Reliquary

by Douglas Preston

  Margo watched him go. Nobody else will ever have any idea how much effort it cost him to admit he was wrong, she thought.

  D’Agosta began following Horlocker and Waxie into the corridor. Then he stopped and turned back to Margo. “Thoughts?” he asked.

  Margo shook her head, bringing herself back. “I don’t know. I understand there’s no time to waste. But I can’t help remembering what happened when…” She hesitated. “I just wish Pendergast was here,” she said at last.

  The phone rang, and she moved to answer it. “Margo Green here.” She listened for a long moment, then hung up.

  “You’d better go on ahead,” she said to D’Agosta. “That was my lab assistant. She wants me downstairs right away.”

  = 41 =

  SMITHBACK PUSHED aside one man in a seersucker suit and dug his elbow into another, trying to force his way through the thickening mob. He’d badly underestimated just how long it would take him to get here; the crowd was jammed solidly for almost three blocks’ worth of Fifth Avenue real estate, and more were arriving every minute. Already, he’d missed Wisher’s opening speech in front of the cathedral. Now he wanted to reach the first candlelight vigil before the crowd began moving again.

  “Watch it, asshole,” a young man brayed loudly, removing a silver hip flask from his lips just long enough to speak.

  “Go suck on a long bond,” Smithback retorted over his shoulder as he straggled forward. He could hear policemen now beginning to work the edges of the crowd, trying ineffectually to clear the avenue. Several news crews had arrived, and Smithback could see cameramen climbing onto the roofs of their vans, craning for a good shot. It seemed that the wealth and power concentrated in the first rally had now been joined by a much larger, much younger crew. And they had all taken the city by surprise.

  “Hey! Smithback!” Turning, the journalist made out Clarence Kozinsky, a Post reporter on the Wall Street beat. “Can you believe this? Word spread like lightning.”

  “Guess my article did the trick,” Smithback said proudly.

  Kozinsky shook his head. “Hate to disappoint you, pal, but your article only hit the streets half an hour ago. They didn’t want to take the chance of alerting the cops too early. Word got passed in late afternoon over the services. You know, brokers’ wires, the NYSE network, Quotron, LEXIS, all the rest. Seems the boys downtown have really taken to this whole Wisher thing. They think she’s the answer to all their white-bread problems.” He snickered. “It’s not just about crime anymore. Don’t ask me how it happened. But the talk in all the bars is that she’s got twice the balls the Mayor has. They think she’s gonna cut welfare, clean up the homeless, put a republican back in the White House, bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn, all at once.”

  Smithback looked around. “I didn’t know there were so many financial types in the whole world, let alone Manhattan.”

  Kozinsky snickered again. “Everybody assumes that Wall Street types are all retro-yuppie drones in boring suits with two point five children, a house in the suburbs, and treadmill, cookie-cutter existences. Nobody remembers the place has a whole sleazy underbelly, too. You got your mere exchange floor runners, bond strippers, interest-rate swappers, pork-belly traders, boiler-room operators, money launderers, you name it. And we’re not exactly talking upper crust here. We’re talking some real Archie Bunker types. Besides, it isn’t just Wall Street anymore. Word’s going out by pager, network, and broadcast fax now. The back offices of banks and insurance companies everywhere are coming to join the party.”

  Ahead, between the rows of heads, Smithback made out Mrs. Wisher. Saying a hasty good-bye to Kozinsky, he pushed his way forward. Mrs. Wisher was standing in the stately shadow of Bergdorf Goodman, flanked by a Catholic priest, an Episcopalian minister, and a rabbi, in front of a three-foot pile of fresh flowers and cards. An effete-looking, long-haired young man wearing a pinstripe suit and thick violet socks stood mournfully to one side. Smithback recognized the hangdog face as that of the Viscount Adair, Pamela Wisher’s boyfriend. Mrs. Wisher looked spare and dignified, her light hair pulled severely back and her face without makeup. As he switched on his tape recorder and thrust it forward, Smithback couldn’t help thinking that she was a born leader.

  Mrs. Wisher stood silently, head bowed, for a long moment. Then she turned toward the assembled crowd, adjusting a wireless microphone. She cleared her throat dramatically.

