Текст книги "Dance Of Death"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Douglas Preston
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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

THIRTY-SEVEN

Whit DeWinter III hunched over his fifteen-pound calculus textbook in the bowels of the Class of 1945 Library at Phillips Exeter Academy. He was staring at a formula made entirely of Greek letters, trying to pound it into his muddy brain. The midterm was in less than an hour and he hadn't even memorized half the formulas he'd need. He wished to hell he'd studied the night before instead of staying up so late, smoking weed with his girlfriend Jennifer. It had seemed like a good idea at the time… Stupid, so stupid. If he failed this test, his B in calculus would drop to a C, he'd have to go to UMass instead of Yale, and that would be it. He'd never get into medical school, he'd never have a decent job, he'd end up living out his miserable life in a split-level in Medford with some cow of a wife and a houseful of squalling brats…

He took a deep breath and dived once again into the tome, only to have his concentration broken by a raised voice from one of the nearby carrels. Whit straightened up. He recognized the voice: it was that sarcastic girl in his English lit class, the Goth with retro purple hair… Corrie. Corrie Swanson.

"What's your problem? Can't you see I'm studying here?" the voice echoed loudly across the sleek atrium of Academy Library.

Whit strained and failed to catch the calm, murmured answer.

"Australia? Are you nuts'?"came the raised reply. "I'm in the middle of midterms! What're you, some kind of pervert?"

A couple of shushes came from students studying nearby. Whit peered above the edge of his carrel, glad for the diversion. He could see a man in a dark suit leaning over a carrel a few dozen yards away.

"Hetold you that? Yeah, right, let's see some ID."

More murmuring.

"All right, hey, I believe you, and I'm all for a beach vacation. But right now? You've gotto be kidding."

More talk. More shushes.

"Okay, okay.All I can say is, if I fail biology, it'll be Pendergast's fault."

He heard a chair scraping and saw Corrie Swanson rise from the carrel and follow the man in the suit. He looked like Secret Service, all buttoned down, square jaw, dark glasses. He wondered what kind of trouble Corrie was in now.

Whit watched her pass, her trim behind twitching invitingly in a slinky black dress with pieces of metal jingling from it, her purple hair falling in a thick cascade down her back, grading almost to black at the ends. Damn, she was cute, just as long as he didn't try to take her home to Father. The old man would kill him for dating a girl like that.

Whit turned his throbbing eyeballs back to the formula for finding the radius of curvature for a function of two variables, but it remained all Greek to him. Literally. The damn formula had so many squiggly letters it could be the first line of the Iliad,for all he knew.

He groaned again. His life was about to end. And all because of Jennifer and her magic bong…

A light snow had fallen on the white clapboard house that stood on the corner of Church Street and Sycamore Terrace in the quiet Cleveland suburb of River Pointe. The whitened streets were broad and silent, the streetlights casting pools of yellow light across thenocturnal landscape. The distant whistle of a train added a melancholy note to the silent neighborhood.

A shadow moved behind a shuttered window in a second-story gable-a figure in a wheelchair-barely outlined in the soft blue light that emanated from the depths of the room. Back and forth the figure went in silent pantomime, busy at some unknown task. Inside the room, metal racks stood from floor to ceiling, packed with electronic equipment: monitors, CPUs, printers, terabytes of hard drives, units for the remote seizure of computer screen images, cellular telephone scanner-interceptors, wireless routers, NAS devices, and Internet port sniffers. The room smelled of hot electronics and menthol.

The figure rolled this way and that, a single withered hand tapping keyboards, pressing buttons, turning dials, and punching keypads. Slowly, one by one, the units were being powered down, shut off, closed out. One by one, the lights went off, LAN and broadband connections were cut, screens went dark, hard drives spun down, LEDs winked out. The man known in the underground hacking community by the single name of Mime was shutting himself off from the world.

The last light to go off-a large blue flat-panel LCD-plunged the room into darkness.

Mime rested when he was finished, breathing in the unaccustomed darkness. He was now completely cut off from the outside world. He knew that, blacked out like this, he could not be found. Still, the information that had reached him from the man known as Pendergast, one of only two people in the world he trusted implicitly, made him uneasy.

Mime had not been cut off in many years from the vast torrents of data that washed over his house like an invisible ocean. It was a cold, lonely feeling.

