City of Endless Night

by Douglas Preston

  He had won. He had met the great and terrible Ozmian on the battlefield, with weapons of the entrepreneur’s own choosing—blackmail—and he had emerged victorious! The way he had caved so completely, even on the tender point about his daughter, spoke volumes.

  The elevator doors whisked open and he strode through the lobby, out the revolving doors, and onto West Street. His cell phone—which had vibrated once or twice during the final minutes of his conference with Ozmian—now began to vibrate again. He took it out of his pocket.

  “Harriman here.”

  “Bryce? This is Rosalie Everett.”

  Rosalie had been one of Shannon Croix’s best friends, and she was second in command on the foundation’s board of directors. She sounded unaccountably breathless.

  “Yes, Rosie. What is it?”

  “Bryce, I don’t quite know how to say this, and still less what to make of it…but I just now received, in a series of email attachments, a large number of documents—financial documents. It looks like they were sent by accident, not five minutes ago. I’m no accountant, but it appears that all the foundation’s assets—just shy of a million and a half dollars—have been transferred from our business account and placed in a private holding in the Cayman Islands, in your own name.”

  “I—I—” he sputtered, too overcome by shock to articulate anything.

  “Bryce, this has to be some kind of mistake. Right? I mean, you loved Shannon.…But it’s right here in black and white. All the other board members have been getting copies, too. These documents—God, here come more of them—they all imply you emptied the foundation’s bank account just before the holiday. This is some kind of forgery, right? Or maybe a bad New Year’s joke? Please, Bryce, say something. I’m frightened—”

  With a click, her voice was cut off. Harriman realized that, involuntarily, his fingers had curled into fists, ending the call.

  A moment later, it rang again. After rolling over to voice mail, it rang again. And then again.

  And then came the chirrup of a text message being received. With the slow, strange movements of a bad dream, Harriman looked down at the screen of his phone.

  The text was from Anton Ozmian.

  Almost against his will, Harriman opened the messages pane of his phone and Ozmian’s text sprang onto the screen:

  Idiot. Proud pillar of the fourth estate, indeed. In your smug satisfaction at uncovering this story, you never thought to ask yourself the most germane question of all: why I beat up that priest. Here’s the answer you should have dug up yourself. When I was an altar boy at Our Lady, Father Anselm abused me. I was serially raped. Years later, I returned to that church to make sure he never preyed on his charges again. Here’s another good question: why was I charged only with a misdemeanor, which was quickly dropped? Sure, there was a courtesy payment, but the church refused to cooperate with any criminal investigation because they knew what damaging information would come out if they did. Now, ask yourself: if you publish this story, where is the public’s sympathy going to lie? With the priest? Or me? Even more germane, what will DigiFlood’s board of directors do? What will the world think of you for exposing my youthful abuse and its predictable psychical aftermath, which I overcame to found one of the most successful companies in the world? So go ahead and publish your story.

  A. O.

  P.S. Enjoy prison.

  But even as he read the text with mounting horror, the lines began to shimmer and grow faint. A second later, they were gone, replaced by a black screen. Harriman frantically tried to take a screen shot, but it was too late—Ozmian’s message had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.

  He looked up from his phone with a groan of disbelief and panic. This was a nightmare, it had to be. And sure enough—just as would happen in a nightmare—he saw, about half a block down West Street, two uniformed NYPD officers looking in his direction. One of them pointed at him. And then—as he stood rooted to the spot, unable to move—they began running toward him, releasing the thumb breaks on their holsters as they did so.

  46

  LONGSTREET, WITH PENDERGAST a silent shadow at his side, stood at the door to the garage of Robert Hightower’s row house on Gerritsen Avenue in Marine Park, Brooklyn. The door was open, allowing a chill wind to blow in—the short driveway was covered in a dusting of snow that had fallen late the night before—but Hightower seemed not to mind. The space was filled with beat-up worktables; personal computers of varying degrees of obsolescence; circuit boards spewing rivers of cabling; old CRT monitors missing their glass tubes; battered tools hanging from pegboard walls; band saws and compression crimpers and table vises; an assortment of soldering guns; half a dozen small-parts organizers, most of their drawers open, spilling screws and nails and resistors. Hightower, fussing over a worktable, was in his late fifties, solidly built, with short but thick iron-gray hair covering the dome of his skull.

  He picked up a tin of soldering flux, pressed the cap onto it, and tossed it toward the back of one of the tables. “So of all the people he screwed, destroyed, ruined, or otherwise fucked over, Ozmian claims I’m the one who hates him the most.”

  “That’s correct,” said Longstreet.

  Hightower barked a sarcastic, mirthless laugh. “What a distinction.”

  “Is it true?” Longstreet asked.

  “Consider a man who had everything to live for,” he said, busying himself at the worktable, “nice home, beautiful wife, great career, happiness, success and prosperity—and then the bastard ripped all that away. So do I win first prize in the hatred category? Yeah, I probably do. Guess I’m your man.”

  “This algorithm you devised,” Longstreet said. “The audio codec for compressing and streaming files simultaneously. I can’t pretend to understand it, but according to Ozmian it was original and quite valuable.”

