Blue Labyrinth

by Douglas Preston

“I do believe you’re trapped.”

  She cast about, but there was no way to go. He was right: she really was trapped.

  Gasping, heart hammering, Margo saw Slade’s shadow against the far wall of the cul-de-sac—black against red in the emergency lighting—creep forward as he approached the corner. And then she saw the blowpipe appear, bobbing slightly, inching forward. Next, Slade’s head and hands came into view. He was moving cautiously, blowpipe to his lips, taking his time, aiming carefully, preparing to fire another dart.

  He wasn’t going to chance missing her again.

  Barbeaux led the way, Shaved Head pushing Constance along before him. They passed through the Bonsai Museum and into the far wing of the Palm House, still decorated for a wedding but now looking a little the worse for wear. Four men stood around a figure seated at the table reserved for the bride and groom. A single candle had been placed on it, casting a dim illumination that barely penetrated the murk.

  Constance faltered when she saw Pendergast slumped in the chair, handcuffed, his face smeared with dirt, his suit awry. Even his eyes had lost their luster. For an instant, those slitted, leaden eyes flickered toward her, and Constance was horrified by their look of hopelessness.

  “Well, what a surprise,” said Barbeaux. “Unexpected, but not unwelcome. In fact, I couldn’t have planned it better myself. Not only have you delivered into my hands your pretty little ward—but also your own very ill person.”

  He contemplated Pendergast for a moment with a cold smile, and then turned to two of the men. “Stand him up. I want him attentive.”

  They pulled Pendergast to his feet. He was so weak he could barely stand; they had to support him, his knees buckling. Constance could hardly bear to look at him. It was she who had drawn him here after her.

  “I was planning to pay you a visit at the end,” Barbeaux said, “so you’d know who did this to you, and why. And…” Barbeaux smiled again, “especially how the idea for this little scheme originated.”

  Pendergast’s head lolled to one side, and Barbeaux turned to his men. “Wake him up.”

  One of the men, with a neck so covered in tattoos it was almost completely blue, stepped forward and delivered a stunning, open-handed blow to the side of Pendergast’s head.

  Constance stared at Tattoo. “You will be the first to die,” she said quietly.

  The man looked over at her, his lip curling in derision, his eyes wandering lasciviously over her body. He issued a short laugh, then reached out and grasped her hair, pulling her toward him. “What, you gonna take me out with that M16 hidden under your teddy?”

  “That’s enough,” said Barbeaux sharply.

  Tattoo backed off with a smirk.

  Barbeaux returned his attention to Pendergast. “I suspect you already know the broad outlines of why I poisoned you. And you surely appreciate its poetic justice. Our families were neighbors in New Orleans. My great-grandfather went shooting with your great-great-grandfather, Hezekiah, up at his plantation, while he had Hezekiah and his wife to dinner several times. In return, Hezekiah poisoned my great-grandparents with his so-called elixir. They died hellish deaths. But it didn’t end there. My great-grandmother took the elixir while pregnant and gave birth before she succumbed to the effects. But as a result, the elixir caused epigenetic changes to her bloodline, to our family DNA, casting a blight across the generations. Of course, nobody knew it at the time. But now and again, another family member would die. The doctors were stumped. My ancestors whisperingly called it the ‘Family Affliction.’ But then it spared my father’s generation. And mine. I believed the Family Affliction had burned itself out.”

  He paused. “How wrong I was. My son was the next victim. He died—slowly and horribly. Again, the doctors were baffled. Again, they said it was some inherited flaw in our genes.”

  Barbeaux paused, staring calculatingly at Pendergast.

  “He was my only son. My wife was already gone. I was left alone in my grief.”

  A deep breath. “And then I received a visit. From your son. Alban.”

  At this, Barbeaux turned and began pacing, slowly at first, his voice low and tremulous.

