Fever Dream

"That was easy," Hayward said.

"Indeed," Pendergast replied, glancing across the surface of the water. Then he looked at her. "You realize, Captain, that they had prior news of our arrival?"

"What makes you think that?"

"One might expect a certain hostility to wealthy customers arriving in a Rolls-Royce. But the level of hostility was so specific, and so immediate, that one must conclude they were expecting us. Judging from the message gouged into my car, they believed we were environmentalists."

"You did say we were birders."

"They get birders here all the time. No, Captain: I'm convinced they thought we were environmental bureaucrats, or perhaps government scientists, masquerading as birders."

"A case of mistaken identity?"

"Possibly."

The boat skimmed the brown waters of the lake. As soon as the town had vanished completely, Pendergast turned the boat ninety degrees.

"Spanish Island is west," said Hayward. "Why are we heading north?"

Pendergast pulled out the map Tiny had sold him. The fat man's scribblings and dirty thumbprints were all over it. "I asked Tiny to indicate every route into Spanish Island that he knew. Clearly, those fellows know the swamp better than anyone else. This map should prove most useful."

"Please don't tell me you're going to trust that man."

Pendergast smiled mirthlessly. "I trust him implicitly--to lie. We can safely discount all these routes he has marked. Which leaves us a northern approach. That way we can evade the ambush here, in the bayous west of Spanish Island."

"Ambush?"

Pendergast's eyebrows shot up. "Captain, surely you realize the only reason we were able to rent this boat at all was because they planned to surprise us in the swamp. Not only did someone notify them we would be coming, but it seems he or she also fed them some sort of story designed to arouse their ire, with instructions to intimidate or perhaps even kill us if we try to go into the swamp."

"It might just be a coincidence," said Hayward. "Maybe the real environmental official is just now arriving in Malfourche."

"I might be concerned about that if we'd arrived in your Buick. But there can be little doubt they were expecting two people fitting our descriptions. Because the look on their faces as soon as we stepped out was one of absolute certainty."

"How could anyone have possibly known where we were going?"

"An excellent question, one for which I have no answer. Yet."

Hayward thought for a minute. "So why did you antagonize them like that? Act like a whiny city slicker?"

"Because I had to be absolutely sure of their enmity. I needed to be completely certain they would mismark the map. This way I'm confident of the route we must take. On a more general level, an aroused, angry, and suspicious crowd is far more revealing in its actions than one that is mixed or partially friendly. Think back to our little encounter, and I think you will agree that we learned a great deal more from that angry crowd than we would have otherwise. I find the Rolls to be most useful in that regard."

Unconvinced, Hayward was disinclined to argue the point and said nothing.

Taking one hand from the wheel, Pendergast removed a manila folder from his jacket and passed it to Hayward. "Here I have some Google Earth images of the swamp. Not altogether helpful, because so much is obscured by trees and other growth, but it does seem to reinforce the notion that the northern approach to Spanish Island is the most promising."

The lake curved around and--in the distance ahead, emerging from the mists--Hayward could see the low, dark line of cypress trees that marked the edge of the swamp. A few minutes later the trees loomed up before them, draped in moss, like the robed guardians to some awful netherworld, and the airboat was swallowed up by the hot, dead, enveloping air of the swamp.

65

Black Brake Swamp

PARKER WOOTEN HAD ANCHORED HIS SKIFF about twenty yards into a dead-end bayou at the northern tip of Lake End, over a deep channel cut where the bayou met the main body of the lake. He was fishing slowly over a tangle of sunken timber with a Texas-rigged firetail worm, casting in a radial pattern in between sips from a quart bottle of Woodford Reserve. It was a perfect time to fish the back bayous: while everyone else was off chasing the environmentalists. In this very spot last year he had landed an eleven-pound, three-ounce largemouth bass, the Lake End record. Ever since then it had been almost impossible to fish Lemonhead Bayou without competition lashing the water on every side. Despite the frenzy, Wooten was pretty sure there were some wise old big ones still lurking down there, if only you could fish them at a quiet moment. The others all used live bait from Tiny's, the party line being that wise old bass knew all about plastic worms. But Wooten had always taken a contrarian view to fishing. He figured that a wise old bass, aggressive and irritable, would be more likely to strike at something that looked different--to hell with the mousees and nightcrawlers the others used.

His walkie-talkie--obligatory when in the swamp--was tuned to channel 5, and every few seconds he'd hear an exchange among members of Tiny's posse as they positioned themselves in the west bayous, waiting for the enviros to show up. Parker Wooten would have none of it. He'd spent five years in Rumbaugh State Prison and there was no way in hell he was ever going back. Let the rest of the yahoos take the rap. He'd take the bass instead.

He cast again, let the bait sink, and then gave it a little tug, bumping it off a sunken log, and started reeling in, twitching the tip. The fish weren't biting. It was too hot and maybe they'd gone to deeper water. Or maybe what was needed here was a firecracker with a blue tail. He was still reeling in when he heard the faint roar of an airboat. Shoving the rod into a holder, he picked up his binoculars and scanned the lake beyond. Pretty soon, the boat came into view, skimming along the surface, its lower section lost in the low haze drifting over the water, the vessel's flat bottom making a rapid slapping sound. And then it was gone.

Parker sat back in his skiff. He took a small sip of Woodford to help him think. It was those two enviros, all right, but they weren't anywhere near where they were supposed to be. Everyone was in the west bayous but here they were, far to the north.

Another sip and he removed his walkie-talkie. "Hey, Tiny. Parker here."

"Parker?" came Tiny's voice after a moment. "I thought you weren't going to join us."

"I ain't joined you. I'm at the north end, fishing Lemonhead Bayou. And you know what? I just saw one a your airboats come on by, them two in it."

"No way. They're coming in through the west bayous."

"The hell they are. I just saw them go by."

"You see them yourself, or is that the Woodford Reserve seeing them?"

"Look here," Wooten said, "you don't want to listen to me, fine. You can wait in the west bayous till they're skating on Lake Pontchartrain. I'm telling you they're going in from the north and what you do with that is your business."

Wooten snapped off the walkie-talkie with annoyance and shoved it in his gear box. Tiny was getting too big for his own britches, figuratively and for real. He took a sip from the Woodford, nestled the precious bottle back down in its box, then tore the plastic worm from the hook and rigged another, throwing it up-bayou. As he cranked and twitched it in, he felt a certain sudden heaviness on his line. Slowly, carefully, he kept the line almost slack for a moment, letting the fish swim off with it--and then, with a sharp but not hard jerk, set the hook. The line tightened, the tip bent double, and Parker Wooten's annoyance immediately vanished as he realized he had hooked a really big one.

66

THE CHANNEL TIGHTENED, AND PENDERGAST shut down the airboat engine. The silence that ensued seemed even louder than the roar of the boat had been.

Hayward glanced over at him. "What now?"

Pendergast removed his suit jacket, draped it over his seat, and slid a pole out of its rack. "Too tight to run the engine--we wouldn't want to snag a branch at three thousand RPMs. I'm afraid we have to pole."

Pendergast took up a position in the stern and began poling the boat forward along an abandoned logging "pull" channel, overhung with cypress branches and tangled stands of water tupelo. It was late afternoon, but the swamp was already in deep shadow. Overhead there was no hint of sun, just enveloping blankets of green and brown, layer upon layer. Now the sound of insects and birds swelled to fill the void left by the engine: strange calls, cries, twitters, drones, and whoops.

"I'll take over whenever you need a break," Hayward said.

"Thank you, Captain." The boat glided forward.

She consulted the two maps, laid out side by side: Tiny's map and the Google Earth printout. After two hours they had made it perhaps halfway to Spanish Island, but the densest, most maze-like part of the swamp lay ahead, past a small stretch of open water marked on the map as Little Bayou.

"What's your plan once we're past the bayou?" Hayward pointed at the printout. "Looks pretty tight in there. And there are no more logging channels."

"You'll take over the poling and I shall navigate."

"And just how do you intend to navigate?"

"The currents flow east to west, toward the Mississippi River. As long as we keep in the west-flowing current, we'll never get dead-ended."

"I haven't seen the slightest indication of a current since we began."

"It's there."

Hayward slapped at a whining mosquito. Irritated, she squeezed some more insect repellent into her hands and slathered it on her neck and face. Ahead now she could see, through the ribbed tree trunks, a glow of sunlight.

"The bayou," she said.

Pendergast poled the boat forward, and the trees thinned. Suddenly they were out on open water, startling a family of coots that quickly took off, flapping low on the water. He racked the pole and fired up the engine, the airboat once again skimming over the mirror-like surface of the bayou, heading for the heavy tangle of green and brown at its western end. Hayward leaned back, savoring the cooling rush of air, the relative openness after the cloying and claustrophobic swamp.

When the bayou narrowed again--too soon--Pendergast slowed the boat. Minutes later, they stopped at a complicated series of inlets that seemed to go every which way, obscured by stickweed and water hyacinths.

Hayward peered at the map, then the printout, and then shrugged. "Which one?" she asked.

Pendergast didn't answer. The engine was still idling. Suddenly he swung the boat a hundred eighty degrees and throttled it up; at the same time Hayward heard a rumble coming from all around them.

"What the hell?" she said.

The airboat leapt forward with a great roar, back in the direction of the open bayou, but it was too late: a dozen bass boats with powerful outboards came growling out of the dark swamp from both sides of the narrow channel, blocking their retreat.

Pulling his gun, Pendergast fired at the closest boat; its engine cover flew off. Hayward pulled her own weapon as answering fire tore into the propeller of their airboat; with a great whack the propeller flew apart, shattering the oversize cage; their boat slowed and swung sideways, dead in the water.

Hayward took cover behind a seat, but--as she quickly reconnoitered--she realized the situation was hopeless. They had driven into an ambush and were now surrounded by bass boats and skiffs, manned by at least thirty people, all armed, all with guns aimed at them. And there in the lead boat stood Tiny, a TEC-9 in his fat paws.

"Stand up, both of you!" he said. "Hands over your heads, nice and slow!" This was punctuated by a warning spray of gunfire over their heads.

Hayward glanced at Pendergast, also crouched behind the seat. Blood was trickling from a nasty cut on his forehead. He gave a curt nod, then rose, hands over his head, his handgun dangling by his thumb. Hayward did the same.

With a growl, Tiny brought his boat up alongside, a skinny man in its bow holding a big handgun. Tiny hopped out onto their boat, the airboat yawing with his weight. He reached up and took the guns from their hands. Examining Pendergast's Les Baer, he grunted in approval and shoved it in his belt. He took Hayward's Glock and tossed it onto the floor of his boat.

"Well, well." He grinned, deposited a stream of tobacco juice into the water. "I didn't know you enviros believed in guns."

Hayward stared at him. "You're making a serious mistake," she said evenly. "I'm a captain of homicide with the New York Police Department. And I am going to ask you to put down your weapon or face the consequences."

An oleaginous smile bloomed on Tiny's face. "That so?"

"I'm going to lower one hand to show you my identification," said Hayward.

Tiny took a step forward. "No, I think I'll find it myself." Holding the TEC-9 to her head, he groped in her shirt pockets, first one, then the other, helping himself to a couple of generous feels in the process.

"Tits are real," he said, to a burst of raucous laughter. "Fucking monsters, too."

He moved down to her pant pocket, fishing about, at last removing her shield wallet. He flipped it open. "Well, lookee here!"

He held it up, showing it around. Then he examined it himself, pursing his wet lips. "Captain L. Hayward, says here. Homicide division. And there's even a picture! You send away for this from the back of a comic book?"

Hayward stared back. Could he really be so stupid? It made her afraid.

Tiny closed the wallet, reached behind himself, made a wiping motion over his enormous derriere, and tossed it into the water with a splash. "That's what I think of your badge," he said. "Larry, get up here and search this one."

The lean man climbed onto the airboat and approached Pendergast.

"Any bullshit and I let loose with this here," he said, gesturing with the gun. "Simple as that."

The man began searching Pendergast. He removed a second gun, some tools, papers, and his shield.

"Lemme see that," Tiny said.

The man named Larry handed it over. Tiny examined it, spat tobacco juice on it, shut it, and tossed it in the water. "More comic-book tin. You folks are something else, you know that?"

Hayward felt the barrel of the gun digging into her side.

"You really are," Tiny said, his voice getting louder. "You come down here, feed us a bunch of birder bullshit, and then you think some fake badges are gonna save your sorry asses. Is that what they told you to do in case of emergency? Let me tell you something: we know who you are and why you're here. You ain't gonna take one more inch of our swamp away from us. This is our land, how we make a living. This is how my granddaddy fed my daddy, and it's how I'm feeding my kids. It ain't some Disneyland for jackoff Yankee kayakers. It's our swamp."

Approving sounds rose up from the surrounding boats.

"Excuse me for interrupting your little speech," said Hayward, "but I am in fact a police officer and he's an FBI agent, and for your information you are all under arrest. All of you."

"Oooooh!" said Tiny, shoving his fat face into hers. "I'm soooo scared." The smell of whiskey and rotting onions washed over Hayward.

He looked around. "Hey! Maybe we should have ourselves a little striptease here, what say?" Tiny hooked a thumb under one of his own immense man-boobs and gave it a jiggle.

A roar of approval, catcalls, hoots.

"Let's see some real hooters!"

Hayward looked at Pendergast. His face was completely unreadable. The skinny man named Larry was holding a gun to his head, and two dozen other weapons were pointed in their direction.

Tiny reached out and grabbed the collar of Hayward's blouse, giving it a jerk and trying to rip it open; she twisted away, buttons popping off.

"Feisty!" said Tiny, then hauled off and smacked her hard across the face, sending her sprawling in the bottom of the boat.

"Get up," he said, to the sound of laughter. Tiny wasn't laughing. She rose, face burning, and he jammed the gun in her ear. "All right, bitch. Take off your own shirt. For the boys."

"Go to hell," Hayward said.

"Do it," Tiny murmured, pushing the muzzle into her ear. She felt the blood begin to well up. Her blouse was already halfway ripped open.

"Do it!"

She placed a shaking hand on a button, began to undo it.

"Yeah!" came the yells. "Oh, yeah!"

Another sideways glance at Pendergast. He remained motionless, expressionless. What was going through his head?

"Unbutton and give 'em air!" screamed Tiny, jabbing with the gun.

She undid the button to another roar, started on the next.

67

SUDDENLY PENDERGAST SPOKE. "THIS IS NO WAY to treat a lady."

Tiny swiveled toward him. "No way to treat a lady? I think it's a fucking great way!"

A chorus of agreement. Hayward looked at the sea of red, sweating, eager faces.

"Would you care to know what I think?" Pendergast said. "I think you are an embonpoint swine."

Tiny blinked. "Huh?"

"A fat pig," said Pendergast.

Tiny drew back a meaty fist and smacked Pendergast in the solar plexus. The agent gasped and bent forward. Tiny hit him again in the same spot and Pendergast sank to his knees, the wind knocked out of him.

Tiny looked down at Pendergast and spat on him disdainfully. "This is taking way too long," he said. Then he grasped Hayward's shirt and--with a powerful tug--tore the remaining buttons away.

There was a roar of approval from the surrounding boats. Pulling a huge skinning knife from a pocket of his overalls, Tiny opened it, then pulled Hayward's ruined shirt aside with its blade, exposing her brassiere.

