The Book of the Dead

by Douglas Preston

  D’Agosta was glad of the activity. During the wait on top, he’d had too much time to think. And thinking was the last thing he wanted to do: thinking about his upcoming disciplinary trial, which might very well end in his dismissal from the NYPD. It seemed incredible what had happened in the last few months: his sudden promotion to the NYPD; his blossoming relationship with Laura Hayward; his reconnection with Agent Pendergast. And then it had all come crashing down. His career as a cop was in deep shit; he was estranged from Hayward; and his friend Pendergast was rotting in that damp hell below, shortly to go on trial for his life.

  D’Agosta staggered, righted himself. He tilted his bleary face upward, letting the drops of icy rain lash a modicum of alertness into him.

  He wiped his face and pushed on. Getting the water sample was going to be tricky, since the stream flowed along the edge of an open field outside the prison walls, completely exposed to the guards in the towers. But this was nothing compared to the magnetic drag he was charged with performing. Glinn wanted him to crawl as close to the outer perimeter fence as he could get, carrying a miniature magnetometer in his pocket, to see if there were any buried sensors or hidden electromagnetic fields… and then plant the damn thing in the ground. Of course, if there were any sensors, he might well set them off-and then things would get exciting.

  He crept slowly downhill, the ground gradually leveling out. Despite his slicker and gloves, he could feel the icy water creeping down his legs and in through the poor sealing of his boots. A hundred yards farther on, he could make out the edge of the woods and hear the gurgle of the stream. He kept low in the laurel bushes as he moved forward. The last few yards he got down on his hands and knees and crawled.

  A moment later, he was at the edge of the brook. It was dark and smelled of damp leaves, and along one bank a scalloped edge of old, rotten ice stubbornly remained.

  He paused, looking at the prison. The guard towers loomed above now, only two hundred yards distant, the bright lights like multiple suns. He fumbled in his pocket and was about to remove the vial Glinn had given him when he froze. His assumption that the guards would be looking inward, toward the prison, had been wrong: he could clearly see one of them looking out, scanning the edge of the woods nearby with high-powered binoculars.

  An important detail.

  He froze, flattening himself in the laurel. He had already entered the forbidden perimeter, and he felt horribly exposed to view.

  The guard’s attention seemed to have swept past him. With exaggerated care, he edged forward and dipped the vial into the icy water, filled it, then screwed the top back on. Then he crept downstream, fishing out trash-old Styrofoam coffee cups, a few beer cans, gum wrappers-and putting it in the knapsack. Glinn had been quite insistent that D’Agosta collect everything. It was a highly unpleasant job, wading in the icy water, sometimes having to root about the cobbled stream bottom up to his shoulder in water. One jam-up of branches across the stream acted like a sieve and he hit the jackpot, collecting a good ten pounds of sodden garbage.

  When he was done, he found himself at the point downstream where Glinn wanted the magnetometer placed. He waited until the guard’s attention was at the farthest point; then he half waded, half crawled across the stream. The meadow that surrounded the prison was unkempt, grasses dead and flattened by the winter snows. But there were just enough skeletal weeds to provide at least the semblance of cover.

  D’Agosta crawled forward, freezing in place every time the guard swept the binoculars his way.

  The minutes crawled by. He felt the icy drizzle trickling down his neck and back. The fence grew closer only by excruciating degrees of slowness. But he had to keep going, and as fast as he dared: the longer he lingered, the higher the probability that one of the guards would spot him.

  At last he reached the groomed part of the lawn. He removed the device from his pocket, pushed one hand out through the tall weeds, sank the magnetometer down to the level of the grass, then began an awkward retreat.

  Crawling back was much more difficult. Now he was facing the wrong direction and unable to monitor the guard towers. He kept on, slowly but steadily, with frequent long pauses. Forty-five minutes after setting out, he once again crossed the stream and reentered the dripping woods, pushing up through the laurel bushes toward their spy nest on top of the hill, feeling half frozen, his back aching from lugging the knapsack of wet trash.

