Brimstone

by Douglas Preston

  He read the article a second time. New York City. This was where it would begin. Of course, this was where it would begin. Two were taken. Just two. It was God's way of getting the word out to his chosen people, so they in turn could spread the message of repentance and atonement while there was still time. The wrath of God would never descend without warning. Let he with ears hear…

  Behold, I come quickly… Surely I come quickly…

  But New York City? Buck had never set foot beyond the Mississippi River, never been in a town much larger than Tucson. To him, the East Coast was Babylon, a foreign, dangerous, soulless region to be avoided at all costs, no place more so than New York. Was it meant to be? Was it, in fact, a sign? And more to the point: was he being called? Was this the great call from God he had been waiting for? And did he have the courage to follow it?

  There was a chuff of air brakes outside the diner. Buck looked up in time to see the morning Greyhound cross-country express, traveling on I-10, stop outside. The sign above the driver's window read New York City.

  Buck walked up just as the bus driver was about to close the door. "Excuse me!" he said.

  The driver looked at him. "What is it, mister?"

  "How much for a one-way ticket to New York?"

  "Three hundred and twenty dollars. Cash."

  Buck fished in his wallet and pulled out all the money he had in the world. He counted it while the bus driver tapped his finger on the wheel and frowned.

  It amounted to precisely three hundred and twenty dollars.

  As the bus pulled away from Yuma, Reverend Buck was sitting in the back, his only luggage the day-old copy of the New York Post.

  { 37 }

  Vasquez eased away from the window, snugged the piece of wood back in place, turned on the hooded lantern, then stood and stretched. It was just past midnight. He rotated his head on his shoulders first one way, then another, working out the kinks. Then he took a long drink of water, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Despite a few surprises, the operation was going well. The target kept exceedingly irregular hours, coming and going at unpredictable times—except that every night, at one o'clock in the morning, he exited the house, crossed Riverside Drive at 137th Street, and took a stroll through Riverside Park. He always returned within twenty minutes. It seemed to be an evening constitutional; a turn around the block, so to speak, before going to bed.

  Over the past forty-eight hours, Vasquez had come to realize he was dealing with a man of intelligence and ability, and yet a man who was also ineffably strange. As usual, Vasquez wasn't sure quite how he arrived at his conclusions, but he was rarely wrong about people and trusted his instincts. This man was something else. Even on the surface he was odd, with his black suit, marble like complexion, and his quick, noiseless walk more like that of a cat than a man. Something about the way he moved spoke to Vasquez of utter self-confidence. Further, anyone who would go strolling in Riverside Park in the middle of the night had to be either crazy or packing heat, and he had no doubt the man possessed an excellent weapon and knew how to use it. Twice he had seen gang members who'd staked out the block quietly disappear when the target emerged. They knew a bad deal when they saw it.

  Vasquez wrenched off a piece of teriyaki beef jerky and chewed it slowly, reviewing his notes. There seemed to be four inhabitants in the house: Pendergast, a butler, an elderly housekeeper he'd viewed only once, and a young woman who wore long, old-fashioned dresses. She wasn't his daughter or his squeeze—they were too formal with each other. Perhaps she was an assistant of some kind. The house had only one regular visitor: a balding, slightly overweight policeman with a Southampton P.D. patch on his arm. Using his computer and wireless modem, Vasquez had easily discovered the man was one Sergeant Vincent D'Agosta. He looked like a straight-ahead, no-bullshit type, solid and dependable, offering few surprises.

  Then there had been a very strange old man with a wild head of white hair who had come by only once, late at night, scurrying along almost like a crab, clutching a book. Probably some kind of functionary, an Igor, a man of no importance.

  The one o'clock walk was, of course, the time to do it. Hit him as he emerged from the semicircular drive. Vasquez had gone over it again and again, figuring out the geometry of death. If the first round entered the man's head obliquely, the round would be deflected slightly by the inside curve of the skull and exit at an angle. The torque generated by the off-center hit would spin the target. As a result, the angle and pattern of the exit spray would suggest a shooter from a window somewhere down the street. The second round would strike him on the way down, spinning him further. The position of the body would help throw off the initial response, deflecting it down the block. In any case, he himself would be out the back and onto 136th Street practically before the body hit the ground, five minutes to the Broadway IRT train and gone. Nobody would notice him—a seedily dressed Puerto Rican runner heading home after a day of dubious employment.

