Линкольн Чайлд - City of Endless Night

“And you decided your own daughter would become your first trophy. An honor for her, really. So you went back and cut off her head.”

Ozmian nodded again. “You understand me astonishingly well.”

“Your choice of targets had nothing to do with them being corrupt. That’s why Adeyemi didn’t seem to fit the profile. The attraction was that she, like the others, was surrounded by supposedly impenetrable security. She was extremely challenging to ‘bag.’”

“And you want to know the true irony? I meant her to be my final trophy . But then you and Longstreet here forced your way into my office. And you thought you played me so well. Ha ha! I had such fun telling you about Hightower. I wish I could have seen old Hightower’s face when you paid him a visit. I hope you sweated him good! The whole time you were peppering me with questions, I was thinking of one thing: how lovely that pale, fine head of yours would look when mounted on my trophy wall.”

His laughter echoed in the shabby space.

A muffled grunt of rage, like a wounded buffalo, came from D’Agosta. Ozmian ignored it.

“After that visit, I was intrigued with you. And what I found only solidified my belief that you , not Adeyemi, should be my ultimate trophy. I also realized the best way to lure you in.” He nodded toward Longstreet’s corpse. “In my office, I sensed that you two had a history. It wasn’t hard to learn about your good friend D’Agosta, either.”

He reached out, took hold of a lock of Longstreet’s hair, and gave the decapitated head a desultory spin. “With both of them at my mercy, I knew you would have no choice but to come out here and play my game.”

Pendergast said nothing.

Ozmian sat forward in his chair. “And you do know the game we are about to play — right?”

“It is all too clear.”

“Good!” He paused. “We will both be on totally fair and equal footing.” He raised his gun. “We will each have the same weapon, the venerable 1911, and an additional magazine. You might think you have a slight advantage in that Les Baer of yours, but mine is equally fine. We will each also have a knife, watch, flashlight, and our wits. Our hunting ground will be the adjoining structure, Building Ninety-Three. You saw it on your way in, that abandoned hospital?”

“I did.”

“I give myself no advantage. This will be a sporting stalk in which we are simultaneously the hunter and the hunted. No fox, no hound; just two experienced hunters each stalking their ultimate prey: each other. The winner will be the one who bags the loser!” He waved the detonator in D’Agosta’s direction. “The lieutenant is an insurance policy to make sure you abide by the rules of the hunt. That suicide vest is on a two-hour timer. If you kill me, you can simply take the timer from my pocket and shut it off. But if you cheat — by walking away, or trying to alert the authorities — all I need to do is press the remote and boom goes D’Agosta. The detonator also ensures that the hunt is completed within two hours: no dawdling or hiding and running out the clock. In a few minutes, I’ll give you back your gun and extra magazine, remove the handcuffs, furnish you with blacked-out clothing... and give you a head start. Make for Building Ninety-Three. After ten minutes, I’ll come after you and the stalk will commence.”

“Why?” Pendergast asked.

“Why?” Ozmian laughed. “Didn’t I already explain? I’ve done it all, I’m standing on the summit, and the only view I have is looking down. This will be the most delicious thrill of my life — the ultimate, the final thrill. Even if I’m to die, at least I’ll go out with a bang, no pun intended — knowing it took the very best to kill me. And if I survive, then I’ll have a memory to cherish... no matter what the future brings.”

“That wasn’t my question. What I meant was, why Building Ninety-Three?”

For a moment, Ozmian looked nonplussed. “You’re kidding, right? It is perfect for a hunt like ours. It’s over four hundred thousand square feet, a huge, rambling ruin, with ten floors divided into numerous wings, miles of corridors, and over two thousand rooms! Imagine the possibilities for traps, ambushes, and blinds! And we’re far, far from any busybody who might hear gunshots and call the cops.”

Pendergast stared at Ozmian through narrow eyes, saying nothing.

“I see you’re not satisfied. Very well. There is a second reason.” He gave Longstreet’s head another casual spin on the tabletop. “There was a day during my twelfth year when our dearly beloved parish priest, Father Anselm, locked me in the sacristy and raped me repeatedly. He said while he did it that God and Jesus were watching and it was all right with them, and he threatened me with hell and worse if I ever told. I had a mental collapse. I stopped speaking, stopped thinking, stopped everything. My family, having no idea what had happened, assumed I’d gone crazy. A diagnosis was made of catatonic schizophrenia. King’s Park back then had a stellar reputation, the one hospital in the country they were sure would cure me. Yes, Agent Pendergast: I became a patient of the main complex in King’s Park. One of the last, it turns out. And here, I eventually recovered. Not through anything they did, but through my own internal resources.”

“King’s Park was known for its electroconvulsive treatments.”

“Indeed it was — and that was why it was shut down in the end. But the shock treatments — and worse! — were reserved for the gibbering lunatics, incorrigibles, and pathetic wretches. I fortunately escaped that fate.”

“And, I’m given to understand, cured yourself.”

“Your sarcastic tone is unpleasant, but yes, indeed I did. One day I realized that I had something important to do: revenge. Perhaps the strongest human motivator there is. So I picked myself up, dusted myself off, and convinced the credulous and easily manipulated doctors that they had cured me. I resumed my life. I continued growing up, went to high school, and finally did the thing I had resolved to do — punish Father Anselm. Death was too much of a release for that man: my goal was to make the rest of his life full of misery and pain. And then I went to Stanford, graduated summa cum laude, founded DigiFlood, made billions of dollars, fucked beautiful women, traveled the world, lived a life of unimaginable luxury and privilege — in short, I did all the things that truly gifted human beings like myself do.”

“Indeed,” Pendergast said drily.

“Anyway, to resume, not long after my discharge, King’s Park was abandoned, shut up, and left to rot.”

“How fitting for you, then, that this will be the place of the final hunt.”

“I see you’re getting into the spirit of it already. Surely you understand how this experience will bring things full circle for me. Of course, I barely knew the building then: just the room where I was drugged and held in restraints day and night, and the therapy room where I told my doctor a bunch of lies that he believed and carefully wrote down. I’m as essentially unfamiliar with the place as you are — there will be no advantage there.”

Ozmian placed the Les Baer on the table, along with an extra magazine, while pocketing the detonator. Next to it he laid a watch, a flashlight, and a fixed-blade knife.

“Your gear.” He stood up. “And so, Agent Pendergast. Shall we begin?”

The night was bitter, without a breath of wind, a full moon just peeking above the towers of Building 93, throwing a bone-white light over the landscape. Clad in the camos and soft shoes Ozmian had forced on him, Agent Pendergast paused beyond the door of Building 44, the vapor from his breath trailing through the night air. Building 93 lay about a hundred yards away, a great black wedge against the moonlit sky, surrounded by a battered chain-link fence. A swath of open ground lay between him and the fence, covered with stubble and patches of crusty snow, with a scattering of dead trees and hollow stumps. A knoll rose on the right, covered with scrubby weeds.