  “Citizens of New York!” she cried. As a hush fell over the crowd, Smithback looked around, startled by the clarity and volume of her voice. He made out several people scattered strategically through the crowd, holding portable speakers on metal poles. Despite the spontaneous look of the march, Mrs. Wisher and her people had clearly thought things out in great detail.

  When the silence was complete, she resumed in a quieter voice. “We are here to remember Mary Ann Cappiletti, who was mugged and shot to death at this spot on March 14. Let us pray.”

  Between her sentences, Smithback could hear the police bullhorns more clearly now, ordering the crowd to disperse. Mounted police had arrived only to find the crowd too heavy for them to move in safely, and their horses pranced at the fringes in frustration. Smithback knew that Mrs. Wisher had deliberately not sought a parade permit this time in order to cause maximum surprise and consternation at City Hall. Like Kozinsky had said, announcing the march over the private services made for an efficient system of communication. It also had the advantage of bypassing law enforcement, the general media, and municipal government, who only got wind of the event when it was too late to stop it.

  “It’s been a long time,” Mrs. Wisher was saying, “a very long time since a child could walk in New York City without fear. But now, even adults are afraid. We’re afraid to walk the streets, to stroll through the park… to ride the subway.”

  An angry murmur rose at this reference to the recent massacre. Smithback added his own voice to the crowd’s, knowing that Mrs. Wisher had probably never hung from a strap in her life.

  “Tonight!” she cried suddenly, eyes glittering as she surveyed the crowd. “Tonight we will change all that. And we will start by taking back Central Park. At midnight we will stand, unafraid, on the Great Lawn!”

  A roar rose from the crowd, growing in intensity until the pressure of it seemed almost to constrict Smithback’s chest. He turned off his cassette recorder and stuffed it into his pocket; it couldn’t handle the noise, and besides, he wouldn’t need any help remembering this event. He knew that, by now, other journalists would have arrived in force, national as well as local. But he, Smithback, was the only journalist with exclusive access to Anette Wisher, the only reporter provided with details of the march. Not long before, a special afternoon edition of the Post had begun appearing on newsstands. It included an insert that displayed maps of the march and listed all the stopping points at which the murder victims would be memorialized. Smithback felt a flush of pride. He could see that many people in the crowd had a copy of the insert in their hands. Kozinski didn’t know everything. He, Smithback, had helped spread the word far and wide. Newsstand sales would no doubt go through the roof, and it was the best kind of circulation—not just working class types, but a good smattering of affluent, influential people who normally read the Times. Let that dweeb Harriman explain this particular phenomenon to his fossilized, dung-encrusted editor.

  The sun had fallen behind the towers and minarets of Central Park West, and a warm summer evening was gathering in the air. Mrs. Wisher lit a small candle, then nodded to the clergymen to do the same.

  “Friends,” she said, holding the candle above her head, “let our small lights, and our small voices, unite into one raging bonfire and one unmistakable roar. We have but one goal, a goal that cannot be ignored or resisted: to take back our city!”

  As the crowd took up the chant, Mrs. Wisher moved forward into Grand Army Plaza. With a final shove, Smithback forced himself past the front row and into the small entourage. It was like being inside the eye
of a hurricane.

  Mrs. Wisher turned toward him. “I’m delighted you could make it, Bill,” she said, as calmly as if Smithback were attending a tea party.

  “Delighted to be here,” Smithback replied, grinning widely in return.

  As they moved slowly past the Plaza Hotel and onto Central Park South, Smithback turned back to watch the great mass of people swinging in behind them, like some vast serpent sliding its bulk along the boundaries of the park. Now he could see more people ahead of them as well, flowing out from Sixth and Seventh Avenues, coming down to join them from the west. There was a healthy scattering of old-monied blue bloods in the crowd, sedate and gray. But Smithback could see growing masses of the young men Kozinsky had been talking about—bond salesmen, bank AVPs, brawny-looking commodity traders—drinking, whistling, cheering, and looking as if they were spoiling for action. He remembered how little it had taken to rouse them into throwing bottles at the mayor, and he wondered just how much control Wisher could exert on the crowd if things got ugly.

