Two Graves

65

ROOM 4 LAY IN THE BOWELS OF THE OLDEST PART OF THE fortress. It was a tunnel-like space of massive basaltic blocks, with a floor of volcanic dirt and an arched ceiling. A single lightbulb hung from a wire. Pendergast was dragged in, prodded toward one wall at gunpoint, then chained hand and foot to a set of enormous iron ring-bolts set into the stonework, his arms and legs spread to nearly maximum extension.

Under the watchful eye of Scheermann, the soldiers made sure the chains were tight. Then, leaving him standing there, chained to the wall, they left the room, turning off the light and shutting behind them the massively thick iron door. A gleam of light briefly shone from a tiny Judas window set into the door, until that too was extinguished, the window shut and blocked.

Blackness reigned.

Pendergast stood in the humid darkness, listening. The soldiers remained outside, and he could hear their movements, the murmur of their voices. Beyond, he could make out nothing beyond a very deep rumble, the humming of large generators, and something else, something even deeper: perhaps the natural movement of magma beneath the not-so-extinct volcano. As if to underscore this, he felt a faint but discernible shuddering of the floor and wall, as if the entire fortress were trembling, ever so slightly, in response to the striking of a giant tuning fork in the earth beneath them.

In the darkness, Pendergast listened. And thought. Thought about what Fischer had said.

An hour passed. And then, Pendergast heard footsteps. There was a scraping noise as a heavy bolt was drawn back. A long cast of light as the door opened. Two figures stood in the doorway, silhouetted. They paused for a moment, side by side, and then separated as they came forward. The bare bulb in the center of the room went on. And standing before Pendergast were Fischer and Alban.

Alban. Alban, free from all disguises, makeup, and deception.

In actual features he looked like Tristram—only stamped into those features was a very different, even diametrically opposite, personality. Alban radiated supreme confidence, an easy charisma, only a trace of arrogance mingling with a sense of amusement. He carried himself with a calm air of discipline, a detachment from the world of sensuality, passion, and intuition.

He was, in many ways, more like Pendergast than Tristram was. Although—to his distress and dismay—Pendergast noticed that Alban had his mother’s mouth and eyes. But the longer Pendergast gazed into that pale, angular face, with its high-domed forehead, blue-and-violet eyes, blond hair, and sculptured lips, the more he became aware something was missing. There was a hole, a huge hole, in this person, where his heart should have been.

Only then did Pendergast take in the rest of his son: the clean, fresh-pressed work shirt and plain canvas trousers of a simple cut, the braided leather belt and sturdy, handmade leather boots. His clothes, curiously, contrasted strongly with the finely cut, expensive gray suit worn by Fischer, with his gold rings, watch, and lighter.

Finally, Fischer spoke. “May I have the pleasure, Agent Pendergast, of formally introducing you to your son Alban?”

Alban stood there, gazing at him. It was impossible to tell what was in those eyes of his, what emotion he might be experiencing, if any; he was so perfectly in control. “Hello again, Father,” he said in a deep, pleasant voice, without the rough accent so apparent in Tristram’s speech.

Pendergast said nothing.

There was a sharp rap on the door.

“Come in, Berger,” Fischer said.

A small, very thin man with a blade-like face entered, carrying an old-fashioned doctor’s bag in one hand and a folding table in the other. Behind him—being prodded forward by the butt of a submachine gun—was Egon. His hair was matted and stiff, and his face was white and creased with anxiety. A hunted look was in his eyes.

The guard closed the door, then stood in front of it, weapon at the ready. Fischer waited while Egon was bound to the wall in the same fashion as Pendergast. Then he turned back to the agent.

“You appear to be a man possessed of great scientific curiosity,” he said. “In this respect, you are not unlike ourselves. So: Do you have any observations to make? Any questions? Because once we begin there won’t be an opportunity for you to speak.”

“Where is Tristram?” Pendergast asked. “Is he alive?”

