Two Graves

by Douglas Preston

  Pendergast stared at the closed door. Unless… was it even possible?

  He quickly opened the door, which led to a crude stone passageway and a descending staircase, constructed from a natural crevasse in the schist bedrock. A strong smell of mold and damp rose from below. Heading down the long series of rude steps, he came to an ancient stone quay alongside a watery tunnel—the lair of the river pirate who had owned an earlier house near the site of the mansion. Normally, an old rowing skiff was upturned on the quay—but now it was gone. Fresh splashes and puddles of water on the stone edges of the quay attested to the fact the boat had been recently launched.

  Pendergast knew the smuggler’s tunnel led to the Hudson River. It was so well concealed, and the passage from it to the sub-basement so carefully barred and locked, Pendergast had always believed the rear tunnel entrance to be undiscoverable and impregnable. He now realized this had been a foolish oversight. With an hour’s head start, Alban and his hostage would be gone—and impossible to trace.

  He half sat, half collapsed onto the stone floor of the quay.

  46

  DR. JOHN FELDER STEPPED OUT OF THE GATEHOUSE AND closed the door silently behind him. As the calendar had promised, it was a moonless night. The Wintour mansion had no exterior lights—Miss Wintour was too miserly to buy any more lightbulbs than absolutely necessary—and the ancient pile was a vast obscure shape rising before him, black against black.

  He took a deep breath, then began pushing his way through the knee-high tangle of dead weeds and grasses. It was a cold night, close to freezing, and his breath smoked the air. The mansion, the street, the entire town of Southport seemed cloaked in silence. Despite the darkness, he felt horribly exposed.

  Reaching the main building, he pressed himself against its chill flanks and paused, listening. All was silent. He moved slowly along the exterior wall until he came to the large bow window of the mansion’s library. The library boasted three sets of casement windows. Moving even more slowly now, Felder peered into the closest casement. Utter blackness.

  Retreating slightly, he pressed his back to the stone façade and peered around. There was nothing, not even the hush of a passing car, to break the stillness. This side of the mansion was at right angles to the street, hidden from view by a wall of ancient arborvitae planted along the inside edge of the wrought-iron fence. He could not be seen.

  Nevertheless, he stood in the lee of the library windows for a long time. Was he really going to do this? As he’d sat in the gatehouse that evening, hour after hour, waiting for midnight, he’d told himself he wasn’t really planning anything wrong. He’d simply be appropriating the portfolio of a second-rate artist who nobody cared about, least of all Miss Wintour. In fact, he wouldn’t even be appropriating it. He was simply borrowing it. At the end of the day, he could just mail it back to her anonymously. No harm done…

  But then he’d come back to reality. He was planning a burglary. Breaking and entering. That was a crime, a misdemeanor or perhaps even a felony, punishable by jail time. And then his thoughts went to Dukchuk—and jail seemed a preferable alternative to getting caught by him.

  His feet were going numb from the cold and the lack of movement, and he shifted position. Was he really going to do this? Yes, he was—in another minute. Or two.

  He reached into the pocket of his jacket, checking its contents. A Maglite, a screwdriver, a scalpel, a tin of 3-In-One oil, a thin pair of leather gloves. He took another deep, shuddering breath; licked his lips; looked around yet again. Nothing. It was utterly black; he could barely make out the library windows against their heavy frames. The mansion was as silent as a tomb. Another moment of hesitation—then he plucked the gloves from his pocket, pulled them on, and stepped up to the nearest window.

  Pressing close to the casement, he took out his flashlight, and—shielding its beam with his glove—turned it on and examined the center post where the two vertical sections of the window met. Damn—the espagnolettes had been twisted into place, the hinged levers effectively locking this pair of windows. Flicking off the light and taking another look around, he moved on to the next casement and examined it. Again, the handles that opened the windows had been twisted into a horizontal position. He couldn’t get in without breaking the glass, reaching in, and turning the handle himself—unthinkable.

