Douglas Preston - Two Graves

“You can also see their doppelgängers in your underground concentration camp.”

Fischer cocked an eyebrow. “My, my, you were busy last night.”

“And Alban? I assume he is the acme, the pinnacle, of your work?”

Fischer could hardly disguise his pride. “Indeed he is.”

“Which means he himself is the beta test.” Pendergast answered his own question.

“Yes. Dr. Faust volunteered his own family—a true man of science. The Faust-Esterhazy line proved exceedingly rich. But I must say the Pendergast line proved even richer. The union between you and Helen, accidental though it was, produced a most remarkable product. Most remarkable, exceeding all our expectations.” Fischer shook his head. “We had allowed her parents to move to America and live there freely, raising their children. It was an early experiment to see how our subjects might function in outside society. It was a catastrophic failure. When Helen grew up, she went rogue on us. Her body had already been prepared to always bear twins—that was easy. When she accidentally got pregnant, she was forced to return here. Otherwise her fetuses would have died, without certain special treatments necessary for her to carry them to term. But she returned to Brazil more than eight weeks’ pregnant, too late for the blastocyst cell treatment we’d developed here at Nova Godói. This forced us to try something new—a tricky and highly experimental technique of shifting genetic material between more developed fetuses. You’ll appreciate this irony, Herr Pendergast, but it was the very lateness that led to our crowning success. We had always believed the genetic work had to be done early, no later than the first few weeks. And yet the delayed work on Helen’s twins proved to be our breakthrough.” Fischer paused. “Helen could never accept the fact that we would not let her take her children back to America. We had to keep them, of course. Even at such an early age, Alban was so promising.”

Throughout this back-and-forth, Alban had been listening, a neutral expression on his face.

“This is your mother he’s talking about,” Pendergast said. “Doesn’t that trouble you in the least?”

“Trouble?” Alban said. “On the contrary, what I feel is pride. Look at how easy it was to learn the location of your Central Park meeting place—from an employee of New York’s own police department, no less!—and how quickly our people put a plan into effect.”

This was followed by a brief pause.

“And Longitude Pharmaceuticals?” Pendergast asked. “What of them?”

“Merely one of many satellite operations loosely affiliated with our work,” Fischer answered. “Our research was subtle, complex, and wide ranging; we had to draw from many sources. They are usually kept at arm’s length—but when accidents occur, as they did at Longitude, certain unfortunate steps must be taken.” Fischer shook his head.

“You mentioned that I was at least partly responsible for the successful conclusion of your work,” Pendergast said. “That you incorporated me into its final phase. What precisely did you mean by that?”

“My dear Agent Pendergast, surely you must have guessed that by now. I’ve already referred to it: your attack on the Vergeltung , your dogged pursuit of Helen and us, her kidnappers. We had another final beta test for Alban in mind—but when you blundered into the picture, we turned what could have been a setback into an opportunity. We completely changed the parameters of the test—rather hastily, I might add. We decided to set Alban free in New York City. To prove that he could kill with impunity, even while revealing his identity to the security cameras. Leaving clues convincing you that the murderer was, in fact, your own son. That knowledge would give you, ah, sufficient motivation to catch him—don’t you think? If the greatest and most intrepid detective, given every opportunity, cannot catch his own murderous son—wouldn’t you say our beta test was a success? A complete, unmitigated success?”

Pendergast did not reply.

“And then Forty-Seven escaped and blundered his way to you. Once again, we turned misfortune to our advantage. We altered Alban’s final mission. Instead of a fifth murder, he would kidnap Forty-Seven from your own house . A mission he executed flawlessly.” Fischer turned to Alban. “Well done, my boy.”

Alban nodded his acceptance of the praise.

“So now you’ve perfected your work on twins,” Pendergast said. “You can produce a pair of them at will—one, a perfect killing machine, strong and intelligent and fearless and cunning. And, most important, perfectly free of any kind of moral or ethical constraint.”

Fischer nodded. “Such constraints , as you put it, lost us the war, you know.”

“And then you have the other twin, as weak as his sibling is strong, as lacking in natural ability as his counterpart is overflowing with it: slave labor and, if necessary, an unwilling organ bank. And so, having perfected this process, this ability to manufacture these diabolically perfect human beings—now that it’s done, what are you going to do?”

“What are we going to do?” Fischer seemed taken aback by the question. “But surely that is obvious? The thing we have vowed—that we have sworn —to do ever since your armed forces stormed our cities, killed our leader, scattered our Reich to the four winds. Why would you think that our goal, Herr Pendergast, has varied one whit from that which it has always been? The only difference is, now—after seventy years of endless work—we are ready to set about achieving that goal. The final beta test is complete. We may now begin—what is the term you use?—the roll-out .”

He dropped the cigarette to the dirt floor, ground it beneath his boot. “But this begins to grow tiresome.” He turned to the man named Berger.

“You may proceed,” he said.

66

BERGER—WHO HAD BEEN CHAIN-SMOKING THROUGHOUT the conversation—now nodded almost primly. He set the folding table in place, placed the medical bag on it, opened it, and rummaged around inside. A moment later he removed a hypodermic syringe—a thick glass tube surrounded by a sheath of gleaming steel, with a long and cruel-looking needle attached. Bringing out a rubber-stoppered pharmaceutical vial containing a reddish liquid, he pushed the needle into it and then—carefully, without hurry—drew back the plunger until the hypo was nearly three-quarters full. He squeezed off a few drops of the liquid. Then he turned and approached Egon, syringe extended.

Throughout the conversation, Egon had been looking floorward, dangling from his manacles, like an animal resigned to his fate. But now, seeing Berger approach, he suddenly became animated. “ Nein! ” he shouted, struggling wildly. “ Nein, nein, nein, nein—! ”

Fischer shook his head in disapproval, then glanced over at Pendergast. “Egon failed to follow his explicit instructions: remain with you at all times. We see no point in rewarding failure here, Herr Pendergast.”

Berger nodded to the guard. Putting his weapon to one side, the man came forward, grasped the luckless Egon’s hair in one hand and his chin in the other, brutally forcing his head back. Berger approached, needle extended. He used it to gently probe various spots in the soft flesh beneath Egon’s chin. Then, choosing one, he forced the needle—slowly, precisely—up into Egon’s soft palate, inserting it right up to the needle hub. He depressed the plunger.

Egon’s struggles grew hysterical. He screamed—or, rather, made a frightful gargling sound between his clenched teeth, as the guard kept his head locked.