for simply furnishing a name and address. Purview began to wonder what this was about: drugs, maybe, or organized crime. Or perhaps a sting? Entrapment? Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

“I doubt if your superiors would look very kindly upon your attempt at bribery,” he said. “You can keep your money.”

Pendergast waved this away like a pesky fly. “I’m offering you a carrot.” He paused significantly, as if refraining from mentioning the other half of that equation.

Purview felt a shiver. “There’s a due process for everything, Agent, ah, Pendergast. I’ll assist you when I see a court order telling me to do so—and not before. Either way, I won’t take your money.”

For a moment, the FBI agent did not reply. Then, with the faintest of sighs—whether of regret or irritation it was impossible to say—he plucked the money off the table and returned it to the inside pocket of his black suit. “I am sorry for you, then,” he said in a low voice. “Please listen carefully. I am someone for whom time is in extremely short supply. I have no inclination, and no patience, for bandying the finer points of law. You are proving yourself an honest man: good for you. Shall we find out just how… courageousa man you are? Allow me to assure you of one thing: you willgive me those records. The only question is how much mortification you’ll have to endure before doing so.”

In his entire adult life, Thomas Purview had never allowed himself to be intimidated by anyone. He had no intention of starting now. He stood from his desk. “Kindly leave, Agent Pendergast, or I shall call the police.”

But Pendergast showed no signs of standing. “The records for the warehouse in question are relatively old,” he said. “At least two dozen years old. They are not available in digital format—I’ve checked. However, somuch other information is. It flies through the virtual ether, Mr. Purview—one only has to reach out and snag it. And I have a resource, a talented resource, who is exceptionally good at such snagging. He has furnished me with another address I think we should discuss. In addition to Two Ninety-Nine Old County Lane, I mean. It’s an address of particular interest.”

Purview picked up his phone and began dialing 911.

“One Twenty-Nine Park Avenue South.”

The hand paused in midair.

“You see, Mr. Purview,” Pendergast went on, “it isn’t only statements and records that are available on the Internet. Images are available, too. Security camera images, for example—if one knows how to access them.”

Pendergast reached into his suit, pulled out a notebook. “Over the last few hours, my, ah, resourcehas sent a worm across the backbone of the Net, using pattern-recognition software to search for images of your face. He found them in—among other places—the security cameras at that particular address.”

Purview remained very still.

“Which shows you in the company of one Felicia Lourdes, Apartment Fourteen-A. A lovely girl, young enough to be your daughter. And you do have several. Daughters, I mean. Correct?”

Purview said nothing. He slowly replaced the phone.

“The security images are of the two of you embracing passionately in the elevator. How touching. And there are quite a few of these images. It must be true love, is it not?”

Again, silence.

“What was it Hart Crane said about love? It is ‘a burnt match skating in a urinal.’ Why do people take such risks?” Pendergast shook his head sadly. “One Twenty-Nine Park Avenue South. A very good address. I wonder how Miss Lourdes can afford it. Given her position as a paralegal, I mean.” He paused. “The person who would find this address to be of particular interest is, of course, your wife.”

Still, silence.

“I am a desperate man, Mr. Purview. I will not hesitate to act on this immediately if you do not comply. Indeed, in that case I will be forced—in the unfortunate parlance of our times—to ‘escalate.’ ”

The word hung in the air like a bad smell.

Purview thought for a moment. “I believe I’ll step out of my office now for a fifteen-minute walk. If, during that time, somebody were to break in and rifle my files—well, I would have no knowledge of said person or said act. Especially if the files in question were left seemingly undisturbed.”

Pendergast did not move as Purview picked up his Wall Street Journal, stepped out from behind the desk, and walked toward the door. As he reached it, he turned. “By the way, just so you don’t make a hash of things, try the third cabinet, second drawer down. Fifteen minutes, Agent Pendergast.”

“Enjoy your walk, Mr. Purview.”

+ Forty Hours

FOR THE PAST FORTY HOURS, SHE HAD BEEN BLINDFOLDED and kept constantly on the move. She had been bundled into the trunk of a car, the back of a truck, and—she guessed—the hold of a boat. In all the furtive shuttling from place to place, she had grown disoriented and lost track of time. She felt cold, hungry, and thirsty, and her head still ached from the savage blow she’d received in the taxi. She had been given no food, and the only liquid offered her had been a plastic bottle of water, thrust into her hand some time back.

