Brimstone

by Douglas Preston

  "No."

  "We can call the police."

  The monk shrugged again. "Takes time. For dogs, two, three days maybe."

  D'Agosta looked back into the endless forest. "Shit."

  Back at the chapel, the scene remained one of confusion. Pendergast was bending over the prostrate form of the monk, applying heart massage and artificial respiration. Several of the monks were kneeling in a half-circle, apparently led by the head of the order; others were standing well back, murmuring in low, shocked tones. As D'Agosta walked across the chapel, utterly winded, he could hear the distant beat of a chopper.

  He knelt and took the old priest's frail hand. The man's eyes were closed, his face gray. In the background, the steady murmur of prayers continued, soothing in its measured cadence.

  "I think he's suffered a heart attack," Pendergast said, pressing down on the man's chest. "The trauma of the gunshot wound. Still, with the medevac arriving, he might be saved."

  Suddenly the monk coughed. A hand fluttered and his eyes opened, staring directly at Pendergast.

  "Padre," said Pendergast, his voice low and calm, "mi dica la confessione più terribile che lei ha mai sentito."

  The eyes, so wise and so close to death, seemed to understand all. "Un ragazzo Americano che ha fatto un patto con il diavolo, ma l'ho salvato, l'ho sicuramente salvato." He sighed, smiled, then closed his eyes and took one long, final, shuddering breath.

  A moment later the paramedics burst in with a transport stretcher. There was an eruption of furious activity as they worked to stabilize the victim: one attached a cardiac monitor while another relayed the lack of vitals to the hospital and received orders in return. The stretcher was rushed back out the door, and within seconds the sound of the helicopter was receding again. And then it was over. The church seemed suddenly empty, the smell of incense drifting on the air, the steady sound of prayer adding a curious note of peace to a most shocking act of violence.

  "He got away," D'Agosta gasped.

  Pendergast laid a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, Vincent."

  "What did you say to the priest just now?"

  Pendergast hesitated a moment. "I asked him to recall the most terrible confession he'd ever heard. He said it was from a boy—an American boy—who had made a pact with the devil."

  D'Agosta felt revulsion constrict his stomach. So it was true, after all. It was really true.

  "He added that he had certainly saved the boy's soul. In fact, he knew he'd saved his soul."

  D'Agosta had to sit down. He hung his head a moment, still breathing hard, and then looked up at Pendergast. "Yeah. But what about the other three?"

  { 68 }

  The Reverend Buck sat at the desk inside his tent, the beams of bright morning sun slanting through the door net and setting the canvas walls ablaze. Everybody in camp was still keyed up from the showdown with the police, still abuzz with energy. Buck could feel that same energy coursing through his being. The passion and belief of his followers had astonished, had heartened him. Clearly, the spirit of God was among them. With God, anything was possible.

  The problem was, the police would not rest. They would act decisively, and act soon. His moment was about to arrive: the moment he had come so far, worked so hard, to fulfill.

  But what moment? And how, exactly, would he fulfill it?

  The question had been growing within him, gnawing at him, for days now. At first, it had been just a faint voice, a sense of disquiet. But now it never left him, despite his praying and fasting and penitence. God's path was unclear, His wishes mysterious.

  Yet again he bowed his head in prayer, asking God to show him the way.

  Outside, in the background, he could hear the excited hum of a hundred conversations. He paused to listen. Everybody was talking about the aborted attempt to arrest him. Strange that the police had sent in only two. They probably didn't want to make a show of aggression, have a Waco on their hands.

  Waco. That little aside from the woman cop had sobered him up. It had been almost like a surgical thrust. She was something, that one. Couldn't be more than thirty-five, a real looker, self-assured as anything. The other was just another weak, vainglorious bully, like any number of the screws he'd dealt with in the Big House. But she—she had the confidence, the power, of the devil behind her.

  Should he resist, put up a fight? He had tremendous power in his hands, hundreds of followers who believed in him heart and soul. He had the power of conviction and the Spirit, but they had the power of physical arms. They had the might of the state behind them. They had weapons, tear gas, water cannon. If he resisted, it would be a butchery.

