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“Excellent.” Pendergast rose from the chair and turned to face his majordomo. “Lead the way.”
He followed Proctor out of the library, through the echoing and vaulted reception hall with its cabinets of wonders, to a door that led into the private areas of the house. The two moved down the darkened passage beyond to another door, which Proctor unlocked. They descended a staircase into one of the stone passageways that honeycombed the mansion’s basement. At length they stopped at a stout door in a section of the cellar that had fallen into desuetude. A keypad and scanning device had been installed in place of a lock, and they gleamed anachronistically against the stonework of the wall. Proctor handed Pendergast a piece of paper with the combination. Pendergast tapped in the sequence of numbers, and the door sprang open.
Beyond lay what, many years before, had been the mansion’s large ice room, its walls insulated with cork and lined in zinc. Pendergast felt for the light switch and snapped it on. He caught his breath at the sight: the empty space beyond had been transformed.
It was now, in every detail, a simulacrum of the basement room in Savannah’s Chandler House—a scorched hulk, as it had looked the last time he laid eyes on it, shortly after Constance left both him and the twenty-first century behind. Proctor had brought back every piece and reassembled it exactly: the gears, wheels, and belts blackened with soot, the melted wands of stainless steel and copper, the burnt cables and broken monitors. In the center was a large control knob, still twisted clockwise to its uttermost setting, just as Constance had left it when she undertook her final journey.
But it was not this alone that so powerfully affected Pendergast. It was the meticulous level of detail in re-creating the machine’s wreckage, even to the bolts and clips scattered about the floor, sprung free by the machine’s brutal shaking.
“Thank you, my friend,” he managed to say. “This is…perfect.”
Proctor nodded. Nothing else needed to be said: the vast amount of logistics, secrecy, and effort involved in this mission spoke to the great loyalty and respect he had for his employer—a feeling that was reciprocated in full.
“If there’s nothing further you need for the moment,” Proctor said, “I’ll take my leave.”
Pendergast extended his hand, grasped Proctor’s for a moment, then let it fall away. He heard the heavy door whisper shut. The footfalls faded in the passage. Still he remained, leaning against the wall, as he surveyed the room.
Although the basement space of the Savannah hotel had been slightly larger, Proctor had carefully compensated, placing everything in proportions so exact even an architect would have been impressed. Everything from the Chandler House room was there, down to the old-fashioned electric light switch and the dusty chunks of rubble. All that was missing were the dead husks of the peculiar insects that had lain scattered on the floor, and the gaping hole in one wall.
Pendergast walked to the worktable with its notebooks. Like everything else, it was coated in dust—save for at one place, where a rectangle of its surface was clear.
Pendergast reached into his pocket, took out an unmarked envelope, and placed it upon the table with a hand that trembled. It fit the dust-free section of the table perfectly. He plucked it up again and—despite himself—opened the envelope and read, one more time, the handwritten note within.
I am going back to save my sister, Mary. I belong with her, anyway. This machine has given me that opportunity—and Miss Frost herself made it clear why I must take it. In her, I see my own lonely, loveless future. It is anything but pretty. And so I will return to my past—the destiny I was meant to have. I will make of it what I can—what I must. If I can’t have you on my terms, I can’t have you at all.
Goodbye, Aloysius. Thank you for everything—most particularly for not coming after me, even were it possible. ThatI could not endure; I’m sure you comprehend my meaning.
I love you.
Constance
Pendergast refolded the note, placed it back in the envelope, then set it down carefully within its dust shadow.
He turned to the ruin of the machine, approaching it slowly. Coming close, he reached out a hand—then drew it back with a reaction little short of galvanic. He stood, motionless, for a long time, staring at the device. And then, deliberately, he knelt before it, placing his elbows on the soot-darkened surface beside the keyboard, and let his forehead rest gently on his intertwined fingers.
There, in the deep and thoughtful silence of the basement, he remained, lips moving silently. He might have been praying, or meditating—or engaging in some secret, internal dialogue. Only three people on earth knew him well enough to hazard a guess: one was dead; another missing; and the third was now—in time, if not in distance—impossibly far away.
29
VINCENT D’AGOSTA SAT INthe banquette at Buongiorno, double-checking his to-do list for the day’s investigation. Reports that were due and done, ingoing and outgoing; questioning of museum workers who’d stayed late the evening of the murder; review of the autopsy; filing into evidence the best CSU photos—check, check, and check.
Even though the circumstances in this particular homicide were bizarre, the usual mountain of paperwork, red tape, and procedures never varied. He’d thought, initially, that being back in the museum on a fresh case might be energizing. Instead it was proving to be the opposite: every hour he spent in that damned old pile increased the feeling that he’d lost the fire in the gut. The lieutenant of long ago, he mused, who had worked and fought inside those columned walls, was now treading water.
Tommaso, the waiter, appeared with a bottle of D’Agosta’s favorite Chianti, opened it with a flourish, poured out a small glass, then set it, the bottle, and another empty glass on the table. D’Agosta picked the glass up by the stem and swirled its contents ruminatively, not bothering to taste it.
He’d felt a similar funk a decade before, during his bachelor years, when he’d taken leave from the force and gone to Canada, planning to write mystery novels under the name Campbell Dirk. That hadn’t gone so well. Deep down, he knew he was a cop. He’d done it his whole life and he was good at it. He couldn’t complain of a lack of recognition. He’d made lieutenant commander two years before. His wife, Laura, was a captain, one of the youngest women in the NYPD to achieve that rank, but he felt no jealousy about that…only pride.
All good. So what thefuckwas going on with him?
The swish of cloth, a faint waft of perfume, and Laura seated herself across the table. As always upon first seeing her, he felt a limbic flush: this beautiful, accomplished, intensely desirable woman was his wife. Given her current assignment, she was out of uniform, and there was a glow on her face that betrayed hours spent outside in the sun and wind.
“Vinnie!” she said, leaning over the table to kiss him. “Hi!”
“Hi, sweet thing.” He was biased, but she didn’t look any older than the day he’d placed a ring on her finger. Hadn’t put on any weight, either—unlike him. Sometimes he wondered what she saw in the guy she’d married.
“How was your day?” she asked as he poured some wine for her, then filled his own glass.
“Good, thanks,” he said with a smile.