The Book of the Dead

by Richard Preston

  Three shots sounded in rapid succession, and he heard one of the shutters in the breakfast nook hurl open, slamming against the wall with a shuddering crash. He jumped up and, scuttling ahead at a crouch, took cover behind a half-wall of masonry separating the kitchen from the dining area. The wind howled through the open window, banging the shutter.

  Had she gotten inside?

  He scrambled around the half-wall, jumped up at a run, and swept the torch across the kitchen: nothing. Still running, he slid into the dining room, braced himself against a wall. The key was to keep moving . . .

  Three more shots resounded, this time from the direction of the library, and he could hear another shutter begin to swing wildly in the wind.

  That was her game, then: punch holes in his defenses, one by one, until the house was no protection at all. He wouldn’t play that game. He had to seize the initiative. He, not she, would choose the terrain for the final confrontation.

  He had to get outside—and not only outside, but up the mountain. He knew every switchback of the steep and dangerous trail. She was comparatively weak and would be weaker after her long and exhausting pursuit. On the mountain, every advantage would be his—including the use of a handgun in the dark. Nevertheless, he reminded himself that he had underestimated her at each turn. That could not be permitted to happen again. He was up against the most determined, and perhaps most deadly, adversary of his career.

  His thoughts returned to the mountain. The ancient trail had been built almost three thousand years ago by Greek priests to offer sacrifices to the god Hephaestus. About halfway up, the trail branched. A newer trail ran to the summit along the Bastimento Ridge. The ancient Greek trail continued westward, where it had been cut centuries earlier by the Sciara del Fuoco, the legendary Slope of Fire. The Sciara was a continuous avalanche of red-hot lava blocks forced from the crater, which tumbled down a vast ravine a mile broad and three thousand feet deep, to ultimately crash into the sea in explosions of steam. The cliff edge of the Sciara was a hellish, dizzying place, like no other on earth, swept by raging winds of heated air coming off the lava flow.

  The Sciara del Fuoco. A perfect solution to his problem. A body that fell in there would virtually disappear.

  Exiting the house would be his point of greatest vulnerability. But she could not be everywhere at once. And even if she was waiting, expecting his exit, she had little chance of hitting him if he kept moving in the dark. It took years to develop handgun skills at that level.

  Diogenes crept up to the side door, paused briefly. And then, in one explosive movement, he kicked it open and charged into the darkness. The shots came, as he knew they would, missing him by inches. He dived for cover and returned the shots, suppressing her fire. Then he jumped up, sprinted through the gate, and turned sharply right, racing up a series of ancient lava steps at the top of the lane, which would connect to the trail that wound up the side of the volcano of Stromboli toward the Slope of Fire.

  77

  Special Agent Pendergast leaped off the swaying fishing boat onto the quay at Ficogrande, the boat already backing its engines to get away from the heavy surf along the exposed shore. He stood for a moment on the cracked cement, looking up at the island. It rose abruptly from the water like a black pillar against the dim night sky, illuminated by a fitful quarter-moon. He saw the reddish play of lights in the clouds capping the mountain, heard the boom and roll of the volcano, mingling with the roar of surf at his back and the howling of wind from the sea.

  Stromboli was a small, round island, two miles in diameter and conical in shape: barren and forbidding. Even the village—a scattering of whitewashed houses stretched out along a mile of shoreline—looked battered, windswept, and austere.

  Pendergast breathed in the moist, sea-laden air and drew his coat more closely around his neck. At the far end of the quay, across the narrow street that paralleled the beach, a row of crooked stuccoed buildings sat crowded together: one was evidently a bar, although the faded sign that rocked in the wind had lost its electric light.

  He hurried up the quay, crossed the street, and entered.

  A thick atmosphere of cigarette smoke greeted him. At a table sat a group of men—one in the uniform of the carabiniere—smoking and playing cards, each with a tumbler of wine in front of him.

  He went to the bar, ordered an espresso completo. “The woman who arrived on the chartered fishing boat earlier this evening . . . ?” he said in Italian to the bartender, and then paused, waiting expectantly.

  The man gave the zinc a swipe with a damp cloth, served the espresso, tipped in a measure of grappa. He didn’t seem inclined to answer.

  “Young, slender, her face swathed in a red scarf?” Pendergast added.

  The bartender nodded.

  “Where did she go?”

  After a silence, he said, in Sicilian-accented Italian, “Up to the professor’s.”

  “Ah! And where does the professor live?”

  No answer. He sensed that the card game behind him had paused.

  Pendergast knew that, in this part of the world, information was never given out freely: it was exchanged. “She’s my niece, poor thing,” he offered. “My sister’s heart is just about broken, her daughter chasing after that worthless man, that so-called professor, who seduced her and now refuses to do the right thing.”

  This had the desired effect. These were Sicilians, after all—an ancient race with antique notions of honor. From behind him, Pendergast heard the scrape of a chair. He turned to see the carabiniere drawing himself up.

  “I am the maresciallo of Stromboli,” he said gravely. “I will take you up to the professor’s house.” He turned. “Stefano, bring up the Ape for this gentleman and follow me. I will take the motorino.”

