The Obsidian Chamber

by Lincoln Child

  DIOGENES, RESTING IN his second-floor sitting room, heard Constance quietly descend the back stairs, open the rear door, and walk across the veranda. She moved very lightly, but his hearing was unnaturally acute, and he was able to follow her movements by sound alone. He rose and looked out the window, and a moment later saw her walking along the pathway to the south end of the island.

  She was, he understood, in many ways like a wild animal: a tiger, perhaps, or a mustang. The taming of such an animal had to proceed with infinite patience, gentleness, and kindness. And as with the taming of a tiger by her handler, the forcing of any issue could be fatal. He was still amazed he had conquered her, at least in part, coaxed her out of the Pendergast mansion, where she had lived almost the entirety of her long life, and succeeded in bringing her down here. It was the fulfilment of what were now his dearest dreams, his most cherished fantasies. But the taming wasn’t complete by any means. Now was the most delicate time—the point where, at the slightest thing, the animal might bolt.

  The most important point with wild animals was to give them their freedom. Never corner or cage one. The taming was imposed from within, not without. It was a seduction, not a conquest. Constance would willingly weave her own bonds, her own restraints, and impose them on herself—that was the only way it would work. He did, of course, have the ultimate lure—the arcanum. When she began to feel its rejuvenating effects…that, he hoped, would be the turning point.

  Now that she was out of the house, he turned to the platter Gurumarra had brought him, on which was placed a single letter that had arrived at the post office box he maintained in Key West. Taking up a mother-of-pearl letter opener, he neatly slit open the larger, remailing-service envelope and removed the smaller envelope inside. This he slit open in turn and removed a single page of cheap paper. The letter was written in a tiny, precise, spiky hand. There was no salutation, he was glad to see, nor signature at the bottom, nor return address—but he knew very well who it was from.

  I have taken care of everything for you. Everything. It all came off exactly as planned. You needn’t feel any concern about the assignment you gave me, as I have accomplished everything you asked me to do, leaving no loose ends. Just a firmer touch than you’d authorized, that’s all. I will go into the details when we meet, which I hope will be as soon as possible.

  When? Where? I am so anxious to tell you everything. Please let me know when we can meet.

  Diogenes read the letter twice, a frown marring his face. The importuning tone of the letter was concerning, and it only reinforced an uneasy feeling he’d had for some time. He rose, taking the letter and envelope to the small tiled fireplace, tore it into pieces, struck a match, and set it to an edge of the paper. He stood, watching, as the pieces curled up and were consumed. When it was done he took a poker, stirred the ashes once, and then again.

  Constance strolled along the sandy path through the mangroves, which fell away, opening up to a meadow on the southern end of the island. She had long since passed by the “gardener’s cottage,” Mr. Gurumarra’s bungalow, tucked away in a grove of sand pines. It was a beautiful meadow, fringed by low dunes and palm trees, terminating in a sweep of white beach that ended in a curving spit at the key’s southern tip. She could see some structures set amid the waving grass, clustered around a thick-limbed, half-dead gumbo-limbo tree.

  They were old Victorian outbuildings, constructed of red brick, weathered and crumbling. One had a smokestack that went up perhaps twenty feet, choked in vines. Curious, she followed the path toward them. The first and largest building, the one with the smokestack, had an old sign set in the brick façade, much faded, in which she could make out the word DYNAMO. She approached a shattered window frame to look inside, and a group of swallows flew out the broken door with much noise. Peering in, she could see the remains of machinery, draped in vines. This, she realized, must have been the old power plant for the island, now long abandoned. Beyond that stood three rows of sparkling new solar panels, and next to that a new windowless building with a metal door.

  Curious, she went to the building and tried the knob, found it unlocked, and opened it. Inside was a single room full of racks of batteries with thick bundles of wires—the island’s new source of power.

  Backing out, she closed the door. There was another small brick building nearby, very old, with a green copper-sheathed door. A slanting roof led into the ground—this door led to some subterranean chamber. She went over to it. Painted on the door was the word CISTERN. She tried it and found it locked.