  “It was my life’s work,” Hightower said. “I didn’t realize just how much of my own self was wrapped up into every line of that code until it was stolen from me.” He paused, surveying the benches. “My dad was a beat cop, just like his dad and his dad. Money was tight. But he had enough to buy the parts for a ham radio set. Just the parts. I built it myself. And that’s how I learned the basics about electrical engineering, telephony, audio synthesis. Got a college scholarship on the strength of that. And then my interests turned from hardware to software. Same melody, different instrument.” Finally, he rose from his fussing and turned toward them, looking from one to the other with eyes that Longstreet could only describe as haunted.

  “Ozmian took it away from me. All of it. And here I am.” He swept a hand around the garage, laughing bitterly. “No money. No family. Parents dead. And what am I doing? Living in their house. It’s like the last decade never happened—except that I’m a dozen years older, with nothing to show for it. And I have one cocksucker to thank for all that.”

  “It’s our understanding,” Longstreet said, “that during and after the takeover, you harassed Mr. Ozmian. You sent him threatening messages, said you were going to kill him and his family—to the point where he had to get a restraining order.”

  “So?” Hightower replied belligerently. “Can you blame me? He lied under oath, cheated, lawyered me to death, stole my company, fired my employees—and you could see he loved every minute of it. If you were half a man, you’d do the same. I could take it, but my wife couldn’t. Drove off a cliff, drunk. They said it was an accident. Bullshit.” He laughed harshly. “He did that, too. Ozmian killed her.”

  “I understand,” Pendergast said, speaking for the first time, “that during this difficult period—before your wife’s tragic death—the police were called to your house on several occasions, responding to a domestic disturbance?”

  Hightower’s hands, which had been roaming over the top of the workbench, suddenly went still. “You know as well as I do that she never filed a complaint.”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got nothing to say about it.” His hands began to stir once again. �
��Funny. I keep coming out here, night after night, puttering about. I guess I’m trying to come up with a second brainstorm. But I know it’s useless. Lightning never strikes twice.”

  “Mr. Hightower,” Pendergast asked, “may I ask where you were on the evening of December fourteenth? Ten PM, to be precise.”

  “Here, I suppose. I never go anywhere. What’s so special about that evening?”

  “That was the night Grace Ozmian was killed.”

  Hightower wheeled back toward them. Longstreet was surprised at the expression that had suddenly appeared on his face. The haunted look had been replaced by a ghastly smile; a mask of vengeful triumph.

  “Oh, yeah, that December fourteenth!” he said. “How could I forget that red-letter night? Such a crying shame.”

  “And your whereabouts the following night?” Longstreet asked. “When her dead body was decapitated?”

  As he was asking the question, a shadow appeared in the doorway of the garage. Longstreet glanced over to see a tall man in a leather jacket standing in the snow. His stony expression, the quick and impassive way with which he sized up the situation, told Longstreet the man was in law enforcement.

  “Bob,” the man said, nodding at Hightower.

  “Bill.” Hightower indicated his guests. “FBI brass. Here asking questions about the night Ozmian’s daughter lost her head.”

  The man said nothing, betraying no expression.

  “This is William Cinergy,” Hightower explained to Longstreet and Pendergast. “NYPD, Sixty-Third Precinct. My neighbor.”

  Longstreet nodded.

  “I grew up in a police family,” Hightower said. “And this is a police neighborhood. We members of the blue fraternity tend to nest together.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Now that I think of it,” Hightower said—and the unnerving travesty of a smile had not left his face—“Bill and I were out drinking the night Ozmian’s kid was killed. Weren’t we, Bill?”

  “That’s right,” Bill said.

  “We were at O’Herlihey’s, around the corner on Avenue R. It’s a cop bar. As I recall, a lot of the boys were there—weren’t they?”

  Bill nodded.

  “And they’d all remember me buying them a round—say, at about ten PM?”

  “Damn straight.”

  “There you have it.” Hightower slid off the stool, his face becoming an expressionless mask once again. “And now, if that’s all, gentlemen,” he said, “Bill and I have a football game to catch on ESPN.”

  They sat in Longstreet’s work sedan, idling at the Gerritsen Avenue curb, looking out at the little row house.

  “So,” Longstreet said, “what do you think about the way that guy practically flung that flimsy alibi in our faces?”

  “Whether the alibi is valid or not, I don’t think we have much of a chance of breaking it.”

  “What about your cop friend—D’Agosta? Maybe he can crack the blue wall.”

  “You know I would never ask him to do that. And there’s another consideration.”

  Longstreet looked at him.

  “While Hightower had the motive, it doesn’t explain the killings that followed.”

  “That’s already occurred to me,” Longstreet said. He continued to look at the house, and the curl of smoke that came drifting up from its chimney. “Maybe he developed a taste for it. I’ve seen cops go rogue before, start taking justice into their own hands when the courts won’t do it for them. One thing’s for sure—this merits following up.”

  “We’re going to have to be careful in doing so,” Pendergast said. “We must keep this lead quiet for now—with the NYPD and FBI. You never know who might pass information along.”

