They walked on, keeping to the deepest shadows of the trees hanging over the edge of the sand. About two-thirds of the way up the long beach, Pendergast halted. Just offshore lay the string of tiny mangrove islands dotting the shallows.
“Aloysius.”
To Pendergast’s astonishment, a figure of a man emerged from the edge of darkness. Longstreet. A gun was in his hand.
“After our last conversation, I should have figured you’d find your own way down here,” Longstreet said.
Pendergast remained silent.
“I’m not sure what you’re up to,” said Longstreet, “but I’d feel a hell of a lot better if you dropped that 1911 of yours into the sand.”
Pendergast dropped his gun.
“You may have forgotten honor, and our oath, but I haven’t.” Longstreet stepped forward and pointed his gun at Diogenes. “Now is the moment,” he said. “Prepare to die, you bastard.”
There was a long silence.
This seemed to unnerve Longstreet. He glanced at Pendergast. “He killed Decker.”
More silence.
“I’ll drop him, we’ll get our stories straight, and nobody will be the wiser.”
Constance spoke. “No.”
Longstreet ignored her. His finger tightened on the trigger.
“No!” Constance cried, suddenly lunging at Diogenes and pushing him sideways just as the gun went off, the round missing. She placed herself in front of Diogenes.
“For fuck’s sake, get her out of my way,” Longstreet said to Pendergast.
Pendergast looked at him. “My answer is also…no.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You will not kill him.”
“We swore an oath! He murdered Decker. You yourself said killing him was the only way!”
“He’s my brother.”
Longstreet stared at him, speechless.
“I’m sorry,” said Pendergast. “It’s…family.”
“Family?”
“You have to be a Pendergast, perhaps, to understand. I’m guilty of terrible crimes against my brother. I’m the reason he is the way he is. I realize now that if I’m party to killing him, I won’t be able to live with myself—and I mean that in the most literal way possible. I’ll have no choice but to end my own life.”
Longstreet looked back and forth between the brothers incredulously. “Son of a bitch, if this doesn’t take the cake.”
“H, please. Don’t kill my brother. He’ll disappear and you’ll never hear from him again. You have my word.”
At this, Diogenes laughed sarcastically, grotesquely. “For the love of God, don’t listen to him. Kill me! I want to die. Oh do man up, frater, and tell your pal to pull the trigger!” A choking sob escaped his lips, even as his laugh continued.
“He’s a serial killer,” Longstreet said. “You expect me to just let him go?”
“Ko ko rico!” Diogenes said abruptly, spewing Longstreet with saliva. “Ko ko rico!”
“Believe me—allowing Diogenes to live will bring him far more pain than anything our criminal justice system could mete out.” Pendergast paused. “And he isn’t going to kill again—I know that now. But it’s your decision. I put his life—and mine—in your hands. Constance, please step away.”
Constance hesitated a moment, then complied.
An unbearably tense minute passed. And then Longstreet slowly lowered the gun. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. He stared at Diogenes with open hatred and spat into the sand. “If I ever see you again, motherfucker, you’re a dead man.”
Pendergast moved quickly, uncuffing Diogenes, who had abruptly gone silent, staring.
“Wade out to that cluster of islands,” Pendergast spoke to him quickly. “In the outermost one, you’ll find a kayak in the mangroves.” He held out the Osprey pack. “In here is food, water, money, and a chart. Head for Johnston Key. Lie low. When things have died down, make your way back to civilization. I’ve no doubt you can come up with a good story and a new identity. And, I hope, a new outlook as well. Because Diogenes Pendergast died here—in the explosion. Metaphorically and literally.”
After a hesitation, Diogenes took the pack and slipped it onto his back. He stepped forward, bent sharply, moving slowly, as if under a far heavier load than the pack could account for. He began wading out into the dark waters. But then he turned. His dim form wavered in the murky gloom, like a disembodied ghost. “Died, you say? Frater, you’re quite right. I am become death.” And then he turned and vanished into the night.
