Pendergast stripped off his suit, folding it up into neat packets which he stowed in his bag. Underneath he was wearing black pants and shirt. D’Agosta stripped down to a similar costume.
“Here.” Pendergast tossed D’Agosta a jar of face paint, taking another for himself, and began blackening his face with the tips of his fingers.
D’Agosta began to apply the paint as he examined the perimeter fence. It looked about as low-security as you could get: rusty and leaning, with numerous rends and tears. He took off his shoes and pulled on another pair Pendergast had supplied him with: black and tight-fitting, with smooth soles.
Pendergast slipped out his Les Baer and began applying blacking to the gun. D’Agosta winced; it was a hell of a thing to do to such a beautiful firearm.
“You need to do the same, Vincent. A single glint, no matter how small, would be all their spotters need.”
D’Agosta reluctantly removed his weapon and began blacking it.
“Undoubtedly you are wondering if all this is really necessary.”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
Pendergast tugged on a pair of black gloves. “The fence, as you’ve surely guessed, is deceptive. There are several rings of security. The first is purely psychological, which no doubt is one reason Bullard chose this site to begin with.”
“Psychological?”
“The site was once Il Dinamitificio Nobel, one of Alfred Nobel’s dynamite factories.” Pendergast checked his watch. “One of the great ironies of history is that Nobel, who established the Nobel Peace Prize, made his fortune with what at the time was the cruelest invention in human history.”
“Dynamite?”
“Exactly. Seventeen times more powerful than gunpowder. It revolutionized warfare. We’re so used to mass killing, Vincent, that we’ve forgotten what war was like with only black powder, cannon, and bullets. A terrible thing, to be sure, but nothing like what it would become. Now a single bomb, instead of killing two or three, could kill hundreds. Shells and bombs could blow up entire buildings, bridges, and factories. With the invention of the airplane, bombs could level entire city blocks, burn cities to the ground, murder thousands. We tend to focus on the terror of nuclear weapons, but the fact is, dynamite and its derivatives have killed and maimed millions more than the atomic bomb ever did, or probably ever will.” He slipped a clip into his weapon and quietly racked the slide.
“Right.”
“Alfred Nobel had a patent on modern warfare. At the height of his success, he had hundreds of factories all over Europe making dynamite. These factories had to be built on large campuses like this one, because no matter how carefully they handled their materials, once in a while it went off, killing hundreds. He sited his factories in impoverished areas which would provide an endless source of desperate, expendable workers. This factory was one of his largest.” He swept his hand toward the darkness beyond the fence.
“Nobel might have gone down in history as a thoroughly evil man had not a curious thing happened. In 1888 his brother died, and the newspapers of Europe mistakenly reported his brother’s death as his own. ‘The Merchant of Death Is Dead,’ ran the headlines. Reading his own obituary shocked Nobel deeply, and made him realize how history would see him. His reaction was to establish the Nobel prizes—including the famed Peace Prize—as a way to redirect what would certainly have been the dreadful judgment of history on his life.”
“Seems to have worked,” muttered D’Agosta.
“Which brings me to the point. By the time this factory closed, hundreds of people had been killed in explosions. On top of that, many thousands had been devastated by some of the chemicals used in the manufacture of dynamite, chemicals that affected the brain. As a result, this is a cursed place. It is shunned by the locals. Except for the visits of a caretaker, the area saw no human beings until Bullard bought the property seven years ago.”
“So Bullard’s letting the rep of the place handle security for him,” D’Agosta said. “Clever.”
“It’s a clever deterrent, at least for the locals. Nevertheless, there will be security, and probably quite sophisticated security at that. I can only speculate as to its nature—my inquiries, as you know, have not been fruitful. But I have a few tools that should aid us.”
Pendergast removed a haversack from his bag and slung it over one shoulder. Reaching back into the bag, he removed several pieces of aluminum tubing and fitted them together, affixing a small disc to one end. He approached the fence, slowly moving the device back and forth. Reaching the fence, he bent down, sweeping the ground before him carefully. A small red light glowed faintly on the small disc.
Pendergast rose, stepped back. “As I suspected. There is a sixty-hertz alternating electromagnetic field, indicating electric current.”
“You’re saying that fence is electrified?” D’Agosta asked. “That old thing?”
“Not the fence itself. A pair of sensor wires are buried just inside to alert security if anyone passes over them.”