The Book of the Dead (45 page)

The toxicological teams had made not one sweep, not two, but three—the results uniformly negative. And now she stood, surveying the crowd, asking herself,
What could possibly go wrong?

Her intellect answered loud and clear:
Nothing
.

But her gut sensed otherwise. She felt almost physically sick with unease. It was irrational; it made no sense.

Once more, she delved deep into her cop instincts, trying to discover the source of the feeling. As usual, her thoughts formed almost automatically into a list. And this time the list was all about Diogenes Pendergast.

Diogenes was alive.

He had kidnapped Viola Maskelene.

He had attacked Margo.

He had stolen the diamond collection—and then destroyed it.

He had probably been responsible for at least some of the killings ascribed to Pendergast.

He spent a great deal of time in the museum in some unknown capacity, most likely posing as a curator.

Both perps—Lipper and Wicherly—had been involved with the Tomb of Senef, and both had suddenly gone mad after being in the tomb. And yet a meticulous examination of the tomb and the hall had produced no evidence whatsoever of any kind of environmental or electrical problem—certainly nothing that could trigger psychotic breaks or brain damage. Was Diogenes somehow to blame? What on earth was he planning?

Against her will, her mind returned to the conversation she’d had with D’Agosta in her office days before.
All of what he’s done so far—the killings, the kidnapping, the diamond theft—has been leading up to something else.
Those had been his words.
Something bigger, maybe much bigger
.

She shivered. Her conjectures, her questions about Diogenes—it
was
all linked, it had to be. It
was
part of a plan.

But what was the plan?

Hayward hadn’t the slightest idea. And yet her gut told her it would happen tonight. It couldn’t be coincidence. This was the “something else” D’Agosta had talked about.

Her eyes traveled around the room, making contact with her people, one by one. As she did so, she picked out the many famous faces in the hall: the mayor, the speaker pro tem of the House, the governor, at least one of the state’s two senators. And there were many others: CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, Hollywood producers, a smattering of actors and television personalities. Then there were the museum staff she knew: Collopy, Menzies, Nora Kelly…

Her eyes moved to the PBS television crew, which had set up at one end of the hall and was filming the gala live. A second crew had set up inside the as-yet-unopened tomb, ready to film the first VIP tour of the exhibition and the sound-and-light show that would be part of it.

Yes—that would be part of the plan. Whatever was going to happen would happen live, with millions watching. And if Diogenes’s alter ego was a curator, or somebody else highly placed in the museum, he would have the power and the access necessary to engineer almost anything. But who could he be? Manetti’s careful probing of the museum’s personnel files turned up nothing. If only they had a picture of Diogenes that was less than twenty-five years old, a fingerprint, a bit of DNA…

What was the plan?

Her eye ended up at the closed door to the tomb, the steel now covered with a faux stone finish, a huge red ribbon stretched across its front.

Her feeling of sickness increased. And along with it came a desperate feeling of isolation. She had done everything in her power to stop, or at least postpone, this opening. But she had convinced nobody. Even Police Commissioner Rocker, her ally in the past, had demurred.

Was it all in her mind? Had the pressure finally gotten to her? If only she had someone who saw things her way, who understood the background, the true nature of Diogenes. Someone like D’Agosta.

D’Agosta
. He had been ahead of her at every step of the investigation. He knew what was going to happen before it happened. Long before anyone else, he’d known the kind of criminal they were up against. He had insisted Diogenes was alive even when she and everyone else had “proved” he was dead.

And he knew the museum—knew it cold. He’d been involved in cases connected to the museum going back half a dozen years or more. He knew the players. God, if only he were here now… Not D’Agosta the man—that was over—but D’Agosta the
cop
.

She controlled her breathing. No point wishing for the impossible. She had done all she could. There was nothing left now but to wait, watch, and be ready to act.

Once again her eye roved the crowd, gauged the flow, examined each face for unnatural tension, excitement, anxiety.

Suddenly she froze. There, standing by the group of dignitaries near the podium, stood the tall figure of a woman: a woman she recognized.

All her alarm bells went off. Making an effort to control her voice, she raised her radio. “Manetti, Hayward here, do you read?”

“Copy.”

“Is that Viola Maskelene I’m looking at? Over by the podium.”

A pause. “That’s her.”

Hayward swallowed. “What’s
she
doing here?”

“She was hired to replace that Egyptologist, Wicherly.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. A day or two ago.”

“Who hired her?”

“Anthropology, I think.”

“Why wasn’t her name on the guest list?”

A hesitation. “I’m not sure. Probably because she was such a recent hire.”

Hayward wanted to say more. She wanted to curse into the radio. She wanted to demand to know why she hadn’t been told. But it was too late for all that. Instead, she merely said, “Over and out.”

The profile indicated that Diogenes isn’t through.

