The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  Turning toward the Versed drip inserted into the saline bag hung from the gurney, he turned the plastic stopcock to stop the flow: tranquilization, like the intubation, was no longer necessary. The trick now would be to keep the resource alive as far into the surgery as possible. There was still much to do, starting with the bony dissection: the removal of the lamina with a Kerrison rongeur. The goal at this point was to have the vitals still detectable when the operation was complete, with the cauda equina removed and lying intact in the special chilled cradle he had designed to receive it. He had reached that goal only twice before—with the slender young woman and the policeman—but this time he felt a swell of confidence in himself and his skills. He knew that he would achieve it again.

  So far, everything had gone according to plan. The great detective, Pendergast, whom he had so feared, had proven less than formidable. Using one of the many traps in this strange old house against the agent had proven ridiculously easy. The others were minor irritants only. He had removed them all, swept them aside with so little effort it was almost risible. In fact it was risible, how pathetic they all were. The colossal stupidity of the police, the moronic Museum officials: how delightful it had all been, how very diverting. There was a certain justice in the situation, a justice that only he could appreciate.

  And now he had almost achieved his goal. Almost. After these three had been processed, he felt sure he would be there. And how ironic it was that it would be these three, of all people, who helped him reach it…

  He smiled slightly as he bent down to set another self-retaining retractor into place. And that was when he saw a small movement at the extreme edge of his peripheral vision.

  He turned. It was the FBI agent, Pendergast, casually leaning against a wall just inside the archway leading into the operating room.

  The man straightened, controlling the highly unpleasant surprise that rose within him. But Pendergast’s hands were empty; he was, of course, unarmed. With one swift, economical movement, the Surgeon took up Pendergast’s own gun—the two-tone Colt 1911, lying on the instrument table—pushed down on the safety with his thumb, and pointed the weapon at the agent.

  Pendergast continued to lean against the wall. For the briefest of moments, as the two exchanged glances, something like astonishment registered in the pale cat’s eyes. Then Pendergast spoke.

  “So it’s you who tortured and killed Enoch Leng. I wondered who the impostor was. I am surprised. I do not like surprises, but there it is.”

  The man aimed the gun carefully.

  “You’re already holding my weapon,” said Pendergast, showing his hands. “I’m unarmed.” He continued leaning casually against the wall.

  The man tightened his finger on the trigger. He felt a second unpleasant sensation: internal conflict. Pendergast was a very dangerous man. It would no doubt be best to pull the trigger now and have done with it. But by shooting now, he would ruin a specimen. Besides, he needed to know how Pendergast had escaped. And then, there was the girl to consider…

  “But it begins to make sense,” Pendergast resumed. “Yes, I see it now. You’re building that skyscraper on Catherine Street. You didn’t just discover those bodies by accident. No—you were looking for those bodies, weren’t you? You already knew that Leng had buried them there, 130 years ago. And how did you learn about them? Ah, it all falls into place: your interest in the Museum, your visits to the Archives. You were the one who examined the Shottum material before Dr. Kelly. No wonder it was all in such disarray—you’d already removed anything you felt useful. But you didn’t know about Tinbury McFadden, or the elephant’s-foot box. Instead, you first learned about Leng and his work, about his lab notebooks and journals, from Shottum’s personal papers. But when you ultimately tracked down Leng, and found him alive, he wasn’t as talkative as you would have liked. He didn’t give you the formula. Even under torture, did he? So you had to fall back on what Leng had left behind: his victims, his lab, perhaps his journals, buried beneath Shottum’s Cabinet. And the only way to get to those was to buy the land, tear down the brownstones above, and dig a foundation for a new building.” Pendergast nodded, almost to himself. “Dr. Kelly mentioned missing pages in the Archives logbook; pages removed with a razor. Those pages were the ones with your name on them, correct? And the only one who knew you had been a frequent visitor to the Archives was Puck. So he had to die. Along with those who were already on your own trail: Dr. Kelly, Sergeant O’Shaughnessy, myself. Because the closer we came to finding Leng, the closer we came to finding you.”

