Blue Labyrinth

by Douglas Preston

  “I’m sorry, Aloysius. I told you—I’m going to fight this thing to the end.”

  Pendergast blinked. “Then why are you even here?”

  “To say good-bye. In case…” Constance began to falter.

  At this, Pendergast made an effort to rally himself. With a supreme act of will, he rose onto one elbow. His eyes cleared a little, and he held Constance with his gaze. The hand snaked back under the covers and reappeared, this time grasping his .45. He pushed it toward her. “If you refuse to listen to reason, at least take this. It’s fully loaded.”

  Constance took a step back. “No. Recall what happened the last time I tried to fire a gun.”

  “Then bring me the phone.”

  “Who are you calling?”

  “D’Agosta.”

  “No. Please don’t. He’ll interfere.”

  “Constance, for the love of God—!” His voice choked off. Slowly, he sank back onto the white sheets. The effort had exhausted him to a fearsome degree.

  Constance hesitated. She was shocked, and deeply moved, that he felt so strongly. She hadn’t been handling this correctly. Her stubbornness was making him agitated to the point of danger. She took a deep breath and decided to lie. “You made your point. I won’t go to the garden. And I’ll call off Margo.”

  “I hope to God you’re not deceiving me.” He stared at her, his voice low.

  “No.”

  He leaned forward and whispered, with the last of his strength: “Do not go to the Botanic Garden.”

  Constance left him with the phone and stumbled out into the hall, breathing hard. There she paused, thinking.

  She had not considered that Barbeaux might be waiting for her at the Botanic Garden. This was a surprising idea—but not an altogether displeasing one.

  She would need a weapon. Not a gun, of course, but something more suited to her… style.

  Moving quickly now down the hallway, she descended the steps to the reception hall, turned and entered the library, moved the secret book, and slipped into the elevator to the basement. Then she almost ran down the corridor to the rough-hewn basement stairs that spiraled down to even deeper spaces, disappearing into the shadow-haunted, dust-fragrant chambers that lay beyond.

  Dr. Stone heard Constance’s retreating footsteps from his waiting room next door. He came out and reentered Pendergast’s bedroom, with a little shiver at the thought of her. While Constance was certainly a young woman of taste, elegance, and exotic beauty, she was also as cold as dry ice—and there was, on top of that, something not right about her, a certain quality that gave him the absolute creeps.

  He found his patient once again asleep. A phone had slipped out of his hands and was lying next to his open hand on the sheets. He picked it up and checked it, wondering whom he had been trying to call, saw that no call had been made, then gently turned it off and placed it back on the bureau. And then he took up once again his position in the chair at the door, waiting for what he was sure would be a long night… before the end.

  Margo realized that getting into the Museum after hours was going to be a major problem. She felt sure Frisby would have put her name on a watch list at the first-floor security entrance—the only way in and out of the Museum after closing time. So she decided to simply hide in the Museum until it closed. She’d get what she came for, then exit the after-hours security station as nonchalantly as possible, with a story about having fallen asleep in a lab.

  As closing time neared, Margo, posing as a museumgoer, made her way into the remotest, least-visited halls. Her chest felt tight, her breathing constricted. As the guards were beginning their sweeps, ushering visitors out, she hid in a bathroom and climbed onto a toilet seat to wait, mentally willing herself to relax. Finally, around six o’clock, all was quiet. She crept back out.

  The halls were more or less empty, and she could hear the guards’ shoes echoing distantly on the marble floors as they made their rounds. It was like an early warning signal, allowing her to evade them as she made her way to the one place she knew the guards would never check—the Gastropod Alcove.

  Was she really going to do this? Could she follow through? She steadied herself by recalling Constance’s words: Those plants are vital if we’re to have any hope of saving Pendergast.

  She ducked into the alcove and hid in the back, in a deeply shadowed corner. It gave her a shiver to realize this was probably where Marsala’s murderer had also hidden. The guards, as she expected, walked past the alcove roughly every half hour, not even bothering to shine their lights inside. No crime would play out twice in the same spot—they had returned to the status quo ante delicti. From time to time a staff member would also walk past on his or her way out, but as nine o’clock neared the Museum began to feel completely empty. There were, no doubt, some curators still toiling in their labs and offices, but the chance of running into them was small.

