Douglas Preston - Brimstone

"I'll be back to you within ninety minutes."

"And Chait? No fuckups, you hear?"

"No, sir."

There was a click; a hiss of static; and the computer beeped once again to signal the connection had been broken.

"Cell site's changed again," Mandrell said, looking at the screen.

D'Agosta turned to Pendergast. "Within ninety minutes, he said? What the hell does that mean?"

Pendergast closed his phone, slipped it back into his pocket. "It means their meeting will take place before then. Come on, Vincent-we haven't a moment to lose."

{ 35 }

D'Agosta blew past the exit helixes of the George Washington Bridge and merged onto the express lanes, driving like hell. As the New Jersey Turnpike divided and the traffic began to thin a little, he seated the emergency bubble onto the dash, turned on its flasher, and began cranking the siren. Veering west onto I-80, he stomped hard on the pedal. The big engine of the pool sedan responded and they were soon rocketing along at a hundred miles an hour.

"Refreshing," murmured Pendergast.

The secure car-to-car frequency crackled into life. "This is 602. We've got a visual on the target. It's a TV van with a satellite dish, call letters WPMP, Hackensack, moving west on 80 near exit 65."

D'Agosta pushed his speed to one twenty.

Pendergast unhooked the mike. "We're just a few miles behind you. Hang back in another lane and keep out of sight. Over."

Everything had come together with remarkable speed. Pendergast had initiated a federal tail on Chait's cell signal, requisitioned a government vehicle, and put D'Agosta behind its wheel. The West Side Highway had been mercifully free of traffic, and it had taken them only ten minutes to clear Manhattan.

"Where do you think we're headed?" D'Agosta asked.

"Bullard mentioned a park. For now, that's all we know."

Out of the corner of his eye, D'Agosta noticed that, despite the speed, Pendergast had unbuckled his seat belt and was crouching forward. Now the agent was scratching his nails on the floor mat, rubbing his palms rapidly against it. D'Agosta had seen the man do strange things before, but this beat all. He wondered if he should ask, decided against it.

"Target leaving freeway at exit 60," the radio squawked. "Following."

D'Agosta slowed. Another minute, and he peeled off at the same exit.

"Target proceeding north on McLean."

"They're heading into Paterson," D'Agosta said. He'd never actually set foot in the city, though he'd passed it on the freeway countless times: a red-brick working town whose best days were probably about a hundred years gone. It seemed like a strange destination.

"Paterson," Pendergast repeated speculatively, wiping his dirty hands on his face and neck. "Birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution."

"Birthplace? Looks more like death's door to me."

"It's a city with a vigorous history, Vincent. Some of the historical neighborhoods are still quite beautiful. However, I'm banking on the fact that those are not where we're headed."

"Target leaving McLean," the voice on the radio said. "Heading left onto Broadway."

D'Agosta tore up McLean Highway, using the siren to punch his way through two red lights. To their right lay the Passaic River, brown and sullen in the autumn light. As he turned onto Broadway, shabby-looking and decrepit, he killed the siren and snapped off the flasher. They were close now: very close.

"Sergeant," Pendergast said abruptly, "head into this strip mall on our right, please. We need to make a quick stop."

D'Agosta glanced at him in surprise. "We don't have time."

"Trust me, we do."

D'Agosta shrugged. The operation was nominally FBI and Pendergast was in charge: Hayward had made sure of that. The lead car was FBI and he himself was Southampton P.D., which would offend nobody. Interstate police rivalries would be kept at a minimum. At the appropriate moment-when it was too late for a bunch of unbriefed town cops to screw things up-Pendergast would call in the locals.

The mall was a collection of dingy, glass-fronted stores set back from a parking lot heaved and cracked by time. It was half abandoned, and D'Agosta wondered just what the hell Pendergast was up to. Here he'd made good time, and now the agent was squandering it.

"There," Pendergast said. "At the far end."

D'Agosta sped up to the last storefront. A yellow Dumpster stood out front, pitted and scarred with age. Even before the car had stopped, Pendergast was out, running into the store. D'Agosta swore, punched the steering wheel. They were going to lose five minutes at least. He was used to Pendergast's inexplicable behavior, but this was too much.

"Target heading into East Side Park," came the cool voice from the lead car. "There's some kind of event going on. Looks like model rockets or something."

D'Agosta heard shouting and saw Pendergast trotting out of the shop, a bundle of clothes slung over one arm and a couple of pairs of shoes clutched in the other. Moments later a fat woman came bursting out.

"Help!" she bellowed. "Police! I hope you're proud of yourself, robbing the Salvation Army. Shithead!"

"Obliged, ma'am," Pendergast said, crumpling a hundred-dollar bill and tossing it over his shoulder as he jumped into the backseat. D'Agosta laid on the gas, leaving a streak of rubber and a cloud of smoke.

"I daresay that was no more than a two-minute detour," Pendergast said from the rear of the car. Looking into the mirror, D'Agosta saw he was peeling off his jacket and tie.

"Two minutes is a long time in this business."

"I'll have to send the Salvation Army people a little something to make up for my lack of manners."

"They're heading into East Side Park."

"Very good. Drive around the park, if you please, and enter from the south. I need a few more moments."

D'Agosta drove past the park-a wall of greenery to his left, rising above a concrete retaining wall-and made a left onto Derrom Avenue. Despite their proximity to seedy, sorry-looking Broadway, the houses here were remarkably large and well tended, relics of the days when Paterson had been a model city of industry.

Pendergast intoned from the back:

"Eternally asleep,

his dreams walk about the city where he persists

incognito."

D'Agosta glanced again in the rearview mirror, almost jamming on the brakes in surprise when he saw a stranger staring back at him. But, of course, it was no stranger: it was Pendergast, transformed by some almost miraculous process of disguise.

"Have you ever read Paterson by William Carlos Williams?" the vagrant in the backseat asked.

"Never heard of it."

"Pity:

" Immortal he neither moves nor rouses and is seldom

seen, though he breathes and the subtleties of his

machinations

drawing their substance from the noise of the pouring

river

animate a thousand automatons."

D'Agosta shook his head and muttered to himself. He drove a few blocks, made another left, and entered the park beside a statue of Christopher Columbus.

East Side Park was an overgrown hillock of grass and the occasional shade tree, closely hemmed in on all four sides by houses. A lane wandered around its periphery, and D'Agosta eased the car onto it, passing a variety of pudding-stone outbuildings in various stages of disrepair. Concrete benches with green-painted wooden slats lined the roadway. Farther along, the lane veered in toward a height of land, which was crowned by a fountain surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence. Several cars were parked along the curb here, including their own lead vehicle, making the already narrow road almost impassable. Ahead, D'Agosta could see the TV van. It had pulled onto the grass between a brace of tennis courts and a baseball field. On the field itself, a small knot of kids was shooting off model rockets, supervised by half a dozen parents. A man with a television camera was standing by the van, filming the event.