  A pained expression came over the agent’s face. “How could I have been so obtuse not to see it? It should have become clear when I first saw Leng’s corpse. When I realized Leng had been tortured to death before the Catherine Street bodies were found.”

  Fairhaven did not smile. The chain of deduction was astonishingly accurate. Just kill him, a voice in his head said.

  “What is it the Arab sages call death?” Pendergast went on. “The destroyer of all earthly pleasures. And how true it is: old age, sickness, and at last death comes to us all. Some console themselves with religion, others through denial, others through philosophy or mere stoicism. But to you, who had always been able to buy everything, death must have seemed a dreadful injustice.”

  The image of his older brother, Arthur, came unbidden to the Surgeon’s mind: dying of progeria, his young face withered with senile keratoses, his limbs twisted, his skin cracked with hideously premature age. The fact that the disease was so rare, its causes so unknown, had been no comfort. Pendergast didn’t know everything. Nor would he.

  He forced the image from his mind. Just kill the man. But somehow his hand would not act—not yet, not until he had heard more.

  Pendergast nodded toward the still form on the table. “You’re never going to get there that way, Mr. Fairhaven. Leng’s skills were infinitely more refined than yours. You will never succeed.”

  Not true, Fairhaven thought to himself. I have already succeeded. I am Leng as he should have been. Only through me can Leng’s work attain its truest perfection…

  “I know,” Pendergast said. “You’re thinking I’m wrong. You believe you have succeeded. But you have not succeeded, and you never will. Ask yourself: Do you feel any different? Do you feel any revivification of the limbs, any quickening of the life essence? If you’re honest with yourself, you can still feel the terrible weight of time pressing on you; that awful, relentless, bodily corruption that is happening constantly to us all.” He smiled thinly, wearily, as if he knew the feeling all too well. “You see, you’ve made one fatal mistake.”

  The Surgeon said nothing.

  “The truth is,” Pendergast said, “you don’t know the first thing about Leng, or his real work. Work for which life extension was just a means to an end.”

  Years of self-discipline, of high-level corporate brinksmanship, had taught Fairhaven never to reveal anything: not in the facial expression, not in the questions asked. Yet the sudden stab of surprise he felt, followed immediately by disbelief, was hard to conceal. What real work? What was Pendergast talking about?

  He would not ask. Silence was always the best mode of questioning. If you remained silent, they always talked out the answer in the end. It was human nature.

  But this time it was Pendergast who remained silent. He simply stood there, leaning almost insolently against the doorframe, glancing around at the walls of the chamber. The silence stretched on, and the man began to think of his resource, lying there on the gurney. Gun on Pendergast, he glanced briefly at the vitals. Good, but starting to flag. If he didn’t get back to work soon, the specimen would be spoiled.

  Kill him, the voice said again.

  “What real work?” Fairhaven asked.

  Still, Pendergast remained silent.

  The merest spasm of doubt passed through Fairhaven, quickly suppressed. What was the man’s game? He was wasting his time, and there was no doubt a reason why he was wasting his time, which mea
nt it was best just to kill him now. At least he knew the girl could not escape from the basement. He would deal with her in good time. Fairhaven’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  At last, Pendergast spoke. “Leng didn’t tell you anything in the end, did he? You tortured him to no avail, because you’re still thrashing about, wasting all these people. But I do know about Leng. I know him very well indeed. Perhaps you noticed the resemblance?”

  “What?” Again Fairhaven was taken off guard.

  “Leng was my great-grand-uncle.”

  It hit Fairhaven then. His grip on the weapon loosened. He remembered Leng’s delicate white face, his white hair, and his very pale blue eyes—eyes that regarded him without begging, without pleading, without beseeching, no matter how hideous it had become for him. Pendergast’s eyes were the same. But Leng had died anyway, and so would he.

  So would he, the voice echoed, more insistently. His information is not as important as his death. This resource is not worth the risk. Kill him.