He sat brooding. In a minute, he would turn to an entirely new set of controls, and new lights would come on in the room: the lights from a battery of video camera monitors and security readouts from a surveillance system set up around and within his house. It was a protective measure that had been installed years before, but that had never been needed. Until now.

Mime breathed in the darkness, and-for the first time in his life-he was afraid.

Proctor carefully locked the door to the great shuttered mansion at 891 Riverside Drive, looked around, then slipped into the waiting Hummer. The building was shut up tightly, every potential breach or entry point carefully sealed. Constance was still within, hiding in the secret spaces that had shielded her in the past, spaces that not even he-not even Pendergast-knew about. She had supplies, an emergency cell phone, medication: everything she needed.

Proctor accelerated from the curb, easing the enormous armored vehicle around the corner, moving south on Riverside Drive. Out of habit, he glanced in his rearview mirror to see if he was being followed. There was no evidence of it, but-as Proctor well knew– the lack of evidence of being followed was not evidence of a lack of being followed.

At the corner of 95th and Riverside, he slowed as he approached an overflowing public trash receptacle; as he passed, he tossed into it a sack of greasy, congealed McDonald's french fries almost completely coated with solidified ketchup. Then he accelerated onto the on-ramp to the West Side Highway, where he headed north, keeping to the speed limit and checking his mirrors frequently. He continued up through Riverdale and Yonkers to the Saw Mill River Parkway, then the Taconic, then I-90, and then I-87 and the Northway. He would drive all night and much of the next morning, until he reached a certain small cabin on a certain small lake twenty-odd miles north of St. Amand l'Eglise, Quebec.

He glanced to his right, where an AR-15 lay on the seat, fully loaded with 5.56mm NATO rounds. Proctor almost hoped he was being followed. He'd like nothing more than to teach the fellow a lesson he'd never forget as long as he lived-which in any case would not be long, not long at all.

As the sky paled and a dirty dawn broke across the Hudson River, and a freezing wind whipped scraps of newspaper down the empty streets, a lone derelict, shuffling along Riverside Drive, paused at an overflowing garbage can and began rummaging about. With a grunt of satisfaction, he extracted a bag of half-frozen McDonald's french fries. As he stuffed them greedily into his mouth, his left hand deftly pocketed a small piece of paper hidden in the bottom of the bag, a paper with a few lines written in a beautiful, old-fashioned script:

There is only one man in the world who meets your particular requirements:

Eli Glinn of Effective Engineering Solutions

Little West 12th Street, Greenwich Village, New York

THIRTY-EIGHT

A brilliant moon, huge and intensely white, seemed to gild the vast expanse of sea far, far below. Looking out her window, Viola Maskelene could see a long white wake like a pencil laid across the burnished water, at the head of which was an enormous ocean liner, looking like a toy boat from 33,000 feet. It was the Queen Mary,she thought, on its way to New York from Southampton.

She gazed at it, feeling the enchantment of it, imagining the thousands of people below on that great ship in the middle of the ocean, eating, drinking, dancing, making love-an entire world on a ship so small it seemed she could hold it in her hand. She watched until it vanished on the far horizon. Funny how she'd flown at least a thousand times and still it was such an exciting experience for her. She glanced at the man across the aisle, dozing over his copy of the Financial Times,having never once looked out the window. That was something she couldn't understand.

She settled back in her seat, wondering how to amuse herself next. This was the second leg of her journey from Italy, having changed planes in London, and she'd already read her book and flipped through the trashy in-flight magazine. The first-class cabin was almost empty, and as it was almost 2 A.M. London time, what few passengers shared the cabin were asleep. She had the flight attendant to herself. She caught the woman's eye.

"Can I be of assistance, Lady Maskelene?"

She winced at the use of her title. How in the world did they all seem to know? "Champagne. And if you don't mind, please don't call me Lady Maskelene. It makes me feel like an old bag. Call me Viola instead."

"My apologies. I'll bring the champagne right away."

"Thanks ever so."

While Viola waited, she rummaged in her purse and withdrew the letter she had received at her house on the Italian island of Capraia three days before. It already showed signs of being opened and closed one too many times, but she read it again, anyway.