"Holy shit!" somebody said.

Tiny gazed hungrily at Hayward's generous breasts. She swallowed painfully and made a move to cover herself with her buttonless shirt but Tiny shook his head, pushed her hands away, and traced the blade of his knife teasingly along the topline of her bra. Then--very slowly--he inserted the tip of the blade under the fabric between the cups. With a jerk, he brought the knife toward him, slitting the bra into two pieces. Hayward's breasts swung free to a hugely appreciative roar.

Hayward saw Pendergast rise, stumbling. Tiny was too preoccupied to notice.

Pendergast steadied himself, leaning heavily to one side. Then--with a sudden, almost imperceptible movement--he shifted his weight to the other side. The boat rocked, throwing Tiny and Larry off balance.

"Hey, easy now--"

Hayward saw a blur, a flash of steel; with a groan Larry doubled over, his clenched hand firing the gun blindly downward; there was a sudden gush of blood into the bottom of the boat.

Tiny twisted around to protect himself, sweeping the TEC-9 through the air, letting loose a long burst of fire, but the agent moved so fast the spray of bullets missed him. A sinuous arm whipped around Tiny's fat neck and jerked his head back, a stiletto at his throat; at the same time Hayward smashed the man's forearm, jarring the TEC-9 loose.

"Don't move," Pendergast said, sinking the knife partway into the man's neck. With his other hand he neatly extracted his Les Baer from the man's waistband.

Tiny roared, twisting his huge bulk, pawing to get at Pendergast; the knife sank deeper, twisted, flashing; there was a small splatter of blood, and then a fresh stillness.

"Move and die," said Pendergast.

Hayward stared, horrified, her own exposed condition momentarily forgotten: Pendergast had somehow managed to work the stiletto into the man's neck, exposing the jugular; the knife blade had already slipped underneath it, stretching it from the wound.

"Shoot me and it's cut," Pendergast said. "I fall, it's cut. He moves, it's cut. She's touched again--it's cut."

"What the fuck!" Tiny screamed in terror, his eyes rolling. "What's he done? Am I bleeding to death?"

A dead silence. All guns were still trained on them.

"Shoot him!" Tiny cried. "Shoot the girl! What are you doing?"

Nobody moved. Hayward stared, transfixed in horror, at the sight of the bulging, pulsing vein, slick over the gleam of the bloodied blade.

Pendergast nodded toward one of the big side mirrors mounted on the gunwale of the boat. "Captain, fetch that mirror for me, please."

Hayward forced herself to move, covering herself as best she could and wrenching the mirror off.

"Hold it up for Tiny's benefit."

She complied. Tiny stared into it, at himself, his eyes widening in terror. "What are you doing... Oh, my God, please, don't..." His voice trailed off into a quaver, his bloodshot eyes wide, his huge body immobilized with terror.

"All weapons in Mr. Tiny's boat, there," said Pendergast quietly, nodding at the empty vessel next to theirs. "Everything. Now."

No one moved.

Pendergast pulled the vein away from the bleeding wound with the flat of his knife. "Do what I say or I cut."

"You heard him!" Tiny said in a kind of terrified, squeaking whisper. "Guns in the boat! Do what he says!"

Hayward continued to hold up the mirror. The men, murmuring, began passing their guns forward and tossing them into the boat. Pretty soon the flat bottom of the boat was filled with an arsenal.

"Knives, Mace, everything."

More things were tossed in.

Pendergast turned toward the skinny man, Larry, lying in the bottom of the boat. He was bleeding from a knife wound in his arm and a self-administered gunshot to his foot. "Remove your shirt, please."

After a brief hesitation, the man did as ordered.

"Pass it over to Captain Hayward."

Hayward took the damp, odorous garment. Turning away from the surrounding boats as much as was possible, she removed her torn blouse and ruined bra and shrugged into the bloody shirt.

Pendergast turned toward her. "Captain, would you care to arm yourself?"

"This TEC-9 looks suitable," Hayward said, picking up the handgun from the pile of weapons. She looked it over, removed the magazine, examined it, slapped it back in. "Converted to fully automatic. Fifty-round magazine, too. Plenty of rounds left to smoke everyone right here, right now."

"An effective, if inelegant, choice," said Pendergast.

Hayward pointed the TEC-9 at the group. "Who still wants to see the floor show?"

Silence. The only sound was Tiny's choked sobbing. The tears streamed down his face, but he remained as immobile as a statue.

"I'm afraid," Pendergast said, "that you folks have made a serious error. This lady is indeed a homicide captain of the NYPD, and I am truly a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We're here on a murder investigation that has nothing to do with you or your town. Whoever told you we were environmentalists lied to you. Now: I'm going to ask a question, just once, and if I get an answer that isn't satisfactory, I'm going to cut Tiny's jugular and my colleague, Captain Hayward, is going to shoot you down like dogs. Self-defense, of course. Being law enforcement, who's to contradict us?"

A silence.

"The question is this: Mr. Tiny, who called you to say we were coming?"

Tiny couldn't get the answer out fast enough. "It was Ventura, Mike Ventura, Mike Ventura..." He choked out the words in between stifled sobs, his voice reduced to a babble.

"And who is Mike Ventura?"

"A guy who lives over in Itta Bena, but he comes down here a lot, big sportsman, lots of money, spends a lot of time in the swamp. It was him, he came into my place, told us all you was environmentalists, you was looking to turn the rest of Black Brake into a refuge, take away all the work from us swampers--"

"Thank you," said Pendergast, "that's sufficient. Here's what's going to happen. My colleague and I are going to continue on our way in Mr. Tiny's excellently equipped and fully loaded bass boat. With all the guns. You all go on home. Understand?"

Nothing.

He tightened the knife beneath the vein. "May I have a response, please?"

Murmurs, nods.

"Excellent. You can see we are now heavily armed. And I can assure you that both of us know how to use these weapons. Captain, would you care to demonstrate?"

Hayward pointed the TEC-9 at a nearby stand of saplings and opened fire. Three short bursts. The trees toppled slowly into the water.

Pendergast slipped the knife out from under the vein. "You're going to need a few stitches, Mr. Tiny."

The fat man merely blubbered.

"I'd advise you all to discuss it among yourselves and come up with a nice, believable story as to how Mr. Tiny here cut his neck and how old Larry there shot himself in the foot. Because the captain and I have bigger fish to fry, and we don't want any more disruptions. Assuming you don't annoy us further--and assuming you leave my rather expensive car alone--we don't see the need to bring charges or arrest anyone--do we, Captain?"

She shook her head. Funny how Pendergast's way of doing things began to make sense--out here in the middle of nowhere, without backup, in front of a crowd who wanted nothing better than to serially rape her and murder them both and sink their bodies in the swamp.

Pendergast stepped into the bass boat, Hayward following, picking her way among the assorted weaponry. Firing up the engine, Pendergast eased the boat forward; the surrounding boats unwillingly parted to give him passage. "We'll see you all again," he called out. "I regret to say that when we do, there might be more unpleasantness."

Then he throttled up and the bass boat headed into the widest inlet at the end of the bayou, heading south into the thick braid of vegetation under a dying evening light.

68

Malfourche, Mississippi

MIKE VENTURA WATCHED FROM HIS PARKED Escalade, A/C going full blast, as the boats straggled back into the slips beyond Tiny's. The sun had just set over the water, the sky a dirty orange. He began to feel uneasy; this did not look like a war party returning from a successful raid. It had more the sullen, dispirited, bedraggled appearance of a rout. When one of the last boats brought in Tiny--who staggered out onto the dock with a bloody, wadded handkerchief tied around his neck, blood caking one side of his shirt--he knew for certain something had gone wrong.

A couple of men supported Tiny, one beneath each meaty arm, as he shuffled into his establishment and disappeared. Meanwhile, others in the crowd had seen Ventura and were talking and gesturing--and then began moving his way. They did not look happy.

Ventura reached over and pressed the automatic locks on the doors, which shot down with a click. The men circled his car in silence, their faces red and streaked with sweat.

Ventura cracked the window an inch. "What happened?"

Nobody answered. After a tense moment, a man raised a fist and brought it down on the hood with a loud bang.

"What the hell?" Ventura cried.

"What the hell?" the man screamed. "What the hell?"

Another fist came down and then, suddenly, they were pummeling the car, kicking the sides, swearing and spitting. Astonished and horrified, Ventura snugged the window tight and threw the car into reverse, backing up so fast those standing behind had to throw themselves to one side to avoid being run over.

"Son of a bitch!" the mob screamed with one voice. "Liar!"

"They were feds, asshole!"

"Lying bastard!"

Giving the wheel a frantic twist, Ventura threw the car into drive and gunned the engine, spraying dirt and gravel in a one-hundred-eighty-degree arc. As he accelerated, a rock smacked the back window with a dull thud, turning it into a spiderweb of cracks.

When he pulled onto the small highway, his cell phone rang. He picked it up: Judson. Shit.

"I'm almost there," came Judson's voice. "How'd it go?"

"Something messed up. And I mean messed up."

By the time Ventura arrived at his neatly kept compound at the edge of the swamp, Esterhazy's pickup was already there. The tall man stood next to the bed of the truck, dressed in khaki, unloading guns. Ventura pulled up and got out. Esterhazy turned toward him, his face dark.

"What happened to your car?" he asked.

"The swampers attacked it. Over in Malfourche."

"Didn't they take care of things?"

"No. Tiny came back with a neck wound and nobody had their guns. They wanted to string me up. I've got a big problem on my hands."

Esterhazy stared at him. "So those two are still heading to Spanish Island?"

"It seems so."

Esterhazy looked past Ventura's rambling whitewashed house and wide, billiard-table lawn to the private dock, where Ventura's three boats were tied up: a Lafitte skiff, a brand-new bass boat with a hydraulic jack plate and a Humminbird console, and a powerful airboat. His jaw tightened. He reached into the pickup bed and removed the last gun case. "It would appear," he said slowly, "that we're going to have to handle the problem ourselves."

"And right away. Because if they reach Spanish Island, it's over."

"We won't let it get that far." Esterhazy squinted toward the sunset. "Depending on how fast they're moving, they might be getting close already."

"They're moving slowly. They don't know the swamp."

Esterhazy looked at the bass boat. "With that two fifty Yamaha, we might just be able to intercept them when they cross that old logging pullboat canal near Ronquille Island. You know what I'm talking about?"

"Of course," said Ventura, irritated that Esterhazy might even question his knowledge of the swamp.

"Then put these guns in the boat and let's get moving," said Judson. "I've got an idea."

69

Black Brake Swamp

A BUTTERY MOON ROSE AMONG THE MASSIVE trunks of the bald cypresses, spreading a faint light through the night-darkened swamp. The boat's spotlight cast a beam into the tangle of trees and other vegetation ahead, now and then illuminating pairs of glowing eyes. Hayward knew most of the eyes belonged to frogs and toads, but nevertheless felt herself growing seriously spooked. Even if the strange stories she'd heard as a child about Black Brake were legends, she knew the place was nevertheless infested with very real alligators and venomous snakes. She poled the bass boat forward, drenched in sweat, walking the pole from the middle backward. Larry's shirt felt coarse and itchy against her bare skin. Pendergast lay on the front deck, maps spread out, examining them intently with the aid of his flashlight. It had been a long, slow journey, full of dead ends, false leads, and painstaking navigation.

Pendergast shone his light into the water and dropped a pinch of dirt from a cup overboard, testing the current. "A mile or less," he murmured, going back to the maps.

She poled, walked back to the stern, pulled the pole up, walked forward, stuck it into the muddy bottom again. She felt as if she were drowning in the greenish black jungle that surrounded them. "What if the camp's gone?"

No answer. The moon rose higher, and Hayward breathed the deep, moist, fragrant air. A mosquito flew into her ear, buzzing frantically. She smacked it, flicked it away.

"Up ahead is the last logging channel," Pendergast said. "Beyond that lies the final stretch of swamp before Spanish Island."

The boat nosed through a patch of rotting water hyacinth, the sour vegetative smell rising from the water and enveloping them.

"Turn off the spotlight and running lights, please," Pendergast said. "We don't want to alert them to our approach."

Hayward switched off the lights. "You really think there's a 'them' there?"

"I'm quite sure something is there. Why go to such lengths to stop us?"

As her eyes adjusted, Hayward found herself surprised at just how much light there was in the swamp under the full moon. Ahead, through the tree trunks, she could see a lane of shimmering water. In a moment the boat had slipped into the logging channel, now half overgrown with duckweed and hyacinth. The branches of the cypresses knitted together overhead, forming a tunnel.

Suddenly the boat stopped dead. Hayward lurched forward, using the pole to keep herself steady.

"We've snagged something beneath the surface," Pendergast said. "Probably a root or a fallen tree branch. See if you can't pole around it."

Hayward pushed herself against the pole. The stern of the boat swung around, impacting heavily against a cypress trunk. The vessel shuddered and swayed, then came loose from the obstruction. As Hayward leaned into the pole, preparing to launch them back into the logging channel, she saw something long, glistening, and black slip from the branches overhead and fall across her shoulders. It slithered around the skin of her neck, cool and dry, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out in surprise and revulsion.

"Don't move," said Pendergast. "Not a muscle."

She waited, willing herself to stay still, as Pendergast took a slow step toward her, then stopped and balanced himself carefully on the arsenal that lay in the boat's bottom. And then one hand shot forward, grabbed the thick coiling presence from her shoulders, and flung it away with a vicious snap. Hayward turned to watch the snake writhing through the air, easily more than a yard long, before landing in the water astern.

"Agkistrodon piscivorus," Pendergast said grimly. "Cottonmouth water moccasin."

Her skin tingled, and the nasty slithering sensation refused to go away. Taking a deep breath, she shuddered and grasped the pole. They moved back into the channel and continued deeper into the overgrown fastness. Pendergast took a look around, then returned to his maps and charts. As she poled, Hayward kept a cautious eye on the braiding of tree trunks above her. Mosquitoes, frogs, snakes--the only thing she hadn't yet encountered was an alligator.

"We may have to get out and travel on foot soon," Pendergast murmured. "There would appear to be obstructions ahead." He glanced up from the map, looked around once again.

Hayward thought about the alligators. On foot. Great.

She placed the pole, gave the boat another shove. Suddenly, in a silent flash of black, Pendergast lunged at her, tackling her at the waist, and they both tumbled over the gunwale of the boat into the black water. She righted herself underwater, too surprised to struggle, her feet sinking into the muck below. As she pushed off and her head broke the surface, she heard a fusillade of shots.

A clang sounded as a round struck the engine, and a gout of flame erupted. Clang! Clang! The shots were coming from the darkness to her right.

"Get a weapon," Pendergast whispered in her ear.

She grasped the gunwale and, waiting for a lull in the shooting, hoisted herself up, grabbed the closest gun--a heavy rifle--and slid back down. Another fusillade of shots tore into the boat, several striking the engine. A trickle of flame ran down the bottom of the boat: the gas line had been hit.

"Don't return fire!" Pendergast whispered, giving her a push. "Get to the other side of the boat, head for the far side of the channel, and take cover."

She half swam, half waded through the water, keeping her head as low as possible. The burning boat erupted into flames behind them, casting a yellow glow over the water. There was a muffled crump! and she felt the pressure-wave of the explosion wash over her, a ball of fire rising orange and black into the night. A series of smaller explosions crackled from the burning pile of firearms.

