Boom. And he was thrown back.
D’Agosta lay there for a moment, stunned, thinking he’d been hit, that it was over. Then he realized he’d run full tilt into the chain-link fence that ran just above the highway. His eyes took it in within the space of a heartbeat: the concertina wire at the top, the crappy fence all mangled and twisted by junkies, the skeletons of cars lying on the verge below the far side. Of course. In the old days, he had driven that highway a million times, seen that fence leaning dangerously above him, stuffed with trash and decaying leaves. One more thing he’d forgotten in those years in British Columbia. He was trapped.
This was it. He rose on one knee and turned to make his stand. One round, two men.
The math wasn’t good.
{ 15 }
A low fire burned in the grate, casting a ruddy light on the walls of books and chasing the damp chill from the air. Two wing chairs occupied the space on either side of the fire. In one sat Special Agent Pendergast, and in the other Constance Greene, pale and slender in a beautifully pressed and pleated dress. To one side sat the remains of an evening tea service: cups and saucers, strainer, creamer, digestive biscuits. The still air smelled of wood polish and buckram, and on all sides the bookshelves climbed, row after row, toward the high ceiling, the old leather-bound books that lined them gleaming with gold stamping in the firelight.
Pendergast’s silvery eyes glanced toward a clock above the mantelpiece, then flickered back to the old newspaper he was reading. His murmured voice picked up where it had left off.
“‘August 7, 1964. Washington—In an 88-4 vote today, the U.S. Senate authorized President Johnson the use of “all necessary measures” to repel armed attacks against U.S. forces in Vietnam. The vote was in response to the shelling of two U.S. Navy ships by North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin’ . . .”
Constance listened intently as he went on. There was a rustle as Pendergast gently turned the fragile, yellowed page.
The girl held up her hand, and Pendergast paused.
“I’m not sure I can bear another war. Will it be a bad one?”
“One of the worst. It will tear apart the country.”
“Let us save this war for tomorrow, then.”
Pendergast nodded, carefully folding up the newspaper and putting it aside.
“I can scarcely believe the cruelty of the last century. It staggers the soul.”
Pendergast inclined his head in agreement.
She shook her head slowly, and the glow of the flames reflected in her dark eyes and straight black hair. “Do you think this new century will be as barbarous?”
“The twentieth century showed us the evil face of physics. This century will show us the evil face of biology. This will be humanity’s last century, Constance.”
“So cynical?”
“May God prove me wrong.”
A bank of embers collapsed, opening a glowing wound in the fire. Pendergast stirred. “And now, perhaps, shall we move on to the results of your search?”
“Certainly.” Constance rose and walked toward one wall of bookshelves, returning with several octavo volumes. “The abbot Trithemius, the Liber de Angelis, the McMaster text, The Sworn Book of Honorius, the Secretum Philosophorum, and, of course, Ars Notorium. Treatises on selling one’s soul, raising the devil, and the like.” She placed the volumes on a side table. “All alleged eyewitness accounts. Latin, Ancient Greek, Aramaic, Old French, Old Norse, and Middle English. Then there are the grimoires.”
“Textbooks of magic,” Pendergast said, nodding.
“The Key of Solomon is the best known. Many of these documents belonged to secret societies and orders, which were common among the nobility of the Middle Ages. Apparently, these societies were often active in satanic practices.”
Pendergast nodded again. “I am particularly interested in accounts of the devil claiming his due.”
“There are many. For example”—she indicated the wormy cover of the Ars Notorium with a faint look of distaste—“the Tale of Geoffrey, magister of Kent.”