Blue Labyrinth

72

Constance sprinted toward the far wall of the Palm House, two men in pursuit. Behind, she could hear Barbeaux shouting orders. It seemed he was sending other men out to encircle her and ensure she didn’t escape into the streets of Brooklyn.

But Constance had no intention of escaping.

She raced for the initial hole she had cut in the glass at the end of the hall and launched herself through it, the shrubbery outside checking her headlong fall. She rolled once and was immediately up and running. Behind her, she heard the slamming of a crash bar and glanced back to see two dark figures hurtle out the side entrance to the Palm House and split up, trying to outflank her, while a third figure struggled through the hole she had just come through.

Ahead of her lay the Lily Pool, shimmering peacefully in the moonlight. She took a hard left just before the pool and ran alongside it, heading away from the garden exit — the direction opposite what her pursuers would anticipate. That caused them to pause, reconnoiter, and then veer back toward her — a gain of precious seconds.

Circling around the domes of the Steinhardt Conservatory, Constance headed back toward the Aquatic House. She was making no attempt to hide her movements, speed being of the essence, and the three men could see her and were now swiftly closing in, trapping her against the Aquatic House.

She ran alongside the wall of glass, then slipped back through the second hole she had made, emerging into the flower-choked orchid garden. She ran through the foliage, stepped over the three dead bodies, circled the main pool, and exited the double glass doors and into the lobby. There she paused just long enough to scoop up the duffel she had hidden under a bench before darting into the Tropical Pavilion. This was the largest greenhouse in the garden: a vast space with a soaring, six-story glass dome enclosing a dense, humid jungle.

Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she ran to one of the giant tropical trees in the center of the pavilion, grasped at its lower branches, and then began to climb upward, limb over limb. Even as she climbed, she heard her pursuers enter.

She flattened herself on an upper limb, pulled open the duffel, and removed a small chemical case that lay within. Silently, she unlatched it. Inside were four little flasks of triflic acid — acid she had appropriated earlier that evening from Enoch Leng’s cache in the sub-basement of the Riverside Drive mansion. Each flask was nestled within foam rubber protective packing that she had fashioned to size. Now she took out one flask and carefully removed its glass stopper. She was careful to hold the flask away from her — even the fumes were deadly.

She could hear the men spreading out across the pavilion, their flashlight beams playing about, voices murmuring, radios crackling. The beams began to move into the trees. A voice called out: “We know you’re in here. Come out now.”

Silence.

“We’ll kill your pal Pendergast if you don’t show yourself.”

Cautiously, Constance peered over the edge of the heavy limb she was on. It was perhaps thirty feet from the ground, and the tree rose at least another thirty feet above her.

“If you don’t come out,” came the voice, “we’re going to start shooting.”

“You know Barbeaux wants me alive,” she said.

Locating her from her voice, the beams immediately flashed up into her tree, probing this way and that. The three men moved through the thick understory until they were under the tree, encircling it.

Time to show her face. She stuck her head out and looked down at them, face expressionless.

“There she is!”

She ducked back.

“Come down now!”

Constance did not reply.

“If we’ve got to come up and get you, that’ll piss us off. You really don’t want to piss us off.”

“Go to hell,” she said.

The men conferred in low, murmuring tones.

“Okay, Goldilocks, here we come.”

One grasped the lower branch and hoisted himself up, while another held a flashlight beam to illuminate the climb.

Constance peered over the swell of the branch. The man was climbing quickly, his face upturned, scowling and angry. It was Tattoo.

Good.

She waited until he was less than ten feet below her. Positioning the flask above the climbing man, she tipped it briefly, pouring out a precise stream of triflic acid. The stream struck Tattoo directly in the left eye. She saw, with interest, that the superacid cut into him like boiling water poured onto dry ice, issuing a great hissing cloud of vapor in the process. The man let out a single, gasping cough and then simply vanished from sight in the widening cloud. A moment later she heard his body crash through the branches and hit the ground, followed by the surprised expostulations of his compadres.

Still peering over the edge, she saw him lying on his back in a thicket of crushed vegetation, his body going into a crazy horizontal dance, writhing and convulsing, jittery hands clutching and tearing at random leaves and flowers, until suddenly his entire frame tensed, arching upward like a drawn bow until only the back of his head and his heels were on the ground. He jittered for a moment in that frozen position. Constance fancied she even heard vertebrae snapping before the body collapsed into the bed of disordered vegetation, and his brains slid out of a steaming hole in the back of his head to settle in a greasy gray puddle.

The effect on the two others was gratifying. These were men, Constance surmised, who had fought in war and seen much killing and death. They were, of course, stupid — like many men — but were nonetheless highly trained, dangerous, and good at their job. But they had never seen anything like this. This was not guerrilla warfare; this was not a special op; this was not “shock and awe”—this was something completely outside their training. They stood like statues, flashlights fixed on their dead companion, stunned into paralysis, uncomprehending and therefore unable to react.

With great rapidity, Constance moved out on the limb until she was positioned above one of the two — Shaved Head — and this time she poured out the rest of the bottle’s contents, then let it fall, taking care that not a single drop of the acid touched her own skin.

Again, the results were most satisfactory. This dousing was not as precisely aimed as the first, and the acid splattered in a swath across the man’s head and one shoulder, as well as the surrounding vegetation. Nevertheless, the consequences were instantaneous. It appeared as if his head melted in on itself, expelling a rush of cloudy, greasy gas. With a shriek of animal horror, Shaved Head sank to his knees, his hands clutching his skull even as it was dissolving, panicked fingers pushing through liquefying bone and brain matter before he keeled over, going into the same peculiar convulsions as Tattoo. As he did so, the vegetation that had been splashed with the acid began to smoke and curl up, bits of it flashing into fire, then quickly flaring out — no fire could sustain itself long in the damp vegetation.

Like all superacids, Constance knew, triflic acid generated a strong exothermic reaction when encountering organic compounds.

The third man was now collecting his wits. He backed away from his convulsing comrade, and then looked up, firing his weapon in a panic. But Constance was already hidden behind a limb and the man was shooting randomly. She used the opportunity to climb higher into the tree’s upper limbs. Here the branches knitted together with the surrounding trees, forming a dense canopy. Slowly and deliberately, keeping the duffel close, she moved from one limb to another, while the frantic man below fired ineffectually at the sounds of her movement. Managing to climb onto an adjacent tree, she descended a few feet and concealed herself in the crook of a thick limb covered in leaves.

There was the crackle of a radio. Now the shots stopped and the flashlight beam played about, searching this way and that. In that moment, two more men burst into the Tropical Pavilion.

“What’s going on?” one of them cried, pointing to the smoking bodies. “What the hell happened?”

“The crazy bitch poured something on them — acid, maybe. She’s up in the trees.”

More flashlight beams joined in roaming about among the canopy.

“Who the fuck was firing? The boss says don’t kill her.”

As she listened to this exchange, Constance took stock of the small chemical case. Three more flasks remained within it, full and carefully stoppered. Then, of course, there were the other contents of her bag to consider. She mentally reviewed the situation. There were, as best she could guess, six or seven men remaining, including Barbeaux.

Barbeaux. She was reminded of Diogenes Pendergast. Brilliant. Formidable. With the kind of sadistic streak reserved only for psychopaths. But Barbeaux was cruder, militaristic, less refined. Her hatred for Barbeaux was now so incandescent she could feel the heat of it warming her vitals.