Bloodless

by Douglas Preston

  He let this hang. Coldmoon could see Pendergast’s eyes glittering. “Can you expand on that, Dr. Kumar?”

  “I can, at least a little. We call this class of compounds organosilvers, which are formed when silver bonds with carbon. The reason we don’t find silver incorporated into the chemistry of living organisms is because it’s toxic.”

  “Then where did it come from?” Coldmoon asked.

  “I believe it’s a manufactured compound. Nothing like this would occur in nature. But to manufacture this would take a very sophisticated chemist, equipped with a high-level lab.” He paused. “The fact is, I’ve never seen a compound like this. It’s sort of crazy, to be honest.”

  “What’s it supposed to do?” Coldmoon asked.

  “I’m not sure I understand the question,” Kumar said.

  “I mean, it must have been made to do something, right? To serve a purpose? So: what’s the purpose?”

  “Ah,” said Kumar. “That is a very good question.” He paused again. “I have absolutely no idea what its purpose is.”

  “I believe it was kind of greasy or slick,” said Coldmoon. “And it was found around the puncture wounds in the victims. Could it have been a lubricant?”

  “Possibly. But why use it as a lubricant, when much simpler compounds can be purchased at the drugstore? Really, I wish I could tell you more, but we’ve barely been able to analyze the compound. We’re still working on its structure. A full analysis could take months.”

  “And the other compounds found in the sample?” Pendergast asked. “What is their chemistry?”

  “Equally bizarre. All organic, complex, and unlike anything we typically see in nature or in manufacturing, medicine, or chemical synthesis. Many seem to have metals in them—organometallic, we call them. Platinum and gold, primarily.”

  “Gold?” Coldmoon asked incredulously. “How much?”

  “Minute quantities. Gold bonded to carbon to make various gold carbide compounds. Again, this is something that doesn’t occur in nature, because such compounds are toxic to life—and they’re not stable.”

  “Any idea what company might manufacture these sorts of compounds?”

  “No idea who, and no idea how. In fact, that’s something that should be looked into.”

  “And we shall,” said Pendergast quietly. He turned his gaze to McDuffie, who flinched visibly in response. “What about the fur found in the mud this morning?”

  “Definitely from the dog,” the M.E. said.

  “And the imprint itself?”

  “Our CSI lab has a cast of it. They’re trying to figure out what made the impression, but it’s so smeared it’s hard to tell.”

  Pendergast leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers, half closing his eyes. “In that case, they are focusing on the wrong problem.”

  “What do you mean?” McDuffie asked.

  “What made the impression is not the question of greatest significance.”

  “What other question is there?”

  “How it was made. Consider, if you will, that the mark is ten feet out on the mudflat, with no other marks leading to it.”

  There was a silence in the room.

  Pendergast rose and picked up the file. “Thank you, Dr. Kumar, for your report. My partner and I will study this with great interest.”

  They took their leave.

  “Fascinating,” Pendergast said as they left the building. “But singularly unilluminating.”

  “So how was it made?” Coldmoon asked.

  But Pendergast, lost in thought, didn’t answer.

  25

  FRANCIS WELLSTONE JR. SAT in a rear corner banquette of Lafitte’s restaurant—one of Savannah’s most historic eateries, situated just off Warren Square. He always ate lunch promptly at noon, and when he was on assignment, he usually ate out and was careful to make his meals brisk, without wine or cocktails, and solus. Writing and researching were hard work. A freelancer such as himself had no boss to motivate him, no one checking up on his whereabouts, and it was all too easy to have a few martinis and let the afternoon and evening slide away. He’d seen it happen many times to other writers, and he was determined it would never happen to him.

  As luck would have it, the maître d’ at Lafitte’s was a voracious reader of nonfiction and happened to recognize Wellstone. While he hated to admit it to himself, this was tremendously gratifying. With great ceremony, the man ushered Wellstone to a prize table, and then—unexpectedly—returned a few minutes later with a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Wellstone was about to refuse it until he noticed it was a Beaucastel: a princely gift, and one of his favorite reds of the Rhône Valley. Under the circumstances, there was no choice but to have one glass. One. It might well be gauche for him to take the rest of the bottle with him, but it would be even more gauche for the restaurant manager to repossess it. So he’d still be able to do a full afternoon’s work, then reward himself with the rest of the bottle after a light dinner.