Now she was once again in the trunk of a car. For several hours they had been driving at high speed, apparently on a freeway. But now the car slowed; the vehicle made several turns; and the sudden roughness of the ride led her to believe they were on a dirt road or track.

Whenever she had been transferred from one makeshift prison to another, her captors had been silent. But now, with the road noise reduced, she could hear the murmur of their voices through the vehicle. They were speaking a mixture of Portuguese and German, both of which she understood perfectly, having learned them before either English or her father’s native Hungarian. The talk was faint, however, and she could make out very little beyond the tones, which seemed angry, urgent. There seemed to be four of them now.

After several minutes of rough travel, the car eased to a halt. She heard doors opening and closing, feet crunching on gravel. Then the trunk was opened and she felt chill air on her face. A hand grabbed her by the elbow, raised her to a sitting position, then pulled her out. She staggered, knees buckling; the pressure of the hand increased, raising her and steadying her. Then—without a word—she was shoved forward.

Strange how she felt nothing, no emotion, not even grief or fear. After so many years of hiding, of fear and uncertainty, her brother had appeared with the news she had long dreamed of hearing but had resigned herself would never come. For one brief day she had been afire with the hope of seeing Aloysius again, of restarting their lives, of finally living once more like a normal human being. Then in a moment it was snatched away, her brother murdered, her husband shot and perhaps dead as well.

And now she felt like an empty vessel. Better to have never hoped at all.

She heard the creak of an opening door, and she was guided over a sill and into a room. The air smelled musty and close. The hand led her across the room, apparently through a second door and into an even mustier space. A deserted old house in the country, perhaps. The hand released its grip on her arm, and she felt the pressure of a chair seat against the back of her knees. She sat down, placing her remaining hand in her lap.

“Remove it,” said a voice in German—a voice she instantly recognized. There was a fumbling at her head, and the blindfold was pulled away.

She blinked once, twice. The room was dark, but her long-blindfolded eyes needed no period of adjustment. She heard footsteps recede behind her, heard the door close. Then, licking dry lips, she raised her eyes and met the gaze of Wulf Konrad Fischer. He was older, of course, but still as powerful looking and as heavily muscled as ever. He was seated in a chair facing her, his legs apart and his hands clasped between them. He shifted slightly, and the chair groaned under his massive build. With his penetrating pale eyes, his dark tan, and his closely trimmed thatch of thick, snow-white hair, he exuded Teutonic perfection. He looked at her, a cold smile distorting his lips. It was a smile Helen remembered all too well. Her apathy and emptiness were replaced by a spike of fear.

“I never expected to receive a visit from the dead,” Fischer said in his clipped, precise German. “And yet here you are. Fräulein Esterhazy—forgive me, Frau Pendergast—who departed this earth more than twelve years ago.” He looked at her, hard eyes glinting with some combination of amusement, anger, and curiosity.

Helen said nothing.

“ Natürlich, in retrospect I can see how it was done. Your twin sister– der Schwächling—was the sacrificial pawn. After all your protests, your sanctimonious outrage, I see how well you have learned from us, after all! I almost feel honored.”

Helen remained silent. The apathy was returning. She would be better off dead than living with this pain.

Fischer peered at her intently, as if to gauge the effect of his words. He took a pack of Dunhills from his pocket, plucked one from the box, lit it with a gold lighter. “You wouldn’t care to tell us where you’ve been all this time, would you? Or whether you’ve had any other accomplices in this little deception—beyond your brother, I mean? Or whether you’ve spoken to anyone about our organization?”

When there was no response, Fischer took a deep drag on the cigarette. His smile broadened. “No matter. There will be plenty of time for that—once we get you back home. I’m sure you’ll be happy to tell the doctors everything… that is, before the experiments begin.”

Helen went still. Fischer had used the word Versuchsreihe—but that word meant more to her than simply “experiments.” At the thought of what it meant—at the memory—she felt a sudden panic. She leapt to her feet and ran headlong toward the door. It was a mindless, instinctive act, born of the atavistic need for self-preservation. But even as she charged the door, it was opened, her captors standing just beyond. Helen did not slow, and the force of the impact knocked two of them back, but the others seized her and gripped her hard. It took all four to restrain her and drag her back into the room.

Fischer stood up. Taking another deep drag on the cigarette, he regarded Helen as she struggled silently, fiercely. Then he looked at his watch.

“It’s time to go,” he said. He glanced again at Helen. “I think we had better prepare the hypodermic.”