The Obsidian Chamber

by Lincoln Child

  Smith appeared next to him, dressed in the orange immersion suit. “What now?” He was terrified, waiting child-like for orders, freaked out by Filipov’s loss of control.

  He tried to get a grip. “Grab a sledgehammer out of the toolbox. We’re going to break off the engine cooling intake at the hull.”

  Smith hesitated. “We’ll sink.”

  “That’s the fucking point.”

  “But—”

  “The suits will save us. The fed will freeze. The EPIRB will be activated when the boat is scuttled and automatically call us a rescue.”

  Now Smith understood. He threw open the door to the engine compartment and undogged the broad hatch on the floor, exposing the intake valve.

  “Wait. The cash.” God, he’d almost forgotten. Filipov unlocked the storage compartment. There were six small waterproof gym bags, each with a share. He yanked them all out, slung three around his shoulder, gave the other three to Smith. “They’ll float.”

  “But the Coast Guard will wonder—”

  Fuck. “Why would they open them and do a search? We’ll just say they’re our clothing.”

  Smith nodded.

  “Okay, now hit that intake valve. Hard.”

  Smith swung the sledge. It banged off the valve, the cooling pipe bending.

  “Again!” The fed was like a fucking bat, flitting about, looking for a way in. He hadn’t noticed the forepeak hatch yet. Nor had he deployed the EPIRB. So the man wasn’t a sailor. Good.

  Bang! Smith wielded the sledge. There was sudden spurting of water.

  Bang!

  Now Filipov heard a rushing sound. Smith backed out, dropping the sledgehammer. “Okay. It’s coming in like a son of a bitch.”

  The water was boiling up like a gusher. It would be only a moment before it reached the floor of the cabin.

  “We go out the forepeak hatch. Just get off the fucking boat and as far away as possible, out of range. He’s only got four rounds left, and he’ll soon have more important things to worry about than shooting us.”

  “Right.”

  Smith unlatched the anchor locker in the forepeak, pulled open the door, and crawled inside, over the anchor chain.

  “Quietly,” Filipov whispered. “Don’t open it until I signal.”

  A nod. Smith reached up and undogged the hatch from below. Then he waited, looking to Filipov for the signal. It was so dark Filipov could barely see him. He eased himself in the locker, pressed up against Smith inside the small space.

  “You lift me up. I’ll turn and pull you up.” Even as he said this, it occurred to Filipov that it would be mighty convenient for Smith to go down with the ship, leaving him the only survivor.

  “Okay,” Smith said.

  “On three.” He stepped into Smith’s handhold.

  “One, two, three.” Smith stiffened and Filipov stepped up, throwing open the hatch, grasping the edges, and pulling himself out. He turned, slamming the hatch behind him.

  A muffled cry came up. “What the fuck?”

  Filipov raced for the gunnel, intending to dive into the sea; but something unexpected happened and he suddenly fell sprawling over the foredeck, his three bags of money scattering. Even before he could recover himself, he felt a foot press painfully against his back and the cold steel of a muzzle screwed violently into his ear.

  A quiet voice said: “Take off your suit. Or die.”

  The forepeak hatch, which was operated from the bottom only, opened and Smith emerged. The gun muzzle went away, there was a single shot and a scream, and then the muzzle was jammed back into Filipov’s ear, more painfully than before. “I dislike having to repeat myself.”

  His pistol was underneath the suit, and if he could get to it…He fumbled with the zipper and began struggling to get it off, but then he remembered the magazine was empty. He stopped.

  “Do continue undressing.”

  Filipov stared at him. The deck was already tilting. “But…we’re sinking.”

  “You’re stating the obvious. I need your suit.”

  Filipov hesitated and the fed fired the gun, the round hitting the deck so close to his ear that it sprayed him with cutting fiberglass.

  “Okay. I’ll take it off, I’ll take it off!” He struggled out of it. He might have a chance when the fed was putting it on. It was damned awkward.

  “Hands in sight, if you please,” the fed said, dragging the suit toward himself. “Now lean forward, a little more, like that. Excellent!”

