Brimstone p-5

by Douglas Preston

  Maybe he's a local, D'Agosta thought. Or a poacher, or something. Great fucking time to be out for a stroll.

  Suddenly, he became aware of the dogs again. They were still baying: a regular, measured sound, as before.

  No more time to waste. The man had turned calmly away from him, uninterested. D'Agosta began descending slowly, waiting for the change in the dogs' cry. He glanced back once and saw the stranger, still motionless, looking intently downslope.

  D'Agosta turned back and continued slowly and carefully down through the forest. Forget him. The important thing now was Pendergast. He would escape. He had to, he had to .

  And then, suddenly, off to his right and below, he heard a single dog barking hysterically, its voice sounding a much higher, more urgent note than before. He paused, listening. Another took up the cry, then a third. In a moment, the whole line had taken it up. D'Agosta could hear them converging on a single spot with a babel of high-pitched barking. Then came the report of a gun, the shriek of a dog. The frenzy increased in pitch. It was a terrifying sound, interrupted by a second shot, then a third. These were followed in turn by the lower boom-boom of an old, heavy-caliber carbine. D'Agosta could see nothing through the dense brush, but he could hear what was happening all too clearly.

  This was his chance. Hugging the machine close to him, D'Agosta ran downhill as hard and fast as he could, leaping, ripping through brambles, stumbling, recovering, running on and on. He broke through a small clearing, and there-far off to his right now-he caught one last glimpse of Pendergast: a lone figure in black, surrounded by a boiling pack of dogs, a dozen or more men converging from two sides and below, each with heavy rifles trained on him. The din was incredible, the frenzied ring of dogs closing in, the bolder ones dashing forward, attempting to tear out chunks of flesh.

  D'Agosta kept running, running-and then he was past the line, the dogs' terrible ravening cry now behind and above him. He kept on going, the nightmarish shrieking of the dogs, the cursing and shouting of the handlers, ringing ever more faintly in his ears. The hunt was over, the quarry cornered-only it wasn't a boar, it was a human being. Pendergast. And he wasn't going to escape: not this time, he wasn't.

  { 83 }

  Buck sat on the cot in his cell at the Manhattan Detention Center, listening and waiting. It was a modern, sterile facility, all white walls and fluorescent lighting, the lights recessed behind caged glass. Despite the fact that it was past midnight, he could hear a lot of noise from the other prisoners, who were banging on the bars, yelling, arguing, demanding lawyers. Some were shouting in unintelligible languages that sounded harsh, almost barbarous.

  He'd been processed, fingerprinted, photographed, showered, given a change of clothes. He'd been fed, given a copy of the Times , been offered a phone to call a lawyer-and told absolutely nothing. It seemed he'd been in the cell forever. Every hour that passed turned the screw another notch. When would it begin? Is this what Christ felt, waiting to be brought before Pontius Pilate? He would have preferred almost anything-beating, torture, abuse-to this interminable wait. And this environment was sterile, suffocating. What was worse, he'd been given a cell to himself. His treatment was almost cruel in its courtesy. He wondered how much longer he could stand these people coming and going with his food: these people who never answered his questions, never looked him in the eye, never said a word.

  He knelt to pray. When would it happen? When would the walls shake, the voices sound on high, the ground open to swallow the unclean? When would the screams of the damned fill the air, the kings and princes run to hide among the rocks, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse appear in the sky? He didn't even have a window to look out of, no way to see anything.

  The suspense was literally killing him.

  Yet another guard appeared: a large black man in a blue uniform, carrying a tray.

  "What's this?" Buck asked, looking up.

  No answer. The man opened the sliding tray in the bars, set it down, slid it in, shut the slot, turned, and walked away.

  "What's happening out there?" Buck cried. "What's-?"

  But the orderly had disappeared.

  Buck rose and sat down again on the bunk. He looked at the food: a bagel with cream cheese and jelly; a chicken breast sitting in some congealed gravy; some grayish green beans and carrots; a dollop of hardening mashed potatoes. The sheer banality of it made him sick.