  The thought of what she was about to do—where she was going to go—made Margo’s heart hammer in her chest. She was about to descend into the one place that frightened her more than anything; that woke her in the middle of the night, bathed in a cold sweat; that prompted her never to enter the Museum without a bottle of Xanax in her bag. She thought of popping a Xanax then and there, but decided against it; she needed to stay sharp. She took slow, deep breaths, forcing her mind to focus on the small, immediate steps—not on the overall task. She would take it one move at a time.

  Another set of long, deep breaths. Time to go.

  Sneaking out of the alcove just after a guard passed by on his rounds, she crept down the halls to the nearest freight elevator, inserting her passkey into the slot. Even though it was a low-level-access key, Frisby had already sent her an email asking her to return it; but she had only gotten the memo that afternoon and figured she had at least a day’s grace period before the pompous ass made an issue of it.

  The elevator groaned and creaked its way down to what was technically known as Building Six basement storage—an anachronism, considering all the buildings comprising the Museum were now interconnected into a single, maze-like unit. The doors opened. The familiar smell of mothballs, mold, and old dead things lingered in the air. The scent hit her unexpectedly, spiking her anxiety and reminding her of the time she had been stalked through these same corridors.

  But that was a long time ago, and these fears of hers should properly be classified as phobias. There was nothing down here to threaten her now, except perhaps a stray Museum employee demanding to see her ID.

  Taking a few more steadying breaths, she stepped out of the elevator. Opening the door into the Building Six basement, she walked quietly through the long, dim passageways hung with caged lightbulbs, making her way toward the Botany collection.

  So far, so good. She inserted her key into the dented metal door of the main botanical collection and found it still worked. The door opened on smooth hinges. The room beyond was dark and she took out a powerful LED headlamp she’d stashed in her bag, put it on her head, and stepped inside. The dark cabinets stretched out in front of her, vanishing into the darkness, and the stale air smelled of mothballs.

  She paused, her heart thudding so hard in her chest she almost couldn’t breathe, fighting down the surge of irrational fear. Despite everything she’d told herself, the smell, the claustrophobic darkness, and the strange noises once again triggered panic and gulping terror. She stopped to take more calming breaths, overcoming the terror with a strong application of reason.

  One move at a time. Bracing herself, she took a step forward into the darkness, and then another. Now she had to shut the door behind her; it would be unwise to leave it open. She turned and eased it closed, blocking out what little light came in from the hall.

  She relocked the door and peered ahead. The Herbarium Vault lay at the far end of the room. Shelves containing preserved plants in liquid rose up into darkness all around her—the so-called wet collections—as narrow aisles led off in two directions, everything vanishing into murk.r />
  Get going, she told herself. She started down the left-hand aisle. At least these specimens didn’t leer at her out of the darkness like the dinosaur skeletons or stuffed animals did in some of the other storage rooms. Botanical specimens weren’t scary.

  Even so, the monotony of the place, the narrow aisles looking all the same, the gleaming bottles that sometimes looked like so many eyes peering at her from the dark, did little to allay her anxiety.

  She walked swiftly down the aisle, took a hard right, walked some more, took a left and then another right, working her way diagonally to the far corner. Why did they design these storage rooms to be so confusing? But after another moment she halted. She had heard something. The echoing sounds of her footfalls had initially obscured it, but she was sure she’d heard something nonetheless.

  She waited, listening, trying not to breathe. But the only sounds were the faint creaking and clicking noises that never seemed to go away, probably caused by the building settling or the forced air system.

  Her anxiety increased. Which way? The scare had caused her to forget which turn was next in the grid of shelving. If she got disoriented, lost in this labyrinth… Making a quick decision, she went down one aisle until she hit the storage room wall, realized she was indeed going in the right direction, and then followed it to the far corner.

