The Inner Circle

by Brad Meltzer

  The word fun came to mind.

  Always keeping Pendergast in his field of vision, Fairhaven shone his light around, finally selecting a bejeweled sword. He plucked it from the wall, hefted it, turned it around in the beam of the flashlight. It would have served his purpose, except it was rather heavy, and the blade was so rusty it looked as if it wouldn’t cut butter. Besides, the handle was sticky and unpleasant. He hung it back up on the shelf, wiping his hands on his surgical cloth.

  Pendergast was still sitting, watching him with pale, cloudy eyes. Fairhaven grinned. “Got any preferences?”

  There was no reply, but Fairhaven could see a look of profound distress cross the agent’s face.

  “That’s right, Agent Pendergast. ‘Quick’ is no longer in the cards.”

  A slight, terrified widening of the eyes was Pendergast’s only response. It was enough. The Surgeon felt a swell of satisfaction.

  He moved along the collections, picked up a dagger with a handle of gold and silver, turned it over, laid it down. Next to it was a helmet shaped like a man’s head, with spikes inside that you could screw closed, driving the spikes bit by bit through the skull. Too primitive, too messy. Hanging on the wall nearby was an oversized leather funnel. He’d heard of this: the torturer would jam it into the victim’s mouth, then pour water down the victim’s throat until the poor wretch either drowned or exploded. Exotic, but too time-consuming. Nearby was a large wheel on which people could be broken—too much trouble. A cat-o’-nine tails, studded with iron hooks. He hefted it, lashed it overhead, laid it back down, again wiping his hands. The stuff was filthy. All this junk had probably been hanging around in Leng’s dingy subbasement for more than a century.

  There had to be something here that would be suitable for his needs. And then his eye fell on an executioner’s axe.

  “What do you know?” said Fairhaven, his smile broadening. “Perhaps you’ll get your wish, after all.”

  He plucked the axe from its mounting hooks and gave it a few swings. The wooden shaft was almost five feet long, fitted with several rows of dull brass nails. It was heavy, but well balanced and sharp as a razor. It made a whistling noise as it cut through the air. Sitting below the axe was the second part of the executioner’s outfit: a tree stump, well worn and covered with a dark patina. A semicircle had been hollowed from it, clearly intended to receive the neck. It had been well used, as many chop marks attested. He set down the axe, rolled the block over to Pendergast, tipped it flat, positioned the block in front of the agent.

  Suddenly, Pendergast resisted, struggling feebly, and the Surgeon gave him a brutal kick in the side. Pendergast went rigid with pain, then abruptly fell limp. The Surgeon had a brief, unpleasant sensation of déjà vu, remembering how he had pushed Leng just a little too hard and ended up with a corpse. But no: Pendergast was still conscious. His eyes, though clouded with pain, remained open. He would be present and conscious when the axe fell. He knew what was coming. That was important to the Surgeon: very important.

  And now another thought occurred to him. He recalled how, when Anne Boleyn was to be put to death, she’d sent for a French executioner, skilled in the art of decapitating with a sword. It was a cleaner, quicker, surer death than an axe. She had knelt, head erect, with no unseemly block. And she had tipped the man well.

  The Surgeon hefted the axe in his hands. It seemed heavy, heavier than it had before. But surely he could swing it true. It would be an interesting challenge to do without the block.

  He shoved the block away with his foot. Pendergast was already kneeling as if he had arranged himself in position, hands limp at his sides, head drooping, helpless and resigned.

  “Your struggles cost you that quick death you asked for,” he said. “But I’m sure we’ll have it off in—oh—no more than two or three strokes. Either way, you’re about to experience something I’ve always wondered about. After the head goes rolling off, how long does the body remain conscious? Do you see the world spinning around as your head falls into the basket of sawdust? When the executioner raised the heads in Tower Yard, crying out ‘Behold the head of a traitor!,’ the eyes and lips continued to move. Did they actually see their own headless corpse?”

