Two Graves

He stood, motionless, for a long moment, listening intently. But there was nothing. He turned and glanced toward the pocket doors. There was no light shining beneath them.

Nevertheless, he took a few anxious steps toward the relative safety of the open window.

He paused again to listen for a good sixty seconds before returning his attention to the shelves. He raised his flashlight, again partially covering it with his hand, and briefly directed the shielded beam to the shelves in front of him. A huge, folio-size volume sat on the shelf at eye level, surrounded by smaller sets of books with matching gilt spines. It was Goethe’s Faust, and it was a beauty, its leather binding stamped and tooled into fantastical shapes…

Felder jerked so violently he almost dropped the flashlight. Was he just hearing things in his extreme agitation? Or had that not been a footstep, a tread on the carpeting in the hall outside the library, a tread almost as stealthy as a cat’s?

He glanced nervously toward the pocket doors. Still no light shone beneath them—all was black as pitch. He swallowed, then turned back to the shelving, preparing to take another look.

And then, something—he did not know what, exactly—prompted him to turn around again, move directly to the open window, slip out of it to the ground, and close it silently behind him, thanking God he had thought to bring the oil.

He stood there in the black of night, trembling slightly. As his heart rate subsided, he began to feel sheepish. It was just his imagination playing tricks on him. There had been no noise; there had been no light. If he let himself fall victim to every fit of the jitters, he’d never find that portfolio. He turned back toward the window. He’d let himself back in, get a better sense of the layout of the books…

Abruptly, the pocket doors to the library were thrown back. The violence with which they opened was just as terrible as the silence with which they moved. Felder shrank away from the window in dread. He could see a huge figure standing in the doorway, framed against the faintest of light from the hallway beyond. It was a man, clothed in a strange, shapeless garment. A long, curved wooden club was grasped in one hand, its cruelly carven length terminating in a croquet-ball-size sphere.

Dukchuk.

Felder stood in the darkness outside the library window, staring through the glass, rooted to the spot with terror. The manservant looked carefully around the room, his bald and dimly shining head moving with the slow deliberation of a great beast, taking in every square inch of the room. And then he closed the pocket doors again, swiftly and silently. The house fell still once again—leaving Felder’s heart pounding furiously in his chest.

Recovering his wits, Felder retreated to the gatehouse as quickly as he dared. But even before the awful tingle of fear had completely faded, he sensed something else—a spark of hope. Because he had just realized something.

Adams. Bierstadt. Goethe. The books in the Wintour library were arranged in alphabetical order.

47

CONSTANCE GREENE SAT QUITE STILL IN THE PANELED fastness of Room 027, located on the first basement level of the Mount Mercy Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Room 027 had once been the site of the hospital’s Water Treatment room, a curative therapy instituted by Bradford Tuke, one of Mount Mercy’s earliest alienists. While the cleats for the manacles had long ago been removed from the walls, the perceptible dip in the carpeting in the room’s center revealed where the large floor drain—now filled with cement—was located.

The room was now normally used for private psychiatric sessions between doctors and low-threat-level inmates. It was comfortably furnished. Still, while the chairs and tables were not bolted to the floor, there was a distinct lack of either sharp or blunt objects. The door was not locked, but a brace of guards was stationed directly outside.

The only other occupant of the room was Special Agent Pendergast. He was pacing slowly back and forth, his step uncertain, his face extremely pale.

Constance watched him for a while, and then her gaze fell to the stacks of police reports, grainy black-and-white stills from security video cameras, forensic analyses, and DNA reports that were neatly arranged on the desk before her. She had read and taken in everything, her mind retaining all the details in their enormous complexity. The information had then been subjected to a meditative practice known as Tsan B’tsan, that most demanding of the arts of Chongg Ran, an ancient mental discipline from Bhutan whose subtleties were known to less than half a dozen people in the Western world—two of whom occupied that room.

During the state of Tsan B’tsan, Constance had come to an unexpected revelation.

After several minutes, she looked back at Pendergast, still pacing slowly across the floor.

“I think it would be best if we reviewed the events that have brought us to the present state,” she said, quietly and coolly. “Your wife, Helen Esterhazy, the descendant of a Nazi doctor, was the product of a genetic experiment involving twins, organized by a group calling itself Der Bund, the Covenant. Twelve years ago, when she threatened to reveal the experiments, they arranged to have her killed. But in an elaborate ruse perpetrated by her own brother, Judson, she survived and her defective twin, Emma, died in her place. Recently, when Der Bund realized Helen was still alive, they kidnapped her from your intended safekeeping—and then killed her.”

Pendergast’s pace slowed even further.

“Your wife gave birth—early in your marriage, and unbeknownst to you—to twin boys. These were the product of Der Bund’s ongoing experiments in eugenics and genetic manipulation. One son, named Alban, was developed into a highly intelligent, aggressive, and remorseless killer, an example of Teutonic perfection as visualized by Nazi ideology. The other son, whom you named Tristram, comprises what is left from their joint gene pool, and thus by necessity is Alban’s opposite: weak, timid, empathic, kind, and guileless. Both were brought here, to New York, as some kind of beta test, the purpose of which is unknown beyond the fact that it involved Alban’s serial killing of guests in hotel rooms and leaving messages intended for you. So far, am I correct?”

Pendergast nodded without looking at her.

“Tristram escaped to you. Last night, Alban found him and kidnapped him in turn, spiriting him away—as Helen Esterhazy was spirited away, not so long ago.”

Somehow, this direct, factual recitation, devoid of emotion, seemed to clear the charged air of the room. Pendergast’s expression eased somewhat, grew less distraught. He stopped in his pacing and looked at Constance.

“I ca

Still Pendergast gazed at her. Finally, he sat down in a chair across the table.

“You are entirely correct,” he said. “I find myself in a paradox. If I do nothing, I will never see Tristram again. If I go after him, I might precipitate his death—just as I did my wife’s.”

Neither spoke for several minutes. At last, Constance shifted in her chair. “The situation to me is clear. You have no choice. This is your child. For too long now, this contest of yours has been waged tangentially, along the periphery of your true adversary. You must attack the nerve center—the homeland, the viper’s nest—directly. You must go to Nova Godói.”