  There it was: the vault. It looked like—and probably was—an old bank vault, converted to a different use. It was painted dark green, with a large wheel and a retrofitted keypad, currently blinking red. With a gasp of relief she hustled over and punched in the number sequence she’d memorized from Jörgensen’s office.

  The keypad light went from red to green. Thank God. She turned the wheel and pulled open the heavy door. Leaning in, she flashed her headlamp around. It was a small space, perhaps eight by ten, with steel shelves covering all three walls. She glanced at the heavy door. No way was she going to shut it and risk being locked in. But she would, at least, partially close it. Just in case someone should come into the storage room—which seemed extremely unlikely.

  She squeezed inside and eased the door shut to the point where it was open only a few inches.

  Forcing down the feeling of panic, remembering to take things one step at a time, Margo turned her attention to the handwritten labels on the drawers, scanning them with her headlamp. They were in various stages of order, some quite ancient, handwritten in faded brown ink, others much newer and laser-printed. In a far corner of the vault, beyond the shelving, she saw a couple of ancient blowpipes—of either Amazonian or Guiana Indian origins, judging by the carved decoration—stacked against the back wall. A small quiver of braided bamboo, containing several darts, hung from one. She wondered what these were doing in here; the payload of most darts came from frogs, not botanicals. She assumed they’d been locked up because of their poisonous nature.

  She returned to scanning the labels, quickly found the drawer marked MYCOHETEROTROPHS, and slid it quietly open. It contained racks of specimens, arranged not unlike a traditional hanging file cabinet. The old dried plant specimens, prepared many years before, were affixed to yellowing paper leaves with spidery script indicating what they were. These, in turn, had been sealed between high-tech glass plates. There weren’t many, and in less than a minute she had found the Thismia americana specimens.

  This was going unbelievably well. If she could keep her fear under control, she’d be out of the building in ten minutes. She realized she was covered with a clammy sweat, and she couldn’t stop her heart from pounding, but her one-step-at-a-time strategy was, at least, keeping her wits about her.

  There were three Thismia plates, one containing several underground rhizomes, another with samples of the aboveground plant, and a final one of the blossoms and seeds.

  Margo recalled Jörgensen’s words. I would never allow the destruction of an extinct plant specimen, the last of its kind, for a one-off medicinal treatment. What is the value of an ordinary human life in the face of the last specimen of an extinct plant in existence? She stared at the plant, with its tiny white flower. She couldn’t agree less with such a misanthropic worldview. Maybe they wouldn’t need all three specimens—but she was taking all of them regardless.

  She slipped them carefully into her bag, zipped it up, and slung it over her shoulder. With an excess of caution, she turned off the headlamp and pushed open the door of the vault. She stepped into the darkness, listening intently. When all seemed silent, she stepped out and, feeling with her hands, shut the vault door, then turned the wheel. It locked automatically, and the green light switched back to red.

  Done! She turned back around and, reaching up, turned on her headlamp.

  The shadowy outline of a man stood there. And then a bright light suddenly flicked on, blinding her.

  D’Agosta stood up from his desk and stretched. His back ached from hours of sitting in the hard wooden chair, and his right ear throbbed from having a phone receiver pressed against it.

  He’d spent hours, it seemed, on the phone with the DA’s office, trying to get a subpoena to have John Barbeaux brought in for questioning. But the DA’s office wouldn’t see it his way and said he hadn’t met probable cause—especially for a guy like Barbeaux, who would immediately lawyer up and make their lives hell.

  The chain of reasoning seemed obvious to D’Agosta: Barbeaux had hired Howard Rudd to pose as the fake Dr. Jonathan Waldron, who had in turn used Victor Marsala in order to get access to the skeleton of the long-dead Mrs. Padgett. Barbeaux needed a bone from that skeleton in order to reverse-engineer the components of Hezekiah Pendergast’s elixir, thus allowing him to resynthesize that elixir and use it on Pendergast. D’Agosta had no doubt that, once Alban was placed on Pendergast’s doorstep and the plot was in motion, Rudd killed Marsala as a way of tying up loose ends—he’d no doubt lured the tech to a remote corner of the Museum, under pretext of payment or some such thing. It seemed equally clear that Barbeaux had then used Rudd as bait to lure Pendergast into the animal handling room at the Salton Fontainebleau—and been gassed with the elixir for his trouble. All in seeking revenge for Hezekiah’s poisoning of Barbeaux’s great-grandparents and the death of his son.