  “Alban found me. He opened my eyes to the evil your family had perpetrated on mine. He pointed out that the Pendergast family fortune was largely founded on the blood money from Hezekiah’s elixir. Your lavish lifestyle—the apartment in the Dakota, a mansion on Riverside Drive, your chauffeured Rolls-Royce, your servants—is based on the suffering of others. He was sickened by your hypocrisy: pretending to bring justice to the world, while all the time being the very image of injustice.”

  During this speech, Barbeaux’s voice had grown louder, and now he halted, face flushed, the blood pulsing visibly in his thick neck. “Your son told me how much he hated you. My God, what a splendid hatred that was! He came to me with a plan of justice. What were his words for it? Delectably appropriate.”

  He resumed pacing, faster this time.

  “I don’t need to tell you how much time and money it took to put my plan into action. The greatest challenge was piecing together the original formula of the elixir. Conveniently, there was a skeleton of a woman murdered by the elixir in the New York Museum’s collection, and I obtained a bone from it, which provided my scientists with the final chemical formulae. But you know all about that, of course.

  “And then there came the challenge of devising and setting the trap out at the Salton Sea—a location Alban had discovered on his own. It was important to me that you suffered the same fate as my son and the others in my family. Alban had anticipated that. And I would never have succeeded had not Alban—before he left me that special evening—warned me in the strongest terms not to underestimate you. Wise counsel indeed. Of course, at the time he warned me against something else, as well: not to send my men after him. Then he left.”

  Barbeaux halted and leaned toward Pendergast. The agent returned the look, his eyes like glassy slits in his pale face. Blood trickled from his nose, almost purple against the alabaster skin.

  “And then, something remarkable happened. Almost a year later, just as my plan was reaching maturity, Alban returned. It seems he’d had a change of heart. In any case, he tried at length to talk me out of my vengeance, and, when I refused, he left in anger.”

  He took a deep, shuddering breath. “I knew he wouldn’t leave it there. I knew he would try to kill me. He might have succeeded, too… if I hadn’t had those security tapes recording his initial visit. Despite Alban’s warning, you see, I’d had my men try to stop him from leaving. But he’d bested them most effectively—and most violently. I watched those fascinating tapes of him in action, over and over again… and in time I figured out the only possible way he’d been able to do the seemingly impossible. He had a kind of sixth sense, didn’t he? An ability to envision what was about to happen.” Barbeaux looked at Pendergast to gauge the effect his words were having. “Isn’t that right? I suppose we all have it to some degree: a primitive, intuitive sense of what’s just about to happen. Only in Alban, this sense was more refined. He’d told me, arrogantly, of his ‘remarkable powers.’ By examining the security tapes frame by frame, I determined your son had the uncanny ability to anticipate events; to, in a sense, almost see a few seconds into the future. Not in an absolute way, you understand, but to see the possibilities. Again, no doubt you know all this.”

  Barbeaux’s pacing quickened further. He was like a man possessed.

  “I won’t go into all the sordid details of how I bested him. Suffice to say, I turned his own power against him. He was cocky. He had no sense of his vulnerability. And I think he’d grown a little soft between our first meeting and our second. I set up the most elaborate and meticulous plan of attack, briefed my men on it. All was in place. We lured Alban in with the promise of another meeting—one of reconciliation this time. He arrived, knowing all, feeling invincible, certain the meeting was a sham—and I spontaneously strangled him with a shoelace, on the spot. It was a sudden im
provisation, with no malice aforethought. I had deliberately avoided thinking about when and how I would actually kill him. As such, it short-circuited his extraordinary ability to anticipate. By the way, the look of astonishment on his face was priceless.”

  He rumbled a laugh, turned.

  “And that was the greatest irony of all. I’d been racking my brains about how to lure you—the most suspicious and circumspect of people—into my trap. In the end, it was Alban himself who provided the bait. I put his own corpse into my service. I was out there, by the way, at the Salton Fontainebleau. If you only knew how much time, money, and effort it cost to stage that—right down to the cobwebs, the untouched dust, the rust on the doors. But it was worth it—because that was the cost of fooling you, luring you in. Watching you sneak in like that, thinking you’d gotten the upper hand—I’d have paid ten times as much to witness that! You see, it was I who pressed the button, released the elixir, poisoned you. And now, here we are.”

