Blue Labyrinth

43

Pendergast pulled into the visitors’ parking lot of the Sanatorium de Piz Julier and killed the engine. The lot was, as he expected, empty: the convalescence spa was remote, tiny, and selective. In fact, at the moment it had only one patient in residence.

He got out of the car — a twelve-cylinder Lamborghini Gallardo Aventador — and walked slowly to the far end of the lot. Beyond and far below, the green skirts of the Alps stretched down to the Swiss resort town of St. Moritz, from this distance almost too perfect and beautiful to be real. To its south reared the Piz Bernina, the tallest mountain of the eastern Alps. Sheep were grazing peacefully on its lower flanks, tiny dots of white.

He turned back and headed toward the sanatorium, a red-and-white confection with gingerbread molding and brimming flower boxes beneath the windows. While he was still rather weak and unsteady on his feet, the most severe symptoms of the pain and mental confusion he had experienced in Brazil had eased, at least temporarily. He’d even scrapped his plans to hire a driver and rented a car instead. He knew the Lamborghini was flashy and not at all his style, but he told himself the speed and technical handling the mountain roads required would help clear his mind.

Pendergast stopped at the front door and rang the bell. An unobtrusive security camera set above the door swiveled in his direction. Then a buzzer sounded, the door sprang open, and he entered. Beyond lay a small lobby and nurse’s station. A woman in a white uniform with a small cap on her head sat behind it.

“Ja?” the woman said, looking up at him expectantly.

Pendergast reached into his pocket, gave her his card. She reached into a drawer, took out a folder, glanced at a photograph that lay within, then back at Pendergast.

“Ah yes,” the woman said, replacing the folder and switching to accented English. “Herr Pendergast. We have been expecting you. Just one minute, please.”

She picked up the phone that sat on her desk and made a brief call. A minute later, a door in the wall behind her buzzed open and two more nurses appeared. One of them gestured for Pendergast to approach. Passing through the interior door, he followed the two women down a cool hallway, punctuated by windows through which streamed brilliant morning sunlight. With its taffeta curtains and colorful Alpine photos, the place appeared bright and cheerful. And yet the bars on the windows were of reinforced steel, and weapons could be seen bulging beneath the crisp white uniforms of the two nurses.

Near the end of the hall, they stopped before a closed door. The nurses unlocked it. Then they opened the door, stepped back, and gestured for Pendergast to enter.

Beyond lay a large and airy room, its windows — also open, also barred — giving out on a beautiful view of the lake far below. There was a bed, a writing table, a bookshelf full of books in English and German, a wing chair, and a private bath.

At the table, silhouetted in a beam of sunlight, sat a young man of seventeen. He was studiously — even laboriously — copying something from a book into a journal. The sun gilded his light-blond hair. His gray-blue eyes moved from the book to the journal and back again, so intent on his work he remained unaware anyone had entered. Silently, Pendergast took in the patrician features, the lean physique.

His sense of weariness increased.

The youth looked up from his work. For a brief moment, his face was a mask of incomprehension. Then he broke into a smile. “Father!” he cried, leaping from the chair. “What a surprise!”

Pendergast allowed himself to return his son’s embrace. This was followed by an awkward silence.

“When can I get out of this place?” Tristram finally asked. “I hate it here.” He spoke in an oddly formal, schoolboy English, with a German accent softened by a touch of Portuguese.

“Not for a while, I’m afraid, Tristram.”

The youth frowned and played with a ring on the middle finger of his left hand — a gold ring set with a beautiful star sapphire.

“Are you being treated well here?”

“Well enough. The food’s excellent. I go on hikes every day. But they hover over me all the time. I have no friends and it is boring. I liked the École Mère-Église better. Can I go back there, Father?”

“In a little while.” Pendergast paused. “Once I have taken care of certain things.”

“What things?”

“Nothing you need be concerned about. Listen, Tristram, I need to ask you something. Has anything unusual happened to you since we last met?”

“Unusual?” Tristram echoed.

“Out of the ordinary. Letters you’ve received, perhaps? Telephone calls? Unexpected visits?”

