Fever Dream

by Douglas Preston

  Pendergast’s eyes glinted. “May I ask you, then, what possible reason you could have for vexing me with these questions about Constance, since you’ve already diagnosed—and committed—her?”

  “Well, I—” He found those silvery eyes boring into him.

  “Would it be out of idle curiosity? Or…” He smiled. “… in the hope of professional publication?”

  Felder stiffened. “Naturally, if there is something novel in the case, I’d want to share my experiences with my colleagues via publication.”

  “And thus enhance your reputation… and perhaps”—Pendergast’s eyes seemed to twinkle wickedly—“garner a plum appointment at a research institute. I note that you have been angling for an adjunct professorship at Rockefeller University for some time.”

  Felder was astounded. How could the man possibly have known about that?

  As if answering the unvoiced question, Pendergast waved his hand casually and said, “I took the liberty of looking into your background.”

  Coloring at having his own phrase thrown back at him, Felder tried to collect himself. “My professional goals are irrelevant. The truth is, I’ve never seen a delusional presentation that has such authenticity. She seems nineteenth-century: in the way she talks, dresses, walks, holds herself, even thinks. That’s why I’ve asked you to come here today. I want to know more about her. What trauma might have occurred to trigger this? What was she like before? What are her major life experiences? Who is she really?”

  Pendergast continued gazing at him, saying nothing.

  “And it’s not only that: in the archives I found this.” He opened a manila folder on his desk and removed a photocopy of Guttersnipes at Play, the engraving from the New-York Daily Inquirer, passing it to Pendergast.

  The FBI agent studied it carefully, then returned it. “The resemblance is quite remarkable. The product of artistic imagination, perhaps?”

  “Look at the faces,” Felder said. “They’re so real, they were certainly drawn from life.”

  Pendergast smiled enigmatically, but Felder fancied he could see a new respect in those pale eyes. “This is all very interesting, Doctor.” He paused. “Perhaps I am in a position to help you—if you can help me.”

  Although he didn’t know precisely why, Felder found himself gripping the arms of his chair. “How so?”

  “Constance is a very fragile person, emotionally and psychically. Under the right conditions, she can flourish. Under the wrong ones…” Pendergast looked at him. “Where is she being held at present?”

  “In a private room in the Bellevue psych ward. Papers are being processed for her transfer to the Mental Health Division of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.”

  Pendergast shook his head. “That’s a maximum-security institution. Someone like Constance will wither away, grow increasingly worse, in a place like that.”

  “You needn’t worry about her coming to harm at the hands of other inmates, because the staff—”

  “It’s not that. Constance has a propensity for sudden, occasionally violent, psychotic breaks. A place like Bedford Hills would only encourage this.”

  “Then what would you suggest?”

  “She requires a place with an atmosphere similar to that she has grown used to—comfortable, old-fashioned, nonstressful. And yet secure. She needs to be surrounded with familiar things—within reason, of course. Books, in particular, are critical.”

  Felder shook his head. “There’s only one place like that, Mount Mercy, and it’s fully occupied. With a long waiting list.”

  Pendergast smiled. “I happen to know that a vacancy opened up not three weeks ago.”

  Felder looked at him. “It did?”

  Pendergast nodded. “As the committing psychiatrist, you could jump the queue, so to speak, and get her in. If you insisted it was the only place for her.”

  “I’ll… I’ll look into it.”

  “You will do more than look into it. In return, I will share with you what I know about Constance—which is a great deal indeed, and which will exceed even your most fervent dreams in psychiatric interest. Whether the information is actually publishable or not will be up to you—and your capacity for discretion.”

  Felder found his heart accelerating. “Thank you.”

  “I thank you. And I bid you good morning, Dr. Felder. We shall meet again—once Constance is safely ensconced in Mount Mercy.”

  Felder watched as the agent stepped out of the office and silently closed the door. Strange—he, too, seemed to have stepped out of the nineteenth century. And then Felder asked himself, for the first time, who exactly had orchestrated the meeting he’d so carefully arranged—and whose agenda had been satisfied.

  EPILOGUE

  Savannah, Georgia

  JUDSON ESTERHAZY RECLINED IN THE LIBRARY of his house on Whitfield Square. It was a surprisingly chilly May evening, and a small fire lay dying in the hearth, scenting the room with the aroma of burning birch.

  Taking a sip of a fine Highland malt he had pulled out of his cellar, he rolled the peaty beverage around in his mouth before swallowing. But the drink was bitter, as bitter as his feelings at that moment.

  Pendergast had killed Slade. They said it was suicide, but he knew that was a lie. Somehow, some way, Pendergast had managed it. Bad as the last ten years had been, the old man’s final moments must have been awful, an unimaginable mental agony. He had seen Pendergast’s manipulations of other people and he had no doubt the man had taken advantage of Slade in his dementia. It was murder—worse than murder.

  The glass, trembling in his hand, shook out some drops on the table, and he placed it down hard. At least he knew with complete confidence that Slade hadn’t betrayed him. The old man loved him like a son and—even in his madness and pain—would have kept his secret to the last. Some things transcend even lunacy.

