Brimstone

And yet sleep did not come quickly to D'Agosta. He lay in bed, eyes on the ceiling, thinking of Diogenes Pendergast, for a long, long time.

{ 49 }

Locke Bullard sat in the rear of the Mercedes as it cruised along the Viale Michelangelo above Florence, the great eighteenth-century villas of the wealthiest Florentines invisible behind enormous walls and massive iron gates. As the limousine passed the Piazzale, Bullard barely glanced out at the stupendous view: the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio, the Arno River. The car descended to the ancient gate of the Porta Romana.

"Cut through the old city," said Bullard.

The driver flashed his permesso at the policemen on duty at the gate, and the limo eased into the crooked streets, heading first north, then west, passing back through another gate in the ancient walls surrounding the city. The Renaissance palazzi turned into modest nineteenth-century apartment houses; these in turn gave way to anonymous blocks of apartments, built mid-century; and finally to hideous projects and high-rises of gray concrete. There were no highways, just a maze of jammed streets and decaying factories, punctuated here and there by tiny kitchen gardens or a few hundred square feet of vineyard.

In half an hour, the limousine was crawling through the shabby streets of Signa, one of the ugliest of the industrial suburbs, a gray expanse of buildings spread out in the floodplains of the Arno. Laundry hung on concrete balconies in the listless, dead air. The only reminder that this was Bella Tuscany was the distant green hills of Carmignano, the tallest topped by the barest outline of a castle.

Bullard saw nothing beyond the smoked windows, said nothing to the chauffeur. His craggy face was utterly blank, his deep-set eyes cold beneath the great jutting brows. The only sign of the great turmoil within were the slowly bulging muscles of his jaw, tensing and relaxing, again and again.

At last, the limo turned down an anonymous dead-end lane, arrived at a shabby chain-link fence with a gate and guardhouse. Beyond, the endless suburb stopped and a surprising new world began: a strange world of dark trees, vines, and a riot of ivy-covered mounds and shapes.

The limo was checked, then waved forward into the darkly fantastical landscape. From this closer vantage point, the green shapes could be descried as ruined buildings, so sunken in creepers as to look like natural cliffs. And yet these were not ancient ruins, like those so often seen in Italy. These heaps of fallen masonry were never visited by tourists. The ruins dated only back to the early decades of the twentieth century. As the limousine moved like a shark through the ruins, it passed old dormitories, tree lined boulevards passing through rows of once-fine houses, past overgrown railroad sidings and wrecked laboratories-and, dominating it all, a brick smokestack that rose thirty stories into the blue Tuscan sky. The only clue as to what all this had once been was the faded remains of a sign painted on the stack, where NOBEL S.G.E.M. could still barely be discerned.

Security seemed deceptively slack. The chain-link fence along the outer perimeter was old and decrepit. A determined group of teenagers could have easily entered. And yet the ruined compound showed no sign of casual human trespass. There was no litter, no graffiti, no sign of campfires or broken wine bottles.

The limousine wound its way slowly along a maze of weed-choked roads, curving past a row of giant warehouses, now empty, windows like dead eyes, fields of wild strawberries growing around the cracked walls. The car continued through an archway in an old brick wall, past more ruins and heaps of brick and broken concrete, until it hit a second gate. This gate was far more modern than the first: attached to a sophisticated double perimeter of blastproof chain-link, topped with glittering coils of concertina, and surrounded by a wide motion-sensor field.

Again the limousine was inspected, this time much more thoroughly, before the gate opened electronically on well-oiled hinges.

And now a shocking contrast met the eye. Beyond one last ruined facade-drowning in vegetation-lay a manicured lawn, sweeping up to a gleaming building dressed in titanium and glass, an architectural masterpiece hidden among the ruins. It was framed by shrubbery that had been trimmed and shaped to perfection. An automatic sprinkler system cast an arc of water that glittered rainbows in the strong Florentine sunlight.

In front of the building stood three men. As the black car pulled up, one of them, clearly agitated but making a strong effort to suppress it, came over and opened the door.

"Bentornato, Signor Bullard,” he said.

Bullard got out, his enormous frame swelling as he stood up. Ignoring the proffered hands, he arched his back, stretched his arms. He seemed to be looking over the heads of the men as if they didn't exist. His massive, ugly, knotted face was an impenetrable mask.

"We should be pleased if you could lunch with us, sir, before-"

"Where is it?" Bullard cut him off.

There was a dismayed silence. "This way."

The small group turned, and Bullard followed them down the limestone walkway into the cool interior of the building. They passed down a corridor through two sets of automatic doors, each requiring a retinal scan from the leader of the group.

At one point, Bullard stopped and looked into a room leading off the corridor. The others paused expectantly. The room was a laboratory, full of equipment and whiteboards covered with formulas.

He stepped into the room, glanced at a nearby table covered with what appeared to be aircraft nose cones. Each was painted a different color, and a pin was stuck into each, bearing a label of notes and chemical formulas. In a sudden blind rage, Bullard raised his arm and swept the nose cones from the table. Then he turned back and, without a word, continued down the corridor.

They came to a third door, thicker and smaller than the others, made of stainless steel and brass.

There was a shout from behind. Everyone turned.

An elegantly dressed man was striding toward them, his face white with anger. "Stop," he said. "Io domando una spiegazione, Signor Bullard, anche da Lei. I demand an explanation, even from you." The man blocked their way, half the size of Bullard, almost noble in his outraged dignity.

There was a flash of movement, a grunt, and the man sank to the ground, punched in the gut. He clutched his midriff, groaning, and Bullard gave him a vicious kick with the toe of his shoe, so hard the snapping of the ribs was audible to all. The man gasped and rolled in agony.

Bullard turned to one of the men. "I fired this man. Martinetti was trespassing. I deeply regret that he resisted apprehension, assaulted a security officer, and had to be subdued by that officer."

He turned to one of the security officers escorting them. "Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes, sir," the man said in an American accent.

"Make it so."

"Yes, sir."

"Call a detail to remove this man and prefer charges against him for trespassing." Bullard stepped over the prostrate form and looked into the retinal scan himself. There was a click of disengaging metal, then the vault door swung open, exposing machined stainless steel and brass. Beyond lay a small vault. On one side were several hard drives, locked in transparent plastic cases and carefully stacked atop plastic filing cabinets. On the other was a small, rectangular box of polished walnut, surrounded by a cluster of sophisticated electronics: climate-control sensors, humidity readouts, a seismograph, gas analyzer, barometers, and temperature gauges. Bullard strode over to the box, picked it up gently by the handle. It was so light that in Bullard's massive grip it seemed weightless. He turned.