The Book of the Dead

by Douglas Preston

  “Don’t start blaming yourself.”

  Pendergast looked up again, the silvery eyes suddenly dark in his bruised face. He spoke in a low voice, almost as if he were talking to himself. “I am my brother’s creator. And all this time, I never knew it-I never apologized or atoned for what I did. That is something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life.”

  “Forgive me for saying it, but that’s a load of crap. I don’t know much about it, but I do know what happened to Diogenes was an accident.”

  Pendergast went on, voice even lower, almost as if he hadn’t heard. “Diogenes’s entire reason for existence is I. And, perhaps, my reason for existence is him.”

  The Rolls entered JFK Airport and drove along the circulation ramp toward terminal 8. As it pulled up to the curb, Pendergast leaped out and D’Agosta followed.

  Pendergast hefted his suitcase, grasped D’Agosta’s hand. “Good luck on the hearing, Vincent. If I don’t return, Proctor will handle my affairs.”

  D’Agosta swallowed. “Speaking of returning, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s… a difficult question.”

  Pendergast paused. “What is it?”

  “You realize there’s only one way to take care of Diogenes.”

  Pendergast’s silvery eyes hardened.

  “You know what I’m talking about, right?”

  Still, Pendergast said nothing, but the look in his eyes was so cold that D’Agosta almost had to look away.

  “When the moment comes, if you hesitate… he won’t. So I need to know if you’ll be able to…” D’Agosta couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “And your question, Vincent?” came the icy reply.

  D’Agosta looked back at him, saying nothing. After a beat, Pendergast turned abruptly and disappeared into the terminal.

  Chapter 72

  Diogenes Pendergast strolled around the corner of the Via dello Sprone and back into Via Santo Spirito. Constance Greene was gone, having ducked into the Via dei Coverelli as he’d anticipated. And now she would be waiting for him, in ambush, to round the corner.

  To confirm this, he walked briskly down Via Santo Spirito and paused just before the entrance to Coverelli, flattening himself against the ancient sgraffito facade of some long-forgotten palace. With enormous caution, he peered around the corner.

  Excellent. She was still not to be seen-she had already turned the first angle of the dogleg and was no doubt waiting for him to come from the opposite direction.

  His hand slipped into his pocket and removed a leather case, from which he took an ivory-handled scalpel identical to the one he had left beneath her pillow. The cool weight of it comforted him. Counting out the seconds, he opened his umbrella and made the turn. Then he began walking boldly down Via dei Coverelli, his shoes echoing on the cobblestones in the confined alleyway, his upper body hidden beneath the black umbrella. Disguise was unnecessary: she would not look back around the corner to see who was coming from the other direction. She would not expect his approach from that side.

  He strode on boldly, inhaling the scent of urine and dog feces, of vomit and wet stone-the ancient alleyway retained even the smell of medieval Florence. Keeping the scalpel poised in his gloved hand, he approached the first corner of the dogleg. As he did so, he previsualized his strike. She would have her back to him; he would come up from the side, grab her neck with his left arm while aiming the scalpel for that sweet spot just below the right clavicle; the length of the scalpel blade would be sufficient to sever the brachiocephalic artery at the point where it divided into the carotid and subclavian arteries. She would not even have time to cry out. He would then hold her while she died; he would cradle her; he would allow her blood to flow over him as it had done once before… under very different circumstances…

  … and then he would leave both her and his raincoat in the alley.

  He approached the corner. Fifteen feet, ten, eight, now…

  He turned the corner and paused, tense and then astonished. There was no one there. The dogleg was empty.

  He quickly looked around, forward and back: no one. And now he was in the dogleg, blind, unable to see who was coming from either direction.

  He felt a twinge of panic. Somewhere he had miscalculated. Where had she gone? Had she tricked him in some way? It didn’t seem possible.

  He paused, realizing that he was now stuck in the blind spot. If he walked around the corner ahead of him, out into Borgo Tegolaio, a much broader and more visible street, and she was there, she would see him-and all his advantage would be lost. On the other hand, if she was behind him, and he went back, that would also destroy his advantage.

