Douglas Preston - The Cabinet of Curiosities

Don’t let him speak, the voice said. Just kill him.

Fairhaven aimed the gun, placing Pendergast’s head squarely before the center dot of the tritium sights. A solid hit with a hollow-point bullet would effectively decapitate the FBI agent. It would be about as quick as you could get. His finger tightened on the trigger.

And then something occurred to him.

Quick was a lot more than Pendergast deserved. The man had caused him a lot of grief. Pendergast had dogged his trail; ruined his latest specimen; brought him anxiety and suffering at the very moment of triumph.

As he stood over the agent, he felt a hatred rise within him; the hatred he had felt for the other one, Leng, who had looked so similar. The hatred he had felt for the trustees and professors of his medical school, who had refused to share his vision. Hatred for the pettiness and small-mindedness that kept people like him from achieving their true greatness.

So Pendergast wanted it quick? Not with this arsenal at his disposal.

He walked over to Pendergast and once again searched the unresisting man carefully, recoiling a little from the warm sticky blood that soaked his side. Nothing. The man had not been able to slip a weapon from the surrounding walls. In fact, he could see that Pendergast’s faltering footsteps led directly to the center of the room, where he had collapsed. But it would do to be careful. Pendergast, even in this pathetic state, was dangerous. If he tried to talk, it would be best to just shoot him. Words, in the mouth of this man, were subtle and pernicious.

He looked around again, more carefully this time. There was every weapon imaginable on the walls. He had read histories of some of them, studied others in museums. The choice would prove amusing.

The word fun came to mind.

Always keeping Pendergast in his field of vision, Fairhaven shone his light around, finally selecting a bejeweled sword. He plucked it from the wall, hefted it, turned it around in the beam of the flashlight. It would have served his purpose, except it was rather heavy, and the blade was so rusty it looked as if it wouldn’t cut butter. Besides, the handle was sticky and unpleasant. He hung it back up on the shelf, wiping his hands on his surgical cloth.

Pendergast was still sitting, watching him with pale, cloudy eyes. Fairhaven grinned. “Got any preferences?”

There was no reply, but Fairhaven could see a look of profound distress cross the agent’s face.

“That’s right, Agent Pendergast. ‘Quick’ is no longer in the cards.”

A slight, terrified widening of the eyes was Pendergast’s only response. It was enough. The Surgeon felt a swell of satisfaction.

He moved along the collections, picked up a dagger with a handle of gold and silver, turned it over, laid it down. Next to it was a helmet shaped like a man’s head, with spikes inside that you could screw closed, driving the spikes bit by bit through the skull. Too primitive, too messy. Hanging on the wall nearby was an oversized leather funnel. He’d heard of this: the torturer would jam it into the victim’s mouth, then pour water down the victim’s throat until the poor wretch either drowned or exploded. Exotic, but too time-consuming. Nearby was a large wheel on which people could be broken — too much trouble. A cat-o’-nine tails, studded with iron hooks. He hefted it, lashed it overhead, laid it back down, again wiping his hands. The stuff was filthy. All this junk had probably been hanging around in Leng’s dingy subbasement for more than a century.

There had to be something here that would be suitable for his needs. And then his eye fell on an executioner’s axe.

“What do you know?” said Fairhaven, his smile broadening. “Perhaps you’ll get your wish, after all.”

He plucked the axe from its mounting hooks and gave it a few swings. The wooden shaft was almost five feet long, fitted with several rows of dull brass nails. It was heavy, but well balanced and sharp as a razor. It made a whistling noise as it cut through the air. Sitting below the axe was the second part of the executioner’s outfit: a tree stump, well worn and covered with a dark patina. A semicircle had been hollowed from it, clearly intended to receive the neck. It had been well used, as many chop marks attested. He set down the axe, rolled the block over to Pendergast, tipped it flat, positioned the block in front of the agent.

Suddenly, Pendergast resisted, struggling feebly, and the Surgeon gave him a brutal kick in the side. Pendergast went rigid with pain, then abruptly fell limp. The Surgeon had a brief, unpleasant sensation of déjà vu, remembering how he had pushed Leng just a little too hard and ended up with a corpse. But no: Pendergast was still conscious. His eyes, though clouded with pain, remained open. He would be present and conscious when the axe fell. He knew what was coming. That was important to the Surgeon: very important.

And now another thought occurred to him. He recalled how, when Anne Boleyn was to be put to death, she’d sent for a French executioner, skilled in the art of decapitating with a sword. It was a cleaner, quicker, surer death than an axe. She had knelt, head erect, with no unseemly block. And she had tipped the man well.

The Surgeon hefted the axe in his hands. It seemed heavy, heavier than it had before. But surely he could swing it true. It would be an interesting challenge to do without the block.

He shoved the block away with his foot. Pendergast was already kneeling as if he had arranged himself in position, hands limp at his sides, head drooping, helpless and resigned.

“Your struggles cost you that quick death you asked for,” he said. “But I’m sure we’ll have it off in — oh — no more than two or three strokes. Either way, you’re about to experience something I’ve always wondered about. After the head goes rolling off, how long does the body remain conscious? Do you see the world spinning around as your head falls into the basket of sawdust? When the executioner raised the heads in Tower Yard, crying out ‘Behold the head of a traitor!’ the eyes and lips continued to move. Did they actually see their own headless corpse?”

He gave the axe a practice swing. Why was it so heavy? And yet he was enjoying drawing out this moment. “Did you know that Charlotte Corday, who was guillotined for assassinating Marat during the French Revolution, blushed after the assistant executioner slapped her severed head before the assembled crowd? Or how about the pirate captain who was caught and sentenced to death? They lined up his men in a row. And they told him that after he was beheaded, whichever men he managed to walk past would be reprieved. So they cut off his head as he stood, and wouldn’t you know it, but that headless captain began to walk along the row of men, one step at a time. The executioner was so upset that he wouldn’t have any more victims that he stuck out his foot and tripped the captain.”

With this the Surgeon roared with laughter. Pendergast did not join in.

“Ah well,” Fairhaven said. “I guess I’ll never know how long consciousness lasts after one has lost one’s head. But you will. Shortly.”

He raised the axe over his right shoulder, like a bat, and took careful aim.

“Give my regards to your great-grand-uncle,” he said, as he tensed his muscles to deliver the stroke.

NORA PILLOWED HER head on Smithback’s shoulder, tears seeping through her closed eyelids. She felt weak with despair. She had done all she could — and yet, all she could was not enough.

And then, through the fog of grief, she realized something: the beeping of the EKG had steadied.

She quickly raised her head, glanced at the monitors. Blood pressure had stabilized, and the pulse had risen slightly, to 60 beats per minute.