After a long hush, Longstreet turned to Pendergast. “That was a big one to ask. Too big. You’ve caused me to break both my oath and my sworn duty as a federal officer.” He glanced around. “I think we’re done here—and you and I, brother, we’re also done.” He turned briskly. “What about her?”
Pendergast spoke with quiet meaning in his voice: “You’re referring to the kidnap victim? Thank God we managed to rescue her. Constance, Agent Longstreet will take care of you now and get you to a hospital. There will be a debriefing, of course, in which you’ll tell the FBI all about your kidnapping.”
“I understand, but…what will you do, Aloysius?” asked Constance, staring at Pendergast.
“I will go home. And await you there.”
As they spoke, two more Zodiacs came roaring in over the water toward the pier, followed by a third. They were filled with men. A fire was now leaping up above the trees—the main house was going up in flames, as Longstreet knew it would from the flash-bangs. The men piled out of the Zodiacs and came running down the pier, some heading toward the burning house, a few peeling off and running up the beach toward them. Longstreet quickly replaced his headset and switched it on.
“Is everything all right?” one cried.
“Fine,” he said. “We rescued the kidnap victim. Constance Greene. She’s hurt: evacuate her in a Zodiac, take her straight to Lower Keys Medical. Assign two agents for her protection.”
“And the target? Any word on him?”
Longstreet hesitated for a second, jaws working. “Took the coward’s way out,” he said brusquely. “At our approach, he blew himself to kingdom come in a massive detonation. I doubt we’ll find so much as a fingernail. Gentlemen, the operation is now over.”
Epilogue
MRS. TRASK WALKED briskly across the marble floor of the grand reception hall of the Riverside Drive mansion, feather duster in hand. It was one of those deceptively warm late-November days that seemed to promise that spring, rather than winter, was imminent. Sunlight filtered down through the antique skylights, gilding the brass fixtures of the mahogany display cases and illuminating the objects within. Mrs. Trask found many of these objects to be peculiar, even disturbing, and she had long ago learned to dust the cases without examining their contents.
The room looked far different than it had when she’d first returned from Albany with a glad heart, despite her grief over Mr. Pendergast’s death: her sister’s mysterious illness, which had at first seemed to be getting increasingly worse, had suddenly vanished in a way the doctors described as little short of miraculous. But imagine: arriving home at 891 Riverside meant discovering not only an empty house, but yellow crime scene tape strung across this very room! A quick call to Mr. Pendergast’s friend Lieutenant D’Agosta had fixed that, at least: the lieutenant had come over the very next morning and supervised in person the removal of that dreadful tape. He’d also given her the surprising and wonderful news that Mr. Pendergast was all right; he had not drowned after all, and was now simply—as was his wont—off on one of his cases. No doubt he would show up in his own good time, probably sooner rather than later.
The lieutenant had not, however, answered her other questions. Where was Proctor? And where was Constance? She couldn’t tell if the man knew nothing, or was hiding the truth from her.
Just before she left for Albany, Mrs. Trask had heard Constance announce her intention of moving to quarters in the sub-basemen
t…a place she herself never entered. But it seemed that, in her absence, those plans had changed. Suitcases were missing from Constance’s room. Proctor, too, was absent, and it appeared he’d left in a hurry: his room was disordered—something most unusual for a man as finicky about neatness as he was.
No doubt when Mr. Pendergast returned he would explain all. It was not her place, he had made clear many years ago, to concern herself with these endless and strange comings and goings.
Mrs. Trask moved from the reception hall to the library. Here there was no cheerful November sunlight: as usual, both the shutters and curtains were drawn, leaving the large space lit only by a single Tiffany lamp. Mrs. Trask bustled about, dusting and straightening, but in fact the room was already spotless—she’d gone over it every day since she’d returned—and her cleaning was more from habit than necessity.