  But it hadn’t worked out that way. The sommelier, after uncorking the wine, immediately decanted it. So much for taking home the rest of the bottle. But the wine was excellent: earthy, almost leathery. As he was looking over the menu, Wellstone found that not only had he finished the glass, but a second had been poured for him. What the heck—he could take an afternoon off. He ordered an appetizer of escargots à la Bordelaise and then, feeling expansive, Lafitte’s famous oysters Rockefeller. But by the time he’d finished the two courses, and three glasses of wine, an uncomfortable satiety, combined with a dismaying lunchtime buzz, made him feel both guilty and discomposed. Not a good idea, after all.

  What was he doing here, anyway? The book was almost finished, and it was an excellent piece of reportage. He had more than enough extra material to put together a prologue and an epilogue. Christ, the book was already a scathing indictment of paranormal charlatanism, and he really didn’t need a final exposé to cap it.

  He’d spent—wasted—nearly five days already. Even this unexpected vampire story, which had materialized out of the blue, wasn’t worth the candle. He might be deluding himself that this was a good investment of his time. Learning that his old nemesis Barclay Betts would be filming a documentary here had no doubt goaded him on—that, and Betts’s damnable libel suit against him. He shouldn’t have allowed that to cloud his judgment. He was meeting with Daisy later this afternoon; he would find out if she had anything solid and incriminating on Betts, and if not, he might just wrap this up, call it quits, and head north to Boston to put the final touches on the manuscript before turning it in to his publisher.

  As he’d been musing, he noticed the sommelier had crept up and refilled his glass. Well, he didn’t have to drink it.

  At that moment, the restaurant’s front door opened and he saw none other than Barclay Betts stroll in, followed by his cinematographer and half a dozen or so hangers-on. Bloody hell. Wellstone reached for the dessert menu as a shield, but realized it had already been taken away when he’d ordered an espresso. He’d drain that and be gone.

  He raised the fresh glass of wine to his lips.

  Betts’s loud voice and braying laugh were disturbing the restrained atmosphere of the restaurant. Heads turned as the party made its progress. As it did so, Wellstone realized that the only tables capable of supporting such a large group were the banquettes along the back wall—and the only free one was directly next to his.

  He half stood, preparing to raise his hand and ask a waiter to forget the espresso and bring his check instead, but at that moment—just as one waiter was seating Betts & Co. with a cacophony of scraping and tinkling—his own waiter, accompanied by the maître d’, approached, carrying something on a platter beneath a domed silver lid.

  They slipped it in front of him and, before Wellstone could protest, the maître d’ whisked off the lid to reveal a white ramekin with a jiggly yellow mass spreading out above it like a miniature mushroom cloud.

  “Et voilà!” the maître d’ said as he sli
pped a sauce boat onto the table beside the plate. “Since Monsieur Wellstone will not order dessert, we have taken the liberty to prepare one for him. Soufflé a l’orange, with the compliments of Lafitte’s!” And again, before Wellstone could protest, the man took two serving spoons, dug out a large mound of soufflé—the remainder quickly sinking back below the edges of the ramekin—placed it on the dessert plate, and drizzled some of the warm sauce artfully over it, putting the sauce boat to one side.

  Both the waiter and the maître d’ now stood back proudly, and there was nothing Wellstone could do but murmur thanks.

  “Smells good!” said one of the goons from Betts’s table. They were now all seated, whipping open napkins and picking up the oversize menus.

  Wellstone ignored them. He’d eat the soufflé as quickly as decorum allowed, then leave before the laughter and conversation arising from the next table spoiled his lunch. The afternoon was shot. This whole trip was a waste of time. If he chose, he might be back in Boston as early as tomorrow, ending his book with another, more elegant flourish. But first things first—he always carried a book or two of his in his briefcase, and he made a mental note to sign one to the maître d’ with an especially thoughtful inscription.