  With a sensation that seemed half disappointment, half relief, he moved on to the last casement, hooded his light, and glanced in. The handle of the first matched window was securely in place. But the beam of his light revealed that its mate was slightly ajar, the espagnolette having broken off and been left unrepaired, the place where it had been fastened to the metal framing now just a hole.

  Snapping off his light, Felder moved on, into the shadow of the far side of the bow window. Once again he waited, looking around and listening carefully. But there was nothing.

  He realized his heart was pounding painfully in his chest. If he didn’t do this now, he’d lose his nerve. Turning resolutely back to the final casement, he slipped the screwdriver into the thin space between the window edge and the frame, then applied gentle pressure. The gap widened with a squeak of protest. Felder stopped, took the lubricating oil from his pocket, applied it to the rusty hinges, tried the screwdriver again. Now the window moved silently. In a moment the gap was large enough for him to insert his fingers. Gently—gently—he pulled the window wide.

  He put the oil and screwdriver back into his pocket. All remained still. Summoning his courage, he placed his hands on both sides of the window frame and raised his foot onto the sill, preparing to pull himself in. Then he hesitated. For a moment, he saw himself as if from a distance. It suddenly seemed ridiculous, even preposterous, what he was doing. A thought flashed through his head: If my med-school professors could see me now. But he was too nervous for such contemplations to last. Taking a fresh hold on the frame, he pulled himself up and, with one quick effort, was inside the room.

  The library was almost as chilly as the night outside. Shielding the flashlight, Felder swept it briefly around the room, taking in the positions of the various pieces of furniture. It wouldn’t do for him to tumble over a chair. The space was decorated similarly to the front parlor: prudish high-backed chairs, a few low tables covered with lace cloths on which were set various pieces of display china and pewter. The room was dusty, as if it had not been used in a long time. The walls on both sides were covered floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves, set behind cases of leaded glass.

  He glanced around again, memorizing the location of the furnishings. Then, snapping off the light, he walked as quickly and as quietly as he dared across the room to the pocket doors. Here he stopped, placing his ear to the doors and listening intently.

  Nothing.

  Heart beating still faster, he turned back to face the library. He had no idea where to start. The shelves were stuffed with thousands of books, leather storage boxes, bundles of ancient manuscripts tied in decaying ribbons, and other material. The prospect of spending hours searching, fearing discovery at any moment, was intolerable.

  He braced himself with thoughts of Constance. Then, turning to his left, he crept over to where the wall of bookshelves seemed to start, next to the pocket doors. Hooding his flashlight again, he snapped it on, long enough to see a row of tall, leather-bound books staring back at him, their ribbed spines glowing faintly in the light. They were the works of Henry Adams, in four volumes.

  He walked a little way down the wall of shelving, then paused and flicked the light on again, briefly. On the shelf in front of him sat maybe half a dozen small wooden boxes of intricate workmanship, beautifully dovetailed and varnished. Paper labels were fixed to each, curling away slightly from the wood as the old glue dried. A note had been handwritten on each box in faded ink: Bierstadt, Vol. 1. Bierstadt, Vol. 2.

  The Bierstadt correspondence. The goal of the Harvard delegation that had made a futile pilgrimage here. No doubt worth a fortune…

  Felder turned off the
light and took a quick step back from the shelves. Was that a noise?

  He stood, motionless, for a long moment, listening intently. But there was nothing. He turned and glanced toward the pocket doors. There was no light shining beneath them.

  Nevertheless, he took a few anxious steps toward the relative safety of the open window.

  He paused again to listen for a good sixty seconds before returning his attention to the shelves. He raised his flashlight, again partially covering it with his hand, and briefly directed the shielded beam to the shelves in front of him. A huge, folio-size volume sat on the shelf at eye level, surrounded by smaller sets of books with matching gilt spines. It was Goethe’s Faust, and it was a beauty, its leather binding stamped and tooled into fantastical shapes…

  Felder jerked so violently he almost dropped the flashlight. Was he just hearing things in his extreme agitation? Or had that not been a footstep, a tread on the carpeting in the hall outside the library, a tread almost as stealthy as a cat’s?

