Douglas Preston - The Obsidian Chamber

“Do continue undressing.”

Filipov stared at him. The deck was already tilting. “But… we’re sinking.”

“You’re stating the obvious. I need your suit.”

Filipov hesitated and the fed fired the gun, the round hitting the deck so close to his ear that it sprayed him with cutting fiberglass.

“Okay. I’ll take it off, I’ll take it off!” He struggled out of it. He might have a chance when the fed was putting it on. It was damned awkward.

“Hands in sight, if you please,” the fed said, dragging the suit toward himself. “Now lean forward, a little more, like that. Excellent!”

He smacked him across the temple with his gun.

When he woke, the fed was standing over him, fully dressed in the orange immersion suit, gun in his hand.

“Welcome back to the sinking ship,” he said. “I’m sorry to say you are the one who’s now going to die of hypothermia. Unless, of course, you know a way to stop the boat from going down. Without the suit you now have the proper incentive.”

Filipov lay on the deck, staring up at him, head pounding. The deck was tilting sharply, the boat already a third under. “There… There is no way.”

“Ah! What a pity.”

“For God’s sake, let me go below and get another suit for myself!”

A hesitation.

“It’ll be cold-blooded murder if you let me freeze.”

“Quite true,” said the man, “and my conscience is rather tender. Very well. You may rise, but please don’t try anything stupid. Get the suit and come back up without delay.”

Filipov rose, almost fainting from the headache, sliding on the tilting deck, grasping handholds as he opened the forepeak hatch. He saw, to his horror, that it was already half full of water. He would have to swim down, in pitch darkness, to get another suit.

“The Zodiac?” he asked weakly.

“Riddled with holes, thanks to your enthusiastic friends.”

Filipov suddenly felt overwhelmed with panic. There was only one way: dive in and feel his way to the suit locker.

“I… I have to dive in,” he said.

“Be my guest.”

Filipov lowered himself into the forepeak hatch. The water was up to his waist. The EPIRB would have been activated by now and the Coast Guard alerted and on their way, but he couldn’t worry about that. He inhaled hard a few times, then held his breath and dove in.

The icy water was like a hammer to his body. Kicking down, he pulled himself through the forepeak door into the cabin, his eyes open — but all was pitch black. Already his lungs were bursting as he felt along the port side, trying to orient himself in the blackness. The current of the inflowing water pushed him to one side and he became disoriented, his diaphragm going into spasms. Realizing he had run out of breath, he reversed and swam back for the forepeak, but instead collided with a wall and suddenly surfaced in an air pocket at the top of the cabin. Gasping for breath, he desperately reoriented himself. The water was rising fast and the pocket was shrinking, the air rushing out with a moaning sound through the broken hatch in the ceiling. Fuck, the steel boat would go down any moment. He dove again, feeling along the sides of the cabin… and there it was. The suit locker! Still open. He fumbled inside, grabbed a handful of rubber, and hauled it out, resurfacing. But now there was only two feet of air left in the cabin. Fumbling with the suit, he tried to put it on in the water, but it was twisted and his hands were numb. He could hardly move his arms, he was so cold, and as he thrashed about the air pocket shrank further, the wheeze of air louder. And then, quite suddenly, he felt the boat shift hard, the air pocket disappeared, and he realized they were going down, down, into the deep cold Atlantic…

Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta plopped the breakfast he’d just prepared — an egg white omelet with tarragon and cracked pepper — down on the kitchen table of the tidy two-bedroom he shared with Laura Hayward. He hated egg whites, but he’d learned that keeping himself slim — or what in his case counted as slim — required constant dieting and vigilance. Across the table, his wife was reading the latest issue of the Journal of Forensic Science and Criminology while enjoying her own meal: the quintessential New York breakfast sandwich of egg, bacon, and cheese on a buttered kaiser roll. No matter what she ate, she didn’t seem to gain even an ounce. It was very depressing. He cut off a slice of his omelet, sighed, pushed it around the plate with his fork.

Hayward laid down her journal. “What’s on your schedule today?”

D’Agosta speared the slice, popped it in his mouth. “Not much,” he said, washing it down with a swallow of coffee. “Some mopping up. Paperwork on the Marten murder.”

“You solved that one in record time. Must have made Singleton happy.”

“He complimented me on my tie yesterday.”

“That clothes horse? Impressive.”

“Probably buttering me up just so he can dump another case on my desk. You watch.”

Hayward smiled, went back to her journal.

D’Agosta went back to pushing the omelet around his plate. He was aware that Hayward, these last few weeks, had been careful to keep the tone of their conversations light. He was grateful for that. She knew how hard the news of Pendergast’s disappearance and death by drowning had hit him. Although almost a month had gone by, he still felt an electric shock every time he thought of Pendergast being gone, which was too often. There had been reports of the FBI agent’s death before, of course, but his friend had always soon reappeared, like the proverbial cat with nine lives. This time, though, it seemed his nine lives had run out. He felt guilty, as if he should have been there in that Massachusetts fishing village; as if his presence could somehow have changed the fateful course of events.

D’Agosta’s cell phone went off, the “Who Let the Dogs Out” opening drowning out the noise of First Avenue traffic that floated up from street level. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and glanced at the screen: UNIDENTIFIED CALLER.

Hayward raised her eyebrows in mute inquiry.

“Anonymous. Probably that damned refinancing company again. They never give up.” He hit the IGNORE button.

“Pretty obnoxious, calling before eight.”

The phone rang again. UNIDENTIFIED CALLER. They looked at each other in silence until the ringing stopped.

D’Agosta put down his fork. “Bite of that sandwich?”

As he reached across the table, his phone rang a third time. UNIDENTIFIED CALLER. With a curse, he plucked it up and hit the ANSWER button. “Yeah?” he said harshly.

The reception was poor and full of static. “Vincent?” came the faint, crackly voice.

“Who is this?”

“Vincent, it is I.”

D’Agosta felt his fingers curl tightly around the phone. The room suddenly felt dim and strange, as if he’d just stepped into a dream. “Pendergast?”

“Yes.”

He tried to make his mouth form words, but all that came out was an incoherent splutter.

“Are you there, Vincent?”

“Pendergast — oh my God, I can’t believe it! They said you were dead!”

Across the table, Hayward had lowered her journal and was staring.

The distorted voice of Pendergast began to speak again, but D’Agosta blurted over it: “What happened? Where have you been? Why didn’t you—”

“Vincent!”

D’Agosta fell silent at the sharp tone.

“I need you to do something for me. It’s of vital importance.”

D’Agosta held the phone closer. “Yes. Anything.”

“I haven’t been able to reach anybody at my Riverside Drive residence: not Proctor, not Constance, not Mrs. Trask. I’ve tried the house phone and Proctor’s cell, several times. Nothing. I am extremely disturbed. Vincent, please go there immediately, this instant, and report back to me. I can’t be back in New York until tonight at the earliest.”