Suddenly shots were striking all around, sending up gouts of water.

"We're spotted," Pendergast said urgently. "Immerse and swim!"

Hayward took a deep breath, ducked below the water, and, rifle awkwardly gripped in one hand, began to propel herself forward in the watery darkness. As her feet sank into the muck, she could feel hard--and sometimes not-so-hard--objects and the occasional slimy wriggle of a fish. She tried not to think about the water moccasins, or about the nutrias and eight-inch leeches and everything else that infested the swamp. She could hear the zip zip of bullets entering the water around her. With her lungs almost bursting she rose, gasped in another breath, and submerged again.

The water seemed to be alive with the buzzing sound of bullets. She had no idea where Pendergast was but she kept going, rising every minute or so to gulp air. The mud under her feet began to rise. Soon she was crawling in ever-shallower water, the trees on the far side of the canal looming up. The shooter was still firing to her right, the bullets striking the tree trunks above her. The shots were more intermittent now. He had evidently lost her and was simply shooting into her general vicinity.

She dragged herself onto the slippery bank, rolling onto her back amid the hyacinths and fighting to catch her breath. She was completely covered with mud. It had happened so fast she hadn't had time to think--but now she thought. Furiously. It wasn't the swampers this time, she was sure of that. It appeared to be a lone shooter. Someone who knew they were coming and had time to prepare.

She ventured a look around but saw no sign of Pendergast. Cradling the rifle with one hand, she half crawled, half swam up a shallow rivulet into the cover of the trees. She grasped an old, rotting cypress stump and settled herself behind it. As she did so, she heard a faint splashing sound. She almost called out, thinking it was Pendergast, when a spotlight abruptly went on in the channel, illuminating the swamp to her left.

She ducked down, trying to make herself as small as possible behind the stump. Slowly, with great deliberation, she shifted the rifle in front of her. It was covered with mud. Immersing it in the water of the rivulet, she agitated it slightly, letting the mud dissolve away, then brought the weapon up and felt along its length, trying to figure out what it was. Lever-action, heavy, octagon barrel, big caliber. It seemed to be a .45-70, a modern replica of an Old West rifle, maybe a Winchester reproduction of an old Browning--which meant it would probably still fire despite the immersion. The magazine would hold between four and nine rounds.

The spotlight lanced through the trees, scanning the swamp. The shooting had stopped, but the light was moving closer.

She should shoot out the light. That was, in fact, her only target, as everything else was invisible in the glare. Moving slowly and silently, she raised the gun, shaking out the last of the water. With infinite care she cocked the lever, feeling a round slip into the chamber. So far, so good. The light was now very visible, moving slowly along the canal. She raised the gun to take aim--and suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder.

Stifling a cry, she ducked back down.

"Do not fire," came Pendergast's almost inaudible voice. "It might be a trap."

Swallowing her surprise, she nodded.

"Follow me." Pendergast turned and crawled up the rivulet, and Hayward did the same. The moon was temporarily hidden behind clouds, but the dying glow from the burning boat gave them just enough light to see by. The little channel narrowed, and soon they were crossing a mudflat covered with about a foot of water. The beam shot across the flat, moving toward them. Pendergast stopped and took a deep breath, sinking into the water as deeply as possible. He looked as mud-encrusted as she was. Hayward followed suit, almost burying her face in the muck. The light passed directly over them. She tensed, waiting for a shot, but there was none.

When the light had passed, she rose. Beyond the flat she could see a massive grouping of dead cypress stumps and rotting trunks. Pendergast was heading directly for it. Hayward followed suit, and within a minute they had taken up a position.

Hayward quickly rinsed and recleaned her gun. Pendergast plucked his Les Baer from its holster and did the same. They worked quickly and silently. The light came back, this time closer, moving directly toward them.

"How do you know it's a trap?" Hayward whispered.

"Too obvious. There's more than one gunman there, and they're waiting for us to fire at the light."

"So what do we do?"

"We wait. In silence. Unmoving."

The light snapped off and darkness reigned. Pendergast crouched, immovable, unreadable, behind the great tangle of stumps.

She listened intently. There were splashes and rustles in the night, seemingly everywhere. Animals moving, frogs jumping. Or was it people?

The burning boat finally sank, the slick of burning gasoline rapidly dying out, leaving the swamp in a cool quasi-darkness. Still they waited. The light came on again, drawing ever closer.

70

JUDSON ESTERHAZY, WEARING SHOULDER WADERS, moved with infinite caution through the thick vegetation, a Winchester .30-30 in his hands. It was much lighter than the sniper rifle, far more maneuverable, and a gun he'd used for hunting deer since he was a teenager. Powerful but sleek, it was almost like an extension of himself.

Through the trees he could see Ventura's light, shining about, steadily approaching the area where Pendergast and the woman must have gone to ground. Esterhazy was positioned about a hundred yards behind where they had been driven. Little did they know they were being squeezed in a pincer movement, as he worked up behind their position among the fallen trees while Ventura approached from the front. The two were sitting ducks. All he needed was for them to shoot once--a single shot--and then he could pinpoint their position and kill them both. And eventually they would be forced to shoot out the light.

The plan was working perfectly, and Ventura had played his part well. The light--on a long pole--moved slowly, haltingly, ever closer to their position. He could see its beam fitfully illuminating a tangle of cypress roots and a massive, rotting trunk--an old blowdown. That was where they were: there was no other decent cover anywhere nearby.

He maneuvered himself slowly to acquire a line of sight to the blowdown. The moon was higher in the sky and now it emerged from behind the clouds, casting a pale light into the darkest recesses of the swamp. He had a glimpse of the two of them, crouched behind the log, focused entirely on the light in front of them--and fully exposed to his flanking maneuver. He didn't even need them to shoot the light after all.

Slowly, Judson raised the rifle to his cheek, peering through the Trident Pro 2.5x night-vision scope. The scene leapt into sharp relief. He couldn't get a line on both at once, but if he took down Pendergast first, the woman would not present much of a challenge.

Shifting slightly, he maneuvered the scope so that Pendergast's back was centered on the crosshairs, and readied himself for the shot.

Hayward crouched behind the rotting trunk as the light swung back and forth in the darkness, moving erratically.

Pendergast whispered in her ear. "I think that light's on a pole."

"A pole?"

"Yes. Look at the curious way it's bobbing. It's a ruse. And that confirms there's a second shooter." Suddenly he grabbed her and shoved her down into the shallow water, her face in the muck. Half a second later she heard a shot just overhead, the dull thud of a bullet hitting wood.

With desperate movements, she followed Pendergast as he crawled through the muck and then wedged himself up behind a tangle of roots, pulling her next to him. More shots came, this time from both forward and behind, tearing through the roots in two directions.

"This cover's no good," gasped Hayward.

"No, it isn't. We can't stay here--it's only a matter of time until one of those bullets finds its mark."

"But what can we do?"

"I'm going to take out the shooter behind us. When I leave, I want you to count ninety seconds, fire, count another ninety, then fire again. Don't bother aiming--it's the noise I require. Take care your muzzle flash is concealed... and then, only then, after the first two fake shots, shoot out the light. And then charge him--and kill."

"Got it."

With a flash Pendergast disappeared into the swamp. A fresh burst of gunfire rang out in response.

Hayward counted to ninety and then, keeping the rifle muzzle low, fired. The .45-70 roared and kicked back, surprising her with its noise, the sound echoing and scattering through the swamp. In answer, a fusillade of bullets tore through the roots just above her head and she burrowed down in the muck, and then she heard Pendergast's answering fire to her left, his .45 blasting into the night. The fire shifted away from her. The light bobbed but did not advance.

She counted again, pulled the trigger, and a second roar from the heavy-caliber rifle split the air.

Once again, the fire came her way and was answered by a rapid tattoo of shots from Pendergast, this time from a different place. The light had still not moved.

Hayward turned, crouched in the muck, and took aim at the light with exquisite care. Slowly, she squeezed the trigger, the gun roared, and the light dissolved in a shower of sparks.

Immediately she was up and moving as fast as she could through the heavy, sucking mud toward where the light had been. She could hear Pendergast firing furiously behind her, pinning down the rearward shooter.

A pair of shots clipped through a stand of ferns next to her; she charged ahead, rifle at the ready, and then burst through the ferns to find the shooter crouching in a shallow-draft boat. He turned toward her in surprise and she threw herself into the water, aiming and firing as she did so. The man fired simultaneously and she felt a sharp blow to her leg, followed by a sudden numbness. She gasped and tried to rise to her feet, but her leg refused to move.

She worked the action frantically, expecting at any moment to be hit by a second, fatal shot. But none came and she realized she must have hit the shooter. With a supreme effort she half crawled, half stumbled into the shallow water and grabbed the gunwale, aiming the rifle within.

The shooter lay on the floor of the boat, blood streaming from a wound in his shoulder. His rifle lay in two pieces--the round had evidently struck it--and he was fumbling with one hand trying to pull out a handgun. He was not one of the swampers--in fact, she had never seen him before.

"Don't move!" she barked, aiming the rifle at him and trying not to gasp with pain. She reached over, snatched away the handgun, pointed it at him. "Stand up, nice and slow. Keep your hands in sight."

The man groaned, raised one hand. The other hung uselessly at his side.

Remembering the second shooter, Hayward kept as low as possible. She checked the handgun, saw it had a full magazine, took it and tossed the heavy rifle into the water.

The man groaned, a patch of moonlight draping his torso, the dark stain of blood slowly spreading downward from his shoulder. "I'm hit," he groaned. "I need help."

"It's not fatal," said Hayward. Her own wound was throbbing, her leg felt like a piece of lead. She hoped she wasn't bleeding to death. Because she was half immersed in water, the shooter didn't know she'd been shot. She could feel the slither and bump of things against her wounded leg--probably fish, attracted to the blood.

More shots rang out behind her, the massive sound of Pendergast's .45 interspersed with the sharper crack of the second shooter's rifle. The firing became sporadic, and then there was silence. A long silence.

"What's your name?" Hayward asked.

"Ventura," the man said. "Mike--"

A single crack. The man named Ventura jerked backward and, with a single grunt, collapsed heavily into the bottom of the boat, twitched, and was still.

Hayward, in sudden panic, dropped down low into the water, clinging to the gunwale with one hand. Vile water creatures were worrying at her wound, and she could feel the wriggling of countless leeches.

She heard a splash, swung around with the gun--only to see Pendergast moving toward her through the water, low and slow. He gestured at her to remain silent, then grasped the gunwale, looked around intently for a moment, and in one swift movement swung himself into the boat. She heard him moving about, then he was back over the side, sinking back into the water next to her.

"You all right?" he whispered.

"No. I'm hit."

"Where?"

"Leg."

"We've got to get you out of the water." The agent grasped her arm and began to tow her to shore. The silence was profound; the shooting had frightened all life in the swamp into a standstill. There were no splashes, no croaks or chirps and rustlings.

She felt a faint current, and then something hard and scaly brushed her underwater. She stifled a scream. The surface of the water dimpled in the moonlight, and two reptilian eyes rose, along with a pair of scaly nostrils. With a terrifying explosion of water it lunged at her; Pendergast simultaneously fired his gun; she felt something sharp and massive and inexorable clamp down on her injured leg and she was yanked underwater, the pain spiking excruciatingly.

Struggling, Pendergast still gripping her arm, she tried to twist away, but the huge alligator was pulling her down into the mud at the bed of the channel. She tried to scream, her mouth filling with stagnant water. She heard the thud of his shots above the surface. She twisted again, jammed the handgun into the thing gripping her leg, and fired.

A huge report; the concussion of the shot and the violent, spastic reaction of the alligator combining into a single huge explosion. The terrible biting pressure was released and she clawed her way out of the muck, gasping.

With an almost violent motion Pendergast hauled her to shore, pulling her into the shallow water and onto a bed of ferns. She felt him tear up her pant leg, rinse the wounds as best he could, and bind them with the strips of cloth.

"The other shooter," she said, feeling dizzy. "Did you get him?"

"No. It's possible I winged him--I routed him from his hiding place and saw his shadow flitting back into the swamp."

"Why hasn't he started shooting again?"

"He may be looking for a new spot from which to improve his fire discipline. The fellow in the boat was killed by a .30-30 round. Not one of ours."

"An accident?" she gasped, trying to keep her mind off the pain.

"Probably not."

He slung her arm around his shoulders and hauled her to her feet. "There's only one thing we can do--get you to Spanish Island. Now."

"But the other shooter. He's still out there, somewhere."

"I know." Pendergast nodded at her leg. "But that wound can't wait."

71

HER ARM AROUND PENDERGAST'S NECK, HAYWARD stumbled through the sucking mud, slipping constantly, at times almost dragging him into the muck with her. With every step, pain shot through her leg as if a red-hot rod of iron had been embedded from shin to thigh, and she had to stifle a cry. She was keenly aware that the shooter was still out there, in the dark. The very quietness of the swamp unsettled her, made her fear he was waiting. Despite the stifling heat of the night and the tepid swamp water, she felt shivery and light-headed, as if all this were happening to someone else.

"You must get up, Captain," came Pendergast's soothing voice. She realized that she had fallen yet again.

The curious emphasis on her title roused her somewhat and she struggled to her feet, managed a step or two, and then felt herself crumpling again. Pendergast continued to half hold, half drag her along, his arms like steel cables, his voice soft and soothing. But then the mud grew deeper, sucking at her legs almost like quicksand, and with the effort of staggering she felt herself merely sinking forward into the mire.

He steadied her and with a great effort she managed to free one leg, but the wounded leg was now deep in the muck and throbbed unbearably at every effort to move it. She fell back into the swamp, sinking almost to her thighs. "I can't," she said, gasping with pain. "I just can't do it." The night whirled crazily about, her head buzzed painfully, and she could feel him holding her upright.

Pendergast glanced around quietly, carefully. "All right," he whispered. He was silent for a moment, and then she heard him softly tearing something up--his suit jacket. The dark swamp, the trees, the moon were all turning around, and around... Mosquitoes swarmed her, in her nostrils and her ears, roaring like lions. She sank back into the watery muck, wishing with all her might that the clinging mud was her bed back home, and that she was safe and warm in Manhattan, Vinnie breathing quietly beside her...

She came to as Pendergast was tying some sort of crudely contrived harness around her upper arms. She struggled for a moment, confused, but he put his hand on hers to reassure her. "I'm going to pull you along. Just stay relaxed."

She nodded, comprehension slowly dawning.

He slung the two strips of the harness over his shoulders and began to pull. At first, she didn't move. Then the swamp slowly released its sucking embrace and she found herself sliding forward over the water-covered muck, half bobbing, half slipping. The trees loomed overhead, black and silver in the moonlight, their interlocking branches and leaves above forming a speckled pattern of dark and light. Weakly, Hayward wondered where the shooter was hiding; why they had heard no further shots. Five minutes might have passed, or thirty; she lost all sense of time.

Suddenly Pendergast paused.

"What is it?" Hayward groaned.

"I see a light through the trees."

