The Devil's Sanctuary (31 page)

“As long as you can?”

“Yes, but that probably won’t be much longer. Sooner or later your brother will come back.”

Daniel took a deep breath to say something, but Fischer preempted him.

“Oh, not voluntarily, of course. But he’ll do something stupid out there, I’m convinced of that. He was so full of hate for that Italian girl. It upset him hugely that he only managed to kill her fiancé and that she survived. All he wanted was to kill her, that was the main reason he wanted to get out of Himmelstal. And if he gets caught we’ll have him back again. Which will be rather confusing. Because of course we already have one Max here! There’ll be an investigation and I’ll be found out. So we’ve got a problem here, Daniel.”

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be a problem,” Daniel said. “Just get me out of this place before Max is sent back. I can leave the valley discreetly. I’m sure you could help me with that. Everyone will think I’ve had an accident or been murdered by another resident. Like Mattias Block. Or one of the others who’ve disappeared in the valley and never been found.”

Karl Fischer lit up.

“What an excellent idea! That’s exactly what I’ll say. That you’ve vanished without a trace. Like Mattias Block. Poor man. The victim of Doctor Pierce’s insane experiment. The idiot sent him in as Adrian Keller’s cricket. Sent him right into the lion’s den to subdue the beast with a ridiculous little gadget. Not really the same as talking to dogs, is it? And he didn’t know that Keller was
my
lion. When I discovered he’d selected Keller it was too late, the chip was already in place. Not that I have much faith in Doctor Pierce’s attempts at conditioning. But if Mattias Block actually did manage to tame Keller, the performances in his living room would be useless for my research. No more of those highly interesting torture scenes. I’d be left sitting behind the mirror and yawning while my object of study did crosswords and watered his potted plants. I did think about bringing Keller in for an operation and removing the chip, but it was actually easier to remove Block. Admittedly, he did manage to escape from his execution in Keller’s house, only to find a different version in one of his snares.”

Daniel was hardly taking in what the doctor was saying. A thick fog had settled over his mind. Like the fog in the valley it parted every now and then to let in what was going on around him in short, distinct sentences and images.

“So you’re going to let me leave the valley?” he asked.

“No, that would be far too risky. You could cause me a lot of trouble when you got out. And I’m not done with you yet. I haven’t even started. But you can disappear from the valley, that’s an excellent idea. In fact I think you can disappear today. Actually”—he looked at his watch—“you
have
already disappeared.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s twenty past twelve. Isn’t it surprising how quickly the time goes when you’re having fun? The evening patrol will have found your cabin empty and sounded the alarm. The guards’ vehicles might already be out looking for you. And they’ll carry on tomorrow. But not too long. As you yourself said, everyone will think Max is dead.”

“But…,” Daniel began in lame protest. He tried to find the rest of the sentence, but it had been swallowed up by the fog before he had time to get it out.

“But of course, you need to sleep,” Doctor Fischer said helpfully.

That wasn’t at all what Daniel had been about to say, he was sure of that. He had been on the point of saying something else, something important, but now it was gone.

“You’re tired, aren’t you? Let me look at your pupils.”

Doctor Fischer took hold of his chin and looked into his eyes.

“Exactly,” he said. “Very tired.”

Just as he was about to deny this Daniel realized that he really
did
feel very tired. In fact he felt more tired than he ever had in his entire life. He had no idea how he was going to have the energy to walk back through the passageways, across the park, and back home to his cabin.

Doctor Fischer stood up and went over to a curtain hanging over the wall at the far end of the room. He pulled it aside and opened a steel door that had been concealed until then.

“I’ll show you to your room. Come with me.”

Slowly Daniel stood up and walked, step by step, over to the doctor, then stopped in the doorway.

In front of him was yet another of the underground passageways. But this one was rather different from the others. It was narrower and the roof was lower. From somewhere he could hear cries and something banging on metal. A guard who was leaning against the wall glanced at them quickly and incuriously.

“Where are we?” Daniel asked warily.

His heart was beating so fast that he felt sick.

“In a different part of the tunnel system,” Karl Fischer said. “When the clinic was built I and our American sponsor made sure it was equipped with a few extra areas that weren’t marked on the plans.”