  He gave the axe a practice swing. Why was it so heavy? And yet he was enjoying drawing out this moment. “Did you know that Charlotte Corday, who was guillotined for assassinating Marat during the French Revolution, blushed after the assistant executioner slapped her severed head before the assembled crowd? Or how about the pirate captain who was caught and sentenced to death? They lined up his men in a row. And they told him that after he was beheaded, whichever men he managed to walk past would be reprieved. So they cut off his head as he stood, and wouldn’t you know it, but that headless captain began to walk along the row of men, one step at a time. The executioner was so upset that he wouldn’t have any more victims that he stuck out his foot and tripped the captain.”

  With this the Surgeon roared with laughter. Pendergast did not join in.

  “Ah well,” Fairhaven said. “I guess I’ll never know how long consciousness lasts after one has lost one’s head. But you will. Shortly.”

  He raised the axe over his right shoulder, like a bat, and took careful aim.

  “Give my regards to your great-grand-uncle,” he said, as he tensed his muscles to deliver the stroke.

  TWELVE

  NORA PILLOWED HER HEAD ON SMITHBACK’S SHOULDER, tears seeping through her closed eyelids. She felt weak with despair. She had done all she could—and yet, all she could was not enough.

  And then, through the fog of grief, she realized something: the beeping of the EKG had steadied.

  She quickly raised her head, glanced at the monitors. Blood pressure had stabilized, and the pulse had risen slightly, to 60 beats per minute.

  She stood in the chill room, trembling. In the end, the saline solution had made the crucial difference. Thank you. Thank you.

  Smithback was still alive. But he was far from out of the woods. If she didn’t further replenish his fluid volume, he’d slip into shock.

  The saline bag was empty. She glanced around the room, spotted a small refrigerator, opened it. Inside were half a dozen liter bags of similar solution, feeder lines wrapped around them. She pulled one out, detached the old line from the catheter, removed the empty bag from the IV rack and tossed it aside, then hung the new bag and attached its line. She watched the fluid dribble rapidly down the clear tube. Throughout, Smithback’s vital signs remained weak but stable. With any luck, he’d make it—if she could get him out of here and to a hospital.

  She examined the gurney. It was on wheels, but detachable. There were straps. If she could find a way out of the basement, she just might be able to drag the gurney up a flight of stairs. It was worth a try.

  She searched through the nearby cabinets, pulled out half a dozen green surgical sheets, and covered Smithback with them. She plucked a medical light from one of the cabinets, slipped it into her pocket. She gave another glance at the monitors at the head of the operating table, another look into the dark opening that led down into darkness. It was from there that the sound of the second shot had come. But the way out of the house lay up, not down. She hated to leave Smithback, if only for a moment, but it was vital he get real medical attention as soon as possible.

  She pulled the flashlight from her pocket and, crossing the room, stepped through the doorway into the stone corridor beyond.

  It was the work of five minutes to explore the basement, a warren of narrow passages and small damp rooms, all of the same undressed stone. The passages were low and dark, and she lost her way more than once. She found the crashed elevator—and, tragically, the corpse of O’Shaughnessy—but the elevator was inoperable, and there was no way up the shaft. Ultimately, she found a massive iron door, banded and riveted, which clearly led upstairs. It was locked. Pendergast, she thought, might be able to pick the lock—but then Pendergast wasn’t here.

  At last she returned
to the operating room, chilled and despondent. If there was another way out of the basement, it was too well hidden for her to find. They were locked in.

  She approached the unconscious Smithback and caressed his brown hair. Once again, her eye fell on the opening in the wall that gave onto a descending staircase. It was pitch black, silent. She realized it had been silent for what seemed a long time, ever since the second shot. What could have happened? she wondered. Could Pendergast…

  “Nora?”

  Smithback’s voice was barely a whisper. She glanced down quickly. His eyes were open, his pale face tight with pain.

  “Bill!” she cried, grabbing his hands. “Thank God.”

  “This is getting old,” he murmured.

  At first, she thought he was delirious. “What?”

  “Getting hurt, waking up to find you ministering to me. The same thing happened in Utah, remember? Once was enough.” He tried to smile, but his face contorted in agony.

  “Bill, don’t talk,” she said, stroking his cheek. “You’re going to be okay. We’re going to get you out of here. I’ll find a—”

  But—mercifully—he had already slipped back into unconsciousness.

