The Wheel of Darkness

by Douglas Preston

  “The man had something to sell?”

  Morin paused. “You’re not working with this . . . individual, are you?”

  “No. I’m looking for him. And the object he stole.”

  “I sent him and his object away.”

  “When did he come?”

  Morin rose, consulted a large daybook. “Two days ago, at two o’clock. He had a box with him. He said he’d heard I was a dealer in Tibetan antiquities.”

  “Was he selling it?”

  “No. It was the strangest thing. He wouldn’t even open the box. He called it an Agozyen, which is a term I’d never heard of—and I know as much about Tibetan art as anyone alive. I would have thrown him out immediately, except that the box was real, and very, very old—quite a prize in and of itself, covered with an archaic Tibetan script that dated it to the tenth century or before. I would have liked to have that box, and I was very curious about what was inside it. But he wasn’t a seller. He wanted to go into some kind of partnership with me. He needed financing, he said. To create some kind of bizarre traveling exhibit of the item in the box, which he claimed would astound the world. I think transfigure was the word he used. But he absolutely refused to show the item until I met his terms. Naturally, I found the whole proposition absurd.”

  “How did you respond?”

  “I tried to talk him into opening the box. You should have seen him. He began to frighten me, Mr. Pendergast. He was a madman.”

  Pendergast nodded. “How so?”

  “He laughed maniacally and said I was missing the opportunity of a lifetime. He said he would take it to London, where he knew a collector.”

  “The opportunity of a lifetime? Do you know what he meant by that?”

  “He babbled some nonsense about changing the world. Pazzesco.”

  “Do you know which collector he planned to go to in London?”

  “He didn’t mention a name. But I know most of them.” He scribbled on a piece of paper, handed it to Pendergast. “Here are a few names to start with.”

  “Why did he come to you?” Pendergast asked.

  Morin spread his hands. “Why did you come to me, Mr. Pendergast? I am the premier dealer in Asian antiquities in Italy.”

  “Yes, it’s true; no one has better pieces than you do—because no one is less scrupulous.”

  “There’s your answer,” Morin said, not without a touch of pride.

  The door chimes rang insistently, repeatedly, and there was a banging sound. “Polizia!” came a muffled voice.

  “Lavinia?” Morin called. “Please send the police away with my thanks. The undesirable has been taken care of.” He turned back to Pendergast. “Have I satisfied your curiosity?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “I trust those documents in your briefcase won’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  Pendergast flipped the briefcase up and opened it. Out spilled a number of old newspapers.

  Morin looked at him, his face reddening, and then a sudden smile broke out. “You are as unscrupulous as I am.”

  “One fights fire with fire.”

  “You made all that up, didn’t you?”

  Pendergast snapped the briefcase shut. “Yes—except for my comment on that Vishnu with Consorts. But I’m sure you will find some rich businessman who will buy it and enjoy it, and be none the wiser.”

  “Thank you. I intend to.” Then he stood and ushered Pendergast toward the door.

  8

  A RECENT RAIN HAD SLICKED THE STREETS OF CROYDON, A GRIM commercial suburb on the southern fringes of London. It was two o’clock in the morning, and Aloysius Pendergast stood on the corner of Cairo New Road and Tamworth. Cars rushed along the A23 and a train flashed past on the London-to-Southampton railway. An ugly, seventies-era hotel rose up at the corner of the block, its poured-cement façade streaked with soot and damp. Pendergast adjusted his hat and tightened his Burberry around his neck, tucked his Chapman game bag under his arm, and then approached the glass entry doors of the hotel. The doors were locked and he pressed a buzzer. A moment later an answering buzz unlocked the door.

  He entered a brightly lit lobby smelling of onions and cigarette smoke. Stained polyester carpeting in blue and gold covered the floor, and the walls were encased in a waterproof-finished textured gold wallpaper. A Muzak version of “Strawberry Fields Forever” drifted through the lobby. At one end, a clerk with long hair, mashed a bit on one side of his skull, waited sullenly for him at the reception desk.

