Crimson Shore Page 17

  Special Agent Pendergast lay, without moving, on the shingle beach. Although his eyes were closed, he was intensely aware of his surroundings: the cadence of the surf; the smell of the salt air; the feel of the pebbles under his back. His first job was to shut down the external world and redirect that intensity inward.

  With a conscious effort born of long practice, he slowed his respiration and heartbeat to half their normal rates. He lay in stasis for perhaps ten minutes, going through the series of complex mental exercises necessary to attain the meditative state of th’an shin gha—the Doorstep to Perfect Emptiness—and preparing himself for what lay ahead. And then, very methodically, he began removing the items that made up the world around him. The town of Exmouth disappeared, along with all its inhabitants. The leaden sky vanished. The chill breeze no longer rustled through his hair. The ocean, with its sound and smell, disappeared. Last of all went Constance and the surrounding beach.

  All was blackness. He had reached stong pa nyid—the State of Pure Emptiness.

  He allowed himself to remain in this state, floating, alone in the void, for what in the heightened state of Chongg Ran seemed like an eternity, but was in fact no longer than a quarter of an hour. And then, in his mind, with exquisite deliberation, he began to reassemble the world in the reverse order from which he’d deconstructed it. First, the shingle beach unrolled itself in all directions. Next, the firmament arched overhead. And then came the sea breeze—save that it was no longer a breeze, but a howling midnight gale, full of lashing rain that stung as it pelted the skin. The sea came next, thundering in with great violence. Last, Pendergast placed himself on the Exmouth beach.

  It was not, however, the beach of today. Through intense intellectual focus, Pendergast had re-created, in his mind, the Exmouth of long ago—specifically, the night of February 3, 1884.

  Now, as he allowed all his senses to return, he became fully aware of his surroundings. In addition to the raging storm, he noticed an absence: a mile to the north, there was nothing but darkness. The lighthouse did not blink; it had vanished in the murk. But then, in a brief flash, it stood revealed when a tongue of lightning split the sky: a pale finger of stone rising into the angry night.

  Directly before him, however, was a very different source of light. A teepee-shaped pyramid of sticks, twigs, and bracken had been built on a dune above the beach and was burning fiercely. Less than a dozen figures clustered around it, huddled in greatcoats. Even though he was there in mind only, Pendergast retreated from the light of the fire into the reassuring safety of darkness. The men’s features, backlit by the flames, were barely distinguishable, but they all shared the same look: hardness, desperation, and a cruel anticipation. Two of the men were holding a thick blanket, and they were standing between the ocean and the bonfire. A third man, apparently the ringleader, and whose heavy, brutish features seemed somehow familiar in the firelight, held an ancient stopwatch in one hand and a lantern in the other. He was loudly counting off the seconds, from one to nine, and then starting over again. For two seconds out of each nine, the men holding the blanket shifted it to one side, exposing the light of the bonfire briefly, before blocking it again. This, Pendergast knew, was to simulate the nine-second periodicity of the Exmouth Light.

  To the south, the indistinct shapes of the Skullcrusher Rocks were visible only as smudges of creamy, storm-tossed waves.

  Skullcrusher Rocks. Walden Point, on which the Exmouth Light was situated, was too close to town; a wreck there would have been noticed. But a wreck on Skullcrusher Rocks…south of town, out of sight—and the wreckage would have been swept directly into this stretch of beach, concentrated in a small area.

  Except for the man with the stopwatch, the group near the bonfire spoke little, their gleaming, rapacious eyes staring out to sea, probing the murk. The wind howled in from the northeast, and the rain was driving almost horizontally.

  And then a shout went up: someone had spied an evanescent gleam in the darkness, out to sea. The group crowded forward, peering. One pulled a spyglass from out of his greatcoat and peered to the northeast. There was an anxious period of silence as he stared through the howling dark.

  Then, the call: “It’s a steamer, boys!”

