Brimstone

The other chuckled. "Good luck getting another pair. That old geezer makes like one pair a month."

"We always get the shit jobs." As if to underscore this, the man gave D'Agosta another shove. "They're soaked through already, goddamn it."

D'Agosta found his thoughts stealing toward Laura Hayward. Would she shed a tear for him? It was strange, but the one thing he most wanted right now was to be able to tell her how he went out. He thought that would make it easier to bear, easier than just vanishing, than never knowing .

"A little shoe polish and they'll be like new."

"Once leather gets wet it's never the same."

"You and your fucking shoes."

"If you paid two hundred euros, you'd be pissed, too."

D'Agosta's sense of unreality grew. He tried to embrace the throbbing pain in his finger, because as long as he could feel that, he knew he was still alive. What he feared was when the pain ended .

Just a few more minutes now. He took a step forward, another, then stumbled against something in the grass.

A slap to the side of the head. "Watch your step, asshole."

The air had grown cooler, and there was a smell of earth and decaying leaves. He felt a terrible helplessness. The gag and blindfold robbed him of all ability to make eye contact with Pendergast, to signal, to do anything.

"The trail to the old quarry goes that way."

There was a rustling, then a grunt. "Jesus, it's overgrown in here."

"Yeah, and watch where you put your feet."

D'Agosta felt himself shoved forward once again. Now they were pushing through wet foliage.

"It's right up ahead. There's a lot of stones near the edge, don't trip." A guffaw. "It's a long way down."

More pushing through bushes and wet grass. Then D'Agosta felt himself brusquely halted

"Another twenty feet," his man said.

Silence. D'Agosta caught a whiff of something wet and cold-the exhalation of stale air from a deep mine shaft.

"One at a time. We don't want to fuck this up. You go first. I'll wait here with this one. And hurry up, I'm getting bitten already."

D'Agosta heard Pendergast being pushed forward, heard the swish of wet footsteps through the undergrowth ahead. The first man had a tight hold on his cuffs, a gun barrel pushed hard into his ear. He should do something, he had to do something. But what? The slightest move and he was dead. He couldn't believe what was happening. His mind refused to accept it. He realized that, deep down, he'd been certain Pendergast would manage to do something miraculous, pull another rabbit out of his hat. But the time for that was past. What could Pendergast do: gagged, blindfolded, a gun to his head, standing at the edge of a precipice? The last small bit of hope drained away.

"That's far enough," came the voice from about thirty feet away, slightly muffled by the foliage. It was the second man, speaking to Pendergast. D'Agosta caught another whiff of cold air from the mine shaft. Insects whined in his ear. His finger throbbed.

It really was over.

He heard the sound of a round being racked into a pistol chamber.

"Make your peace with God, scumbag."

A pause. And then the sound of a gunshot, incredibly loud. Another pause-and then from far below, echoing up the shaft in a distorted way, the sound of a heavy object hitting water.

There was a longer silence, and then the man's voice came back, a little breathless. "Okay. Bring up the other one."

{ 56 }

Three a.m.

Locke Bullard stood in the enormous, vaulted alone of his villa, isolated on a hill south of Florence, his feelings betrayed only by the muscles working slowly above his massive jawline. He walked to the leaded windows that looked over the walled gardens, opened one with a shaking, knotted hand. The stars were obscured by clouds, the night sky perfectly black. A perfect night for this kind of business; as perfect as that other night had been, all those years ago. God, what he would give to undo that night .     He shivered at the memory, or maybe it was just the cool breath of the wind sighing through the ancient trees in the pineta beyond the garden.

He stood at the window for some time, struggling to calm himself, to suppress a growing feeling of dread. Below, on the terrace, the indistinct white shapes of marble statues glowed faintly. Soon it would be over, he reminded himself. And he would be free. Free. But right now, he had to keep calm  He had to put his old, rational view of the world aside, if only for one night. Tomorrow, he could tell himself it had all been a bad dream.

With a great effort he cleared his mind, tried to focus on something else, even briefly. Beyond the swaying tops of the umbrella pines, he could see the outlines of cypresses on the far hills, and then the distant cupola of the Duomo, next to Giotto's tower, brightly lit. Who was it that said only if you lived within sight of the Duomo were you a true Florentine? This was the same view Machiavelli had seen, exactly this: those hills, that famous dome, the distant tower. Perhaps Machiavelli had stood in this very spot five hundred years ago, working out the details of The Prince . Bullard had read the book when he was twenty. It was one of the reasons he'd jumped at the opportunity to own the villa Machiavelli was born and raised in.

Bullard wondered how Machiavelli would have reacted to this predicament. The great courtier would no doubt have felt the same things he did: dread and resignation  How do you make a choice when faced with a problem that has two solutions, both intolerable? He corrected himself: one was intolerable, the other unthinkable.

You accepted the intolerable.

He turned from the window and looked across the dim room at the clock on the mantelpiece. Ten minutes after three. He needed to make his final preparations.

He moved toward a table and lit a huge, ancient candle, whose glow illuminated an old piece of parchment: a certain page from a thirteenth-century grimoire. Then, taking up the ancient arthame knife that lay beside it, Bullard carefully began to score a circle in the terra-cotta floor of the room, working slowly, taking the utmost care to make sure the circle remained unbroken  When that was done, he took a piece of charcoal, specially prepared, and began to inscribe letters in Greek and Aramaic on the periphery of the circle, stopping now and then to consult the grimoire. He followed this by inscribing two pentagrams around it all. Next he inscribed a smaller circle-this one broken-beside the larger. He did not worry about being interrupted: he had dismissed all the security and the help. He wanted no chance of witnesses and-above all-no chance of interruption  When you were doing what he was about to do, raising what he hoped to raise, there could be no disruptions, no mistakes, nothing left out. The stakes were greater than his life-because, it seemed, the consequences would not end with his death.

He paused, preparations almost complete. It would not be long now. It would be over and then he could begin again. There would be, of course, minor loose ends to take care of: the disappearance of Pendergast and D'Agosta, for example; the Chinese and what had happened in Paterson. But it would be a relief to return to business as usual. Those problems, as tricky as they were, belonged to the real world, and he could handle them. They were small potatoes compared to this .

He went over the manuscript page again, then yet again, making sure he had missed nothing. Then, almost against his will, his gaze shifted to the old rectangular box sitting on the table. Now it was time for that .