The Book of the Dead

by Douglas Preston

  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?

  He couldn’t bear the thought that this might continue. He could not go on in this manner. It must end this very night. If she would not come to him, he had to force the issue by coming to her.

  But how?

  He lay on the hard ground, peering down into the murk, his agitation increasing. He tried to think as she would, anticipate what she would do. He could not afford to underestimate her again.

  I escape the house, run up the trail. She stands there, wondering if she should follow. What would she do? She knew he would be going up the mountain; she knew he would wait for her, that he intended to fight her on his own ground, on his own terms.

  What would she do?

  The answer came to him in a flash: find another route. A shorter route. And cut him off. But of course there wasn’t another route-

  With a sudden, dreadful prickling sensation along his neck, he recalled an old story he had heard told around the island. Back in the eighth century, the Saracens had attacked the island. They had landed at Pertuso, a cove on the far side, and made a bold and dangerous crossing, which required climbing up one side of the volcano and down the other. But they had not taken the Greek trail down-they had blazed their own route in order to fall upon the town from an unexpected direction.

  Could she have taken the Saracen trail up?

  His mind worked feverishly. He hadn’t paid any attention to the old story, treating it as yet another colorful legend, like so many others attached to the island. Did anyone even know today where the Saracen trail went? Did it still exist? And how could Constance have known about it? There probably weren’t more than half a dozen people in the world who would know the actual route.

  He cursed savagely, racked his brains, trying to remember more of the story. Where did the Saracen trail go?

  There was something in the legend about the Saracens losing men into the Filo del Fuoco, a narrow gorge that split off from the Sciara. If that were the case, the trail must have hugged the edge of the Sciara all the way down the Bastimento Ridge-or up it, as the case may be-

  He rose abruptly. He knew-he knew!-this was what Constance had done. She was a consummate researcher; she had gotten hold of some old atlas of the island. She’d studied it, memorized it. She’d flushed him from his house, like a badger from a bolt-hole, driven him up the more familiar trail. Allowing him to think that it was his own plan all the time… And meanwhile, she would have cut to the west and taken the secret trail up, flanking him as he’d waited in ambush, wasting minute after precious minute. And now she was above. Waiting for him.

  A cold sweat broke out on his brow. He could see the breathtaking subtlety of her plan. She had worked it all out ahead of time. She had expected him to flee his house, run up the trail. And she had expected him to pause somewhere along the trail and wait in interminable ambush, giving her-the weaker one-all the time she needed to get up the Saracen trail to the Bastimento Ridge-

  He stood abruptly in horror, eyes focusing on the great black fin of the Bastimento above him. The clouds were tumbling across the peak, the mountain groaning and shaking with each explosion-and then they parted, exposing the ridge to the glare of the eruptions: and in that moment he spied, silhouetted against the horrid lambent glow, a figure in white, dancing… And despite the roar of the wind and the rumbling of the mountain, he was sure he could hear a shrill, manic laughter echoing down toward him…

  In a convulsion of fury, he aimed his gun and fired again and again, the bright flashes blinding his own night vision. After a moment, he cursed and lowered the gun, his heart pounding. The ridge was bare, the figure gone.

  It was now or never. The end was upon them. He tore up the trail, moving as fast as he could, knowing that she could never hit him in the dark. The fork in the trail loomed ahead, the newer trail running off to the left on a graded path. The right fork was blocked by a fence, rusty concertina wire rattling in the wind, marked by a weather-beaten sign in two languages:

  Sciara del Fuoco!

  Pericolosissimo!

  Vietato a Passare!

  Active Lava Flow Ahead!

  Extreme Danger!

  Do Not Pass!

  He leaped over the fence and scrambled up the ancient trail toward t
he top of the Bastimento Ridge. There was only one possible outcome. One of them would walk back down the mountain; the other would be thrown into the Sciara.

  It remained to be seen who, in the end, would prevail.

  Chapter 79

  Aloysius Pendergast paused at the fork in the trail, listening intently. Not five minutes before, he had distinctly heard shots-ten of them in all-over the thundering of the volcano. He knelt and examined the ground with his light, quickly determining that Diogenes-and Diogenes alone-had taken the fork blocked by a fence.