  He glanced nervously toward the pocket doors. Still no light shone beneath them—all was black as pitch. He swallowed, then turned back to the shelving, preparing to take another look.

  And then, something—he did not know what, exactly—prompted him to turn around again, move directly to the open window, slip out of it to the ground, and close it silently behind him, thanking God he had thought to bring the oil.

  He stood there in the black of night, trembling slightly. As his heart rate subsided, he began to feel sheepish. It was just his imagination playing tricks on him. There had been no noise; there had been no light. If he let himself fall victim to every fit of the jitters, he’d never find that portfolio. He turned back toward the window. He’d let himself back in, get a better sense of the layout of the books…

  Abruptly, the pocket doors to the library were thrown back. The violence with which they opened was just as terrible as the silence with which they moved. Felder shrank away from the window in dread. He could see a huge figure standing in the doorway, framed against the faintest of light from the hallway beyond. It was a man, clothed in a strange, shapeless garment. A long, curved wooden club was grasped in one hand, its cruelly carven length terminating in a croquet-ball-size sphere.

  Dukchuk.

  Felder stood in the darkness outside the library window, staring through the glass, rooted to the spot with terror. The manservant looked carefully around the room, his bald and dimly shining head moving with the slow deliberation of a great beast, taking in every square inch of the room. And then he closed the pocket doors again, swiftly and silently. The house fell still once again—leaving Felder’s heart pounding furiously in his chest.

  Recovering his wits, Felder retreated to the gatehouse as quickly as he dared. But even before the awful tingle of fear had completely faded, he sensed something else—a spark of hope. Because he had just realized something.

  Adams. Bierstadt. Goethe. The books in the Wintour library were arranged in alphabetical order.

  47

  CONSTANCE GREENE SAT QUITE STILL IN THE PANELED fastness of Room 027, located on the first basement level of the Mount Mercy Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Room 027 had once been the site of the hospital’s Water Treatment room, a curative therapy instituted by Bradford Tuke, one of Mount Mercy’s earliest alienists. While the cleats for the manacles had long ago been removed from the walls, the perceptible dip in the carpeting in the room’s center revealed where the large floor drain—now filled with cement—was located.

  The room was now normally used for private psychiatric sessions between doctors and low-threat-level inmates. It was comfortably furnished. Still, while the chairs and tables were not bolted to the floor, there was a distinct lack of either sharp or blunt objects. The door was not locked, but a brace of guards was stationed directly outside.

  The only other occupant of the room was Special Agent Pendergast. He was pacing slowly back and forth, his step uncertain, his face extremely pale.

  Constance watched him for a while, and then her gaze fell to the stacks of police reports, grainy black-and-white stills from security video cameras, forensic analyses, and DNA reports that were neatly arranged on the desk before her. She had read and taken in everything, her mind retaining all the details in their enormous complexity. The information had then been subjected to a meditative practice known as Tsan B’tsan, that most demanding of the arts of Chongg Ran, an ancient mental discipline from Bhutan whose subtleties were known to less than half a dozen people in the Western world—two of whom occupied that room.

  During the state of Tsan B’tsan, Constance had come to an unexpected revelation.

  After several minutes, she looked back at Pendergast, still pacing slowly across the floor.

  “I think it would be best if we reviewed the events that have brought us to the present state,” she said, quietly and coolly. “Your wife, Helen Esterhazy, the descendant of a Nazi doctor, was the product of a genetic experiment involving twins, organized by a group calling itself Der Bund, the Covenant. Twelve years ago, when she threatened to reveal the experiments, they arranged to have her killed. But in an elaborate ruse perpetrated by her own brother, Judson, she survived and her defective twin, Emma, died in her place. Recently, when Der Bund realized Helen was still alive, they kidnapped her from your intended safekeeping—and then killed her.”