My dear Viola,

This letter will no doubt come as a shock to you, and for that I'm sorry. I find myself in the same position as Mark Twain in having to announce that the reports of my death are much exaggerated. I am alive and well, but I was forced to go underground due to an exceptionally delicate case I have been working on. That, combined with certain recent events in Tuscany with which you are no doubt acquainted, created the unfortunate impression among my friends and colleagues that I was dead. For a time, it was useful for me not to correct that impression. But I amalive, Viola-though I experienced a situation that put me as close to death as a human being can get.

That terrible experience is the reason for this letter. I realized during those dreadful hours of near-death how short life is, how fragile, and how we must none of us let slip those rare opportunities for happiness. When we met by chance on Capraia scant hours before that experience began, I was taken by surprise-and so, if you'll pardon my saying so, were you. Something happened between us. You made an indelible impression on me, and I entertain hopes that I made a not dissimilar impression on you. I would therefore like to invite you to stay with me in New York forten days, so that we may get to know each other better. To see, in effect, if indeed that impression is as indelible, and as favorable, as I strongly believe it to be.

At this, Viola had to smile; the old-fashioned, somewhat awkward wording was so like Pendergast that she could almost hear his voice. But the fact was, this wasan extraordinary letter, unlike any she had ever received. Viola had been approached by many different men in many different ways, but never quite like this. Something happened between us.It was true. Even so, most women would be surprised and even shocked to receive an invitation like this. Somehow, even on one meeting, Aloysius already knew her well enough to understand that such a letter would not displease her. On the contrary…

She returned her attention to the letter.

If you accept this admittedly unconventional invitation, please arrange to be on the January 27 British Airways Flight 822 from Gatwick to Kennedy. Do not tell anyone why you are coming.I will explain when you get here; suffice to say that, if word of your visit got out, it could even now endanger my life.

When you arrive at Kennedy, my dear brother, Diogenes, will meet you at the luggage carousel.

Diogenes.She found herself smiling, remembering how Aloysius had said on Capraia that eccentric names ran in his family. He wasn't kidding-who would ever name their child Diogenes?

You will recognize him instantly because of his strong resemblance to me-except that he sports a neatly trimmed beard. What is most striking about him is that, due to a childhood accident, he has eyes of two different colors: one hazel, the other a milky blue. He will carry no sign and he, of course, does not know what you look like, so you will have to find him yourself. I wouldn't trust you with anyone less than my brother, who is utterly discreet.

Diogenes will escort you to my cottage out on Long Island, in a little town on Gardiners Bay, where I will be waiting for you. This will allow us several days in each other's company. The cottage is well equipped but rustic, with a splendid view of Shelter Island across the bay. You will naturally have your own chambers, and we will comport ourselves with propriety-unless, of course, circumstances dictate otherwise.

At this, Viola giggled out loud. He was so old-fashioned, and yet here he was, basically propositioning her in a way that wasn't even subtle-but managing to do it tastefully, with the driest sense of humor.

In three days following your arrival, the case I've been involved in will conclude. We will then emerge and I will once again show myself to the living, with (I trust) you on my arm. We will proceed to enjoy a splendid week of theater, music, art, and culinary exploration in New York City before your return to Capraia.

Viola, I beg you again, tell no one of this. Please give me your answer by old-fashioned telegram to the following address:

A. Pendleton

15 Glover's Box Road

The Springs, NY 10511

and sign it, "Anna Livia Plurabelle."

You will make me very happy if you accept my invitation. I know I am not very clever with sentiment and flowery phraseology-that is not my way. I will save further demonstrations of affection for when we meet in person.

Sincerely,

Aloysius

Again, Viola had to smile. She could almost hear Pendergast, with his elegant but rather severe air, speaking the sentences. Anna Livia Plurabelle, indeed; nice to know that Pendergast wasn't above tossing in a witty literary allusion, and an esoteric, highbrow one at that. How appealing he was; she fairly tingled with the thought of seeing him again. And the faint whiff of danger he alluded to in the letter simply added spice to the adventure. Once again, she couldn't help but reflect on how odd it was she seemed to know him so well after spending only that one afternoon together. She had never before believed in that nonsense about soulmates, about love at first sight, about matches made in heaven. But somehow…

She folded up the letter and took out the second one. It was a telegram, and it read simply:

Delighted you are coining! Confirmed my brother will meet you. I know I can trust you to be discreet. Fondly, A.X.L.P.

