Страница 64 из 105
“Agent Pendergast, please. The acquisition of knowledge is our primary stock-in-trade. In trying to learn more about you-for purposes of better understanding your brother-we have spoken to a great many people. One of them was Cornelia Delamere Pendergast, your great-aunt. Current residence: the Mount Mercy Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Then there was a certain associate of yours, Miss Corrie Swanson, enrolled as a senior at Phillips Exeter Academy. She was a rather more difficult subject, but we ultimately learned what we needed to.”
Gli
At last Pendergast spoke. “This prying into my private life goes far beyond the bounds of your employ.”
Gli
“I use the memory crossing in a strictly impersonal way-as a forensic tool, to re-create the scene of a crime or a historical event. That is all. It would have no value with such a… personal matter.”
“No value?” A dry tone of skepticism crept into Gli
“On top of that, it is a very difficult technique. Attempting to apply it here would be a waste of time. Just like the little game that Dr. Krasner tried to play with me.”
Gli
“Mr. Pendergast, isn’t it possible that the same event which has marred your brother so terribly-which turned him into a monster-scarred you as well? Isn’t it possible you have walled up its memory so completely that you no longer have any conscious recollection of it?”
“Mr. Gli
“Tell me,” Gli
Pendergast looked at him, gray eyes glinting. “I suppose it is remotely possible.”
“If it is possible, and if this memory does exist, and if this memory will help us find that last missing piece, and if by doing so we can save lives and defeat your brother… isn’t it at least worth trying?”
The two men held each other’s gaze for less than a minute, but to D’Agosta it seemed to last forever. Then Pendergast looked down. His shoulders slumped visibly. Wordlessly he nodded.
“Then we must proceed,” Gli
Pendergast did not reply for a moment. Then he seemed to rouse himself. “Privacy,” he said.
“Will the Berggasse studio suffice?”
“Yes.”
Pendergast placed both hands on the arms of the chair and pushed himself upright. Without a glance at the others in the room, he turned and made his way back toward the room from which he’d emerged.
“Agent Pendergast…?” Gli
Hand on the doorknob, Pendergast half turned.
“I know how difficult this ordeal will be. But this is not the time for half measures. There can be no holding back. Whatever it is, it must be faced-and confronted-in its totality. Agreed?”
Pendergast nodded.
“Then good luck.”
A wintry smile passed briefly over the agent’s face. Then, without another word, he opened the door to the study and slipped out of sight.
Chapter 48
Captain of Homicide Laura Hayward stood to the left of the Egyptian Hall entrance, gazing dubiously over the crowd. She had dressed in a dark suit, the better to blend in with the crowd, the only sign of her authority the tiny gold captain’s bars pi
The scene that greeted her eyes was one of textbook security. Her people, plainclothed and uniformed, were all at their appointed stations. They were the best she had-truly New York’s finest. The museum guard presence was there as well, deliberately obtrusive, adding at least a psychological sense of security. Manetti had so far been fully cooperative. The rest of the museum had been painstakingly secured. Hayward had run dozens of disaster scenarios through her head, drawing up plans to deal with every contingency, even the most unlikely: suicide bomber, fire, security system malfunction, power failure, computer failure.
The only weakness was the tomb itself-it had only one exit. But it was a large exit, and at the insistence of the NYC fire marshals, the tomb and all its contents had been specially fireproofed. She herself had made sure the tomb’s security doors could be opened or closed from the inside or outside, manually or electronically, even in the case of a total power failure. She had stood in the control room, occupying the empty room next to the tomb, and had operated the software that opened and closed the doors.
The toxicological teams had made not one sweep, not two, but three-the results uniformly negative. And now she stood, surveying the crowd, asking herself, What could possibly go wrong?
Her intellect answered loud and clear: Nothing.
But her gut sensed otherwise. She felt almost physically sick with unease. It was irrational; it made no sense.
Once more, she delved deep into her cop instincts, trying to discover the source of the feeling. As usual, her thoughts formed almost automatically into a list. And this time the list was all about Diogenes Pendergast.
Diogenes was alive.
He had kidnapped Viola Maskelene.
He had attacked Margo.
He had stolen the diamond collection-and then destroyed it.
He had probably been responsible for at least some of the killings ascribed to Pendergast.
He spent a great deal of time in the museum in some unknown capacity, most likely posing as a curator.
Both perps-Lipper and Wicherly-had been involved with the Tomb of Senef, and both had suddenly gone mad after being in the tomb. And yet a meticulous examination of the tomb and the hall had produced no evidence whatsoever of any kind of environmental or electrical problem-certainly nothing that could trigger psychotic breaks or brain damage. Was Diogenes somehow to blame? What on earth was he pla
Against her will, her mind returned to the conversation she’d had with D’Agosta in her office days before. All of what he’s done so far-the killings, the kidnapping, the diamond theft-has been leading up to something else. Those had been his words. Something bigger, maybe much bigger.
She shivered. Her conjectures, her questions about Diogenes-it was all linked, it had to be. It was part of a plan.
But what was the plan?
Hayward hadn’t the slightest idea. And yet her gut told her it would happen tonight. It couldn’t be coincidence. This was the “something else” D’Agosta had talked about.
Her eyes traveled around the room, making contact with her people, one by one. As she did so, she picked out the many famous faces in the hall: the mayor, the speaker pro tem of the House, the governor, at least one of the state’s two senators. And there were many others: CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, Hollywood producers, a smattering of actors and television personalities. Then there were the museum staff she knew: Collopy, Menzies, Nora Kelly…
Her eyes moved to the PBS television crew, which had set up at one end of the hall and was filming the gala live. A second crew had set up inside the as-yet-unopened tomb, ready to film the first VIP tour of the exhibition and the sound-and-light show that would be part of it.
Yes-that would be part of the plan. Whatever was going to happen would happen live, with millions watching. And if Diogenes’s alter ego was a curator, or somebody else highly placed in the museum, he would have the power and the access necessary to engineer almost anything. But who could he be? Manetti’s careful probing of the museum’s perso