  He smacked him across the temple with his gun.

  When he woke, the fed was standing over him, fully dressed in the orange immersion suit, gun in his hand.

  “Welcome back to the sinking ship,” he said. “I’m sorry to say you are the one who’s now going to die of hypothermia. Unless, of course, you know a way to stop the boat from going down. Without the suit you now have the proper incentive.”

  Filipov lay on the deck, staring up at him, head pounding. The deck was tilting sharply, the boat already a third under. “There…There is no way.”

  “Ah! What a pity.”

  “For God’s sake, let me go below and get another suit for myself!”

  A hesitation.

  “It’ll be cold-blooded murder if you let me freeze.”

  “Quite true,” said the man, “and my conscience is rather tender. Very well. You may rise, but please don’t try anything stupid. Get the suit and come back up without delay.”

  Filipov rose, almost fainting from the headache, sliding on the tilting deck, grasping handholds as he opened the forepeak hatch. He saw, to his horror, that it was already half full of water. He would have to swim down, in pitch darkness, to get another suit.

  “The Zodiac?” he asked weakly.

  “Riddled with holes, thanks to your enthusiastic friends.”

  Filipov suddenly felt overwhelmed with panic. There was only one way: dive in and feel his way to the suit locker.

  “I…I have to dive in,” he said.

  “Be my guest.”

  Filipov lowered himself into the forepeak hatch. The water was up to his waist. The EPIRB would have been activated by now and the Coast Guard alerted and on their way, but he couldn’t worry about that. He inhaled hard a few times, then held his breath and dove in.

  The icy water was like a hammer to his body. Kicking down, he pulled himself through the forepeak door into the cabin, his eyes open—but all was pitch black. Already his lungs were bursting as he felt along the port side, trying to orient himself in the blackness. The current of the inflowing water pushed him to one side and he became disoriented, his diaphragm going into spasms. Realizing he had run out of breath, he reversed and swam back for the forepeak, but instead collided with a wall and suddenly surfaced in an air pocket at the top of the cabin. Gasping for breath, he desperately reoriented himself. The water was rising fast and the pocket was shrinking, the air rushing out with a moaning sound through the broken hatch in the ceiling. Fuck, the steel boat would go down any moment. He dove again, feeling along the sides of the cabin…and there it was. The suit locker! Still open. He fumbled inside, grabbed a handful of rubber, and hauled it out, resurfacing. But now there was only two feet of air left in the cabin. Fumbling with the suit, he tried to put it on in the water, but it was twisted and his hands were numb. He could hardly move his arms, he was so cold, and as he thrashed about the air pocket shrank further, the wheeze of air louder. And then, quite suddenly, he felt the boat shift hard, the air pocket disappeared, and he realized they were going down, down, into the deep cold Atlantic…

  33

  LIEUTENANT VINCENT D’AGOSTA plopped the breakfast he’d just prepared—an egg white omelet with tarragon and cracked pepper—down on the kitchen table of the tidy two-bedroom he shared with Laura Hayward. He hated egg whites, but he’d learned that keeping himself slim—or what in his case counted as slim—required constant dieting and vigilance. Across the table, his wife was reading the latest issue of the Journal of Forensic Science an
d Criminology while enjoying her own meal: the quintessential New York breakfast sandwich of egg, bacon, and cheese on a buttered kaiser roll. No matter what she ate, she didn’t seem to gain even an ounce. It was very depressing. He cut off a slice of his omelet, sighed, pushed it around the plate with his fork.

  Hayward laid down her journal. “What’s on your schedule today?”

  D’Agosta speared the slice, popped it in his mouth. “Not much,” he said, washing it down with a swallow of coffee. “Some mopping up. Paperwork on the Marten murder.”

  “You solved that one in record time. Must have made Singleton happy.”

  “He complimented me on my tie yesterday.”

  “That clothes horse? Impressive.”

  “Probably buttering me up just so he can dump another case on my desk. You watch.”

  Hayward smiled, went back to her journal.