  Another shout went up, this one quickly hushed by the leader, who continued to count with his stopwatch, ensuring that the flame of the bonfire maintained the precise periodicity of the Exmouth Light. Now the lights of the ship became more visible, appearing and disappearing as the vessel rose and fell on the heavy seas. An electric shiver went through the group: the ship was clearly steering by the fake light, and was on a heading directly for Skullcrusher Rocks.

  Rifles, muskets, pistols, cudgels, and scythes were produced from beneath the greatcoats.

  Now a cloak of obscurity fell, and the scene on the beach dissolved. When the dark lifted, Pendergast found himself on the bridge of a vessel: the steamship Pembroke Castle. A man clad in a captain’s uniform stood next to him, staring fixedly with his spyglass at a light onshore. To his right stood the navigator, chart spread out under the dim red glow of a navigational lantern. His tools were laid upon the chart—parallel bars, dividers, pencil. Beside him, the binnacle was only a quarter open, just a gleam emanating from it—the bridge being kept as dark as possible in order for all to maintain their keenest night vision. The helmsman stood to the other side of the captain, wrestling the wheel through the heavy seas.

  The air on the bridge was tense, but the captain—through his economical movements and his terse, efficient orders—radiated calm and command. There was no sense of the impending disaster.

  In his mind’s eye, retreating into a far corner of the bridge, Pendergast noted that a following sea was bursting over the stern of the ship, black water sweeping fore, the vessel rolling heavily with each swell. A mate came forward, drenched to the skin. In response to the captain’s inquiry, he reported that the steam engines were working efficiently, the oak hull was holding: leaks had been reported, but it was nothing that the bilge pumps couldn’t handle.

  Now Captain Libby lowered the spyglass long enough to hear the reports of the first and second mates. The first mate noted that the taffrail log gave the ship’s speed as nine knots; the heading was south-southwest, 190 degrees true. The second mate reported the depth of water, via the drop of the sounding line. “Twelve fathoms,” he cried over the storm. “Shelly bottom.”

  Captain Libby did not reply, but his face grew troubled. He raised his glass once again toward what appeared to be the Exmouth Light. “Keep your soundings continuous.” He turned to the navigator. “Keep the light hard a-starboard.”

  Pendergast knew enough of maritime navigation to be aware that, because the ship was close to shore and in great danger from the storm, the depth soundings were critically important.

  A few minutes later, the second mate returned with another depth report. “Ten fathoms,” he said. “Rocky bottom.”

  The captain lowered his spyglass, frowning. “Check again,” he said.

  The second mate briefly disappeared again into the storm. “Nine fathoms, rocky bottom.”

  All men on the bridge knew that the Pembroke Castle drew three fathoms, or eighteen feet, beneath the waterline. Captain Libby turned to the navigator for an explanation.

  “It makes no sense, sir!” the man yelled over the wind. “According to the chart, we should be holding steady at sixteen fathoms, sandy bottom.”

  “A rocky bottom means shoaling water,” the captain rapped back. “Either the chart is wrong, or we’re off course.”

  The navigator, working behind the pelorus—a kind of dummy compass—took a bearing off the light and then worked furiously with his charts. “It can’t be,” he said, more to himself than to anyone else. “It just can’t be.” He took another bearing off the light.

  “Six fathoms,” the voice of the second mate droned. “Rocky bottom.”

  The captain stepped over to the pelorus and took his own heading. “Bloody hell,�
�� he said, raising his spyglass again, peering ferociously into the lashing storm, but now nothing was visible—not even the light.

  “Hard to port,” the captain abruptly ordered the helmsman in a stentorian voice. “Set new heading 90 degrees true.”

  “But Captain,” the first mate protested, “that will put the sea directly on our beam.”

  “So be it,” said Libby. “Carry on!” But the helmsman was already swinging the wheel, making the course change, the ship shuddering into a turn.

  Even as the Pembroke Castle turned, however, a cry came up from the watch at the bridge wing: “Surf ahead!”

  The captain wheeled about, staring through his spyglass. Silently, Pendergast crept up behind. There, ahead, the faintest smudge of white seemed to float on the darkness of the waves.

