Brimstone

by Douglas Preston

  She stopped. Don’t say too much. Let him come round.

  All around them, an air of expectancy had grown. Everyone was waiting for the reverend to speak. It all depended on Buck.

  At last, he moved. He blinked, raised his hand slowly, almost robotically. The tension increased with the silence. It was so silent, in fact, Hayward could hear birds chirping in the trees around them.

  The hand came around and pointed at her.

  "Centurion," he said in a voice so low it was barely more than a whisper.

  It was like the release of pressure from a cooker. "Centurion!" came the sudden cry of the crowd. "Soldier of Rome!" The throng jostled and shoved as it began to close in.

  For the first time, Hayward felt a stab of real fear. Failure was becoming a foregone conclusion, but there was more than her career at stake now. This crowd was dangerously aroused.

  "Reverend, if your answer is no—"

  But Buck had turned away, and now, to her overwhelming dismay, he was entering his tent, lifting the flap, disappearing inside. More people streamed in where he'd stood, filling the gap.

  He'd left her to the mercy of the crowd.

  She turned to face them. Now it was time to get the hell out. "All right, folks, I know when to take no for an answer—"

  "Silence, Judas!"

  Hayward saw sticks once again, swaying above the heads. It amazed her how ugly a crowd could get, so quickly. She had failed, failed miserably. Her career was ruined, no question. The real question was whether she could get out in one piece.

  "I'm leaving," she said loudly and firmly. "I'm leaving, and I expect to be allowed to leave peacefully. I am an officer of the law."

  She moved toward the wall of people, but this time no path opened. She kept walking, expecting, hoping for, them to fall back. But they didn't. Several hands reached out and shoved her back—hard.

  "I came in peace!" she said loudly, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. "And I'm leaving in peace!" She took another step toward the wall of people, coming face-to-face with Todd. He was brandishing something in one hand. A rock.

  "Don't do anything stupid," she said.

  He raised his hand as if to throw. She immediately took a step toward him, looking into his eyes, just as one would do with a dangerous dog. It was always the crazies who got to the front of a hot crowd. The followers stayed back, hoping for a good lick once the adversary was down and helpless. But these front ones, they were the killers.

  Todd took a step back. "Judas bitch," he said, waving the rock threateningly.

  Reaching down inside and searching for calm, Hayward quickly reviewed her options. If she pulled her piece, that would be the end. Sure, by firing into the air she might drive them back for a moment, but they would be on her in a flash and she'd be forced to shoot into the crowd. And then she'd be dead meat. She could call Rocker, but it would be ten minutes at least before he could mobilize and move in. Blood would be up, and he'd meet immediate resistance. By the time they reached her… God, she didn't have ten minutes, she didn't even have five.

  The only one who could control this crowd was Buck, and he was in his tent.

  She backed up, turning in a slow circle. The crowd was so thick she couldn't even see his tent anymore. And she was being pushed away from it, as if the crowd wanted to keep the unpleasantness of what was to come away from him. Taunts and chanting rose from all sides.

  She searched her mind desperately for something useful from her training. Crowd psychology was something that interested her, especially after the Wisher Riots a few years back. Problem was, an angry crowd did not behave like a normal human being. A crowd did not respond to the cues of body language. A crowd did not listen to anything except itself. You could not reason with a crowd. A crowd would enthusiastically commit an act of violence no single member would normally condone.

  "Centurion!" Todd had taken another step forward, emboldened, the crowd consolidating behind him. Hysterically angry. They weren't going to hurt her—they were going to kill her.

  "Buck!" she shouted, turning, but it was hopeless, he couldn't hear over the taunts of the crowd.

  She faced them again. "You call yourselves Christians?" she screamed. "Look at you!"

  Wrong move. It just pushed their anger up a notch. But it was all she had left.

  "Ever heard of turning the other cheek? Loving thy neighbor—"

  "Blasphemer!" Todd shook his rock, the crowd flowing with him.

  She was really frightened now. She took a step back, felt herself shoved from behind. Her voice cracked. "In the Bible, it says—"

  "She's blaspheming the Bible!"

  "You hear her?"

  "Shut her up!"