He gave Daniel a gentle shove in the back, making him tumble forward into the corridor, then quickly locked the door behind them.

“I daresay you’ve heard about this ward. The residents talk about it a lot. They’ve even given it a nickname.”

“THE CATACOMBS?”
Daniel whispered.

Doctor Fischer nodded.

“Personally, I think the name is a rather poor choice. There was supposed to be an underground crypt here when the convent was at its height. But there’s probably nothing left of that these days. In any case, what we have here, as you can see, is a very modern setup, and everyone down here is alive.”

Daniel gazed in amazement at the row of metal doors that presumably led to some sort of prison cells. Each door had a small round window made of extremely thick glass at head height. In some of the windows faces could be seen against the glass. Even though several of them were moving their lips as if they were talking, maybe even screaming, not a sound could be heard. Their silently gaping mouths and the thick glass made Daniel think of fish in an aquarium.

“This part of Himmelstal’s activities isn’t so well known,” Doctor Fischer said as they passed the doors. “A small and dedicated group of us conduct research down here. Our taskmasters seldom visit. I inform them of anything I feel they should know. To be honest, I don’t think they actually
want
to know too much. All they want is results.”

“What sort of activities?” Daniel asked.

They had stopped in the middle of the corridor, and Doctor Fischer was looking thoughtfully through one of the windows.

“Cutting-edge research,” he said. “At the very forefront of neuropsychiatry.”

He called one of the guards over.

“Please check this patient,” he said, tapping a fingernail against the glass. “That doesn’t look like ordinary sleep to me.”

With a sense of unreality Daniel observed the faces as they passed by. Like creatures from another world they stared at him through the little windows. Their heads were either fully or partially shaved and their eyes were either overflowing with emotion or completely empty.

He knew that what he was seeing ought to make him angry, that he ought to protest. But he was exhausted, not just physically, but his thoughts and senses too. All he really wanted was to get some sleep, and what worried him most right now was that the corridor was so long and that the floor seemed to slope oddly to one side, as if they were on a boat. The porthole-like windows only increased this impression, and Daniel started to feel slightly seasick.

The room the doctor had mentioned, a room with a bed where he could spend the night, no longer seemed such a bad idea. There was no way he could make it all the way back to his cabin. The fact was that he needed a bed immediately. He stumbled and the doctor grabbed hold of his arm.

“Not far now. Can you walk?”

Daniel nodded. To his right was a woman’s face, held like an old photograph in the round, riveted metal frame. A thin, porcelain face, very pale, with blue rings under the eyes and dark, shadowy stubble on her bald head. Alien, inhuman, yet simultaneously peculiarly familiar. He’d seen the face before, close to his own. Was it his mom? No, of course not. His mom was dead. But maybe this woman was dead as well?

He turned and looked back in bewilderment at the row of doors they had passed. Maybe all these people were dead? Or, if not dead, then at least… Well, they certainly weren’t alive, no matter what Doctor Fischer might claim. After all, they
were
in the underworld.

He remembered the strange, heavy book his grandfather had in one of the bookcases in his home in Uppsala. Daniel had felt a mixture of fear and delight whenever he looked at the pictures: It was Dante’s
Inferno,
with Gustave Doré’s engravings. Naked, contorted bodies, tormented by serpents, fire, and unimaginable horrors. Doomed to eternal suffering.

“How are you feeling, Daniel?” Doctor Fischer said close to his ear.

“I’m a bit dizzy,” he whispered.

“Shall I send for a stretcher?”

“No, I’m not ill.”

He straightened his back then, and with Virgil holding his arm, he staggered on through the underworld.

“It’s just over there,” Doctor Fischer said encouragingly.

In front of them a guard was holding a door open. Fischer and Daniel went in.

They were hit by a strong smell of disinfectant and urine. The room was small and painted with very shiny white gloss paint that cast harsh reflections from the fluorescent lights. There was a bed and a tabletop, both fixed to the wall, as well as a stool shaped like a steel cylinder with a black PVC seat.

“Nice,” Daniel muttered in confusion, pointing at the minimalist design of the stool as he sank onto the bed. He was so tired that he hardly knew where he was.