  Putting her ear to the keyhole, she listened and heard the faint hum of machinery and the distant sound of running water.

  Walking past, she went to the point of the island. Here, two gorgeous beaches met in a long sandy spit that extended into the turquoise water. She felt tired from her walk, and curiously listless. A refreshing dip in the water might help revive her. She looked around. There was nobody about, of course, and the house was at the other end of the key, hidden behind mangroves, with only the tower poking above. There were no boats.

  It was as if the water before her, all the way to the horizon, was her private bath.

  Feeling a surge of independence, she took off her shoes, unhooked her dress, slipped it off, and in a moment was standing naked, her toes in the water. Again glancing around furtively, she waded into the water, going out quite a way before it became deep enough to immerse herself. She lay on her back, staring up at the blue sky, and trying to calm her mind and simply exist, with no thoughts, no misgivings, no fears, no yammering inner voice.

  In the tower of the main house, his eye to the lens of a telescope, Diogenes stared at her white figure floating in the green-blue water. His breath came fast and he could feel his heart hammering in his chest, and with a great effort he tore himself away from the scope.

  45

  THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS Center took up almost half a floor of Federal Plaza. It was a rambling labyrinth of glass and chrome, illuminated a cool fluorescent blue, with countless workstations, monitoring devices, satellite tracking screens, flat-panel displays of all sizes, terminals for controlling Predator and Reaper drones, and breakout rooms used by field agents planning operations; spooks listening in on satellite communications or sifting terabytes of email data; and federal nerds disassembling cell phones or employing decryption algorithms on confiscated laptops. Everywhere was a low hum of noise: the beep of electronics, the whisper of servers, the murmur of a dozen conversations. Much of the present activity was focused on one thing: crunching massive amounts of data in an attempt to discover the whereabouts of Diogenes Pendergast.

  In a glass-walled room in one corner of the center, behind a closed glass door, Pendergast and Howard Longstreet sat at a conference table. A white-noise machine masked their conversation from any passersby. Although this room served as one of Longstreet’s numerous satellite offices within Federal Plaza, it was bare save for two laptops, a phone on the table, and a monitor on one wall.

  “Your trip to Exmouth was instructive,” Longstreet was telling Pendergast. “Thanks to the landlord, we have identities for both Diogenes and his female companion.”

  “I wouldn’t put much stock in Diogenes’s identity,” Pendergast said. “I believe he has two types—long-term ‘avatars’ such as Hugo Menzies that he carefully cultivates and that will stand up to official scrutiny, and throwaway names like the one he registered in the Exmouth cottage under, and the one he used to charter the plane that—I’m assuming—my associate Proctor was chasing. Those aren’t worth investigating. The long-term identities are what we need to concern ourselves with. I’m not sure how many he still uses, but after he lost the Menzies identity, and what happened at Stromboli, I would doubt he has many left. At this point, having to sustain double, triple, or quadruple lives might be a burden to him.”

  “Well,” said Longstreet, “his accomplice is no question mark at all. Flavia Greyling is in fact her real name. She’s got a long and disturbing history.
There are a couple of law enforcement agencies that would like to chat with her. Interesting that she used her real first name during her time in Exmouth.”

  “It seems to speak to a certain disdain for the authorities.”

  “Agreed.” Longstreet tapped some keys and an image appeared on the monitor: a young woman with blond hair, ice-blue eyes, and high, prominent cheekbones. The photo was evidently a mug shot and, judging by the height scale being measured in meters, had been taken in some foreign country.

