Blue Labyrinth

Once again he paused to mentally reconstruct the layout of the hotel. This door led to the animal handling area: housing, veterinary care, feeding. And beyond that would be the animal garden itself — and the rear entrance to the mine.

Pendergast tried to open the door, but the metal had rusted over long years of disuse and would not budge. He tried again, exerting more pressure, until it opened an inch with a disturbing screech of iron. Reaching into his equipment vest, he removed a small pry bar and applied it to half a dozen spots around the edge of the door, working the rust loose, with the help of a spray of marine super-penetrating oil. This time, when he tried the handle, the door yielded just enough for him to squeeze through.

Beyond lay a corridor tiled in white porcelain. Open doors lay on either side, pools of darkness even in the night-vision goggles. Pendergast moved forward carefully. Even now, all these years later, the musk of wild animal and big-game scat freighted the air. To the left was a room containing four large, iron-barred cages with feeding doors. This opened to another room, a tiled veterinary area for examinations and, it appeared, minor surgical procedures. A little farther on, the hallway ended in another metal door.

Pendergast stopped, staring at the door through his goggles. Beyond, he knew, was the handling room. Here was where the animals would have been sedated if the need arose, for special handling, cleaning, emergency removal from the garden, or medical treatment. As best he could make out from the blueprints, the room acted as a kind of air lock, a staging area between the subterranean garden and the controlled atmosphere of the handling areas.

The blueprints did not indicate precisely how the animal garden had been constructed over the rear entrance to the mine: not shown was whether the mine had been sealed or whether it was open to the animal garden itself. Either way, he was ready; if it had been sealed, he had the means to break through — chisels, hammer, lock picks, pry bar, and lubricant.

This second metal door was rusted, too, but not as badly, and Pendergast was able to open it without much difficulty. He stood in the doorway and inspected the room beyond. It was small and extremely dark, clad in porcelain tile, cross-ties and restraint fixtures on the walls, with some closed vents in the ceiling. It had been sealed so well from the outside elements that it appeared to be in much better shape than the rest of the ruin — indeed, almost new. The walls were clean and almost gleamed in the sickly light of his goggles…

Suddenly a terrific blow to his neck sent him sprawling to the floor. He fell, stu

Pendergast slowly removed his hand from his vest, leaving the Les Baer in its holster. He rose quietly as he saw the door shutting behind the man as if of its own accord, locking with an audible click. Giving every sign of complete submission and cooperation, he kept his hands in sight, moving slowly, as he recovered from the surprise of being waylaid. The extreme emptiness of the place, the dust and the age, had lulled him into a false sense of isolation.

Quickly, his preternatural sharpness of senses returned.

The man had said nothing. He hadn’t moved. But Pendergast could see his frame relaxing ever so slightly, his sense of extreme readiness softening as Pendergast continued to convey by his body language that he was under the man’s control.

“What’s going on?” he asked, a submissive whine in his voice, the Texas accent back in force. “Why’d you hit me?”

The man said nothing.

“I’m just an artifact collector, checking the place out.” Almost groveling, Pendergast ducked his head and took a step closer, as if to genuflect in front of the man. “Please don’t shoot me.”

He ducked his head again, fell to his knees with a repressed sob. “Please.”

The pry bar on his vest — given a touch of assistance — fell to the tiled floor with a clatter. And in this millisecond of distraction, Pendergast rose up in one explosive movement, striking the man’s right wrist, cracking it and sending the gun flying.

But instead of lunging for his gun, the man pivoted on the sole of one foot and sent the other foot, karate-style, slamming into Pendergast’s chest so fast he could not pull his own weapon. He was again knocked to the floor, but this time — cognizant of his attacker, no longer caught unaware — he spun over just in time to fend off another brutal kick and flipped to his feet, just managing to lean away from a roundhouse punch. He jammed his heel into the inside of the man’s right knee as he sprang back, hearing the popping of tendons. His attacker staggered, delivered a cross punch. Pendergast feinted away, then drew him in with a pull counter; as the man delivered the punch into air, Pendergast jerked back and responded with a blow to his face, his fingers in the kung fu “tiger hand” position. The man reared back, the blow missing him by less than an inch, while simultaneously sinking a fist into Pendergast’s stomach, almost knocking the wind from him.

It was the most peculiar of battles, conducted in pitch black, in utter silence, with singular intensity and ferocity. The man said nothing, made no sound save for the occasional grunt. He moved so quickly that he gave Pendergast no time to extract his Les Baer. The man was possessed of excellent fighting skills, and for an eternity of sixty seconds they seemed equally matched. But Pendergast had a superior range of martial arts moves, along with highly unusual self-defense techniques he had learned at a certain Tibetan monastery. At last, using one of these latter moves called a Crow Beak — a lightning-like sword-slash of two hands held together as if in prayer — he knocked the goggles from his adversary’s face. This gave him an instant advantage, and he used it to land a flurry of blows that brought the man to his knees, gasping. In another moment Pendergast had his .45 out, trained on the man. He gave him a brief search, pulling out a knife, which he tossed away.

“FBI,” he said. “You’re under arrest.”

The man did not reply. Indeed, he hadn’t spoken a word throughout the entire encounter.

“Open the door.”

Silence.

Pendergast spun the man around, zip-tied his hands behind his back, sought out a loop of pipe, found one, and further zip-tied him to that. “Very well. I’ll open it myself.”

Again, the man said nothing, giving no indication he had even heard. He just sat on the floor, tied to the pipe, face blank.

As Pendergast went to the door to fire a few rounds into the lock, something strange happened. The room began to fill with a distinct scent: the delicate, sweet smell of lilies. Pendergast glanced around for the source of the odor. It seemed to come from the vent in the ceiling directly above where he had tied the assailant — a vent that had previously been closed, but was now open, a mist descending with a whisper of air. Pendergast’s assailant, blinded by the loss of his goggles, stared about in fear as the cloud of mist cloaked his face and body, and he began to cough and shake his head.

Quickly Pendergast aimed at the lock, pulled the trigger. The sound was explosive in the confined space, the round deflected by the metal — a major surprise. But even as he prepared to fire again, he felt his limbs get heavy, his movements begin to grow sluggish. A strange sensation flooded his head — a feeling of fullness and a sense of well-being, serenity, and lassitude. Black spots danced before the green field of his vision. He swayed, caught himself, swayed again, dropped the gun. Just as blackness overtook him and he sank to the floor, he heard the ceiling grate begin to close again. And with it came the whispered words: