Cemetery Dance

by Douglas Preston

  His face tightened with recognition.

  Now he turned his attention to the junk crowding the basement. Rising before him was an Egyptian obelisk of cracked plaster, weeping with damp and spiderwebbed with mildew. Beside it stood the truncated turret of a medieval castle, slapped together out of rotting plywood, complete with crenellations and machicolations, perhaps one-tenth actual size; next to that was a heap of broken plaster statues, stacked like cordwood, in which Pendergast could make out smaller-scale copies of the David, the Winged Victory, and the Laocoön, arms and legs and heads all tangled up, broken fingers lying about the cement floor beneath. The light revealed, in turn, a fiber-glass shark, several plastic skeletons, a primitive tribal relic carved from Styrofoam, and a rubber human brain with a bite taken out of it.

  The extensive clutter made for slow going, and it prevented him from grasping the full dimensions of the belowground areas. As he moved through the eerie piles of cast-off movie sets—for that was clearly what they were—he kept the penlight low, moving as swiftly and silently as he could manage. Though scattered and jumbled without hint of organization, the props and the concrete floor they lay on were unusually clean and dust free, attesting to an excessive interest on the part of Esteban.

  The light flashed this way and that as Pendergast moved deeper into the clutter of Hollywoodiana. The claustrophobic spaces continued to branch out underground, room after room, stretching beyond the current footprint of the house, all manner of odd and unusual nooks and crannies, each stuffed with old props in various stages of decrepitude and decay, most from the grand historical epics for which Esteban was known. The basement was beginning to feel endless; it must have belonged to an earlier, even larger building occupying the site of Esteban’s mansion.

  Esteban. He would return home shortly, if he hadn’t already. Time was passing—precious time that Pendergast could not afford to waste.

  He moved to the next cellar—once apparently a smokehouse, now stacked with a witch-dunking chair, a gibbet, a set of stocks—and a spectacularly realistic guillotine from the French Revolution, blade poised to drop, the tumbrel below filled with severed wax heads, eyes open, mouths frozen in screams.

  He moved on.

  Reaching the end of the final cellar, he approached a rusty iron door, unlocked and standing ajar. He eased it open, surprised to find that the heavy door moved silently on oiled hinges. A long, narrow tunnel stretched ahead into darkness—a tunnel that at first glance appeared to have been dug out of the raw earth. Pendergast moved closer and touched a wall—and discovered it wasn’t earth at all, but plaster painted to look like dirt. Another movie set, this one retrofitted into what had evidently been an older tunnel. From the direction, Pendergast guessed it led to the barn; such tunnels connecting house and barn were a common feature of nineteenth-century farms.

  He shined the light down the murky passage. In places the fake plaster walls had peeled off, revealing the same stacked granite stones that had been used to build the house basement—and that were evident in the video of Nora.

  He began moving cautiously down the tunnel, shading the pen-light with his hand. If Nora was imprisoned on the grounds—and he was sure she was—she would have to be in the barn basement.

  Esteban entered the barn through the side door and treaded softly in the vast space, fragrant with the smell of hay and old plaster. All around him loomed the props he had so assiduously collected and stored, at great expense, from his many films. He kept them for sentimental reasons he had never been able to explain. Like all movie props they had been built in haste, slapped together with spit and glue, designed to last only as long as the shooting. Now they were rapidly decaying. And yet he was deeply fond of them, could not in fact bear to part with them, see them broken up and hauled off. He had passed many a delicious evening strolling among them, brandy in hand, touching them, admiring them, fondly recalling the glory days of his career.

  Now they were serving an unexpected purpose: slowing down that FBI agent, keeping him occupied and distracted, while at the same time helping to conceal Esteban and his movements.