  “Mission accomplished?” Proctor asked as he returned.

  “Yeah, assuming I don’t lose my frigging toes to frostbite.”

  Proctor adjusted a small unit. “Signal’s coming in nicely. It appears you got within fifty feet of the fence. Nice work, Lieutenant.”

  D’Agosta turned wearily toward him. “Call me Vinnie,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’d call you by your first name, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “Proctor is fine.”

  D’Agosta nodded. Pendergast had surrounded himself with people almost as enigmatic as himself. Proctor, Wren… and in the case of Constance Greene, maybe even more enigmatic. He checked his watch again: almost two.

  Fourteen hours to go.

  Chapter 13

  Rain hammered against the crumbling brick-and-marble facade of the Beaux Arts mansion at 891 Riverside Drive. Far above the mansard roof and its widow’s walk, lightning tore at the night sky. The first-floor windows had been boarded up and covered with tin, and the windows of the upper three stories were securely shuttered-no light pierced through to betray life within. The fenced front yard was overgrown with sumac and ailanthus bushes, and stray bits of wind-whipped trash lay in the carriage drive and beneath the porte cochere. In every way, the mansion appeared abandoned and deserted, like many others along that bleak stretch of Riverside Drive.

  For a great many years-a truly remarkable number of years, in fact-this house had been the shelter, redoubt, laboratory, library, museum, and repository for a certain Dr. Enoch Leng. But after Leng’s death, the house had passed through obscure and secret channels-along with the charge of Leng’s ward, Constance Greene-to his descendant, Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.

  But now, Agent Pendergast was in solitary confinement in the maximum security wing of Herkmoor Correctional Facility, awaiting trial for murder. Proctor and Lieutenant D’Agosta were away on a reconnaissance of the prison. The queer excitable man known as Wren, who was Constance Greene’s nominal guardian while Pendergast was gone, was at his night job at the New York Public Library.

  Constance Greene was alone.

  She sat before a dying fire in the library, where neither the sounds of rain nor those of traffic penetrated. She had before her My Life by Giacomo Casavecchio, and she was intently studying the Renaissance spy’s account of his celebrated escape from the Leads, the dreaded prison in the Venetian Ducal Palace from which no one had ever escaped before-or would escape again. A stack of similar volumes covered a nearby table: accounts of prison escapes from all over the world, but especially focusing on the federal correctional system in the United States. She read in silence, every so often pausing to make a notation in a leather-bound notebook.

  As she finished one of these notations, the fire settled in the grate with a loud crack. Constance looked up abruptly, eyes widening at the sudden noise. Her eyes were large and violet, and strangely wise for a face that appeared to be no older than twenty-one. Slowly, she relaxed again.

  It was not that she felt nervous, exactly. After all, the mansion was hardened against intruders; she knew its secret ways better than anyone; and she could vanish into one of a dozen hidden passages at a moment’s notice. No-it was that she had lived here so long, knew the old dark house so well, that she could almost sense its moods. And she had the distinct impression something was not right; that the house was trying to tell her something, warn her about something.

  A pot of chamomile tea sat on a side table beside the chair. She put the documents aside, poured herself a fresh cup, then rose.
Smoothing down the front of her bone-colored pinafore, she turned and walked to the bookshelves set into the far wall of the library. The stone floor was covered in rich Persian rugs, and as she moved, Constance made no noise.

  Reaching the bookshelves, she leaned close, squinting at the gilt bindings. The only light came from the fire and a lone Tiffany lamp beside her chair, and this far corner of the library was dim. At last she found what she was looking for-a Depression-era prison management treatise-and returned to her chair. Seating herself once again, she opened the book, leafed ahead to the contents page. Finding the desired chapter, she reached for her tea, took a sip, then moved to replace the cup.

  As she did so, she glanced up.