“And practical,” Doctor Fischer added, demonstrating how the seat could be lifted so that the stool became a toilet.

“Fantastic,” Daniel said, and closed his eyes.

“Now you must get some sleep, my friend. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble. I stirred some fairly strong medication into your tea.”

The light was reduced to a pleasant semidarkness, and the door closed with a brief sucking sound that make Daniel open his eyes again. Through the little window Karl Fischer gave him a last, paternal look. Then he was gone.

Daniel let go of consciousness. Faces drifted past, bobbing about as if they were floating in goldfish bowls. The thin, strangely familiar porcelain face stopped in front of him, forced its way out of the glass, and leaned over him. It was lit from below, as if by a pocket flashlight.

Suddenly he knew who she was. The realization burrowed its way out of his deep sleep and made his limbs twitch in a desire to take flight. He didn’t manage to wake up, but he still knew: It was the little dark-haired hostess. The one who disappeared, the one the guards had been searching the river for. Skinnier and without any hair she looked very different. But it had definitely been her, staring at him through the round window in one of the doors.

“SO HE’S
MISSING
?” Hedda Heine said in a worried voice. “Since when?”

“The host patrol informed security headquarters at ten past twelve last night,” Doctor Pierce explained. “And they contacted Ms. Simmen.” He gestured toward Corinne, who was sitting next to him at the conference table. “But she knew nothing about it.”

“The last time I spoke to him was the day before yesterday, that evening in Hannelores Bierstube,” Corinne said.

Outside the picture window the clouds were hanging between the walls of the valley, heavy and gray white, like a layer of padding in a box. She wasn’t often up this high. She usually met Doctor Pierce in a small treatment room on the first floor of the care center.

“Recently Max has always been in his cabin for the hosts’ patrols. We haven’t had any problems there. Which is why it’s so unusual that he wasn’t there last night,” Doctor Pierce went on. “We were hoping he’d turn up of his own accord during the night, but his cabin was still empty when the morning patrol checked. The last sighting we have of him is from the guard on the door of the care center. According to him, Max took the elevator up to the doctors’ floor at eight o’clock in the evening. He was going to see you, Doctor Fischer.”

“That’s right,” Doctor Fischer said. “He insisted on seeing me even though it was so late. I agreed to see him because he was so keen. He seemed rather confused. He was making ridiculous claims.”

“What sort of claims?” Pierce asked.

Karl Fischer pulled a tired face.

“The same old thing. That he isn’t Max but his twin brother. Somehow he’d managed to find out about the Pinocchio Project. I suspect he may have met a certain female colleague of ours who is currently on sick leave and ought not to have any contact with residents. Either way, he knew that Max had had a chip implanted and wanted me to check the results of his MRI scan to see if he didn’t have a chip. That was supposed to prove that he isn’t Max. It seems to have become something of an obsession for him. He was extremely persistent, so to resolve the matter once and for all I agreed to his request. We went down and looked at the scans. I showed him the chip. He became distraught.”

“I hope you told him that the chip is completely harmless?” Doctor Pierce said. “The radiation is no worse than you get from a cell phone.”

“Yes, but I don’t think that was what was worrying him. I think he was distraught at discovering his true identity. That this marvelous twin brother was an invention. He’s been deceiving himself, and now he was forced to realize the truth. Or else the whole performance was just put on. But it was certainly late, and I was eager to get rid of him. So I took him through the tunnels and let him out through the library building. That was the shortest route back to his cabin.”

“And what time was that?”

Fischer shrugged. “Ten, maybe.”

“Did you see which way he went after that?” Hedda Heine asked.

“No. I assumed he went straight home.”

“Then you were the last person to see him,” Pierce concluded. “Did he seem particularly upset?”

Fischer rubbed his unshaven chin, making a rasping sound. “Well, I suppose so. But I thought he’d calm down overnight.”

“Are you quite sure you saw a chip?” Pierce asked, staring intently at Karl Fischer’s face.

“Of course.”

“It couldn’t be that you expected to see one and made a mistake because you were tired?”

Fischer gave him a scornful look.