  His face broke into another smile as he swung around again. “One other thing. It seems you have another son at school in Switzerland. Tristram, I believe. After you’re gone, I’ll pay him a little visit. I’m going to scrub the world clean of the Pendergast stain.”

  Now Barbeaux halted, planting himself in front of Pendergast, massive jaw thrust forward. “Have you anything to say?”

  For a moment, Pendergast was silent. Then he said something in a low, indistinct voice.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m…” Pendergast halted, unable to muster the breath to continue.

  Barbeaux gave Pendergast a short, brutal slap. “You’re what? Say it!”

  “… Sorry.”

  Barbeaux stepped back, surprised.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to your son… for your loss.”

  “Sorry?” Barbeaux managed to say. “You’re sorry? That doesn’t begin to cut it.”

  “I… accept the death that is coming.”

  Hearing this, Constance froze. An electric silence descended among the group. Barbeaux, clearly astonished, seemed to struggle to recover the momentum of his anger. And in the temporary silence, Pendergast’s silvery eye flickered toward Constance—for no more than an instant—and in that momentary look she sensed a message was being sent. But what?

  “Sorry…”

  Constance could feel, ever so slightly, the slackening of Shaved Head’s grip on her arms. He, like everyone else, had been intent on the drama unfolding between Barbeaux and Pendergast.

  Suddenly Pendergast collapsed, going limp and dropping like a bag of cement toward the floor. The two men on either side jumped to catch his arms, but they were taken by surprise and thrown off balance as they tried to pull him back to his feet.

  And in that instant, Constance knew her moment had come. With sudden violence she twisted free of Shaved Head and leapt into the darkness.

  Slade held the blowpipe steady. His eyes narrowed slightly as he aimed.

  In a sudden moment of desperation, Margo lunged forward, grabbed the end of the blowpipe, and gave a mighty puff of air into it. With a strangled cry Slade dropped the weapon and staggered back, hands at his throat, coughing and choking. As he spat out the two-inch dart, Margo ran past him, out of the cul-de-sac and into the maze of shelving in the storage room.

  “Fucking hell!” He ran after her, voice strangled. A moment later she heard gunshots ring out, the rounds ricocheting off the concrete walls in front of her with jets of pulverized dust. The gun was incredibly loud in the enclosed space. He had abandoned all caution.

  She sprinted back into the room full of whale eyeballs and paused for a second. Slade had cut off the main route out of the basement. The back exit was past a warren of rooms, many of them probably locked. On impulse, she veered off, chose one of the room’s other exits, and pulled its door open. As she did so, Slade came into view, swaying slightly in the faint light, then dropping awkwardly into firing position. Had the business end of the dart poisoned him? He looked stricken.

  She flung herself sideways as a fusillade of bullets riddled the door. Running through the doorway and down the corridor beyond, she glanced into the offices and storage rooms passing to her left and right, hoping to discover some way to shake him—but the effort was useless as all the rooms were dead ends. Her only hope now was that security had heard the gunshots and would come to investigate, find the jammed door, and break it down.

  But even that would take time. She wasn’t going to escape the basement. She had to defeat him somehow—or at least keep him at bay long enough for help to arrive.

  The corridor ended in a T-intersection and she turned left, Slade’s feet pounding loudly behind her. As she made the turn, she glimpsed back and saw him halt, fumbling more rounds into the magazine of his gun.

  The main dinosaur lab, she knew, lay just ahead: it was large, with many possible places to hide. And it would have an inter-Museum phone that would allow her to call for help.

  She reached the lab door—closed—jammed her key into the lock, and turned it, mumbling a prayer. It opened. She darted in, then slammed and locked the door behind her.

  She palmed on the lights to orient herself. At least a dozen worktables were arrayed around the huge room, containing fossils in various stages of restoration or curation. In the center of the room, two huge dinosaur skeletons in the midst of assembly reared up: a famous “dueling dinosaurs” fossil set that, in a highly publicized coup, the Museum had recently acquired—a triceratops and a T. rex, locked in a death embrace.