  A dark, hairy man rose from the table and nodded at Pendergast, who followed him outside. The three-wheeled motorized cart stood at the curb and Pendergast got in. Ahead, he could see the carabiniere kick-starting his moto. In a moment, they were off, driving along the beach road, the surf roaring on their right, pounding up beaches that were as dark as the night.

  After a short drive, they swung inland, winding through the impossibly narrow lanes of the town, rising steeply up the side of the mountain. The lanes grew even steeper, now running through dark vineyards and olive groves and kitchen gardens, enclosed by walls made of mortared lava cinders. A few sprawling villas appeared, dotting the upper slopes. The last one stood hard against the rising mountain, surrounded by a high lava-stone wall.

  The windows were dark.

  The carabiniere parked his motorbike at the gate and the Ape stopped behind it. Pendergast jumped out, looking up at the villa. It was large and austere, more like a fortress than a residence, graced with several terraces, the one facing the sea colonnaded with old marble columns. Beyond the lava wall stood a lush and extensive garden of tropical plants, birds of paradise, and giant exotic cacti. It was the very last house on the mountainside, and from Pendergast’s vantage point below, it almost seemed as if the volcano were leaning above the house, its rumbling, flickering peak reflecting a menacing bloody orange against the lowering clouds.

  Despite everything—despite the extremity of the moment—Pendergast continued to stare. This is my brother’s house, he thought.

  With an officious swagger, the carabiniere went to the iron gate—which stood open—and pressed the buzzer. And now, spell broken, Pendergast brushed past him, ducked through the gate, and ran at a crouch toward the side door on the terrace, which was banging in the wind.

  “Wait, signore!”

  Pendergast slipped out his Colt 1911 and pressed himself on the wall against the door, catching it in his hand as it swung to. It was riddled with bullet holes. He glanced around: a shutter outside the kitchen was also open, swinging in the wind.

  The carabiniere came puffing up beside him. He eyed the door. “Minchia!” His own firearm came out immediately.

  “What is it, Antonio?” said the Ape driver, c
oming up, the tip of his cigarette dancing in the roaring dark.

  “Go back, Stefano. This does not look good.”

  Pendergast pulled out a flashlight, ducked into the house, shone it around. Splinters of wood lay scattered across the floor. The beam of the flashlight illumined a large living room in the Mediterranean style, with cool plastered surfaces, a tiled floor, and heavy antique furniture: spare and surprisingly austere. He had a glimpse, beyond an open door, of an extraordinary library, rising two stories, done up in a surreal pearl gray. He ducked inside, noting that a second shutter in the library had been shot open.

  Still, no signs of a struggle.

  He strode back to the side door, where the carabiniere was examining the bullet holes. The man straightened up.

  “This is a crime scene, signore. I must ask you to leave.”

  Pendergast exited onto the terrace and squinted up the dim mountain. “Is that a trail?” he asked the Ape driver, who was still standing there, gaping.

  “It goes up the mountain. But they would not have taken that trail—not at night.”

  The carabiniere appeared a moment later, radio in hand. He was calling the carabiniere caserma on the island of Lipari, thirty miles away.

  Pendergast exited through the gate and walked up to the end of the lane. A ruined staircase in stone ran up the side of the hill, joining a larger, very ancient trail on the slope just above. Pendergast knelt, shone his light on the ground. After a moment, he rose and took a dozen steps up the trail, examining it with his light.

  “Do not go up there, signore! It is extremely dangerous!”

  He knelt again. In a thin layer of dust protected from the wind by an ancient stone step, he could make out the impression of a heel—a small heel. The impression was fresh.

  And there, above it, another small, faint print, lying on top of a larger one. Diogenes, pursued by Constance.

  Pendergast rose and gazed up the dizzying slope of the volcano. It was so black he could see nothing except the faint flicker of muffled orange light around its cloud-shrouded summit.

  “This trail,” he called back to the policeman. “Does it go to the top?”

  “Yes, signore. But once again, it is very dangerous and is for expert climbers only. I can assure you, they did not go up there. I have called the carabinieri on Lipari, but they cannot come until tomorrow. And maybe not even then, with this weather. There is nothing more I can do, aside from searching the town . . . where surely your niece and the professor have gone.”

  “You won’t find them in the town,” Pendergast said, turning and walking up the trail.

  “Signore! Do not take that trail! It leads to the Sciara del Fuoco!”

  But the man’s voice was carried away in the wind as Pendergast climbed with all the speed he could muster, his left hand gripping the flashlight, his right the handgun.

  78

  Diogenes Pendergast jogged along a windswept shoulder of lava 2,500 feet up the side of the mountain. The wind blew demonically, lashing the dense ginestra brush that crowded the trail. He paused to catch his breath. Looking down, he could just barely see the dim surface of the sea, flecked with bits of lighter gray that were whitecaps. The lighthouse of Strombolicchio sat alone on its rock, surrounded by a gray ring of surf, blinking its mindless, steady message out to an empty sea.

