The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  He mastered himself with a supreme effort, still pacing the room like a caged beast.

  “Go on, please,” said Glinn tonelessly.

  “Diogenes shrieked and screamed from within the inner chamber. Again and again . . . and again. I heard a terrible scrabbling as he tried to claw his way out—I could hear his nails breaking. Then there was a long silence . . . And then—I don’t know how much later—I heard the shot.”

  “Gunshot?”

  “Comstock Pendergast had furnished his . . . house of pain with a single-shot derringer. He gave his victim a choice. You could go mad; you could die of fright—or you could take your life.”

  “And Diogenes chose the last.”

  “Yes. But the bullet didn’t . . . didn’t kill him. It only damaged him.”

  “How did your parents react?”

  “At first they said nothing. Then they pretended Diogenes was sick, scarlet fever. They kept it secret. They were afraid of the scandal. They told me the fever had altered his vision, his sense of taste and smell. That it deadened one eye. But now I know it must have been the bullet.”

  Glinn felt a chill horror settle over him, and he felt an illogical need to wash his hands. The thought of something so awful, so utterly terrifying, that a seven-year-old could possibly be induced to . . . He forced the thought away.

  “And the small chamber you were imprisoned in,” he said. “These photographs you mention—what were they of?”

  “Official crime scene photographs and police sketches of the world’s most terrible murders. Perhaps a way to prepare for the . . . the horror beyond.”

  An awful silence settled over the small room.

  “And how long was it before you were rescued?” Glinn asked at last.

  “I don’t know. Hours, a day perhaps.”

  “And you awakened from this living nightmare under the impression Diogenes had become sick. And that accounted for his long absence.”

  “Yes.”

  “You had no idea of the truth.”

  “No, none.”

  “And yet Diogenes never realized that you had repressed the memory.”

  Abruptly Pendergast stopped in his pacing. “No. I suppose he didn’t.”

  “As a result, you never apologized to your brother, tried to make it up to him. You never even mentioned it, because you had utterly blocked out all memory of the Event.”

  Pendergast looked away.

  “But to Diogenes, your silence meant something else entirely. A stubborn refusal to admit your mistake, to ask forgiveness. And that would explain . . .”

  Glinn fell silent. Slowly he pushed his wheelchair back. He did not know everything—that would await the computer analysis—but he knew enough to see it now, clearly, in its broadest brushstrokes. Almost from birth, Diogenes had been a strange, dark, and brilliant creature, as had many Pendergasts before him. He might have swung either way, if the Event had not occurred. But the person who emerged from the Doorway to Hell—ravaged emotionally as well as physically—had turned into something else entirely. Yes, it all made sense: the gruesome images of crime, of murder, that Pendergast had endured . . . Diogenes’s hatred of the brother who refused to speak of the ordeal he had caused . . . Pendergast’s own unnatural attraction to pathological crimes . . . Both brothers now made sense. And Glinn now knew why Pendergast had repressed the memory so utterly. It was not simply because it was so awful. No—it was because the guilt was so overwhelming it threatened his very sanity.

  Remotely, Glinn became aware that Pendergast was looking at him. The agent was standing as stiff as a statue, his skin like gray marble.

  “Mr. Glinn,” he said.

  Glinn raised his eyebrows in silent query.

  “There is nothing more I can or will say.”

  “Understood.”

  “I will now require five minutes alone, please. Without interruptions of any kind. And then we can . . . proceed.”

  After a moment, Glinn nodded. Then he turned the wheelchair around, opened the door, and exited the studio without another word.

  53

  With sirens shrieking, Hayward was able to get down to Greenwich Village in twenty minutes. On the way, she had tried the few other contact numbers she had for D’Agosta—none connected. She had tried to find a listing for Effective Engineering Solutions or Eli Glinn, without success. Even the NYPD telephone and Manhattan business databases didn’t have a number, although EES was registered as a legitimate business, as required by law.

  She knew the company existed, and she knew its address on Little West 12th Street. Beyond that, nothing.

  Sirens still blaring, she pulled off the West Side Highway onto West Street, and from there turned into a narrow lane, crowded on both sides by dingy brick buildings. She shut off her sirens and crawled along, glancing at the building numbers. Little West 12th, once the center of the meatpacking district, was a single block in length. The EES building had no number, but she deduced it must be the correct one by the numbers on either side. It was not exactly what she imagined: perhaps a dozen stories tall, with the faded name of some long-defunct meatpacking company on the side—except it betrayed itself by tiers of expensive new windows on the upper floors and a pair of metal doors at the loading dock that looked suspiciously high-tech. She double-parked in front, blocking the narrow street, and went up to the entrance.

