Kloster eased the cat among the old mining structures. “This is as far as I’d better go,” he said. But instead of the argument he expected, the pale man simply opened the door and got out. Kloster watched, first in amazement, and then horror, as the man walked toward the smoking, fire-licked remains of the structure and circled it slowly, like a panther, close — way too close.
Pendergast stared into the hellish scene. The air around him was alive with falling sparks mingled with snowflakes, which dusted his hat and coat, hissing out in the dampness. The engine and all its pipework had survived intact, but the building was utterly gone. Plumes of smoke and steam billowed up from hundreds of little pockets of heat, and timbers lay scattered about, hissing and smoking, with tongues of fire flickering here and there. There was an acrid stench, along with the whiff of something else: singed hair and burnt meat. All that could be heard now was the low hiss of steam, the crackle and pop of isolated fires, and the sound of the wind moaning through the ruins. He made a circuit around the perimeter of the fire. There was enough light from the many dying fires to see everything.
At a certain point he paused abruptly.
Now, moving ever so slowly, he stepped deeper into the fire zone, raising the scarf to cover his mouth against the acrid smoke. Winding his way among pipes and valves, his feet crunching on the cracked cement floor littered with nails and glass, he approached the thing that had stopped him in his tracks. It resembled a long, black log, and it, too, was hissing and smoking. As he got closer he confirmed it was the remains of a human body, which had been handcuffed to a set of pipes. Even though the arm had burned off, and the body had dropped to the floor, a carbonized hand remained in the cuffs, the fingers curled up like the legs of a dead spider, blackened bones sticking out from where the wrist should have been.
Pendergast sank to his knees. It was an involuntary motion, as if all the strength was suddenly drained from his body, forcing him down against his will. His head fell forward and his hands clasped together. A sound came from his mouth — low, barely audible, but undeniably the by-product of a grief beyond words.
63
Pendergast did not linger long over the charred body. He rose, a tall figure among the smoking ruins, his cold gaze surveying the burnt remains of the pump building. For a moment, he remained as immobile as a statue, only his two pale eyes exploring the scene, pausing here and there to take in some invisible detail.
A minute passed. And then his eyes turned back to the corpse. He reached into his coat, slid out his custom Les Baer 1911 Colt, ejected the magazine, checked it, slid it back into place, and racked a round into the chamber. The firearm remained in his right hand.
Now he began to move forward, a small flashlight appearing in his other hand. The heat of the fire had melted much of the snow in the immediate vicinity of the area, leaving puddles of water and even, here and there, exposed brown grass, now quickly being reblanketed with snow. He made a circuit of the ruined building, peering through the falling snow, stepping over the innumerable piles of charred and smoking debris. Darkness was falling, and the snow thickened on his shoulders and hat, making him appear like a wandering ghost.
At the far side of the devastation, where the flanks of the mountainside began to rise up, he paused to examine a small, scorched wooden door, which covered what appeared to be a tunnel entrance. After a moment he knelt and examined the handle, the nearby ground, and then the door itself. He grasped the handle and tested the door, finding it locked from the inside — padlocked, apparently.
Pendergast rose and — with a sudden explosion of movement — stove in the door with a massive kick. He grasped the broken pieces and ripped them out by main force with his hands, throwing them aside. As quickly as it had come, the furious violence passed. He knelt, shining the light inside. The beam revealed an empty dewatering tunnel running straight into the mountain.
He turned the light to the ground. There were fresh scuffs and various confused marks in the dust, both coming and going. A moment of stasis…and then he was suddenly in motion, trotting alongside the pipe as smoothly as a cat, his coat billowing behind him, the Colt in his hand gleaming faintly in the dimness.
The pipe ended in a low stream of water that interrupted the tracks. Moving forward, Pendergast came to an intersection; continued on; reached another, and then — trying to think like his quarry — took a right, where the tunnel abruptly changed slope and ascended steeply to a higher level.
The tunnel continued for a quarter mile, deep into the mountain, until it struck what had once been a complex mineral seam, perhaps a dozen feet wide. This seam almost immediately divided the tunnel into a warren of shafts, crawl spaces, and alcoves, the spaces that remained after the ancient mining operation had cleared out every vein and pocket of a complex ore body that had once threaded this way and that through the heart of the mountain.
Pendergast paused. He understood that his quarry would have anticipated pursuit, and as a result had led his presumed pursuer to this very place: this maze of tunnels, where he, with his undoubtedly superior knowledge of the mine complex, would have the advantage. Pendergast sensed it was very likely his presence had already been noted. The prudent course of action would be to retreat and return with additional manpower.
But that would not do. Not at all. His quarry might use such a delay to escape. And besides, it would deprive Pendergast of what he needed to do so very badly that he could taste the bile of it in his mouth.
He doused the light and listened. His preternaturally acute sense of hearing picked up many sounds — the steady drip of water, the faint movement of air, the occasional tick-tickof settling rock and wooden cribbing.
But there was no light, no telltale sound or scent. And yet he sensed, he knew, that his quarry — Ted Roman — was near and well aware of his presence.
He turned the light back on and examined the surrounding area. Much of the rock in this section of the mine was rotten, shot through with cracks and seams, and extra cribbing had been placed to hold it up. He stepped over to a vertical member, removed a knife from his pocket, and pushed it into the wood. It sank into the cribbing like butter, all the way to the hilt. He pulled it out and pried away at the wood, pulling off big, dusty pieces.
The wood was thoroughly weakened by dry rot. It might not be hard to bring it down…but that would lead to unpredictable consequences.
He ceased moving and paused, frozen in place, listening. He heard a faint sound, the tiny drop of a pebble. It was impossible, in the echoing spaces, to tell whence it came. It almost seemed to him deliberate, a tease. He waited. Another ping of rock against rock. And now he knew for certain that Ted Roman was playing with him.
A fatal mistake.
With the light on, acting as if he had heard nothing, unsuspecting, Pendergast chose a tunnel at random and passed down it. After a few steps he halted to discard his bulky coat, gloves, and hat, and stuff them into an out-of-the-way alcove. It was much warmer here, deep in the mine — and the coat was too constricting for the work that lay ahead of him.
The tunnel twisted and turned, dipped and rose, dividing and redividing. Many small tunnels, stopes, and shafts branched off in odd directions. Old mining equipment, pulleys, cages, cables, buckets, carts, and rotting ropes were strewn about in various stages of decay. At several points, vertical shafts sank down into darkness. Pendergast examined each one of these carefully, shining his light on the descending walls and testing the depths with a dropped pebble.
At one shaft, he lingered somewhat longer. It took two seconds for the pebble to hit bottom; a quick mental calculation indicated the distance would be twenty meters, or about sixty feet. Sufficient. He examined the rock making up the wall of the shaft and found it rough, solid, with enough adequate footholds: suitable for the purpose he had in mind.