  D’Agosta went back to pushing the omelet around his plate. He was aware that Hayward, these last few weeks, had been careful to keep the tone of their conversations light. He was grateful for that. She knew how hard the news of Pendergast’s disappearance and death by drowning had hit him. Although almost a month had gone by, he still felt an electric shock every time he thought of Pendergast being gone, which was too often. There had been reports of the FBI agent’s death before, of course, but his friend had always soon reappeared, like the proverbial cat with nine lives. This time, though, it seemed his nine lives had run out. He felt guilty, as if he should have been there in that Massachusetts fishing village; as if his presence could somehow have changed the fateful course of events.

  D’Agosta’s cell phone went off, the “Who Let the Dogs Out” opening drowning out the noise of First Avenue traffic that floated up from street level. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and glanced at the screen: UNIDENTIFIED CALLER.

  Hayward raised her eyebrows in mute inquiry.

  “Anonymous. Probably that damned refinancing company again. They never give up.” He hit the IGNORE button.

  “Pretty obnoxious, calling before eight.”

  The phone rang again. UNIDENTIFIED CALLER. They looked at each other in silence until the ringing stopped.

  D’Agosta put down his fork. “Bite of that sandwich?”

  As he reached across the table, his phone rang a third time. UNIDENTIFIED CALLER. With a curse, he plucked it up and hit the ANSWER button. “Yeah?” he said harshly.

  The reception was poor and full of static. “Vincent?” came the faint, crackly voice.

  “Who is this?”

  “Vincent, it is I.”

  D’Agosta felt his fingers curl tightly around the phone. The room suddenly felt dim and strange, as if he’d just stepped into a dream. “Pendergast?”

  “Yes.”

  He tried to make his mouth form words, but all that came out was an incoherent splutter.

  “Are you there, Vincent?”

  “Pendergast—oh my God, I can’t believe it! They said you were dead!”

  Across the table, Hayward had lowered her journal and was staring.

  The distorted voice of Pendergast began to speak again, but D’Agosta blurted over it: “What happened? Where have you been? Why didn’t you—”

  “Vincent!”

  D’Agosta fell silent at the sharp tone.

  “I need you to do something for me. It’s of vital importance.”

  D’Agosta held the phone closer. “Yes. Anything.”

  “I haven’t been able to reach anybody at my Riverside Drive residence: not Proctor, not Constance, not Mrs. Trask. I’ve tried the house phone and Proctor’s cell, several times. Nothing. I am extremely disturbed. Vincent, please go there immediately, this instant, and report back to me. I can’t be back in New York until tonight at the earliest.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you have a pen?”

  D’Agosta searched his jacket pockets, feeling Hayward’s eyes on him. “Got it.”

  “Very good.” Pendergast gave him the number of the cell phone. “Now listen. On the left column outside the front door, five feet above the ground, you’ll find a hidden compartment. Inside is a keyless entry pad. Enter the following code to disable the alarms and unlock the door: 315-514-17-804-18.”

  D’Agosta scrawled down the numbers. “Okay.”

  “Please hurry, Vincent. I am most concerned.”

  “I’ll call you from the house. But I’d really like to know where you’ve been these last weeks—”

  He realized he was talking to a dead phone: Pendergast had hung up.

  “Vinnie—?” Laura began, then stopped. She said nothing more; she did not need to. D’Agosta could read conflicting emotions in her face; relief that Pendergast was alive, but concern about what it meant—and how the man might, yet again, draw D’Agosta into some fresh and dangerous case.

  He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “I know. I’ll be careful.”

  Then D’Agosta rose, gave her a kiss, drained his cup, and hurriedly exited the apartment.

  34

  AS HE DROVE across town, D’Agosta just couldn’t believe that anything was really amiss at the Pendergast mansion. He’d spoken with Proctor not three weeks earlier about the search for the missing agent, and he knew from personal experience that the reserved, taciturn chauffeur-cum-bodyguard was as capable and resourceful as any man could be. Nothing untoward was likely to go down on his watch. Mrs. Trask and Constance often didn’t answer the phone, neither had cell phones, and Proctor kept strange hours.