  A smaller door sat beside the loading dock, an intercom with a buzzer its only adornment. She pressed the intercom and waited, her heart racing with frustration and impatience.

  Almost immediately a female voice answered. “Yes?”

  She flashed her badge, not sure where the camera was but certain there was one. “Captain Laura Hayward, NYPD Homicide. I demand immediate access to these premises.”

  “Do you have a warrant?” came the pleasant answer.

  “No. I’m here to see Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta. I’ve got to see him immediately—it’s a matter of life and death.”

  “We don’t have a Vincent D’Agosta on staff here,” came the female voice, still maintaining a tone of bureaucratic pleasantness.

  Hayward took a breath. “I want you to carry a message to Eli Glinn. If this door isn’t opened within thirty seconds, here’s what’ll happen: the NYPD will stake out the entrance, we’ll photograph everyone coming in or out, and we’ll get a search warrant looking for a meth lab and bust a lot of glass. You understand me? The countdown just began.”

  It took only fifteen seconds. There came a faint click and the doors sprang open noiselessly.

  She stepped into a dimly lit corridor that ended in doors of polished stainless steel. They opened simultaneously, revealing a heavily muscled man in a warm-up suit emblazoned with the logo of Harvey Mudd College. “This way,” he said, and turned unceremoniously.

  She followed him through a cavernous room to an industrial elevator, which led via a short ascent to a maze of white corridors, finally ending up at a pair of polished cherry doors. They opened onto a small, elegant conference room.

  Standing at the far end was Vincent D’Agosta.

  “Hi, Laura,” he managed after a moment.

  Hayward suddenly found herself at a loss for words. She’d been so intent on getting to see him that she hadn’t thought ahead to what she would say if she succeeded. D’Agosta, too, was silent. It seemed that beyond a greeting, he was also unable to speak.

  Hayward swallowed, found her voice. “Vincent, I need your help.”

  Another long silence. “My help?”

  “At our last meeting, you spoke about Diogenes planning something bigger. You said, ‘He’s got a plan which he’s put in motion.’”

  Silence. Hayward found herself coloring; this was a lot harder than she’d thought. “That plan is tonight,” she went on. “At the museum. At the opening.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Let’s call it a gut feeling—a pretty damn strong gut feeling.”

  D’Agosta nodded.

  “I t
hink Diogenes works at the museum, in some kind of alter ego. All the evidence shows the diamond theft had inside help, right? Well, he was the inside help.”

  “That isn’t what you and Coffey and all the others concluded—”

  She waved her hand impatiently. “You said Viola Maskelene and Pendergast were romantically involved. That’s why Diogenes kidnapped her. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Guess who’s at the opening.”

  Another silence—this one not awkward, but surprised.

  “That’s right. Maskelene. Hired at the last minute to be Egyptologist for the show. To replace Wicherly, who died in the museum under very strange circumstances.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” D’Agosta glanced at his watch. “It’s seven-thirty.”

  “The opening’s going on as we speak. We need to go right now.”

  “I—” D’Agosta hesitated again.

  “Come on, Vinnie, there’s no time to waste. You know the place better than I do. The brass isn’t going to do anything—I have to do it myself. That’s why I need you there.”

  “You need more than me,” he said, his voice now quiet.

  “Who else did you have in mind?”

  “You need Pendergast.”

  Hayward laughed mirthlessly. “Brilliant. Let’s send a chopper up to Herkmoor and see if we can’t borrow him for the evening.”

  Another silence. “He isn’t at Herkmoor. He’s here.”

  Hayward stared at him, uncomprehending.

  “Here?” she repeated at last.

  D’Agosta nodded.

  “You busted him out of Herkmoor?”

  Another nod.

  “My God, Vinnie. Are you frigging crazy? You’re already hip-deep in shit . . . and now this?” Without thinking, she sank into one of the chairs at the conference table, then sprang immediately back to her feet. “I can’t believe it.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” D’Agosta asked.

  Hayward stood there, staring at him. Slowly the enormity of the choice she had to make became clear to her. It was a choice between playing it by the book—taking Pendergast into custody, calling in backup and transferring custody, then getting back to the museum—or . . .

  Or what? There was no other option. That was what she should do—what she had to do. Everything she had learned as a cop, every fiber of her cop’s soul, told her so.

  She took out her radio.

  “Calling for backup?” D’Agosta asked in a low voice.

  She nodded.

  “Think about what you’re about to do, Laura. Please.”

  But fifteen years of training had already thought for her. She raised the radio to her lips. “This is Captain Hayward calling Homicide One, come in.”

  She felt D’Agosta’s hand gently touch her shoulder. “You need him.”

  “Homicide One? This is a Code 16. I’ve got a fugitive and need backup . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  In the silence, she could hear the dispatcher’s inevitable question. “Your location, Captain?”

