Dance Of Death

SIXTY-FIVE

Diogenes Pendergast stared at the cell phone, lying on the pine table, for a long time. The only indication of the strong emotion running through him was a faint twitching of his left little finger. A mottled patch of gray had appeared on his left cheek, and-were he to look in a mirror, which he did only when applying a disguise-he knew he'd find his ojo sarco looking deader than usual.

Finally, his gaze strayed from the telephone to a small bottle topped by a rubber membrane and, lying next to it, a glass-and-steel hypodermic needle. He picked up the bottle, held it upside down while inserting the needle, drew out a small quantity, thought a moment, drew out more, then capped the needle with a plastic protector and placed it in his suit pocket.

His gaze then went to a deck of tarot cards, sitting on the edge of the table. It was the Albano-Waite deck-the one he preferred. Picking it up, he gave the deck an overhand shuffle, then laid three cards facedown before him in the spread known as the gypsy draw.

Putting the rest of the deck to one side, he turned over the first card: the High Priestess. Interesting.

He moved his hand to the second card, turned it over. It showed a tall, thin man in a black cloak, turned away, head bowed. At his feet were overturned golden goblets, spilling red liquid. In the background was a river, and beyond that, a forbidding-looking castle. The Five of Cups.

At this, Diogenes drew in his breath sharply.

More slowly now, his hand moved to the third and final card. He hesitated a moment, then turned it over.

This card was upside down. It portrayed a hand above a barren landscape, thrusting out of a dark cloud of smoke. It held a massive sword with a jeweled hilt. A golden crown was impaled on the end of its blade.

The Ace of Swords. Reversed.

Diogenes stared at the card for a moment, then slowly exhaled. He raised it in a shaking hand, then with one violent motion tore it in half, then in half again, and scattered the pieces.

Now his restless gaze moved to the black velvet cloth, laid out and rolled up at the edges, on which lay 488 diamonds, almost all of them deeply colored, scintillating underneath the bright gem light clamped to the table's edge.

As he stared at the diamonds, his agitation began to ease.

Restraining an exquisite eagerness, his hand roved over the ocean of glittering trapped light before plucking one of the largest diamonds, a vivid blue stone of thirty-three carats, called the Queen of Narnia. He held it in his palm, observing the light catch and refract within its saturated deeps, and then with infinite care raised it to his good eye.

He stared at the world through the fractured depths of the stone. It was like kicking open a door just a crack and catching a glimpse of a magic world beyond, a world of color and life, a real world-so different from this false, flat world of gray mundanity.

His breathing became deeper and more even, and the trembling in his hand subsided as his mind loosened in its prison and began to ramble down long-forgotten alleys of memory.

Diamonds. It always started with diamonds. He was in his mother's arms, diamonds glittering at her throat, dangling from her ears, winking from her fingers. Her voice was like a diamond, pure and cool, and she was singing a song to him in French. He was no more than two years old but nevertheless was crying, not from sorrow, but from the aching beauty of his mother's voice. In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song / betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong…

The scene faded.

Now he was wandering through the great house on Dauphine Street, down long corridors and past mysterious rooms, many of them, even then, having been shut up for ages. But when you opened a door, you would always find something exciting, something wondrous and strange: a huge draped bed, dark paintings of women in white and men with dead eyes; you would see exotic objects brought from faraway places-panpipes made of bone, a monkey's paw edged in silver, a brass Spanish stirrup, a snarling jaguar head, the wrapped foot of an Egyptian mummy.

There was always his mother to flee to, with her warmth and her soft voice and her diamonds that glittered as she moved, catching the light in sudden bursts of rainbow. The diamonds were here, they were alive, they never changed, never faded, never died. They would remain, beautiful and immutable, for all time.

How different from the fickle vicissitudes of the flesh.

Diogenes understood the image of Nero watching Rome burn while gazing at the conflagration through a gemstone. Nero understood the transformative power of gems. He understood that to gaze at the world through such a stone was to transform both the world and oneself. Light was vibration; and there were special vibrations from a diamond that reached the deepest levels of his spirit. Most people couldn't hear them; perhaps nobody else on earth could hear them. But he could. The gemstones spoke to him, they whispered to him, they gave him strength and wisdom.

Today the diamonds, not the cards, would provide divination.

Diogenes continued to gaze deeply into the blue diamond. Each gemstone had a different voice, and he had picked this stone for its particular wisdom. He waited, murmuring to the gemstone, beseeching it to speak.

And after a moment, it did. In response to his murmured question, a whispery answer came back like an echo of an echo, half heard in a waking dream.

It was a good answer.

Viola Maskelene listened to the strange murmuring, almost like a prayer or a chant, that came from below. The sound was so low she could make out nothing. This was followed by an unnerving half-hour silence. Then, at last, came the sound she'd been dreading: the scrape of a chair, the slow, careful footfall of the man climbing the staircase. All her senses went on high alert, her muscles trembling, ready to act.

A polite rap on the door.

She waited.

"Viola? I should like to come in. Please step round the bed to the far side of the room."

She hesitated, then did as he requested.

He had said he was going to kill her at dawn. But he hadn't. The sun had set already, night was coming on. Something had happened. His plans had changed. Or, more likely, had been changed, against his will.

