The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  “How are you, Aunt Cornelia?” he asked.

  The woman bent toward him. She whispered hoarsely, “My dear, how lovely to see you. May I offer you a spot of tea with cream and sugar?”

  One of the guards snickered, but shut up abruptly when Ostrom cast a sharp glance in his direction.

  “No, thank you, Aunt Cornelia.”

  “It’s just as well. The service here has declined dreadfully these past few years. It’s so hard to find good help these days. Why haven’t you visited me sooner, my dear? You know that at my age I cannot travel.”

  Pendergast leaned nearer.

  “Mr. Pendergast, not quite so close, if you please,” Dr. Ostrom murmured.

  Pendergast eased back. “I’ve been working, Aunt Cornelia.”

  “Work is for the middle classes, my dear. Pendergasts do not work.”

  Pendergast lowered his voice. “There’s not much time, I’m afraid, Aunt Cornelia. I wanted to ask you some questions. About your great-uncle Antoine.”

  The old lady pursed her lips in a disapproving line. “Great-uncle Antoine? They say he went north, to New York City. Became a Yankee. But that was many years ago. Long before I was born.”

  “Tell me what you know about him, Aunt Cornelia.”

  “Surely you’ve heard the stories, my boy. It is an unpleasant subject for all of us, you know.”

  “I’d like to hear them from you, just the same.”

  “Well! He inherited the family tendency to madness. There but for the grace of God…” The old woman sighed pityingly.

  “What kind of madness?” Pendergast knew the answer, of course; but he needed to hear it again. There were always details, nuances, that were new.

  “Even as a boy he developed certain dreadful obsessions. He was quite a brilliant youth, you know: sarcastic, witty, strange. At seven you couldn’t beat him in a game of chess or backgammon. He excelled at whist, and even suggested some refinements that, I understand, helped develop auction bridge. He was terribly interested in natural history, and started keeping quite a collection of horrid things in his dressing room—insects, snakes, bones, fossils, that sort of thing. He also had inherited his father’s interest in elixirs, restoratives, chemicals. And poisons.”

  A strange gleam came into the old lady’s black eyes at the mention of poisons, and both attendants shifted uneasily.

  Ostrom cleared his throat. “Mr. Pendergast, how much longer? We don’t want to unduly disturb the patient.”

  “Ten minutes.”

  “No more.”

  The old lady went on. “After the tragedy with his mother, he grew moody and reclusive. He spent a great deal of time alone, mixing up chemicals. But then, no doubt you know the cause of that fascination.”

  Pendergast nodded.

  “He developed his own variant of the family crest, like an old apothecary’s sign it was, three gilded balls. He hung it over his door. They say he poisoned the six family dogs in an experiment. And then he began spending a lot of time down… down there. Do you know where I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “They say he always felt more comfortable with the dead than with the living, you know. And when he wasn’t there, he was over at St. Charles Cemetery, with that appalling old woman Marie LeClaire. You know, Cajun voodoo and all that.”

  Pendergast nodded again.

  “He helped her with her potions and charms and frightful little stick dolls and making marks on graves. Then there was that unpleasantness with her tomb, after she died…”

  “Unpleasantness?”

  The old woman sighed, lowered her head. “The interference with her grave, the violated body and all those dreadful little cuts. Of course you must know that story.”

  “I’ve forgotten.” Pendergast’s voice was soft, gentle, probing.

  “He believed he was going to bring her back to life. There was the question of whether she had put him up to it before she died, charged him with some kind of dreadful after-death assignment. The missing pieces of flesh were never found, not a one. No, that’s not quite right. I believe they found an ear in the belly of an alligator caught a week later out of the swamp. The earring gave it away, of course.” Her voice trailed off. She turned to one of the attendants, and spoke in a tone of cold command. “My hair needs attention.”

  One of the attendants—the one wearing surgical gloves—came over and gingerly patted the woman’s hair back into place, keeping a wary distance.