  She glanced at the vitals and felt a huge rush of relief. They had improved—slightly. The saline bag continued to deliver critical fluid.

  And then she heard the scream.

  It came up from the dark stairs, faint and muffled. Nevertheless it was the most frightening, bone-chilling sound she had ever heard. It started at a high, tearing pitch: shrill, inhuman. It remained at a piercing high for what seemed at least a minute, then began wavering, ululating, before dropping into a gasping, slobbering growl. And then there was the distant clang of metal against stone.

  And then, silence once again.

  She stared at the opening in the wall, mind racing through the possibilities. What had happened? Was Pendergast dead? His opponent? Were they both dead?

  If Pendergast was hurt, she had to help him. He’d be able to pick the lock on the iron door, or find some other way for them to get Smithback out of this hell-hole. On the other hand—if the Surgeon was still alive, and Pendergast dead—she’d have to face him sooner or later anyway. It might as well be sooner: and on her own terms. She was damned if she was going to wait up here, a sitting duck, for the Surgeon to return and pick her off—and then finish the job on Smithback.

  She plucked a large-bladed scalpel from the surgical stand. Then—holding the light in one hand and the scalpel in the other—she approached the doorway that led down into the subbasement.

  The narrow stone panel, swung to one side, had been perfectly disguised to look part of the wall. Beyond was a pool of blackness. Shining the beam ahead of her, she began descending, slowly and silently.

  Reaching the last turn at the bottom, she turned off the light and waited, heart beating rapidly, wondering what to do. If she shone her light around, it might betray her presence, give the Surgeon—if he was waiting out there in the darkness—a perfect target. But with the light off, she simply could not proceed.

  The light was a risk she’d have to take. She snapped it back on, stepped out of the stairwell, then gasped involuntarily.

  She was in a long, narrow room, crowded floor to ceiling with bottles. Her powerful beam, lancing through the endless rows, cast myriad glittering colors about the room, making her feel as if she was somehow inside a window of stained glass.

  More collections. What could all this mean?

  But there was no time to pause, no time to wonder. Two sets of footprints led on into the darkness ahead. And there was blood on the dusty floor.

  She moved through the room as quickly as she could, beneath an archway and into another room filled with more bottles. The trail of footsteps continued on. At the end of this room was another archway, covered by a fringed tapestry.

  She turned off her light and advanced toward it. There she waited, in the pitch black, listening. There was no sound. With infinite care, she drew back the tapestry and peered into the darkness. She could see nothing. The room beyond seemed empty, but there was no way to be sure: she would simply have to take a chance. She took a deep breath, switched on her light.

  The beam illuminated a larger room, filled with wooden display cases. She hurried ahead, sidestepping from case to case, to an archway in the far wall that led on into a series of smaller vaults. She ducked into the nearest and turned off her light again, listening for any sound that might indicate that her presence had been noticed. Nothing. Turning on the light again, she moved forward, into a room whose cases were filled with frogs and lizards, snakes and roaches, spiders of infinite shapes and colors. Was there no end to Leng’s cabinet?

  At the far end of the room, before another low archway that led into further darkness, she again crouched, turning off her light to listen for any noises that might be coming from the room beyond.

  It was then she heard the sound.

  It came to her faintly, echoing and distorted by its passage through intervening stone. Remote as it was, it instantly chilled her blood: a low, gibbering moan, rising and falling in a fiendish cadence.

  She waited a moment, flesh crawling. For a moment, her muscles tensed for an involuntary retreat. But then, with a supreme effort, she steeled herself. Whatever lay beyond, she would have to confront it sooner or later. Pendergast might need her help.

  She gathered up her courage, switched on her light, and sprinted forward. She ran past more rooms full of glass-fronted cases; through a chamber that seemed to contain old clothing; and then into an ancient laboratory, full of tubes and coils, dust-heavy machines festooned with dials and rusted switches. Here, between the lab tables, she pulled up abruptly, pausing to listen again.

  There was another sound, much closer now, perhaps as close as the next room. It was the sound of something walking—shambling—toward her.