72

PENDERGAST LEANED OVER HAYWARD, EXAMINING her closely. She was in shock. Given the sloppy, mud-drenched state of her person, it was difficult to tell how much blood she had lost. The moonlight slanted across her face, ghostly white where it wasn't smeared with dirt. Gently, he pulled her up to a sitting position, loosened the harness, and propped her back against a tree trunk, camouflaging her position with a few fern leaves. Rinsing a rag in the murky water, he tried to clean some of the mud from her wound, pulling off numerous leeches in the process.

"How are you doing, Captain?"

Hayward swallowed, her mouth working. Her eyes blinked, unable to focus. He felt her pulse; shallow and rapid. Bending over to her ear, he whispered, "I have to leave you. Just for a while."

For a moment, her eyes widened in fear. Then she nodded and managed to speak, her voice hoarse. "I understand."

"Whoever is living at Spanish Island knows we're here; they undoubtedly heard the shots. Indeed, the remaining shooter may well have come from Spanish Island and is awaiting us there--hence the silence. I must approach with great care. Let me see your weapon."

He took the handgun--a .32--examined the magazine, then slapped it back in place and pressed it into her hands. "You've got four rounds left. If I don't come back... you may need them." He placed the flashlight in her lap. "Don't use it unless you have to. Watch for the gleam of eyes in the moonlight. Look at the distance between them. More than two inches, it's either a gator or our shooter. Do you understand?"

Again she nodded, clasping the gun.

"This is a good blind. You won't be seen until you want to be seen. But listen to me carefully, now: you must stay awake. To lose consciousness is to die."

"You'd better get going," she murmured.

Pendergast peered into the darkness. A faint yellow glow was just barely visible through the ranks of tree trunks. He took out a knife and, reaching up, scored a large X on opposite sides of the biggest tree trunk. Leaving Hayward, he set off southward, approaching the distant lights in a tightening, spiral-like trajectory.

He moved slowly, extracting his feet from the muck with care so as to make as little noise as possible. There was no sign of activity, no sounds from the distant light that flickered and disappeared among the dark trunks. As he tightened the spiral, the trees thinned and a dull yellow rectangle came into view: a curtained window, floating in the blackness, amid a cluster of vague buildings with pitched roofs.

In another ten minutes, he had maneuvered close enough to have a clear view of the old hunting camp on Spanish Island.

It was a vast, rambling place, built just above the waterline on creosote pilings: at least a dozen large, shingled buildings wedged in among a massive stand of ancient bald cypresses heavily draped in curtains of Spanish moss. It lay right on the edge of a small slackwater bayou. The camp was built on marginally higher ground, surrounded by a screen of ferns, bushes, and tall grass. The heavy fringe of vegetation, combined with the almost impenetrable skeins of hanging moss, gave the place a hidden, cocooned feeling.

Pendergast moved laterally, still circling the place, checking for guards and getting a feel for the layout. At one end, a large wooden platform led to a pier with a floating dock projecting into the bayou. Tied to it was an unusual boat, which Pendergast recognized as a small, Vietnam-era brownwater navy utility boat. It was a hybrid species of swampcraft with a draft of only three inches and a quiet, underwater jet drive--ideal for creeping around a swamp. Although some of the outbuildings were in ruins, their roofs sagging inward, the central camp was in good condition and clearly inhabited. A large outbuilding was also in impeccable shape. Heavy curtains were drawn over the windows, diffusing the faintest yellow glow from inside.

As he completed his circle, Pendergast was surprised: nobody seemed to be on watch. It was quiet as a tomb. If the shooter was here, he was exceptionally well hidden. He waited, listening. And then he heard something: a faint, desolate cry, thin and birdlike, just on the threshold of audibility, such as from one that has lost all hope, soon dying away. When that, too, ended, a profound stillness fell on the swamp.

Pendergast removed his Les Baer and circled up behind the camp, wriggling into a dense clump of ferns at the edge of the supporting pilings. Again he listened but could hear nothing more; no footfalls on the wooden planks above, no flash of a light, no voices.

Affixed to one of the pilings was a crude wooden ladder made from slippery, rotting slats. After a few more minutes he half crawled, half swam toward it, grasped the lower rung, and pulled himself up, one rung at a time, testing each in turn for solidity. In a moment his head had reached the level of the platform. Peering over, he could still see nothing in the moonlight, no sign of anyone on guard.

Easing himself onto the platform, he rolled over the rough wooden boards and lay there, sidearm at the ready. Straining to listen, he thought now that he could hear a voice, exceptionally faint even to his preternatural hearing, murmuring slowly and monotonously, as if reciting the rosary. The moon was now directly overhead and the camp, deep in the cluster of trees, was speckled with moonlight. He waited one moment more. Then he rose to his feet and darted into the shadow of the nearest outbuilding, flattening himself against the wall. A single window, shades drawn, cast a faint light across the platform.

He inched forward, around the corner, and ducked to pass below a second window. Pivoting around another corner, he reached a door. It was old and dilapidated, with rusted hinges, the paint peeling off in strips. With exquisite care he tried the handle, found it locked; a moment's effort unlocked it. He waited, crouching.

No sound.

He slowly turned the knob, eased the door open, then ducked quietly through and covered the room with his weapon.

What greeted his eye was a large, elegant sitting room, somewhat dilapidated. A massive stone fireplace loomed over one end, dominated by a moldering stuffed alligator on a plaque, with a rack of briar pipes and a bulbous gasogene set on the huge timbered mantel. Empty gun cases lined one wall, other cases filled with decaying fly and spinning rods, display cases exhibiting flies and lures. Burgundy leather furniture, much patched and cracked with age, was grouped around the dead fireplace. The room appeared dusty, little used. For such a large space it seemed remarkably empty.

The faintest tread of a foot sounded directly above his head, the murmur of a voice.

The room was illuminated with several hanging kerosene lanterns, their light set at the dimmest possible setting. Pendergast unhooked one, turned the wick to brighten it, and moved across the room to a narrow enclosed staircase, heavily carpeted, on the far end. Slowly, he ascended the stairs.

The difference between the second and first floors was remarkable. There was none of the heavy scattering of objects here, the confusion of colors and shapes and patterns. As he reached the top of the stairs, a long hallway greeted his eye, lined on either side with bedrooms, evidently from the days when the camp had paying guests. But the usual decorations, the chairs and the paintings and the bookcases, were completely missing. The doors were open, displaying barren rooms. Each window had been covered with gauze, apparently to filter out light. Everything was in muted pastel, almost black and white. Even the knotholes had been carefully filled in.

At the end of the hall, a larger door stood ajar, light illuminating its edges. Pendergast moved down the hall like a cat. The last set of bedrooms he passed were evidently still in use, one very large and elegant although still quite spartan, with a freshly made bed, adjoining bathroom and dressing room--and a one-way mirror, looking into a second, adjoining bedroom, smaller and more austere, with no furniture other than a large double bed.

Pendergast crept up to the door at the end of the hall and listened. He could hear, for the first time, the faint throb of a generator. No sound came from the room: all was silent.

He positioned himself to one side, and then in a swift motion pivoted around and kicked the door in with one powerful blow. It flew open and Pendergast simultaneously dropped to the floor.

An enormous blast from a shotgun ripped through the door frame above him, taking out a chunk the size of a basketball, showering him with splinters, but before the shooter could unload another round of buckshot Pendergast had used his momentum to roll and rise; the second blast obliterated a side table by the door but by then Pendergast was on top of the shooter, arm sliding around her neck. He wrenched the shotgun from her hands and spun her around--and found himself grasping a tall, strikingly beautiful woman.

"You can unhand me now," she said calmly.

Pendergast released her and stepped back, covering her with the .45. "Don't move," he said. "Keep your hands in sight." He rapidly scouted the room and was astonished at what he saw: a state-of-the-art critical care facility, filled with gleaming new medical equipment--a physiologic monitoring system, pulse oximeter, apnea monitor, ventilator, infusion pump, crash cart, mobile X-ray unit, half a dozen digital diagnostic devices. All powered by electricity.

"Who are you?" the woman asked. Her voice was frosty, her composure recovered. She was dressed simply and elegantly in a pale cream dress without pattern, no jewelry, and yet she was carefully made up, her hair recently done. Most of all, Pendergast was impressed by the fierce intelligence behind her steely blue eyes. He recognized her almost immediately from the photographs in the Vital Records file in Baton Rouge.

"June Brodie," he said.

Her face paled, but only slightly. In the tense silence that ensued, a faint cry, of pain or perhaps despair, came muffled through a door at the far end of the room. Pendergast turned; stared.

When June Brodie spoke again, her voice was cool. "I'm afraid your unexpected arrival has disturbed my patient. And that is really most unfortunate."

73

PATIENT?" PENDERGAST ASKED.

Brodie said nothing.

"We can discuss the matter later," Pendergast said. "Meanwhile, I have an injured colleague in the swamp. I require your boat. And these facilities."

When nothing happened, he waved his gun. "Anything less than full haste and cooperation will be seriously detrimental to your health."

"There's no need to threaten me."

"I'm afraid there is. May I remind you who fired first?"

"You came bursting in here like the Seventh Cavalry--what did you expect?"

"Shall we bandy civilities later?" Pendergast said coldly. "My colleague is badly hurt."

Still remarkably composed, June Brodie turned, pressed the tab on a wall intercom, and spoke into it with a voice of command. "We have visitors. Prepare to receive an emergency patient--and meet us with a stretcher down on the dock."

Brodie walked through the room and exited the door without looking over her shoulder. Pendergast followed her back down the hallway, gun at the ready. She descended the stairs, crossed the main parlor of the lodge, exited the building, and walked across the platform to the pier to the floating dock. She stepped gracefully into the back and fired up the engine. "Untie the boat," she said. "And please put away that gun."

Pendergast tucked the gun in his belt and untied the boat. She revved the engine, backing it out.

"She's about a thousand yards east-southeast," said Pendergast, pointing into the darkness. "That way," he added. "There's a gunman in the swamp. But of course, you probably know all about that. He may be wounded--he may not."

Brodie looked at him. "Do you want to retrieve your colleague, or not?"

Pendergast indicated the boat's control panel.

Saying nothing else, the woman accelerated the boat and they sped along the muddy shores of the bayou. After a few minutes she slowed to enter a tiny channel, which wound this way and that, dividing and braiding into a labyrinth of waterways. Brodie managed to penetrate the swamp in a way that Pendergast was surprised was possible, always keeping to a sinuous channel that, even in bright moonlight, was almost invisible.

"More to the right," he said, peering into the trees. They were using no lights; it was easier to see farther in the moonlight--and it was safer as well.

The boat wound among the channels, now and then threatening to ground in the shallow muck but always sliding across when the jet drive was gunned.

"There," said Pendergast, pointing to the mark on the tree trunk.

The boat grounded sluggishly on a mud bar. "This is as far as we can go," Brodie murmured.

Pendergast turned to her, searched her quickly and expertly for concealed weapons, and then spoke in a low voice. "Stay here. I'll go retrieve my colleague. Continue to cooperate and you'll survive this night."

"I repeat: you don't need to threaten me," she said.

"It's not a threat; it's clarification." Pendergast climbed over the side of the boat and began making his way through the muck.

"Captain Hayward?" he called.

No answer.

"Laura?"

Still nothing but silence.

In a moment he was at Hayward's side. She was still in shock, semi-conscious, her head lolling against the rotten stump. He glanced back and forth briefly, listening for a rustle or the crack of a twig; looking for any glint of light off metal that might indicate the presence of the shooter. Seeing nothing, he gripped Hayward under the arms and dragged her through the muck back to the boat. He lifted her over the side, and Brodie grasped the limp body and helped set it in the bottom.

Without a word she turned and fired up the engine; they backed out of the channel and then returned at high speed to the camp. As they approached, a small, silent man wearing hospital whites came into view, standing at the dock with a stretcher. Pendergast and Brodie lifted Hayward out of the boat and placed her on the stretcher; the man then rolled her along the platform and into the main parlor of the lodge. He and Pendergast carried the stretcher up the stairs, down the hall, and into the bizarrely high-tech emergency room, positioning it beside a bank of critical care equipment.

As they moved her from the stretcher onto a surgical bed, June Brodie turned to the little man in white. "Intubate her," she said sharply. "Orotracheal. And oxygen."

The man leapt into action, passing a tube into Hayward's mouth and delivering oxygen, both of them working with a swift economy of action that clearly attested to years of experience.

"What happened?" she asked Pendergast as she cut away a mud-heavy sleeve with a pair of medical scissors.

"Gunshot wound and alligator bite."

June Brodie nodded, then listened to Hayward's pulse and took her blood pressure, examining the pupils with a light. The movements were practiced and highly professional. "Hang a bag of dextran," she told the man in scrub whites, "and run a 14g IV."

While he worked, she readied a needle and took a blood sample, filling a syringe and transferring it to vacuum tubes. She plucked a scalpel from a nearby sterile tray and, with several deft cuts, removed the rest of the pant leg.

"Irrigation."

The man handed her a large saline-filled syringe, and she washed the mud and filth away, plucking off numerous leeches as she did so and tossing everything into a red-bag disposer. Injecting a local around the ugly lacerations and the bullet wound, she worked diligently but calmly, cleaning everything with saline and antiseptic. Lastly, she administered an antibiotic and dressed the wound.

She looked up at Pendergast. "She'll be fine."

As if on cue, Hayward's eyes opened and she made a sound in the endotracheal tube. She shifted on the surgical bed, raised a hand, and gestured at the tube.

After briefly examining her, June ordered the tube removed. "I felt it was better to be safe than sorry," she said.

Hayward swallowed painfully, then looked around, her eyes coming into focus. "What's going on?"

"You've been saved by a ghost," said Pendergast. "The ghost of June Brodie."

74

HAYWARD LOOKED AT THE VAGUE FIGURES IN turn, then tried to sit up. Her head was still swimming.

"Allow me." Brodie reached over and raised the backrest of the surgical bed. "You were in light shock," she said. "But you'll soon be back to normal. Or as close as possible, given the conditions."

"My leg..."

"No permanent damage. A flesh wound and a nasty bite from a gator. I've numbed it with a local, but when that wears off it's going to hurt. You're going to need a further series of antibiotic injections, too--lots of unpleasant bacteria live in an alligator's mouth. How do you feel?"

"Out of it," said Hayward, sitting up. "What is this place?" She peered at June. "June... June Brodie?" She looked around. What kind of hunting camp would contain a place like this--an emergency room with state-of-the-art equipment? And yet it was like no emergency room she had ever seen. The lighting was too dim, and except for the medical equipment the space was utterly bare: no books, paintings, posters, even chairs.

She swallowed and shook her head, trying to clear it. "Why did you fake your suicide?"

Brodie stepped back and gazed at her. "I imagine you must be the two officers investigating Longitude Pharmaceuticals. Captain Hayward of the NYPD and Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI."

"We are," said Pendergast. "I'd show you my badge, but I fear the swamp has claimed it."

"That won't be necessary," she said coolly. "Perhaps I shouldn't answer any questions until I call an attorney."

Pendergast gave her a long, steady look. "I am not in any mood for obstructionism," he said in a low, menacing voice. "You will answer any questions I put to you, attorney and Miranda be damned." He turned to the man in surgical whites. "Stand over there next to her."

The short man hastily complied.

"Is that the patient?" Pendergast asked Brodie. "The one you mentioned earlier?"

She shook her head. "Is this any way to treat us, after we helped your partner?"

