Douglas Preston - The Book of the Dead

Pendergast scaled the fence and continued up the ancient trail, which had fallen into dangerous ruin. The top of the ridge was perhaps a quarter mile distant, and beyond that he could see only the sky, stained by an angry orange glow. He had to move fast-but with care.

The trail came to a steep part of the ridge, carved into a staircase that ran up the rough lava itself. But the staircase was badly eroded, and Pendergast was forced to holster his sidearm and use both hands to climb it. Just before cresting the top, he leaned into the slope, paused, and removed his gun again, listening. But it was hopeless: the roar and bellow of the volcano was even louder here, and the wind howled ever more fiercely.

He crawled to the top of the ridge, into the stinging wind, and paused once again to reconnoiter. The exposed trail ran along the crest before turning and disappearing around a spike of frozen lava. He jumped to his feet, ran across the exposed ground, and took cover behind the lava, peering ahead. He could see now that a great chasm must lie to his right-no doubt the Sciara del Fuoco. The reddish glow coming up from it provided an excellent backdrop against which to identify a figure.

He edged around the lava spike, and the Sciara suddenly appeared on his right: a sheer cliff falling away into a steeply pitched chasm, like a huge cleft in the side of the island: half a mile broad, plunging precipitously into a churning, boiling sea hundreds of feet below. Heated air came roaring up the chasm, screaming diagonally over the ridge, carrying with it stinging particles of ash and clouds of sulfurous fumes. And now, in addition to the roar from the mountain, Pendergast could hear a new sound: the crackling and rumbling of huge blocks of living lava, some glowing red-hot, that came bounding down from the crater above, leaping and tumbling into the sea below, where they blossomed into dim white flowers.

He staggered forward into the tearing wind, finding his balance while compensating for the hellish force pushing him back from the brink of the cliff. He examined the ground, but all possible tracks had been scoured away by the wind. He sprinted along the ragged trail, taking cover behind old blocks of lava whenever possible, keeping his center of gravity low. The trail continued, still climbing the ridgeline. Ahead stood an enormous pile of lava blocks, an arrested rockfall, which the trail skirted around, making a sharp right toward the cliff’s edge.

He crouched in the shelter of the lava fall, gun at the ready. If there was anyone on this trail, they would be directly ahead of him, at the edge of the cliff.

He spun around the edge of the rock, gun in both hands-and saw a terrifying sight.

At the very edge of the chasm, he could see two figures, silhouetted against the dull glow of the volcano. They were locked in a curious, almost passionate embrace. And yet these were not lovers-these were enemies, joined in mortal struggle, heedless of the wind, or the roar of the volcano, or the extreme peril of the cliff edge on which they stood.

“Constance!” he cried, racing forward. But even as he ran, they began to tip off balance, each raking and clawing at the other, each pulling the other into the abyss-

And then, with a silence worse than any cry, they were gone.

Pendergast rushed up to the edge, almost blown onto his back by the force of the wind. He dropped to his knees, shielding his eyes, trying to peer into the abyss. A thousand feet below, hardened blocks of dull red lava the size of houses rolled and bounced like pebbles, shedding clouds of orange sparks, the wind screaming up from the volcano’s flanks like the wail of the collective damned. He remained on his knees, the wind whipping salt tears from his eyes.

He could barely comprehend what he had seen. It was incredible to him, an impossibility, that Constance-sheltered, fragile, confused Constance-could have pursued his brother to the very ends of the earth, driven him up this volcano, and flung herself into it with him…

He swiped savagely at his eyes, made a second attempt to peer down into the hellish cleft, in the faint hope that something, anything, might be left-and there, not two feet below him, he saw a hand, completely covered with blood, clutching at a small projection of rock with almost superhuman strength.

Diogenes.

And now he heard D’Agosta’s voice in his head: You realize there’s only one way to take care of Diogenes. When the moment comes…

Without a second thought, Pendergast reached down to save his brother, grasped the wrist with one hand and clutched the forearm with the other, and with a mighty heave leaned back, pulling him up and away from the lip of the inferno. A ragged, wild face appeared over the crest of the rock-not that of his brother, but of Constance Greene.

Seconds later, he had pulled her away from the brink. She rolled onto her back, her chest heaving, arms spread, ragged white dress whipping in the wind.

Pendergast bent over her. “Diogenes…?” he managed to ask.

“He’s gone!” A laugh tore from her bloodied lips and was instantly whisked away by the wind.

The waiting area for hearing room B consisted of an impromptu collection of seventies-era Bauhaus benches lining an anonymous hallway on the twenty-first floor of One Police Plaza. D’Agosta sat on one of these benches, breathing in the stale air of the hallway: the mingled smells of bleach and ammonia from the nearby men’s room; stale perfume; perspiration; and old cigarette smoke, which had permeated the walls too deeply to ever be completely eradicated. Underlying all was the acrid, omnipresent tang of fear.

Fear, however, was the last thing on his own mind. D’Agosta was about to undergo a formal disciplinary hearing that would decide if he could ever serve in law enforcement again-and all he felt was a weary emptiness. For months, this trial had been hanging over his head like the sword of Damocles-and now, for better or worse, it was almost over.

Beside him, Thomas Shoulders, his union-appointed lawyer, shifted on the bench. “Anything else you’d like to review one last time?” he asked in his thin, reedy voice. “Your statement, or their likely line of questioning?”

D’Agosta shook his head. “Nothing more, thanks.”

“The department advocate will be presenting the case for the NYPD. We might have caught a break there. Kagelman’s tough but fair. He’s old-school. The best approach is to play it straight: no evasions, no bull. Answer the questions with a simple yes or no, don’t elaborate unless asked. Present yourself along the lines we discussed-a good cop caught in a bad situation, doing the best he could to see that justice was served. If we can keep it at that level, I’m guardedly optimistic.”

Guardedly optimistic. Whether spoken by an airplane pilot, a surgeon, or one’s own lawyer, the words were not exactly encouraging.

He thought back to that fateful day in the fall, when he had run into Pendergast at the Grove estate, tossing bread to the ducks. It was only six months ago, but what a long strange journey it had been…

“Holding up?” Shoulders asked.

D’Agosta glanced at his watch. “I just want the damn thing to be over with. I’m tired of sitting here, waiting for the axe to drop.”

“You shouldn’t think about it that way, Lieutenant. A disciplinary hearing is just like a trial in any other American court. You’re innocent until proven guilty.”

D’Agosta sighed, shifted disconsolately. And in so doing, he caught a glimpse of Captain Laura Hayward, walking down the busy corridor.

She was coming toward them with that measured, purposeful stride of hers, wearing a gray cashmere sweater and a pleated skirt of navy wool. Suddenly the drab corridor seemed charged with life. And yet the last thing he wanted was for her to see him like this: parked on a bench like some truant awaiting a whipping. Maybe she’d walk on, just walk on, like she’d done that day back in the police substation beneath Madison Square Garden.