Blue Labyrinth

Barbeaux looked at them in turn, then jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Join the others,” he snapped. “Get the girl.”

74

The lone survivor of her first attack had been joined by two others. Based on the radio chatter, Constance knew that at least two more were on their way. The men below were rallying, developing a plan. She watched as the three began spreading out in the foliage below. Then they began to climb the trees surrounding her own. Their intention was to come at her from three sides.

She jammed the small chemical case back into the duffel, slung the duffel around her neck to free up both hands, and climbed higher. As she did, the trunk grew thi

As she climbed upward, trying to reach the glass of the ceiling, the entire treetop began swaying. The men had now reached the canopy as well, and were creeping out on lateral branches, boxing her in.

A branch she was grasping broke with a crack and she slipped, stopping her fall only by wrapping her arms around an adjoining group of small branches, leaving her swaying and dangling in space.

“There she is!”

The flashlight beams shone on her as she pulled herself up the slender branches until she found another purchase for her feet. Every move sent the branches into a fresh paroxysm of swaying and cracking.

Trying not to agitate the canopy, she maneuvered with care, working her way still higher. The tiniest twigs and branches came within a foot or two of the glass ceiling, but they were too slender to support any weight. She was now triangulated in the flashlight beams.

A low laugh. “Hey, little girl. You’re surrounded. Climb down.”

If any of them came any closer, Constance knew, their combined weight on the network of branches would send them all crashing to the ground. They were stymied.

Through the heavy canopy of branches, she could see that two more men had entered the Tropical Pavilion. One of them removed a pistol and aimed it at her. “Start down or I’ll put a bullet in you.”

She ignored this, working her way higher with exquisite care and balance.

“Get your ass down!”

She was now just below the glass roof. The branches were shaking and swaying, her bare feet slipping. She had nothing to break the glass above her except the bag, and she didn’t dare use it for fear of breaking certain of its contents. Steadying herself in the topmost branches as best she could, she removed a cloth from the bag, wrapped it around her fist, and punched out the pane of glass above her with one blow.

This caused violent agitation in the network of branches she was clinging to, and she slipped down a few feet as broken glass rained down around her.

“She’s going out the top!” one of the men called.

With a desperate, reckless move she lunged upward, grasping and clawing at the metal frame above her and securing a purchase with one hand, cutting her fingers in the process. Pushing out first the small case, then the bag, she followed these onto the roof, swinging herself up and then climbing out and on top.

Placing her feet on the bronze frames that held the sections of glass in place, not treading on the glass itself, Constance knelt, opened the small chemical case, and took out a second bottle. Two of the men who’d climbed the adjoining trees were directly below her, working their way up toward the hole. The other man was descending fast, no doubt to join up with the two on the ground and prepare to intercept her outside when she climbed down to the ground.

She leaned over the hole she had made in the roof and glanced down at the closer of the two climbers. He was yelling at her and waving his gun. Taking the glass stopper from the bottle, she upended its contents onto the man, then skipped back. The gun went off, blowing out the pane next to her, and then there was a scream; a dull cloud of acrid gas blossomed in the moonlight, followed by a popping of leaves and twigs, to a constellation of flares and gouts of flame. She heard a falling body crash through branch after branch, hitting the ground with a sickening thump.

A fusillade of shots came from the other climber, bursting panes around her, but he was high in the swaying canopy and unable to aim properly. Or perhaps he was not trying to hit her, but rather trying to intimidate her. It made no difference. She plucked the third bottle from the case, skipped along the roof into a fresh position, removed its stopper, and — leaning over one of the skylights blown out by the bullets — doused the remaining climber with it. A horrible gush of steam rose up through the broken glass, gray, shot through with ropy strands of crimson, and Constance reared backward to avoid it. An ululating, throat-shredding cry tore through the broken panes, followed by the sounds of yet another body crashing downward. Taking the final small bottle from the case, she tossed it through one of the other ruined skylights. Perhaps it would act as a grenade, taking out one or more of the men down at the floor level of the pavilion. She heard an odd puffing noise, like the lighting of a gas range, and then a flare of flame shot up from far below, flickering angrily for several seconds before going out.

This was followed by an intense silence.

Abandoning the empty chemical case on the roof, Constance slung the backpack over her shoulder and began moving across the dome, to a ladder that curved down from the top.

She descended just as two men came ru

That, Constance thought, left Barbeaux alone in the Palm House with Pendergast.

The three men spread out farther as they approached the Japanese Garden. She crept through the darkness and skirted the pond, moving along narrow graveled pathways among dense plantings of weeping cherries, willows, yews, and Japanese maples. Partway around the pond stood a rustic pavilion.

Based on the squawk of radios and the whispered murmur of voices, Constance could tell that the three had taken up triangular positions around the Japanese Garden. They would know she was surrounded; they would assume she’d gone to ground.

It was time.

In a thick, dark stand of twisted juniper, Constance knelt, letting her bag slip to the ground. She zipped it open and reached inside. Out came an old bandolier of heavy leather, studded along its length with looped ammunition pockets, which she had appropriated from Enoch Leng’s military collections. She fixed it sash-style over one shoulder and belted it at her waist. Reaching into the duffel again, she removed from another ancient case five large, identical syringes and laid them in a row on the soft ground. These were old, handblown glass “balling guns”—catheter-type irrigation syringes used for administering medicine orally to horses and other large animals. These, too, were courtesy of Leng’s bizarre cabinet of curiosities, in this case the collection devoted to veterinary curiosa, its contents used by him in experiments best not speculated on. All five syringes were filled with triflic acid and capable of delivering a larger, more directed payload than the flasks had been. Each was nearly a foot long, as thick around as a tube of caulk, and made of borosilicate glass with sodium metasilicate as both lubricant and sealant. These last facts were particularly important: triflic acid, she had learned, would violently attack any substance composed of carbon-hydrogen bonds.