  She turned back to Pendergast.

  “She had a kind of sexual hold over him, as dreadful as that sounds, considering the sixty-year difference in their ages.” The old lady shuddered, half in disgust, half in pleasure. “Clearly, she encouraged his interest in reincarnation, miracle cures, silly things like that.”

  “What did you hear about his disappearance?”

  “It happened at the age of twenty-one, when he came into his fortune. But ‘disappearance’ really isn’t quite the word, you know: he was asked to leave the house. At least, so I’ve been told. He’d begun to talk about saving, healing the world—making up for what his father had done, I suppose—but that cut no mustard with the rest of the family. Years later, when his cousins tried to track down the money he’d inherited and taken with him, he seemed to have vanished into thin air. They were terribly disappointed. It was so very much money, you see.”

  Pendergast nodded. There was a long silence.

  “I have one final question for you, Aunt Cornelia.”

  “What is it?”

  “It is a moral question.”

  “A moral question. How curious. Is this connected by any chance with Great-Uncle Antoine?”

  Pendergast did not answer directly. “For the past month, I have been searching for a man. This man is in possession of a secret. I am very close to discovering his whereabouts, and it is only a matter of time until I confront him.”

  The old woman said nothing.

  “If I win the confrontation—which is by no means certain—I may be faced with the question of what to do with his secret. I may be called upon to make a decision that will have, possibly, a profound effect on the future of the human race.”

  “And what is this secret?”

  Pendergast lowered his voice to the merest ghost of a whisper.

  “I believe it is a medical formula that will allow anyone, by following a certain regimen, to extend his life by at least a century, perhaps more. It will not vanquish death, but it will significantly postpone it.”

  There was a silence. The old lady’s eyes gleamed anew. “Tell me, how much will this treatment cost? Will it be cheap, or dear?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And how many others will have access to this formula besides yourself?”

  “I’ll be the only one. I’ll have very little time, maybe only seconds after it comes into my hands, to decide what to do with it.”

  The silence stretched on into minutes. “And how was this formula developed?”

  “Suffice to say, it cost the lives of many innocent people. In a singularly cruel fashion.”

  “That adds a further dimension to the problem. However, the answer is quite clear. When this formula comes into your possession, you must destroy it immediately.”

  Pendergast looked at her curiously. “Are you quite sure? It’s what medical science has most desired since the beginning.”

  “There is an old French curse: may your fondest wish come true. If this treatment is cheap and available to everyone, it will destroy the earth through overpopulation. If it is dear and available only to the very rich, it will cause riots, wars, a breakdown of the social contract. Either way, it will lead directly to human misery. What is the value of a long life, when it is lived in squalor and unhappiness?”

  “What about the immeasurable increase in wisdom that this discovery will bring, when you consider the one, maybe two hundred years, of additional learning and study it will afford the brilliant mind? Think, Aunt Cornelia, of what someon
e like Goethe or Copernicus or Einstein could have done for humanity with a two-hundred-year life span.”

  The old woman scoffed. “The wise and good are outnumbered a thousand to one by the brutal and stupid. When you give an Einstein two centuries to perfect his science, you give a thousand others two centuries to perfect their brutality.”

  This time, the silence seemed to stretch into minutes. By the door, Dr. Ostrom stirred restlessly.

  “Are you all right, my dear?” the old lady asked, looking intently at Pendergast.

  “Yes.”

  He gazed into her dark, strange eyes, so full of wisdom, insight, and the most profound insanity. “Thank you, Aunt Cornelia,” he said.

  Then he straightened up. “Dr. Ostrom?”

  The doctor glanced toward him.

  “We’re finished here.”

  TWO

  CUSTER STOOD IN A POOL OF LIGHT BEFORE THE ARCHIVES desk. Clouds of dust—by-products of the ongoing investigation—billowed out from aisles in the dimness beyond. The pompous ass, Brisbane, was still protesting in the background, but Custer paid little attention.

