Douglas Preston - The Obsidian Chamber

He tried to clear his head with a shake. Big mistake. With a groan, he lay carefully back, closing his eyes.

Voices were speaking: voices he recognized. He opened his eyes again, tried to blink away the confusion and the sedative. A large clock on the wall read five o’clock. Christ, have I really been out all day? Laura Hayward was sitting in a chair beside his bed. She now had a look on her face he recognized: a protective, hostile look, like a lioness guarding her mate.

“Vinnie!” she said, rising.

“Mmmm.” He tried to speak, but his tongue wasn’t working.

“Vincent, my friend.”

The new voice came from the foot of the bed and — keeping his head still this time — D’Agosta swiveled his eyes in its direction. Special Agent Pendergast was sitting there. D’Agosta blinked some more, utterly shocked by his skeletal appearance, gray circles under his eyes, skin pale beneath the dirt, his face covered with raw cuts and bruises. He was dressed in an FBI windbreaker too large for his emaciated frame.

They made a fuss over him, even as he began to subside back into a half world of semiconsciousness. He lay there with his eyes closed, trying to focus on the conversation. Pendergast was speaking to Laura.

“The helicopter took me to the Downtown Manhattan Heliport,” Pendergast was saying. “They told me what happened, and I came directly here. Was it you who found him?”

“When I couldn’t reach him on his cell, I sent a black-and-white to your house. They found him on the floor of the reception hall, facedown, unconscious.”

“I understand a large NYPD response has been mobilized.”

“Are you kidding? With a woman kidnapped and an officer attacked? They’ve called out the cavalry.”

D’Agosta found his voice again, his head clearing. “Pendergast!”

The FBI agent swiveled toward him. “How do you feel?”

“Never better. God, am I glad to see you…” He felt his voice choking up.

From his seat at the end of the bed, Pendergast waved this away impatiently.

“So… what happened?” D’Agosta managed.

“I’ve been… at sea. To make a long story short, the gentlemen who saved me from drowning decided to ransom me instead. I was held prisoner on their boat until it unfortunately sank. All irrelevant to the present situation. I wasn’t myself when I sent you into danger. I’m truly sorry.”

“Forget it,” said D’Agosta.

A pause. “Can you tell me, please… what transpired?”

“Don’t tire him out,” Laura said.

Even through the pharmaceutical fog, D’Agosta could see that his friend was, most uncharacteristically, agitated and worried. He cleared his throat, struggled against the almost overwhelming feeling of fatigue. The doctor had told him he might experience amnesia, as well, but thankfully that had not happened — although the exact details of the morning were a little vague.

“I entered the house, using the key code you gave me. I walked into the reception hall just moments before… before Diogenes did.”

At this Pendergast rose partway out of his chair. “ Diogenes? Are you sure?”

“Yeah. He was coming from the rear of the house. I recognized him right away.” D’Agosta paused to think. “He had a suitcase in one hand.”

“And then?”

“He recognized me, too.” D’Agosta swallowed. “I drew down on him. Then Constance came into the room.”

Pendergast went even more pale. “Constance.”

“I told her to take a protective position behind me. I was covering Diogenes, getting ready to call for backup, when I was clobbered on the back of my skull…” He stopped. “Next thing, I was waking up in an ambulance.”

The look on Pendergast’s hollow face was terrible to behold. “ Constance ,” he said, as if to himself.

“It seems cut and dried enough,” Laura said. “Diogenes had an accomplice Vinnie didn’t see, who hit him from behind. We’re dusting the broken vase presumably used as a weapon for fingerprints now.”

“I thought Diogenes was dead,” D’Agosta said.

“We all did,” Pendergast said. He sat for a moment, very still. Then he spoke again. “How did Diogenes react when he saw you?”

“He was as surprised to see me as I was to see him.”

“And Constance. Was she handcuffed? Restrained in any way?”

D’Agosta thought through the haze for a moment. “Not that I saw.”

“How did she seem to you? Rebellious? Drugged? Coerced?”

“I never could read her. Um, sorry. She, she had a bag over one shoulder. Oh, and she was wearing a hat. I don’t remember what it looked like.”

“Did she struggle? Say anything?”

“Nothing. She got behind me when I asked her to. Didn’t say a word.”

“Did he have a weapon?”

The ringing in D’Agosta’s ears was getting louder. “Nothing visible.”

“I think maybe Vinnie’s had enough,” Laura said, with a note of finality.

Pendergast did not reply. His gaze seemed to go far away for a moment. Then he came back to the present again. The look on his face, the glitter in those silvery eyes, was as bad as D’Agosta had ever seen it.

He rose. “Vincent, I wish you a speedy recovery.”

“You look pretty bad yourself,” D’Agosta said. “Just saying.”

“I’ll get myself looked after. Captain Hayward?” He turned, gave her a curt nod, then swiveled to the door and walked quickly toward it. As he did, D’Agosta noticed — just before he drifted off once again — that underneath the FBI windbreaker, the agent was wearing a pair of filthy black trousers that had been sliced practically to ribbons.

Diogenes Pendergast, in his carefully curated identity as Petru Lupei, stepped out onto the private terrace of the tenth-floor suite of the Corcoran Hotel, then paused — as was his long habit — to scrutinize his surroundings with obsessive care. The Atlantic Ocean stretched from north to south in an unbroken line, its creamy breakers reflecting the pink of the evening clouds. The bustle of Miami’s South Beach neighborhood surrounded the hotel on all sides, salsa music floating up to him on the freshening late-afternoon breeze. Nothing appeared amiss.

He probed his own sixth sense for danger, the internal psychic alarm he trusted more than anything else. It was quiescent.

Except for the sudden appearance of the NYPD lieutenant at Riverside Drive that morning — an event Diogenes, compulsive planner though he was, had been utterly unprepared for — everything had gone well. Even that unwelcome surprise turned out to have a silver lining: he had been gratified by how quickly, and without hesitation, Constance had acted to neutralize the threat.

He glanced over at her now, sitting on a deck chair, wearing a knee-length white skirt and a pale lemon-colored blouse, large-brimmed straw hat obscuring her face and dark glasses. One slender ankle was crossed over the other, and an iced glass of tart limeade sat on a nearby side table.

It was the outfit he had suggested she wear when they checked into the hotel. He had chosen this location — Ocean Drive, the very heart of the South Beach Art Deco District — because of how easy it was to hide in plain sight among the chic, flashy, self-absorbed crowds. And he had chosen this hotel not only for its elegance and comfort — it was the old Vanderbilt Arms, done over, as had been most of the hotels on Ocean Drive, in Streamline Moderne, although thankfully with a degree of restraint — but because it was large. A cruise ship full of German tourists had just arrived and was occupying the staff’s full attention. He’d considered booking the penthouse, which occupied the hotel’s entire top floor and came with four bedrooms, a seven-foot grand piano, and an infinity pool, but he’d decided that might attract attention. Instead, he’d settled for one of the dozen grand suites, with three bedrooms, rainfall showers, Frette linens, and cedar saunas. It seemed a good stepping-stone between the austerity of Constance’s Riverside Drive rooms and the understated luxury of Halcyon.