PENDERGAST STUMBLED PAST THE LONG TABLES OF THE OLD LABORATORY. Another spasm of pain wracked his gut and he paused momentarily, mentally willing it to pass. Despite the severity of his wounds, he had so far managed to keep one corner of his mind clear, sharp, free of distraction. He tried to focus on that corner through the thickening fog of pain; tried to observe and understand what lay around him.
Titration and distillation apparatuses, beakers and retorts, burners; a vast thicket of glassware and metal. And yet, despite the extent of the equipment, there seemed to be few clues to the project Leng had been working on. Chemistry was chemistry, and you used the same tools and equipment, regardless of what chemicals you were synthesizing or isolating. There were a larger number of hoods and vintage glove boxes than Pendergast expected, implying that Leng had been handling poisons or radioactive substances in his laboratory. But even this merely corroborated what he had already surmised.
The only surprise had been the state of the laboratory. There was no mass spectrometer, no X-ray diffraction equipment, no electrophoresis apparatus, and certainly no DNA sequencer. No computers, nothing that seemed to contain any integrated circuits. There was nothing to reflect the revolution in biochemistry technology that had occurred since the 1960s. Judging by the age of the equipment and its neglected condition, it looked, in fact, as if all work in the lab had ceased around fifty years before.
But that made no sense. Leng would certainly have availed himself of the latest scientific developments, the most modern equipment, to help him in his quest. And, until very recently, the man had been alive.
Could Leng have finished his project? If so, where was it? What was it? Was it somewhere in this vast basement? Or had he given up?
The flicker of Fairhaven’s light was licking closer now, and Pendergast ceased speculating and forced himself onward. There was a door in the far wall, and he dragged himself toward it through an overwhelming wash of pain. If this was Leng’s laboratory, there would be no more than one, perhaps two, final workrooms beyond. He felt an almost overpowering wave of dizziness. He had reached the point where he could barely walk. The endgame had arrived.
And still he didn’t know.
Pendergast pushed the door ajar, took five steps into the next room. He uncloaked the lantern and tried to raise it to get his bearings, examine the room’s contents, make one final attempt at resolving the mystery.
And then his legs buckled beneath him.
As he fell, the lantern crashed to the floor, rolling away, its light flickering crazily across the walls. And along the walls, a hundred edges of sharpened steel reflected the light back toward him.
TEN
THE SURGEON SHONE THE LIGHT HUNGRILY AROUND THE CHAMBER AS the echoes of the second shot died away. The beam illuminated moth-eaten clothing, ancient wooden display cases, motes of disturbed dust hanging in the air. He was certain he had hit Pendergast again.
The first shot, the gut shot, had been the more severe. It would be painful, debilitating, a wound that would grow steadily worse. The last kind of wound you wanted when you were trying to escape. The second shot had hit a limb—an arm, no doubt, given that the FBI agent could still walk. Exceedingly painful, and with luck it might have nicked the basilic vein, adding to Pendergast’s loss of blood.