  In the wing chair next to the side table, a man was now seated: tall, aristocratic, with an aquiline nose and a high forehead, pale skin, dressed in a severe black suit. He had ginger-colored hair and a small, neatly trimmed beard. As he looked back at her, the firelight illuminated his eyes. One was a rich hazel green; the other, a milky, dead blue.

  The man smiled.

  Constance had never seen this man before, and yet she knew immediately who he was. She rose with a cry, the cup dropping from her fingers.

  As fast as a striking snake, the man’s arm shot out and deftly caught the cup just before it hit the ground. He replaced it on its silver salver, sat back again. Not a drop had spilled. It had happened so fast that Constance was hardly sure it had happened at all. She remained standing, unable to move. Despite her profound shock, one thing was clear: the man was seated between her and the room’s only exit.

  The man spoke softly, as if sensing her thoughts. “There is no need for alarm, Constance. I mean you no harm.”

  She remained where she was, standing motionless before the chair. Her eyes flickered about the room and returned to the seated man.

  “You know who I am, don’t you, child?” he asked. Even the buttery New Orleans tones were familiar.

  “Yes. I know who you are.” She choked on the uncanny resemblance to the man she knew so well, all except his hair-and his eyes.

  The man nodded. “I am gratified.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “How I got in is unimportant. Why I am here is the true question, don’t you think?”

  Constance seemed to consider this for a moment. “Yes. Perhaps you are right.” She took a step forward, letting the fingers of one hand drift from her wing chair and slide along the side table. “Very well, then: why are you here?”

  “Because it’s time we spoke, you and I. It’s the least courtesy you could pay me, after all.”

  Constance took another step, her fingers trailing along the polished wood. Then she paused. “Courtesy?”

  “Yes. After all, I-”

  With a sudden motion, Constance snatched a letter opener from the side table and leaped at the man. The attack was remarkable not only for its swiftness, but for its silence. She had done nothing, said nothing, to warn the man of her strike.

  To no avail. The man twitched aside at the last instant and the letter opener sank to its hilt in the worn leather of the wing chair. Constance jerked it free and-still without uttering a sound-whirled to face the man, raising the weapon above her head.

  As she lunged, the man coolly dodged the stroke and with a flick of his arm seized her wrist; she thrashed and struggled, and they fell to the floor, the man pinning her body under his, the letter opener skidding across the rug.

  The man’s lips moved to within an inch of her ear. “Constance,” he said in a quiet voice. “Du calme. Du calme.”

  “Courtesy!” she cried once again. “How dare you speak of courtesy! You murder my guardian’s friends, disgrace him, tear him from his house!” She stopped abruptly and struggled. A soft groan rose in her throat: a groan of frustration, mingled with another, more complex emotion.

  The man continued to speak in a smooth undertone. “Please understand, Constance, I’m not here to hurt you. I’m restraining you simply to prevent harm to myself.”

  She struggled again. “Hateful man!”

  “Constance, please. I have something to say to you.”

  “I’ll never listen to you!” she gasped.

  But he continued to pin her to the floor, gently yet firmly. Slowly her struggling ceased. She lay there, heart racing painfully. She became aware of the beating of his own heart-much slower-against her breasts. He was still whispering calming, soothing words into her ear that she tried to ignore.

  He pulled away slightly. “If I release you, will you promise not to attack me again? To stay and hear me out?”

  Constance did not reply.

  “Even a condemned man has the right to be heard. And you may learn that everything is not as it seems.”

  Still, Constance said nothing. After a long moment, the man raised himself from the floor, then-slowly-released his grip on her wrists.

  She stood at once. Breathing heavily, she smoothed down her pinafore. Her eyes darted around the library again. The man was still positioned strategically between her and the door. He raised a hand toward her wing chair.

  “Please, Constance,” he said. “Sit down.”

  Warily, she seated herself.

  “May we speak now, like civilized people, without further outbursts?”

  “You dare speak of yourself as civilized? You? A serial killer and thief.” She laughed scornfully.