The whole gala opening looked like a meticulous setup—but for what?

D’Agosta’s words rang in her ears like a Klaxon.
Something bigger, maybe much bigger
.

Jesus, she needed D’Agosta—she needed him right now. He had the answers she didn’t.

She pulled out her personal phone, tried his cellular. No response.

She glanced at her watch: 7:15. The evening was still young. If she could find him, get him back here… Where the hell could he be? Once again, his words echoed in her mind:

There’s something else you ought to know. Have you heard of the forensic profiling firm of Effective Engineering Solutions, down on Little West 12th Street, run by an Eli Glinn? I’ve been spending most of my time down there recently, moonlighting…

It was just a chance—but it was better than nothing. It sure beat waiting here, twiddling her thumbs. With luck, she could be there and back in less than forty minutes.

She lifted her radio again. “Lieutenant Gault?”

“Copy.”

“I’m heading out briefly. You’re in charge.”

“There’s somebody I need to speak with. If anything—
anything
—out of the ordinary happens, you have my authority to shut this down. Totally. You understand?”

“Yes, Captain.”

She pocketed the radio and walked briskly out of the hall.

P
endergast stood in the small study, back pressed against the door, motionless. His eyes took in the rich furnishings: the couch covered with Persian rugs, the African masks, the side table, bookshelves, curious objets d’art.

He took a steadying breath. With a great effort of will, he made his way to the couch, lay down upon it slowly, folded his hands over his chest, crossed his ankles, and closed his eyes.

Over his professional career, Pendergast had found himself in many difficult and dangerous circumstances. And yet none of these equaled what he now faced in this little room.

He began with a series of simple physical exercises. He slowed his breathing and decelerated his heartbeat. He blocked out all external sensation: the rustle of the forced-air heating system, the faint smell of furniture polish, the pressure of the couch beneath him, his own corporeal awareness.

At last—when his respiration was barely discernible and his pulse hovered close to forty beats per minute—he allowed a chessboard to materialize before his mind’s eye. His hands drifted over the well-worn pieces. A white pawn was moved forward on the board. A black pawn responded. The game continued, moving to stalemate. Another game began, ending the same way. Then another game, and another…

… but without the expected result. Pendergast’s memory palace—the storehouse of knowledge and information in which he kept his most personal secrets, and from which he carried out his most profound meditation and introspection—did not materialize before him.

Mentally, Pendergast switched games, moving from chess to bridge. Now, instead of setting two players against each other, he posited four, playing as partners, with the infinity of strategy, signals both missed and made, and plays of the hand that could result. Quickly he played through a rubber, then another.

The memory palace refused to appear. It remained out of reach, shifting, insubstantial.

Pendergast waited, reducing his heartbeat and respiration still further. Such a failure had never occurred before.

Now, delving into one of the most difficult of the Chongg Ran exercises, he mentally detached his consciousness from his body, then rose above it, floating incorporeal in space. Without opening his eyes, he re-created a virtual construct of the room in which he lay, imagining every object in its place, until the entire room had materialized in his mind, complete to the last detail. He lingered over it for several moments. And then, piece by piece, he proceeded to remove the furnishings, the carpeting, the wallpaper, until at last everything was gone once again.

But he did not stop there. Next, he proceeded to remove all the bustling city that surrounded the room: initially, structure by structure, then block by block, and then neighborhood by neighborhood, the act of intellectual oblivion gaining speed as it raced outward in all directions. Counties next; then states; nations, the world, the universe, all fell away into blackness.

Within minutes, everything was gone. Only Pendergast himself remained, floating in an infinite void. He then willed his own body to disappear, consumed by darkness. The universe was now entirely empty, stripped clean of all thought, all pain and memory, all tangible existence. He had reached the state known as Sunyata: for a moment—or was it an eternity?—time itself ceased to exist.

And then at last, the ancient mansion on Dauphine Street began to materialize in his mind: the Maison de la Rochenoire, the house in which he and Diogenes had grown up. Pendergast stood on the old cobbled street before it, gazing through the high wrought-iron fence to the mansion’s mansard roofs, oriel windows, widow’s walk, battlements, and stone pinnacles. High brick walls on one side hid lush, interior parterre gardens.

In his mind, Pendergast opened the huge iron gates and walked up the front drive, pausing on the portico. The whitewashed double doors lay open before him, giving onto the grand foyer.

After a moment of uncharacteristic indecision, he stepped through the doors and onto the marble floor of the hall. A huge crystal chandelier sparkled brilliantly overhead, hovering beneath the trompe l’oeil ceiling. Ahead, a double curved staircase with elaborately beaded newels swept up toward the second-floor gallery. On the left, closed doors led into the long, low-ceilinged exhibition hall; on the right lay the open doorway into a dim, wood-paneled library.