She carefully put both letters back into her handbag and sipped the champagne, her mind drifting back to that meeting on Capraia. She remembered how she had been digging manure into her vineyard when she saw a man in a black suit approaching, picking his way gingerly among the clods, accompanied by an American policeman in mufti. It was such an odd sight it had almost made her laugh. They had called out to her, thinking she was a peasant laborer. And then they'd drawn closer and she had looked at Pendergast's strange and beautiful face for the first time. Nothing like that sudden, queer feeling had happened to her before. She could read the same experience in his face, despite his efforts to conceal it. It had been a short visit– an hour's talk over glasses of white wine on her terrace overlooking the sea-and yet her mind had returned again and again to that afternoon, as if something momentous had happened.

Then there was that second visit-by D'Agosta alone, his face wan and troubled, and his terrible news of Pendergast's death. It wasn't until that awful moment that she had realized just how much she'd looked forward to seeing Agent Pendergast again-and how certain she had somehow been that he would figure in the rest of her life.

How dreadful that day had been. And how joyful things had become, now that she'd received his letter.

She smiled, thinking about seeing him again. She loved intrigue. She had never shied away from anything life had thrown at her. Her impulsiveness had gotten her into trouble on occasion, but it had also given her a colorful and fascinating life she wouldn't trade for anything. This mysterious invitation was like something out of the romance novels she used to devour in her early teen years. A weekend in a cottage hidden away on Long Island, with a man who fascinated her like no other, followed by a whirlwind week in New York City. How could she refuse? She certainly didn't have to sleep with him– he was the very soul of a gentleman-although just the thought brought an electric tingle that caused her to blush…

She finished off the champagne, which was excellent, as it always was in first class. She sometimes felt guilty about flying first class– it seemed elitist-but on a transatlantic flight, it was so much more comfortable. Viola was used to discomfort from her many years digging up tombs in Egypt, but she had never seen any sense in being uncomfortable for its own sake.

She checked her watch. She'd be landing at Kennedy in just over four hours.

It would certainly be interesting to meet this brother of Pendergast's-this Diogenes. You could tell a lot about a person by meeting his brother.

THIRTY-NINE

D'Agosta followed Pendergast's downtrodden form as the agent shambled around the corner of Ninth Avenue onto Little West 12th Street. It was nine o'clock in the evening and a bitter wind was blowing hard off the Hudson River. The old meatpacking district-sandwiched into a narrow corridor south of Chelsea and north of Greenwich Village-had changed in the years D'Agosta was away. Now hip restaurants, boutiques, and technology start-ups were sprinkled among the wholesale meat distributors and commercial butcheries. It seemed like a hell of a place for a forensic profiler to hang up his shingle.

Halfway down the block, Pendergast halted before a large twelve-story warehouse that had seen better days. The steel-mesh windows were opaque with age, and the lower stories were caked with soot. There was no sign of any kind, no name, nothing to announce the existence of any firm within beyond a weathered sign painted directly onto the old brick which read Price Price Pork Packing Inc.Below that was an oversize entrance for truck deliveries, closed and barred, and a smaller door beside it with an unlabeled buzzer. Pendergast's finger went up to it and gave it a jab.

"Yes?" a voice asked immediately from the adjoining speaker grille.

Pendergast murmured something and there was the sound of an electronic lock disengaging. The door opened into a small white space, empty save for a tiny camera mounted high on the rear wall. The door closed behind them with a faint click. They stood there, facing the camera, for thirty seconds. Then an almost invisible door in the rear wall slid back. Pendergast and D'Agosta walked down a white corridor, then stepped into a dim room-an amazingroom.

The lower floors of the warehouse had been gutted, leaving a large, six-story shell. Ahead, the sprawling main floor was a maze of display tables, hulking scientific equipment, computer workstations, and intricate models and dioramas, all cloaked in shadow. D'Agosta's attention was drawn to a gigantic table displaying what appeared to be a model of the ocean floor somewhere around Antarctica, cut away to show sub-seafloor geology, along with what looked like a strange volcano of some kind. There were other intricate models, including one of a ship packed with mysterious-looking ROVs, scientific equipment, and military hardware.