  He had once loved Slade, too, but that feeling had died twelve years ago. He had seen a flash of another side of Slade that was just a little too close for comfort; a little too reminiscent of his own brutal father and the rather diabolical research of his that Judson was only too aware of. Maybe that was the fate of all fathers and father figures—to disappoint, to betray, to shrink in stature as one grew older and wiser.

  He shook his head. What a mistake it had all been; what a terrible, tragic mistake. And how ironic, upon reflection: when Helen had originally brought the idea to him, an idea she had literally stumbled on through her interest in Audubon, it had seemed almost miraculous—to him as well as to her. It could be a miracle drug, she’d said. You consult with a variety of pharmaceutical companies, Judson; surely you know the place to take it. And he had known. He knew where to secure the financial backing. And he knew the perfect company to develop the drug: Longitude, run by his graduate-school dissertation adviser, Charles Slade, now working in the private sector. He’d fallen under his old professor’s charismatic spell, and the two had stayed in contact. Slade was the ideal person to develop such a drug—he was a creative and independent thinker, unafraid of risk, consummately discreet…

  And now he was gone, thanks to Pendergast. Pendergast, who had stirred up the past, reopened old wounds, and—directly or indirectly—caused several deaths.

  He grasped the glass and drained it in one rough motion, swallowing the whiskey without even tasting it. The side table that held the bottle and small glass also sported a brochure. Esterhazy took it up and thumbed through it. A grim feeling of satisfaction displaced his anger. The tasteful brochure advertised the refined pleasures of an establishment known as the Kilchurn Shooting Lodge in the Highlands of Scotland. It was a great stone manor house on a windswept fell overlooking the Loch Duin and the Grampian Mountains. One of the most picturesque and isolated in Scotland, the lodge offered excellent grouse and partridge shooting, salmon fishing, and stalking of red deer. They took only a select few guests, prided themselves on their privacy and discretion; the shooting could be guided or not, depending on preference.


  Naturally, he would prefer the self-guided shooting.

  Ten years before, Esterhazy and Pendergast had spent a week at Kilchurn. The lodge sat in the middle of a vast and wild estate of forty thousand acres, once the private hunting preserve of the lairds of Atholl. Esterhazy had been deeply impressed by the empty, rugged landscape, the deep lochs hidden in the folds of the land, the swift streams bursting with trout and salmon, the windswept moorlands and the forbidding Foulmire, the heather braes and wooded glens. A man could disappear forever in a land like that, his bones left to molder, unseen, lashed by wind and rain until nothing was left.

  Taking another lazy sip of the single-malt, which had now warmed in his cradling palm, he felt calmer. All was not lost by any means. In fact, things had taken a turn for the better—for the first time in a long while. He laid the brochure aside and took up a short note, written in an old-fashioned copperplate hand on cream-colored, heavy laid paper.

  The Dakota

  New York City

  24 April

  My dear Judson,

  I thank you most sincerely for your kind invitation. After some reflection I believe I will take you up on your offer, and gladly. Perhaps you are right that the recent events have taken a certain toll. It would be delightful to see Kilchurn Lodge again after so many years. A fortnight’s holiday would be a welcome respite—and your company is always a pleasure.

  In answer to your question, I plan to bring my Purdey 16-bore, an H&H Royal over-and-under in .410 caliber, and a .300 H&H bolt-action for stalking deer.

  With affectionate regards,

  A. Pendergast

  AUTHORS’ NOTE

  While most towns and other locations in Fever Dream are completely imaginary, we have in a few instances employed our own version of existing places such as New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In such cases, we have not hesitated to alter geography, topology, history, and other details to suit the needs of the story.

  All persons, locales, police departments, corporations, institutions, museums, and governmental agencies mentioned in this novel are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

  Dear Reader,

  We have an important announcement to make: we will soon be launching an exciting new series of thrillers featuring a rather uncommon “investigator” by the name of Gideon Crew. We are having an absolutely amazing time writing the first novel in the series, which will be published in the winter of 2011. We’re sorry we can’t give you any information about this novel except its title: Gideon’s Sword. We want to keep everthing else a surprise. Stay tuned to our website, www.prestonchild.com —we’ll have more to tell you in the near future.

  We hasten to assure you that our devotion to Agent Pendergast remains undimmed and that we will continue to write novels featuring the world’s most enigmatic FBI agent with the same frequency as before.

  Thanks again for your continuing interest and support.

  Best wishes,

  Douglas & Lincoln

  GIDEON’S SWORD

  Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

  Coming Winter 2011

  1

  August 1988

  Nothing in his twelve years of life had prepared Gideon Crew for that day. Every insignificant detail, every trivial gesture, every sound and smell, became frozen as if in a block of glass, unchanging and permanent, ready to be examined at will.

