Two Graves

Souza fumbled out the magazine, dropped it into the water, grabbed another from his rucksack, and with shaking hands tried to affix it into place. Pendergast reached over, placing a steadying hand on the gun as Souza finally got the magazine in place.

“Save your ammo,” he said quietly. “This is what he wants.”

“Os fantasmas?” said the colonel, shaking all over.

“Unfortunately, it’s real.”

With this enigmatic answer, Pendergast scrambled up the stone steps, the colonel stumbling after him, slipping as he climbed the slimy stairs to the narrow walkway, ru

“Agora eu esto satisfeito…” came the voice again out of the miasma, the sound like an ice pick into the colonel’s ear. In the tu

“What does that mean?” Pendergast whispered.

“How horrible… it means ‘satisfaction, fulfillment…’ ” Souza choked, his mind whirling. He could hardly come to grips with what had happened, what was still happening. It was a nightmare beyond anything he could have imagined.

“We’ve got to keep moving, Colonel.”

Something about the agent’s cool voice steadied him a little. Gripping his M16, Souza rose and followed Pendergast’s fleeting form down the passage. They passed side pipes and tu

Low laughter followed them. The colonel could not stand it. He felt everything crumbling again; his world was destroyed—and now this. How was this happening? Who was this devil?

“Você está satisfeito, Coronel?” came the voice, closer in the mists. Are you satisfied, Colonel?

It was as if the world suddenly flew away. Colonel Souza spun with a roar and ran back in the direction of the voice, a sound coming from his throat that wasn’t entirely human, a bestial scream of rage, his finger locked on the trigger, the weapon on full automatic, the muzzle sweeping back and forth, the thirty-round magazine emptying into the mist.

A sudden silence fell as the magazine ran out. Souza stopped, almost as if waking up; stopped and waited, waited for the end, which he suddenly wanted more than anything else he had ever wanted in his life.

76

PENDERGAST, FLATTENED AGAINST THE WALL, HEARD the long, wild, sustained firing and the animalistic scream of the colonel as he charged down the walkway into the darkling mists, followed by a sudden silence. There was a moment of stasis as the sound echoed and died away in the tu

A moment later, he heard the colonel’s body hit the water. And then he heard the voice again—the voice he knew so well.

“And now, Father, here we are. Just the two of us.”

In the darkness, pressed against the wall, Pendergast said nothing.

“Father?”

Finally he felt able to speak. “What do you want?” he asked, slowly and evenly.

“I am going to kill you.”

“And you really think you can do it? Kill your own father?”

“We shall see.”

“Why?”

“Why climb Mount Everest? Why go to the moon? Why run a marathon? For me, this is the ultimate test of character.”

A silence. Pendergast could formulate no response.

“You really can’t escape me. You realize that, don’t you?” The voice paused briefly. And then Alban said: “But first, a gift for you. Earlier, you asked about the Copenhagen Window. Would you like to know my secret? Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you. Nietzsche, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

A knife flashed out of the darkness, like a bat on the wing, so fast and so unexpected that Pendergast could not quite dodge it. It struck his clavicle a glancing blow, little more than a flesh wound. He twisted away, fell and rolled, then was up and, after a quick sprint, took cover again, pressing himself into the next alcove, up against the wet, slimy wall. Even with the thrown knife, he couldn’t pinpoint Alban’s current location, the youth taking advantage of the peculiarities of the way sound echoed in the tu

“You won’t kill me, because you’re weak. That’s where we differ. Because I can kill you. As I just demonstrated. And I must say, that was an excellent evasion, Father. As if you sensed it was coming.”

Pendergast noted a hint of pride in the boy’s voice: that of a son impressed with his father. The weird sickness of it made it hard to focus. He felt the sting of the injury to his already-wrenched shoulder, felt the warm blood seeping through his wet shirt. A certain part of him—perhaps the greater part—did not care now whether he lived or died. He only hoped his son would shoot straight and true.

“Yes, it is true I could kill you now,” the voice went on. “And, in fact, you’re in my crosshairs as I speak. But that wouldn’t be right. I’m a man of honor and wouldn’t just shoot you down like a dog. So I’ll give you a choice. I shall count to ten. If you choose to die, do nothing, and on ten I will help you with your assisted suicide. If you wish to flee, to give yourself a sporting chance, you may do so.”

Pendergast dove into the water, but not until the count had reached six.

Keeping underwater, he swam as fast as he could, the heavy rifle dragging him down. He stayed close to the wall, only coming up when he needed to gulp air. He heard several bursts of gunfire—Alban was true to his word and fired on ten—and could hear the bullets zipping underwater all around him. He wasn’t moving fast enough, not nearly fast enough, and with a moment’s regret he released the rifle. He swam with his eyes open but could see nothing. The water was cold and foul and full of dead things that bumped against him, and he felt more than once the slithering brush of a water snake. Ignoring all this, he kept going.

The tu

That, he knew, would not last long. The boy was surely coming after him.

He continued swimming, heading westward, toward the mainland.

77

ALBAN LISTENED FOR A WHILE IN THE DARKNESS WHILE the sounds of his father’s swimming slowly faded. The opening to the lake wasn’t far; he would reach it within a few minutes. His heart was beating strongly and he could feel all his senses at their keenest level of alertness, his mind ru

Alban considered what his father would do next. And the answer came easily: He would not remain on the island, where he could do nothing and was completely outgu