  “Hard right rudder!” Libby roared. “Reverse engines, full astern!”

  The order was transmitted to the engine room while the helmsman leapt to obey the wheel order, but the ship was heavy, it was long, and it was fighting a beam sea. The white smudge grew brighter, and a sudden tongue of lightning revealed them for what they were: the Skullcrusher Rocks.

  “It’s impossible we’re so far off course!” the navigator cried.

  “Full astern!” the captain shouted again, even as the laboring rumble from the engines vibrated the deck. But the crew of the bridge, and Pendergast, could see it was far too late: the horrid rocks loomed up out of the driving rain, surrounded by exploding surf…

  …And then there came a shuddering crash as the bow of the ship was thrust violently upward onto the rocks. A massive sea broke over the port rail, bashing through the bridge windows and carrying the first mate and navigator overboard with it.

  “Abandon ship!” Captain Libby called out to the second mate. “Crew to stations, lifeboats away, women and children first!”

  “Abandon ship! Crew to stations!” The orders went echoing down the line of command as the crew leapt to obey.

  Once again the scene dissolved in a second cloak of darkness, Pendergast’s mental point of view returning to the party on the beach. The men were standing, horrified and silent, at the spectacle of the great ship, barely a hundred yards away, as it was thrust up and over the rocks, pounded by the thunderous sea, its back breaking, the stacks coming down, muffled explosions coming from the boilers as seawater rushed in through the breached hull. The violence of the ocean, the distant cries and screams, seemed almost beyond comprehension. The men were struck dumb, aghast at what they had wrought.

  There was an effort to lower lifeboats, but the ship was violently careened on the rocks, swung back and forth by the sea, and the effort was almost impossible, the lifeboats bashed to pieces on the rocks or driven into the ship’s hull, spilling their passengers into the sea.

  Within minutes, the driving wind and storm surge began carrying wreckage ashore—spars, planks, barrels…and then survivors. A ripple of surprise went through the group standing on the beach. Instead of well-dressed officers, what appeared out of the dark and the storm were young women—some grasping babies or toddlers, still others clinging to debris. They struggled through the surf and onto the beach, crying piteously for help, soaked to the skin, bleeding from scrapes and cuts. Other bodies, already drowned, were washed up the strand and deposited in grotesque, wanton poses. Among them were the bodies of men in dungarees—crew.

  Pendergast turned his attention from the wreck to two of the men onshore, so alike they must have been brothers—the one with the stopwatch, the other with the spyglass. Their faces registered confusion and surprise. They clearly had not expected the ship to be laden with so many passengers—especially not women and children. The other men were shocked as well. For a moment, all were paralyzed, unable to act. Then, on impulse, one broke for the water, preparing to help a woman and baby ashore. As he ran past the man with the stopwatch, the leader angrily seized him and threw him to the ground. Then he turned to the others. “These are witnesses!” he cried, addressing the crowd. “Do you understand? Witnesses! Do you all want to swing for this?”

  The only answer was the howl of the storm and the piteous sounds of drowning and desperate women and children, struggling up through the surf.

  And then, coming in through the waves, Pendergast beheld a remarkable sight: a large dory, crammed with women and children. A lifeboat had managed to survive. Captain Libby stood at the bow, holding a lantern and giving orders, two crewmen at the oars. As the group onshore watched, Libby brought the boat expertly through the surf, and the women and children poured out onto the beach even as the captain jumped back into the boat and ordered the men back to the wreck in a heroic effort to save more. The survivors swarmed toward the guttering bonfire, believing themselves saved.

  The leader of the mob was enraged at this development. “That’ll be the captain!” he said, pointing with a shaking finger. “That’s the man we want! He knows where the loot is! Get him—now!”

  The mob, galvanized, rushed forward with a roar, brandishing guns, knives, and scythes. As the boat returned with more survivors, it was overtaken. The two crew members were quickly dispatched. Libby drew his sword but was overcome by numbers, dragged out, and hauled before the leader.

  The captain, his features distorted by gashes across his forehead and left cheek, looked at the leader with anger and disgust. “You did this!” he said. “You lured us in. Murderer!”