  Just as he was raising a spoonful of the dessert to his mouth, the bray of Betts’s nasal laugher sounded from the adjoining banquette. “Well, well!” he said. “Look who it is. Horace Greeley himself. Trip over any lawsuits recently, Frankie?”

  The resulting laughter washed over Wellstone, his table, and his dessert. He put the spoon down and picked up his wineglass instead. “Barclay Betts,” he said, the wine making his voice strangely attenuated in his own ears. “That explains the smell. And here I thought someone had tracked in dog shit from the street.”

  Betts laughed good-humoredly. “What are you down here for, anyway? Have New York and Boston run out of creeps and perverts with law degrees for you to blackmail?”

  This, of course, was a snarky reference to his first book, Malice Aforethought. Wellstone took another, deeper sip of wine. Swearing at Betts had felt good. He had no reason to be polite to the man. Encouraged by the wine, he said, “Thanks, but there are quite enough creeps right here at the next table,” he replied.

  Betts laughed again, with a little less humor this time. “Is it possible I’m speaking to a new Francis Wellstone? I thought you saved all the tough talk for your books and were only timid in person. Don’t tell me you’ve grown a pair.”

  Wellstone drained his wineglass. “Why don’t you go back to your sycophants and toadies? At least they will laugh at your puerile, stunted attempts at witticism. You remind me of that charming description of S. J. Perelman: Under a forehead roughly comparable to that of the Piltdown Man are visible a pair of tiny pig eyes, lit up alternately by greed and concupiscence.”

  “Well…!” Betts said, inhaling, temporarily stunned but preparing his next sally.

  “Well, well!” interrupted Wellstone, mimicking Betts’s pompous, theatrical voice. The wine had muzzled his internal traffic cop. “Speaking of wells, how is that well of yours? Find any corpses down there after all?”

  The Well had been a pet project of Betts’s two years before. Traveling through Dutchess County, he’d heard about a farmhouse that belonged to a man who—according to local lore—had killed drifters and hitchhikers and thrown the bodies down his well. Betts decided the stories were true, even though the authorities didn’t think so and had never investigated. Betts leased the property and raised money for a special live television event in which the well was dug up to uncover the foul crimes. Nothing was found, Betts was embarrassed, and it set back his career a few years. Rumor was he never allowed the project to be mentioned in his presence.

  “Watch it, Frankie boy,” Betts said. Wellstone could see, with a rising sense of triumph, that Betts was losing his cool.

  “Now who needs to grow a pair?” Wellstone replied, imperially and drunkenly disdainful from the safety of his banquette. “You can’t sue me for what I say to your face, especially if it’s true. But don’t worry,” he went on in a sarcastic voice, encouraged even more by seeing Betts’s face darken with anger. “My critique of your Well project, which I shall shortly publish, is only three words long—brief enough for even your infantile attention span. Care to hear it?” And he leaned a little unsteadily toward the leather curve of the banquette. “Al. Capone’s. Vault.”

  At this mention of the most ridiculous special ever to air on TV, Betts put his napkin aside and stood up. He moved slowly, however, and Wellstone felt in no physical danger—until the producer plucked the sauce boat from Wellstone’s table and poured warm crème anglaise all over the writer’s pants, shirt, and tie, paying particularly careful attention to the crotch, which he decorated in large, inelegant loops as Wellstone sat there, momentarily thunderstruck. But only momentarily: he launched himself over the edge of the banquette toward Betts, who skipped backward with a harsh guffaw. A musclebound crew member leapt up and deflected Wellstone’s charge with a shove of outstretched palms, and he half rolled, half tumbled back into his own banquette, falling across his table—which promptly collapsed. As Wellstone hit the floor, and before he could process the full indignity of what had just transpired, he became aware of two things: the unpleasant musky smell of the carpeting pressing against his nose, and the inverted plate of soufflé that now lay against the nape of his neck, its contents sliding down his back in a sticky warm stream.