“Tristram? So you have given der Schwächling a name. How nice. How domestic of you. If you’re referring, as I assume, to Forty-Seven: naturally he’s alive. He’s carrying all of Alban’s spare parts. For that reason, and that reason alone, he’s a very important boy. Rest assured he is safely back in the fold. His moment of freedom undomesticated him somewhat, but he’s been retamed and is now doing just fine.” Fischer paused. “Actually, his kidnapping and return served three purposes. It brought him back to us, a future donor bank for Alban. We also knew that his kidnapping would draw you, like a moth to a flame. And at the same time, successfully spiriting Forty-Seven out from your own house, from under your own guardianship, would be a fitting end to the final phase of our work. Such admirable economy of action! How might you put that in English: killing three birds with one stone?”

“The final phase of your work,” Pendergast said in a toneless voice. “You used that phrase earlier. I assume you refer to what you call the beta test?”

For a brief moment, Fischer seemed surprised. Then he smiled. “Excellent, excellent. Yes, I was referring to our beta test.”

“What is it, exactly?”

“Surely you can guess the answer to that already. For more than half a century, we’ve been following in the footsteps of Doctors Mengele and Faust, continuing their great work on twins.”

“Work that was started on helpless victims, held in concentration camps,” Pendergast said.

“Work that began during the course of that unfortunate war, which we later carried here to Brazil. Work that is now complete—thanks in part to you.”

“And the scientific principles involved?” Pendergast asked, coolly.

Fischer put a finger to his chin. “Simple in theory, exceedingly difficult in practice. Following conception, after the first mitosis, the two daughter cells are separated and begin to develop independently, creating the path toward identical twins. When the two embryos reach the morula stage, the really delicate work begins. We initiate a process of transferring genetic material between the embryos. In the good embryo, we augment the genetic material with the very best from the other embryo, swapping out the inferior stuff, which goes in turn into the bad embryo.”

“But if they are identical twins,” asked Pendergast, “how is there any difference between the two embryos?”

A smile illuminated Fischer’s fine features. “Ah, Mr. Pendergast, you have precisely identified the central question our scientists have struggled with for years. The answer is this: The human genome carries three billion base pairs. Even among identical twins there are errors: bad copies, reversed sequences, and so forth. We augment that variation by slightly irradiating the unfertilized egg and sperm before union. Not so much as to create a freak; just enough to give us the variation we must have to swap genes. So instead of mixing and matching genes randomly, as nature does so crudely, we can build a man or woman according to careful specifications.”

“And the ‘bad’ embryo?”

“Nothing is wasted. The bad twin develops into a baby as well. Your, ah, Tristram is a perfect example.” Fischer chuckled. “He or she is raised for menial labor in the camps and fields, a useful and fulfilled member of society. Arbeit macht frei. And of course this bad twin, der Schwächling, is an excellent repository of organs and blood in case the good twin is damaged or requires a transplant. Naturally, these are isograft transplants, the most perfect kind, which cannot be rejected.” He paused to light another cigarette. “The painstaking research, the refinement of the procedure, the perfection of the result—you can imagine it took years, decades, of careful work. It took many, many iterations, each one slightly better than the last.”

“Iterations,” Pendergast said. “In other words, sets of twins, intermediate steps in the process, that weren’t yet up to your exacting specifications. Human beings to be liquidated.”

“Not at all. You can see them every day in our village, living out useful and productive lives.”

“You can also see their doppelgängers in your underground concentration camp.”

Fischer cocked an eyebrow. “My, my, you were busy last night.”

“And Alban? I assume he is the acme, the pinnacle, of your work?”

Fischer could hardly disguise his pride. “Indeed he is.”

“Which means he himself is the beta test.” Pendergast answered his own question.