  A dead end. Hayward knew she was out of time. She had to figure out something before the stones came raining down. Once the first was thrown, it wouldn't stop until it was over.

  The problem was, she'd exhausted all her options. There was nothing left to do.

  Nothing.

  { 77 }

  At five minutes to nine, D'Agosta turned from the window to see Pendergast rising calmly from the sofa, where he had been lying motionless for the past half hour. Earlier, the agent had established he could open the door with his lock-picking tools, but he seemed uninterested in exploring, so he'd relocked it and they had waited.

  "Good nap?" He wondered how Pendergast could sleep at a time like this. He felt so keyed up it seemed he'd never be able to sleep again.

  "I wasn't napping, Vincent—I was thinking."

  "Yeah. So was I. Like how are we going to get out of this place?"

  "Surely you don't think I have brought us in here without a well-conceived plan of departure? And if my plan does not work, I am a great believer in improvisation."

  "Improvisation? I don't like the sound of that."

  "These old castles are full of holes. One way or another we'll escape with the evidence we need and return with reinforcements. Reinforcements that will only be convinced by the evidence. Coming here, Vincent, was our only option—aside from giving up."

  "That's not an option in my book."

  "Nor in mine."

  There was a knock at the door. It opened and Pinketts stood there, in full livery. D'Agosta's hand drifted toward his service piece.

  Pinketts gave a slight bow and said, in his plummy English, "Dinner is served."

  They followed him back down the staircase and through a series of rooms and passageways to the dining salotto. It was a cheerful space, painted yellow, with a high vaulted ceiling. The table had been laid with silver and plate, an arrangement of fresh roses in the middle. There were three places set.

  Fosco was standing at the far end of the room, where a small fire burned in the grate of an enormous stone fireplace, surmounted with a carved coat of arms. He turned quickly, a little white mouse scampering over his fat hand and running up his sleeve.

  "Welcome." He put the mouse away in a small wire pagoda. "Mr. Pendergast, you will sit here, on my right; Mr. D'Agosta on my left, if you please."

  D'Agosta seated himself, edging his chair away from Fosco. The count had always given him the creeps; now he could hardly stand to be in the same room. The man was a fiend.

  "A little prosecco? It is my own."

  Both men shook their heads. Fosco shrugged. Pinketts filled his glass with the wine, and the count raised it.

  "To the Stormcloud," he said. "Pity you can't toast. Have some water, at least."

  "Sergeant D'Agosta and I are abstaining tonight," replied Pendergast.

  "I have prepared a marvelous repast." He drained the glass and, on cue, Pinketts brought out a platter heaped with what looked to D'Agosta like cold cuts.

  "Affettati misti toscani," said Fosco. "Prosciutto from boar taken on the estate, shot by myself, in fact. Won't you try some? Finocchiona and soprassata, also from the estate."

  "No, thank you."

  "Mr. D'Agosta?"

  D'Agosta didn't answer.

  "
Pity we don't have a dwarf handy to taste the food. I so dislike eating alone."

  Pendergast leaned forward. "Shall we leave the dinner aside, Fosco, and settle the business at hand? Sergeant D'Agosta and I cannot stay the night."

  "But I insist."

  "Your insistence means nothing. We will go when we choose."

  "You will not be leaving—tonight, or any other night, for that matter. I suggest you eat. It will be your last meal. Don't worry, it isn't poisoned. I have a much cleverer fate in mind for you both."

  This was greeted by silence.

  Pinketts came and poured a glass of red wine. The count swirled it in his glass, tasted it, nodded. Then he looked at Pendergast. "When did you realize it was me?"

  Pendergast's reply, when it came, was slow. "I found a fragment of horsehair at the site of Bullard's murder. I knew it came from a violin bow. At that point, I recalled the name of Bullard's boat: the Stormcloud. It all came together: I realized then that this case was merely a sordid attempt at theft through murder and intimidation. My thoughts naturally turned to you—although I'd long been sure the business went beyond Bullard."

  "Clever. I didn't expect you to put it together so quickly—hence the unseemly rush to kill the old priest. I regret that more than I can say. It was unnecessary, stupid. I had a momentary panic."

  " 'Unnecessary'?" snapped D'Agosta. " 'Stupid'? We're talking about murdering another human being here."

