D'Agosta cleared his throat, knocked on the door frame.
Pendergast turned quickly at the sound. "Ah, Vincent. Come in." He slipped the sheet of paper into a small wooden box, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, that lay on the table. Then he closed the box carefully and pushed it to one side. It almost seemed to D'Agosta as if Pendergast was careful to shield its contents from view.
"Would you care for some refreshment?" he asked, stepping across the room. "Cognac, Calvados, Armagnac, Budweiser?" Though the voice was Pendergast's usual slow, buttery drawl, there was a strange brightness to his eyes D'Agosta had not seen before.
"No, thanks."
"Then I'll help myself, with your indulgence. Please have a seat." And moving to a sideboard, Pendergast poured two fingers of amber liquid into a large snifter.
D'Agosta watched him carefully. There was something unusual about his movements, a strange hesitancy, that-combined with Pendergast's expression-troubled D'Agosta in a way he could not quite describe.
"What's happened?" he asked instinctively.
Pendergast did not immediately respond. Instead, he replaced the decanter, picked up the snifter, and took a seat in a leather sofa across from D'Agosta. He sipped meditatively, sipped again.
"Perhaps I can tell you," he said at last in a low voice, as if arriving at a decision. "In fact, if any other living person is to know, I suppose that person should be you."
"Know what?" D'Agosta asked.
"It arrived half an hour ago," Pendergast said. "It couldn't possibly have come at a worse time. Nevertheless, it can't be helped; we've come too far with this case to change direction now."
"What arrived?"
"That." And Pendergast nodded at a folded letter on the table lying between them. "Go ahead, pick it up; I've already taken the necessary precautions."
D'Agosta didn't know exactly what was meant by that, but he leaned over, picked up the letter, and unfolded it gingerly. The paper was a beautiful linen, apparently hand-pressed. At the top of the sheet was an embossed coat of arms: a lidless eye over two moons, with a crouching lion beneath. At first, D'Agosta thought the sheet was empty. But then he made out, in a beautiful, old-fashioned script, a small date in the middle of the page: January 28 . It appeared to have been written with a goose quill.
D'Agosta put it down. "I don't understand."
"It's from my brother, Diogenes."
"Your brother?" D'Agosta said, surprised. "I thought he was dead."
"He is dead to me. At least, he has been until recently."
D'Agosta waited. He knew better than to say more. Pendergast's sentences had grown hesitant, almost broken, as if he found the subject intolerably repellent.
Pendergast took another sip of Armagnac. "Vincent, a line of madness has run through my family for many generations now. Sometimes this madness has taken a benign or even beneficial form. More frequently, I fear, it has manifested itself through astonishing cruelty and evil. Unfortunately, this darkness has reached full flower with the current generation. You see, my brother, Diogenes, is at once the most insane-most evil-and yet the most brilliant member of our family ever to walk the earth. This was clear to me from a very early age. As such, it is a blessing we two are the last of our line."
Still, D'Agosta waited.
"As a young child, Diogenes was content with certain . experiments. He devised highly complex machines for the lure, capture, and torture of small animals. Mice, rabbits, opossums. These machines were brilliant in a horrible way. Pain factories, he proudly called them when they were ultimately discovered." Pendergast paused. "His interests soon grew more exotic. House pets began disappearing-first cats, then dogs-never to be found again. He spent days on end in the portrait gallery, staring at paintings of our ancestors . especially those who had met untimely ends. As he grew older-and as he realized he was being watched with increasing vigilance-he abandoned these pastimes and withdrew into himself. He poured forth his black dreams and his terrible creative energies into a series of locked journals. He kept these journals well hidden. Very well hidden, in fact: it took me two years of stealthy surveillance as an adolescent to discover them. I read only one page, but that was enough. I will never forget it, not as long as I live. The world was never quite the same for me after that. Needless to say, I immediately burned all the journals. He had hated me before, but this act earned his undying rage."
Pendergast took another sip, then pushed the snifter away, unfinished.
"The last time I saw Diogenes was the day he turned twenty-one. He had just come into his fortune. He said he was planning a terrible crime."