“Yes. Dr. Faust volunteered his own family—a true man of science. The Faust-Esterhazy line proved exceedingly rich. But I must say the Pendergast line proved even richer. The union between you and Helen, accidental though it was, produced a most remarkable product. Most remarkable, exceeding all our expectations.” Fischer shook his head. “We had allowed her parents to move to America and live there freely, raising their children. It was an early experiment to see how our subjects might function in outside society. It was a catastrophic failure. When Helen grew up, she went rogue on us. Her body had already been prepared to always bear twins—that was easy. When she accidentally got pregnant, she was forced to return here. Otherwise her fetuses would have died, without certain special treatments necessary for her to carry them to term. But she returned to Brazil more than eight weeks’ pregnant, too late for the blastocyst cell treatment we’d developed here at Nova Godói. This forced us to try something new—a tricky and highly experimental technique of shifting genetic material between more developed fetuses. You’ll appreciate this irony, Herr Pendergast, but it was the very lateness that led to our crowning success. We had always believed the genetic work had to be done early, no later than the first few weeks. And yet the delayed work on Helen’s twins proved to be our breakthrough.” Fischer paused. “Helen could never accept the fact that we would not let her take her children back to America. We had to keep them, of course. Even at such an early age, Alban was so promising.”

Throughout this back-and-forth, Alban had been listening, a neutral expression on his face.

“This is your mother he’s talking about,” Pendergast said. “Doesn’t that trouble you in the least?”

“Trouble?” Alban said. “On the contrary, what I feel is pride. Look at how easy it was to learn the location of your Central Park meeting place—from an employee of New York’s own police department, no less!—and how quickly our people put a plan into effect.”

This was followed by a brief pause.

“And Longitude Pharmaceuticals?” Pendergast asked. “What of them?”

“Merely one of many satellite operations loosely affiliated with our work,” Fischer answered. “Our research was subtle, complex, and wide ranging; we had to draw from many sources. They are usually kept at arm’s length—but when accidents occur, as they did at Longitude, certain unfortunate steps must be taken.” Fischer shook his head.

“You mentioned that I was at least partly responsible for the successful conclusion of your work,” Pendergast said. “That you incorporated me into its final phase. What precisely did you mean by that?”

“My dear Agent Pendergast, surely you must have guessed that by now. I’ve already referred to it: your attack on the Vergeltung, your dogged pursuit of Helen and us, her kidnappers. We had another final beta test for Alban in mind—but when you blundered into the picture, we turned what could have been a setback into an opportunity. We completely changed the parameters of the test—rather hastily, I might add. We decided to set Alban free in New York City. To prove that he could kill with impunity, even while revealing his identity to the security cameras. Leaving clues convincing you that the murderer was, in fact, your own son. That knowledge would give you, ah, sufficient motivation to catch him—don’t you think? If the greatest and most intrepid detective, given every opportunity, cannot catch his own murderous son—wouldn’t you say our beta test was a success? A complete, unmitigated success?”

Pendergast did not reply.

“And then Forty-Seven escaped and blundered his way to you. Once again, we turned misfortune to our advantage. We altered Alban’s final mission. Instead of a fifth murder, he would kidnap Forty-Seven from your own house. A mission he executed flawlessly.” Fischer turned to Alban. “Well done, my boy.”

Alban nodded his acceptance of the praise.

“So now you’ve perfected your work on twins,” Pendergast said. “You can produce a pair of them at will—one, a perfect killing machine, strong and intelligent and fearless and cunning. And, most important, perfectly free of any kind of moral or ethical constraint.”

Fischer nodded. “Such constraints, as you put it, lost us the war, you know.”

“And then you have the other twin, as weak as his sibling is strong, as lacking in natural ability as his counterpart is overflowing with it: slave labor and, if necessary, an unwilling organ bank. And so, having perfected this process, this ability to manufacture these diabolically perfect human beings—now that it’s done, what are you going to do?”

“What are we going to do?” Fischer seemed taken aback by the question. “But surely that is obvious? The thing we have vowed—that we have sworn—to do ever since your armed forces stormed our cities, killed our leader, scattered our Reich to the four winds. Why would you think that our goal, Herr Pendergast, has varied one whit from that which it has always been? The only difference is, now—after seventy years of endless work—we are ready to set about achieving that goal. The final beta test is complete. We may now begin—what is the term you use?—the roll-out.”

He dropped the cigarette to the dirt floor, ground it beneath his boot. “But this begins to grow tiresome.” He turned to the man named Berger.

“You may proceed,” he said.