Two Graves (2 page)

“Aloysius!” she cried at the top of her lungs, looking back over her shoulder. “Help! I know these people!
Der Bund
—the Covenant! They’ll kill me! Help me,
please—
!”

In the dying light, she could just make out Pendergast. He had struggled to his feet, bleeding freely from the gunshot wound, and he was limping toward her on his one good leg.

Ahead, on Fifth Avenue, a taxi idled at the curb, waiting—waiting for her and her abductors.

“Aloysius!” she screamed again in despair.

The men pushed her forward, opened the cab’s rear door, and flung her inside. Bullets ricocheted off the tempered front window of the cab.

“
Los! Verschwinden wir hier!
” one of the joggers shouted as they tumbled in after her. “
Gib Gas!
”

Helen struggled fiercely as the taxi pulled away from the curb, trying with her one good hand to claw her way to the door. She got the briefest glimpse of Pendergast, in the gloom of the park. He had fallen to his knees, still looking in her direction.

“No!” she cried as she struggled. “
No!
”

“
Halt die Schnauze!
” barked one of the men. He drew back his fist and punched her in the side of the head—and darkness came rushing over all.

A
DOCTOR IN WRINKLED SCRUBS STUCK HIS HEAD INTO
the waiting room of the Lenox Hill ICU. “He’s awake, if you’d like to talk to him.”

“Thank God.” Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta of the NYPD stuffed the notebook he’d been examining into his pocket and stood up. “How is he?”

“No complications.” A note of irritation crossed the physician’s face. “Although doctors always make the worst patients.”

“But he’s not—” D’Agosta began, then fell silent. He followed the doctor into the intensive care unit.

Special Agent Pendergast was sitting up in bed, attached to half a dozen monitoring machines. An IV was in one arm, and a nasal cannula was fitted to his nostrils. His bed was strewn with medical charts, and he held an X-ray in his hand. Always very pale, the skin of the FBI agent was now like porcelain. A doctor was bending over the bed, in intense conversation with his patient. Although D’Agosta could barely hear Pendergast’s replies, it was clear the two men were not exactly in agreement.

“—
Completely
out of the question,” the doctor was saying as D’Agosta approached the bed. “You’re still in shock from the gunshot wound and loss of blood, and the wound itself—not to mention the two bruised ribs—will require healing and ongoing medical attention.”

“Doctor,” Pendergast replied. Normally, Pendergast was the
quintessence of southern gentility, but now his voice sounded like ice chips rattling on iron. “The bullet barely grazed the gastrocnemius muscle. Neither the tibia nor the fibula was touched. The wound was clean, and no operation was required.”

“But the blood loss—”

“Yes,” Pendergast interrupted. “The blood loss. How many units was I given?”

A pause. “One.”

“One unit. Due to damage to the minor tributaries of the Giacomini vein. Trivial.” He waved the X-ray like a flag. “As for the ribs, you said it yourself: bruised, not broken. The costae verae five and six, at the heads, approximately two millimeters from the vertebral column. Being true ribs, their elasticity will aid in quick recovery.”

The doctor fumed. “Dr. Pendergast, I simply cannot permit you to leave this hospital in your condition. You of all people—”

“On the contrary, Doctor: you cannot prevent it. My vitals are within acceptable norms. My injuries are minor, and I can tend to them myself.”

“I will note on your chart that you are leaving the hospital against my express orders.”

“Excellent.” Pendergast flipped the X-ray like a playing card onto the nearby table. “And now if you’ll excuse me?”

The physician took one final, exasperated look at Pendergast, then turned on his heel and left the room, followed by the doctor who had admitted D’Agosta.

Now Pendergast turned to D’Agosta as if seeing him for the first time. “Vincent.”

D’Agosta quickly approached the bedside. “Pendergast. My God. I’m so sorry—”

“Why aren’t you with Constance?”

“She’s safe. Mount Mercy redoubled their security measures. I had to…” He paused a moment to control his voice. “To check up on you.”

“Much ado about nothing, thank you.” Pendergast removed the nasal cannula, slid out the IV needle from the inside of his elbow,
then detached the blood pressure cuff and pulse oximeter. He pulled back the sheets and sat up. The movements were slow, almost robotic; D’Agosta could see the man was driving himself by a sheer iron will.

“I hope to hell you aren’t really planning to leave.”

Pendergast turned to look at him again, and the fire in his eyes—fierce coals in an otherwise dead face—shut D’Agosta up immediately.

“And how is Proctor?” Pendergast asked, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

“He’s fine, they say. Considering. A few broken ribs where the impact of the shot hit his bulletproof vest.”

“Judson?”

D’Agosta shook his head.

“Bring me my clothes,” Pendergast said, nodding toward the closet.

D’Agosta hesitated, realized it was useless to protest, and brought them over.

With a wince, Pendergast stood up; swayed almost imperceptibly for a second; then steadied himself. D’Agosta handed him his clothes, and he drew the curtain.

“Do you have any idea what the hell happened back there in the park?” D’Agosta said to the curtain. “It’s all over the news, five people dead, homicide’s going crazy.”

“I have no time for explanations.”

“Sorry, but you’re not getting out of here without telling me what happened.” He took out his notebook.

“Very well. I will speak to you for the length of time it takes me to get dressed. And then I
am
getting out of here.”

D’Agosta shrugged. He’d take what he could get.

“It was a carefully planned—
exceptionally
carefully planned—abduction. They killed Judson and kidnapped my wife.”

“
They?
Who?”

“A shadowy group of Nazis, or Nazi descendants, called
Der Bund
.”