  “A room, please.” Pendergast kept his collars turned up and stood in a way that blocked most of his face. He spoke in a gruff voice with a Midlands accent.

  “Name?”

  “Crowther.”

  The clerk shoved a card over to Pendergast, who filled it in with a false name and address.

  “Mode of payment?”

  Pendergast took a sheaf of pound notes from his pocket and paid in cash.

  The man gave him a swift glance. “Luggage?”

  “Bloody airline misplaced it.”

  The clerk handed him a card key and disappeared into the back, no doubt to go back to sleep. Pendergast took his card key and went to the bank of elevators.

  He took the elevator to his floor—the fourth—but did not get off. After the doors closed again, he remained on the elevator while it waited at the floor. He opened his bag, took out a small magnetic card-reading device, swiped his card through it, and studied the readout that appeared on the small LCD screen. After a moment he punched in some other numbers, slowly repassed the card through the reader, and tucked the device back into his bag. Then he pressed the button for the seventh floor and waited while the car rose.

  The doors rolled back on a hall that was brightly lit with fluorescent tubes. It was empty, the same blue-and-gold rug stretching the length of the building, doors lining both walls. Pendergast exited the elevator, walked quickly to room 714, then paused to listen. It was quiet within, the lights out.

  He inserted his key card, and the door snapped ajar with a little trill and a green light. He slowly eased it open and stepped inside, quickly shutting it behind him.

  With any luck, he would simply locate the box and steal away without waking the inhabitant. But he was uneasy. He had done a bit of research into Jordan Ambrose. The man came from an upper-middle-class family in Boulder, Colorado; he was an expert snowboarder, climber, and mountain bike rider who had dropped out of college to climb the Seven Summits. It was an accomplishment claimed by only two hundred people in the world, summiting the highest peak on each of the seven continents, and it took him four years. After that, he had become a highly paid professional mountaineer, guiding trips to Everest, K2, and the Three Sisters. During the winter he made money doing extreme snowboarding stunts for videos and also collected money from endorsements. The expedition to Dhaulagiri had been a well-organized and financed attempt to scale the unclimbed west face of the mountain, one of the last epic climbs left in the world, a staggering twelve-thousand-foot sheer face of rotten rock and ice swept by avalanches, high winds, and temperature swings from day to night of fifty to sixty degrees. Thirty-two climbers had already died in the attempt, and Ambrose’s group would add five more fatalities to the list. They hadn’t even made it halfway up.

  That Ambrose had survived was extraordinary. That he had made it to the monastery was nothing short of miraculous.

  And then, everything he had done since the monastery had been out of character—beginning with the theft. Jordan Ambrose didn’t need money, and up to this point had shown little interest in it. He wasn’t a collector. He had no interest in Buddhism or any kind of spiritual seeking. He had been an honest and highly intelligent man. He had always been focused—one might say obsessed—with climbing.

  Why had he stolen the Agozyen? Why had he carted it all over Europe, not looking to sell it, but trying to arrange for some kind of partnership? What was the purpose of this “partnership” he sought? Why had he refused to show it to anyone? And wh
y had he made no effort to contact the families of the five dead climbers—who were all close friends of his—something utterly at variance with the climbing ethic?

  Everything Jordan Ambrose had done since the monastery had been completely out of character. And this concerned Pendergast deeply.

  He stepped past the foyer, took a dogleg, and entered the darkened room. The rusty-iron smell of blood hit him immediately and he could see, in the harsh light of the motorway that filtered through the curtains, a body splayed on the floor.

  Pendergast felt a swell of dismay and annoyance. The simple resolution he had hoped for was not to be.

  Keeping his raincoat tight about him and his hat on his head, he reached out and turned on a light with a gloved hand.

  It was Jordan Ambrose.