  What did God want him to do? He bowed, prayed again.

  There was a knock on one of the wooden posts of the tent.

  "Yes?"

  "It's almost time for your morning sermon and the laying-on of hands."

  "Thank you, Todd. I'll be out in a few minutes."

  He needed an answer, if only for himself, before he could face his people once again. They relied on him for spiritual guidance in this greatest crisis of all. He was so proud of them, of their bravery and conviction. "Soldiers of Rome," they'd shouted so aptly at the cops…

  Soldiers of Rome—that was it.

  Suddenly, like the cogs of some vast spiritual machine, a series of connections fell together like dominoes in his mind. Pilate. Herod. Golgotha. It had been there all the time, the answer he'd been searching for. He'd just needed the strength of faith to find it.

  He knelt a moment longer. "Thank you, Father," he murmured. Then he rose, feeling suffused with light.

  Now he knew exactly how he would face the armies of Rome.

  He armed aside the tent flap and strode toward the preaching rock. He glanced around at the beauty of the morning, the beauty of God's earth. Life was so precious, such a fleeting gift. As he climbed the path that circled behind the rock, he reminded himself that the next world would be far better, far more beautiful. When the infidels came, a thousand strong, he knew exactly how he was going to deliver them unto defeat.

  He raised his hands to a thunderous cheer.

  { 69 }

  The cellar of the carabinieri barracks looked more like the dungeon it had once been than a basement, and as D'Agosta followed Colonnello Esposito and Pendergast through the winding tunnels of undressed stone, streaked with cobwebs and lime, he was half surprised to find no skeletons chained to the walls.

  The colonnello paused at an iron door, opened it. "As you'll see, alas, we have yet to join the twenty-first century," he said as he gestured for them to enter.

  D'Agosta stepped into a room wall-to-wall with filing cabinets and open shelves. Fascicles of documents sat on the shelves, tied up in twine. Some were so old and moldy they must have dated back centuries. An officer in a neat uniform of blue and white, with a smart red stripe down the outside of the slacks, stood and saluted crisply.

  "Basta," said the colonnello in a tired voice, then gestured at some old wooden chairs arranged around a long table. "Please sit."

  As they seated themselves, the colonnello spoke to the younger officer, who in turn produced a dozen folders and laid them on the table. "Here are the summaries of the homicides that fell within your requirements: unsolved murders over the last year in which the victim was found burned. I have been through them myself and found nothing of the slightest interest. I am much more concerned about what happened up at La Verna this morning."

  Pendergast took the first folder, opened it, slid out the case summary. "I regret that more than I can say."

  "I regret it even more. Things were tranquil here until you arrived—and then…" He opened his hands and smiled wanly.

  "We are almost there, Colonnello."

  "Then let us pray you get there, wherever 'there' may be, as soon as possible."

  Pendergast began reading through the case summaries, passing each to D'Agosta as he completed it. The only sound was the gentle whisper of forced air, carried into the basement
by shiny aluminum ducts that snaked along the vaulted ceilings in a futile attempt to bring fresh air into these depths. D'Agosta looked at each case and its associated photograph, struggling to comprehend the Italian, able to get the gist but no more. Occasionally he jotted down a note—more to have something to report to Hayward on their next call than for his own recollection.

  In less than an hour, they'd gone through them all.

  Pendergast turned to D'Agosta. "Anything?"

  "Nothing stood out."

  "Let us take a second pass."

  The colonnello glanced at his watch, lit a cigarette.

  "There's no need for you to stay," said Pendergast.

  Esposito waved his hand. "I am quite content to be buried down here, out of reach, my cell phone dead. It is not so pleasant upstairs, with the Procuratore della Repubblica calling every half hour—thanks again, I fear, to you " He looked around. "All that's lacking is an espresso machine." He turned to the officer. "Caffè per tutti."

  "Sissignore."

  D'Agosta heaved a sigh and began leafing again through the barely comprehensible files. This time he paused at a black-and-white photo of a man lying in what looked like an abandoned building. The corpse lay curled in a cracked cement corner, very badly burned. It was a typical police photo, sordid, vile.