  “There she is,” Longstreet said, waving at the image. “On one of the few occasions when someone actually managed to get her in custody.” He consulted the computer in front of him. “She was born twenty-four years ago in Cape Town, South Africa. When she was eight, both of her parents were found beaten to death with what the coroner believed was a cricket bat. The weapon was never found, and the deaths were ascribed to a home invasion. Unsolved. After their deaths, she passed through a series of foster homes—never staying for more than a few months. Kicked out, one after the other, the families often citing fear of physical violence. Finally, she ended up a ward of the state—put in an orphanage. Reports from social workers who interviewed her there said she’d been the victim of sexual abuse by her father from an early age. They described her as maladapted, aggressive, manipulative, withdrawn, fascinated by martial arts and weapons—particularly knives, real or improvised, which were always being confiscated from her person—and prone to violence.”

  Longstreet used a mouse to scroll through the data on his screen. “It was not long before she was moved from an orphanage to a reformatory. Several instances of assault were noted during her residency there; in one case, she beat a fellow inmate almost to death. Ultimately, when she was fifteen, a request was made that she be transferred to a high-security prison, despite her age. The reformatory staff was simply unable to control her. But before the red tape could be completed, she escaped—stabbing a psychologist through the eye with a pen and killing him in the process.”

  He perused the screen a moment. “They tried to run her down, but she was a wily one. She left in her wake a trail of crime and violence. She evinced a hatred of men: one of her favorite tactics was to loiter around in seedy neighborhoods until someone either solicited her or tried to molest her, at which point she would castrate him and stuff his genitals into his mouth.”

  “Charming,” Pendergast murmured.

  “At around sixteen, her wanderings took her to Japan, where she got involved with a yakuza gang. After some kind of violent falling-out that the Tokyo police are still investigating, she apparently went to Canton, China, where she joined one of that city’s triads. According to our intelligence sources, her natural affinity for violence helped her rise quickly through the ranks. Almost immediately, she graduated from a ‘49’ to a ‘426’—a ‘Red Pole’ enforcer, whose specialty was managing and carrying out offensive operations. By twenty-one, she was set to rise still higher within the organization, when something happened, we don’t know what, and she left China for the United States.”

  Longstreet looked away from the screen. “In the years since, she’s made her home here, although it appears she left the country for Europe on a few occasions. Based on the crimes she’s presumably committed, she appears to be an extremely highly functioning sociopath, who kills and maims primarily for her own amusement. She has shown a remarkable ability to hide in plain sight and to evade the authorities at every turn. That mug shot is the only one we have of her, taken in Amsterdam. She escaped the following day.”

  “An ideal accomplice for Diogenes,” Pendergast said.

  “Precisely.” Longstreet sighed. “Having identified Greyling is a coup, without doubt—and yet, given her ability to successfully elude law enforcement in the past, I’m not sure how much material progress we’ll make.” He glanced at Pendergast. “I presume you searched the cottage where they stayed with particular care?”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “It had been meticulously cleaned.”

  Longstreet stretched, ran a hand through his long steel-colored hair. “We’ll send a CSU there anyway.”

  “I doubt if they’ll find more than this.” Pendergast reached into his pocket, withdrew something in a plastic bag, and handed it to Longstreet: a small slip of robin’s-egg-blue paper.

  Longstreet took it. “Interesting.”

  “I found it wedged between two floorboards near an air vent.”

  As Longstreet turned the bag over in his hands, Pendergast continued. “It’s a partial receipt for a piece of jewelry—a gold ring with a rare tanzanite gemstone. I would speculate it was a present from Diogenes to Flavia—a reward, perhaps, for a job well done.”

  “So, with luck, we can use this to trace the purchase back to Diogenes,” said Longstreet. “If we knew where this ring was purchased. Too bad the name of the store has been torn off.”

  “But we do know the store. There is only one that uses that particular color as the face they present to the world.”

  Longstreet glanced at the receipt again. And then he smiled—a slow, triumphant smile.

  46

  DIOGENES ENTERED THE library, carrying with him a silver bucket of ice and a bottle of champagne, with two glasses. He set them down on the side table and turned to Constance, who was sitting at the harpsichord bench, idly turning pages of sheet music.

  “Do you mind,” he asked, “if I enjoy a glass while listening to you play? If you’re in the mood to play, of course.”