  Esteban threaded through the props to the back of the barn, where he unlocked and unbolted an iron door. A set of stairs descended into cool darkness, down into the barn’s capacious underground rooms—once upon a time the fruit cellars, cheese aging rooms, root cellars, meat-curing vaults, and wine cellars of the grand hotel that had occupied the site. Even these spaces, the deepest on the estate, were chock-full of old props. Except for the old meat locker he had cleared out to imprison the girl.

  Like a blind man in his own house, Esteban made his way through the mass of old props, not even bothering with a flashlight, moving surely and confidently in the dark. Soon he had reached the mouth of the tunnel that led from the barn to the house. Now he snapped on a small pocket LED; in the bluish glow he could make out the fake plaster walls and cribbing left over from shooting Breakout Sing Sing, in which he had used this very tunnel as a set—and saved a tidy sum. About twenty feet past the tunnel mouth, a plywood panel had been set into the wall, a small angle-iron lever protruding from it. Esteban gave it a quick inspection and found it to be in good condition. It had been a simple mechanism to begin with, requiring no electricity, only the force of gravity to operate—in the movie business, contraptions had to be reliable and easy to work, because it was well known that what could break, would break, inevitably when the cameras were rolling and the star was, finally, sober. Out of curiosity he had tested the device just the year before—a device he had designed himself—and found that it still functioned just as well as on the day he shot the immortal escape scene of the movie that had almost won him an Academy Award. Almost.

  Flushing at the thought of the lost Oscar, he switched off his light and listened. Yes: he could hear the faint footsteps of the approaching agent. The man was about to make a gruesome discovery. And then, of course, there was no way the poor FBI agent—no matter how transcendentally clever—could possibly anticipate what would happen to him next.

  77

  Harry R. Chislett, deputy chief of the Washington Heights North district, stood at the central control point on Indian Road, a radio in each hand. Faced with an unprecedented and utterly unexpected development, he had nevertheless—so he considered—adapted with remarkable speed and economy. Who could have foreseen so many protesters, so quickly, all moving with the ruthless precision and purpose of a single mind? Yet Chislett had risen to the occasion. What a tragedy, then, that—for all his probity—he was surrounded by incompetence and ineptitude. His orders had been misinterpreted, improperly carried out, even ignored. Yes: there was no other word for it than tragedy.

  Picking up his field glasses, he trained them on the entrance to the Ville. The protesters had managed to get inside, and his men had gone after them. The reports were chaotic and contradictory; God only knew what was really going on. He would go in himself except that a commander must not place his own person in danger. There might be violence; perhaps even murder. It was the fault of his men in the field, and that was how his report would most emphatically read.

  He raised the radio in his right hand. “Forward position alpha,” he rapped out. “Forward position alpha. Move up to defense position.”

  The radio cracked and sparked.

  “Forward position alpha, do you read?”

  “Position alpha, roger,” came the voice. “Please verify that last order.”

  “I said, move up to defense position.” It was outrageous. “In the future, I’ll thank you to please obey my orders without asking me to repeat them.”

  “I just wanted to make sure, sir,” came the voice again, “because two minutes ago you told us to fall back and—”

  “Just do as you’re told!”

  From the gaggle of officers milling around confusedly on the baseball diamond, one figure in a dark suit separated itself and came trotting over. Inspector Minerva.

  “Yes, Inspector,” said Chislett, car
eful to let his voice radiate a dignified, McClellan-like tone of command.

  “Reports are coming back, sir, from inside the Ville.”

  “You may proceed.”

  “There is significant conflict between the inhabitants and the protesters. There are reports of injuries, some serious. The interior of the church is being torn up. The streets of the Ville are filling with displaced residents.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Minerva hesitated.

  “Yes, Inspector?”

  “Sir, once again I’d recommend you take… well, firmer action.”

  Chislett looked at him. “Firmer action? What the devil are you talking about?”

  “With all due respect, sir, when the protesters began their march on the Ville I recommended you immediately call for backup units. We’ve got to have more people.”

  “We have sufficient manpower,” he said fussily.

  “I also recommended that our officers move quickly to take up positions across the road to the Ville, to block the march.”