  "Spare me the moral absolutism." Fosco sipped his wine, folded a piece of prosciutto onto his fork, ate it, recovered his good humor. He glanced back at Pendergast. "As for me, I knew you were going to be a problem within five minutes of encountering you. Who'd have expected a man like you would go into law enforcement?"

  When he didn't receive an answer, he raised his glass in another toast. "From the very first time I met you, I knew that I would have to kill you. And here we are."

  He took a sip, set down the glass. "I had hoped that idiot Bullard would pull it off. But, of course, he failed."

  "You put him up to that, naturally."

  "Let us just say that, in his frightened condition, he was susceptible to suggestion. And so now it is left to me. But first, don't you think you should congratulate me on a beautifully executed plan? I extracted the violin from Bullard. And as you know well, Mr. Pendergast, there are no witnesses or physical evidence to connect me to the murders."

  "You have the violin. Bullard once had it. That can be established beyond the shadow of a doubt."

  "It belongs to the Fosco family by legal right. I still have the bill of sale, signed by Antonio Stradivari himself, and the chain of ownership is beyond question. A suitable period will pass following Bullard's death; then the violin will surface in Rome. I've planned it down to the last detail. I will make my claim, pay a small reward to the lucky shopkeeper, and it will come to me free and clear. Bullard told no one why he needed to remove the violin from his laboratory, not even the people at his company. How could he?" Fosco issued a dry chuckle. "So you see, there is nothing, Mr. Pendergast, no evidence at all against me. But then, I have always been a most fortunate man in such matters." He bit off a piece of bread. "For example, there is an extraordinary coincidence at the very heart of this affair. Do you know what it is?"

  "I can guess."

  "On October 31, 1974, in the early afternoon, while on my way out of the Biblioteca Nazionale, I ran into a group of callow American students. You know the type—they throng Florence all year long. It was the afternoon of All Hallows' Eve—Halloween to them, of course—and they'd been drinking to excess. I was young and callow myself, and I found them so astonishingly vulgar that they amused me. We fell in for the moment. At some point, one of the students—Jeremy Grove to be precise—went on a tear about religion, about God being rubbish for the weak mind, that sort of thing. The sheer arrogance of it annoyed me. I said that I couldn't speak on the existence of God, but I did know one thing: that the devil existed."

  Fosco laughed silently, his capacious front shaking.

  "They all roundly denied the existence of the devil. I said I had friends who dabbled in the occult, who had collected old manuscripts and that sort of thing, and that, in fact, I had an old parchment which contained formulas on how to raise Lucifer himself. We could settle the question that very night. The night was perfect, in fact, being Halloween. Would they like to try it? Oh, yes, they said. What a marvelous idea!"

  Another internal disturbance shook Fosco's person.

  "So you put on a show for them."

  "Exactly. I invited them to a midnight séance in my castle, and then rushed back myself to set it all up. It was a great deal of fun. Pinketts helped—and, by the way, he isn't English at all, but a manservant named Pinchetti who happens to be both a clever linguist and a lover of intrigue. We had only six hours, but we did it up rather well. I've always been a tinkerer, a builder of machines and gadgets, and incidentally a designer of fuochi d'artificio—fireworks. There are all sorts of secret passageways, trapdoors, and hidden panels in the cellars here, and we took full advantage of them. That was a night to remember! You should have seen their faces as we recited the incantations, asked the Prince of Darkness to bring them great wealth, offered their souls in return, pricked their fingers and signed contracts in blood—especially when Pinketts activated the theatrics." He leaned back, pealing with laughter.

  "You terrified them. You scared Beckmann so much it ruined his life."

  "It was all in good fun. If it shook up their pathetic little certainties, so much the better. They went their way and I went mine. And here comes the coincidence so marvelous I feel it must be predestination: thirty years later, I discovered to my horror that one of these philistines had acquired the Stormcloud."

  "How did you learn?" Pendergast asked.