  He stood motionless, thinking furiously. The sky continued to darken, and now he realized that it wasn’t merely the rain, but the evening was falling like a dead hand over the city. He couldn’t stay there forever: he would have to move, to turn either one corner or the other.

  Despite the chill, he felt himself growing warm under the raincoat. He had to abandon his plan, turn around, and walk back the way he had come-to unwind, so to speak, his flanking maneuver as if it had never happened. That would be best. Something had happened. She had taken another turn somewhere and he had lost her-that was it. He would then have to think of another attack. Perhaps he should go to Rome and allow her to follow him into the Catacombs of St. Callixtus. That popular tourist site, with its anonymous dead ends and doubling-backs, would be an excellent place to kill her.

  He turned and walked back along Via dei Coverelli, cautiously rounding the first dogleg. The alleyway was empty. He strode down it-and then suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of movement from one of the archways above; he instinctively threw himself sideways even as a shadow dropped upon him and he felt the resistless swipe of a scalpel cutting through the layers of his raincoat and suit, followed by the searing burn of cut flesh.

  With a cry, he twisted around and-even as he fell-drove his own scalpel in a glittering arc toward her, aiming for the neck. His greater experience with the blade, combined with superior speed, paid off as his scalpel met flesh in a mist of blood; but as he continued to fall, he realized she had twisted her head at the last moment and his blade, instead of cutting her throat, had merely slashed the side of her head.

  He fell hard onto the cobblestones, his mind swept clean by astonishment, rolled over, and leaped up, scalpel in hand-but she was already gone, vanished.

  In that moment, he understood her plan. Her poor disguise had been no accident. She had been showing herself to him, just as he had been revealing himself to her. She had allowed him to lead her to a point of ambush, and she had then used it against him. She had countered his countermove.

  The simple brilliance of it astounded him.

  He stood there, looking up at the crowded stone arches above him. He made out the crumbling ledge of pietra serena from which she had no doubt launched her attack. Far above he could see the tiniest sliver of steel-gray sky, out of which were spinning raindrops.

  He took a step, staggered.

  He felt a wave of faintness as the burning sensation in his side increased. He dared not open his coat and inspect; he could not afford to get blood on the outside of his clothing-it would draw attention. He belted his raincoat as tightly as possible, trying to bind the wound.

  Blood would draw attention.

  As the feeling of faintness receded and his brain emerged from the shock of the attack, he realized that an opening had presented itself to him. He had cut her head, and no doubt it was bleeding copiously, as all such cuts did. She could not hide such a cut and the blood, not even with a scarf. She could not pursue him around Florence with blood pouring down her face. She would have to retreat somewhere, clean herself up. And that gave him the window of opportunity he needed to escape from her, to shake her off-forever.

  Now was the moment. If he could escape from her cleanly, he could assume another identity, and f
rom there proceed to his final destination. She would never find him there-never.

  He strolled as casually as possible through the streets toward the taxi stand at the end of Borgo San Jacopo. As he walked, he could feel the blood soaking through his clothes, trickling down his leg. The pain was minor, and he was sure the cut had merely sliced along his rib cage without penetrating his vitals.

  He had to do something about the blood, however-and fast.

  He turned into a little café at the corner of Tegolaio and Santo Spirito, went up to the bar, and ordered an espresso and a spremuta. He downed both, one after the other, dropped a five-euro bill on the zinc, and went into the bathroom. He locked the door and opened his raincoat. The amount of blood was shocking. He quickly probed the wound, confirming that it hadn’t pierced his peritoneum. Using paper towels, he mopped up as much blood as he could; and then, tearing away the lower half of his blood-soaked shirt, he tied the strips around his torso, closing the wound and stanching the flow of blood. Then he washed his hands and face, put on his raincoat, combed his hair, and left.