A voice sounded from the shadows. "Welcome."

D'Agosta turned into the dimness and saw a figure in a wheelchair approaching between two rows of long tables: a man with closely cropped brown hair and thin lips set above a square jaw. He wore an unassuming but well-cut suit and controlled the wheelchair with a small joystick operated by a black-gloved hand. D'Agosta realized that one of the man's eyes must be glass, because it conveyed none of the fierce gleam of its mate. A purple scar ran down the right side of his face, from hairline to jaw, giving the illusion of a dueling wound.

"I am Eli Glinn," he said, his voice low, mild, and neutral. "You must be Lieutenant D'Agosta and Special Agent Pendergast." He stopped the wheelchair and extended his hand. "Welcome to Effective Engineering Solutions."

They followed him back between the tables and past a small greenhouse, its grow-lamps flickering eerily, then got into an elevator cage that took them up to a fourth-floor catwalk. As he followed the wheelchair down the catwalk, D'Agosta felt a twinge of doubt. Effective Engineering Solutions? Mr.-not Dr.-Eli Glinn? He wondered if, despite her vaunted research skills, Constance Greene had made a mistake. This didn't look like any forensic profiling consultant he had ever seen before-and he had dealt with quite a few.

Glinn glanced back, ran his good eye over D'Agosta's uniform. "You might as well turn off your radio and cell phone, Lieutenant. We block all wireless signals and radio frequencies in this building."

He led the way into a small conference room decorated in polished wood, dosed the door, then gestured for them to be seated. He wheeled himself to the far side of the lone table, where a gap between the charcoal-colored Herman Miller chairs was clearly reserved for him. A thin envelope lay on the table before him; otherwise, the spotless table was empty. Leaning back in the wheelchair, he fixed them both with a penetrating gaze.

"Yours is an unusual request," he said.

"Mine is an unusual problem," Pendergast replied.

Glinn eyed him up and down. "That is a rather effective disguise, Mr. Pendergast."

"Indeed."

Glinn folded his hands. "Tell me the nature of your problem."

Pendergast glanced around. "Tell me the nature of your company. I ask because all this"-he gestured-"does not look like the office of a forensic profiler."

A slow, mirthless smile stretched the features of the man's face, distorting and inflaming the scar. "A fair question. Effective Engineering Solutions is in the business of solving unique engineering problems and performing failure analysis."

"What kind of engineering problems?" Pendergast asked.

"How to neutralize an underground nuclear reactor in a certain rogue Middle Eastern state being used to produce weapons-grade fuel. The analysis of the mysterious and sudden loss of a billion-dollar classified satellite." He twitched a finger, a small gesture that carried surprising weight, so motionless had the man been up to that point. "You'll understand if I don't go into details. You see, Mr. Pendergast, 'failure analysis' is the other side of the engineering coin: it is the art of understanding how things fail, and thus preventing failure before it happens. Or finding out why failure occurred afterit happens. Sadly, the latter is more common than the former."

D'Agosta spoke. "I still don't get it. What does failure analysis have to do with forensic profiling?"

"I'm getting to that, Lieutenant. Failure analysis begins and ends with psychological profiling. EES realized long ago that the key to understanding failure was understanding exactly how human beings make mistakes. Which is the same as understanding how human beings make decisions in general. We needed predictive power-a way to predict how a given person would act in a given situation. We therefore developed a muscular proprietary system for psychological profiling. It currently runs on a grid-powered supercomputer of IBM eServer nodes. We do psychological profiling better than anyone else in the world. And I do not tell you this by way of salesmanship. It's a simple fact."

Pendergast inclined his head. "Most interesting. How is it I have never heard of you?"

"We do not generally wish to be known-beyond, that is, a small circle of clients."

"Before we begin, I must be assured of discretion."

"Mr. Pendergast, EES makes two guarantees. First, utter discretion. Second, guaranteed success. Now, please tell me your problem."

"The target is a man named Diogenes Pendergast-my brother. He disappeared over two decades ago, after contriving to stage his own false death. He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth-at least officially. He's not in any government databases, beyond a death certificate which I know to be forged. There are no adult records of him at all. No address, no photos, nothing." He removed a thick manila folder from his coat and placed it on the table. "Everything I know is in here."