  The investigation, which had started so strongly, was bogging down. So far his men had found an amazing assortment of junk—old maps, charts, snakeskins, boxes of teeth, disgusting unidentifiable organs pickled in centuries-old alcohol—but not one thing that resembled an actual clue. Custer had been certain that, once in the Archives, the puzzle would immediately fall into place; that his newfound investigative skill would make the critical connection everyone else had overlooked. But so far there had been no brainstorm, no connection. An image of Commissioner Rocker’s face—staring at him through lowered, skeptical brows—hung before his eyes. A feeling of unease, imperfectly suppressed, began to filter through his limbs. And the place was huge: it would take weeks to search at this rate.

  The Museum lawyer was talking more loudly now, and Custer forced himself to listen.

  “This is nothing but a fishing expedition,” Brisbane was saying. “You can’t just come in here and turn the place upside down.” He gestured furiously at the NYPD evidence lockers lying on the floor, a riot of objects scattered within and around them. “And all that is Museum property!”

  Absently, Custer gestured toward the warrant that Noyes was holding. “You’ve seen the warrant.”

  “Yes, I have. And it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. I’ve never seen such general language. I protest this warrant, and I am stating for the record that I will not permit the Museum to be further searched.”

  “Let’s have your boss, Dr. Collopy, decide that. Has anybody heard from him yet?”

  “As the Museum’s legal counsel, I’m authorized to speak for Dr. Collopy.”

  Custer refolded his arms gloomily. There came another crash from the recesses of the Archives, some shouting, and a ripping sound. An officer soon appeared, carrying a stuffed crocodile, cotton pouring from a fresh slit in its belly. He laid it in one of the evidence lockers.

  “What the hell are they doing back there?” Brisbane shouted. “Hey, you! Yes, you! You’ve damaged that specimen!”

  The officer looked at him with a dull expression, then shambled back into the files.

  Custer said nothing. His feeling of anxiety increased. So far, the questioning of Museum staff hadn’t come up with anything either—just the same old stuff the earlier investigation had produced. This had been his call, his operation. His and his alone. If he was wrong—it almost didn’t bear thinking, of course, but if—he’d be hung out to dry like last week’s laundry.

  “I’m going to call Museum security and have your men escorted out,” Brisbane fumed. “This is intolerable. Where’s Manetti?”

  “Manetti was the man who let us in here,” Custer said distractedly. What if he’d made a mistake—a huge mistake?

  “He shouldn’t have done that. Where is he?” Brisbane turned, found Oscar Gibbs, the Archives assistant. “Where’s Manetti?”

  “He left,” Gibbs said.

  Custer watched absently, noticing how the young man’s insolent tone, his dark look, conveyed what he thought of Brisbane. Brisbane’s not popular, Custer thought again. Got a lot of enemies. Puck sure must have hated the guy, the way Brisbane came down on him. Can’t say I blame him one bit for—

  And that was when the revelation hit him. Like his initial revelation, only bigger: much bigger. So obvious in retrospect, and yet so difficult to first perceive. This was the kind of brilliant leap of intuition one received departmental citations for. It was a leap of deduction worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

  He turned now, watching Brisbane subtly, but intently. The man’s well-groomed face was glistening, his hair askew, eyes glittering with anger.

  “Left where?” Brisbane was demanding.

  Gibbs shrugged insolently.

  Brisbane strode over to the desk and picked up the phone. Custer continued to watch him. He dialed a few numbers, and left low, excited messages.

  “Captain Custer,” he said, turning back. “Once again, I am ordering you to remove your men from the premises.”

  Custer returned the glance from between lowered lids. He’d have to do this very carefully.

  “Mr. Brisbane,” he asked, taking what hoped sounded like a reasonable tone. “Shall we discuss this in your office?”

  For a moment, Brisbane seemed taken aback. “My office?”

  “It’ll be more private. Perhaps we needn’t search the Museum much longer. Perhaps we can settle this in your office, now.”