  Vasquez bit off another hunk of the dry meat. He wasn't sure just what it was that brought on a feeling of readiness, but he always knew when the time had come for the kill. It was now forty minutes to one, and it felt to him like that time had come. For two nights running, Pendergast had emerged at exactly 1 A.M. Vasquez felt certain he would do it again. This would be the night.

  He took off his clothes and put on his getaway costume-warm-up suit open at the chest, heavy gold, puffy sneakers, thin mustache, cell phone—turning himself into just another cheap hustler from Spanish Harlem.

  Vasquez extinguished the light, removed the small piece of wood from the corner of the boarded-up window, and got into position. Snugging his cheek against the composite stock—a stock that would never warp or swell in adverse weather—he carefully aligned the match grade barrel to the spot where the target's head would appear, right beyond the marble and brick wall that supported the porte-cochère. There the target always paused to speak to the butler, waiting to make sure the man shut and locked the door. It was a ten- or twenty-second pause: an eternity of opportunity for a shooter like Vasquez.

  As he readied his equipment, Vasquez felt a faint twinge of uneasiness. Not for the first time, he wondered if the whole setup was just a little too easy. The one o'clock stroll, the little pause—everything seemed a little too perfect. Was he being set up? Did the target know he was there? Vasquez shook his head, smiling ruefully. He always had an attack of paranoia just before the kill. There was no way the subject could have detected his presence. What's more, the target had already exposed himself on a number of occasions. If he had known a shooter was tracking him, those deliberate exposures would take a level of sangfroid few human beings possessed. Vasquez had already had half a dozen chances to kill him cleanly. It was just that he'd never felt ready.

  Now he did.

  Slowly and carefully, he fitted his eye to the scope. The scope had a built-in compensator for bullet drop and had already been properly zeroed for windage. Everything was ready. He sighted through the crosshair grid. The central crosshairs were positioned just where the target would pause. It would be quick and clean, as always. The butler would witness it and call the police, but by then Vasquez would be gone. They would find his kill nest, of course, but it would do them no good. They already had his DNA, for all the good it did them. Vasquez would be back home by then, sipping lemonade on the beach.

  He waited, gazing at the doorway through the scope. The minutes ticked off. Five minutes to one. Three to one. One o'clock.

  The door opened and the target emerged, right on schedule. He took a few steps, turned, began speaking with the butler.

  The rifle was already sighted in. Gently and evenly, Vasquez's finger began to apply increasing pressure to the trigger.

  There was a sudden faint pop and flash of light from down the block, followed by a tinkle of glass. Vasquez hesitated, taking his eye from the sight; but it was just a streetlight failing as they always did in that neighborhood—or perhaps some young hoodlum-in-trai
ning with a BB gun.

  But the moment had passed, and the man was now walking across the street, toward the park.

  Vasquez leaned back from the rifle, feeling the tension drain away. He had missed his opportunity.

  Should he catch him coming back? No, the man walked so swiftly back into the porte-cochère that he could not be sure of that perfect, off-center shot. No matter: it just wasn't in the cards. So much for his paranoia, for everything seeming a little too easy.

  So he would be in his little nest for another twenty-four hours. But he wasn't complaining: two million dollars was just as acceptable for three days' work as it was for two.

  { 38 }

  D'Agosta rode in the back of the Rolls in silence. Proctor was driving, and Pendergast sat beside him in the front passenger seat, chatting about the Boston Red Sox, which appeared to be the only topic of interest to Proctor, and which Pendergast in his mysterious way seemed to know all about. They were debating some statistical nuance of the 1916 pennant race that stupefied even D'Agosta, who considered himself a baseball fan.

  "Where is it we're meeting this Beckmann again?" D'Agosta interrupted.

  Pendergast glanced into the backseat. "He's in Yonkers."