  There was much about this situation that he had not yet untangled, enigmas wrapped in mysteries. There had been very few footprints-only where dust or sand had blown into pockets of the rock-but even so, Constance’s prints had ceased, almost at the beginning of the trail. And yet Diogenes had continued on. Why? Pendergast had been forced to make a choice: search for Constance’s prints or follow Diogenes’s. And this was no choice at all-Diogenes was the danger, he needed to be found first.

  And then, there had been gunshots-but whose? And why so many? Only a person in the grip of panic would fire ten shots in a row like that.

  Pendergast scaled the fence and continued up the ancient trail, which had fallen into dangerous ruin. The top of the ridge was perhaps a quarter mile distant, and beyond that he could see only the sky, stained by an angry orange glow. He had to move fast-but with care.

  The trail came to a steep part of the ridge, carved into a staircase that ran up the rough lava itself. But the staircase was badly eroded, and Pendergast was forced to holster his sidearm and use both hands to climb it. Just before cresting the top, he leaned into the slope, paused, and removed his gun again, listening. But it was hopeless: the roar and bellow of the volcano was even louder here, and the wind howled ever more fiercely.

  He crawled to the top of the ridge, into the stinging wind, and paused once again to reconnoiter. The exposed trail ran along the crest before turning and disappearing around a spike of frozen lava. He jumped to his feet, ran across the exposed ground, and took cover behind the lava, peering ahead. He could see now that a great chasm must lie to his right-no doubt the Sciara del Fuoco. The reddish glow coming up from it provided an excellent backdrop against which to identify a figure.

  He edged around the lava spike, and the Sciara suddenly appeared on his right: a sheer cliff falling away into a steeply pitched chasm, like a huge cleft in the side of the island: half a mile broad, plunging precipitously into a churning, boiling sea hundreds of feet below. Heated air came roaring up the chasm, screaming diagonally over the ridge, carrying with it stinging particles of ash and clouds of sulfurous fumes. And now, in addition to the roar from the mountain, Pendergast could hear a new sound: the crackling and rumbling of huge blocks of living lava, some glowing red-hot, that came bounding down from the crater above, leaping and tumbling into the sea below, where they blossomed into dim white flowers.

  He staggered forward into the tearing wind, finding his balance while compensating for the hellish force pushing him back from the brink of the cliff. He examined the ground, but all possible tracks had been scoured away by the wind. He sprinted along the ragged trail, taking cover behind old blocks of lava whenever possible, keeping his center of gravity low. The trail continued, still climbing the ridgeline. Ahead stood an enormous pile of lava blocks, an arrested rockfall, which the trail skirted around, making a sharp right toward the cliff’s edge.

  He crouched in the shelter of the lava fall, gun at the ready. If there was anyone on this trail, they would be directly ahead of him, at the edge of the cliff.

  He spun around the edge of the rock, gun in both hands-and saw a terrifying sight.

  At the very edge of the chasm, he could see two figures, silhouetted against the dull glow of the volcano. They were locked in a curious, almost passionate embrace. And yet these were not lovers-these were enemies, joined in mortal struggle, heedless of the wind, or the roar of the volcano, or the extreme peril of the cliff edge on which they stood.

  “Constance!” he cried, racing forward. But even as he ran, they began to tip off balance, each raking and clawing at the other, each pulling the other into the abyss-

  And then, with a silence worse than any cry, they were gone.

  Pendergast rushed up to the edge, almost blown onto his back by the force of the wind. He dropped to his knees, shielding his eyes, trying to peer into the abyss. A thousand feet below, hardened blocks of dull red lava the size of houses rolled and bounced like pebbles, shedding clouds of orange sparks, the wind screaming up from the volcano’s flanks like the wail of the collective damned. He remained on his knees, the wind whipping salt tears from his eyes.

  He could barely comprehend what he had seen. It was incredible to him, an impossibility, that Constance-sheltered, fragile, confused Constance-could have pursued his brother to the very ends of the earth, driven him up this volcano, and flung herself into it with him…

  He swiped savagely at his eyes, made a second attempt to peer down into the hellish cleft, in the faint hope that something, anything, might be left-and there, not two feet below him, he saw a hand, completely covered with blood, clutching at a small projection of rock with almost superhuman strength.

  Diogenes.