  He pulled the unmarked car into the porte cochere and got out. It was quarter past eight, and the big house looked asleep. A dark passenger van was idling at the curb, an UBER placard in its window, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything: the driver could be on break or waiting for a fare in one of the adjoining buildings.

  All was quiet; the only sound was the light ring of his heels against stone as he approached the front door. After a brief search he located the small hatch concealing the hidden entry pad, which sprang open when he pressed it. Pulling a folded piece of paper from his pocket, he entered the code. There was a muted click as the massive front door unlocked.

  D’Agosta put his hand on the knob, turned it, pushed inward. With a whisper, the door opened. Ahead lay the front hall, and beyond it the long refectory, lying in the deeply woven shadows of early morning. Leaving the door open and walking into the refectory, he opened his mouth to call for Constance Greene, who—he imagined—was probably having a cup of tea in the library right about now.

  Then, thinking better of it, he hesitated. Something about the oppressive silence of the place unsettled him.

  And then he realized something. No lights had been turned on, and there were few external windows in this section of the mansion. He himself was a dark figure in a dark room. If Proctor saw him unexpectedly, without warning, a dim silhouette, the man might take some quick, precautionary measure that would prove unpleasant. He retreated to the shadows of a wall and considered the situation.

  Should he have rung the doorbell? To the best of his recollection, there wasn’t one—besides, if something was amiss, the last thing he wanted was to sound the alert.

  He pulled out his cell phone, consulted the list of contacts, found Proctor’s number, and dialed it. It rang eight times before cutting off; there was no voice mail.

  D’Agosta shook his head. This was crazy; he was letting himself get the heebie-jeebies. He slipped the phone back into his jacket pocket and walked down the length of the refectory to the grand reception hall. This large and elegant space was somewhat better lit, and he stopped to take in the mellow glow of the wooden display cases that lined the walls, the various treasures ranged behind glass or seated upon decorous wall shelves. To his right stood the double doors that led into the library. He’d approach them, then announce his presence with a discreet knock.

  As he walked across the marble floor, a man stepped into the room from a dark passage in the far wall. He was dressed
in a dark-gray suit and carried an expensive, slab-sided suitcase in one hand. Even as D’Agosta took in the salient details—tall, slender, reddish hair, neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard—he felt himself freeze in shock and disbelief.

  He knew this man; knew him, if not from the photographs and reconstructions Pendergast had shown to him, then from the clear resemblance to the man’s brother. It can’t be, he thought. It’s impossible.

  The man, obviously recognizing him as well, looked just as surprised, the expression quickly controlled. “Ah, the lieutenant,” he said quietly, but with an unpleasant edge to his voice.

  D’Agosta knew the voice, as well: it was a voice he had heard coming out of the semi-darkness of the Iron Clock, the railroad turntable far beneath the streets of Midtown Manhattan, during a tense confrontation almost four years ago.

  Diogenes Pendergast.

  All this flashed by in a single, incredulous heartbeat. Then the man began to move—but he was encumbered by the heavy case, which he dropped, and D’Agosta beat him to it. In a moment he had his gun out and pointed, dropping into a combat stance.

  “Hands in sight,” he said.

  Slowly, Diogenes withdrew the hand that had been slipping under the lapel of his jacket, then raised his arms, stepping back into a beam of sunlight, which cut across his face, illuminating a scar on one cheek and his eyes: one silver, one green.

  Now there was movement from the darkness behind Diogenes and Constance Greene came into view. She halted abruptly.

  D’Agosta nodded to her. “Get behind me, Constance.”

  For an instant Constance did not move. Then, with absolute composure, she walked across the room, past Diogenes—his hands in the air—and moved behind D’Agosta.

  “This is what’s going to happen now,” D’Agosta said, keeping the gun fixed on Diogenes. “I’m going to call for backup. And then we’re just going to wait for it to arrive—the three of us. If you move your hands; if you move any part of your body; if you speak; if you so much as twitch, I’m going to put a bullet in your brain, and—”

  There was a sudden explosion against the base of his skull. Brilliant white light flooded his vision—and then it turned to black as he collapsed to the floor.