  "You think he'll talk to us? I mean, Cutforth and Bullard weren't exactly forthcoming."

  "I imagine he'll be most eloquent."

  Pendergast resumed his discussion, and D'Agosta turned his attention to the passing scenery, wondering if he'd completed all the necessary paperwork on yesterday's dust-up with the Chinese. This case was generating more paperwork than any he'd been involved with before. Or was it just all the new bullshit regulations that were keeping him hogtied? Pendergast never seemed to do any paperwork; D'Agosta wondered if the agent somehow still managed to keep above such mundane details, or if he simply worked all night filling out forms.

  The Rolls had left Manhattan via the Willis Avenue Bridge and was now heading north through late Saturday morning traffic along the Major Deegan Expressway. Soon it left the Deegan for the Mosholu Parkway and made its way into the hard-core inner ring of suburbs that comprised the lower fringe of Westchester County. Pendergast had been his usual reticent self about where they were going. Dun-colored housing projects, aging industrial complexes, and strings of gas stations passed by in a blur. After a mile or two, they exited onto Yonkers Avenue. D'Agosta sat back with a sigh. Yonkers, the city with the ugliest name in America. What was Beckmann doing here? Maybe he had some nice place overlooking the Hudson: D'Agosta had heard talk of the city's waterfront revitalization.

  But the waterfront was not their destination. Instead, the Rolls turned east, toward Nodine Hill. D'Agosta watched the passing road signs with little interest. Prescott Street. Elm Street. Except there didn't seem to be any elms here, only dying ginkgo trees that barely softened the dingy residential lines. As they drove on, the neighborhood grew increasingly seedy. Drunks and addicts now lounged on front stoops, watching the Rolls pass with scant interest. Every square inch of space was covered by illegible graffiti—even the tree trunks. The sky was the color of lead, and the day was becoming chilly. Here and there they passed vacant lots, reclaimed by weeds or sumac, patches of jungle in the middle of the city.

  "Left here, please."

  Proctor turned into a dead-end street and glided to a stop in front of the last building. D'Agosta stepped out, Proctor staying with the car.

  Instead of entering the tenement, Pendergast headed for the end of the cul-de-sac: a twelve-foot cinder-block wall covered with still more graffiti. An iron door, studded with old rivets, streaked and scaly with rust, was set into the wall.

  Pendergast tried the handle, then bent to examine the lock. He removed a pencil-thin flashlight from his pocket and peered into the keyhole, probing with a small metal tool.

  "Going to pick it?" D'Agosta asked.

  Pendergast straightened. "Naturally." He removed his sidearm and shot into the lock once, twice, the deafening reports rolling like thunder up the alleyway.

  "Jesus, I thought you said you were going to pick it!"

  "I did. With my pick of last resort." Pendergast holstered the .45. "It's the only way to unlock a solid block of rust. This door hasn't been opened in years." He raised his foot and gave the door a shove. It swung open with a groan of rusted metal.

  D'Agosta peered through the doorway, astonished. Instead of a small weedy lot, the door opened on a vast overgrown meadow rising up a hill, covering at least ten acres, surrounded by decaying tenements. At the top stood a cluster of dead trees circling the ruins of what looked like a Greek temple: four Doric columns still standing, roof caved in, the whole structure shrouded in ivy. Directly before them was what once had been a small road. Now it was thick with weeds and poison sumac, rows of dead trees lining either side, their claw like branches reaching into the gray sky.

  D'Agosta shivered. "What's this, some kind of park?"

  "After a fashion."

  Pendergast began ascending the broken surface of the road, carefully stepping over chunks of frost-heaved asphalt, skirting four-foot weeds and dodging the poisonous sumac pistils. If he felt any lingering pain from the bullet graze of the day before, it did not show. On either side, beyond the dead trees, the weeds rose into a riot of overgrowth: ivy run rampant, brambles, and bushes. Everything was intensely green, growing with unnatural vigor and health.

  After a few hundred feet, Pendergast paused, removed a piece of paper from his pocket, consulted it.

  "This way."

