The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  Fourmillante cité, cité pleine de rêves

  Où le spectre en plein jour raccroche le passant

  The sky was threatening rain, the city dark and narrow. Perhaps that was why he had always liked Florence in winter—it was monochromatic, the buildings pale, the surrounding hills gray humps spiked with cypress trees, the river a sluggish ripple of dull iron, its bridges almost black.

  He dropped a bill on the table and left the café, continuing his stroll down the street. He paused to examine the display window at Valentino, using the reflection of the glass to observe the other side of the street. He went inside and purchased two suits, one in silk and the other a black double-breasted completo with a broad pinstripe, which he favored because of its faint thirties gangsterish flavor—and had them, as well, sent to his hotel.

  Back on the street, he turned his footsteps toward the grim medieval facade of the Palazzo Ferroni, an imposing castle of dressed stone with towers and crenellated battlements, now the world headquarters of Ferragamo. He crossed the small piazza in front of the castle, past the Roman column of gray marble. Just before he entered the castle proper, a swift, sidelong glance identified the dowdy woman with brown hair—her—just at that moment entering the church of Santa Trinità.

  Satisfied, he entered Ferragamo and spent a good deal of time looking over shoes, buying two pairs, and then completing his wardrobe with purchases of underwear, socks, nightshirt, undershirts, and bathing suit. As before, he sent his purchases over to his hotel and exited the store, encumbered with nothing more than the furled umbrella and the raincoat.

  He walked toward the river and paused along the lungarno, contemplating the perfect curve of the arches of the Ponte Santa Trinità, designed by Ammanati: curves that had confounded the mathematicians. His yellowed eye examined the statues of the four seasons that crowned both ends.

  None of it gave him pleasure anymore. It was all useless, futile.

  The Arno below, swollen by winter rains, shuddered along like the back of a snake, and he could hear the roar of water going over the pescaia a few hundred yards downriver. He felt a faint raindrop on his cheek, then another. Black umbrellas immediately began appearing among the bustling crowds, and they bobbed over the bridge like so many black lanterns . . .

  e dietro le venìa sì lunga tratta

  di gente, ch’i’ non averei creduto

  che morte tanta n’avesse disfatta.

  He put on his own raincoat, belted it tightly, unfurled the umbrella, and experienced a certain nihilistic frisson as he joined the crowds crossing the bridge. On the far side, he paused at the embankment, looking back over the river. He could hear the tick-tick of raindrops on the fabric of the umbrella. He could not see her, but he knew she was there, somewhere under that moving sea of umbrellas, following him.

  He turned and strolled across the small piazza at the far end of the bridge, then took a right on Via Santo Spirito and an immediate left onto Borgo Tegolaio. There he paused to look in the rear display window of one of the fine antique shops that fronted on Via Maggio, stuffed with gilt candlesticks, old silver saltcellars, and dark still lifes.

  He waited until he was sure that she had observed him—he caught just a glimpse of her through a double reflection in the shop window. She was carrying a Max Mara bag, and for all the world looked like one of the swinish American tourists who visited Florence in mindless shopping herds.

  Constance Greene, just where he wanted her.

  The rain slackened. He furled his umbrella but remained at the shop window, examining the objects with apparent interest. He watched her distant, almost unreadable reflection, waiting for her to move forward into the sea of umbrellas and thus lose sight of him for a moment.

  As soon as she did so, he burst into a run, sprinting silently up Borgo Tegolaio, his raincoat flying behind him. He ducked across the street and darted into a narrow alley, Sdrucciolo de’ Pitti; tore along its length; then took another left, racing down Via Toscanella. Then he ran across a small piazza and continued down Via dello Sprone until he had made a complete circuit and come back around to Via Santo Spirito, some fifty yards below the antique shop where he had dallied moments earlier.

  He paused just short of the intersection with Via Santo Spirito, catching his breath.

  Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

  In a field

  He forced his mind back to business, angry at the whispered voice that never gave him peace. When she saw he was no longer on the street, she would assume—she would have to assume—that he had taken a right turn down the tiny alley just beyond the antique shop: Via dei Coverelli. She would think him ahead of her, walking in the opposite direction toward her. But, like the Cape buffalo, he was now behind her, their positions reversed.

  Diogenes knew Via dei Coverelli well. It was one of the darkest, narrowest streets in Florence. The medieval buildings on both sides had been built out over the street on arches of stone, which blocked the sky and made the alley, even on a sunny day, as dim as a cave. The alley made a peculiar dogleg as it wormed past the back of the Santo Spirito church, two ninety-degree turns, before joining Via Santo Spirito.

  Diogenes trusted in Constance’s intelligence and her uncanny research abilities. He knew she would have studied a map of Florence and considered deeply the momento giusto in which to launch her attack on him. He felt sure that she would see the Coverelli alleyway as an ideal point of ambush. If he had turned down Coverelli, as she must believe, then this would be her chance. All she had to do was backtrack, enter Coverelli from the other end, and then wait in the crook of the dogleg for Diogenes to arrive. A person lurking in that dark angle could not be seen from either opening of the alleyway.