  “You’re right, of course. Let’s work on this individually. Compartmentalize. Minimize our communication. Keep in touch by phone or encrypted email only.” Longstreet went silent for a moment, staring at the house. The blinds had been pulled tight across the picture window of what he assumed was the living room. “That look he gave us,” he said. “When he passed off that alibi. It was almost like a challenge.”

  At this, Pendergast gave an almost convulsive shudder. “Challenge,” he repeated. “But of course.”

  Longstreet frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  But Pendergast said nothing more, and after a moment Longstreet put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb.

  47

  MARSDEN SWOPE SAT at the only desk in his tiny apartment. The time was six o’clock in the morning of January 3.

  January 3. A date that would initiate the purification of the city.

  He had no illusions. It would start small, he knew—if you could call so many pilgrims “small.” But he had a tool that prophets before him had not: the Internet. The one thing he had instructed his followers not to dispose of was their cell phones. They were critical for two reasons: first, they allowed him to orchestrate the logistics of the bonfire, and second, they would be able to document it.

  What would start as a single act of purification in Manhattan would spread: to big cities and small towns, from America to Europe and beyond. The world, divided more than ever between the haves and have-nots, was hungry for this message. The people would rise up and unite to rid their lives of greed, materialism, and the ugly social divisions caused by money, forsaking wealth for a life of simplicity, purity, and honorable poverty.

  But he must not get ahead of himself. He had paved the way, set things in motion—but now his next act was crucial. His followers, he knew, were awaiting his signal. The trick would be to get them to assemble on the Great Lawn at precisely the right moment, without alerting the authorities.

  Turning back to his desk, he composed a tweet for his base: short, instructive, and to the point:

  TONIGHT. Pray, fast & prepare for what is to come. Final LOCATION & instructions sent at 3 PM.

  —The Passionate Pilgrim (@SavonarolaRedux)

  January 3, 6:08 AM

  He read it over once, then again, and then—satisfied—posted it and sent it on its way. At three he would send his final instructions and then it would all be in God’s hands.

  48

  HOWARD LONGSTREET’S CELL phone chirruped just after 6 AM.

  He sat up with a grunt and glanced at it. It was not his personal cell, but the official mobile phone that the FBI issued to its agents and supervisors. It had the ability to send and receive both cleartext and encrypted mail—and the icon on the screen told him he had just received an encrypted note from S. A. Aloysius Pendergast.

  He plucked the phone from the table, ran the email through the decryptor, then read it.

  We must speak on a matter of great urgency. Significant breakthrough made. Connections proving far deeper than expected. Secrecy vital. Meet at old King’s Park, Building 44, 2 PM to plan apprehension of perps (sic). Any attempted contact in the interim is inadvisable. Backup is vital; bring Lt. D’Agosta, to whom I have also reached out.

  P.S. We are being surveilled.

  A.

  Longstreet cleared the message from his phone, then replaced it thoughtfully on the nightstand. Perps. The plural was no typo, as the “sic” indicated. More than one. This was indeed deeper than expected. Was it Hightower and others? He tried to parse Pendergast’s shorthand. It seemed he had made a critical discovery about the man. But the message also implied that Hightower’s connections to law enforcement ran deeper than either of them had suspected. Perps. Was Pendergast hinting at a conspiracy within the NYPD? It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility, given the NYPD’s old history of corruption. No wonder secrecy was paramount—especially since Pendergast had enough evidence to use the word apprehension.

  Pendergast, Longstreet knew, disliked email and rarely sent it. However, in this case the situation was dire enough, the stakes high enough, and the suspected perps well placed enough to make a high degree of caution necessary.

  What about this business of being surveilled? Did this mean his work
phone was actually at risk? Longstreet found that hard to believe; the FBI had the latest in encryption and protection. Damn that Pendergast and his deliberately inscrutable ways. He found himself tugged with curiosity as to what the agent had uncovered. And also…what was this place, “old King’s Park”?

  Reaching for his laptop, he turned it on, fired up the secure Tor browser, and used it to access the Dark Web. This was a highly irregular undertaking for a ranking member of the FBI, he knew, but if his email, phone, and texts were vulnerable, as Pendergast implied, so were his browsing habits. At least now he could make an untraceable search.

  It took only a few minutes to learn that King’s Park was a vast, rambling psychiatric hospital on the North Shore of Long Island, built in the late nineteenth century and now abandoned. He downloaded a map of the site and quickly familiarized himself with it. Building 44 was a small warehouse, originally used for depoting food supplies for the enormous complex.

  Committing the map to memory, Longstreet closed the browser, then quickly shut down the computer. Why King’s Park Psychiatric Center? But as he considered the matter further, he realized it was an ideal location for a meeting—outside New York City limits, thus curbing the effectiveness of any dirty NYPD surveillance, yet both isolated and easy to get to. And Building 44 had no doubt been chosen for its access to Old Dock Road, which bisected the grounds of the sanitarium.

  There was only one more thing to do: reach out to D’Agosta. He would use his regular cell phone for this, just the one call, and keep it banal. He looked through his log of his associates’ contacts, found D’Agosta’s number, and dialed.