  She heard pounding on the door, shouting, and then shots being fired through the lock. She cast about but could see no phone. There had to be one somewhere. Or another exit, at least.

  But she could see nothing. There was no phone, no other exit. And the multitude of hiding places she’d hoped for were not to be found.

  So much for her plan.

  A fusillade of shots punched the lock partway through the door. Slade was going to be inside the lab at any moment. And as soon as he was through, she’d be dead.

  She heard him scream in rage… or was it pain? Was the poison working?

  The two huge skeletons loomed above her like a grotesque jungle gym. Instinctually, she rushed up to the triceratops, grasped a rib, and began clambering, climbing hand over hand. The mount was far from complete, and the entire setup shivered and shook as she climbed. Her scramble dislodged smaller bones, which fell crashing to the floor. This was crazy; she’d be trapped up there, a sitting duck. But some instinct told her to keep climbing.

  Gripping a spinal process, she pulled herself onto the backbone of the triceratops. Another series of shots punched the lock cylinder out entirely, sending it skidding across the floor. She could hear Slade heaving himself against the door, the metal plate that held the lock rattling, its bolts springing out. Another heave against the door and the plate sprang off.

  Scrambling in desperation, Margo vaulted from one dinosaur skeleton to the other, climbing onto the higher, steeper backbone of the T. rex. Its massive head, the size of a small vehicle and studded with huge teeth, was not yet fully braced and welded into place with iron, and it shook and wobbled terrifyingly.

  As she reached it, she saw that it was actually cradled in a metal understructure. Most of the bolt holes that had been drilled into the frame were still empty—no wonder it was shaking so precariously.

  She swung her body around and, with her back to a metal girder, braced her feet against the side of the skull. There was always the possibility he might not see her up here.

  A final heave on the door and it sprang open with a thud. Slade staggered in. He waved the gun about wildly, his steps uneven, drunken. He swiveled this way and that, and then looked up.

  “There you are! Treed like a cat!” He took a few shaky steps and positioned himself underneath her, raising the gun with both hands, taking careful aim.

  He looked like he had been poisoned—but not poisoned enough.

  She gave a great
heave with both feet, rocking the skull out of its cradle. It swayed up and paused at the edge for a moment, then toppled over and came down, crashing through the rib cage of the triceratops. She had a momentary glimpse of Slade, frozen like a deer in a car’s headlights, before the huge mass of petrified bones came down on him, knocking him to the ground. A second later the top part of the tyrannosaur skull landed on him, teeth first, with a sickening wet thud.

  Margo clung precariously to the shuddering metal frame as more bones unraveled from the mount and fell clattering and tinkling to the floor. She waited, gasping for breath, until the violent rocking of the mount had settled. With infinite care, muscles trembling, she climbed down.

  Slade was on the floor, arms flung wide, his eyes bugged open. The upper part of the T. rex skull had impaled him with its teeth. It was a horrifying sight. She stumbled backward, away from the carnage. As she did so, she remembered her bag. It had been instinctively clenched tight to her body throughout the ordeal. Now she unzipped it and looked inside. The glass plates holding the plant specimens were shattered.

  She stared at the various dried plant remains, mingled with broken glass at the bottom of the bag. Oh Jesus. Will this suffice?

  She heard a sharp voice and turned. Lieutenant D’Agosta stood in the doorway, two guards behind him, staring at the scene of carnage. “Margo?” he said. “What the hell?”

  “Thank God you’re here,” she choked out.

  He continued to stare, his eyes moving from her to the body on the floor. “Slade,” he said. It wasn’t phrased as a question.

  “Yes. He was trying to kill me.”

  “The son of a bitch.”

  “He said something about getting a better offer. What the hell was going on?”

  D’Agosta nodded grimly. “Working for Barbeaux. Slade listened in on our conversation in my office this afternoon.” He looked around. “Where’s Constance?”

  Margo stared at him. “Not here.” She hesitated. “She went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.”