He shook his head. That old superstitious nonsense wasn’t going to help him get inside.
Or would it?
He started walking down the road.
54
AS THE BOAT with no name sped north, P. B. Perelman wondered just what the hell he’d gotten himself into.
The first two hours had been smooth motoring, the flat sea allowing him to go at the boat’s top speed of seventy-five knots. But as the light disappeared in the steady rain, he could feel in his bones the approaching storm, an electricity in the air. A slight swell was developing, the leading edge of worse to come, and the wind had kicked up, producing a little chop. Already the boat was starting to catch too much air, and at that speed, in the dark, it would be easy to flip over.
He throttled back.
“What the devil are you doing?” Constance asked sharply.
“I have to ease off in this sea,” said Perelman. He couldn’t believe her lack of fear. Any other passenger would be on the floor by now, begging him to slow down.
“Don’t lose your nerve.”
“I’m worried about losing my life. Our lives. We can’t help Pendergast if we’re dead.”
She said nothing, but let him throttle down to fifty without further complaint. Even at that speed, the boat was starting to take a pounding, the props coming out of the water from time to time with a terrifying roar. They were making for the mouth of Crooked River, a course that took them far offshore. Christ, if they didn’t get there before the storm hit, they’d be screwed no matter what speed they were going. This was no craft to weather a storm in.
He glanced over at Constance, who was standing on his left, her face barely illuminated by the dim red light of the helm. She was looking straight ahead, her short hair whipped by the wind: a crazy girl, he thought, with such peculiar mannerisms and old-fashioned speech. Although the look in her violet eyes wasn’t crazy—not exactly. They were more the eyes of a stone killer than of a young woman—eyes that had seen everything and, as a result, were surprised by nothing.
This whole business had taken a bizarre turn, and done so very suddenly. Looking back, he could see in retrospect the signs that the task force had been compromised. Whoever these people were, kidnapping a fed like that was the height of insanity—unless they were an arm of the government themselves. An arm of the government. Incredible as that might seem, it was really the only thing that made sense. That meant the only way to keep Pendergast alive was to make them think they’d gotten away with it; that nobody knew their location, that the cavalry hadn’t been called in. Of course, the chances that Pendergast was still alive were vanishingly low.
The bow hit a particularly steep swell and the boat lurched upward, the props screaming, then came back down at a tilt that scared the shit out of him. He eased a little more off the throttle, only to receive another sharp rebuke from Constance.
She was clueless of how go-fast boats handled, but there was no point arguing with her now.
“You’d better hold on tighter than ever,” he warned her instead. “Because it’s only going to get rougher.”
55
AFTER THE CHOPPER had landed in what appeared to be the inner courtyard of an industrial plant, they had been carried out, still bound, and placed in wheelchairs, to which they were additionally strapped. Escorted by half a dozen men carrying rifles and automatic weapons, they’d been pushed through seemingly endless cinder-block hallways and up an elevator, to arrive at a strikingly elegant room—Persian rugs, a massive desk flanked by flags, with paintings on the walls and gilded furniture.
Behind the desk sat an old man wearing military fatigues. Their escort halted them twenty feet from the desk. The old man rose slowly, painfully. Gladstone could see that where his name, rank, and service would have been on his fatigues; the labels had been removed, leaving darker patches. His collar sported three torn holes on each side. The man’s square, granite face was careworn, and tiny veins sprinkled his cheeks. He looked eighty, maybe older. What little hair he had left, fringing a liver-spotted pate, had been cut so short he seemed almost bald. Outside, the storm had intensified tremendously, but the thick concrete walls shielded them to the point where only a faint, muffled moaning came through.
“Welcome,” the man said, his voice anything but welcoming. “I am General Smith.”
Gladstone said nothing and neither did Pendergast. She glanced at the FBI agent. His face was pale, unreadable.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your lab associate, Dr. Gladstone.”
“What ‘happened’ is that you murdered him.”
He sighed and gave a small shrug. “Our work here is of the utmost importance. Regrettable things sometimes happen.”
Gladstone started to speak again but the general overrode her. “We have so little time, and much important work that needs doing. I shall escort you both to the laboratory. That will be much more convenient.” He turned and walked slowly to the far door of the room. Soldiers pushed their wheelchairs, following the old man out of the elegant room and down a hallway, through a set of double doors and into a dazzling laboratory, brightly lit, with gleaming medical equipment such as one would find in an intensive care unit. Two orderlies and a male nurse were in the lab and they glanced up, apparently surprised to see them. Another man stepped through a metal door in the back of the lab. He cradled a small plastic case in his arms. The place smelled strongly of methyl alcohol and iodopovidone.
The general turned. “It is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Smith.”
“Lot of Smiths around here,” Gladstone said sarcastically.
“Names are immaterial.”
Dr. Smith stepped forward. He was small and brisk, with round tortoiseshell glasses slightly smoked, dressed in dazzling white. With a shock of brilliantined black hair and an upturned nose, he made Gladstone think of a malignant, mincing leprechaun. An eager smile creased his small face. He gave a short bow, eyes blinking like an owl’s behind the thick lenses. “Pleased.”
“Dr. Smith, could you prepare the patient?”
“Yes, sir.” The doctor turned to one of the orderlies. “Bring the IV.”
The orderly took some items from a cabinet and placed them on the tray of a rolling IV pole, then pushed it toward Gladstone.
A strange, detached sense of curiosity and outrage was suddenly replaced by a spike of fear. “Get the fuck away from me.”
The doctor continued to work as if nothing had been said. He slid a pair of scissors beneath her sleeve and started cutting.
“Stop! No!” She struggled in the chair, but everything was strapped down fast.
The doctor swabbed her exposed forearm.
“No!” she cried. As the doctor bent over her arm, she could smell his hair tonic. “No!”
“Dr. Gladstone,” said the general, standing behind her, “if you continue to make a disturbance I will have you gagged. I can’t tolerate noise.”
She felt the sting as the IV needle went into her vein, and she struggled uselessly again. The doctor secured the catheter, got blood, flushed it, depressed the sterile spike of the drip chamber, then taped the setup in place and stood back. She looked once more at Pendergast, but his face remained shut down, only his eyes glittering, like pale diamonds.