  In response, the leader put a gun to the captain’s head. “Tell us where the money is.”

  The captain remained motionless, saying nothing. The leader cracked his pistol across Libby’s face. The captain sank to his knees, temporarily stunned. At the leader’s order, the captain was hauled roughly back to his feet, blood now streaming from a broken nose. He was searched, but no valuables were found. The leader, further enraged, dealt him a stinging backhanded blow. “Haul him off to the lighthouse,” he ordered the men.

  Two of the men grabbed the captain by the upper arms and began half pushing, half dragging him northward along the beach. Rousing himself, the captain cried: “What are you going to do with the women and children?”

  In answer, the leader spat into the sand—but not before glancing over his shoulder at the dunes beyond the shingle beach. Then he turned back to his men. “Take that dory out to the ship,” he said. “Search it, starting with the captain’s quarters! Find the loot before the ship breaks up!”

  The men, though still in shock, were now united. The utter barbarism of the atrocity they’d committed had bound them together, made them resolved to see it through to the end, no matter what. The mob went lumbering down the beach and launched the dory into the water, manning the double sets of oars and driving it through the surf until they reached the broken back of the ship, wedged on the reef, battered and being driven into pieces by the sea. Converging on a gaping rend in the center of the hull, they disappeared inside, the torches winking out one by one as they were swallowed by the hulk’s interior.

  Pendergast watched them from his position at the rear of the beach. Then he turned his attention to the pathetic, bedraggled groups of women, young children, and babies, huddled together in threes and fours, crying and pleading for help.

  Another man was staring at them, too: the leader of the mob. In one hand was his pistol; in the other, a heavy, cruel-looking cudgel. And the expression on his face was so harrowing that, in an instant, the memory crossing was cut violently short and Pendergast found himself once again in the present, lying upon the stony beach, Constance Greene nearby, a statue standing guard over the deserted scene.

  32

  Carole Hinterwasser stepped up to the front door of her shop, A Taste of Exmouth, and peered out the window through a slit in the gauzy drapes. It was four thirty, half an hour before the regular closing time, but a CLOSED sign had already hung on the door for the past ninety minutes. She looked left, then right. Main Street was quiet, with only a few pedestrians moving purposefully along.

  Soft footsteps ap
proached from the rear of the shop, and then she became aware of the presence of Bradley Gavin behind her. She felt his body touch hers, felt his warm breath on her neck as he, too, peered through the window.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “No.” She took a step back. “Careful. Somebody might see you.”

  “Who’s to say I’m not just browsing?”

  “In a closed store?” Even though they were alone, she found herself whispering.

  “I meant to ask—where’s that girl, Flavia, been all this time?”

  “Down in the basement, doing inventory. She hasn’t heard a thing—I made sure of that.”

  “Do you think they suspect?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “We’ve always been discreet, but Exmouth’s a small place.” She walked over to the bank of lights, snapped them all off. Immediately, the room grew dim, illuminated only by the glow of a sunless sky.

  There was a brief pause, then Gavin said, “You’re right. And all these recent events—the theft of Lake’s wine, Agent Pendergast snooping around, the murders, and the Tybane markings—it’s never been so bad. It’s like living under a microscope. My grandfather liked to say: ‘If you throw out a big enough net, there’s no telling what you might drag in.’ As you said, it’s a small town. These murders have nothing to do with us, but with all this investigation, someone might find out, anyway…by accident.”

  Carole nodded. “So—we’re in agreement. Right?”

  “Right. Things can’t go on like this any longer. It’s got to be done, as soon as possible. It’s for the best.”

  In the half-light, she took his hand in hers.

  Gavin had been looking at the ground as he spoke. Now he raised his head, held her gaze. “It’s not going to be easy for us, you know.”

  “I know.”

  They stood there, motionless, for a long moment. Then Carole gave his hand a squeeze.

  “You go first,” she said. “I’ll wait a few minutes, then go myself. I told Flavia to lock up when she’s finished downstairs.”