  All this Diogenes had already thought out, the day before, on the plane ride to Italy.

  She did not know that he had already anticipated her every action. She did not know that his flanking dash in the other direction would turn the tables. He would now be approaching her from behind, instead of from the front.

  The hunter is now the hunted.

  71

  The Rolls tore across the upper deck of the Triborough Bridge, the skyline of Manhattan rising to the south, slumbering in the predawn. Proctor drove effortlessly through the traffic—heavy even at 4:00 A.M.—leaving drivers in his wake, their angry horns Doppler-shifting downward as he passed.

  Pendergast sat in the back, in disguise as an investment banker on a business trip to Florence, equipped with the appropriate documents supplied by Glinn. Next to him sat D’Agosta, silent and grim.

  “I don’t get it,” D’Agosta said at last. “I just don’t understand how Diogenes could call this a perfect crime.”

  “I do understand—and rather too late,” Pendergast replied bitterly. “It’s as I explained on the ride to the museum last night. Diogenes wanted to inflict on the world the pain that had been inflicted on him. He wanted to re-create the . . . the terrible Event that ruined his life. You recall I mentioned he had been victimized by a sadistic device, a ‘house of pain’? The Tomb of Senef was nothing less than a re-creation of that house of pain. On a grand and terrible scale.”

  The Rolls slowed for the tollbooth, then accelerated again.

  “So what was going on in the tomb, then? What happened to all those people?”

  “I’m not yet sure precisely. But did you notice that some of the victims were walking with a peculiar, shuffling gait? It put me in mind of the neurological effect known as drop foot, which sometimes afflicts people suffering from brain inflammation. Their ability to walk is impaired in a very specific manner, making it difficult to lower their feet smoothly to the ground. And if you ask Captain Hayward to inspect the tomb, I feel certain she will find powerful lasers hidden among the strobe lights. Not to mention a superfluity of fog machines and subwoofers far beyond anything the original design called for. It seems Diogenes engineered a combination of strobe light, laser, and sound to induce lesions in a very particular part of the brain.
The flashing lasers and sound overwhelmed the ventromedial cortex of the brain, which inhibits violent and atavistic behavior. Victims would lose all inhibition, all sense of restraint, prey to every passing impulse. The id unleashed.”

  “It’s hard to believe that light and sound could actually cause brain damage.”

  “Any neurologist will tell you that extreme fear, pain, stress, or anger can damage the human brain, kill brain cells. Post-traumatic stress disorder in its extreme form does, in fact, cause brain damage. Diogenes simply brought that to its ultimate conclusion.”

  “It was a setup from the very beginning.”

  “Yes. There was no Count of Cahors. Diogenes fronted the money for the restoration of the tomb. And the ancient curse itself provided just the kind of flourish that Diogenes delights in. Clearly, he secretly installed his own version of the show, a hidden version unknown to the technicians and programmers. He tested it first on Jay Lipper, then on the Egyptologist, Wicherly. And recall, Vincent, his ultimate aim was not just the people in the tomb: a live feed was going out over public television. Millions could have been affected.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  Pendergast bowed his head. “No. Utterly logical. His aim was to re-create the terrible, unforgivable Event . . . for which I was responsible.”

  “Don’t start blaming yourself.”

  Pendergast looked up again, the silvery eyes suddenly dark in his bruised face. He spoke in a low voice, almost as if he were talking to himself. “I am my brother’s creator. And all this time, I never knew it—I never apologized or atoned for what I did. That is something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.”

  “Forgive me for saying it, but that’s a load of crap. I don’t know much about it, but I do know what happened to Diogenes was an accident.”

  Pendergast went on, voice even lower, almost as if he hadn’t heard. “Diogenes’s entire reason for existence is I. And, perhaps, my reason for existence is him.”

  The Rolls entered JFK Airport and drove along the circulation ramp toward terminal 8. As it pulled up to the curb, Pendergast leaped out and D’Agosta followed.

  Pendergast hefted his suitcase, grasped D’Agosta’s hand. “Good luck on the hearing, Vincent. If I don’t return, Proctor will handle my affairs.”

  D’Agosta swallowed. “Speaking of returning, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s . . . a difficult question.”

  Pendergast paused. “What is it?”

  “You realize there’s only one way to take care of Diogenes.”

  Pendergast’s silvery eyes hardened.

  “You know what I’m talking about, right?”

  Still, Pendergast said nothing, but the look in his eyes was so cold that D’Agosta almost had to look away.

  “When the moment comes, if you hesitate . . . he won’t. So I need to know if you’ll be able to . . .” D’Agosta couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “And your question, Vincent?” came the icy reply.