She was used to Mr. Pendergast’s frequent absences, of course, but it was much rarer for Constance or Proctor to be gone. With all three of them away, things felt queer indeed. The mansion seemed even bigger than usual, and it was full of a lonely, ambient emptiness that made Mrs. Trask rather uncomfortable. Upon retiring each night, she locked not only the door to her rooms, but the door leading into the servants’ quarters, as well.
She’d thought of trying to telephone, but realized that she knew neither Mr. Pendergast’s nor Proctor’s cell phone number. Constance, of course, had no phone and didn’t care for one. Really, once they were back, she was going to have to make sure to…
At that moment, a hollow knock resounded on the front door.
Mrs. Trask paused in her dusting. Visitors to 891 Riverside were rare—almost unheard of. Except for Lieutenant D’Agosta’s recent appearance, which she herself had requested, she could only recall two such knocks on the door in the last twelve months. The first had proven most distressing indeed, and the second had precipitated the sudden visit of Mr. Pendergast and Constance to Exmouth that—until just recently—she believed to have ended in tragedy.
The housekeeper stayed where she was.
A few seconds later the knock sounded again: so loud it seemed to reverberate through the house.
It was not her place, she told herself, to answer the door. Nevertheless, something told her that—in the absence of anyone else—Mr. Pendergast would want her to do so. It was a bright, sunny morning, after all; what was the chance of it being a robber, or some other ne’er-do-well?
Exiting the library, she crossed the reception hall once again, passed through the long, narrow refectory, and entered the front hall. The massive front door stood before her like an ominous portal, monolithic, with no door viewer set into its grim lines.
As she stood there, a third knock came. She jumped slightly.
This was silly. Taking a deep breath, she unbolted and unlocked the door, then—with some effort—pulled it open. And then she stifled a scream.
A man stood on the stoop before her: a man who looked to be in the very last stages of debility. His shirt was stained and torn almost to ribbons; the inside of the collar was almost black; half-moons of dried sweat darkened the armpits. Despite it being November, he had no coat. His pants were, if anything, even more rent than the shirt. One cuff had come undone, billowing out over the bare and impossibly dirty foot below; the other trouser leg had been cut or, more likely, ripped off at the calf. The cloth of one shoulder and one leg were heavily matted with dried blood. But it was the man’s gaunt and hollow face that most distressed her. His hair was plastered to his head like a skullcap. Dirt, mud, blood, and dust coated his skin so thickly that she had a difficult time distinguishing his race. His beard was a tangled rat’s nest that ended in several spiky points. And then there were his eyes: two burning coals set deep, so deep, into sockets of purplish black.
She seized the door and was about to slam it closed when she realized that the specter standing in front of her was Proctor.
“Mr. Proctor! My goodness!” she said, opening the door wide. “Whatever happened to you?”
He took one tottering step forward—then another—and then collapsed to his knees.
Quickly, she knelt, helping him to his feet again. He appeared to be beyond exhaustion.
“What happened?” she repeated as she guided him through the refectory. “Where have you been?”
“It’s a long story.” His voice was faint, barely a whisper. “Can you help me to my room? I need to lie down.”
“Of course. I’ll bring you some broth.”
“Constance—?” he murmured.
“She’s not here. I don’t know where she’s gone. I think that Lieutenant D’Agosta might have some idea. You should ask him.”
“I will.”
“But I do have wonderful news. Or did you already know? Mr. Pendergast is alive. He didn’t drown, after all. He was back here, briefly—then left again, about a week ago I understand.”
For just a moment, those coal eyes brightened even further. “Good. That’s good. I’ll call Lieutenant D’Agosta first thing tomorrow.”
They were halfway across the reception hall when Proctor abruptly stopped. “Mrs. Trask?”
“Yes?”
“I think I’ll rest right here, if you don’t mind.”
“But let me at least get you to a sofa in the library, where you’ll be—”
Yet even as she spoke, Proctor released his hold on her and slid slowly onto the cold marble floor, where he lay, unmoving, in a dead faint.