  He felt the blood pooling now into his shoe, and he looked down to see that his heel was leaving a bloody quarter-moon on the sidewalk. But it was not fresh blood, and he could sense that the bleeding had slowed. A few more steps and he arrived at the taxi stand, slid into the backseat of a Fiat.

  “Speak English, mate?” he asked, smiling.

  “Yes,” came the gruff reply.

  “Good man! The railroad station, please.”

  The cab shot forward and he lay back in the seat, feeling the blood sticky in his groin, his mind suddenly loosening itself in a tumult of thoughts, a shower of broken memories, a cacophony of voices:

  Between the idea

  And the reality

  Between the motion

  And the act

  Falls the Shadow

  Chapter 73

  In the convent of the Suore di San Giovanni Battista in Gavinana, Florence, twelve nuns presided over a parochial school, a chapel, and a villa with a pensione for religious-minded visitors. As night gathered over the city, the suora behind the front desk noted with unease the return of the young visitor who had arrived that morning. She had come back from her tour of the city cold and wet, her face bundled up in a woolen scarf, body hunched against the weather.

  “Will the signora be having dinner?” she began, but the woman silenced her with a gesture so brusque the suora closed her mouth and sat back.

  In her small, simply furnished room, Constance Greene furiously flung off her coat on her way to the bathroom. She bent over the sink, turning on the hot water tap. As the sink filled, she stood before the mirror and unwound the woolen scarf from her face. Beneath it was a silk scarf, stiff with blood, which she gingerly unwrapped.

  She peered closely at the wound. She could not see much; her ear and the side of her head were crusted with clotted blood. She dipped a washcloth in the warm water, wrung it out, and gently placed it over her skin. After a moment, she removed, rinsed, and reapplied it. Within minutes, the blood had softened enough for her to cleanse the cut and examine it more clearly.

  It wasn’t as bad as it had looked at first. The scalpel had scored deeply across her ear but had only nicked her face. She gently probed with her fingers, noting that the cut was exceedingly sharp and clean. It was nothing, although it had bled like a stuck pig-it would heal with hardly a scar.

  Scar. She almost laughed out loud as she threw the bloody washcloth into the sink.

  She leaned over and examined her face in the mirror. It was thin and haggard, her eyes hollow, lips cracked.

  The novels she had read made pursuit sound easy. Characters followed other characters halfway around the world, all the while remaining well rested, fed, refreshed, and groomed. In reality, it was an exhausting, brutal business. She had hardly slept since she first picked up his trail at the museum; she had barely eaten; she looked like a derelict.

  On top of that, the world had proved to be a nightmare beyond all imagining: noisome, ugly, chaotic, and brutally anonymous. It was not at all like the comfortable, predictable, moral world of literature. The great welter of human beings she had encountered were hideous, venal, and stupid-indeed, mere words failed to describe their true loathsomeness. And chasing Diogenes had proved expensive: through inexperience, being cheated, and rash expenditure, she had run through almost six thousand euros in the past forty hours. She had only two thousand left-and no way of getting more.

  For forty hours, she had followed him relentlessly. But now he had escaped her. His wound would not slow him down: it was undoubtedly a trifle, like hers. She was certain she had lost his trail for good-he would see to that. He was gone, on to a new identity, and no doubt heading for the safe place he had prepared for just such a flight, years ago.

  She had come so close to killing him-twice. If she had a better handgun… if she had known how to shoot… if she had been a millisecond quicker with the blade… he would be dead.

  But now he had escaped her. She had lost her chance.

  She gripped the sink, staring into her bloodshot eyes. She knew with a certainty the trail would end here. He would flee by taxi, train, or plane, cross a dozen borders, crisscross Europe, before ending up in a place and in a persona he had carefully cultivated. It would be somewhere in Europe, she was sure of that-but the certainty was of little help. It might take a lifetime to find him-or even more.