  Although he couldn’t be sure, D’Agosta was fairly confident that Barbeaux had hired Rudd three years ago, paid off his gambling debts, given him a new face and a new identity, and kept him on as an anonymous enforcer he could use for any number of nefarious jobs—keeping him loyal by threatening his family with harm. It made complete sense.

  The DA had dismissed all this with barely concealed contempt, calling it a conspiracy theory of supposition, speculation, and fantasy, and entirely unsupported by hard medical data.

  D’Agosta had then spent a good part of the early evening phoning various botanical experts and pharmaceutical specialists, looking for that medical data. But he quickly understood that there would have to be tests, analyses, blind studies, and so on and so forth, before any conclusions could be drawn.

  There had to be a way to dig up enough evidence to at least get Barbeaux’s ass in his office long enough for Margo and Constance to do their thing.

  Probable cause. Son of a bitch. There must be a piece of evidence out there, somewhere, that he’d overlooked, which would suggest Barbeaux was crooked. Frustrated, he got up from his desk. It was nine o’clock; he needed some fresh air; a walk to clear his head. Shrugging into his jacket, D’Agosta strode to the door, snapped off the lights, then began to make his way down the corridor. After a few steps, he paused. Maybe Pendergast would have some ideas on how to squeeze Barbeaux. But no—the agent would be too weak for that conversation. Pendergast’s condition filled him with anger and a sick feeling of impotence.

  As he exited his office, he paused. The Marsala files were next door: what he really should do is go through them again in case he’d overlooked something. He stepped into the vacant room he was using for overflow storage.

  Turning on the lights, D’Agosta began to survey the stacks of fol
ders piled on the conference table and against the walls. He’d take everything related to Howard Rudd. Maybe Barbeaux had a connection to Gary, Indiana, that he could—

  At that moment D’Agosta went quite still. His roving eye had stopped at the room’s lone garbage can. It contained only one thing: a crumpled-up licorice toffee wrapper.

  Slade’s ubiquitous toffee. What the hell had he been doing in here?

  D’Agosta took a breath, then another. It was only a candy wrapper, and yes, Slade did have access and authority to be in there, looking at these files. D’Agosta wasn’t sure why, but all of a sudden his cop instincts were going off. He looked around again, more carefully this time. Boxes and filing cabinets were stacked against the walls. The files were where he remembered leaving them. Slade should have checked with him, that was true, but maybe Angler didn’t want D’Agosta to know. After all, the guy was obviously not too keen on Pendergast, and D’Agosta was known to be a friend of the agent.

  As he moved to grab the Rudd files, his eye spied a dusting of white plaster on the rug, a spot near the wall that was shared with his own office. D’Agosta approached the wall and moved the boxes away from it. There was a small hole drilled in the wall, just above the baseboard.

  He knelt and peered more closely, let his finger drift over the hole. It was about half a millimeter in diameter. He probed it with an unbent paper clip and found it didn’t go all the way through.

  His gaze went back to the dusting of white plaster. This hole had been made recently.

  A candy wrapper, a recently drilled hole… such things weren’t necessarily connected. But then he recalled how Slade had misfiled the tip on Barbeaux from the Albany police.

  Had it really come from Angler’s desk—or had Slade even shown it to Angler before misfiling it?

  Albany. That was another thing. Hadn’t Slade said Angler was away, visiting relatives upstate?

  He trotted back to his office and, without bothering to turn on the lights, typed his password into the computer and accessed the homicide department’s personnel records. Locating Peter Angler’s file, D’Agosta searched the extensive next-of-kin records all NYPD officers were required to maintain. There it was: his sister, Marjorie Angler, 2007 Rowan Street, Colonie, New York.