  But there was something else. Something wrong.

  Pendergast instantly detected his interest. "Yes?"

  D'Agosta slid the photo over. Pendergast scrutinized it for a few seconds. Then his eyebrows shot up. "Yes, I do see."

  "What is it?" asked the colonnello, reluctantly leaning forward.

  "This man. You see the small pool of blood there, underneath him? He was burned and then shot."

  "And so?"

  "Usually victims are shot, then burned, to conceal evidence. Have you ever heard of burning a man first and then shooting him?"

  "Frequently. To extract information."

  "Not over half the body. Torture burning is localized."

  Esposito peered at the photo. "That means nothing. A maniac, perhaps."

  "May we see the complete file?"

  The colonnello shrugged, rose, shuffled to a distant cabinet, then returned with a fat bundle of documents. He put it on the table, cut the twine with his pocketknife.

  Pendergast looked through the documents, pulled one out, began to summarize in English: "Carlo Vanni, aged sixty-nine, retired farmer, body found in a ruined casa colonica in the mountains near Abetone. There was no physical evidence recovered at the site, no fingerprints, fibers, shell casings, prints, tracks." He glanced up. "This does not look like the work of a maniac to me."

  A slow smile gathered on the colonnello's face. "Even among the carabinieri, incompetence has been known to occur. Just because no evidence was recovered does not mean there was no evidence to recover."

  Pendergast flipped the page. "A single shot to the heart. And what's this? Some droplets of molten aluminum recovered by the medico legale, burned deep into the man's flesh."

  He flipped another page.

  "Now, this is even more intriguing. Several years before his murder, Vanni was accused of molesting children in the local community. He got off on a technicality. The police theorized that the murder was simple vengeance, and it appears they did not try very hard to find the killer."

  The colonnello stubbed out his cigarette. "Allora. A revenge killing, someone from the community. The killer wanted to make this pedophile suffer for what he had done. Hence the burning, then the shot to the heart. It explains everything."

  "It would seem so."

  A long silence.

  "And yet," said Pendergast, almost to himself, "it's too perfect. If you wanted to kill someone, Colonnello, but it made no difference who it was, who would you choose? A man exactly like this: guilty of a heinous crime but never punished for it. A man with no family, no important connections, no job. The police aren't going to exert themselves to find the killer, and the townspeople will do all they can to hinder the investigation."

  "That is too clever, Agent Pendergast. Never in my life have I dealt with a criminal who would be capable of such sophisticated planning. And why kill someone at random? It is like something out of Dostoevsky."

  "We are not dealing with an ordinary criminal, and our killer had a very specific reason to kill." Pendergast laid the file down and gazed at D'Agosta. "Vincent?"

  "Worth pursuing."

  "May I have a copy of the report of the medico legale?" Pendergast asked.

  The colonnello murmured to the officer, who had just returned with the coffee. The man took the folder to a photocopy machine, returning with the copy a moment later.

  The colonnello handed it to Pendergast, then lit a cigarette, his face creased with irritation. "I hope you are not going to ask me for an exhumation order."

  "I'm afraid we are."

  Esposito sighed, smoke dribbling out of his nostrils. "Mio Dio. This is all I need. You realize how long this will take? At least a year."

  "Unacceptable."

  The colonnello nodded. "That's Italy." A thin smile worked itself into his face. "Of course…"

  "Of course what?"

  "You could always go the unofficial route."

  "You mean, grave robbing?"

  "We prefer to call it il controllo preliminare. If you find something, then you do the paperwork."

  Pendergast rose. "Thank you, Colonnello."

  "For what? I said nothing." And he made a mock bow. "Besides, the place is out of my jurisdiction. A satisfactory arrangement for all concerned—save perhaps Carlo Vanni."

  As they were leaving, the colonnello called after them. "Do not forget to pack panini and a good bottle of Chianti. The night, I fear, will be long and chilly."