  The man reapplied pressure to the trigger. At this distance, he could not miss.

  “It’s hidden here in the house, you know. Leng’s ultimate project. But you’ve never found it. All along you’ve been looking for the wrong thing. And as a result, you will die a long, slow, wasting death of old age. Just like the rest of us. You cannot succeed.”

  Squeeze the trigger, the voice in his head insisted.

  But there was something in the agent’s tone. He knew something, something important. He wasn’t just talking. Fairhaven had dealt with bluffers before, and this man was not bluffing.

  “Say what you have to say now,” said Fairhaven. “Or you will die instantly.”

  “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

  “Show me what?”

  “I’ll show you what Leng was really working on. It’s in the house. Here, right under your nose.”

  The voice in his head was no longer little; it was practically shouting. Do not allow him to continue talking, no matter how important his information may be. And Fairhaven finally heeded the wisdom of that advice.

  Pendergast was leaning against the wall, off balance, his hands clearly in view. It would be impossible for the man, in the time it took to squeeze off one shot, to reach inside his suit and pull out a backup weapon. Besides, he had no such weapon; Fairhaven had searched him thoroughly. He took a fresh bead on Pendergast, then held his breath, increasing the pressure on the trigger. There was a sudden roar and the gun kicked in his hand. And he knew instantly: it had been a true shot.

  FOUR

  THE CELL DOOR STOOD OPEN, ALLOWING A FAINT LIGHT TO filter in from the passageway beyond. Nora waited, shrinking back into the pool of darkness behind the cell door. Ten minutes. Pendergast had said ten minutes. In the dark, with her heart pounding like a sledgehammer, every minute seemed an hour, and it was almost impossible to tell the passage of time. She forced herself to count each second. A thousand one, a thousand two… Each count made her think of Smithback, and what might be happening to him. Or had happened to him.

  Pendergast had told her he thought Smithback was dead. He had said this to spare her the shock of discovering it for herself. Bill is dead. Bill is dead. She tried to absorb it, but found her mind would not accept the fact. It felt unreal. Everything felt unreal. A thousand thirty. A thousand thirty-one. The seconds rolled on.

  At six minutes and twenty-five seconds, the sound of a gunshot came, deafening in the confined spaces of the cellar.

  Her whole body kicked in fear. It was all she could do not to scream. She crouched, waiting for the absurd skipping of her heart to slow. The terrible sound echoed and re-echoed, rumbling and rolling through the basement corridors. Finally, silence—dead silence—returned.

  She felt her breath coming in gasps. Now it was doubly hard to count. Pendergast had said to wait ten minutes. Had another minute passed since the shot? She decided to resume the count again at seven minutes, hoping the monotonous, repetitive activity would calm her nerves. It did not.

  And then she heard the sound of rapid footsteps ringing against stone. They had an unusual, syncopated cadence, as if someone was descending a staircase. The footfalls quickly grew fainter. Silence returned once again.

  At ten minutes, she stopped counting. Time to move.

  For a moment, her body refused to respond. It seemed frozen with dread.

  What if the man was still out there? What if she found Smithback dead? What if Pendergast was dead, too? Would she be able to run, to resist, to die, rather than be caught herself and face a fate far worse?

  Speculation was useless. She would simply follow Pendergast’s orders.

  With an immense effort of will, she rose from her crouch, then stepped out of the darkness, easing her way around the open door. The corridor beyond the cell was long and damp, with irregular stone floor and walls, streaked with lime. At the far end was a door that opened into a bright room: the lone source of light, it seemed, in the entire basement. It was in that direction Pendergast had gone; that direction from which the shot had come; that direction from which she’d heard the sound of running feet.

  She took a hesitant step forward, and then another, walking on trembling legs toward the brilliant rectangle of light.

  FIVE

  THE SURGEON COULD HARDLY BELIEVE HIS EYES. WHERE Pendergast should have been lying dead in a pool of blood, there was nothing. The man had vanished.