  Now, above the usual prison sounds, he heard something else: voices, a clang, a sudden burst of shouting from the other prisoners. Buck stood up.

  Was it starting? Was it starting at last?

  Four police officers appeared down the hall, heavily armed, billy clubs swinging from their hips, swaggering in formation. For him: they were coming for him . He felt a tingle of anticipation. Something would happen now. It might be very hard. It would no doubt test him to the utmost. But whatever it was, he would accept it. It was part of God's great plan.

  They halted outside his cell. He stared back at them, waiting. One stepped forward and read from a card clipped to a green folder.

  "Wayne Paul Buck?"

  He nodded, stiffening.

  "You're to come with us."

  "I'm ready," he said, defiantly but with quiet dignity.

  The man unlocked the cell. The others stood back, guns at the ready.

  "Step out, please. Turn around and place your hands behind your back."

  He did as he was told. It was going to be bad, very bad: he could feel it. The cold steel of the cuffs went around his wrists, and there was a click: a portent of things to come.

  "This way, sir."

  Sir. The mocking was beginning.

  They marched him silently down the hall to an elevator, rose a few floors, then down another sterile corridor to a gray metal door. They knocked.

  "Come in," said a feminine voice.

  The door opened, and Buck found himself in a small office with a metal desk, a single window looking out over the nightscape of lower Manhattan. Sitting at the desk was that one, the female cop who had led the centurions in to arrest him.

  He stood proudly before her, unbowed. She was his Pontius Pilate.

  She accepted the folder from the lead cop. "Have you had access to a lawyer?" she asked.

  "I don't need a lawyer. God is my advocate." He noticed, for the first time, how pretty she was-and how young. She had a discreet bandage above her ear, where she had been hit with the rock. He had saved her from death.

  The devil has many faces.

  "As you wish." She rose, pulled her jacket off a hook, slid into it, then nodded to the policemen. "Is the marshal ready?"

  "Yes, Captain."

  "Let's go, then."

  "Where?" Buck asked.

  Her only answer was to lead the way down the hall. They took another elevator down and out through a maze of corridors into the yard, where an unmarked police car sat, idling, gleaming beneath a dozen sodium lamps. A uniformed cop was behind the wheel. A small, heavyset man in gray polyester stood beside the passenger door, hands clasped before him.

  "You can uncuff him," Hayward said to the cops. "Put him in the back, please."

  They uncuffed him, opened the door, eased him in. Meanwhile, Hayward was talking to the man in the suit, giving him the green folder and a clipboard. He signed the clipboard, handed it back to her, got in beside the driver, and slammed the door.

  Now Hayward leaned in at the rear window. "You're probably wondering what's going to happen to you, Mr. Buck."

  Buck felt a rush of emotion. This was it: he was being led away, taken to meet his end, his supreme moment. He was ready.

  "This gentleman is a U.S. marshal, who is going to escort you by plane back to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where you are wanted for parole violation."

  Buck sat there, stunned. This couldn't be. More mockery. It was a trick, a ruse.

  "Did you hear me?"

  Buck did not acknowledge. It had to be a trick.

  "The D.A. decided not to file any charges
against you here in New York-too much trouble. And to tell you the truth, you didn't really do anything all that wrong, outside of exercising your right of free speech in a rather misguided way. We were lucky, avoided a riot, managed to disperse the crowd peacefully once you left. Everyone went home and the area's now fenced. Soon the Parks Department will be giving it a thorough cleaning and reseeding, which it needed anyway. So, you see, no real harm was done, and we felt it better to let the whole incident die a quiet death and be forgotten."

  Buck listened, hardly able to believe his ears.

  "And what about me?" he finally managed to say.

  "Like I said, we're shipping you back to Oklahoma, where there's a parole officer really anxious to talk to you. We don't want you. They had a prior and wanted you back. Nice ending all around."

  She smiled, laid her hand on the side of the car. "Mr. Buck? Are you all right?"

  He didn't answer. He wasn’t all right. He felt sick. This wasn't what was supposed to happen. It was a trick, a vicious trick.

