Cold Vengeance

by Douglas Preston

  These weren’t drug smugglers. These were Nazis—and they must have been operating in this house since World War II. Even after Germany surrendered, even after the Nuremberg Trials, even after the Soviet occupation of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall, they’d been operating. It seemed incredible, unbelievable. All the original Nazis would be dead by now—wouldn’t they? Who were these people? And what in God’s name were they still doing after all these years?

  If Pendergast didn’t know about this, and she suspected he didn’t, it was imperative for her to learn more.

  She moved with great caution now, her heart beating hard. Although she had seen no sign of activity, no sign of anyone coming or going, there still might be people in the house. She couldn’t be certain.

  In the corner sat a table with some electronic equipment, also covered by grimy plastic. She raised one corner, slowly, silently, to find herself staring at a collection of vintage radio equipment. Next, she turned her attention to the filing cabinets, examining the labels. They were in German and she didn’t know the language. She chose one at random, found it locked, and took out her tools. In a minute she had picked the simple lock and eased open the drawer. Nothing. The drawer was empty. But based on the lines of dust coating the upper edges of the drawer, it looked like it had until recently been full.

  Several other drawers confirmed the same thing. Whatever papers that had been kept there were gone—although not long gone.

  Taking out her flashlight and shining it briefly around, she spied doors in each of the far walls. One of them had to lead upstairs. She moved toward the closest, grasped its knob, and pulled it open with infinite care, keeping the squeak from the rusty hinges to an absolute minimum.

  Her light revealed a room, tiled in white on the floor, ceiling, and all four walls. A naked steel chair was bolted in the middle, and under the chair was a drain. Steel cuffs dangled from the arms and legs of the chair. In the corner a hose was coiled up, detached from a rusty faucet.

  She retreated, feeling faintly sick, and moved to the door on the other side of the basement room. This one led to a narrow staircase.

  At the top of the landing was another closed door. Corrie listened for a long time, then grasped the doorknob and eased it open a quarter of an inch. A quick examination with the dental mirror showed a dusty, disused kitchen. She pushed the door wide and looked around the kitchen, then passed quietly through to a dining room, and then into an ornate sitting room beyond. It was decorated in a heavy, encrusted Bavarian hunting-lodge style: antlers mounted on paneled walls, massive carved furniture, landscapes in heavy frames, racks of antique rifles and carbines. A shaggy boar’s head with gleaming yellow tusks and fierce glass eyes dominated the mantelpiece. She quickly scanned the bookcases and searched a few cabinets. The documents and books were all in German.

  She moved into the hall. Here she stood, barely breathing, listening intently. All remained silent. At last she climbed the stairs, one at a time, pausing on each tread to listen. At the second-floor landing she waited again, examining the closed doors, and then opened one at random. It disclosed a room almost devoid of furniture beyond a skeletal bed frame, a table, a chair, and a bookshelf. A broken window looked onto the back garden, shards of glass still littering the sill. The window was barred.

  She checked the other rooms on the second floor. All were similar—all bedrooms, all stripped—except for the last room. That one turned out to be a dust-choked photographic workshop and darkroom, and in addition contained several printing presses and primitive-looking photocopying machines. Racks of copper printing plates of all sizes lined one wall, many engraved with elaborate and official-looking patterns and seals. It appeared to have been an old document-counterfeiting operation.

  Back in the hall, she climbed the stairs to the third floor. She found herself in a large attic that had been divided into two rooms. The first—the room in which she now stood—was very strange. The floor was covered by thick, Persian-looking rugs. Dozens of candles, large and fat, sat in ornate freestanding holders, pools of melted wax hanging stalactite-like from their bases. On the walls were black tapestries covered with bizarre yellow-and gold-colored symbols, some sewn on, others fashioned from thick felt: hexagrams, astronomical symbols, lidless eyes, interlocking triangles, five-and six-pointed stars. At the base of one such tapestry was emblazoned a single word: ARARITA. In one corner of the room, a series of three marble steps led up to what looked like an altar.