"A single crime?" D'Agosta repeated.
"He gave no hint of the details. All I can go on is his use of the word terrible . For something to be terrible to him . ..." Pendergast's voice trailed off, and then he resumed briskly. "Suffice to say, it will be anathema to rational contemplation. Only he, in his limitless madness, could comprehend its evil. How, when, where, against whom-I have no idea. He disappeared that very day, taking his fortune with him, and I have not seen or heard from him since-until now. This is his second notice to me. The first had the same date on it. I wasn't sure what it meant. It arrived exactly six months ago-and now this. The meaning is now obvious."
"Not to me."
"I am being put on notice. The crime will occur in ninety-one days. It is his challenge to me, his hated sibling. I suspect his plans are now complete. This note is equivalent to his flinging the gauntlet at my feet, daring me to try and stop him."
D'Agosta stared at the folded letter in horror. "What are you going to do?"
"The only thing I can do. I will wrap up this current case of ours as quickly as possible. Only then can I deal with my brother."
"And if you find him? What then?"
"I must find him," Pendergast said with quiet ferocity. "And when I do-" He paused. "The situation will be addressed with appropriate finality."
The look on the agent's face was so terrible D'Agosta looked away.
For a long moment, the library was silent. Then, at last, Pendergast roused himself. One glance told D'Agosta the subject was closed.
Pendergast's voice changed back into its usual efficient, cool tone. "As liaison with the Southampton P.D., it seemed logical to suggest you as FBI liaison with the NYPD. This case began in the United States, and it may well end here. I've arranged for you, working with Captain Hayward, to be that liaison. It will require you to be in touch with her on a regular basis, via phone and e-mail."
D'Agosta gave a nod.
Pendergast was looking at him. "I trust you'll find that a satisfactory arrangement?"
"Fine with me." D'Agosta hoped he wasn't blushing. Is there anything this guy doesn't know?
"Very good." Pendergast rose. "And now I must pack for the trip and speak briefly with Constance. She'll be remaining behind, of course, to manage the collections and do any additional research we may require. Proctor will see that you're comfortable. Feel free to ring if you need anything."
He rose, offering his hand. "Buona notte. And pleasant dreams."
The room D'Agosta was shown to was on the third floor, facing the rear. It was exactly what he'd dreaded most: dimly lit and tall-ceilinged, with dark crushed-velvet wallpaper and heavy mahogany furniture. It smelled of old fabric and wood. The walls were covered with paintings in heavy gilt frames: landscapes, still lifes, and some studies in oil that were strangely disturbing if you looked at them too closely. The wooden shutters were closed tight against the casements, and no external noise filtered through the heavy stonework. Yet the room, like the rest of the house, was spotlessly clean; the fixtures were modern; and the huge Victorian bed, when he at last turned in, was exceptionally comfortable with fresh, clean sheets. The pillows had been aired and fluffed by some invisible housekeeper; the comforter, when he drew it up, was a luxuriously thick eiderdown. Everything about the room seemed guaranteed to provide an ideal night's sleep.
And yet sleep did not come qu
ickly to D'Agosta. He lay in bed, eyes on the ceiling, thinking of Diogenes Pendergast, for a long, long time.
{ 49 }
Locke Bullard sat in the rear of the Mercedes as it cruised along the Viale Michelangelo above Florence, the great eighteenth-century villas of the wealthiest Florentines invisible behind enormous walls and massive iron gates. As the limousine passed the Piazzale, Bullard barely glanced out at the stupendous view: the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Arno River. The car descended to the ancient gate of the Porta Romana.
"Cut through the old city," said Bullard.
The driver flashed his permesso at the policemen on duty at the gate, and the limo eased into the crooked streets, heading first north, then west, passing back through another gate in the ancient walls surrounding the city. The Renaissance palazzi turned into modest nineteenth-century apartment houses; these in turn gave way to anonymous blocks of apartments, built mid-century; and finally to hideous projects and high-rises of gray concrete. There were no highways, just a maze of jammed streets and decaying factories, punctuated here and there by tiny kitchen gardens or a few hundred square feet of vineyard.