At this, a blank look came over Tristram. He hesitated for a moment. Then, silently, he shook his head.

“No.”

Pendergast looked at him closely. “You’re lying.”

Tristram said nothing, his eyes fixed on the ground.

Pendergast took a deep breath. “I don’t quite know how to tell you this. Your brother is dead.”

Tristram started. “Alban? Tot?”

Pendergast nodded.

“How?”

“Murdered.”

The room went very still. Tristram stared, shocked, and then his gaze dropped to the floor again. A single tear gathered tremulously in the corner of one eye, then rolled down his cheek.

“You feel sad?” Pendergast asked. “After the way he treated you?”

Tristram shook his head. “He was my brother.”

Pendergast felt deeply affected by this. And he was my son. He wondered why he felt so little sorrow for Alban’s death; why he lacked his son’s compassion.

He found Tristram looking back at him with those deep-gray eyes. “Who did it?”

“I don’t know. I’m trying to find out.”

“It would take a lot… to kill Alban.”

Pendergast said nothing. He felt uncomfortable with Tristram’s eyes on him so intently. He had no idea how to be a father to this boy.

“Are you ill, Father?”

“I am merely recovering from a bout of malaria brought on by my recent travels — nothing more,” he said hastily.

Another silence fell over the room. Tristram, who had been hovering over his father during this exchange, now went back to his writing desk and sat down. He appeared to be struggling with some inner conflict. Finally, his gaze turned back to Pendergast.

“Yes. I lied. There is something I have to tell you. I promised him, but if he’s dead… I think you must know.”

Pendergast waited.

“Alban visited me, Father.”

“When?”

“A few weeks ago. I was still at Mère-Église. I was taking a walk in the foothills. He was there, ahead of me, on the trail. He told me he had been waiting for me.”

“Go on,” Pendergast said.

“He looked different.”

“In what way?”

“He was older. Thinner. He looked sad. And the way he spoke to me — it was not like the old way. There was no… no…” He moved his hands, uncertain of the word to use. “Verachtung.”

“Disdain,” said Pendergast.

“That is it. There was no disdain in his voice.”

“What did he discuss with you?”

“He said he was going to the United States.”

“Did he say why?”

“Yes. He said that he was going to… right a wrong. Undo some terrible thing he himself had put into motion.”

“Were those his exact words?”

“Yes. I didn’t understand. Right a wrong? Write a wrong? I asked him what he meant and he refused to explain.”

“What else did he say?”

“He asked me to promise not to tell you of his visit.”

“That’s it?”

Tristram paused. “There was something else.”

“Yes?”

“He said he had come to ask my forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness?” Pendergast repeated, hugely surprised.

“Yes.”

“And what did you say to that?”

“I forgave him.”

Pendergast rose to his feet. With something like a throb of despair, he realized the mental confusion, the pain, was beginning to return. “How did he ask for your forgiveness?” he asked harshly.

“He wept. He was almost crazy with grief.”

Pendergast shook his head. Was this remorse real, or some cruel game Alban was practicing on his simple twin brother? “Tristram,” he said. “I moved you here for your own safety, after your brother was murdered. I’m trying to find the killer. You’ll have to stay here until I’ve solved the case and… taken care of things. Once that happens, I hope you won’t want to return to Mère-Église. I hope you’ll want to come back to New York — and live with…” He hesitated. “Family.”

The young man’s eyes widened, but he did not speak.

“I’ll remain in contact, either directly or through Constance. If you need anything, please write and let me know.” He approached Tristram, kissed him lightly on the forehead, then turned to leave.

“Father?” Tristram said.

Pendergast glanced back.

“I know malaria well. Back in Brazil, many Schwächlinge died of malaria. You don’t have malaria.”

“What I have is my own business,” he said sharply.

“And is it not my business, too, as your son?”

Pendergast hesitated. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to speak to you like that. I’m doing what I can about my… affliction. Good-bye, Tristram. I hope to see you again soon.”

With that, he hastily let himself out of the room. The two nurses, who had been waiting outside, relocked the door and then escorted him back down the corridor of the sanatorium.