  This was just too creepy, and she backed away. One last room, and then she’d get the hell out.

  Shivering, she moved through a low doorway into the attic’s second room. It was full of bookshelves and had once been a library, or perhaps a research room. But now all the bookshelves were empty, the walls barren save for a single, moth-eaten Nazi flag hanging limply against the far wall.

  In the middle of the room stood a large industrial paper shredder of new manufacture, plugged into the wall and looking ludicrously out of place in what was otherwise a midcentury time capsule. On one side of it stood a dozen tottering stacks of paper, and on the other a series of black garbage bags full of the shredded result. A closet door stood open in the far wall.

  She thought of the empty filing cabinets downstairs, the vacant bedrooms. Whatever had gone down here was now quickly becoming history: the place showed every indication of being methodically stripped of its incriminating contents.

  She realized—with a faint tickle of fear—that if this work was ongoing, it could pick up again at any time.

  These were the only documents remaining in the house. Pendergast would no doubt want to see them. Quickly and quietly, she moved over to the stacks of paper, examining them. Most dated back to World War II and were on Nazi letterhead, complete with swastikas and old-style German lettering. She cursed her inability to read German as she ploughed through the documents, being careful to maintain them in their correct order and piles, trying to root out any that might prove to be of special interest.

  As she worked her way down through the stacks, shifting papers and only examining one or two out of each huge batch, she realized that the documents on the bottom were more recent than those on top. She turned from the older documents and focused on these newer ones. They were all in German and it was impossible to ascertain their significance. Nevertheless, she collected those documents that looked most important: the ones with the most stamps and seals, along with others that were stamped in large red letters:

  STRENG GEHEIM

  Which to her eyes looked a whole lot like a TOP SECRET stamp.

  Suddenly her eye caught a name on one of the documents: ESTERHAZY. She recognized it immediately as the maiden name of Pendergast’s late wife, Helen. The name was sprinkled throughout the document, and as she sorted through the documents directly below, she found others with that name on it as well. She collected them all, stuffing them into her knapsack.

  And then she came across a batch of documents that were not in German, but some in Spanish and—she guessed—the rest in Portuguese. She could muddle through Spanish, at least, but most of these papers seemed pretty dull: invoices, requisitions, lists of expenses and reimbursements, along with a lot of medical files in which the names of the patients were blacked out or recorded by initials only. Nevertheless she stuffed the most significant-looking ones into her knapsack, now full almost to bursting…

  She heard the creak of a floorboard.

  Immediately, she froze, adrenaline flooding her body. She paused, listening intently. Nothing.

  Slowly, she closed her knapsack and stood up, careful to make no noise. The door was open only a crack, and a dim light filtered through. She continued listening and—after a moment—heard another creak. It was low, barely audible… like a cautious footfall.

  She was trapped, in the attic, with only one narrow staircase leading down. There were no windows, no place to go. But it would be a mistake to panic; it might just be her overactive imagination. She waited in t
he dim light, every sense on high alert.

  Another creak, this one higher and closer. No imagination: someone was definitely in the house—and they were coming up the stairs.

  In her excitement over the papers, she’d forgotten to keep utterly silent. Had the person on the stairs heard her?

  With exquisite care, she moved across the room to the closet standing open on the far side. She managed to get there without creaking any of the floorboards. Easing herself in, she pulled the door almost but not quite closed and then crouched down in the darkness. Her heart was beating so hard and so fast she feared the intruder might hear it.

  Another stealthy creak, and then a faint groan. The door to the room was being opened. She peered out from the closet, hardly daring to breathe. After a long period of silence, a figure moved into the room.

  Corrie held her breath. The man was dressed in black, wearing round smoked glasses, his face obscure. A burglar?

  He walked to the center of the room, stood there, and finally removed a pistol. He turned toward the closet, raised the gun, and aimed at the closet door.

  Corrie began to fumble desperately in her knapsack.

  “You will come out, please,” the strongly accented voice said.