  The drivers of the vehicles along Central Park South had given up honking and had left their vehicles to watch or join the throng, but a vast caterwauling of horns was still rising from the direction of Columbus Circle. Smithback breathed deeply, drinking in the chaos like fine wine. There’s something unbelievably bracing about mob action, he thought.

  A young man hustled up to Mrs. Wisher. “It’s the mayor,” he panted, holding out a cellular phone.

  Tucking the microphone into her purse, Mrs. Wisher took the phone. “Yes?” she said coolly, without breaking stride. There was a long silence. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but the time for permits is long past. You don’t seem to realize this city is in an emergency. And we’re putting you on notice. This is your final chance to bring peace to our streets.” There was a pause while she listened, placing a hand over her free ear to shut out the noise of the crowd. “I’m grieved to hear that the march is hindering your policemen. And I’m pleased to know that the Chief of Police is mounting some operation of his own. But let me ask you a question. Where were your policemen when my Pamela was murdered? Where were your—”

  She listened impatiently. “No. Absolutely not. The city is drowning in crime and you are threatening me with a citation? If you have nothing else to say, I’ll hang up. We’re rather busy here.”

  She handed the phone back to her assistant. “If he calls again, tell him I’m engaged.”

  She turned to Smithback, slipping one hand into his arm. “This next stop is the site where my daughter was killed. I need to be strong for this, Bill. You’ll help me, won’t you?”

  Smithback licked his lips. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

  = 42 =

  D’AGOSTA FOLLOWED Margo down a dusty, poorly lit hall on the first floor of the Museum. Once part of an ancient exhibit, the hall had been sealed from public view for years, and was now used primarily as overflow storage space for the mammalian collection. Various stuffed beasts, in postures of attack or defense, lined both sides of the narrow corridor. D’Agosta nearly snagged his jacket on the claw of a rearing grizzly. He found himself keeping his arms close to his sides to avoid brushing against the rest of the moldering specimens.

  As they rounded a corner into a cul-de-sac, D’Agosta saw a huge stuffed elephant dead ahead, its much-repaired gray skin tattering and flaking. Beneath its massive belly, hidden in shadow, was the two-story metal door of a freight elevator.

  “We gotta make this quick,” he said as Margo pressed the elevator button. “One Police Plaza has been mobilizing all afternoon. Looks like they’re getting ready to storm the Normandy beaches. Besides that, there’s some kind of surprise rally by Take Back Our City forming along Fifth Avenue.” There was a smell in the air that reminded him of certain summer crime scenes he’d visited.

  “The preparation lab is just down the hall,” Margo said, watching as D’Agosta’s nose wrinkled. “They must be macerating a specimen.”

  “Right,” said D’Agosta. He glanced up at the huge elephant overhead. “Where are the tusks?”

  “That’s Jumbo, P. T. Barnum’s old showpiece. He was hit by a freight train in Ontario and his tusks were shattered. Barnum ground them up, made gelatin out of them, and served it at Jumbo’s memorial dinner.”

  “Resourceful.” D’Agosta slid a cigar into his mouth. Nobody could complain about a little smoke with a reek like this.

  “Sorry,” said Margo, grinning sheepishly. “No smoking. Possibility of methane in the air.”

  D’Agosta put the cigar back in his pocket as the elevator door slid open. Methane. Now there was something to think about.

  They stepped out into a sweltering basement corridor lined with steam pipes and enormous packing crates. One of the crates was open, exposing, the knobby end of a black bone, big as a tree limb. Must be a dinosaur, D’Agosta thought. He struggled to control a feeling of apprehension as he remembered the last time he’d been in the Museum’s basement.

  “We tested the drug on several organisms,” Margo said, walking into a room whose bright neon lights stood in sharp contrast to the dingy corridor outside. In one corner, a lab worker was bending over an oscilloscope. “Lab mice, E. coli bacteria, blue-green algae, and several single-celled animals. The mice are in here.”

  D’Agosta peered into the small holding area, then stepped back quickly. “Jesus.” The white walls of the stacked cages were flecked with blood. Torn bodies of dead mice littered the floors of the cage, shrouded in their own entrails.