  Hayward said nothing. Her eyes met D’Agosta’s.

  “Captain? I need your location.”

  There was a silence broken only by the crackle of the radio.

  “I read you, over,” Hayward said.

  “Your location?”

  Another silence. Then she said, “Cancel that Code 16. Situation resolved. This is Captain Hayward, over and out.”

  54

  Hayward tore away from the curb, made a U-turn, and drove the wrong way down Little West 12th, peeled right onto West Street, and rocketed uptown, cars braking and pulling off to the left and right as she flashed past, sirens screaming. If all went well, they would be at the museum no later than 8:20 P.M. D’Agosta sat in the passenger’s seat next to her, saying nothing. She glanced at Pendergast in the rearview mirror—face badly bruised, a freshly dressed cut along one cheek. He wore a ghostly expression, one she had never seen on his face before—or anybody else’s, for that matter. He had the look of somebody who had just peered into his own personal hell.

  Hayward returned her gaze to the street ahead. She knew, in some profound way, that she had just crossed the Rubicon. She had done something that went against all her training, everything she knew about what it meant to be a good cop.

  Funny how, at the moment, she didn’t seem to care.

  A strange, uncomfortable silence hung over the three. She would have expected Pendergast to be peppering her with questions, or at least thanking her for not turning him in. Instead, he sat there wordlessly, the same awful expression on his bruised features.

  “Okay,” she said. “Here it is. Tonight’s the big opening of the new exhibition at the museum. Everyone’s there: top museum brass, mayor, governor, celebrities, tycoons. Everyone. I tried to stop it, postpone it, but I got vetoed. Problem is, I didn’t—still don’t—have any really hard information. All I know is this: something’s coming down. And your brother, Diogenes, is behind it.”

  She glanced at Pendergast again. But he did not respond, did not return the glance. He just sat there, withdrawn, detached. He might have been a million miles away.

  The wheels squealed a little as she negotiated a city bus, then accelerated onto the West Side Highway.

  “After the diamond heist,” she went on, “Diogenes vanished. I figure he already had an alter ego prepared and just stepped into it. I’ve done some sniffing around, and so has that journalist Smithback. We’re both convinced Diogenes’s alter ego is a staff member of the museum, probably a curator. Think about it: the diamond heist had to be an inside job, but he’s not the kind of guy to take in partners. That’s also how he managed to penetrate the security of the Sacred Images exhibition and attack Margo Green. Vinnie, you’d told me from the start Diogenes was working up to something big. You were right all along. And it’s going to happen tonight, at the opening.”

  “You’d better bring Pendergast up to speed on the new exhibition,” D’Agosta said.

  “After the fiasco with the diamonds, the museum announced it was going to reopen an old Egyptian tomb in its basement—the Tomb of Senef. Some French count gave them a ton of money to do it. It was obviously a way to distract public attention from the destruction of the diamond collection. Tonight’s the opening gala.”

  “Name?” Pendergast asked. His voice was barely audible, as if emerging from deep within a sepulcher.

  It was the first word Hayward had heard him utter. “I’m sorry?” she replied.

  “The name of the count?”

  “Thierry de Cahors.”

  “Did anyone actually meet this count?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  When Pendergast lapsed back into silence, she continued. “Over the past six weeks, there’ve been two deaths associated with the reopening of the tomb, supposedly unconnected with each other. The first was a computer technician working inside the tomb, killed by his partner. The guy went crazy, murdered his pal, stuffed his organs into nearby ceremonial jars, and fled to the museum attics. Attacked a guard when they tried to flush him out. The second death was a curator named Wicherly, a Brit brought in specially to curate the show. He went nuts, tried to strangle Nora Kelly—you know her, Vinnie, right?”

  “She all right?”

  “She’s fine—in fact, she’s handling the opening tonight. Wicherly, on the other hand, was shot and killed by a panicked museum guard during the attack on Kelly. Now here’s the kicker: autopsies showed both aggressors suffered the exact same kind of brain damage.”

  D’Agosta looked over at her. “What?”

  “Both were working in the tomb just before they went psycho. But we went over everything with a fine-tooth comb, found nothing—no environmental or other cause. As I said, the official line is that the two deaths are unconnected. But I’m not buying the coincidence. Diogenes is planning something—I’ve felt it all evening. And when I saw her at the opening, I knew I was right.”

  “Who?” Pendergas
t murmured.

  “Viola Maskelene.”

  Hayward sensed a sudden stillness behind her.

  “Did you inquire as to how she happened to be there?” came the very cool voice from the backseat.

  Hayward swerved around a lumbering garbage truck. “She was hired by the museum at the last minute to replace Wicherly.”

  “Hired by whom?”