There was a silence broken only by the crackle of the radio.
“I read you, over,” Hayward said.
“Your location?”
Another silence. Then she said, “Cancel that Code 16. Situation resolved. This is Captain Hayward, over and out.”
54
Hayward tore away from the curb, made a U-turn, and drove the wrong way down Little West 12th, peeled right onto West Street, and rocketed uptown, cars braking and pulling off to the left and right as she flashed past, sirens screaming. If all went well, they would be at the museum no later than 8:20 P.M. D’Agosta sat in the passenger’s seat next to her, saying nothing. She glanced at Pendergast in the rearview mirror—face badly bruised, a freshly dressed cut along one cheek. He wore a ghostly expression, one she had never seen on his face before—or anybody else’s, for that matter. He had the look of somebody who had just peered into his own personal hell.
Hayward returned her gaze to the street ahead. She knew, in some profound way, that she had just crossed the Rubicon. She had done something that went against all her training, everything she knew about what it meant to be a good cop.
Funny how, at the moment, she didn’t seem to care.
A strange, uncomfortable silence hung over the three. She would have expected Pendergast to be peppering her with questions, or at least thanking her for not turning him in. Instead, he sat there wordlessly, the same awful expression on his bruised features.
“Okay,” she said. “Here it is. Tonight’s the big opening of the new exhibition at the museum. Everyone’s there: top museum brass, mayor, governor, celebrities, tycoons. Everyone. I tried to stop it, postpone it, but I got vetoed. Problem is, I didn’t—still don’t—have any really hard information. All I know is this: something’s coming down. And your brother, Diogenes, is behind it.”
She glanced at Pendergast again. But he did not respond, did not return the glance. He just sat there, withdrawn, detached. He might have been a million miles away.
The wheels squealed a little as she negotiated a city bus, then accelerated onto the West Side Highway.
“After the diamond heist,” she went on, “Diogenes vanished. I figure he already had an alter ego prepared and just stepped into it. I’ve done some sniffing around, and so has that journalist Smithback. We’re both convinced Diogenes’s alter ego is a staff member of the museum, probably a curator. Think about it: the diamond heist had to be an inside job, but he’s not the kind of guy to take in partners. That’s also how he managed to penetrate the security of the Sacred Images exhibition and attack Margo Green. Vinnie, you’d told me from the start Diogenes was working up to something big. You were right all along. And it’s going to happen tonight, at the opening.”
“You’d better bring Pendergast up to speed on the new exhibition,” D’Agosta said.
“After the fiasco with the diamonds, the museum announced it was going to reopen an old Egyptian tomb in its basement—the Tomb of Senef. Some French count gave them a ton of money to do it. It was obviously a way to distract public attention from the destruction of the diamond collection. Tonight’s the opening gala.”
“Name?” Pendergast asked. His voice was barely audible, as if emerging from deep within a sepulcher.
It was the first word Hayward had heard him utter. “I’m sorry?” she replied.
“The name of the count?”
“Thierry de Cahors.”
“Did anyone actually meet this count?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
When Pendergast lapsed back into silence, she continued. “Over the past six weeks, there’ve been two deaths associated with the reopening of the tomb, supposedly unconnected with each other. The first was a computer technician working inside the tomb, killed by his partner. The guy went crazy, murdered his pal, stuffed his organs into nearby ceremonial jars, and fled to the museum attics. Attacked a guard when they tried to flush him out. The second death was a curator named Wicherly, a Brit brought in specially to curate the show. He went nuts, tried to strangle Nora Kelly—you know her, Vinnie, right?”
“She all right?”
“She’s fine—in fact, she’s handling the opening tonight. Wicherly, on the other hand, was shot and killed by a panicked museum guard during the attack on Kelly. Now here’s the kicker: autopsies showed both aggressors suffered the exact same kind of brain damage.”
D’Agosta looked over at her. “What?”
“Both were working in the tomb just before they went psycho. But we went over everything with a fine-tooth comb, found nothing—no environmental or other cause. As I said, the official line is that the two deaths are unconnected. But I’m not buying the coincidence. Diogenes is planning something—I’ve felt it all evening. And when I saw her at the opening, I knew I was right.”