  He started down a path at right angles to the road. D'Agosta scrambled to follow, pushing through the chest-high growth, his uniform becoming covered with pollen dust. Pendergast moved slowly, peering left and right, once in a while consulting the diagram in his hand. He seemed to be counting. D'Agosta gradually became aware just what it was Pendergast was counting: almost invisible in the undergrowth were rows of low, gray slabs of granite set into the ground, each with a name and a pair of dates.

  "Hell, we're in a cemetery!" said D'Agosta.

  "A potter's field, to be exact, where the indigent, the friendless, and the insane were buried. Pine coffin, six-foot hole, granite tombstone, and a two-minute eulogy, all courtesy of the state of New York. It filled up close to ten years ago."

  D'Agosta gave a whistle. "And Ranier Beckmann?"

  Pendergast said nothing. He was moving through the ragweed, still counting. Suddenly he halted before a low granite stone, no different from any of the others. With a sweep of his foot, he knocked aside the weeds.

  RANIER BECKMAN

  1952—1995

  A chill wind swept down from the hill, rippling the weeds like a field of grain. There was a distant rumble of thunder.

  "Dead!" D'Agosta exclaimed.

  "Exactly." Pendergast extracted his cell phone and dialed. "Sergeant Baskin? We have located the grave in question and are ready for the exhumation. I have all the forensics paperwork here. We shall await you."

  D'Agosta laughed. "You've got quite a sense of theater, you know that, Pendergast?"

  Pendergast shut the cell phone with a snap. "I didn't want to tell you until I was sure myself, and for that I needed to find the grave. There was a sad paucity of records on Mr. Beckmann. Those few that we managed to uncover were suspect. As you can see, they even misspelled his name on the tombstone."

  "But you said Beckmann would be 'most eloquent.' "

  "And so he will. While dead men tell no tales, their corpses often speak volumes. And I think Ranier Beckmann's corpse has quite a bit to tell us."

  { 39 }

  Locke Bullard stood on the flying bridge of the Stormcloud. The air was crisp and sharp, the ocean flat-calm. It was a world reduced to its essentials. The ship throbbed beneath his feet; the cool breeze flowed past him as the ship plowed eastward at flank speed toward Europe.

  Bullard lowered his cigar and stared forward at the point where the sky met the knife edge of ocean, his knuckles white on the rail. On this clear fall day, it reall
y did look like the edge of the world, from which a ship could sail off into weightless oblivion. A part of him wished it would happen: that he could just drop off the world and be done with it.

  He could do it now, in fact; he could wander to the back of the ship and slip off into the water. Only his steward would miss him and probably not for some time: he had spent most of the voyage locked in his cabin, having his meals delivered, seeing no one.

  Bullard could feel himself trembling, every muscle tense, his whole body in the grip of powerful emotion, a terrible combination of rage, regret, horror, and astonishment. He could hardly believe what had happened, what had brought him to this point—here, in the middle of the Atlantic, heading eastward on such fateful business. Never in a million years of corporate scheming—with all his plotting, counterplotting, and preparation for every eventuality—could he have expected it would come to this. At least he'd been able to remove the wild card of that FBI agent, Pendergast: if Vasquez hadn't finished the job yet, he would soon.

  And yet this was slight consolation.

  He caught the glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye. It was the slim figure of his steward, bobbing deferentially at the hatch. "Sir? The videoconference is in three minutes."

  Bullard nodded, turned his eyes once more toward the horizon, hawked up a gobbet of phlegm, and rocketed it into the far blue. The cigar followed. Then he turned and descended.

  The videoconference room was small, built just for him. The technician was there—why were they all weaselly men with goatees?—hunched over the keyboard. He rose when Bullard entered, bumping his head on a bulkhead in his haste. "Everything's set, Mr. Bullard. Just press—"

  "Get out."

  The man got out, leaving Bullard alone. He locked the door behind him, keyed in the passphrase, waited for the prompt, keyed in another. The screen flickered into life, split down the center into two images: the COO of Bullard Aerospace Industries in Italy, Martinetti; and Chait, his head man in the States.