Pierce went on: “Because I’ve been down to the MRI unit myself and asked Sister Louise to bring up the images. And I didn’t see a chip.”

Karl Fischer was about to protest, but Doctor Pierce wouldn’t be interrupted.

“And Ms. Simmen has something to say that I think will be of interest to all of us.”

He turned to Corinne and gave an almost imperceptible nod of encouragement.

She looked round at the people sitting at the conference table, straightened her back, and said in a steady voice: “I’m pregnant. With the resident you believe is Max. But who can’t possibly be him.”

The scientists looked at one another in bewildered silence.

Hedda Heine leaned forward. “Are you absolutely sure, Ms. Simmen?”

Corinne nodded. “I’ve taken two pregnancy tests.”

“And there’s no one else who…could be the father?”

“No,” Corinne said firmly.

Karl Fischer was looking at her without saying anything.

“You’re the resident’s cricket, aren’t you?” Brian Jenkins said. “As I understand it, there are strict rules governing the behavior of crickets. Close, but not too close, and so on. Am I wrong, Doctor Pierce?”

“I know perfectly well what the rules are,” Corinne said irritably. “But over the past couple of months there’s been something about my client that hasn’t made sense. He’s been completely unreceptive to the instrument.”

She held up her arm and showed her bracelet.

“I brought it in to check it and made some adjustments,” Doctor Pierce said. “Ms. Simmen claimed that it still wasn’t working, so I assumed she was using it incorrectly and wanted to replace her with a different cricket. But Ms. Simmen refused to be replaced. She claimed that Max was very different and that she had a duty to protect him.”

“Which he immediately exploited,” Karl Fischer said with a scornful glance at Corinne’s stomach.

“Not at all,” Corinne said angrily. “Daniel isn’t Max. He doesn’t exploit anyone. Everything he’s been telling us is true. He’s Max’s twin brother, and Max was the one we let out after the visit back in July.”

“Max doesn’t have…,” Doctor Fischer began.

“Yes he does!” Corinne said, waving a sheet of paper. “The other day I found a page of the material I was given during my training. I know we weren’t supposed to keep anything on paper. But one of my colleagues taught me the lyrics to a song and I wrote them down on the back of a sheet of paper, which I then kept. It turned out to be Max’s admission documentation. And from this it is quite clear that Max has a twin brother. Someone must have altered his medical records after he was admitted.”

She passed the copy around.

Doctor Pierce looked in his briefcase, took out some stapled sheets of paper, and passed these around as well.

“Ms. Simmen is right. I checked what she said with the population registry in Sweden. And we’ve got the wrong twin. Now he’s missing, and I’m extremely worried about him. I suggest that we send the guards out at once.”

His colleagues stared at him, and Hedda Heine said, “I quite agree. What do you say, Doctor Fischer?”

“Yes, that would probably be best. They can search the valley,” Fischer said uninterestedly, passing the documents to the person next to him. He had hardly looked at them. “Well, that’s agreed, then. They go out and look for Max. Pierce will contact security headquarters.”

“They go out and look for
Daniel.
Not Max,” Corinne corrected him.

Doctor Fischer stood up with a glance at his watch.

“I’ve got a lot to do, so I hope you’ll excuse me,” he said.

As soon as he left the room a heated discussion broke out around the table.

Corinne sat in silence. The discussion was partly about her, and she felt superfluous in a rather unpleasant way.

Doctor Pierce called security headquarters on his cell phone. He was the only person she knew in the room, and he was the one who had brought her along. As soon as he finished his conversation she was planning to say good-bye to him and sneak out.

But just as he was putting his phone back in his pocket there was a knock on the door and a hostess came in, holding a phone in her hand.

“Sorry to interrupt. I’ve got a call from the Italian police. They want to talk to the director.”

“Doctor Fischer has just left,” Pierce said. “Try him on his cell.”

“He’s not answering.” The hostess waved the phone, at something of a loss. “They said it was urgent.”

“I’ll take it,” Pierce said.

He took the phone and went over to the big window to speak in private.

When the conversation was over he turned round. “The police in Naples are wondering if Max Brant is still in Himmelstal. Four days ago they arrested a man for the brutal assault of a woman, and they think it’s Max.”