Two Graves p-12 Read online

  “Let her go!” Pendergast cried. “I want her, not you! Let her go and you can walk away!”

  “No!” The man gripped her desperately.

  Pendergast slowly stood, letting his rifle fall to one side. “Just let her go,” he said. “That’s all. There will be no problems. You have my word.”

  The man fired another shot at Pendergast, but it went wide. Pendergast began limping toward them, rifle still held to one side. “Let her go. That’s the only way you’ll get out of here alive. Let her go.”

  “Drop your gun!” The man was hysterical with fear.

  Pendergast slowly laid his gun down, stood up, hands raised.

  “Aloysius!” Helen wept. “Just go, go!”

  The man, dragging Helen backward, fired at Pendergast again, missing him. He was too far away—and too panicked to shoot straight.

  “Trust me,” Pendergast said in a low, measured voice, his arms held out. “Release her.”

  There was a moment of terrible stasis. And then, with an inarticulate cry, the man abruptly threw Helen to the ground, lowered his pistol, and fired point-blank into her body. “Help her or chase me!” he cried, turning and running.

  Helen’s scream pierced the air—and then, abruptly, cut off. Taken completely by surprise, Pendergast rushed forward with an inarticulate cry and within moments was kneeling beside her. He saw instantly that the shot was fatal, blood flowing rhythmically from a hole in her chest—a bullet to the heart.

  “Helen!” he cried, voice breaking.

  She grasped him like a drowning woman. “Aloysius… you must listen…” Her voice came as a gasped whisper.

  He bent down to hear.

  The hands clutched tighter. “He’s coming… Mercy… Have mercy…” And then a gush of blood stopped her speech. He placed two fingers against the carotid artery in her neck; felt the pulse flutter in her very last heartbeat, then cease.

  After a moment, Pendergast rose. He limped unsteadily back to where he had dropped the M4. The white-haired man appeared to have been as surprised as Pendergast by this development, because only belatedly had he started to run, following the shooter.

  Pendergast knelt, raised the weapon, and aimed it toward his wife’s murderer, a fleeing figure now five hundred yards distant. In a curious, detached way he was reminded of the last time he had gone hunting. He sighted in the figure, compensated for windage and drop, then squeezed the trigger; the rifle bucked and the man went down.

  The white-haired man was a powerful runner; he had already overtaken the killer and was now even more distant. Pendergast took aim, fired at him, missed.

  Taking a slow breath, he let the air run out, sighted in on him, compensated, and fired at the man a second time. Missed again.

  The third attempt clicked on an empty magazine even as the man disappeared into the vastness of the desert.

  After a long moment, Pendergast put the gun down again and walked back to where Helen’s body lay in a slowly spreading pool of blood. He stared at the body for a long time. Then he got to work.

  + Ninety-One Hours

  THE SUN STOOD HIGH IN A SKY WHITE WITH HEAT. A DUST devil whirled across the empty expanse. Blue mountains serrated the distant horizon. Scenting death, a turkey vulture rode a thermal overhead, turning lazily in a tightening gyre.

  Pendergast dropped the last shovelful of sand onto the grave, slapped it down with the flat of the rusty blade, and smoothed the sand into place. It had taken him a long time to dig the hole. He had gone deep, deep into the dry clay. He did not want the grave disturbed by animal or man.

  He paused, leaning on the shovel, taking shallow breaths. The wound in his leg was once again bleeding freely from the exertion, soaking through the last of his bandages. Beads of sweat, mixed with the mud, trickled down his expressionless face. His shirt was torn, slack, brown with dust; his jacket shredded, his pants ripped. He stared at the patch of disturbed ground, and then—moving slowly, like an old man—bent down and took hold of the rude marker he’d fashioned from a board he had taken from the same abandoned ranch house where he’d found the shovel. He did not wish it to be too obviously a grave. He took the knife from his pocket and scratched, in an unsteady hand:

  H. E. P.

  Aeternum vale

  Limping to the head of the grave, he pressed the sharpened base of the marker into the earth. Taking a step back and raising the shovel, he took careful aim, then brought the head down onto the marker’s top with a bone-jarring impact.