  His mother was driving him home from his tennis lesson in their Plymouth station wagon. It was a hot day, well up in the nineties, the kind where clothes stick to one’s skin and sunlight has the texture of flypaper. Gideon had turned the dashboard vents onto his face, enjoying the rush of cold air. They were driving on Route 27, passing the long cement wall enclosing Arlington National Cemetery, when the two motorcycle cops intercepted their car, one pulling ahead, the other staying behind, sirens flashing, red lights turning. The one in front motioned with a black-gloved hand toward the Columbia Pike exit ramp; once on the ramp, he signaled for Gideon’s mother to pull over. There was none of the slow deliberation of a routine traffic stop—instead, both officers hopped off their motorcycles and came running up.

  “Follow us,” said one, leaning in the window. “Now.”

  “What’s this all about?” Gideon’s mother asked.

  “National security emergency. Keep up—we’ll be driving fast and clearing traffic.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  But they were already running back to their motorcycles.

  Sirens screaming, the officers escorted them down the Columbia Pike to George Mason Drive, forcing cars aside as they went. They were joined by more motorcycles, squad cars, and finally an ambulance: a motorcade that screamed through the traffic-laden streets. Gideon didn’t know whether to be thrilled or scared. Once they turned onto Arlington Boulevard, he could guess where they were going: Arlington Hall Station, where his father worked for INSCOM, the United States Army and Intelligence Command.

  Police barricades were up over the entrance to the complex, but they were flung aside as the motorcade pulled through. They went shrieking down Ceremonial Drive and came to a halt at a second set of barricades, beside a welter of fire trucks, police cars, and SWAT vans. Gideon could see his father’s building through the trees, the stately white pillars and brick façade set among emerald lawns and manicured oaks. It had once been a girls’ finishing school and still looked it. A large area in front had been cleared. He could see two sharpshooters lying on the lawn, behind a low hummock, rifles deployed on bipods.

  His mother turned to him and said, fiercely, “Stay in the car. Don’t get out, no matter what.” Her face was grey and strained, and it scared him.

  She stepped out. The phalanx of cops bulled through the crowd ahead of her and they disappeared.

  She’d forgotten to turn off the engine. The air conditioning was still going. Gideon cranked down a window, the car filling with the sounds of sirens, walkie-talkie chatter, shouts. Two men in blue suits came running past. A cop hollered into a radio. More sirens drifted in from afar, coming from every direction.

  He heard the sound of a voice over an electronic megaphone, acidic, distorted. “Come out with your hands in view.”

  The crowd immediately hushed.

  “You are surrounded. There is nothing you can do. Release your hostage and come out now.”

  Another silence. Gideon looked around. The attention of the crowd was riveted on the front door of the Station, the large cleared area. That, it seemed, was where things would play out.

  “Your wife is here. She would like to speak to you.”

  A buzz of fumbled static came through the sound system and then the electronically magnified sound of a partial sob, grotesque and strange. “Melvin?” another choking sound. “MELVIN?”

  Gideon froze. That’s my mother’s voice, he thought.

  It was like a dream where nothing made sense. It wasn’t real. Gideon put his hand on the door handle and opened it, stepping into the stifling heat.

  “Melvin…” a choking sound. “Please come out. Nobody’s going to hurt you, I promise. Please let the man go.” The voice was harsh and alien—and yet unmistakably his mother.

  Gideon advanced through the clusters of police officers and army officers. No one paid him any attention. He made his way to the outer barricade, placed a hand on the rough, blue-painted wood. He stared in the direction of Arlington Hall but could see nothing stirring in the placid façade or on the grounds. The building, shimmering in the heat, looked dead. Outside, the leaves hung limply on the oak branches, the sky flat and cloudless, so pale it was almost white.

  “Melvin, if you let the man go, they’ll listen to you.”

  More waiting silence. Then there was a sudden motion at the front door. A plump man in a suit Gideon didn’t recognize came stumbling out. He looked around a moment, disoriented, then broke into a run toward the barricades, his thick legs churning. Four helmeted officers rushed out, guns drawn; they seized the man and hustled him back behind
one of the vans.

  Gideon ducked under the barricade and moved forward through the groups of cops, the men with walkie-talkies, the men in uniform. Nobody noticed him, nobody cared: all eyes were fixed on the front entrance to the building.

  And then a faint voice rang out from inside the doorway. “There must be an investigation!”

  It was his father’s voice. Gideon paused, his heart in his throat.

  “I demand an investigation! Twenty six people died!”

  A muffled, amplified fumbling, then a male voice boomed from the sound system. “Dr. Crew, your concerns will be addressed. But you must come out now with your hands up. Do you understand? You must surrender now.”

  “You haven’t listened,” came the trembling voice. His father sounded frightened, almost like a child. “People died and nothing was done! I want a promise.”

  “That is a promise.”

  Gideon was at the innermost barricade. The front of the building remained still, but he was now close enough to see the front door standing half open. It was a dream, a nightmare; at any moment he would wake up. He felt dizzy from the heat, felt a taste in his mouth like copper. It was a nightmare—and yet it was real.

  And then Gideon saw the door swing inward and the figure of his father appear in the black rectangle of the doorway. He seemed terribly small against the elegant façade of the building. He took a step forward, his hands held up, palms facing forward. His straight hair hang down over his forehead, his tie askew, his blue suit rumpled.

  “That’s far enough,” came the voice. “Stop.”