Линкольн Чайлд - City of Endless Night

Pulling his Les Baer, Pendergast slipped through the doorway and moved down the corridor until he reached the lighted door. He waited a few moments to assure himself there was no activity. Then he placed his palm on the door, gave it a sharp shove, stepped forward with the weapon raised, and panned the room.

The light was sufficiently dim as to illuminate only the immediate portion of the space he was standing in. The deeper recesses, going back through rows of empty shelves, were too dark to make out. There was a table in the center of the pool of light, with a figure seated in a chair, his back to Pendergast. He recognized the man instantly: even from the rear, the rumpled suit, powerful frame, and long gray hair could only belong to one man — Howard Longstreet. He was, it seemed, looking into the inky darkness at the rear of the room, head propped on one arm in an attitude of alert repose.

Pendergast paused for a moment, frozen by surprise. The man was not bound — in fact, he seemed to be under no restraint whatsoever.

“H?” he said in a voice barely more than a whisper.

Longstreet did not reply.

Pendergast took a step toward the seated figure. “H?” he said again.

Still Longstreet said nothing. Was he unconscious? Pendergast stepped toward the seated figure and reached out, resting a hand on Longstreet’s shoulder and giving him a gentle shake.

With a quiet, slippery kind of sigh, the man’s head fell off, hit the table with a dull thud, rolled away, and came to rest, rocking slightly, Longstreet’s gray eyes staring up at Pendergast in silent agony.

At the same time, the lights abruptly went off. And from out of the darkness came a low chuckle of triumph.

Just as quickly as blackness fell, brilliant light suddenly flooded the room. There — seated in a wooden chair in a far corner — sat Lieutenant D’Agosta. He was hog-tied to the chair, wearing nothing but boxers and a sleeveless coat stuffed with packets of plastic explosive — a suicide vest. A cue-ball gag was in his mouth. He looked at Pendergast, his eyes on fire.

“I arrived within the requisite fifty-five minutes, Mr. Ozmian,” Pendergast said. “And yet you killed Howard Longstreet. That was not part of the deal.”

A moment passed. And then, Anton Ozmian stepped quietly into the room. He was wearing blacked-out camos, and in one hand he held a 1911 handgun — trained on Pendergast — while the other cupped a remote detonator.

“Place your weapon on the floor, please, Agent Pendergast,” he said in a cool voice.

Pendergast complied.

“Now nudge it toward me with your foot.”

Pendergast did so.

“Take off your jacket, turn around, place your feet apart, and spread-eagle yourself against the wall.”

Pendergast did this as well. The opportunity, he was fairly sure, would come for turning the tables, but for now there were no options except to obey. He heard Ozmian approach; he felt the cold hard muzzle of the gun against the nape of his neck as the man searched him, uncovering the spare magazine along with several knives, lock picks and bump keys, a garrote, two cell phones, money, some test tubes and tweezers, and a single-shot derringer.

“Put one hand behind your back while balancing yourself against the wall with the other.”

When Pendergast did this, he felt a pair of plastic zip cuffs slip around his wrist. Then his other hand was pulled back and cuffed as well. He heard Ozmian step back.

“Very good,” the entrepreneur said. “Now you may have a seat beside your friend. And we’ll have a little talk.”

Wordlessly, Pendergast sat down next to the body of Longstreet — which, no longer propped up by the arm, had fallen forward onto the table, next to Longstreet’s lolling head. D’Agosta looked on from his chair in the far corner, his own eyes wide and red-rimmed.

Ozmian settled into a chair on the other side of the table and inspected Pendergast’s primary weapon. “Very nice. You’ll be getting it back soon, by the way.” He put it down, paused a moment. “First: I never promised to keep both men alive. My exact words were, ‘you’ll never see either of your friends alive again.’ As you can see, Lieutenant D’Agosta is still very much alive — for the time being. Second: congratulations on deducing that I was the Decapitator. How did you do it, exactly?”

“Hightower. You led us to a suspect who was simply too perfect. That was when I sensed a master puppeteer at work, and started to assemble the pieces.”

“Very good. Have you also guessed why I am killing these particular people?”

“Why don’t you tell me?” Pendergast said.

“I’d much rather hear it from you.”

“The hobby you supposedly gave up many years ago — big-game hunting. You were desirous of the ultimate thrill: the ‘most dangerous game,’ so to speak.”

Ozmian grinned widely. “I am impressed!”

“I am puzzled about one thing: why your daughter was your first victim. Although I suspect it had something to do with your recent company troubles.”

“Well, I’ll help you with that one, as it’s getting late and the game will soon begin. As you’ve guessed, it was my own daughter, my dear, devoted daughter, who leaked our proprietary code onto the Internet — almost capsizing my company in the process.”

“I take it, then, that your relationship wasn’t quite as close as you pretended.”

At this, Ozmian paused for a moment. “When she was a girl, we were quite close. Bosom companions, actually. She worshipped me, and in her alone I found unconditional love. But as puberty approached, she zigged when she should have zagged. She had a brilliant mind when she wanted to use it, not to mention a remarkable facility with computers from a very early age. I’d always expected her to be my partner and eventual replacement. Her betrayal of me when it came was, as you can imagine, all that much keener.”

“Why did she betray you?”

“The zig rather than the zag. You know how it goes, Agent Pendergast: a family gone wrong thanks to too much money, too many ex-wives, too much dysfunction.” He scoffed. “Oh, we kept up appearances — today it’s all about celebrity-watching and paparazzi, isn’t it, and we both had skin in that game. But the fact is, my daughter became a drug-addicted, self-destructive, vicious little slut who hated everything about me except my money. And when I cut that off, she used her considerable skills to break into my private computer and do the one thing she knew would hurt me the most. She tried to ruin the company I had built — for her .”

“And so, in a fit of rage, you killed her.”

“Yes. They tell me I have ‘anger management issues.’” Ozmian made air quotes. “The only thing is, I never seem to regret my outbursts. It’s been quite useful to me in business.”

“And once you’d cooled off... I presume you got to thinking. About her head.”

“I see you’ve found the final piece of the puzzle. There was Grace’s body, lying in a Queens garage. And there I was, in my freshly cleaned apartment, sipping cognac and thinking. To be honest, I was shocked at what I’d done. I’d been consumed with fury, but after that was gone a depression set in. It wasn’t just Grace — it was my whole life. Here I’d achieved everything I ever wanted. Made a fortune. Humiliated my enemies. And still I felt unfulfilled. Restless. My thoughts turned to big-game hunting. You see, I’d given it up after bagging the biggest, baddest game there was — including, by the way, a black rhino, a bull elephant, and a few other critically endangered species, although naturally I kept those a closely guarded secret. But in my edginess it occurred to me that I’d become bored with big-game hunting prematurely . You see, I’d never hunted the biggest game of all. Man. Not just your average, run-of-the-mill cretin, however. No — my ‘big game’ would be powerful, affluent men with enemies: men who had surrounded themselves with layers of security; smart men, alert men, men who would be almost impossible to take down. Oh, and lest I be called sexist, women as well. I ask you, as a fellow big-game hunter: what better game to stalk than Homo sapiens ?”