  She leaned in just a little farther. "Mr. Buck? If you don't mind, there's something personal I'd like to say to you."

  He stared at her.

  "First of all, there's only one Jesus and you aren't Him. Another thing: I'm a Christian, and I try to be a good one, although I may not always succeed. You had no right to stand there when I was at the mercy of that crowd, point your finger at me, and pass judgment. You should take a good look at that passage in the Gospel of Matthew: Judge not, that ye be not judged . Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. "

  She paused. "I always liked the King James Version the best. Now, listen. You worry about yourself from now on, being a good citizen, keeping out of trouble, and obeying the law."

  "But . You don't realize . It's going to happen. I warn you, it's coming." Buck could barely articulate the words.

  "If there's a Second Coming in the works, you sure as heck won't get advance notice-that much I do know."

  With that, she smiled, patted the side of the car, and said, "Farewell, Mr. Buck. Keep your nose clean."

  { 84 }

  In the elegantly appointed dining room within the main massing of the Castello Fosco, the count waited, quite patiently, for his dinner. The walls of the fifteenth-century villa were extremely thick, and there was no sound at all save the faint mechanical whirring of Bucephalus from a white T-stand nearby, applying his artificial beak to an artificial nut. The stately windows of the room looked out over a spectacular landscape: the hills of Chianti, the deep valley of the Greve. But Fosco was content to sit in his heavy oak chair at one end of the long table, reviewing-with delicious tranquillity-the events of the day.

  His reverie was broken by the shuffle of feet in the passageway. A moment later his cook, Assunta, appeared, bearing a large serving tray. Placing it at the far end of the table, she presented the dishes to him one by one; a simple maltagliati ai porcini ; oxtail, servedalla vaccinara ;fegatini grilled over the fire; a contorno of fennel braised in olive oil. It was the simple, homely fare his cook excelled at and Fosco preferred while in the country. And if Assunta's presentation lacked the polish and subtlety of Pinketts-that, alas, could not be helped.

  He thanked her, pouring himself a glass of the estate's exceptional Chianti Classico as she left the room. And then he applied himself to his dinner with relish. Although he felt famished, he ate slowly, savoring every bite, every mouthful of wine.

  At last, meal complete, he rang a small silver bell that lay near his right hand. Assunta reappeared.

  "Grazie," he said, dabbing the corners of his mouth with a huge linen napkin.

  Assunta curtsied a little awkwardly.

  The count rose. "Once you have cleared away, you may take a few days off."

  The cook glanced at him inquiringly without raising her head.

  "Per favore, signora. It has been months since you visited your son in Pontremoli."

  The curtsy deepened. “Mille grazie."

  "Prego. Buona sera.” And the count turned lightly on his heel and left the dining room.

  Once the cook had departed, the castle would be empty of servants. His men had done their work and departed. Even the groundskeepers had been given a few days' absence. Only Giuseppe, the ancient dogmaster, remained on the estate: as it happened, he could not be spared.

  It was not that Fosco distrusted his retainers: they all had ancient ties to his family, some going back as far as eight hundred years, and their loyalty was without question. It was simply that he wanted to finish this business undisturbed.

  He moved slowly and purposefully through the huge rooms of the castle: the alone ; the hall of portraits; the hall of armor. His stroll took him back through time: first, through the older, thirteenth-century additions, then into still older chambers, built half a millennium earlier. Here there was no electricity, no modern conveniences such as plumbing or central heating. The warren of small, windowless rooms grew dark and oppressive, and Fosco stopped to pull a torch from a wall sconce and light it. Turning to an ancient worktable nearby, he picked up something else and tucked it into his waistcoat. Then he took a side passage and continued on and down: down into a subterranean warren of tunnels cut into the living rock.

  Many of the extensive basements of the Castello Fosco were taken up with the production of the estate. A great many rooms were devoted to winemaking: filled with bottling machinery and fermentation vats, or with countless small barrels of French oak. Others were given over to the aging of boar hams: deep, cool spaces from whose ceilings hung countless hams, still covered in coarse fur. Still others were used for storing olive oil or making balsamico . But here-far beneath the bulk of the castle's stronghold-there were no such large and well-ventilated spaces. Narrow vaults dug deeply into the beetling cliff face of limestone, and stairs corkscrewed down toward old wells and chambers unused for half a millennium.