In half an hour, the limousine was crawling through the shabby streets of Signa, one of the ugliest of the industrial suburbs, a gray expanse of buildings spread out in the floodplains of the Arno. Laundry hung on concrete balconies in the listless, dead air. The only reminder that this was Bella Tuscany was the distant green hills of Carmignano, the tallest topped by the barest outline of a castle.
Bullard saw nothing beyond the smoked windows, said nothing to the chauffeur. His craggy face was utterly blank, his deep-set eyes cold beneath the great jutting brows. The only sign of the great turmoil within were the slowly bulging muscles of his jaw, tensing and relaxing, again and again.
At last, the limo turned down an anonymous dead-end lane, arrived at a shabby chain-link fence with a gate and guardhouse. Beyond, the endless suburb stopped and a surprising new world began: a strange world of dark trees, vines, and a riot of ivy-covered mounds and shapes.
The limo was checked, then waved forward into the darkly fantastical landscape. From this closer vantage point, the green shapes could be descried as ruined buildings, so sunken in creepers as to look like natural cliffs. And yet these were not ancient ruins, like those so often seen in Italy. These heaps of fallen masonry were never visited by tourists. The ruins dated only back to the early decades of the twentieth century. As the limousine moved like a shark through the ruins, it passed old dormitories, tree lined boulevards passing through rows of once-fine houses, past overgrown railroad sidings and wrecked laboratories-and, dominating it all, a brick smokestack that rose thirty stories into the blue Tuscan sky. The only clue as to what all this had once been was the faded remains of a sign painted on the stack, where NOBEL S.G.E.M. could still barely be discerned.
Security seemed deceptively slack. The chain-link fence along the outer perimeter was old and decrepit. A determined group of teenagers could have easily entered. And yet the ruined compound showed no sign of casual human trespass. There was no litter, no graffiti, no sign of campfires or broken wine bottles.
The limousine wound its way slowly along a maze of weed-choked roads, curving past a row of giant warehouses, now empty, windows like dead eyes, fields of wild strawberries growing around the cracked walls. The car continued through an archway in an old brick wall, past more ruins and heaps of brick and broken concrete, until it hit a second gate. This gate was far more modern than the first: attached to a sophisticated double perimeter of blastproof chain-link, topped with glittering coils of concertina, and surrounded by a wide motion-sensor field.
Again the limousine was inspected, this time much more thoroughly, before the gate opened electronically on well-oiled hinges.
And now a shocking contrast met the eye. Beyond one last ruined facade-drowning in vegetation-lay a manicured lawn, sweeping up to a gleaming building dressed in titanium and glass, an architectural masterpiece hidden among the ruins. It was framed by shrubbery that had been trimmed and shaped to perfection. An automatic sprinkler system cast an arc of water that glittered rainbows in the strong Florentine sunlight.
In front of the building stood three men. As the black car pulled up, one of them, clearly agitated but making a strong effort to suppress it, came over and opened the door.
"Bentornato, Signor Bullard,” he said.
Bullard got out, his enormous frame swelling as he stood up. Ignoring the proffered hands, he arched his back, stretched his arms. He seemed to be looking over the heads of the men as if they didn't exist. His massive, ugly, knotted face was an impenetrable mask.
"We should be pleased if you could lunch with us, sir, before-"
"Where is it?" Bullard cut him off.
There was a dismayed silence. "This way."
The small group turned, and Bullard followed them down the limestone walkway into the cool interior of the building. They passed down a corridor through two sets of automatic doors, each requiring a retinal scan from the leader of the group.
At one point, Bullard stopped and looked into a room leading off the corridor. The others paused expectantly. The room was a laboratory, full of equipment and whiteboards covered with formulas.
He stepped into the room, glanced at a nearby table covered with what appeared to be aircraft nose cones. Each was painted a different color, and a pin was stuck into each, bearing a label of notes and chemical formulas. In a sudden blind rage, Bullard raised his arm and swept the nose cones from the table. Then he turned back and, without a word, continued down the corridor.