"Don't irritate me."

Brodie fell silent.

Pendergast looked at her, a terrible expression on his face. His Les Baer still hung ominously by his side. "You will answer my questions completely, starting now. Understood?"

The woman nodded.

"Now: why this extensive medical setup? Who is your 'patient'?"

"I am the patient," came a cracked, whispery voice, to the accompaniment of a door opening in the far wall. "All this largesse is for me." A figure stood in the darkness outside the door, tall and still and gaunt, a scarecrow silhouette barely visible in the darkness beyond the emergency room. He laughed: a papery laugh, more breath than anything else. After a moment the shadow stepped very slowly from the darkness into the half-light and raised his voice only slightly.

"Here's Charles J. Slade!"

75

JUDSON ESTERHAZY HAD GUNNED THE 250 Merc and aimed the bass boat south, accelerating to a dangerous speed down the old logging pullboat channel. With a supreme effort of will, he drew back a little on the throttle, quieted the turmoil in his mind. There was no question it had been time to cut his losses and run. He had left Pendergast and the injured woman back in the swamp, without a boat, a mile from Spanish Island. Whether they made it there or not was not his most pressing concern; he was safe and it was time to beat a strategic retreat. He would have to act decisively, and soon, but for now the wise course was to go to ground, lick his wounds--and reemerge refreshed and stronger.

Yet somehow he felt uncomfortably certain Pendergast would reach Spanish Island. And--even given all that had happened between him and its occupant--he was finding it hard to leave Slade behind, and unprotected; harder, so much harder, than he'd steeled himself to ever expect.

In a curious way, deep down, he had known this would be the result as soon as Pendergast had shown up in Savannah with his accursed revelation. The man was preternatural. Twelve years of meticulous deception, blown up in a matter of two weeks. All because one barrel of a bloody rifle had not been cleaned. Unbelievable how such a small oversight could lead to such enormous consequences. And he hadn't helped matters any, blurting out about Audubon and New Madrid in his surprise at seeing Pendergast.

At least, Esterhazy thought, he had not made the mistake of underestimating the man... as so many others had done, to their great sorrow. Pendergast had no idea of his involvement. Nor did he know of the trump card he held in reserve. Those secrets Judson knew--without the slightest doubt--Slade would take with him, to the grave or elsewhere.

The night air breezed by his boat, the stars shimmered in the sky above, the trees stood blackly against the moonlit sky. The pullboat channel narrowed and grew shallow. Esterhazy began to calm further. There was always the possibility--a distinct one--Pendergast and the woman would die in the swamp before making it to the camp. After all, the woman had taken one of his rounds. She could easily be bleeding to death. Even if the wound wasn't immediately fatal, it would be sheer hell dragging her through that last section of swamp, infested with alligators and water moccasins, the water thick with leeches, the air choking with mosquitoes.

He slowed as the boat came to the silted-over end of the channel. Esterhazy shut off the engine, swiveled it up out of the water, and began poling. The very mosquitoes he had just been thinking about now arrived in swarms, clustering about his head and landing on his neck and ears. He slapped and cursed.

The silty channel divided, and he poled into the left one; he knew the swamp well. He continued, checking the fish finder to monitor the depth of the water. The moon was now high in the sky, and the swamp was almost as clear as day. Midnight: six hours to dawn.

He tried to imagine the scene at Spanish Island when they arrived, but it was depressing and frustrating. He spat into the water and put it out of his head. It didn't concern him anymore. Ventura had allowed himself to be captured by Hayward, the damn fool, but he'd said nothing before Judson put a bullet through his brain. Blackletter was dead; all those who could connect him to Project Aves were dead. There was no way to put the Project Aves genii back in the bottle. If Pendergast lived, it would all come out, they might ultimately get wind of it, there was no help for that; but what was now critical was erasing his own role from it.

The events of the past week had made one thing crystal clear: Pendergast would figure it out. It was only a matter of time. That meant even Judson's own carefully concealed role would come to light. And because of that, Pendergast had to die.

But this time, the man would die on Esterhazy's terms, in his own good time, and when the FBI agent least expected it. Because Esterhazy retained one critical advantage: the advantage of surprise. The man was not invulnerable, and Esterhazy knew now exactly where his weakness lay and how to exploit it. Stupid of him not to have seen it before. A plan began to form in his mind. Simple, clean, effective.

The channel deepened enough to drop his engine. He lowered it and fired up, motoring slowly through the channels, working his way westward, constantly monitoring the depth below the keel. He would be at the Mississippi well before dawn; he could scuttle the boat in some backwater bayou and emerge from the swamp a new man. A line from The Art of War surfaced in his mind, unbidden:

Forestall your opponent by seizing what he holds dear, and contrive to strike him at the time and on the ground of your choosing.

So perfectly apposite to his situation.

76

THE SPECTER THAT PRESENTED ITSELF IN THE doorway froze Hayward with shock. The man was at least six and a half feet tall, gaunt, his face hollow with sunken cheeks, his dark eyes large and liquid under heavy brows, chin and neck bristling with half-shaven swipes of bristle. His hair was long and white, brushed back, curling behind the ears and tumbling to his shoulders. He wore a charcoal-gray Brooks Brothers suit jacket pulled over a hospital gown, and he carried a short stock-whip in one hand. With the other he wheeled an IV rack, which doubled as a kind of support.

It seemed to Hayward that he had almost materialized out of thin air, so quiet and stealthy had been his approach. His eyes--so bloodshot, they looked almost purple--didn't dart around the room as one would expect from a lunatic; rather, they moved very slowly from one person to the other, staring at--almost through--everyone in turn. When his eyes reached her, he winced visibly and closed his eyes.

"No, no, no," he murmured, his voice as whispery as the wind.

Turning away, June Brodie retrieved a spare lab coat and draped it over Larry's muddy shirt. "No bright colors," she whispered to Hayward. "Keep your movements slow."

Sluggishly, Slade opened his eyes again. The look of pain eased somewhat. Releasing his hold on the rack, he slowly raised a large, massively veined hand in a gesture of almost biblical gravitas. The hand unfolded, the long fingers shaking slightly, the index finger pointing at Pendergast. The huge dark eyes rested on the FBI agent. "You're the man looking to find out who killed his wife." His voice was thin as rice paper, and yet it somehow projected an arrogant self-assurance.

Pendergast said nothing. He seemed dazed, his torn suit still dripping with mud, his pale hair smeared and tangled.

Slowly, Slade let his arm fall to his side. "I killed your wife."

Pendergast raised his .45. "Tell me."

"No, wait--" June began.

"Silence," said Pendergast with quiet menace.

"That's right," breathed Slade, "silence. I ordered her killed. Helen--Esterhazy--Pendergast."

"Charles, the man has a gun," said June, her voice low but imploring. "He's going to kill you."

"Poppycock." He raised a finger and twirled it. "We all lost somebody. He lost a wife. I lost a son. So it goes." Then he repeated, with sudden intensity, in the same faint voice, "I lost a son."

June Brodie turned toward Pendergast, speaking sotto voce. "You mustn't get him talking about his son. That would set him back--and we'd made such progress!" A sob, immediately stifled, escaped her throat.

"I had to have her killed. She was going to expose us. Terribly dangerous... for all of us..." Slade's eyes suddenly focused on nothing, widening as if in terror, staring at a blank wall. "Why are you here?" he murmured at nothing. "It isn't time!" He slowly raised the whip up over his head and brought it down with a terrific smack on his own back, once, twice, three times, each blow causing him to stagger forward, the tatters of the torn suit jacket fluttering to the ground.

The blow seemed to snap him back to reality. He straightened, refocused his eyes. The room became very still.

"You see?" the woman said to Pendergast. "Don't provoke him, for God's sake. He'll hurt himself."

"Provoke? I intend to do far more than that."

Pendergast's menacing tone chilled Hayward. She felt trapped, helpless, vulnerable, stuck in the bed with IVs. She grasped the tubes, pressed down on her arm, and yanked them out. She swung up and out of bed, momentarily dizzy.

"I will handle this," Pendergast told her.

"Remember," Hayward replied, "you promised you wouldn't kill him."

Pendergast ignored her, facing the man.

Slade's eyes suddenly went far away again, as if seeing something that wasn't there; his mouth worked strangely, the dry lips twitching and stretching in unvoiced speech, of which Hayward gradually made out a rapid susurrus of words. "Go away, go away, go away, go away..." He brought the whip down again on his back, which again seemed to shock him into lucidity. Trembling, he fumbled--moving as if underwater, yet with evident eagerness--for the IV rack, located a bulb hanging from a tube, and gave it a decided press.

Drugs, she thought. He's an addict.

The old man's eyes rolled up white for a moment before he recovered, the eyes popping open again. "The story is easily told," he went on in his low, hoarse voice. "Helen... Brilliant woman. A juicy piece of ass, too... I imagine you had some rollicking good times, eh?"

Hayward could see the gun in Pendergast's hand shaking ever so slightly under the fierceness of his grip.

"She made a discovery..." Another gasp and Slade's eyes defocused, staring into an empty corner, his lips trembling and whispering, unintelligible words tumbling out. His whip hand fluttered uselessly.

With a brisk step forward Pendergast slapped him across the face with shocking force. "Keep going."

Slade came back. "What do they say in the movies? Thanks, I needed that!" The old man shook briefly with silent mirth. "Yes, Helen... Her discovery was quite remarkable. I imagine you could tell me most of the story already, Mr. Pendergast. Right?"

Pendergast nodded.

A cough erupted from the wizened chest, silent spasms racking his frame. Slade wheezed, stumbled, pressed the bulb again. After a moment he resumed. "She brought the discovery to us, the avian flu, through an intermediary, and Project Aves was born. She hoped a miracle drug might be the result, a creativity treatment. After all, it worked for Audubon--for a while. Mind enhancement. The ultimate drug..."

"Why did you give it up?" Pendergast asked. The neutral tone did not fool Hayward--the gun was still shaking in his hand. Hayward had never seen him so close to losing control.

"The research was expensive. Hideously expensive. We began to run out of money--despite all the corners we cut." And he raised his hand and--slowly, slowly--waved it around the room.

"And so this is where you did the work," Pendergast said. "Spanish Island was your laboratory."

"Bingo. Why build an expensive level-4 biocontainment facility, with negative pressure and biosuits and all the rest? We could just do it out here in the swamp, save ourselves a pot of money. We could keep the live cultures out here, do the really dangerous work where nobody was going to see, where there were no annoying government regulators poking their noses in."

So that's why Longitude had a dock facing the swamp, Hayward thought.

"And the parrots?" Pendergast asked.

"They were kept back at Longitude. Complex Six. But as I said, mistakes were made. One of our birds escaped, infected a family. A disaster? Not when I pointed out to everyone: Here's a way to save millions in experimental protocols; let's sit tight and just see what happens!"

He burst into another fit of silent mirth, his unshaven Adam's apple bobbing grotesquely. Bubbles of snot blew out of his nose and flecked his suit. He hacked up a huge gobbet of phlegm and bent over, allowing it to slide off his lips to the floor. Then he resumed.

"Helen objected to our way of doing business. The lady was a crusader. Once she found out about the Doane family--right before your little safari, by the way--she was going to expose us, go to the authorities no matter what. Just as soon as she got back." He spread his hands. "What else could we do but kill her?"

Pendergast spoke quietly. "Who is 'we'?"

"A few of us in the Aves Group. Dear June, here, had no idea--back then, at least. I kept her in the dark until just before the fire. Neither did poor old Carlton." He flapped at the silent man.

"The names, please."

"You have all the names. Blackletter. Ventura. By the way, where is Mike?"

Pendergast did not reply.

"Probably rotting in the swamp, thanks to you. Damn you to hell, Pendergast. He was not only the best security director a CEO could ask for, but he was our one link to civilization. Well, you may have killed Ventura, but you couldn't have killed him." Here Slade's low tone became almost proud. "And his name you shall not have. I want to save that--to keep a little surprise for your future, maybe pay you back for Mike Ventura." He sniggered. "I'm sure he'll pop up when you least expect him."

Pendergast raised the gun again. "The name."

"No!" cried June.

Slade winced once more. "Your voice, my dear--please."

Brodie turned to Pendergast, clasping her hands together as if in supplication. "Don't hurt him," she whispered fiercely. "He's a good man, a very good man! You have to understand, Mr. Pendergast, he's also a victim."

Pendergast's eyes went toward her.

"You see," she went on, "there was another accident at Project Aves. Charles got the disease himself."

If Pendergast was surprised by this, he showed no sign. "He made the decision to kill my wife before he got sick," he replied in a flat tone.

"That's all in the past," she said. "Nothing will bring her back. Can't you let it go?"

Pendergast stared at her, his eyes glittering.

"Charles almost died," she continued. "And then he... he had the idea for us to come out here. My husband," she nodded at the silent man standing to one side, "joined us later."

"You and Slade were lovers," Pendergast said.

"Yes." Not even a blush. She straightened up. "We are lovers."

"And you came out here--to hide?" said Pendergast. "Why?"

She said nothing.

Pendergast turned back to Slade. "It makes no sense. You had recovered from the illness before you retreated to the swamp. The mental deterioration hadn't begun. It was too early. Why did you retreat to the swamp?"

"Carlton and I are taking care of him," Brodie went on hastily. "Keeping him alive... It's very difficult to keep the ravages of the disease at bay... Don't question him further, you're disturbing him--"

"This disease," Pendergast said, cutting her off with a flick of his wrist. "Tell me about it."

"It affects the inhibitory and excitatory circuits of the brain," Brodie whispered eagerly, as if to distract him. "Overwhelms the brain with physical sensations--sight, smell, touch. It's a mutant form of flavivirus. At first it presents almost as acute encephalitis. Assuming he lives, the patient appears to recover."

"Just like the Doanes." Slade giggled. "Oh, dear me, yes--just like the Doanes. We kept a very close eye on them."

"But the virus has a predilection for the thalamus," Brodie continued. "Especially the LGB."

"Lateral geniculate body," Slade said, slapping himself viciously with the whip.

"Not unlike herpes zoster," Brodie went on rapidly, "which takes up residence in the dorsal root ganglion and years, or decades, later resurfaces to cause shingles. But it eventually kills its host neurons."

"End result--insanity," Slade whispered. His eyes began to defocus and his lips began moving silently, faster and faster.

"And all this--" Pendergast gestured with the gun. "The morphine drip, the flail--are distractions from the continuous barrage of sensation?"

Brodie nodded eagerly. "So you see, he's not responsible for what he's saying. We might just be able to get him back to where he was before. We've been trying--trying for years. There's still hope. He's a good man, a healer, who's done good works."

Pendergast raised the gun higher. His face was as pale as marble, his torn suit hanging off his frame like rags. "I have no interest in this man's good works. I want only one thing: the name of the final person on Project Aves."

But Slade had slid off again into his own world, jabbering softly at the blank wall, his fingers twitching. He gripped the IV stand and his whole body began to tremble, the stand shaking. A double press of the bulb brought him back under control.

"You're torturing him!" Brodie whispered.

Pendergast ignored her, faced Slade. "The decision to kill her: it was yours?"

"Yes. At first the others objected. But then they saw we had no choice. She wouldn't be appeased, she wouldn't be bought off. So we killed her, and most ingeniously! Eaten by a trained lion." He broke into another carefully contained spasm of silent laughter.