  Almost without thinking, she threw herself beneath the nearest table, switching off her light.

  Another sound came, hideously alien and yet unmistakably human. It started as a low chatter, a tattoo of rattling teeth, punctuated with a few gasps as if for breath. Then came a high keening, at the highest edge of audibility. Abruptly, the noise stopped. And then Nora heard, in the silence, the footsteps approach once again.

  She remained hidden behind the table, immobilized by fear, as the shuffling drew closer in the pitch black. All of a sudden, the darkness was ripped apart by a terrible shriek. This was immediately followed by a coughing, retching sound and the splatter of fluid on stone. The echoes of the shriek died out slowly, ringing on through the stone chambers behind her.

  Nora struggled to calm her pounding heart. Despite the unearthly sound, the thing that was approaching her was human. It had to be, she had to remember that. And if it was human, who could it be but Pendergast or the Surgeon? Nora felt it had to be the Surgeon. Perhaps he had been wounded by Pendergast. Or perhaps he was utterly insane.

  She had one advantage: he didn’t seem to know she was there. She could ambush him, kill him with the scalpel. If she could summon the courage.

  She crouched behind the lab table, scalpel in one trembling hand and light in the other, waiting in the enfolding dark. The shambling seemed to have stopped. A minute, an eternity, of silence ticked by. Then she heard the unsteady footsteps resume. He was now in the room with her.

  The footsteps were irregular, punctuated by frequent pauses. Another minute went by in which there was no movement; then, half a dozen jerky footsteps. And now she could hear breathing. Except it wasn’t normal breathing, but a gasping, sucking sound, as if air were being drawn down through a wet hole.

  There was a sudden explosion of noise as the person stumbled into a huge apparatus, bringing it to the ground with a massive crash of glass. The sound echoed and reechoed through the stone vaults.

  Maintain, Nora said to herself. Maintain. If it’s the Surgeon, Pendergast must have wounded him badly. But then, where was Pendergast? Why wasn’t he
pursuing?

  The noises seemed to be less than twenty feet away now. She heard a scrabbling, a muttering and panting, and the tinkling of something shedding broken glass: he was getting up from his fall. There was a shuffling thump, and another. Still he was coming, moving with excruciating slowness. And all the time came that breathing: stertorous, with a wet gurgle like air drawn through a leaky snorkel. Nothing Nora had ever heard in her life was quite so unnerving as the sound of that breathing.

  Ten feet. Nora gripped the scalpel tighter as adrenaline coursed through her. She would turn on her light and lunge forward. Surprise would give her the advantage, especially if he was wounded.

  There was a loud wet snoring sound, another heavy footfall; a gasp, the spastic stamp of a foot; silence; then the dragging of a limb. He was almost upon her. She crouched, tensing all her muscles, ready to blind the man with her light and strike a fatal blow.

  Another step, another snuffle: and she acted. She switched on the light—but, instead of leaping with her scalpel, she froze, arm raised, knife edge glittering in the beam of light.

  And then she screamed.

  THIRTEEN

  CUSTER STOOD ATOP THE GREAT FLIGHT OF STEPS RISING above Museum Drive, looking out over the sea of press with an indescribable feeling of satisfaction. To his left was the mayor of the City of New York, just arriving with a gaggle of aides; to his right, the commissioner of police. Just behind stood his two top detectives and his man, Noyes. It was an extraordinary assemblage. There were so many onlookers, they’d been forced to close Central Park West to traffic. Press helicopters hovered above them, cameras dangling, brilliant spotlights swiveling back and forth. The capture of the Surgeon, aka Roger C. Brisbane III—the Museum’s respected general counsel and first vice president—had riveted the media’s attention. The copycat killer who had terrorized the city hadn’t been some crazy homeless man, living in Central Park on a piece of cardboard. It had instead been one of the pillars of Manhattan society, the smiling, cordial fixture at so many glittering fund-raisers and openings. Here was a man whose face and impeccably tailored figure were often seen in the society pages of Avenue and Vanity Fair. And now he stood revealed as one of New York’s most notorious serial killers. What a story. And he, Custer, had cracked the case single-handedly.