  Pendergast’s pace slowed even further.

  “Your wife gave birth—early in your marriage, and unbeknownst to you—to twin boys. These were the product of Der Bund’s ongoing experiments in eugenics and genetic manipulation. One son, named Alban, was developed into a highly intelligent, aggressive, and remorseless killer, an example of Teutonic perfection as visualized by Nazi ideology. The other son, whom you named Tristram, comprises what is left from their joint gene pool, and thus by necessity is Alban’s opposite: weak, timid, empathic, kind, and guileless. Both were brought here, to New York, as some kind of beta test, the purpose of which is unknown beyond the fact that it involved Alban’s serial killing of guests in hotel rooms and leaving messages intended for you. So far, am I correct?”

  Pendergast nodded without looking at her.

  “Tristram escaped to you. Last night, Alban found him and kidnapped him in turn, spiriting him away—as Helen Esterhazy was spirited away, not so long ago.”

  Somehow, this direct, factual recitation, devoid of emotion, seemed to clear the charged air of the room. Pendergast’s expression eased somewhat, grew less distraught. He stopped in his pacing and looked at Constance.

  “I cannot put myself in your place, Aloysius,” Constance went on. “Because you and I both know that—had I been in your place, had this happened to me—my reaction would have been of a rather more… harsh and impulsive nature than yours. However, the fact you have come to me like this tells me a great deal. I know you must be tormented by the tragic way your wife’s kidnapping ended. And I sense this cruel twist of fate—your son, the son you never knew you had, being taken in such a similar manner—has paralyzed you. You don’t trust your own judgment. Had you decided on a plan of action, you would not be here now, with me.”

  Still Pendergast gazed at her. Finally, he sat down in a chair across the table.

  “You are entirely correct,” he said. “I find myself in a paradox. If I do nothing, I will never see Tristram again. If I go after him, I might precipitate his death—just as I did my wife’s.”

  Neither spoke for several minutes. At last, Constance shifted in her chair. “The situation to me is clear. You have no choice. This is your child. For too long now, this contest of yours has been waged tangentially, along the periphery of your true adversary. You must attack the nerve center—the homeland, the viper’s nest—directly. You must go to Nova Godói.”

  Pendergast’s gaze dropped to the papers on the table. He took a deep, shuddering breath.

  “Recall my own child,” Constance went on. “When we learned of the threat posed to him, we didn’t hesitate t
o act. Even if it meant my being accused of infanticide. You must act now, decisively—and with violence.”

  His eyebrows rose.

  “Yes: violence. Great and decisive violence. That is sometimes the only solution. I discovered that for myself…” Her voice trailed off into silence, filled by the ticking of an antique clock.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low. “In my preoccupied state I didn’t think to ask about your own child. You should have heard something by now.”

  “I received the sign just five days ago. He’s finally in India now, away from Tibet, deep in the mountains above Dharamsala—safe.”

  “That is good,” Pendergast murmured, and the silence fell once again. But even as Pendergast began to rise from his chair, Constance spoke again.

  “There’s something else.” She swept a hand in the direction of the photographs and paperwork. “I sense something unusual about this Alban. Something unique in the way he perceives reality.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not sure. He somehow sees… somehow knows… more than we do.”

  Pendergast frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I don’t fully understand it myself. But I feel he has some power, like an additional sense—one that in normal human beings is undeveloped or absent.”

  “Sense? As in a sixth sense? Clairvoyance or ESP?”

  “Nothing as obvious as that. Something subtler—but perhaps even more powerful.”

  Pendergast thought for a moment. “I obtained some old papers, taken from a Nazi safe house on the Upper East Side. They pertain to the Esterhazy family, and they make mention of something called the Kopenhagener Fenster.”