They came to a third door, thicker and smaller than the others, made of stainless steel and brass.
There was a shout from behind. Everyone turned.
An elegantly dressed man was striding toward them, his face white with anger. "Stop," he said. "Io domando una spiegazione, Signor Bullard, anche da Lei. I demand an explanation, even from you." The man blocked their way, half the size of Bullard, almost noble in his outraged dignity.
There was a flash of movement, a grunt, and the man sank to the ground, punched in the gut. He clutched his midriff, groaning, and Bullard gave him a vicious kick with the toe of his shoe, so hard the snapping of the ribs was audible to all. The man gasped and rolled in agony.
Bullard turned to one of the men. "I fired this man. Martinetti was trespassing. I deeply regret that he resisted apprehension, assaulted a security officer, and had to be subdued by that officer."
He turned to one of the security officers escorting them. "Did you hear what I said?"
"Yes, sir," the man said in an American accent.
"Make it so."
"Yes, sir."
"Call a detail to remove this man and prefer charges against him for trespassing." Bullard stepped over the prostrate form and looked into the retinal scan himself. There was a click of disengaging metal, then the vault door swung open, exposing machined stainless steel and brass. Beyond lay a small vault. On one side were several hard drives, locked in transparent plastic cases and carefully stacked atop plastic filing cabinets. On the other was a small, rectangular box of polished walnut, surrounded by a cluster of sophisticated electronics: climate-control sensors, humidity readouts, a seismograph, gas analyzer, barometers, and temperature gauges. Bullard strode over to the box, picked it up gently by the handle. It was so light that in Bullard's massive grip it seemed weightless. He turned.
"Let's go."
"Mr. Bullard, perhaps you might care to check the contents?"
Bullard turned to the man who'd spoken. "I'll check soon enough. If it isn't there, losing your jobs will be the least of your worries."
"Yes, sir."
The tension in the room was palpable. The men shifted uneasily, apparently reluctant to leave. Bullard brushed past them, started to duck through the vault door, turned back. "You coming?"
The men followed him out of the vault. The door hissed shut behind. Bullard stepped over Martinetti again
and walked through the three sets of doors, the men in his wake, the only sound the clicking of heels on the polished corridors. In another few minutes, he was back at the curb, where the limousine sat idling. The men stood on the sidewalk uncertainly, looking at Bullard. There was no more mention of lunch.
Without a backward glance, Bullard got in the car, slammed the door. "To the villa," he said, placing the wooden box very carefully on his lap.
{ 50 }
D'Agosta stood at the windows of his suite in the Lungarno Hotel, looking out over the deep green of the Arno, the pale yellow palaces of Florence lining both banks, the Ponte Vecchio with its crooked little buildings perched out over the water. He felt strangely expectant, even a little light-headed. He wasn't sure if it was jet lag, the opulence of his surroundings, or the fact that he was in his country of origin for the first time in his life.
D'Agosta's father had left Naples as a boy with his parents, right after the war, to escape the terrible famine of '44. They settled on Carmine Street in New York City. His father, Vito, outraged by the rising power of the Mafia, had fought back by becoming a New York City cop, and a damn good one. His shield and awards still stood in a glass case on the mantel like holy relics: police combat cross, medal of honor. D'Agosta had grown up on Carmine Street, surrounded by Italian immigrants from Naples and Sicily, immersed in the language, the religion, the cycles of saints' days and celebrations. From childhood, Italy had for him taken on the air of a mythical place.
And now here he was.
He felt a lump rising in his throat. He had not expected it to be such an emotional experience. This was the land of his ancestors going back millennia. Italy was the birthplace of so much: art, architecture, sculpture, music, science, and astronomy. The great names of the past rolled through his mind: Augustus Caesar, Cicero, Ovid, Dante, Christopher Columbus, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Galileo . The list stretched back more than two thousand years. D'Agosta felt certain no other nation on earth had produced such genius.
Brimstone p-5 Page 28
