Blue Labyrinth

For a moment the scene playing out in Pendergast’s head vanished. When it became visible again, the location had changed. He was now outside the compound at the very summit of the Ciudad dos Anjos: the gated, fenced complex from which he had come not an hour before. Now, however, it looked more like an armed camp than a residence. There were two guards patrolling the fence; dogs with handlers wearing heavy leather gloves moved back and forth across the courtyard beyond. The windows of the upper story of the central building were brilliantly lighted; talk and harsh laughter floated down from them. From his vantage point in the shadows across the street, Pendergast saw the silhouette of a large, heavyset man move briefly before one of the windows. O Punho — The Fist.

Pendergast glanced over his shoulder, down at the favela that sprawled over the flanks of the mountainside. A faint glow rose out of a crabbed warren of streets about half a mile below: Alban’s house was still smoldering.

And now there came a new sound: the low throb of an engine. Pendergast saw a battered jeep, its headlights out, approach, then pull over to the side of the road about a quarter mile away. A single figure got out of the driver’s seat: Alban.

Pendergast squinted through the darkness of his mind’s eye for a clearer look. Alban had a large pack slung over his shoulder, and a weapon in each hand. He shrank against the façade of the nearest house, and then — making sure he wasn’t spotted — moved rapidly up the darkened street to the gated entrance to the compound.

And then something surprising happened. Just as he reached it, Alban stopped, turned, and looked directly at Pendergast.

Of course, Pendergast could not be seen. His corporeal form was not there, but rather in the ruined nursery, and all this was a creation inside his own mind. And yet the piercing, strangely knowing gaze of Alban disconcerted him, threatened to dissolve the already-fragile memory crossing…

… Then Alban looked away. He crouched, checking his weapons: twin TEC-9s, each equipped with silencers and thirty-two-round magazines.

One of the guards outside the fence had turned away and was lighting a cigar. Alban crept swiftly forward and waited for the other guard to come to his location. In a peculiar way he seemed to anticipate the man’s movement. As the guard strolled along, Alban removed a knife from his belt, waited for the guard to pause and ignite his lighter, and then slit his throat just as the man was concentrating on touching the flame to the tip of the cigarette. A wet sigh of air was the only sound as he let the man’s body down gently and the second guard, his cigarillo now lit, turned back. The guard reached for his weapon but Alban — again with his preternatural gift of foresight — anticipated his movements by seizing the barrel and twisting the weapon from the guard’s hands even as he buried the knife in his heart.

Satisfying himself that both guards were dead, Alban retreated once more to his initial vantage point. Removing the bulky pack and placing it on the ground, he pulled out something long and villainous looking. As he fitted the pieces together, Pendergast recognized an RPG-7 grenade launcher.

Alban paused, preparing himself. Then, reslinging the pack over his shoulder and tucking the TEC-9s into his waistband, he approached the compound again. As Pendergast watched out of the darkness of memory, Alban positioned himself some distance from the gate, balanced the grenade launcher on his shoulder, sighted it in, and fired.

There was a huge explosion, followed by a tremendous boiling cloud of orange flame and smoke. In the distance, Pendergast could hear shouts, barking, and a clattering rain of metal as pieces of the fence began falling all around. Dogs and their human handlers came ru

When no more guards came, Alban reached into the pack, pulled out another rocket-propelled grenade, and fitted it to the RPG-7. He moved cautiously through the ruins of the fence, smoke still drifting here and there in thick pockets, weapons at the ready. Pendergast followed.

The courtyard was empty. There was much activity and consternation in the central building. Seconds later a stream of machine-gun fire came from an upper window. But Alban had positioned himself in cover, outside the field of fire. Aiming his RPG again, he fired a grenade at the windows of the upper floor. They flew apart in a storm of glass, cinder block, and wood. As the thunder echoed away, screams of pain could be heard within. Alban fitted another grenade into the launcher; fired again.

Now armed men began boiling out of the buildings to the left and right. Dropping the RPG, Alban began firing at them in controlled bursts from the TEC-9s, moving from one pool of darkness to another, one cover to another, avoiding their volleys even before they started.

Within minutes, the deadly ballet was over. A dozen more men lay dead, their bodies draped in doorways or splayed over the cobbles of the courtyard.

And now Alban approached the central building, automatic handguns at the ready. He entered the front door. Pendergast followed. Alban glanced around briefly, hesitating, before stealthily moving up the staircase.

At the top of the stair, a man burst out of a darkened room, handgun raised, but with that strange sixth sense of his Alban had anticipated the move and his own weapon was already raised; he fired even before the man had fully appeared, the fatal rounds ripping through the door frame to kill the man as he emerged. Alban paused to eject the magazines of the TEC-9s, slap two more home. And then he crept up the stairway to the third floor.

The office — the office Pendergast had visited himself, just an hour before, but at the same time half a year later — lay in ruins. Furniture was burning; two grenade entry holes punctured the walls. Alban moved to the center of the office, weapons at the ready, and slowly looked around. At least four bloody figures lay motionless: some sprawled across overturned chairs, one actually pi

A heavyset man lay across the desk, rivulets of blood ru

Alban paused, listening. But all was silent. O Punho’s lieutenants and personal guards — all of them — were dead.

For a moment Alban remained standing amid the blood and the devastation. And then — very slowly — he crumpled onto the floor, sinking into the ru

Watching him, Pendergast recalled the words of Fábio. You do not understand at all. Something in him changed when his wife and child were killed.

From the doorway, in his mind’s eye, Pendergast watched his son: sunken to the floor, silent and motionless, the blood wicking into his clothes, surrounded by ruination of his own causing. Had Fábio been telling the truth? Was this more than mere violent retribution that Pendergast was now witnessing? Was it possible this was remorse? Or a kind of justice? Had Alban learned what evil—true evil — really was? Was he changing?

Suddenly the walls of the ruined office flickered; went black briefly; came back into view in his mind’s eye; flickered again. Desperately, Pendergast tried to keep the memory crossing alive in his head: to observe his son, to learn the answer to his questions. But then the pain burst through again, all the worse for having been suppressed, and the entire tableau — the burning compound, the bloody bodies, and Alban — vanished from Pendergast’s mind.