  After a long moment, Corrie stood up, swung the door open.

  The man smiled. He thumbed off the safety and took careful aim.

  “Auf Wiedersehen,” he said.

  CHAPTER 81

  SPECIAL AGENT PENDERGAST SAT ON A LEATHER COUCH in the reception room of his Dakota apartment. The cut on his cheek had been cleaned and was now just a faint red line. Constance Greene, dressed in a white cashmere sweater and a pleated, knee-length skirt the color of coral, sat beside him. A soft light filled the room from behind scallop-shaped agate fixtures arrayed just below the ceiling molding. The room was windowless. Three of the walls were painted a deep rose. The fourth was entirely of black marble, over which fell a thin sheet of water, gurgling quietly into the pool at the base, in which floated clusters of lotus blossoms.

  An iron pot of tea sat on a table of Brazilian purpleheart, along with two small cups filled with green liquid. The two conversed in low tones, barely audible above the hush of the waterfall fountain.

  “I still don’t understand why you let him go last night,” Constance was saying. “Surely you don’t trust him.”

  “I don’t trust him,” Pendergast replied. “But in this matter, I believe him. He was telling me the truth about Helen, there in the Foulmire—and he’s telling the truth now. Besides—” he went on in an even lower tone—“he knows that, if he doesn’t keep his promise, I’ll track him down. No matter what.”

  “And if you don’t,” Constance said, “I will.”

  Pendergast glanced at his ward. A cold hatred flickered briefly in her eyes—a flicker he had seen once before. This, he realized immediately, was going to be a serious problem.

  “It’s half past five,” she said, glancing at her watch. “In half an hour…” She paused. “How do you feel, Aloysius?”

  Pendergast did not answer immediately. At last he shifted on the couch. “I must confess to a most disagreeable sensation of anxiety.”

  Constance looked at him, her face full of concern. “After twelve years… if it’s true that your… your wife cheated death, why has she never contacted you? Why this—forgive me, Aloysius—but why this monstrous, overarching deception?”

  “I don’t know. I can only assume it has to do with this Covenant that Judson mentioned.”

  “And if she is still alive… Would you still be in love with her?” Her face flushed slightly and she looked down.

  “I don’t know that, either,” Pendergast replied in a tone so low even Constance barely heard it.

  A phone on the table rang and Pendergast reached for it. “Yes?” He listened a moment, replaced the phone in its cradle. He turned to her. “Lieutenant D’Agosta is on his way up.” He paused a moment, then continued: “Constance, I must ask you: if at any time you have reservations, or can’t bear being incarcerated any longer, let me know and I will fetch the child and clear all this up. We don’t have to… follow the plan.”

  She silenced him with a gentle gesture, her face softening. “We do have to follow the plan. And anyway, I’m happy going back to Mount Mercy. In a queer way I find it comforting to be there. I don’t care for the uncertainty and busyness of the outside world. But I will say one thing. I realize now that I was wrong—wrong to look at the child as your brother’s son. I should have thought of the boy, from the very start, as the nephew of my… my dearest guardian.” And she pressed his hand.

  The doorbell rang. Pendergast rose and opened the door. D’Agosta stood in the entranceway, his face drawn.

  “Thank you for coming, Vincent. Is everything prepared?”

  D’Agosta nodded. “The car’s waiting downstairs. I told Dr. Ostrom that Constance was on her way back. The poor bastard just about collapsed with relief.”

  Pendergast removed a vicuña overcoat from a closet, slipped it on, and helped Constance into her own coat. “Vincent, please make sure that Dr. Ostrom fully understands Constance is returning voluntarily—and that her departure from the hospital was a kidnapping, not an escape, entirely the fault of this phony Dr. Poole. Whom we are still looking for but are unlikely to find.”

  D’Agosta nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

  They left the apartment and entered the waiting elevator. “When you get back to Mount Mercy, make sure she’s given her old room with all her books, furniture, and notebooks returned. If not, protest vigorously.”