  Pendergast’s dismay increased when he saw the condition of the body. It lay on its back, arms thrown wide, mouth open, blue eyes staring at the ceiling. A small bullet hole in the center of the forehead, with powder burns and tattooing, indicated the man had been executed at point-blank range with a .22. There was no exit wound: the .22 had rattled around inside the skull, no doubt killing Ambrose instantly. But it appeared the murderer had not been content merely to kill—he had indulged himself in an utterly gratuitous orgy of knife play with the victim’s corpse, cutting, stabbing, and slicing. It did not bespeak a normal mind, or even an average killer.

  Pendergast quickly searched the room and determined the Agozyen was gone.

  He went back to the body. The clothes had been badly cut up in the brutal postmortem knife work, but several partially turned-out pockets indicated the killer had searched the body before going into a bloody frenzy. Careful to touch the corpse as little as possible, Pendergast slipped the man’s wallet out of his back pocket and looked through it. It was full of cash—Ambrose had not been robbed of his money. Rather, Pendergast guessed, the man had been searched to make sure he had not written anything down about the fateful appointment.

  He slipped the wallet into his game bag. Then he stood back and examined the room again, taking in everything. He noted the bloodstains, the marks in the carpet and on the bed, splashed across the suitcase.

  Ambrose was well dressed, in a suit and tie, as if expecting a visitor of some importance. The room was neat, the bed carefully made, the toiletries arranged in the bathroom. A new bottle of scotch and two nearly full glasses stood on a table. Pendergast examined the sweating on the sides of the glasses, dipped in a finger and tasted the liquor, estimating the amount of ice that had been present and had subsequently melted. Based on the dilution of the whisky and the temperature of the glasses, he estimated that the drinks had been poured four or five hours before. The glasses had been wiped clean—no fingerprints.

  Once again he was struck by the bizarre dichotomy of the killer’s actions.

  He placed his bag on the bed, extracted some test tubes and tweezers, knelt, and took samples of blood, fibers, and hair. He did the same in the bathroom, on the off-chance the visitor had used it. But the visitor appeared to have been careful, and a cheap, perfunctorily cleaned hotel room was one of the worst places to conduct forensic evidence gathering. Nevertheless, he did a thorough job, dusting the doorknobs and other surfaces for prints—even underneath the Formica table—only to find that every surface had been meticulously wiped clean. A damp spot in the corner near the door indicated an individual had placed an umbrella there, which had dripped water, and then retrieved it.

  The rain had started at nine and stopped by eleven.

  Pendergast knelt again at the body, slipped his hand inside the suit, and felt the temperature of the skin. Based on body temperature, the evidence of the drinks, and the timing of the rain shower, death had taken place around ten o’clock.

  Carefully, Pendergast rolled the body over. The carpet underneath was marked by cuts where the knife had gone clear through the body into the floor. Taking his own knife, he cut out a square of carpet, peeled it up, and examined the marks in the plywood subfloor, probing into them with the tip of his knife. They were remarkably deep.

  Pendergast retreated to the door, then gave the room a final look over. There was nothing more to see. The general outlines of what had happened were now plain: the killer had arrived for an appointment around ten; he’d placed his wet umbrella in the corner and his wet raincoat over a chair; Ambrose had poured out two scotches from a bottle he had purchased for the occasion; the man had taken out a .22 Magnum, pressed it to Ambrose’s head, and fired a bullet into his brain. Next, he had searched the body and the room; then savagely and senselessly stabbed and cut up the corpse—and then, still apparently calm, had wiped down the room, taken the Agozyen, and left.

  Behavior well outside the bell curve of most murderers.

  The hotel wouldn’t discover the corpse until checkout time or later. Pendergast had plenty of time to get far away.

  He turned off the light, exited the room, and took the elevator to the lobby. He went to the desk and gave the bell a pair of sharp rings. After a long wait, the clerk came slouching out of the back, his hair mashed even further.

  “Problem?” he asked.

  “I’m a friend of Jordan Ambrose, registered in room 714.”

  The clerk scratched his skinny ribs through his shirt. “So?”

  “He had a visitor about ten this evening. Do you recall him?”