  Whang!

  … He was sitting before a small fire, deep in the heavily wooded flanks of Cannon Mountain. On the far side of the fire sat Helen, dressed in a plaid flannel shirt and hiking boots. They had just completed the third day of a week’s backpacking trip through the White Mountains. Beyond a glacial tarn, the sun was going down—a ball of scarlet fire—highlighting the peaks of the Franconia Range. Faintly, from far below on the mountain, rose voices and snatches of song from Lonesome Lake Hut. A pot of espresso sat on the fire, its aroma mingling with the scents of wood smoke, pine, and balsam. As Helen turned the pot on the fire, she glanced up at him and suddenly smiled—her unique smile, half shy, half assured—then set two tiny porcelain espresso cups on the firestone, one beside the other, with a neat precision that was totally her own…

  Pendergast swayed, gasping with the effort of the shovel’s blow. He wiped one unsteady forearm across his brow. Mud and sweat smeared the tattered sleeve of his suit. He waited, standing in the blazing heat of the sun, trying to catch his breath, to summon the final dregs of his strength. Then, once again, with a gasp of effort, he lifted the shovel. The weight of it caught him off balance and he staggered back, fighting to steady himself. His knees started to buckle, and before he tottered yet again he brought the shovel head down onto the marker with all the strength he could muster:

  Whang!

  … London, early fall. The leaves on the shade trees lining Devonshire Street were kissed with yellow. They were walking toward Regent’s Park, having just exited Christie’s. Rising to a dare of Helen’s, he had just bought at auction two works of artwork he’d loved at first sight: a seascape by John Marin, and a painting of Whitby Abbey that the Christie’s catalog had listed as being by a “minor Romantic painter” but that he thought might be an early Constable. Helen had smuggled a silver flask of cognac into the auction, and now—as they crossed Park Crescent and headed into the park proper—she began to quote in a full voice the poem “Dover Beach” for all to hear: “The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair…”

  He had dropped the shovel without realizing it. It lay across his shoes, askew, the point half buried in the loose soil. He knelt to pick it up, then quite abruptly fell to his knees; he reached a hand out to steady himself but it slipped and he collapsed to the ground, the side of his face in the dirt.

  It would be easy, remarkably easy, to stay like this, lying here above Helen’s body. But he could hear the slow drip, drip, drip of blood onto the sand and he realized he could not let go until the work was complete. He raised himself to a sitting position. After a few minutes, he felt just strong enough to stand. With supreme effort, using the shovel as a crutch, he stood—first the left leg rising, then the right. The pain in his injured calf had gone away; he felt nothing at all. Despite the fierce glare of the sun, darkness was creeping in around the periphery of his vision: he had but one more chance to set the marker permanently in the ground before he lapsed into unconsciousness. Taking a deep breath, he grasped the handle of the shovel as hard as he could, raised it with shaking hands, and—with a final spark of strength—swung it down against the headpost.

  Whang…!

  … A warm summer night, the trill of crickets. He and Helen were sitting on the back veranda at Penumbra Plantation, tall glasses in their hands, watching the evening fog creep in from the bayou, glowing in the moonlight. The mists rolled first over the marshy verge, then the formal garden, then the carpet of grass leading up toward the b
ig house; they eddied about the lawn, tendrils licking at the steps like a slow-motion tide, whitened to ghostliness by the orb of the moon.

  On a wheeled server nearby sat a pitcher of iced lemonade, half full, and the remains of a plate of crevettes rémoulade. From out of the kitchen came the scent of grilling fish: Maurice was preparing pompano Pontchartrain for dinner.

  Helen looked over at him. “Can’t it just stay like this forever, Aloysius?” she asked.

  He took a sip of lemonade. “Why not? Our entire life lies ahead of us. We can do with it what we like.”

  She smiled, glanced skyward. “Do with it what we like… Promise on the moonrise?”

  Gazing in mock solemnity at the amber moon, he put a playful hand across his breast. “Cross my heart.”