The gun began to shake more visibly in Pendergast's hands.

"Crunch, crunch!" Slade whispered, his eyes wide with glee. "Ah, Pendergast, you have no idea what sort of Pandora's box you've opened up with this investigation of yours. You've roused the sleeping dog with a kick in the ass."

Pendergast took aim.

"You promised," Hayward said in a low, insistent voice.

"He must die," whispered Pendergast, almost to himself. "This man must die."

"The man must die," Slade said mockingly, his voice rising briefly above a whisper before falling again. "Kill me, please. Put me out of my misery!"

"You promised," Hayward repeated.

Abruptly, almost as if overcoming an invisible opponent in a physical struggle, Pendergast lowered the pistol with a jerk of his hand. Then he took a step toward Slade, twirled the gun around, and offered him the grip.

Slade seized it, yanked it from Pendergast's grasp.

"Oh, my God," Brodie cried. "What are you doing? He'll kill you for sure!"

Slade, with an expert motion, retracted the slide, snapped it back, then slowly raised the gun at Pendergast. A crooked smile disfigured his gaunt face. "I'm going to send you to the same place I sent your bitch of a wife." His finger curled around the trigger and began to tighten.

77

JUST A MOMENT," PENDERGAST SAID. "BEFORE YOU shoot, I'd like to speak to you a minute. In private."

Slade looked at him. The big handgun looked almost like a toy in his gnarled fist. He steadied himself against the IV rack. "Why?"

"There's something you need to know."

Slade looked at him a moment. "What a poor host I've been. Come into my office."

June Brodie made a move to protest, but Slade, with a flick of the gun, gestured Pendergast through the doorway. "Guests first," he said.

Pendergast shot a warning glance at Hayward, then disappeared through the dark rectangle.

The hallway was paneled with cedar, painted over in gray. Recessed lights in the ceiling cast low, regular pools of light onto neutral carpeting, its weave tight and plush. Slade walked slowly behind Pendergast, the wheels of his IV making no noise as they turned. "Last door on the left," he said.

The room that served as Slade's office had once been the game room of the lodge. A dartboard hung on the wall, and there were a couple of chairs and two tables shoved up against the walls, tops inlaid for backgammon and chess. A snooker table near the back apparently served as Slade's desk: its felt surface was empty save for carefully folded tissues, a crossword magazine, a book on advanced calculus, and several additional flails, their tips tattered from constant use. A few ancient snooker balls, crazed with craquelure, still lay forlornly in one pocket. There was little other furniture: the big room was remarkably bare. Gauzy curtains were drawn tightly over the windows. The space had the stillness of a tomb.

Slade closed the door with exquisite care. "Sit down."

Pendergast dragged a cane chair out and set it on the thick carpet before the table. Slade wheeled his IV rack behind the table and sat down very slowly and carefully in the lone easy chair. He pressed the bulb on the IV line, eyes fluttering as the morphine hit his bloodstream, sighed, then trained the gun again on Pendergast. "Okey-dokey," he said, his voice remaining whispery and slow. "Say what you have to say so that I can get on with shooting you." He smiled faintly. "It'll make a mess, of course. But June will clean it up. She's good at cleaning up my messes."

"Actually," Pendergast said, "you're not going to shoot me."

Slade emitted a careful little cough. "No?"

"That's what I wanted to speak to you about. You're going to shoot yourself."

"Now, why would I want to do that?"

Instead of replying, Pendergast stood up and walked over to a cuckoo clock that stood on a side wall. He pulled up the counterweights, set the time to ten minutes before twelve, then gave the pendulum a flick with his fingernail to start it.

"Eleven fifty?" Slade said. "That's not the correct time."

Pendergast sat down again. Slade waited. The tick of the now-active cuckoo clock began to fill the silence. Slade seemed to stiffen slightly. His lips began to move.

"You are going to kill yourself because justice demands it," Pendergast said.

"To satisfy you, I suppose."

"No. To thwart me."

"I won't kill myself," Slade said out loud, the first words he had spoken above a papery whisper.

"I hope you won't," Pendergast said, plucking two snooker balls from the corner pocket. "You see, I want you to live."

Slade said, "You're making no sense. Even to a madman."

Pendergast began rolling the pool balls back and forth in one hand, Queeg-like, clacking them together.

"Stop that," Slade hissed, wincing. "I don't like it."

Pendergast clacked the balls together a little more loudly. "I had planned to kill you. But now that I've seen the condition you're in, I realize the cruelest thing I could do would be to let you live. There's no cure. Your suffering will go on, only increasing with old age and infirmity, your mind sinking ever deeper into misery and ruin. Death would be a release."

Slade shook his head slowly, his lips twitching, the muttered sounds of broken words tumbling from his lips. He groaned with something very much like physical pain, and then gave the morphine drip another pump.

Pendergast reached into his pocket, took out a small test tube half full of black granules. He tipped out a small line of the granules along the edge of the pool table.

The action seemed to bring Slade back around. "What are you doing?"

"I always carry a little activated charcoal. It's useful in so many field tests--as a scientist, you must know that. But it has its own aesthetic properties, as well." From another pocket Pendergast pulled out a lighter, swiftly lit one end of the granules. "For example, the smoke it emits tends to curl upward in such beautiful gossamer patterns. And the smell is far from unpleasant."

Slade leaned backward sharply. He trained the gun, which had sagged to the floor, toward Pendergast again. "You put that out."

Pendergast ignored him. Smoke curled up in the still air, looping and coiling. He leaned back in his chair, forcing it to rock slightly, the old canework creaking. He rolled the pool balls together as he went on. "You see, I knew--or at least guessed at--the nature of your affliction. But I never stopped to think just how awful it would be to endure. Every creak, click, tap, and squeak intruding itself into your brain. The chirping of the birds, the brightness of the sun, the smell of smoke... To be tormented by every little thing carried into your brain by the five senses, to live at the edge of being overwhelmed every minute of every hour of every day. To know that nothing can be done, nothing at all. Even your, ah, unique relationship with June Brodie can provide nothing but temporary diversion."

"Her husband lost his apparatus in Desert Storm," Slade said. "Blown off by an IED. I've stepped in to fill the breach, so to speak."

"How nice for you," said Pendergast.

"Go stuff your conventional morality. I don't need it. Anyway, you heard June." The mad sheen to his eyes seemed to fade somewhat, and he looked almost serious. "We're working on a cure."

"You saw what happened to the Doanes. You're a biologist. You know as well as I do there's no hope for a cure. Brain cells cannot be replaced or regrown. The damage is permanent. You know this."

Slade seemed to go off again, his lips moving faster and faster, the hiss of air from his lungs like a punctured tire, repeating the same word, "No! No, no, no, no, no!"

Pendergast watched him, rocking, the snooker balls moving more quickly in his hand, their clacking filling the air. The clock ticked, the smoke curled.

"I couldn't help but notice," Pendergast said, "how everything here was arranged to remove any extraneous sensory trigger. Carpeted floor, insulated walls, neutral colors, plain furnishings, the air cool, dry, and scentless, probably HEPA-filtered."

Slade whimpered, his lips fairly blurring with maniacal, and virtually silent, speech. He lifted the flail, smacked himself.

"And yet even with all that, even with the counterirritant of that flail and the medicines and the constant dosings of morphine, it isn't enough. You are still in constant agony. You feel your feet upon the floor, you feel your back against the chair, you see everything in this room. You hear my voice. You are assaulted by a thousand other things I can't begin to enumerate--because my mind unconsciously filters them out. You, on the other hand, cannot tune it out. Any of it. Listen to the snooker balls! Examine the curling smoke! Hear the relentless passage of time."

Slade began to shake in his chair. "Nononononononoooo!" spilled off his lips, a single never-ending word. A loop of drool descended from one corner of his mouth, and he shook it away with a savage jerk of his head.

"I wonder--what must it be like to eat?" Pendergast went on. "I imagine it's horrible, the strong taste of the food, the sticky texture, the smell and shape of it in your mouth, the slide of it down your gullet... Isn't that why you're so thin? No doubt you haven't enjoyed a meal or a drink--really enjoyed--for a decade. Taste is just another unwanted sense you can't rid yourself of. I'll wager that IV drip isn't only for the morphine--it's for intravenous feeding as well, isn't it?"

Nonononononononono... Slade reached spastically for the flail, dropped it back on the desk. The gun trembled in his hand.

"The taste of food--mellow ripe Camembert, beluga caviar, smoked sturgeon, even the humblest eggs and toast and jam--would be unbearable. Perhaps baby food of the most banal sort, without sugar or spice or texture of any kind, served precisely at body temperature, would only just be bearable. On special occasions, naturally." Pendergast shook his head sympathetically. "And you can't sleep--can you? Not with all those raging sensations crowding in on you. I can imagine it: lying on the bed, hearing the least of noises: the woodworms gnawing between the lathe and plaster, the beat of your heart in your eardrums, the ticking of the house, the scurry of mice. Even with your eyes closed your sight betrays you, because darkness is its own color. The blacker the room, the more things you see crawling within the fluid of your vision. And everything--everything--pressing in on you at once, always and forever."

Slade shrieked, covering his ears with claw-like hands and shaking his entire body violently, the IV drip line flailing back and forth. The sound ripped through the stillness, shockingly loud, and Slade's entire body seemed to convulse.

"That is why you will kill yourself, Mr. Slade," Pendergast said. "Because you can. I've provided you with the means to do it. In your hand."

"Yaaahhhhhhhhh!" Slade screamed, writhing, the tortured movements of his body a kind of feedback from his own screams.

Pendergast rocked more quickly, the chair creaking, rolling the balls ceaselessly in his hand, faster and faster.

"I could have done it anytime!" Slade cried. "Why should I do it now? Now, now, now, now, now?"

"You couldn't have done it before," Pendergast said.

"June has a gun," Slade said. "A lovely gun, gun, gun."

"No doubt she is careful to keep it locked up."

"I could overdose on morphine! Just go to sleep, sleep!" His voice subsided into a rapid gibbering, almost like the humming of a machine.

Pendergast shook his head. "I'm sure June is equally careful to regulate the amount of morphine you have access to. I would guess the nights are hardest--like about now, as you're quickly using up your allotted dose without recourse for the endless, endless night ahead."

"Eeeyaaahhhhhhhhhh!" Slade screamed again--a wild, ululating scream.

"In fact, I'm sure she and her husband are careful to limit your life in countless ways. You're not her patient--you're her prisoner."

Slade shook his head, his mouth working frantically, soundlessly.

"And with all her ministrations," Pendergast went on, "all her medication, her perhaps more exotic means of holding your attention--she can't stop all those sensations from creeping in. Can she?"

Slade didn't respond. He pressed the morphine button once, twice, three times, but apparently nothing more was coming through. Then he slumped forward, head hitting the felt of the desk with a loud crack, jerked it back up, his lips contracting spastically.

"Usually I consider suicide a cowardly way out," Pendergast said. "But in your case it's the only sensible solution. Because for you, life really is so much infinitely worse than death."

Still, Slade didn't respond. He banged his head again and again onto the felt.

"Even the least amount of sensory input is exquisitely painful," Pendergast went on. "That's why this environment of yours is so controlled, so minimalist. Yet I have introduced new elements. My voice, the smell of the charcoal, the curls and colors of its smoke, the squeaking of the chair, the sound of the billiard balls, the ticking of the clock. I would estimate you are now a vessel that is, so to speak, full to bursting."

He continued, his voice low and mesmerizing. "In less than half a minute now, the cuckoo of that clock is going to sound--twelve times. The vessel will burst. I don't know exactly how many of the cuckoo calls you'll be able to withstand before you use that gun on yourself. Perhaps four, perhaps five, perhaps even six. But I know that you will use it--because the sound of that gun firing, that final sound, is the only answer. The only release. Consider it my gift to you."

Slade looked up. His forehead was red from where it had impacted the table, and his eyes wheeled in his head as if set free of each other. He raised his gun hand toward Pendergast, let it fall back, raised it again.

"Good-bye, Dr. Slade," Pendergast said. "Just a few seconds now. Let me help count them down for you. Five, four, three, two, one..."

78

HAYWARD WAITED, PERCHED ON A GURNEY, in the gleaming room full of medical equipment. The other occupants of the large space--June Brodie and her silent husband--stood like statues by the far wall, listening, waiting. Occasionally a voice would sound--a cry of rage or despair, a strange gibbering laugh--but they drifted only faintly through the thick, apparently soundproofed walls.

From her vantage point, she could see both exits--the one that led to Slade's office, and the one that led down the stairs and out into the night. She was all too aware that a second shooter was still out there somewhere--and that at any moment he might come bursting in from the stairwell. She lifted her weapon, checked it.

Once again, her eye drifted to the doorway through which Pendergast and Slade had disappeared. What was going on? She had rarely felt worse in her life--utterly exhausted, covered with caked mud, her leg throbbing viciously as the painkiller began to wear off. It had been at least ten minutes, maybe a quarter of an hour since they had left, but some sixth sense told her to heed Pendergast's urgent instruction to remain where she was. He had promised not to kill Slade--and she had to believe that, whatever else he was, Pendergast was a gentleman who kept his word.

At that moment, a handgun fired, a single shot, the muffled boom shuddering the room. Hayward raised her weapon, and with a cry June Brodie ran to the doorway.

"Wait!" Hayward said. "Stay where you are."

There was no further sound. A minute passed, then two. And then--quiet, but distinct--came the sound of a closing door. A moment later the faintest of treads sounded in the carpeted hallway. Hayward sat up straight on the gurney, heart racing.

Agent Pendergast stepped through the doorway.

Hayward stared at him. Under the thick encrustation of mud he was paler than usual, but otherwise he appeared unhurt. He glanced at the three of them in turn.

"Slade--?" Hayward asked.

"Dead," came the reply.

"You killed him!" June Brodie shrieked, running past Pendergast and into the corridor. He did nothing to stop her.

Hayward slid off the gurney, ignoring the pain shooting through her leg. "You son of a bitch, you promised--"

"He died by his own hand," Pendergast said.

Hayward stopped.

"Suicide?" Mr. Brodie said, speaking for the first time. "That's not possible."

Hayward stared at Pendergast. "I don't believe it. You told Vinnie you would kill him--and you did."

"Correct," Pendergast replied. "I did vow to do that. Nevertheless, all I did was talk to him. He committed the deed."

Hayward opened her mouth to continue, then shut it again. Suddenly she didn't want to know any more. What did that mean--talk to him? She shuddered.

Pendergast was watching her closely. "Recall, Captain, that Slade ordered the killing. He did not carry it out. There is still work to be done."

A moment later June Brodie reappeared. She was sobbing quietly. Her husband walked over and tried to put a comforting arm over her shoulder. She shrugged it away.

"There's nothing to keep us here any longer," Pendergast told Hayward. He turned to June. "I'm afraid we'll have to borrow your utility boat. We'll see it's returned to you tomorrow."

"By a dozen cops armed to the teeth, I suppose?" the woman replied bitterly.