  And now he heard D’Agosta’s voice in his head: You realize there’s only one way to take care of Diogenes. When the moment comes…

  Without a second thought, Pendergast reached down to save his brother, grasped the wrist with one hand and clutched the forearm with the other, and with a mighty heave leaned back, pulling him up and away from the lip of the inferno. A ragged, wild face appeared over the crest of the rock-not that of his brother, but of Constance Greene.

  Seconds later, he had pulled her away from the brink. She rolled onto her back, her chest heaving, arms spread, ragged white dress whipping in the wind.

  Pendergast bent over her. “Diogenes…?” he managed to ask.

  “He’s gone!” A laugh tore from her bloodied lips and was instantly whisked away by the wind.

  Chapter 80

  The waiting area for hearing room B consisted of an impromptu collection of seventies-era Bauhaus benches lining an anonymous hallway on the twenty-first floor of One Police Plaza. D’Agosta sat on one of these benches, breathing in the stale air of the hallway: the mingled smells of bleach and ammonia from the nearby men’s room; stale perfume; perspiration; and old cigarette smoke, which had permeated the walls too deeply to ever be completely eradicated. Underlying all was the acrid, omnipresent tang of fear.

  Fear, however, was the last thing on his own mind. D’Agosta was about to undergo a formal disciplinary hearing that would decide if he could ever serve in law enforcement again-and all he felt was a weary emptiness. For months, this trial had been hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles-and now, for better or worse, it was almost over.

  Beside him, Thomas Shoulders, his union-appointed lawyer, shifted on the bench. “Anything else you’d like to review one last time?” he asked in his thin, reedy voice. “Your statement, or their likely line of questioning?”

  D’Agosta shook his head. “Nothing more, thanks.”

  “The department advocate will be presenting the case for the NYPD. We might have caught a break there. Kagelman’s tough but fair. He’s old-school. The best approach is to play it straight: no evasions, no bull. Answer the questions with a simple yes or no, don’t elaborate unless asked. Present yourself along the lines we discussed-a good cop caught in a bad situation, doing the best he could to see that justice was served. If we can keep it at that level, I’m guardedly optimistic.”

  Guardedly optimistic. Whether spoken by an airplane pilot, a surgeon, or one’s own lawyer, the words were not exactly encouraging.

  He thought back to that fateful day in the fall, when he had run into Pendergast at the Grove estate, tossing bread to the ducks. It was only six months ago, but what a long strange journey it had been…

  “Holding up?” Should
ers asked.

  D’Agosta glanced at his watch. “I just want the damn thing to be over with. I’m tired of sitting here, waiting for the axe to drop.”

  “You shouldn’t think about it that way, Lieutenant. A disciplinary hearing is just like a trial in any other American court. You’re innocent until proven guilty.”

  D’Agosta sighed, shifted disconsolately. And in so doing, he caught a glimpse of Captain Laura Hayward, walking down the busy corridor.

  She was coming toward them with that measured, purposeful stride of hers, wearing a gray cashmere sweater and a pleated skirt of navy wool. Suddenly the drab corridor seemed charged with life. And yet the last thing he wanted was for her to see him like this: parked on a bench like some truant awaiting a whipping. Maybe she’d walk on, just walk on, like she’d done that day back in the police substation beneath Madison Square Garden.

  But she did not walk on. She stopped before the bench, nodded nonchalantly to him and Shoulders.

  “Hi,” D’Agosta managed. He felt himself blushing with embarrassment and shame and felt furious for doing so.

  “Hey, Vinnie,” she replied in her dusky contralto. “Have a minute?”

  There was a moment of stasis.

  “Sure.” He turned to Shoulders. “Could you spare me for a sec?”

  “Don’t go far-we’re up soon.”

  D’Agosta followed Hayward down to a quieter section of the hallway. She paused, looking at him, one hand unconsciously smoothing down her skirt. Glancing at her shapely legs, D’Agosta felt his heart accelerate further. He searched his mind for something to say, came up with nothing.

  Hayward, too, seemed uncharacteristically at a loss for words. Her face looked clouded, conflicted. She opened her handbag, fumbled in it a moment, closed it, tucked it under her arm. They stood there another moment in silence as police officers, technicians, and court personnel passed by.