“Nazis? Jesus, why?”

“Their motives are obscure to me.”

“I need details of exactly what happened.”

Pendergast’s voice came from behind the curtain. “I went to meet Judson and Helen at the boathouse, to take Helen and hide her from this group. Helen arrived at six, as agreed. I quickly became aware that we’d been set up. One of the model yachtsmen was acting suspicious. He didn’t know the first thing about boats, and he was nervous—sweating in the chill air. I drew on him and told him to stand up. That precipitated it.”

D’Agosta took notes. “How many were involved?”

A pause. “At least seven. The yachtsman. Two lovers on a park bench—they killed Judson. A would-be homeless man, who shot Proctor. Your CS people have probably already reconstructed the sequence of the firefight. There were at least three others: two joggers, who kidnapped Helen as she was trying to escape, and the driver of the ersatz cab they forced her into.”

Pendergast emerged from behind the screen. His usually immaculate suit was a mess: the jacket was covered with grass stains, and the lower part of one trouser leg was torn and crusted with dried blood. He stared at D’Agosta as he straightened his tie. “Good-bye, Vincent.”

“Wait. How the hell did this… this
Bund
learn about your meeting?”

“A most excellent question.”

Pendergast grabbed a metal cane and turned to leave. D’Agosta caught him by the arm. “This is nuts, you walking out of here like this. Isn’t there something I can do to help you?”

“Yes.” Pendergast plucked the notebook and pen from D’Agosta’s hand, opened the notebook, and quickly scrawled something. “This is the license plate of the cab Helen was abducted in. I managed to get all but the final two numbers. Put all your resources into finding it. Here’s the hack number, too, but my guess is it’s meaningless.”

D’Agosta took back the notebook. “You got it.”

“Put out an APB on Helen. It might be complicated, as she’s officially
dead, but do it anyway. I’ll get you a photograph—it will be fifteen years old, use forensic software to age it.”

“Anything else?”

Pendergast gave a single, brusque shake of his head. “Just
find that car
.” And he stepped out of the room without another word, limping down the hall, accelerating as he went.

A
S D’AGOSTA DROVE WEST AWAY FROM NEWARK, HE FELT AS
if he were stepping back in time to when he’d been a beat cop at the Forty-First Precinct of the old South Bronx. The dilapidated shops, the shuttered buildings, the ravaged streets—all were a reminder of less happy days. He drove on as the view outside the windshield grew steadily grimmer. Soon he reached the heart of the blight: here—in the midst of the densest megalopolis in America—entire blocks lay empty, their buildings burnt shells or piles of rubble. He pulled over at a corner and got out, service piece where he could get to it quickly. But then he saw, amid all the decay, a single building—standing like a lonely flower in a parking lot—with lace-curtained windows, geraniums, and brightly painted shutters: a spot of hope in the urban wasteland. D’Agosta fetched a deep breath. The South Bronx had come back; this neighborhood would, too.

He crossed the sidewalk and started across a vacant lot, kicking aside bricks. Pendergast had beaten him here: he could see the agent at the far end of the lot, beside the burned-out remains of a taxi, speaking to a uniformed police officer and what looked like a small CSI team. Pendergast’s Rolls-Royce was parked at the corner, spectacularly out of place on these impoverished streets.

Pendergast gave D’Agosta a curt nod as he approached. Other than the shocking paleness, the FBI agent now looked more like his old self. In the late-afternoon light, his trademark black suit was clean and pressed, his white shirt crisp. He had traded the ungainly aluminum cane for one of ebony, topped by a handle of carved silver.

“… Found it forty-five minutes ago,” the beat cop was telling Pendergast. “I was chasing some twelve-year-olds who’d been boosting copper wire.” He shook his head. “And here was this New York taxi. The license matched the one on the APB, so I called it in.”

D’Agosta turned his attention to the taxi. It was little more than a husk: the hood was gone, the engine cannibalized, the seats missing, dashboard scorched and partially melted, steering wheel broken in two.

The head of the CSI team approached from the far side of the vehicle. “Even before the vandals got to it, this was almost useless as evidence,” he said, pulling off a pair of latex gloves. “No paperwork or documentation. It was vacuumed and wiped down, all fingerprints removed. They employed a particularly aggressive accelerant. Anything the perps didn’t take care of, the fire would have.”

“The VIN?” D’Agosta asked.

“We’ve got it. Stolen vehicle. Won’t be of much use.” The man paused. “We’ll haul it back to the warehouse for a more thorough examination, but this smells like a professional cleanup job. Organized crime.”

Pendergast took this in without replying. Although the agent remained utterly still, D’Agosta could feel a sense of desperation, of ruthless drive, radiating from him. Then, abruptly, he drew a pair of latex gloves from a coat pocket, snapped them on, and approached the vehicle. Crouching over it, wincing briefly with pain, he circled once, then twice, spidery fingers running lightly over the scorched metal, glittering eyes taking in everything. As the others watched, he peered carefully into the engine space; the passenger compartment, front and back; the trunk. Then, as he began a third revolution, he pulled some small ziplock bags, a few sample tubes, and a scalpel from his pocket. Kneeling beside the front fender, his face creasing momentarily with the effort, he used the scalpel to scrape some shavings of dried mud into one of the bags, which he then sealed and returned to his pocket. Rising, he completed the third circuit, more slowly this time. Stopping at the right rear tire,
he knelt again and—using a pair of forceps—plucked several small pebbles from the treads of the tire and placed them in a second bag. This, too, quickly disappeared into his pocket.