  { 70 }

  The church where Carlo Vanni was interred lay in the foothills of the Apennines above the town of Pistoia, at the end of a winding road that seemed to climb forever through darkness. Their replacement Fiat wound back and forth, the headlights stabbing into darkness at each turn.

  "We should be prepared for company," said Pendergast.

  "You think they know we're here?"

  "I know it. A car's trailing us. I glimpsed it a couple of times three or four switchbacks down the mountain. He'll have to park below the church, and I don't intend to be surprised. Are you familiar with the move-and-cover approach to an objective?"

  "Sure."

  "You'll cover me while I move, then I'll signal you to follow, like this." And he gave a low hooting sound indistinguishable from an owl's.

  D'Agosta grinned. "Your talents always manage to surprise me. Rules of engagement?"

  "We're dealing with a potential killer, but we can't shoot first. Wait for the first shot, then shoot to kill."

  "Meanwhile, you're down."

  "I can take care of myself. Here we are." Pendergast slowed, making the final turn. "Check weapons."

  D'Agosta removed his Glock, ejected the magazine, made sure it was at its maximum fifteen-round capacity, slammed it home, and racked the slide. Pendergast drove past the church and parked in a turnout near the end of the road and exited the vehicle.

  The smell of crushed mint rose around them. It was a chill, moonless night. There was a scattering of bright stars above the dark line of cypresses. The church itself stood below, faintly silhouetted against the distant glow of Pistoia. Crickets trilled in the darkness. It was a perfect place for a tomb robbing, thought D'Agosta—quiet and isolated.

  Pendergast touched his shoulder and nodded toward a dark copse of trees about a hundred yards downhill. D'Agosta crouched in the shadows of the car, gun drawn, as Pendergast darted silently down toward the copse, disappearing into the darkness.

  A minute later, D'Agosta heard a low hoot.

  He rose, moved quickly toward the trees, and joined Pendergast. Beyond stood the church: small and very ancient, built of stone blocks with a square tower. The front entrance—a Gothic arch over a wooden door—was closed. />
  Pendergast touched D'Agosta's arm again, nodded this time toward the entrance. D'Agosta retreated into the shadows, waiting.

  Pendergast shot across the courtyard in front of the church. D'Agosta could just make out his silhouette, black against black, before the door. There was the sound of a locked door being tried. This was followed by the faint scraping of iron against iron as Pendergast picked the lock, and then a dull creak as the door opened. Pendergast slipped quickly inside. Within moments, another hoot of an owl. Taking a deep breath, D'Agosta ran across the open piazza and past the door. Pendergast immediately closed it behind him and, inserting a narrow device into the keyhole, relocked it.

  D'Agosta turned, crossed himself. The interior of the church was cool and smelled of wax and stone. A few candles guttered before a painted wooden statue of the Virgin, throwing a dim orange light across the small nave.

  "You take the left side, I'll take the right," said Pendergast.

  They moved down opposite walls of the ancient church, guns drawn. It was empty save for the statue of the Virgin, a confessional with a drawn curtain, and a rough altar with a crucifix.

  Pendergast crept up to the confessional, took hold of the curtain, jerked it aside.

  Empty.

  D'Agosta watched him put his gun away and glide to a small, rusted iron door set into a far corner. He bent over the lock and—with another rattle and scrape—opened it to reveal a descending stone staircase. Pendergast switched on his flashlight and probed into the murk.

  "This isn't the first tomb I've disturbed," murmured Pendergast as D'Agosta drew up beside him, "but it promises to be one of the most interesting."

  "Why was Vanni buried down here, and not in a cemetery outside?"

  They passed through the doorway, and Pendergast gently closed and locked the door behind them. "Because of the steep hill, the church has no outside camposanto. All the dead are buried down in the crypts, cut into the hillside underneath the church."

  They descended the staircase to find themselves in a low, vaulted space. D'Agosta's nostrils filled with the smell of mold. To the left, the flashlight revealed some medieval sarcophagi, several with the bodies of the deceased carved in marble on the lids, as if asleep. One was shown in a suit of armor; another was dressed as a bishop.