  He looked around wildly. It was inconceivable, a physical impossibility… And then he noticed that the section of wall Pendergast had been leaning against was now a door, swiveled parallel to the stone face that surrounded it. A door he never knew existed, despite his diligent searches of the house.

  The Surgeon waited, stilling his mind with a great effort of will. Deliberation in all things, he had found, was absolutely necessary for success. It had brought him this far, and with it he would prevail now.

  He stepped forward, Pendergast’s gun at the ready. On the far side of the opening, a stone staircase led downward into blackness. The FBI agent obviously wanted him to follow, to descend the staircase whose end was hidden around the dark curve of the stone wall. It could easily be a trap. In fact, it could only be a trap.

  But the Surgeon realized he had no choice. He had to stop Pendergast. And he had to find out what lay below. He had a gun, and Pendergast was unarmed, perhaps even wounded by the shot. He paused, briefly, to examine the pistol. The Surgeon knew something about weapons, and he recognized this as a Les Baer custom, .45 Government Model. He turned it over in his hands. With the tritium night sights and laser grips, easily a three-thousand-dollar handgun. Pendergast had good taste. Ironic that such a fine weapon would now be used against its owner.

  He stepped back from the false wall. Keeping a watchful eye on the stairway, he retrieved a powerful flashlight from a nearby drawer, then darted a regretful glance toward his specimen. The vital signs were beginning to drop now; the operation was clearly spoiled.

  He returned to the staircase and shone the flashlight down into the gloom. The imprint of Pendergast’s footsteps was clearly visible in the dust that coated the steps. And there was something else, something besides the footsteps: a drop of blood. And another.

  So he had hit Pendergast. Nevertheless, he would have to redouble his caution. Wounded humans, like wounded animals, were always the most dangerous.

  He paused at the first step, wondering if he should go after the woman first. Was she still chained to the wall? Or had Pendergast managed to free her, as well? Either way, she posed little danger. The house was a fortress, the basement securely locked. She would be unable to escape. Pendergast remained the more pressing problem. Once he was dead, the remaining resource could be tracked down and forced to take the place of Smithback. He’d made the mistake of listening to Pendergast once. When he found him, he wouldn’t make that mistake again. The man would be dead before he even opened his mouth.

  The staircase spiraled down, down, corkscrewing endl
essly into the earth. The Surgeon descended slowly, treating each curve as a blind corner behind which Pendergast might be lying in wait. At last he reached the bottom. The stairs debouched into a dark, murky room, heavy with the smell of mildew, damp earth, and—what? Ammonia, salts, benzene, the faint smell of chemicals. There was a flurry of footprints, more drops of blood. Pendergast had stopped here. The Surgeon shone his light on the nearest wall: a row of old brass lanterns, hanging from wooden pegs. One of the pegs was empty.

  He took a step to one side, then—using the stone pillar of the staircase as cover—lifted his heavy flashlight and shone it into the gloom.

  An astonishing sight met his eye. A wall of jewels seemed to wink back at him: a thousand, ten thousand glittering reflections in myriad colors, like the reflective surface of a fly’s eye under intense magnification. Suppressing his surprise, he moved forward cautiously, gun at the ready.

  He found himself in a narrow stone chamber, pillars rising toward a low, arched ceiling. The walls were lined with countless glass bottles of identical shape and size. They were stored on oaken shelving that rose from floor to ceiling, row upon row upon row, crowded densely together, shut up behind rippled glass. He had never seen so many bottles in his life. It looked, in fact, like a museum of liquids.

  His breath came faster. Here it was: Leng’s final laboratory. No doubt this was the place where he had perfected the arcanum, his formula for life prolongation. This place must hold the secret for which he had unsuccessfully tortured Leng. He remembered his feeling of disappointment, almost despair, when he’d discovered that Leng’s heart had stopped beating—when he realized he had pushed a little too hard. No matter now: the formula was right here, under his nose, just as Pendergast had said.