  Margo peered into the cages. “You can see that of the four mice originally placed in each cage, only one remains alive.”

  “Why didn’t you put them all in separate cages?” D’Agosta asked.

  Margo glanced up at him. “Leaving them together was the whole point. I wanted to examine behavioral as well as physical changes.”

  “Looks like things got a little out of hand.”

  Margo nodded. “All of these mice were fed the Mbwun lily, and all became massively infected by the reovirus. It’s highly unusual for a virus that affects humans also to affect mice. Normally, they’re very host-specific. Now watch this.”

  As Margo approached the topmost cage, the surviving mouse leapt at her, hissing, clinging to the wire, its long yellow incisors knitting the air. Margo stepped back.

  “Charming,” said D’Agosta. “They fought to the death, didn’t they?”

  Margo nodded. “The most surprising thing is that this mouse was badly wounded in the fight. But look at how thoroughly its cuts have healed. And if you check the other cages, you’ll see the same phenomenon. The drug must have some powerful rejuvenative or healing properties. The light probably makes them irritable, but we already know that the drug makes one sensitive to light. In fact, Jen left one of the lights on and by morning the protozoan colony directly beneath it had died.”

  She stared at the cages for a moment. “There’s something else I’d like to show you,” she said at last. “Jen, can you give me a hand here?”

  With the lab assistant’s help, Margo slid a divider across the topmost cage, trapping the live mouse on one side. Then she deftly removed the remains of the dead mice with a long pair of forceps and dropped them into a Pyrex basin.

  “Let’s take a quick look,” she said, carrying the pieces into the main lab and placing them on the stage of a wide-angle Stereozoom. She peered through the eyepieces, probing the remains with a scapula. As D’Agosta looked on, she sliced open the back of a head, peeled the skin and fur away from the skull, and examined it carefully. Next, she cut open a section of spinal cord and peered closely at the vertebrae.

  “As you can see, it looks normal,” she said, straightening up. “Except for the rejuvenative qualities, it seems the primary changes are behavioral, not morphological. At least, that’s the case in this species. It’s too early to be sure, but perhaps Kawakita did succeed in taming the drug in the end.”

  “Yeah,” D’Agosta added. “After it was too late.”<
br />
  “That’s what’s been puzzling me. Kawakita must have taken the drug before it reached this stage of development. Why would he take such a risk, trying the drug on himself? Even after testing it on other people, he couldn’t have been sure. It wasn’t like him to act so rashly.”

  “Arrogance,” said D’Agosta.

  “Arrogance doesn’t explain turning yourself into a guinea pig. Kawakita was a careful scientist, almost to a fault. It just doesn’t seem in character.”

  “Some of the most unlikely people become addicts,” D’Agosta said. “I see it all the time. Doctors. Nurses. Even police officers.”

  “Maybe.” Margo sounded unconvinced. “Anyway, over here are the bacteria and the protozoans we inoculated with the reovirus. Strangely enough, they all tested negative: the amoebas, paramecia, rotifers, everything. Except for this one.” She had open an incubator, exposing rows of Petrie dishes covered with purple agar. Glossy, dime-sized welts in each dish of agar indicated growing colonies of protozoans.

  She removed a dish. “This is B. meresgerii, a single-celled animal that lives in the ocean, growing in shallow water on the surface of kelp and seaweed. It usually feeds on plankton. I like to use them because they’re relatively docile, and they’re exceptionally sensitive to chemicals.”

  She carefully dragged a wire loup through the colony of single-celled animals. Smearing the loup on a glass slide, she seated the slide on the microscope tray, adjusted the focus, then stepped away so D’Agosta could take a look.

  Peering into the eyepiece, D’Agosta couldn’t see anything at first. Then he made out a number of round, clear blobs, waving their cilia frantically against a gridded background.

  “I thought you said they were docile,” he said, still staring.

  “They usually are.”

  Suddenly, D’Agosta realized that the frenzied maneuvering was not random at all: The creatures were attacking each other, ripping at each other’s external membranes and thrusting themselves into the breaches they created.