  "I had been on the track of the Stormcloud almost my entire adult life, Mr. Pendergast. I made it my life's goal to return that violin to my family. You've been to see Lady Maskelene, so you know its history. I knew perfectly well Toscanelli had not thrown it into the Falls of the Sciliar. How could he? As crazy as he was, he knew better than anyone what that violin represented. But if he didn't destroy it, then what had happened? The answer is not so mysterious. He froze to death in a shepherd's hut up on the Sciliar, and then it snowed. There were no footprints in the snow. Obviously, someone had found him dead with the violin before it snowed and had stolen the violin. And who was this someone? Just as obviously, the man who owned the hut."

  Pinketts whisked away his plate, then returned bearing another of tortelloni with butter and salvia. Fosco tucked into it with relish.

  "Remember how I told you I loved detective work? I have a rare talent for it. I traced the Stormcloud from the shepherd, to his nephew, to a band of Gypsies, to a shop in Spain, to an orphanage in Malta—this way and that it traveled. I shudder to think of the times it was left in the sun; packed in a case with a few threads of straw and thrown into the back of a truck; left unattended in some school auditorium. Mio Dio! Yet it survived. It ended up in France, where it was sold in a lot of junk instruments to a lycée. Some clumsy oaf in the orchestra dropped it, chipped one of the scrolls, and it was taken to a violin shop in Angoulême for repair. The man who owned the shop recognized it, substituted it, and sent back another instrument in its place." Fosco clucked disapprovingly. "What a moment that must have been for him! He knew he could never acquire legal title to it, so he smuggled it to America and quietly put it up for sale. It took a long time to find a buyer. Who wanted a Stradivarius if you couldn't play it as a Strad? If you could never establish title to it? If it might be taken from you at any moment? But he finally did find a buyer—in Locke Bullard. Two million dollars—that was all! I found out three months after the deal had closed."

  A dark furor passed over Fosco's face, rapidly clearing as Pinketts carried in the next course, a bistecca fiorentina, sizzling from the fire. Fosco carved off a piece of almost raw meat, placed it in his mouth, chewed.
r />   "I was perfectly willing to buy it from Bullard, even paying a handsome price, despite the fact it was mine to begin with. But I never got to the point of making an offer. You see, Bullard was going to destroy the violin."

  "To crack Stradivari's secret formulas once and for all."

  "Exactly. And do you know why?"

  "I know Bullard was not in the business of making violins, nor did he have any interest in music."

  "True. But do you know the business his company, BAI, was into? With the Chinese?"

  Pendergast did not reply.

  "Missiles, my dear Pendergast. He was working on ballistic missiles. That's why he needed the violin!"

  "Bullshit!" D'Agosta interjected. "There can't possibly be a connection between a three-hundred-year-old violin and a ballistic missile."

  Fosco ignored this. He was still looking at Pendergast. "I sense you know rather more than you let on, my good sir. In any case, I penetrated their laboratory with a mole in my employ. Poor fellow ended up with his head crushed. But before that happened, he did tell me just what Bullard planned to do with the violin."

  He leaned forward, eyes flashing with indignation. "The Chinese, you see, had developed a ballistic missile that could theoretically penetrate the United States' planned antimissile shield. But they had a problem with their missiles breaking up on re-entry. To make the missile invisible to radar, you know, one can't have any curved or shiny surfaces. Look at the strange angular shapes of your stealth fighters and bombers. But this wasn't a bomber flying at six hundred miles an hour: this was a ballistic missile re-entering the atmosphere at ten times that speed. Their test missiles broke up under uncontrollable resonance vibrations during atmospheric re-entry."

  Pendergast nodded almost imperceptibly.

  "Bullard's scientists realized the solution to this problem lay in the Stradivari formula for the varnish. Can you imagine? You see, the key to the Stradivari varnish is that, after a few years of playing, it develops billions of microscopic cracks and flaws, too small to be seen. These are phenomenally effective in dampening and warming the sound of a Stradivari. This is also why the violin must be played regularly—otherwise, the cracks and flaws start knitting back up. Bullard was designing a high-performance coating for those Chinese missiles that would do the same thing—a coating that would have billions of microscopic flaws to dampen the vibrational resonance of re-entry. But he had to figure out precisely what the physics was, why those cracks and flaws did what they did. He had to know how they were distributed three-dimensionally in the varnish; how they made contact with the wood; how wide, long, and deep they were; how they connected to each other."