  “Certainly,” she replied, turning to the keyboard. He could see the music on the stand: preludes from L’Art de Toucher by François Couperin. Uncorking the champagne, he filled his glass and eased himself back into a chair.

  He was concerned; more than concerned. That morning, Constance had arisen at ten, which seemed to him very late, although he wasn’t sure—some people did sleep excessively long. She had eaten very little at dinner the evening before, and hardly touched the magnificent breakfast he’d prepared for her. It had now been almost forty-eight hours since the infusion, and she should be showing its effects—strongly. Of course, this life was very new to her, and an adjustment was to be expected. What he was noticing could well be emotional rather than physical. Perhaps she was also having second thoughts.

  While he was thus preoccupied, he heard the first notes of the Premier Prelude in C major, slow and stately. It was not a difficult piece of music from a technical point of view. But as her fingers moved over the keys, and the rich low sound of the harpsichord filled the cozy room, he heard that the notes were uneven, tentative; he winced at a wrong note, and another; and then Constance ceased playing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I seem to be rather distracted.”

  Diogenes made an effort to disguise the strong feeling of dismay, even panic, that arose in him. He set down the glass, rose from his chair, and came over to her, taking her hand. It was warm—too warm—and dry. Her face was pale, and half-moon shadows had formed under her eyes.

  “Are you feeling well?” he asked, casually.

  “Very well, thank you,” came the sharp retort. “I just don’t feel like playing.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Champagne?”

  “Not tonight.” She removed her hand from his.

  Diogenes thought for a moment. “Constance, before dinner, if I could just have a moment of your time. I need to do a little routine blood work, now that the arcanum has been in your system for two days.”

  “I’ve been pricked enough, thank you.”

  Not nearly enough for my taste, thought Diogenes, but quickly removed that unworthy thought from his head. “Really, my dear, it’s a necessary part of the process.”

  “Why? You never mentioned it before.”

  “Didn’t I? I’m so sorry. Quite standard, I assure you. A routine follow-up to any drug infusion.”

  “What could be wrong?”

  “Nothing, my dear, nothing! Just a medical precaution. Now,
may I? Let’s just get it over with.”

  She brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Very well. Be quick about it, please.”

  She began to roll up her sleeve. Diogenes went to the cupboard where he kept the infusion supplies, removed a blood draw kit, and came back. He laid a sterile pad on the side table, placed her white arm upon it, strapped the tourniquet, tapped her veins, inserted an extra-large Vacutainer needle, and drew thirty milliliters.

  “Do you really need that much blood? That’s enough to choke a vampire.”

  “All quite standard.” It was indeed far more than the usual amount, but he needed plenty to work with.

  He quickly withdrew the needle and applied a cotton ball, taped it, and folded her arm up. “Done!” he said as brightly as he could muster.

  She gave an irritated sigh. “I think I’ll go to bed early. I feel drained—literally.”

  “No dinner? I am preparing brochettes d’agneau à la Grecque.”

  The irritated look on her face softened a bit. “I’m sorry, it sounds lovely, but I’m not hungry.”

  “Perfectly fine, not a problem. Shall I see you upstairs?”

  The look came back. “Please don’t hover so. I can manage on my own.”

  She disappeared through the library door, and a moment later he heard her light tread climbing the stairs.

  He waited, listening acutely to the extremely faint sounds of her movements; the water running; and finally silence.

  Swiftly, Diogenes took up the vial of blood and hastened through the darkened halls to the basement door, descending to his laboratory. Now he gave full flow to his feelings of apprehension. He quickly began setting up the tests for her blood work, chemistry panel and blood count, fibrinogen, hemoglobin A1C, DHEA, C-reactive protein, TSH, and estradiol.

  At a certain point later that night he found that his hands were shaking, and he took a moment to put everything down, close his eyes, fold his hands, center and empty his mind. Then he continued, maintaining focus. There could be no more mistakes.