"How do you know he's still alive?"

"We had a curious encounter last summer. It's in the report. That, and the fact he has turned into a serial killer."

Glinn gave a slow nod.

"From a young age, Diogenes hated me, and he's made it his life's work to destroy me. On January 19 of this year, he finally put his plan into action. He has begun murdering my friends and associates, one by one, and taunting me with my inability to save them. He's killed four so far. For the last two, he's mocked me with notes ahead of time, naming the victim-the first time correctly, and the second time as a ruse to make me protect the wrong person. In short, I have utterly failed to stop him. He claims to be targeting Lieutenant D'Agosta here next. Again, the summaries of the homicides are in that folder."

D'Agosta saw Glinn's good eye gleam with new interest. "How intelligent is this Diogenes?"

"As a child, his I.Q. was tested at 210. That was, incidentally, after he had scarlet fever, which altered him permanently."

Glinn raised an eyebrow. "Are we dealing with organic brain damage?"

"Not likely. He was strange before the fever. The illness seems to have focused it, brought it to the fore."

"And this is why you need me. You need a complete psychological, criminal, and behavioral analysis of this man. Naturally, because you are his brother, you are too close to him-you cannot do it yourself."

"Correct. Diogenes has had years to plan this. He's been three steps ahead of me all the way. He leaves no clues at his crime scenes-none that are unintentional at least. The only way to stop him is to anticipate what he'll do next. I must stress this is an emergency situation. Diogenes has threatened to complete his crime tomorrow, January 28. He named this day as the culmination of all his planning. There is no telling how many more lives are in jeopardy."

Glinn opened the folder with his good hand and began leafing through it, scanning the pages. "I cannot produce a profile in twenty-four hours."

"You must."

"It's impossible. The earliest I can do it-assuming I drop all other work and focus solely on this-is seventy-two hours from now. You have come to me too late, Mr. Pendergast. At least too late for the date your brother named. Not too late, perhaps, to take effective action afterwards." He gave his head a curious tilt as he eyed Pendergast.

The agent was very still for a moment. "So be it, then," he said in a low voice.

"Let's not waste any more time." Glinn put a hand on the folder before him and slid it across the table. "Here is our standard contract. My fee is one million dollars."

D'Agosta rose from his chair. "A million bucks? Are you crazy!"

Pendergast stilled him with a wave of his hand. "Accepted." He took the folder, opened it, scanned the contract rapidly.

"At the back," said Glinn, "you'll find our standard disclaimers and warranties. We offer an absolute, unconditional guarantee of success."

"This is the second time you've mentioned that curious guarantee. How do you define 'success,' Mr. Glinn?"

Another ghostly smile lingered on Glinn's face. "Naturally, we cannot guarantee that you will apprehend Diogenes. Nor can we guarantee to stop him from killing. That lies in your hands. Here's what we do guarantee. First: we will give you a forensic profile of Diogenes Pendergast that will accurately elucidate his motive."

"I already know his motive."

Glinn ignored this. "Second: our forensic profile will have predictivepower. It will tell you, within a limited range of options, what Diogenes Pendergast's next actions will be. We offer follow-up services– if you have specific questions about the target's future actions, we will run them through our system and provide you with reliable answers."

"I question whether that's possible with any human being, let alone someone like Diogenes."

"I do not wish to bandy philosophical questions with you, Mr. Pendergast. Human beings are disgustingly predictable, and this is as true of psychopaths as it is of grandmothers. We shall do what we say."

"Have you ever failed?"

"Never. There is one assignment that remains-shall we say– open."

"The one involving the thermonuclear device?"

If Glinn was surprised by this question, he did not show it. "What thermonuclear device is that?"

"The one you are designing downstairs. I saw several equations on a whiteboard relating to the curve of binding energy. On a nearby table lay a paper with the design for machining a piece of H.E. that could only be used to compress a core."

"I shall have to speak to my chief engineer about his carelessness with regard to our other project."

"I also see you're developing a genetically engineered plant mosaic virus. Does that also relate to that other project?"

"We offer the same guarantee of confidentiality to our other clients that we offer you. Shall we return to the subject of Diogenes? In particular, the question of his motive."