  It was one of these staircases that Fosco now descended. The air was chill, the walls slick with damp. The count slowed further: the hand-cut steps were slippery, and if he fell there would be nobody to hear his cries.

  At last, the staircase ended in a labyrinth of narrow vaults, lined in ancient brick. Niches were cut into the walls, and each contained a skeleton: some long-deceased family member or-more likely, given the sheer number-fallen allies from wars fought a millennium ago. The air was bad here, and Fosco's torch guttered as he threaded his complex path.

  As he penetrated deeper into the maze, the ancient walls grew more uneven. He passed several places where they had fallen away from the rock, leaving heaps of scattered bricks. Skeletons lay in thick profusion, as if dumped and abandoned where they lay, the bones chewed and scattered by rats.

  The vault finally ended in a cul-de-sac. The darkness here was so thick, so complete, that Fosco's torch barely penetrated. He took another step forward, waved the torch in a cautious arc into the last recess ahead of him.

  The guttering flame revealed the figure of Agent Pendergast, head lolled forward onto his chest. His face was scratched and bleeding in a dozen places. His normally immaculate black suit was shredded and dirty, the jacket lying in a heap at his feet. His hand-tailored English shoes were covered in thick Tuscan mud. He appeared unconscious and would have sunk to the ground before Fosco if not for the heavy chain bound tightly across his chest. This was fixed to an iron staple set into the limestone wall, and was padlocked to a second iron staple on Pendergast's far side. His wrists hung limply at his sides, secured by additional lengths of chain fixed to the rear wall of the niche.

  Fosco's first sweep of the torch had been a careful one. He had learned, even now, not to underestimate his opponent. But Pendergast was clearly immobilized, helpless. Emboldened, the count brought the torch forward again.

  As the light of the torch crossed his face, Pendergast stirred. His eyes fluttered open.

  Instantly, Fosco stepped back. "A
gent Pendergast?" he crooned. "Aloysius? Are we awake?"

  Pendergast did not answer, but his eyes remained open. He moved his limbs weakly, flexed his manacled hands.

  "Please forgive me, but I'm afraid the restraints are necessary. As you shall soon understand."

  When there was no response, the count continued. "You no doubt feel weak, barely able to stir. And you may be experiencing a certain degree of amnesia. Phenobarbital does have that effect at times: it seemed the easiest way to return you to the castle without undue exertions. So allow me to refresh your memory. You and the good sergeant D'Agosta grew tired of my hospitality and desired to leave. I, naturally, took objection. There was a nasty struggle, I'm afraid, in which my beloved Pinketts perished. You had deposited some paperwork I was obliged to reclaim. Then came your escape attempt. Sergeant D'Agosta made good his escape, I fear. But the important thing is that you’re back, my dear Agent Pendergast: back safely again in the bosom of Castel Fosco! And I insist you remain here, as my guest. No, really-I'll hear no objection."

  Fosco placed the torch carefully into an iron wall mounting. "I beg your pardon for the scant accommodation. Still, these chambers are not without their natural charm. You'll notice the white webwork that gleams from the cavern walls? It's nitre, my dear Pendergast-you of all people should appreciate the literary allusion. And thus understand what is to follow."

  And to underscore this, the count slipped his hand into his waistcoat and slowly withdrew a trowel.

  Staring at it, Pendergast's dull, drug-heavy eyes gleamed briefly.

  "Aha!" the count cried, pleased. "It is not lost on you! Let us then proceed with all haste." And turning to one side, he swept away a heap of tumbled bones, revealing a large quantity of freshly slaked mortar.

  Using the trowel, he laid a thick line of mortar along the front lip of the recess. Then he moved to one of the piles of collapsed brick and, two at a time, brought the bricks back to the niche, laying them carefully in a line atop the mortar. Within a few minutes, the first course of bricks was in place and Fosco was troweling another layer of mortar along its top.