  “I’ll raise holy hell, believe me.”

  “Excellent, my dear Vincent.”

  “But… damn it, don’t you think I should go with you to the boathouse? Just in case there’s trouble?”

  Pendergast shook his head. “Under any other circumstances, Vincent, I would accept your help. But Constance’s safety is too important. You’re armed, of course?”

  “Of course.”

  The elevator arrived at the ground floor, the doors whispering open. They exited the southwest lobby and walked across the interior courtyard.

  D’Agosta frowned. “Esterhazy might be organizing a trap.”

  “I doubt it, but I’ve taken precautions. In case anyone tries to interrupt us.”

  They passed beneath a portcullis-like structure and through the entrance tunnel to Seventy-Second Street. An unmarked car idled by the doorman’s pillbox, a uniformed police officer behind the wheel. D’Agosta glanced around for a moment, then opened the rear door, holding it for Constance.

  Constance turned to Pendergast, kissed him lingeringly on the cheek. “Take care, Aloysius,” she whispered.

  “I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” he told her.

  She gave his hand a final press and slipped into the rear of the car.

  D’Agosta closed the door after her, walked around to the other side. He gave Pendergast a last, intent look. “Watch your ass, partner.”

  “I will endeavor to follow your advice—metaphorically, of course.”

  D’Agosta got in and the car pulled out into traffic.

  Pendergast watched the car disappear into the gathering dusk. Then he reached into his jacket, pulled out a tiny Bluetooth headset, and fitted it to his ear. Slipping his hands into the pockets of his coat, he crossed the broad avenue, entered Central Park, and vanished down a winding path, heading for Conservatory Water.

  CHAPTER 82

  AT FIVE MINUTES BEFORE SIX IN THE EVENING, Central Park lay under the drowsy enchantment of a Magritte painting: the sky above in vivid light, the trees and pathways below swathed in heavy dusk. The pulse of the city had slowed with the coming of evening; the cabs hushed by on Fifth Avenue, too lazy even to honk their horns.

  The Kerbs Memorial Boathouse rose like a confection of brick and verdigrised copper beside the mirrored surface of Conservatory Water. Beyond it, past a fringe of trees dressed in autumn colors, rose the monolithic e
xpanse of Fifth Avenue, the ramparts of stone blushing pink in the reflected glow of the dying sun.

  Special Agent Pendergast made his way through the cherry trees of Pilgrim Hill and paused in the long shadows to scan the boathouse and its surroundings. It was an unusually warm fall evening. The oval pond was utterly calm, its mirror-like surface ablaze with the carmine and vermilion of the sky. The café adjoining the boathouse was closed for the day, and there were only a handful of would-be yachtsmen at the water’s edge plying their model yachts. A few children sat or lay beside them, hands idly stirring the water, staring out at the little vessels.

  Slowly, Pendergast circled the pond, passing the Alice in Wonderland statue as he approached the boathouse. A violinist stood on the stone parapet that rose before the lake, case open at his feet, playing “Tales from the Vienna Woods” with almost more rubato than the music could stand. A young couple sat on one of the benches before the boathouse, holding hands, whispering and nuzzling, identical backpacks beside them. On the next bench over sat Proctor, dressed in a suit of dark serge, apparently intent on reading The Wall Street Journal. A vendor of chestnuts and hot pretzels was closing up his cart for the day, and in the deep shadow behind the boathouse, in a cluster of rhododendrons, a homeless man was preparing his cardboard-box bed for the evening. A sprinkling of pedestrian commuters strode past on the various walkways leading to Fifth Avenue.

  Pendergast touched his earpiece. “Proctor?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anything amiss?”

  “No, sir. Everything’s quiet. A couple of lovebirds who can’t seem to get enough of each other. A vagrant who’s just finished scrounging a meal from the trash. Now he’s settling down for the night with what looks like a bottle of Night Train. An art class was painting the lake, but they left about fifteen minutes ago. The last model yachtsmen are packing up their boats. Looks like a go.”