  He stood in the middle of that vast, empty, brutal, and alien desert. The darkness crept deeper across his vision, as if he were looking down a dark tunnel, the end of which was moving farther and farther away. The shovel slipped from his nerveless fingers and clattered to the stony soil. With a last, half-audible sigh, he sank to his knees and then—after a swaying pause—fell across the grave of his dead wife.

  PART TWO

  1

  ALBAN LORIMER ENTERED THE LOBBY OF THE MARLBOROUGH Grand Hotel in New York City, his pale eyes hungrily taking in the polished acres of red Italian marble, the discreet lighting, the whispering wall of water cascading into a pool of blooming lotus flowers, the vast hushed space milling with people.

  He paused in the center of the atrium, energized by the early-morning bustle around him. He focused on random individuals and followed their trajectories across, around, in, and out of the lobby. Many were heading toward the line at the Starbucks kiosk, from which wafted the heady scent of brew and bean.

  New York City…

  His smooth hand stroked the lapel of his wool pin-striped suit, his thin but powerful fingers enjoying the give and texture of the expensive wool. He had never worn such a suit before. His shoes were also of the finest quality, and he had groomed himself with care to look his very best, as if he were about to have the interview of his life. And it was an interview of sorts: today was an important day, a red-letter day—rather hastily put together and arranged, of course, but essential nonetheless. He breathed deeply. How wonderful it was, what a lovely feeling of security, to be well dressed, with money in your pocket, standing in a hotel lobby in the greatest city in the world. The only thing that marred his appearance was the small white bandage covering his left earlobe, but that of course could not be helped.

  Coffee? Maybe later.

  With a final smoothing down of his suit front, Alban strode across the lobby marble toward the banks of elevators, entered one, and pressed the button for the fourteenth floor. He glanced at the brand-new Breitling watch he had been given, which he was so pleased with: seven thirty-one AM.

  There were others in the elevator, most carrying enormous cups of coffee. Alban wondered at the size of these coffee cups. People in New York seemed to drink large amounts of coffee. He himself preferred coffee in what his people called the Italian style, strong, short, and black. He was also surprised and even mildly shocked that so many tourists to New York City did not dress properly. Even here, in this beautiful and expensive hotel just off Fifth Avenue, they dressed as if they were picking up their children at the playground or going for a jog, in warm-up suits, running shoes, sweatshirts, or jeans. But few of them could actually be contemplating a run, given their physical condition, many of the men with hanging guts and the women slab-sided and heavily made up. He had never seen so many people in poor physical condition. Then again, he was forgetting: this was the common herd.

  He exited at the fourteenth floor, took a left, and walked briskly down the hall, taking each dogleg at an easy pace until he reached the far end of the corridor, where an emergency door led to a staircase. He turned and looked back down the hall. There were eight room doors on the right, eight on the left. In front of about half of them, a wake-up newspaper had been folded and placed. Some guests took the Times, others the Journal, and a few USA Today.

  He waited, hands clasped in front, all his senses now on alert. He was utterly still. He knew that, from the time he had entered the hotel to this point, his image had been recorded on hidden security cameras. The idea pleased him not a little. Later, looking at those images, people would say things like, What a superior fellow he is! and What taste he has in clothes! They would all be very, very interested in him. His picture might even be in the papers.

  Right now, however, in the particular place he stood, the camera recording that stretch of corridor was directly over his head, and he was in its blind spot.

  Still he waited. And then, at the precisely necessary moment, he began walking back down the hall with a purposeful step. At the very moment he came to the door of Room 1422, it opened and a woman in a bathrobe bent down to pick up the Wall Street Journal. Without altering his pace or making any sudden movements, he veered into her, pushed her into the room, at the same time whipping his right arm around her neck and squeezing so tightly she could make no noise. With his left hand he gently closed the door and did the chain.

  She struggled mightily as he dragged her into the center of the carpeted room. He enjoyed the flexing of her muscles as she fought him; enjoyed the heaving of her diaphragm as she tried to make a sound; enjoyed the twisting of her torso as she attempted to shake him off. She was a fighter, athletic, not one of those fat old women in the elevator. In this he was lucky. Her age was perhaps thirty, with agreeably blond hair, no wedding ring. Her bathrobe became undone in the struggle, allowing him to see her as God had made her. He continued squeezing her, tightening the choke hold until she got the message and ceased her struggle.