  The man nodded slowly, as if ingesting this. “Naturally, my brother has taken a certain line with you. After all, it’s worked so well for him in the past. He’s an extraordinarily persuasive and charismatic individual.”

  “You can’t presume to imagine I’d believe anything you say. You’re insane-or worse, you do these things as a sane man.” She again glanced past him, toward the library exit and the reception hall beyond.

  The man gazed back at her. “No, Constance. I am not insane-on the contrary, like you, I greatly fear insanity. You see, the sad fact is, we have a great deal in common-and not just that which we fear.”

  “We haven’t the slightest in common.”

  “No doubt this is what my brother would like you to believe.”

  It seemed to Constance that the man’s expression had become one of infinite sadness. “It’s true that I am far from perfect and cannot yet expect your trust,” he went on. “But I hope you understand that I intend you no hurt.”

  “What you intend means nothing. You’re like a child who befriends a butterfly one day to pull off its wings the next.”

  “What do you know of children, Constance? Your eyes are so wise and so old. Even from here, I can see the vast experience written there. What strange and terrible things they must have seen! How very penetrating your gaze! It fills me with sadness. No, Constance: I sense-I know-that childhood was a luxury you were denied. Just as I myself was denied it.”

  Constance went rigid.

  “Earlier, I said I was here because it’s time we spoke. It is time that you learned the truth. The real truth.”

  His voice had sunk so low that the words were only just audible. Against her will, she asked, “The truth?”

  “About the relationship between me and my brother.”

  In the soft light of the dying fire, Diogenes Pendergast’s peculiar eyes looked vulnerable, almost lost. Gazing back at her, they brightened slightly.

  “Ah! Constance, it must sound impossibly strange to you. But gazing on you like this, I feel I would do anything in my power to lift from you that burden of pain and fear and carry it myself. And do you know why? Because when I look at you, I see myself.”

  Constance did not reply. She merely sat, motionless.

  “I see a person who longs to fit in, to be merely human, and yet who is destined always to remain apart. I see a person who feels the world more deeply, more intensely, than she is willing to admit… even to herself.”

  Listening, Constance began to tremble.

  “I sense both pain and anger in you. Pain at being abandoned-no
t once, but several times. And anger at the sheer capriciousness of the gods. Why me? Why again? For it’s true: you’ve been abandoned once again. Though not, perhaps, in exactly the way you imagined it. Here, too, we are the same. I was abandoned when my parents were burned to death by an ignorant mob. I escaped the flames. They did not. I’ve always felt that I should have died, not them; that it was my fault. You feel the same way about the death of your own sister, Mary-that it was you, instead of she, who should have died. Later, I was abandoned by my brother. Ah: I see the disbelief in your face. But then again, you know so little about my brother. All I ask is that you hear me with an open mind.”

  He rose. Constance took in a sharp breath, half rising herself.

  “No,” Diogenes said, and once again Constance stopped. There was nothing in his tone but weariness now. “There’s no need to run. I’ll take my leave of you. In the future, we’ll speak again, and I’ll tell you more about the childhood I was denied. About the older brother who took the love I offered and flung back scorn and hatred. Who took pleasure in destroying everything I created-my journals of childish poetry, my translations of Virgil and Tacitus. Who tortured and killed my favorite pet in a way that, even today, I can barely bring myself to think about. Who made it his mission in life to turn everyone against me, with lies and insinuations, to paint me as his evil twin. And when in the end none of this could break my spirit, he did something so awful… so, so awful…” But at this, his voice threatened to break. “Look at my dead eye, Constance: that was the least of what he did…”

  There was a brief silence, broken only by the sound of labored breathing as Diogenes struggled to master himself, his opaque eye staring not quite at her, but not quite away from her, either.

  He passed one hand across his brow. “I’ll be going now. But you’ll find I’ve left you with something. A gift of kinship, a recognition of the pain we share. I hope you’ll accept it in the spirit in which it is offered.”