  His eye followed the sea in toward land. From his vantage point, he could make out fully a third of the island, a great swerve of shoreline from Piscità to the crescent beach below Le Schiocciole, where the sea raged in a broad band of white surf. The dim illumination of the town lay sprinkled along the shore: dirty, wavering points of light, an uncertain strip of humanity clinging to an inhospitable land. Beyond and above, the volcano rose massively, like the ribbed trunk of a giant mangrove, in great parallel ridges, each with its own name: Serra Adorno, Roisa, Le Mandre, Rina Grande. He turned, looked up. Above him loomed the immense black fin of the Bastimento Ridge, behind which lay the Sciara del Fuoco—the Slope of Fire. That ridge ran up to the summit itself: still shrouded in fast-moving clouds, blooming with the lurid glow of each fresh eruption, the thunderous booms shaking the ground.

  A few hundred meters up, Diogenes knew, the trail split. The left fork cut eastward and switchbacked to the summit crater up the broad cinder slopes of the Liscione. The right fork, the ancient Greek trail, continued westward, climbing the Bastimento and ending abruptly where it was cut by the Sciara del Fuoco.

  She would be at least fifteen, twenty minutes behind him by now—he had been pushing himself to the utmost, climbing at maximum speed up the crumbling stone staircases and cobbled switchbacks. It was physically impossible for her to have kept up. That gave him time to think, to plan his next step—now that he had her where he wanted her.

  He sat down on a crumbling wall. The obvious mode of attack would be an ambush from the almost impenetrable brush that crowded each side of the trail. It would be simple: he could hide himself in the ginestra at, say, one of the switchback turns, and shoot straight down the trail as she came up. But this plan had the great disadvantage of being the obvious one, a plan she would most certainly anticipate. And the brush was so thick he wondered if he could even push into it without leaving a ragged hole behind or, at the least, signs of damage visible to a keen eye—and she had a damnably keen eye.

  On the other hand, she did not know the trail—could not know the trail. She had arrived at the island and come straight to his villa. No map could convey the steepness, the danger, the roughness of the trail. There was a spot ahead, just below the fork, where the trail ran close under a bluff of hardened lava, looped back around, and then topped the bluff. There were cliffs all around it—there was no way for her to get off the trail at that point. If he waited for her on the bluff above, she would have to pass almost directly underneath him. There was simply no other way for her to go. And because she did not know the trail, she could not anticipate that it doubled back over the bluff.

  Yes. That would serve nicely.

  He continued up the mountain and in another ten minutes had reached the final switchback and gained the top of the bluff. But as he looked around for a hiding place, he saw there was an even better position—indeed, it was nearly perfect. She would see the bluff as she approached and might anticipate a strike from it. But well before the bluff itself was another ambush point—in the deep shadows below it, half obscured by rocks—that looked to be far subtler; indeed, it was completely invisible from farther down the trail.

  With an unutterable feeling of relief that it would soon be over, he carefully took up a position in the shadow of the switchback and prepared to wait. It was a perfect spot: the deep darkness of the night and the natural lines of the terrain making it appear there was no break at all in the rocks behind which he hid. Within fifteen minutes or so, she should appear. After he killed her, he would throw her body into the Sciara, where it would vanish forever. And he would once again be free.

  The fifteen minutes that passed next were the longest of his life. As they ticked on into twenty, he became increasingly uneasy. Twenty-five minutes passed . . . thirty . . .

  Diogenes found his mind racing with speculation. She could not possibly know that he was there. He was certain she could not have been alerted to his presence.

  Something else might be wrong.

  Was she too weak to have climbed this high up the mountain? He had assumed her hatred would carry her far past the point of normal exhaustion. But she was only human; she had to have a breaking point. She had been following him for days, hardly eating and sleeping. On top of that, she would have lost a fair amount of blood. To then climb almost three thousand vertical feet up an unknown and exceedingly dangerous trail at night . . . maybe she just couldn’t make it. Or perhaps she’d been hurt. The decrepit cobbled path was strewn with loose stones and eroded blocks, and the steepest parts—where the ancients had built stone staircases—were slick with rubble and missing many steps, a veritable death trap.

/>   A death trap. It was entirely possible—indeed, even probable—that she had slipped and hurt herself; fallen and twisted an ankle; perhaps even been killed. Did she have a flashlight? He didn’t think so.

  He checked his watch: thirty-five minutes had now passed. He wondered what to do. Of all the possibilities, the likeliest was that she had been hurt. He would go back down the trail and see for himself. If she was lying there with a broken ankle, or collapsed in exhaustion, killing her would be simple . . .

  He paused. No, that would not do. That was, perhaps, her game plan: to make him believe she’d been hurt, to lure him back down—and then ambush him. A bitter smile passed across his face. That was it, wasn’t it? She was waiting him out, waiting for him to descend. But he would not fall into that trap. He would wait her out. Eventually her hatred would force her up the mountain.

  Ten more minutes passed, and once again he was beset by doubts. What if he waited for her all night? What if she had declined to bring the battle into the terrain of the mountain itself? What if she had gone back to town and was lying low, planning something new? What if she had alerted the police?