  26

  C​LIFFORD MASOLINO, FORENSIC ACCOUNTANT for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, returned from lunch to find a new assignment waiting for him, delivered from Georgia by special courier, with an attached note written by one Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast.

  As Masolino took his seat in the windowless basement office, he wiped the grease off his hands from the gyro he’d just eaten. He used a paper towel, a roll of which he kept handy, because he was large and soft and had a tendency to sweat. Pendergast, Pendergast…the name was familiar, and he vaguely associated it with something unpleasant. The reason suddenly came to him as he opened the note: that crazy episode years ago at the New York Museum of Natural History, where a bunch of people got killed and, if memory served, there was a cover-up. A special agent named Pendergast was involved with that, and…and now Masolino recalled a spectral image of the man. Masolino had been a rookie forensic accountant in New York at the time, just getting started with the FBI, and he’d assisted in analyzing the museum’s accounts after the bloodbath, where they found significant fraud involving donated monies. It was Masolino’s first case and he had done well. Very well. Those were heady times indeed.

  That was years ago. Pendergast’s note was written with indigo-colored ink in an elegant script:

  Dear Mr. Masolino,

  I hope this finds you well. On the enclosed hard drives are the records of thousands of financial transactions. Could you kindly examine them for anything unusual or illegal, including but not limited to insider trading, money laundering, and financial fraud?

  This data came from the computers of a deceased hotel manager in Savannah named Ellerby, who traded equities, puts, and calls in his spare time. It appears he ultimately made a great deal of money doing it. We should like to know how.

  Very truly yours,

  S. A. Pendergast

  The handwritten note was rather an eccentric touch—didn’t the fellow have a computer?—but the project itself was straightforward enough, nothing different from what Masolino had done a thousand times over the past decade.

  He plugged in the first hard drive; examined it for viruses, malware, and rootkits; found it clean; and then copied the contents to his powerful, air-gapped Mac Pro, a version ordered to his own specifications, which included a 2.5GHz 28-core Intel processor, 1.5 terabytes of RAM, two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo graphics cards, 4 terabytes of SSD storage, and an Afterburner card. The monster was brand-new and had cost the FBI more than fifty grand—a sign of his value to the organization.<
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  As he scrolled through the files, Masolino noticed that this guy, Ellerby, hadn’t encrypted them. This was a pretty good hint that what he had been doing was probably legal. Of course, that wasn’t saying much: a lot of the dishonest, manipulative, sleazy shit that traders did was legal, which was the main reason why Masolino didn’t personally invest in the market. The last thing he wanted to be was another chump. If small-time investors knew how they were being reamed out by the big boys every day, they’d never invest again.

  He opened one trading account and looked it over, just to get a feel for it. In this account, Ellerby was trading Big Board stocks, Dow Jones Industrials. It all looked aboveboard and he was openly trading in his own name, not through some offshore entity or LLC. The first thing Masolino noticed was how small many of the trades were, and how short the duration. Almost all were in and out in less than an hour. But in the end, the guy had made a shitload of money.

  Masolino went through the trades, one by one. No giant killings here on any single trade, but significant amounts that nevertheless added up. With the extra leverage in the puts and calls, he was making some nifty profits. Now that Masolino was looking more closely, he could see Ellerby had made a profit not just on most trades, but on every single one.

  This was crazy. That simply didn’t happen. So it wasn’t legal, after all: there must be a scam hidden in here somewhere.

  Delving deeper into the specifics, noting dates and times, he was struck again. Going back farther, he found hundreds of even quicker trades, in and out in a minute or less. But this was not computerized high-speed trading: Ellerby was doing it online by hand. Masolino called up matching historical data for the stock price movements bracketing each trade and was further astonished. Ellerby’s trades came right before a stock moved sharply upward, in such a way that the trade produced a sweet little profit. The data had all the earmarks of an algorithmic trading program…but if this was such a program, it was worth billions, because it was never wrong.