  Nevertheless, a lifetime was what she had. And when she found him, she would know him. His disguises had been good-but no disguise would deceive her. She knew him. He could alter everything possible about his appearance: his face, clothes, eyes, voice, body language. But there were two things he could not alter. His stature was the first. The second, the more important, was something she was sure Diogenes had not thought of: and that was his peculiar scent. That scent she remembered so well, strange and heady, like a mixture of licorice underscored by the keen, dark smell of iron.

  A lifetime… She felt a wave of despair so overwhelming that she swayed over the sink.

  Could he have left some clue behind in his hasty departure? But that would mean returning to New York, and by the time she did so, the trail would have grown too cold.

  Perhaps he had dropped some unconscious reference, then, in her presence? It seemed most unlikely-he had been so careful. But perhaps, because he had expected her to die, he might have been less than vigilant.

  She walked out of the bathroom, sat down on the edge of the bed. She paused a moment to clear her mind as best she could. Then she thought back to their earliest conversations in the library of 891 Riverside. It was a mortifying exercise, excruciatingly painful, like peeling back a raw bandage of memory: and yet she forced herself to continue, summoning up their first exchanges, his whispered words.

  Nothing.

  She then went over their later meetings, the books he had given her, his decadent disquisitions on sensual living. But there was still nothing, not even the hint of a geographical location.

  In my house-my real house, the one that is important to me-I have a library… That was what he had told her once. Was it, like everything else, just a cynical lie? Or was there perhaps a glimmer of truth?

  I live near the sea. I can sit in that room, all lights and candles extinguished, listening to the roar of the surf, and I become a pearl diver…

  A library, in a house by the sea. That wasn’t much help. She ran over the words again and again. But he had been so careful to hide any personal details, except for those lies he had so carefully crafted, such as the suicide scars.

  The suicide scars. She realized that, in her recollections, she had been unconsciously avoiding the one event that held out the greatest chance of revealing something. And yet she could not bear to think of it again. Reliving those final hours together-the hours in which she gave herself to him-would be almost as painful as first reading the letter…

  But once again a coldness descended over her. Slowly she lay
back on the bed and stared upward into the darkness, remembering every exquisite and painful detail.

  He had murmured lines of poetry in her ear as his passion mounted. They had been in Italian:

  Ei's’immerge ne la notte,

  Ei's’aderge in vèr’ le stelle.

  He plunges into the night,

  He reaches for the stars.

  She knew that the poem was by Carducci, but she had never made a careful study of it. Perhaps it was time that she did.

  She sat up too quickly and winced from a sudden throbbing in her ear. She went back into the bathroom and went to work on the injury, cleaning it thoroughly, covering it with antibiotic ointment, and then bandaging it as unobtrusively as possible. When she was done, she undressed, took a quick bath, washed her hair, put on fresh clothes. Next, she stuffed the washcloth, towel, and bloody clothes into a garbage bag she found stored in the back of the room’s armoire. She gathered up her toiletries and returned them to her suitcase. Pulling out a fresh scarf, she wrapped it carefully around her face.

  She closed the suitcase, buckled and strapped it. Then she took the garbage bag and descended to the greeting room of the convent. The sister was still there, and she looked almost frightened by this sudden reappearance.

  “Signora, is there something not to your liking?”

  Constance opened her wallet. “Quanto costa? How much?”

  “Signora, if there is a problem with your room, surely we can accommodate you.”

  She pulled out a rumpled hundred-euro bill, placed it on the counter.

  “That is too much for not even one night…”

  But Constance had already vanished into the cold, rainy dark.

  Chapter 74

  Two days later, Diogenes Pendergast stood on the port rail of the traghetto as it plowed through the heaving blue waters of the southern Mediterranean. The boat was passing the rocky headland of Capo di Milazzo, crowned by a lighthouse and a ruined castle; behind him, sinking into the haze, stood the great hump of Sicily, the blue outline of Mount Etna thrusting into the sky, a plume of smoke trailing off. To his right lay the dark spine of the Calabrian coast. Ahead lay his destination, far, far out to sea.