Pendergast shook his head. "There's no reason anyone else need know about this. In fact, I think it's in all of our best interests that no one ever does. I suggest you burn this place to the ground and then leave it, never to return. You tended a madman in his final sufferings--and as far as I'm concerned, that's where the story begins and ends. No need to report the suicide of a man who is already officially dead. You and your husband will want to work out an appropriate cover story to minimize any official interest in yourselves--or in Spanish Island--"

"Madman," June Brodie interrupted. She almost spat out the word. "That's what you call him. But he was more than that--much more. He was a good man. He did good work--wonderful work. If I could have cured him, he would have done it again. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen. You wouldn't listen..." Her voice broke, and she struggled to master herself.

"His condition was incurable," Pendergast said, not unkindly. "And I'm afraid there's no way his experimental putterings could make up for cold-blooded murder."

"Putterings! Putterings? He did this!" And she stabbed her own breast with a finger.

"This?" Pendergast said. A look of surprise came over his mud-smeared face. Then, suddenly, the surprise disappeared.

"If you know so much about me, you must have known of my condition," she said.

Pendergast nodded. "Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Now I understand. That clarifies the last question in my mind--why you moved into the swamp before Slade went mad."

"I don't understand," said Hayward.

"Lou Gehrig's disease." Pendergast turned toward Mrs. Brodie. "You don't appear to be suffering any symptoms at present."

"I have no symptoms because I no longer have the disease. After his recovery, Charles had a period of... genius. Amazing genius. That's what it does to you, the avian flu. He had ideas... wonderful ideas. Ideas to help me... and others, as well. He created a treatment for ALS, utilizing complex proteins grown in vats of living cells. The first of the so-called biologics. Charles developed them first, by himself, ten years ahead of his time. He had to retreat from the world to do his work. He did it--all of it--right here."

"I see now why this room appears to be far more than a clinic," Pendergast said. "It's an experimental laboratory."

"It is. Or was. Before... before he changed."

Hayward turned to her. "This is extraordinary. Why haven't you shared this with the world?"

"Impossible," Mrs. Brodie said, almost in a whisper. "It was all in his head. We begged him but he never wrote it down. He grew worse, and then it was too late. That's why I wanted to restore him to his old self. He loved me. He cured me. And now the secret of that cure has died with him."

Heavy clouds veiled the moon as they pulled away from Spanish Island. There was little light--either for a sniper, or for a pilot--and Pendergast kept the boat to a crawl, the engine barely audible as they nosed through the thick vegetation. Hayward sat in the bow, a pair of crutches appropriated from the lodge at her side. She was thinking quietly.

For perhaps half an hour, not a word was exchanged. Finally, Hayward roused herself and glanced back at Pendergast, piloting from the rear console.

"Why did Slade do it?" she asked.

Pendergast's eyes shone faintly as he glanced at her.

"Disappear, I mean," she went on. "Hide himself away in this swamp."

"He must have known he was infected," Pendergast replied after a moment. "He'd seen what had happened to the others; he realized he was going to go mad... or worse. He wanted to make sure he could exercise some kind of control over his care. Spanish Island was the perfect choice. If it hadn't been discovered yet, it never would be. And because it had been used as a lab, they already had much of the equipment he'd need. No doubt he harbored hopes for a cure. Perhaps it was while trying to discover one that he managed to cure June Brodie."

"Yes, but why such an elaborate setup? Stage his own death, stage Mrs. Brodie's death. I mean, he wasn't on the run from the law or anything like that."

"No, not from the law. It does seem like an extreme reaction. But then a man isn't likely to be thinking clearly under those circumstances."

"Anyway, he's dead now," she went on. "So can you find some peace? Some resolution?"

For a moment, the agent did not respond. When at last he spoke, his voice was flat, uninflected. "No."

"Why not? You've solved the mystery, avenged your wife's murder."

"Remember what Slade said: there's a surprise in my future. He could only have meant the second shooter--the one who's still out there, somewhere. As long as he is loose, he remains a danger to you, to Vincent, and to me. And..." He paused a moment. "There's something else."

"Go on."

"As long as there is even one more person out there who bears responsibility for Helen's death, I cannot rest."

She looked at him, but his gaze had suddenly shifted. Pendergast appeared to be strangely transfixed by the full moon--which had emerged from the clouds and was finally setting into the swamp. His face was briefly illuminated by slivers of light as the orb sank through the dense vegetation, and then, as the moon finally disappeared below the horizon, the glow was snuffed out, the swamp plunged again into darkness.

79

Malfourche, Mississippi

THE NAVY UTILITY BOAT, WITH PENDERGAST AT the wheel, slid into an unoccupied boat slip across the inlet from the docks beyond Tiny's Bait 'n' Bar. The sun, rising toward noon, was pouring unseasonable heat and humidity into every corner of the muddy waterfront.

Hopping out, Pendergast tied up and helped Hayward onto the dock, then handed her the pair of crutches.

Though it was only late morning, the twang of country-and-western music came from the ramshackle Bait 'n' Bar on the far side of the docks. Pendergast removed June Brodie's 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and raised it over his head.

"What are you doing?" Hayward asked, balancing on the crutches.

"Getting everyone's attention. As I alluded to before, we have unfinished business here." An enormous boom sounded as Pendergast fired the shotgun into the air. A moment later people came spilling out of the Bait 'n' Bar like hornets from a hive, many with beers in their hands. Tiny and Larry were nowhere to be seen, but the rest of the crew, Hayward noticed, were there in force. Hayward remembered their leering, sweating faces with a trace of nausea. The large group stared silently at the two figures. They had washed up before leaving Spanish Island, and June Brodie had given Hayward a clean blouse, but she knew they must both be muddy sights.

"Come on down, boys, and watch the action!" Pendergast called out, walking across the landing toward Tiny's and the second set of docks.

Haltingly, warily, the crowd worked its way down toward them. Finally one man, more courageous than the rest, stepped forward. He was large and mean looking, with a small, ferret-like face atop a large amorphous body. He stared at them with squinty blue eyes. "What the hell you want now?" he said, advancing while tossing his can of beer into the water. Hayward recognized him as one of the ones cheering the loudest when her brassiere was cut in two.

"You said you were gonna leave us alone," someone else called out.

"I said I wouldn't arrest you. I didn't say I wouldn't come back to bother you."

The man hitched up his pants. "You already bothering me."

"Excellent!" Pendergast stepped onto the docks behind Tiny's, crowded with boats of various descriptions. Hayward recognized most of them from the previous day's ambush. "And now: which of these fine vessels belongs to Larry?"

"None of your business."

Pendergast casually tilted the shotgun down, pointing it into a nearby boat, and pulled the trigger. A massive boom echoed across the lake, the boat shuddering with the discharge, a gout of water shooting up, leaving a twelve-inch hole ripped out of its welded aluminum hull. Muddy water came swirling in, the nose of the boat tipping downward.

"What the hell?" a man in the crowd yelled. "That's my boat!"

"Sorry, I thought it was Larry's. Now, which is Larry's? This one?" Pendergast aimed the gun at the next boat, discharged it. Another geyser of water rose up, showering the crowd, and the boat jumped and began to settle immediately.

"Son of a bitch!" another man screamed. "Larry's is the 2000 Legend! That one over there!" He gestured to a bass boat at the far end of the slip.

Pendergast strolled over and inspected it. "Nice. Tell Larry this is for tossing my badge into the swamp." Another blast from the shotgun, which punched through the outboard engine, the cover flying off. "And this one's because he's such a low fellow." A second shot holed the boat at the transom, kicking up a geyser. The stern filled with water, the boat tilted up by the nose, the engine sinking.

"Christ! This bastard's crazy!"

"Indeed." Pendergast strolled down the dock, racked a fresh round into the shotgun, and casually aimed at the next boat. "This one's for giving us incorrect directions." Boom.

Another casual step. "This is for the double punch to the solar plexus."

Boom.

"And this is for expectorating on me."

Boom. Boom. Two more boats went down.

Removing his .45, Pendergast handed it to Hayward. "Keep an eye on them while I reload." He pulled a handful of shells from his pocket and inserted them.

"And this is most especially for humiliating and exposing my esteemed colleague to your vulgar, lascivious gaze. As I said before, that was no way to treat a lady." As he strolled down the dock, he fired into the bottom of each remaining boat, one after the other, pausing only to reload. The crowd stared, shocked into absolute silence.

Pendergast halted before the group of sweating, shaking, beery men. "Anybody else in the bar?"

Nobody spoke.

"You can't do this," a man said, his voice cracking. "This ain't legal."

"Perhaps somebody should call the FBI," said Pendergast. He strolled toward the door into the Bait 'n' Bar, cracked it open, glanced inside. "Ma'am?" he said. "Please step out."

A flustered woman with bleached-blond hair and enormous red fingernails came bustling out and broke into a run toward the parking lot.

"You've lost a heel!" Pendergast called after her, but she kept going, hobbling like a lame horse.

Pendergast disappeared inside the bar. Hayward, pistol in hand, could hear him opening and closing doors and calling out. He emerged. "Nobody home." He walked around to the front and faced the crowd. "Everyone, please withdraw to the parking lot and take cover behind those parked cars."

Nobody moved.

Boom! Pendergast unloaded the shotgun over their heads and they hastily shuffled to the dirt parking lot. Pendergast backed away from the building, racked a fresh round into the shotgun, and aimed at the large propane tank snugged up against the side of the bait shop. He turned to Hayward.

"Captain, we might need the penetrative power of that .45 ACP, so let us both fire on the count of three."

Hayward took a stance with the .45. I could get used to the Pendergast "method," she thought, aiming at the big white tank.

"One..."

"Holy shit, no!" wailed a voice.

"Two...

"Three!"

They fired simultaneously, the .45 kicking hard. A gigantic explosion erupted, and a massive wave of heat and overpressure swept over them. The entire building disappeared, engulfed in a boiling fireball. Soaring out of the fireball, trailing streamers of smoke, came thousands of bits and pieces of debris that rained down around them--writhing nightcrawlers, bugs, burning maggots, pieces of wood, reels, streamers of fishing line, shattered fishing rods, broken liquor bottles, pigs' trotters, pickles, lime wedges, coasters, and exploded beer cans.

The fireball rose in a miniature mushroom cloud while the debris continued to patter down. Gradually, as the smoke cleared, the burning stub of the building came into view. There was virtually nothing left.

Pendergast slung the shotgun over his shoulder and strolled down the dock toward Hayward. "Captain, shall we go? I think it's time we paid a visit to Vincent. Police guard or not, I'll feel better once we've moved him to new quarters--perhaps a place more private, not far from New York City, where we can keep an eye on him ourselves."

"Amen to that." And with a certain relief, Hayward thought that it was a good thing she wouldn't be working with Pendergast much longer. She had enjoyed that just a little too much.

80

New York City

DR. JOHN FELDER SAT IN HIS CONSULTING OFFICE in the Lower Manhattan building of the New York City Department of Health. It was on the seventh floor, where the Division of Mental Hygiene was located. He glanced around the small, tidy space, mentally assuring himself that everything was in order: the medical references in the bookshelves lined up and dusted, the impersonal paintings on the wall all perfectly level, the chairs before his desk set at just the right angle, the surface of his desk free of any unnecessary items.

Dr. Felder did not normally receive many guests in his office. He did most of his work--so to speak--in the field: in locked wards and police holding tanks and hospital emergency rooms, and he carried out his small private practice in a consulting room on lower Park Avenue. But this appointment was different. For one thing, Felder had asked the gentleman to see him, not the other way around. The psychiatrist had done a background check on the man--and what he learned was rather disconcerting. Perhaps the invitation would prove to be a mistake. Even so, this man seemed to be the key, the only key, to the mystery of Constance Greene.

A quiet double tap sounded at the door. Felder glanced at his watch: ten thirty precisely. Punctual. He rose and opened the door.

The apparition that stood in the doorway did little to relieve Felder's misgivings. He was tall, thin, and immaculately dressed, his pallid skin a shocking contrast to the black suit. His eyes were as pale as his skin, and they seemed to regard Felder with a combination of keen discernment, mild curiosity, and--perhaps--just a little amusement.

Felder realized he was staring. "Come in, please," he said quickly. "You're Mr. Pendergast?"

"I am."

Felder showed the man to one of the consultation seats and then took his place behind the desk. "I'm sorry, but it's actually Dr. Pendergast, isn't it? I took the liberty of looking into your background."

Pendergast inclined his head. "I have two PhDs, but, frankly, I prefer my law enforcement title of special agent."

"I see." Felder had interviewed his share of cops, but never an FBI agent, and he wasn't quite sure how to begin. The straightforward approach seemed as good as any.

"Constance Greene is your ward?"

"She is."

Felder leaned back in his chair, casually throwing one leg over the other. He wanted to make sure he gave the impression of relaxation and informality. "I wondered if you could tell me a little more about her. Where she was born, what her early life was like... that sort of thing."

Pendergast continued to regard him with the same neutral expression. For some reason Felder began to find it irritating.

"You are the committing psychiatrist in the case, are you not?" Pendergast asked.

"My evaluation was submitted as evidence at the involuntary-commitment hearing."

"And you recommended commitment."

Felder smiled ruefully. "Yes. You were invited to the court hearing, but I understand that you declined to--"

"What, precisely, was your diagnosis?"

"It's rather technical--"

"Indulge me."

Felder hesitated a second. "Very well. Axis One: schizophrenia of the paranoid type, continuous, with a possible premorbid Axis Two state of schizotypal personality disorder, along with psyphoria and indications of dissociative fugue."

Pendergast nodded slowly. "And you base this finding on what evidence?"

"Simply put, on the delusion that she is Constance Greene: a girl who was born almost a century and a half ago."

"Let me ask you something, Doctor. Within the context of her, ah, delusion, have you noticed any discontinuity or nonconformity?"

Felder frowned. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"Are her delusions internally consistent?"

"Beyond the belief that her child was evil, of course, her delusions have been remarkably consistent. That's one of the things that interests me."

"What has she told you, exactly?"

"That her family moved from an upstate farm to Water Street, where she was born in the early 1870s, that her parents died of tuberculosis and her sister was killed by a serial murderer. That she, an orphan, was taken in by a former resident of 891 Riverside Drive, about whom we have no record. That you ultimately inherited that house and, by extension, the responsibility for her well-being." Felder hesitated.

Pendergast seemed to pick up on Felder's hesitation. "What else did she say about me?"

"That your becoming her guardian was due to guilt."

There was a silence.

"Tell me, Dr. Felder," Pendergast asked at length. "Did Constance tell you of her existence between this earlier period and her very recent crossing on the ship?"

"No."

"No details at all?"

"None."

"Then I submit to you that, under a diagnosis of 295.30, schizotypal personality disorder cannot be assumed. At the very most, you should have specified a schizophreniform disorder for the Axis Two diagnosis. The fact is, Doctor, you have no prior history of her condition--for all you know, these delusions could have been of recent origin, perhaps as recent as her Atlantic crossing."

Felder sat forward. Pendergast had quoted the precise DSM-IV diagnostic code for paranoid schizophrenia. "Have you studied psychiatry, Special Agent Pendergast?"

Pendergast shrugged. "One has one's interests."

Despite everything, Felder found his irritation getting the better of himself. Why was Pendergast showing such interest now, when before he'd seemed almost indifferent? "I must tell you," he said, "I would categorize your conclusions as amateurish and superficial."

Pendergast's eyes glinted. "May I ask you, then, what possible reason you could have for vexing me with these questions about Constance, since you've already diagnosed--and committed--her?"