The door opened and she saw Diogenes standing in it. He looked different-slightly disheveled. His face was mottled, his cravat askew, his ginger hair a little ruffled.

"What do you want?" she asked huskily.

Still, he gazed at her. "I'm beginning to see what my brother found so fascinating in you. You are, of course, beautiful and intelligent, as well as spirited. But there is one quality you possess that truly astonishes me. You have no fear."

She did not dignify this with an answer.

"You should be afraid."

"You're mad."

"Then I am like God, because if there is a God, He is Himself mad. I wonder why it is that you have no fear. Are you brave or stupid-or do you merely lack the imagination to picture your own death? You see, I can imagine it, have imagined it, so very clearly.

When I look at you, I see a bag filled with blood, bones, viscera, and meat, held in by the most fragile and vulnerable covering, so easily punctured, so facilely ripped or torn. I have to admit, I was looking forward to it."

He peered at her closely. "Ah! Do I finally detect a note of fear?"

"What do you want?" she repeated.

He raised his hand, opening it with a twist and displaying a dazzling gemstone between thumb and forefinger. The ceiling light struck it, casting glittering shards about the room.

"Ultima Thule."

"Excuse me?"

"This is a diamond known as the Ultima Thule, named after a line in one of Virgil's Georgics. That's Latin for the 'Uttermost Thule,' the land of perpetual ice."

"I read Latin in school, too," said Viola sarcastically.

"Then you'll understand why this diamond reminded me of you."

With another flick of the wrist, he tossed it to her. Instinctively, she caught it.

"A little going-away gift."

Something about the way he said "going away" gave her an ugly feeling. "I don't want any gift from you."

"Oh, but it's so apt. Twenty-two carats, princess-cut, rated IF Flawless, with a color grading of D. Are you familiar with the grading of diamonds?"

"What rot you talk!"

"D is given to a diamond utterly without color. It is also called white. It is considered by those with no imagination to be a desirable trait. I look at you, Viola, and what do I see? A wealthy, titled, beautiful, brilliant, and successful woman. You have a splendid career as an Egyptologist, you have a charming house on the island of Capraia, you have a grand old family estate in England. No doubt you consider you are living life to the fullest. Not only that, but you've had relationships with a variety of interesting men, from an Oxford professor to a Hollywood actor to a famous pianist-even an Italian soccer player. How others must envy you!"

Shock burned through Viola at this invasion of her privacy. "You bloody-"

"And yet, not all is what it seems. None of your relationships have worked out. No doubt you're telling yourself the fault lies with the men. When will it occur to you, Viola, that the fault lies in yourself? You are just like that diamond-flawless, brilliant, perfect, and utterly without color. All your sad attempts to appear exciting, unconventional, are just that-sad attempts." He laughed harshly. "As if digging up mummies, rooting in your little plot of dirt by the Mediterranean, could confer character! That diamond, which all the world considers so perfect, is in reality dead common. Like you. You're thirty-five years old and you're unloved and unloving. Why, you're so desperate for love that you fly halfway around the world in response to a letter from a man you met only once! Ultima Thule is yours, Viola. You've earned it."

Viola staggered. His words felt like one physical blow after another, each one finding its mark. This time she had no answer.

"That's right. No matter where you go, you'll live in Ultima Thule, the land of perpetual ice. As someone once said: Wherever you go, there you are. There's no love within you, and there'll be no love for you. Barrenness is your fate."

"You and your bit of glass can get knotted!" she cried, violently throwing the stone back at him.

He deftly caught it. "Glass, you say? Do you know what I did yesterday while you were here all alone?"

"My interest in your life would be undetectable even to the most powerful microscope."

Diogenes removed a square of newsprint from his pocket and unfolded it, revealing the front page of that day's New York Times.

She stared at it from across the room, squinting to make out the headlines.

"I robbed the Astor Hall of Diamonds at the Museum of Natural History. It is a crime I've been planning for many years. I created a new identity to pull it off. And you helped me do it. That's why I wanted to give you that stone. But if you don't want it…" He shrugged, slipped it into his pocket.

"My God." Viola stared at him. And now, for the first time, she was truly afraid.

"You played an important role. The pivotal role. You see, your disappearance kept my brother racing all over Long Island, searching frantically for you, desperately worried about your safety, while I robbed the museum and transported the gems out here."

Viola swallowed, feeling a lump in her throat. The fact she was still alive was nothing but a temporary reprieve. He wouldn't tell her all this if he meant to let her live.

He really was going to kill her.

"I was giving you that as a little keepsake, a memento, since we shall part, never to see each other in this world again."

"I'm going somewhere?" she said, voice quavering now despite her best efforts.

"Oh, yes."

"Where?"

"You shall find out."

She could see he had his hand in his jacket pocket, fingering something. He took a step into the room. The door remained open behind him.

"Come here, Ice Princess."

She didn't move.

He took a second step forward, and a third. At that moment, she broke for the door. But somehow he had anticipated it, whirling and leaping toward her with the speed of a cat. She felt a shockingly powerful arm, tight as a steel cable, whip around her neck; the other hand slipped out of his pocket now, and in it was the sudden flash of a needle, and then she felt a burning sting in her upper thigh; there was the sensation of heat and an overpowering roar; and then the world abruptly shut down.