  D’Agosta looked back at him, saying nothing. After a beat, Pendergast turned abruptly and disappeared into the terminal.

  72

  Diogenes Pendergast strolled around the corner of the Via dello Sprone and back into Via Santo Spirito. Constance Greene was gone, having ducked into the Via dei Coverelli as he’d anticipated. And now she would be waiting for him, in ambush, to round the corner.

  To confirm this, he walked briskly down Via Santo Spirito and paused just before the entrance to Coverelli, flattening himself against the ancient sgraffito facade of some long-forgotten palace. With enormous caution, he peered around the corner.

  Excellent. She was still not to be seen—she had already turned the first angle of the dogleg and was no doubt waiting for him to come from the opposite direction.

  His hand slipped into his pocket and removed a leather case, from which he took an ivory-handled scalpel identical to the one he had left beneath her pillow. The cool weight of it comforted him. Counting out the seconds, he opened his umbrella and made the turn. Then he began walking boldly down Via dei Coverelli, his shoes echoing on the cobblestones in the confined alleyway, his upper body hidden beneath the black umbrella. Disguise was unnecessary: she would not look back around the corner to see who was coming from the other direction. She would not expect his approach from that side.

  He strode on boldly, inhaling the scent of urine and dog feces, of vomit and wet stone—the ancient alleyway retained even the smell of medieval Florence. Keeping the scalpel poised in his gloved hand, he approached the first corner of the dogleg. As he did so, he previsualized his strike. She would have her back to him; he would come up from the side, grab her neck with his left arm while aiming the scalpel for that sweet spot just below the right clavicle; the length of the scalpel blade would be sufficient to sever the brachiocephalic artery at the point where it divided into the carotid and subclavian arteries. She would not even have time to cry out. He would then hold her while she died; he would cradle her; he would allow her blood to flow over him as it had done once before . . . under very different circumstances . . .

  . . . and then he would leave both her and his raincoat in the alley.

  He approached the corner. Fifteen feet, ten, eight, now . . .

  He turned the corner and paused, tense and then astonished. There was no one there. The dogleg was empty.

  He quickly looked around, forward and back: no one. And now he was in the dogleg, blind, unable to see who was coming from either direction.

  He felt a twinge of panic. Somewhere he had miscalculated. Where had she gone? Had she tricked him in some way? It didn’t seem possible.

  He paused, realizing that he was now stuck in the blind spot. If he walked around the corner ahead of him, out into Borgo Tegolaio, a much broader and more visible street, and she was there, she would see him—and all his advantage would be lost. On the other hand, if she was behind him, and he went back, that would also destroy his advantage.

  He stood motionless, thinking furiously. The sky continued to darken, and now he realized that it wasn’t merely the rain, but the evening was falling like a dead hand over the city. He couldn’t stay there forever: he would have to move, to turn either one corner or the other.

  Despite the chill, he felt himself growing warm under the raincoat. He had to abandon his plan, turn around, and walk back the way he had come—to unwind, so to speak, his flanking maneuver as if it had never happened. That would be best. Something had happened. She had taken another turn somewhere and he had lost her—that was it. He would then have to think of another attack. Perhaps he should go to Rome and allow her to follow him into the Catacombs of St. Callixtus. That popular tourist site, with its anonymous dead ends and doubling-backs, would be an excellent place to kill her.

  He turned and walked back along Via dei Coverelli, cautiously rounding the first dogleg. The alleyway was empty. He strode down it—and then suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of movement from one of the archways above; he instinctively threw himself sideways even as a shadow dropped upon him and he felt the resistless swipe of a scalpel cutting through the layers of his raincoat and suit, followed by the searing burn of cut flesh.

  With a cry, he twisted around and—even as he fell—drove his own scalpel in a glittering arc toward her, aiming for the neck. His greater experience with the blade, combined with superior speed, paid off as his scalpel met flesh in a mist of blood; but as he continued to fall, he realized she had twisted her head at the last moment and his blade, instead of cutting her throat, had merely slashed the side of her head.

  He fell hard onto the cobblestones, his mind swept clean by astonishment, rolled over, and leaped up, scalpel in hand—but she was already gone, vanished.

  In that moment, he understood her plan. Her poor disguise had been no accident. She had been showing herself to him, just as he had been revealing himself to her. She had allowed him to lead h
er to a point of ambush, and she had then used it against him. She had countered his countermove.

  The simple brilliance of it astounded him.

  He stood there, looking up at the crowded stone arches above him. He made out the crumbling ledge of pietra serena from which she had no doubt launched her attack. Far above he could see the tiniest sliver of steel-gray sky, out of which were spinning raindrops.

  He took a step, staggered.

  He felt a wave of faintness as the burning sensation in his side increased. He dared not open his coat and inspect; he could not afford to get blood on the outside of his clothing—it would draw attention. He belted his raincoat as tightly as possible, trying to bind the wound.