  Brisbane seemed to consider this. “Very well. Follow me.”

  Custer nodded to his man, Lieutenant Detective Piles. “You take over here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Then Custer turned toward Noyes. The merest crook of his fat finger brought the little man to his side.

  “Noyes, I want you with me,” he murmured. “Got your service piece on you?”

  Noyes nodded, rheumy eyes glistening in the dusky light.

  “Good. Then let’s go.”

  THREE

  THE SLOT OPENED AGAIN. IN THE ENDLESS PERIOD OF darkness and terror, Smithback had lost his perception of time. How long had it been? Ten minutes? An hour? A day?

  The voice spoke, lips once again gleaming in the rectangle of light. “How kind of you to visit me in my very old and interesting house. I hope you enjoyed seeing my collections. I am particularly fond of the corydon. Did you, by chance, see the corydon?”

  Smithback tried to respond, belatedly remembering that his mouth was taped.

  “Ah! How thoughtless of me. Do not trouble yourself to answer. I will speak. You will listen.”

  Smithback’s mind raced through the possibilities for escape. There were none.

  “Yes, the corydon is most interesting. As is the mosasaur from the chalk beds of Kansas. And of course the durdag from Tibet is quite unusual, one of only two in the world. I understand it was fashioned from the skull of the fifteenth reincarnation of the Buddha.”

  Smithback heard a dry laugh, like the scattering of withered leaves.

  “Altogether a most interesting cabinet of curiosities, my dear Mr. Smithback. I’m sorry that so few people have had a chance to see it, and that those so honored find themselves unable to make a return visit.”

  There was a silence. And then the voice continued, softly and gently: “I will do you well, Mr. Smithback. No effort will be spared.”

  A spasm of fear, unlike anything he had ever known, racked Smithback’s limbs. I will do you well… Do you well… Smithback realized that he was about to die. In his extremity of terror, he did not immediately notice that Leng had called him by name.

  “It will be a memorable experience—more memorable than those who have come before you. I have made great strides, remarkable strides. I have devised a most exacting surgical procedure. You will be awake to the very end. Consciousness, you see, is the key: I now realize that. Painstaking care will be taken, I assure you.”

  There was a silence as
Smithback struggled to keep his reason about him.

  The lips pursed. “I shouldn’t want to keep you waiting. Shall we proceed to the laboratory?”

  A lock rattled and the iron door creaked open. The dark figure in the derby hat who approached was now holding a long hypodermic needle. A clear drop trembled at its end. A pair of round, old-fashioned smoked glasses were pushed into his face.

  “This is merely an injection to relax your muscles. Succinyl choline. Very similar to curare. It’s a paralyzing agent; you’ll find it tends to render the sort of weakness one feels in dreams. You know what I mean: the danger is coming, you try to escape, but you find yourself unable to move. Have no fear, Mr. Smithback: though you’ll be unable to move, you will remain conscious throughout much of the operation, until the final excision and removal is performed. It will be much more interesting for you that way.”

  Smithback struggled as the needle approached.

  “You see, it’s a delicate operation. It requires a steady and highly expert hand. We can’t have the patient thrashing about during the procedure. The merest slip of the scalpel and all would be ruined. You might as well dispose of the resource and start afresh.”

  Still the needle approached.

  “I suggest you take a deep breath now, Mr. Smithback.”

  I will do you well…

  With the strength born of consummate terror, Smithback threw himself from side to side, trying to tear free his chains. He opened his mouth against the heavy tape, trying desperately to scream, feeling the flesh of his lips tearing away from his skin under the effort. He jerked violently, fighting against the manacles, but the figure with the needle kept approaching inexorably—and then he felt the sting of the needle as it slid into his flesh, a sensation of heat spreading through his veins, and then a terrible weakness: the precise weakness Leng had described, that feeling of paralysis that happens in the very worst of dreams, at the very worst possible moment.

  But this, Smithback knew, was no dream.