  “That is precisely what I ordered.”

  Minerva cleared his throat. “Sir… you ordered all units to maintain their positions.”

  “I gave no such command!”

  “It’s not too late for us to—”

  “You have your orders,” Chislett said. “Please carry them out.” He glared at the man as he dropped his eyes and mumbled a “Yes sir,” while walking slowly back to the gaggle of officers. Honestly, it was nothing but incompetence, incompetence, even from those he had hoped to rely on the most.

  He raised his binoculars again. Now, this was interesting. He could see protesters—first just a few, but as he watched, more and more—running out of the Ville and back down the drive, faces contorted with fear. His officers were finally flushing them out. Sprinkled among them were robed and cowled figures, residents of the Ville itself. All were streaming out of the Ville, sprinting away from the ancient wooden structures, falling over one another in a panicked effort to get as far away as possible.

  Excellent, excellent.

  Lowering the binoculars, he raised his radio. “Forward position delta, come in.”

  After a moment, the radio squawked. “Forward position delta, Wegman speaking.”

  “Officer Wegman, the protesters are beginning to disperse,” said Chislett primly. “Clearly, my tactics are having the intended effect. I want you and your men to shunt the protesters back toward the baseball diamond and the street, to effect an orderly dispersal.”

  “But, sir, we’re all the way across the park at the moment, where you told us to—”

  “Just do as you’re told, Officer.” And Chislett shut off the man’s protests with the flick of the transmit button. Weak as water, the whole lot of them. Had ever a commander in the history of organized aggression ever been burdened with such monumental ineptitude?

  He lowered the radio with a disheartened sigh and watched as the crowd of people streaming out of the Ville became a river, then a flood.

  78

  Pendergast moved through the tunnel, keeping close to the left-hand wall, the narrow beam of the penlight carefully shielded. As he came around a bend in the tunnel, he spied something in the dim glow—a long, whitish object lying on the tunnel floor.

  He approached. It was a heavy plastic bag, zippered on one side, smeared with mud, dirt, and grass, as if it had been dragged. Printed on the side were the words morgue of the city of new york and a number.

  He knelt and reached out, grasping the zipper. Slowly he drew it back, keeping the sound as low as possible. An overpowering stench of formalin, alcohol, and decomposition assaulted his nostrils. Inch by inch, the corpse within was exposed. He pulled the zipper back until the bag was half open, grasped the edges of the plastic and spread them apart, exposing the face.

  William Smithback, Jr.

  For a long time, Pendergast stared. Then, with an almost reverent care, he fully opened the zipper, exposing the entire body. It was at the worst stage of decomposition. Smithback’s cadaver had been autopsied and then, the day before it disappeared, reassembled for turning over to the family: the organs replaced, the Y-incision sewn up, the cranium reattached with the scalp pulled back over it and sutured closed, the face repaired, everything stuffed and packed and padded. It was a crude job—delicate work wasn’t a pathologist’s forte—but it was a package a good mortician could, at least, work with.

  Only, the body hadn’t gone to the funeral home. It had been stolen. And now it was here.

  Suddenly, Pendergast peered more closely. Reaching into the pocket of his suit coat, he extracted a pair of tweezers and used them to pluck away a few bits of white latex rubber that were clinging to the corpse’s face: one from a nostril, another from an earlobe. He examined them closely with the penlight, then placed them thoughtfully in his pocket.

  He slowly played the light about—and saw, fifty feet away, another decaying corpse, neatened up and dressed for burial in a black suit. An unknown person, but tall and lanky, the same approximate height and build as Smithback and Fearing.