One Week Later
December 3
PENDERGAST LAID ASIDE the thick book he was reading—Douglas Hofstadter’s brilliant if at times recondite Gödel, Escher, Bach—and looked over at Constance Greene. She was sitting opposite him, ankles crossed demurely over a leather footrest, drinking Hediard Mélange tea with milk and sugar and gazing into the fire.
“Do you know what I just realized, Constance?” he asked.
She glanced back at him, eyebrows raised in mute inquiry.
“The last time we sat together in this room, Percival Lake paid us a visit.”
“You are right. And therein—as the saying goes—hangs a tale.” And she went back to sipping her tea and looking into the fire.
Mrs. Trask and Proctor appeared quietly in the library doorway. The housekeeper had long since recovered from her shock, and was simply glad to have the household together again. Proctor, too, looked like his old stoic self, and the only remaining sign of his ordeal was a slight limp—the result, he’d explained, of a lion bite and a hike across almost two hundred miles of trackless desert.
“Excuse me, sir,” Mrs. Trask said to Pendergast. “But I just wanted to know if we could do anything for you before we had our supper.”
“Nothing, thank you,” Pendergast said. “Unless you need anything, Constance?”
“I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” came the reply.
Mrs. Trask smiled, curtsied, then turned away. Proctor, the eternal cipher, merely nodded and followed her back in the direction of the kitchen. Pendergast picked up his book and pretended to resume reading, but privately he continued observing Constance.
She’d spent the last week in a private Florida clinic, recovering from the wounds she’d sustained in the fight with Flavia, and tonight was her first night back in the Riverside Drive mansion. Although they had spoken at some length over the week—and while each had told in detail their stories of how they’d spent the last month apart, and any lingering misunderstandings were now fully cleared up—she did not seem herself and, truth be told, had not—as far as he could tell—since leaving Halcyon. All evening she had seemed restless and brooding; she would start to play a piece on the harpsichord, then leave off in the middle of a passage; she would pick up a book of poetry and stare at it, but for half an hour not a page would be turned.
Finally, he lowered his book. “What’s troubling you, Constance?” he asked.
She looked over at him. “Nothing is troubling me. I’m perfectly fine.”
“Come n
ow. I know your humors. Is it something I’ve said or done—or not done?”
She shook her head.
“It was unforgivable of me to leave you defenseless like that in Exmouth.”
“You couldn’t help it. You nearly drowned. And as you know, I managed to—how should I put it?—entertain myself in your absence.”
Pendergast winced inwardly.
After a minute, Constance shifted in her chair. “It’s Diogenes.”
“How do you mean?”
“I can’t stop thinking about him. Where is he now? What’s his frame of mind? Will he seek out the good in life—or will he prove a recidivist?”
“I fear that only time will tell. I hope for all our sakes it is the former—I gave Howard Longstreet my word on the matter.”
She picked up her teacup, then put it down again without tasting it. “I hated him. I loathed him. And yet I feel that what I did was too cruel—even for somebody as wicked as he was. Even…given what he’d done to me. And to you.”
Pendergast considered a variety of answers, but decided that none of them would be satisfactory.
“You made him the way he was,” she went on, her voice lower, eyes still on the fire. “He told me about the Event.”
“Yes,” Pendergast said simply. “It was a stupid, childish mistake—and one I regret every day. Had I known, I would never have forced him into that terrible device.”
“And yet that’s not what troubles me. What troubles me is that, despite everything, he tried to come back from the dark place in which he’d spent so many years. He created Halcyon. It was to be his retreat from the world; his place of safety. Also, I think he built it to make sure the world would be safe from him. But then he made the mistake of falling in love with me. And I—I was consumed with a thirst for revenge.”
Suddenly she looked directly at Pendergast. “You see, we’re two sides of the same coin, you and I. You, at least in part, made Diogenes into the monster he was. And now, I’ve unmade the good man he tried so hard to become.”
The Obsidian Chamber Page 34
