Brimstone

by Douglas Preston

  "Not just any violin."

  "I don't care. It wasn't worth all those deaths. And it especially wasn't worth—" But here she stopped, as if hesitant to break some unspoken code between them. "Where is it now?"

  "I sent it by special courier to a woman on the island of Capraia. Comes from a line of violinists. She'll restore it to the Fosco family at a time of her choosing, when the new heir is settled in. Somehow, I think that's what Pendergast would have wanted."

  It was the first time Pendergast's name had passed between them.

  "I know you couldn't explain on the phone," she went on. "But what happened, exactly? After you took the Italian police to Fosco's castle yesterday morning, I mean."

  D'Agosta did not reply.

  "Come on, Vinnie. It'll be better if you talk about it."

  D'Agosta sighed. "I spent the rest of the day combing the Chianti countryside. Talking to farmers. Talking to villagers. Anyone who might have seen anything, heard anything. Checking my hotel for messages. Of course, there was nothing. But I had to be sure, you see—absolutely sure…"

  Hayward waited. After a moment, he went on.

  "The thing is, deep down, I was already sure. We'd searched the castle. And then there was that look Fosco gave me, that awful look. If you'd seen it…" He shook his head. "Close to midnight, I drifted back to the castle. Went in the same way we'd come out. I took the time to figure out how the microwave device worked. And then I… used it. One last time."

  "You brought Fosco to justice. Avenged your partner. I'd have done the same thing."

  "Would you?" D'Agosta asked quietly.

  Hayward nodded.

  D'Agosta shifted restlessly. "There's not much more to tell. I spent this morning back in Florence, checking hospitals, morgues, police reports. More to keep busy than for anything else. And then I boarded the plane."

  "What did you do with that weapon?"

  "Disassembled it, smashed the pieces, and deposited them in half a dozen garbage cans around Florence."

  She nodded. "And what are your plans now?"

  D'Agosta shrugged. He hadn't given this any thought. "I don't know. Go back to Southampton, I guess. Face the music."

  A small smile crept over her face. "Didn't you hear what I said? It's the chief who's facing the music. He got back from vacation and was so eager to hog the limelight that now it's all coming back to roost. Braskie's running against him in the next election, odds-on favorite to win."

  "Even worse for me."

  She changed lanes. "There's something else you should know. They've suspended the NYPD hiring freeze. That means you can work the city again. Get your old job back."

  D'Agosta shook his head. "No way. I've been away too long. I'm old goods."

  "It hasn't been that long. They're rehiring by seniority. And with your experience in Southampton, and as FBI liaison…" She paused to negotiate the ramp onto the Long Island Expressway. "Of course, it couldn't be in my division. But they've got openings in several of the downtown precincts."

  D'Agosta sat a moment, letting this penetrate. Then he looked at her sharply. "Wait a minute. My old job back, openings downtown. You didn't have anything to do with this, did you? Have a talk with Rocker, or something like that?"

  "Me? You know the kind of cop I am. By the book. Miss Straight Arrow " But her smile seemed to deepen briefly.

  Up ahead, the maw of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel loomed, gridworks of tile illuminated by fluorescent tubes. Hayward merged smoothly into the E-Z Pass toll lane.

  From the passenger seat, D'Agosta watched her: the beautiful lines of her face, the curve of her nose, the little furrow of concentration as she negotiated the evening traffic. It was wonderful just to see her again, to be here by her side. And yet he could not escape the sense of desolation that enveloped him. It was like a hollowness he carried around, a vacuum that could not be filled.

  "You're right," he said as they entered the tunnel. "It doesn't matter if that violin's the most precious ever made. It wasn't worth Pendergast dying. Nothing was worth that."

  Hayward kept her eyes on the road. "You don't know he's dead."

  D'Agosta didn't answer. He'd told himself this already: once, twice, a thousand times. When everything had been stacked against them—when there seemed no way they could possibly survive—Pendergast had always saved them. At times, it had seemed almost miraculous. And yet, this time, Pendergast had not reappeared. This time, it felt different.

  Then there was that other feeling, the one that made him almost physically ill. It was the image of Pendergast, there in the clearing, surrounded by dogs. Everyone—the hunters, the handlers, the beaters—closing in. Only one of us can get through. There's no other way.

  D'Agosta felt his throat close up. "You're right. I have no proof. Except maybe this." He reached into his pocket, drew out Pendergast's platinum chain and pendant: a lidless eye over a phoenix, rising from fiery ash, now pitted and partly melted. The chain he'd retrieved from Fosco's burning, smoking corpse. He stared at it a moment. He balled the hand into a fist, pressed a knuckle against his teeth. He felt a ridiculous impulse to burst into tears.

  The worst of it was, D'Agosta knew he was the one who should have been left on that hill. He wished, more than anything else, that he had been left on that hill.

  "Anyway, he would have contacted me by now. Or you. Or somebody." He paused. "I don't know how I'm going to tell Constance."

  "Who?"

  "Constance Greene. His ward."

  They drove through the rest of the tunnel in silence, finally emerging into the Manhattan night. Then he felt Hayward take his hand.

  "Let me off anywhere," he said, sick at heart. "Penn Station's fine. I'll take the LIRR out to Southampton."

  "Why?" she replied. "There's nothing for you out there. Your future's here, in New York City."

  D'Agosta remained silent as the car cruised west: past Park, past Madison, past Fifth.

  "You have a place to stay in town?" she asked.

  D'Agosta shook his head.

  "I—," Hayward began. Then she, too, fell silent.

  D'Agosta roused himself, glanced at her. "What?" It was hard to tell, but in the reflected light of the streetlamps, he thought she was blushing.