  Looking at the two corpses, the final details of Esteban’s plot crystallized in his mind. It was most elegant. Only one question now remained: what was in the document Esteban looted from the tomb? It would have to be something truly extraordinary, something of immense value, for a man to go to such risk. Cautiously and silently he closed the zipper. Pendergast was stunned, not only by the complexity of Esteban’s plan, but by its audacity. Only a man of the rarest parts, of patience, strategic vision, and personal mettle, could have pulled it off. And pull it off he had; if Pendergast had not accidentally come across the looted tomb in the basement of the Ville, and combined that detail with the sanguineous wrappings of a crown roast of lamb found in the garbage, the man would have gotten away with it.

  In the noisome dark, Pendergast thought intently. In his mad dash to get here as quickly as possible, to save Nora, he had neglected to consider in detail how he would deal with Esteban. He now realized he had underestimated the man—this was a formidable adversary. The distance by car from Inwood to Glen Cove was such that he had surely returned home by now. Such a man would know that Pendergast was here as well. Such a man would have a plan and would be waiting for him. He had to confound the man’s expectations. He had to strike from—quite literally—an unexpected direction.

  Carefully, noiselessly, he retreated down the passage the way he had come.

  Esteban waited in the tunnel, standing beside the lever, listening intently. The FBI agent was damn quiet, but in these silent, underground spaces, even the smallest sounds traveled forever. Listening intently, he could reconstruct what was happening. First, the faint sound of a zipper; then the rustle of plastic; several minutes of silence—and the zipper again. Then he spied the faintest glow of light in the tunnel: Pendergast’s flashlight. Still he waited.

  It was amusing, really, the FBI agent finding the two bodies. What a shock that must be. He wondered just how much the man had figured out; with both corpses in front of him probably a great deal—this Pendergast fellow was clearly intelligent. Perhaps he knew everything but the crucial point: the nature of the document he had taken from his ancestor’s tomb.

  The important thing was that Pendergast was operating on a hunch, without proof—and that was why he was here alone, without backup or a SWAT team.

  At the thought of the document, Esteban felt a sudden panic thread his spine. He didn’t have it. Where had he left it? Inside his unlocked car, sitting in the driveway. That damn alarm coming in over his BlackBerry had distracted him just as he’d arrived home. What if it was stolen? What if Pendergast found it? But these were foolish thoughts: the gate into the estate was shut and locked, and Pendergast was down here, in the tunnel. He would retrieve the document at his earliest opportunity, but right now he had urgent business to attend to.

  The silence from the tunnel was now absolute. Hardly breathing, he listened and waited.

 
; And waited. The faint, indirect glow of the light remained steady, unmoving. As the minutes crawled by, Esteban began to realize something was awry.

  “Mr. Esteban?” came the pleasant voice out of the darkness behind him. “Would you be so kind as to remain absolutely still, while slowly releasing your grip on the weapon and allowing it to fall to the ground? Let me warn you that the slightest movement, even an ill-timed twitch of an eyelash, will result in your immediate death.”

  79

  Esteban released the gun. It fell to the ground with a thud. “Now if you will slowly raise your hands and take two steps back, then lean against the wall.”

  Esteban took the two required steps and did as he was told. Pendergast reached down, picked up the Browning, and slipped it into his jacket pocket, then searched through Esteban’s pockets and removed his flashlight. He stepped back and switched it on.

  “Listen—” Esteban began.

  “No talking, please, except to answer my questions. Now you will lead me to Nora Kelly. Nod if you understand.”

  Esteban nodded. All was not lost… It was always possible to be too intelligent. He moved slowly backward, in the direction of the house.

  “She’s not that way,” said Pendergast. “I’ve already explored those areas. You’ve used up your only chit—next time you try to pull something off, I’ll conclude you are unhelpful, kill you without further ado, and find Ms. Kelly myself. Nod if you understand.”

  Esteban nodded.

  “She’s in the basement of the barn?”

  Esteban shook his head.

  “Where is she? You may speak.”

  “She’s in a room hidden in the tunnel, under the plaster. Not far from Smithback’s body.”

  “There was no fresh plaster in the tunnel.”

  “The door is under a section of old wired-up plaster I can move and replace at will.”