"Well, I--" He found those silvery eyes boring into him.

"Would it be out of idle curiosity? Or..." He smiled. "... in the hope of professional publication?"

Felder stiffened. "Naturally, if there is something novel in the case, I'd want to share my experiences with my colleagues via publication."

"And thus enhance your reputation... and perhaps"--Pendergast's eyes seemed to twinkle wickedly--"garner a plum appointment at a research institute. I note that you have been angling for an adjunct professorship at Rockefeller University for some time."

Felder was astounded. How could the man possibly have known about that?

As if answering the unvoiced question, Pendergast waved his hand casually and said, "I took the liberty of looking into your background."

Coloring at having his own phrase thrown back at him, Felder tried to collect himself. "My professional goals are irrelevant. The truth is, I've never seen a delusional presentation that has such authenticity. She seems nineteenth-century: in the way she talks, dresses, walks, holds herself, even thinks. That's why I've asked you to come here today. I want to know more about her. What trauma might have occurred to trigger this? What was she like before? What are her major life experiences? Who is she really?"

Pendergast continued gazing at him, saying nothing.

"And it's not only that: in the archives I found this." He opened a manila folder on his desk and removed a photocopy of Guttersnipes at Play, the engraving from the New-York Daily Inquirer, passing it to Pendergast.

The FBI agent studied it carefully, then returned it. "The resemblance is quite remarkable. The product of artistic imagination, perhaps?"

"Look at the faces," Felder said. "They're so real, they were certainly drawn from life."

Pendergast smiled enigmatically, but Felder fancied he could see a new respect in those pale eyes. "This is all very interesting, Doctor." He paused. "Perhaps I am in a position to help you--if you can help me."

Although he didn't know precisely why, Felder found himself gripping the arms of his chair. "How so?"

"Constance is a very fragile person, emotionally and psychically. Under the right conditions, she can flourish. Under the wrong ones..." Pendergast looked at him. "Where is she being held at present?"

"In a private room in the Bellevue psych ward. Papers are being processed for her transfer to the Mental Health Division of the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility."

Pendergast shook his head. "That's a maximum-security institution. Someone like Constance will wither away, grow increasingly worse, in a place like that."

"You needn't worry about her coming to harm at the hands of other inmates, because the staff--"

"It's not that. Constance has a propensity for sudden, occasionally violent, psychotic breaks. A place like Bedford Hills would only encourage this."

"Then what would you suggest?"

"She requires a place with an atmosphere similar to that she has grown used to--comfortable, old-fashioned, nonstressful. And yet secure. She needs to be surrounded with familiar things--within reason, of course. Books, in particular, are critical."

Felder shook his head. "There's only one place like that, Mount Mercy, and it's fully occupied. With a long waiting list."

Pendergast smiled. "I happen to know that a vacancy opened up not three weeks ago."

Felder looked at him. "It did?"

Pendergast nodded. "As the committing psychiatrist, you could jump the queue, so to speak, and get her in. If you insisted it was the only place for her."

"I'll... I'll look into it."

"You will do more than look into it. In return, I will share with you what I know about Constance--which is a great deal indeed, and which will exceed even your most fervent dreams in psychiatric interest. Whether the information is actually publishable or not will be up to you--and your capacity for discretion."

Felder found his heart accelerating. "Thank you."

"I thank you. And I bid you good morning, Dr. Felder. We shall meet again--once Constance is safely ensconced in Mount Mercy."

Felder watched as the agent stepped out of the office and silently closed the door. Strange--he, too, seemed to have stepped out of the nineteenth century. And then Felder asked himself, for the first time, who exactly had orchestrated the meeting he'd so carefully arranged--and whose agenda had been satisfied.

EPILOGUE

Savannah, Georgia

JUDSON ESTERHAZY RECLINED IN THE LIBRARY of his house on Whitfield Square. It was a surprisingly chilly May evening, and a small fire lay dying in the hearth, scenting the room with the aroma of burning birch.

Taking a sip of a fine Highland malt he had pulled out of his cellar, he rolled the peaty beverage around in his mouth before swallowing. But the drink was bitter, as bitter as his feelings at that moment.

Pendergast had killed Slade. They said it was suicide, but he knew that was a lie. Somehow, some way, Pendergast had managed it. Bad as the last ten years had been, the old man's final moments must have been awful, an unimaginable mental agony. He had seen Pendergast's manipulations of other people and he had no doubt the man had taken advantage of Slade in his dementia. It was murder--worse than murder.

The glass, trembling in his hand, shook out some drops on the table, and he placed it down hard. At least he knew with complete confidence that Slade hadn't betrayed him. The old man loved him like a son and--even in his madness and pain--would have kept his secret to the last. Some things transcend even lunacy.

He had once loved Slade, too, but that feeling had died twelve years ago. He had seen a flash of another side of Slade that was just a little too close for comfort; a little too reminiscent of his own brutal father and the rather diabolical research of his that Judson was only too aware of. Maybe that was the fate of all fathers and father figures--to disappoint, to betray, to shrink in stature as one grew older and wiser.

He shook his head. What a mistake it had all been; what a terrible, tragic mistake. And how ironic, upon reflection: when Helen had originally brought the idea to him, an idea she had literally stumbled on through her interest in Audubon, it had seemed almost miraculous--to him as well as to her. It could be a miracle drug, she'd said. You consult with a variety of pharmaceutical companies, Judson; surely you know the place to take it. And he had known. He knew where to secure the financial backing. And he knew the perfect company to develop the drug: Longitude, run by his graduate-school dissertation adviser, Charles Slade, now working in the private sector. He'd fallen under his old professor's charismatic spell, and the two had stayed in contact. Slade was the ideal person to develop such a drug--he was a creative and independent thinker, unafraid of risk, consummately discreet...

And now he was gone, thanks to Pendergast. Pendergast, who had stirred up the past, reopened old wounds, and--directly or indirectly--caused several deaths.

He grasped the glass and drained it in one rough motion, swallowing the whiskey without even tasting it. The side table that held the bottle and small glass also sported a brochure. Esterhazy took it up and thumbed through it. A grim feeling of satisfaction displaced his anger. The tasteful brochure advertised the refined pleasures of an establishment known as the Kilchurn Shooting Lodge in the Highlands of Scotland. It was a great stone manor house on a windswept fell overlooking the Loch Duin and the Grampian Mountains. One of the most picturesque and isolated in Scotland, the lodge offered excellent grouse and partridge shooting, salmon fishing, and stalking of red deer. They took only a select few guests, prided themselves on their privacy and discretion; the shooting could be guided or not, depending on preference.

Naturally, he would prefer the self-guided shooting.

Ten years before, Esterhazy and Pendergast had spent a week at Kilchurn. The lodge sat in the middle of a vast and wild estate of forty thousand acres, once the private hunting preserve of the lairds of Atholl. Esterhazy had been deeply impressed by the empty, rugged landscape, the deep lochs hidden in the folds of the land, the swift streams bursting with trout and salmon, the windswept moorlands and the forbidding Foulmire, the heather braes and wooded glens. A man could disappear forever in a land like that, his bones left to molder, unseen, lashed by wind and rain until nothing was left.

Taking another lazy sip of the single-malt, which had now warmed in his cradling palm, he felt calmer. All was not lost by any means. In fact, things had taken a turn for the better--for the first time in a long while. He laid the brochure aside and took up a short note, written in an old-fashioned copperplate hand on cream-colored, heavy laid paper. The DakotaNew York City24 AprilMy dear Judson,I thank you most sincerely for your kind invitation. After some reflection I believe I will take you up on your offer, and gladly. Perhaps you are right that the recent events have taken a certain toll. It would be delightful to see Kilchurn Lodge again after so many years. A fortnight's holiday would be a welcome respite--and your company is always a pleasure.In answer to your question, I plan to bring my Purdey 16-bore, an H&H Royal over-and-under in .410 caliber, and a .300 H&H bolt-action for stalking deer.With affectionate regards,A. Pendergast

AUTHORS' NOTE

While most towns and other locations in Fever Dream are completely imaginary, we have in a few instances employed our own version of existing places such as New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In such cases, we have not hesitated to alter geography, topology, history, and other details to suit the needs of the story.

All persons, locales, police departments, corporations, institutions, museums, and governmental agencies mentioned in this novel are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

Dear Reader,We have an important announcement to make: we will soon be launching an exciting new series of thrillers featuring a rather uncommon "investigator" by the name of Gideon Crew. We are having an absolutely amazing time writing the first novel in the series, which will be published in the winter of 2011. We're sorry we can't give you any information about this novel except its title: Gideon's Sword. We want to keep everthing else a surprise. Stay tuned to our website, www.prestonchild.com--we'll have more to tell you in the near future.We hasten to assure you that our devotion to Agent Pendergast remains undimmed and that we will continue to write novels featuring the world's most enigmatic FBI agent with the same frequency as before.Thanks again for your continuing interest and support.Best wishes,Douglas & Lincoln

GIDEON'S SWORD

Douglas Preston and Lincoln ChildComing Winter 2011

1

August 1988

Nothing in his twelve years of life had prepared Gideon Crew for that day. Every insignificant detail, every trivial gesture, every sound and smell, became frozen as if in a block of glass, unchanging and permanent, ready to be examined at will.

His mother was driving him home from his tennis lesson in their Plymouth station wagon. It was a hot day, well up in the nineties, the kind where clothes stick to one's skin and sunlight has the texture of flypaper. Gideon had turned the dashboard vents onto his face, enjoying the rush of cold air. They were driving on Route 27, passing the long cement wall enclosing Arlington National Cemetery, when the two motorcycle cops intercepted their car, one pulling ahead, the other staying behind, sirens flashing, red lights turning. The one in front motioned with a black-gloved hand toward the Columbia Pike exit ramp; once on the ramp, he signaled for Gideon's mother to pull over. There was none of the slow deliberation of a routine traffic stop--instead, both officers hopped off their motorcycles and came running up.

"Follow us," said one, leaning in the window. "Now."

"What's this all about?" Gideon's mother asked.

"National security emergency. Keep up--we'll be driving fast and clearing traffic."

"I don't understand--"

But they were already running back to their motorcycles.

Sirens screaming, the officers escorted them down the Columbia Pike to George Mason Drive, forcing cars aside as they went. They were joined by more motorcycles, squad cars, and finally an ambulance: a motorcade that screamed through the traffic-laden streets. Gideon didn't know whether to be thrilled or scared. Once they turned onto Arlington Boulevard, he could guess where they were going: Arlington Hall Station, where his father worked for INSCOM, the United States Army and Intelligence Command.

Police barricades were up over the entrance to the complex, but they were flung aside as the motorcade pulled through. They went shrieking down Ceremonial Drive and came to a halt at a second set of barricades, beside a welter of fire trucks, police cars, and SWAT vans. Gideon could see his father's building through the trees, the stately white pillars and brick facade set among emerald lawns and manicured oaks. It had once been a girls' finishing school and still looked it. A large area in front had been cleared. He could see two sharpshooters lying on the lawn, behind a low hummock, rifles deployed on bipods.

His mother turned to him and said, fiercely, "Stay in the car. Don't get out, no matter what." Her face was grey and strained, and it scared him.

She stepped out. The phalanx of cops bulled through the crowd ahead of her and they disappeared.

She'd forgotten to turn off the engine. The air conditioning was still going. Gideon cranked down a window, the car filling with the sounds of sirens, walkie-talkie chatter, shouts. Two men in blue suits came running past. A cop hollered into a radio. More sirens drifted in from afar, coming from every direction.

He heard the sound of a voice over an electronic megaphone, acidic, distorted. "Come out with your hands in view."

The crowd immediately hushed.

"You are surrounded. There is nothing you can do. Release your hostage and come out now."

Another silence. Gideon looked around. The attention of the crowd was riveted on the front door of the Station, the large cleared area. That, it seemed, was where things would play out.

"Your wife is here. She would like to speak to you."

A buzz of fumbled static came through the sound system and then the electronically magnified sound of a partial sob, grotesque and strange. "Melvin?" another choking sound. "MELVIN?"

Gideon froze. That's my mother's voice, he thought.

It was like a dream where nothing made sense. It wasn't real. Gideon put his hand on the door handle and opened it, stepping into the stifling heat.

"Melvin..." a choking sound. "Please come out. Nobody's going to hurt you, I promise. Please let the man go." The voice was harsh and alien--and yet unmistakably his mother.

Gideon advanced through the clusters of police officers and army officers. No one paid him any attention. He made his way to the outer barricade, placed a hand on the rough, blue-painted wood. He stared in the direction of Arlington Hall but could see nothing stirring in the placid facade or on the grounds. The building, shimmering in the heat, looked dead. Outside, the leaves hung limply on the oak branches, the sky flat and cloudless, so pale it was almost white.

"Melvin, if you let the man go, they'll listen to you."

More waiting silence. Then there was a sudden motion at the front door. A plump man in a suit Gideon didn't recognize came stumbling out. He looked around a moment, disoriented, then broke into a run toward the barricades, his thick legs churning. Four helmeted officers rushed out, guns drawn; they seized the man and hustled him back behind one of the vans.

Gideon ducked under the barricade and moved forward through the groups of cops, the men with walkie-talkies, the men in uniform. Nobody noticed him, nobody cared: all eyes were fixed on the front entrance to the building.

And then a faint voice rang out from inside the doorway. "There must be an investigation!"

It was his father's voice. Gideon paused, his heart in his throat.

"I demand an investigation! Twenty six people died!"

A muffled, amplified fumbling, then a male voice boomed from the sound system. "Dr. Crew, your concerns will be addressed. But you must come out now with your hands up. Do you understand? You must surrender now."

"You haven't listened," came the trembling voice. His father sounded frightened, almost like a child. "People died and nothing was done! I want a promise."

"That is a promise."

Gideon was at the innermost barricade. The front of the building remained still, but he was now close enough to see the front door standing half open. It was a dream, a nightmare; at any moment he would wake up. He felt dizzy from the heat, felt a taste in his mouth like copper. It was a nightmare--and yet it was real.

And then Gideon saw the door swing inward and the figure of his father appear in the black rectangle of the doorway. He seemed terribly small against the elegant facade of the building. He took a step forward, his hands held up, palms facing forward. His straight hair hang down over his forehead, his tie askew, his blue suit rumpled.

"That's far enough," came the voice. "Stop."

Melvin Crew stopped, blinking in the bright sunlight.

The shots rang out, so close together they sounded like firecrackers, and his father was abruptly punched back into the darkness of the doorway.

"Dad!" screamed Gideon, leaping over the barrier and running across the hot asphalt of the parking lot. "Dad!"

Shouts erupted behind him, cries of "Who's that kid?" and "Hold fire!"

He leapt the curb and cut across the lawn toward the entrance. Figures raced forward to intercept him.

"Jesus Christ, stop him!"

He slipped on the grass, fell to his hands and knees, rose again. He could see only his fathers' two feet, sticking out of the dark doorway into the sunlight, toes pointed skyward, scuffed soles turned up for all to see, one with a hole in it. It was a dream, a dream--and then the last thing he saw before he was tackled to the ground was the feet move, jerking twice.

"Dad!" he screamed into the grass, trying to claw back to his feet as the weight of the world piled up on his back and shoulders; but he'd seen those feet move, his father was alive, he would wake up and all would be well.

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