  "I was just thinking. If you're coming back to the NYPD, working here in the city… well, why not stay with me? For a while," she added hastily. "You know. See how it works out."

  For a moment, D'Agosta didn't answer. He just looked back out at the lights passing over the windshield.

  Then he realized, quite abruptly, he had to let go. Let go, at least for the moment. The past was over and done. Tomorrow was an unknown, still to come. He had no control over either. All he could control, all he could live, was the here and now. Knowing this didn't make things any better, really—but it did make them easier to bear.

  "Look, Vinnie," Hayward said in a low voice. "It doesn't matter what you say. I just can't believe that Pendergast is dead. My gut tells me he's still alive. The guy's as close to indestructible as a body can be. He's cheated death a thousand times. He'll do it again somehow. I know he will."

  D'Agosta smiled faintly.

  Ahead, a traffic light turned red. She eased to a stop, then turned to look at him.

  "So, you coming back with me, or what? It's not polite to make a lady ask twice."

  He turned to her, squeezed her hand.

  "I think I'd like that," he said, his smile broadening. "I think I'd like that very much."

  { Epilogue }

  A chill November sun illuminated, but did not warm, the bleak stone ramparts of Castel Fosco. The garden was deserted; the marble fountain purled and splashed for no one. Beyond the castle walls, dead leaves swirled over the gravel of the parking area, obscuring the tracks of the many vehicles that had come and gone earlier in the day. Now all was quiet. The narrow road leading down the mountainside was empty. A single raven sat on the battlements above, gazing silently over the valley of the Greve.
r />   The coroner's van had removed Fosco's body around mid-morning. The police lingered a little longer, snapping photos, taking statements, looking for evidence but finding nothing of value. Assunta, who had discovered the corpse, had been borne away, ashen and distraught, by her son. The few remaining servants had also gone off, taking advantage of the unexpected vacation. There seemed little reason to stay. Fosco's nearest relation, a distant cousin, was vacationing on the Costa Smeralda of Sardinia and would not arrive for several days at least. Besides, none were eager to linger in a place to which death had made such a gruesome visitation. And so the castle was left to brood in shadows and silence.

  Nowhere was the silence more profound than in the ancient passageways that riddled the rock far beneath the basements of the castle. Here there was not even the rustle of the wind to disturb the dusty tombs and stone sarcophagi of the forgotten dead.

  The deepest of these passages, carved by Etruscans into the living rock more than three thousand years before, twisted down into black depths and came to an end in a horizontal tunnel. At the far end of this tunnel stood a brick wall with a small scatter of bones lying before it. Though the tunnel was dark, even with the aid of a torch it would have been almost impossible to tell the wall had been built only forty-odd hours before, sealing up an ancient tomb, the bones of its former occupant, an unknown Longobardic knight, swept out and left lying in the dirt.

  The ancient tomb that lay behind the brick wall was just large enough to contain a man. Inside that tomb there was no sound. Darkness reigned so profoundly that even the very passage of time seemed suspended.

  And then a muffled sound broke the stillness: a faint footfall.

  This was followed by a rattle, as if a bag of tools had been set down on the ground. Silence descended briefly once again. And then came an unmistakable sound: the scrape of iron against mortar, the sharp rap of a hammer against a cold chisel.

  The rapping went on in a low, measured cadence, methodical, like the ticking of a clock. Minutes passed, and the sound stopped. Another silence, and then there were the faint sounds of scraping, the abrasion of brick against mortar; a few more sharp raps—and suddenly a faint light appeared in the tomb, a glowing crack that outlined the rectangular shape of a brick in the upper portion of the wall. With a soft, slow grating, the brick was withdrawn, millimeter by millimeter. Then it was gone, and a soft yellow light shone through the newly opened hole, penetrating the darkness of the tomb.

  A moment later, two eyes appeared in the glowing rectangle, gazing in with curiosity, perhaps even anxiety.

  Two eyes: one hazel, one blue.

  An Aside to the Reader

  Some readers will note we have done something quite unusual in Brimstone. Perhaps certain English professors will shake their heads and wonder that such a vile offense could have been committed against great literature.

  We are speaking of how we've brazenly lifted the character of Count Isidore Ottavio Baldassare Fosco from the pages of The Woman in White, the great novel by the Victorian author Wilkie Collins, and inserted him boldly into Brimstone.

  For those not familiar with Collins, he invented the modern detective novel with the publication of his work The Moonstone. The Woman in White, published a few years earlier in 1860,was in our opinion his greatest novel and one of the most popular books of the Victorian Age. Today it is well-nigh forgotten.

  We apologize for purloining the character of Count Fosco. Yet it is the highest tribute we can pay to one of our favorite writers, who has certainly influenced our own fiction. We owe an enormous debt to Wilkie Collins, as do all writers of detective fiction (whether they know it or not). If, perchance, this prompts some of our more adventurous readers to pick up a copy of The Woman in White, we will be very pleased. And to those who protest the pilfering of Fosco as a transgression against literature, we respond:

  Braveggia, urla! T'affretta

  a palesarmi il fondo dell'alma ria!

  About the Authors

  DOUGLAS PRESTON and LINCOLN CHILD are co-authors of the bestselling novels Relic, Mount Dragon, Reliquary, Riptide, Thunderhead, The Ice Limit, The Cabinet of Curiosities, and Still Life With Crows. Douglas Preston, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, worked for the American Museum of Natural History. He is an expert horseman who has ridden thousands of miles across the West. Lincoln Child is a former book editor and systems analyst who has published numerous anthologies of ghost stories and supernatural tales. The authors are working on their new novel, Dance of Death. They encourage readers to visit their Web site, www.prestonchild.com.