  “I’m not likely to forget that,” said the clerk. “Man came in around ten, said he had an appointment with the gentleman in 714.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Had a bloody patch over one eye, along with some bandages. Wore a cap and raincoat, it was tiddling down outside. Didn’t get a closer look and didn’t want to.”

  “Height?”

  “Oh, about average.”

  “Voice?”

  The man shrugged. “American, I think. Kind of high. Soft-spoken. Didn’t say much.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Didn’t see him go. Was in the back doing paperwork.”

  “He didn’t ask you to call him a cab?”

  “No.”

  “Describe what he was wearing.”

  “Raincoat, like yours. Didn’t see what he had on his feet.”

  “Did he come by car or cab?”

  The clerk shrugged and scratched again.

  “Thank you,” Pendergast said. “I’ll be going out for a few hours. Call me a cab from your standard pool, please.”

  The clerk made a call. “Just buzz when you return,” he said over his shoulder, as he went back to his “paperwork.”

  Pendergast stood outside. In about five minutes, a cab came. He got in.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  Pendergast took out a hundred-pound note. “Nowhere yet. Can I ask you a few questions?”

  “You a copper?”

  “No. Private detective.”

  “A regular Sherlock, eh?” The cabbie turned, his red, bloodshot face lighting up with excitement and pleasure. He took the note. “Thanks.”

  “A man left here about a quarter past ten or half past ten this evening, most likely in one of your cabs. I need to locate the driver.”

  “Right.” He plucked his radio off the dash, spoke into it. The exchange went on for a few minutes, and then he pressed a button and handed the mike back to Pendergast. “Got your bloke on the line.”

  Pendergast took the mike. “You’re the man who picked up a fare in front of the Buckinghamshire Gardens Hotel this evening about ten-twenty?”

  “I’m your man,” came the raspy voice, in a heavy Cockney accent.

  “Where are you? Can I meet you?”

  “I’m driving back from Southampton on the M3.”

  “I see. Can you describe your fare for me?”

  “To tell the truth, guv, your man ’ad an eye that warn’t too lovely. A patch over it, oozing blood like, didn’t want to take too close a butcher’s, if you get my meaning.”

  “Was he carrying anything
?”

  “A big, long cardboard box.”

  “His accent?”

  “American, southern or something.”

  “Could he have been a woman in disguise?”

  A raspy laugh followed. “With all the nancy boys around today, I suppose it’s possible.”

  “Did he tell you his name or pay by credit card?”

  “Paid in cash and never said a bleedin’ word the whole way—after telling me where he was going, that is.”

  “Where did you take him?”

  “Southampton. To the quay.”

  “The quay?”

  “Right, guv. To the Britannia.”

  “North Star’s new ocean liner?”

  “You got it.”

  “Was he a passenger?”

  “Think so. He had me drop him off at the customs building, and he had what looked like a ticket in his hand.”

  “Could he have been crew?”

  Another raspy laugh. “Not bloody likely. It were a two-’undred-pound cab ride.”

  “He had no luggage other than the box?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Was there anything else unusual about him?”

  The driver thought for a moment. “He had a strange smell about him.”

  “Smell?”

  “Like he worked in a tobacconist, like.”

  Pendergast paused for a moment, thinking. “Do you know when the Britannia is sailing, by any chance?”

  “They said it were sailing at noon, with the tide.”

  Pendergast handed the mike back to the cabbie and thought for a moment. And in that moment his cell phone rang.

  He flipped it open. “Yes?”

  “It’s Constance.”

  Pendergast sat up, surprised. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the Brussels airport, I’ve just deplaned from a nonstop flight from Hong Kong. Aloysius, I’ve got to see you. I’ve some critical information.”

  “Constance, your timing is excellent. Listen to me carefully. If you can get to Heathrow in four hours or less, I’ll pick you up at the airport. Can you do that—four hours, not one minute more? Otherwise I’ll be forced to leave without you.”

  “I’ll do my best. But what’s this about leaving? What’s happening?”