  Then he loosened his hold just slightly, enough so she could breathe but not enough for her to scream. He allowed her to draw in a gasp of air, then another, before tightening once again.

  They stood there, locked together, her back pressed to his chest, as she trembled all over and finally began to collapse, her legs buckling in sheer terror.

  “Stand up straight,” he commanded.

  She obeyed, like the good girl she was.

  “This will only take a moment,” he said. He needed to do it, he wanted to do it, but something in him also wanted to prolong this exquisite moment of power over another human being, this basking in the vicarious thrill of her terror. It was surely the most wonderful feeling in the world. It was certainly his favorite.

  But it was time to get down to business.

  With a certain regret, he removed a small, specially sharpened penknife from his pocket. He reached out to the side and, in a quick, almost ritualistic gesture, deftly inserted the blade into her throat. He held it there for a loving, lingering moment, listening to the gargle of her pierced windpipe. Then he made a quick lateral motion that severed both the windpipe and the carotid artery, exactly as one would stick a pig. As her body began to spasm he quickly released her and skipped back while she fell forward, away from him, the blood erupting in a controlled direction. It would be wrong to get blood on his suit—very wrong. They would disapprove.

  She fell facedown on the rug, not too hard, the kind of thump that those directly below might ascribe to an overturned piece of furniture. Alban waited, watching with great interest until the death struggle had ceased and the body bled out.

  Again he checked his watch: seven forty AM. Schön.

  Kneeling, almost as if in prayer, he took a small leather-wrapped bundle from his pocket, unrolled it on the rug, and laid out his few essential tools. Then he began to work.

  He would be enjoying that Starbucks doppio in the lobby by eight.

  2

  … ONCE AGAIN, THE MISTS CLEAR, AND THE MAN SMILES. He thumbs the safety off his handgun and takes aim.

  “Auf Wiedersehen,” he says. His crooked smile widens as he savors the moment.

  The young woman, her hand still in her bag, finds what she ne
eds, grasps it. “Wait. The… the papers. I have them.”

  A hesitation.

  “The papers from… from Laufer.” She recalls a name she glimpsed on one of the papers, plucked out of her memory at random.

  “Impossible! Laufer’s dead.” The man, the Nazi, appears taken aback, the cruel confidence on his face changing into alarm, uncertainty.

  Her fingers close around some of the papers, curling them up and partially crushing them, and she lifts them from her handbag, just enough to show the black swastika on the letterhead.

  Taking an impatient step forward, the man reaches out to snatch them. But hidden in their wrinkled folds, curled around it, lies her can of Mace, which she scooped up as she gathered the papers together. As he glances down, reaching for the bundle, she lets fly with a blast directly into his face.

  The man topples backward with an inarticulate cry, the pistol dropping to the floor as his hands fly to his face, the papers scattering. Snatching them back up, she kicks the gun aside and sprints for the door, running through the altar-like room beyond to the staircase and hurtling down to the second floor, taking the steps three at a time, the heavy knapsack like a millstone around her shoulders. This is where it starts to happen: the feeling of drifting, of heaviness in her legs, of semi-paralysis. From upstairs she hears harsh words, German, guttural, the tread of heavy feet.

  She runs past the counterfeiting room, past the bedrooms, hearing always behind her the sound of the man’s pounding feet. She races down to the first floor, gasping from exertion, still strangely slowed as if by molasses and fear, but manages to reach the front door, grasps the handle.

  Locked. And all the first-floor windows are barred.

  As she turns back, a gun goes off behind her, the round taking a hunk out of the door frame. She flings herself into the sitting room, slipping behind a large display case that stands away from the wall of the room as if in preparation for being removed. Pressing her back against the wall for support, gripping the wainscot rail, she raises her feet and cocks her legs; a second later the man enters and she kicks forward with both legs, heaving the case down onto the man. He leaps to one side as crockery, pewter, books, and glass come crashing, again in slow motion; the man only partially escapes being crushed, the top edge of the falling case catching his knee, knocking him to the floor with a howl of fury.