Still Life With Crows

“Raskovich, it’s all right, just take it easy, just lay the gun down—”

The gun went off with a deafening blast, and a shower of pebbles came down, tinkling and bouncing among the pillars of stone before landing in the shallow water.

The distant shrieking of the dogs . . . the slack, panicked face of Raskovich . . . Hazen realized that the operation was rapidly spinning out of control. “Larssen!” he bawled out. “On the double!”

Now Raskovich turned and ran, the gun lying where he’d dropped it, still smoking from the shot.

“Raskovich!”Hazen took off after him, yelling at the top of his lungs: “Hey! Wrong fucking way!”

And as he ran, the terrible threnody of both dog and man went on and on behind him—and then, silence: sudden, unnerving silence.

Sixty-Two

 

Pendergast paused, listening. He heard the sounds echoing through the galleries of stone, distorted beyond recognition. He waited, straining to hear, but it was impossible to make out anything beside a whisper of sound, so altered by the acoustical properties of the caverns that it seemed almost like distant surf, or wind among trees.

He redoubled his pace in what seemed the right direction, dodging over and between enormous toppled stalactites. At the end of the cavern, where the trails divided, he stopped again, listening.

The sounds continued.

Now he consulted his map, found his approximate location. He was in the middle of a particularly labyrinthine section of the cave system, riddled with multilevel cracks, passageways, and blind holes. Locating the sound within such a fiendish maze would be difficult. And yet he knew that in caves such as this, sound usually followed the flow of air. Pulling a slim gold lighter from his pocket, Pendergast lit it and held it at arm’s length, carefully scrutinizing the direction in which the flame bent. Then he pocketed the lighter again and continued on, upwind, toward the sound.

But now, the sounds had ceased. The cave had returned to dripping silence.

Pendergast went on, through galleries and tunnels. With the absence of sound, he went back to following the map toward what appeared to be the central part of the cave system. At the end of a particularly narrow gallery he stopped, shining his light upon a far wall. There was one narrow vertical crack here, not on the map, that looked like it might give way onto another cavern on the far side. If so, it would cut off a considerable distance. He went to the crack and listened.

Once again, he heard faint sounds. The rush of water, overlaid by a human voice. At least, it appeared to be human, and yet it was so distorted that it was impossible to make out any words—if indeed there were any.

Shining his light on the ground before his feet, he noticed that he was not the first person to have taken this shortcut.

He edged into the crack, which soon widened enough for him to walk normally. Gradually the bottom of the crack dropped away and a crevasse opened below; yet the walls remained narrow enough that he could continue forward, one foot on either side of the crevasse, squeezing his torso through a narrow slot. It was a position that gave, strangely, the sensations of both claustrophobia and acrophobia at the same time.

Ahead, the crack opened into the blackness of space. He was standing on a narrow ledge almost a hundred feet up the wall of a domelike cavity. A stream of water plunged from above and feathered down toward the base far beneath his feet, filling the cavern with the echoing splash of water. A billion winking lights—reflections of feathery gypsum crystals—filled the cavern like fireflies.

Pendergast’s flashlight beam could only barely reach the bottom.

There had been footprints at the entrance to the crack: that meant there must be a way down.

Below the lip of rock on which he stood, his light caught a series of hand- and footholds. Intermittent sounds came from below, clearer now.

Had Hazen and the troopers reached the killer and Corrie? The thought was almost too unpleasant to contemplate.

Pendergast crouched on the narrow ledge, shining his light into the blackness below. He could see nothing but a massive jumble of fallen stalactites, torn from the ceiling by some long-ago earthquake.

He took off his shoes and socks, tied the laces together, and draped them around his neck. He turned off his flashlight and slipped it into a pocket: it would be of no help now. Then, reaching down into the darkness, he grabbed the first handhold again and swung out into space, his bare feet finding slippery purchase. Five minutes of cautious climbing brought him to the bottom. He put on his shoes in complete darkness, listening.

The noise was coming from the blackness at the far end of the cavern. Whoever was making that sound had no light. It rose and fell in a strange, babbling way, but there could be no mistake: it was a man, and he sounded injured.

Turning on the flashlight again and pulling out his handgun, Pendergast moved forward swiftly.

A flash of color, and something flickered across the dim cone of light; he swung the beam around and saw something yellow on the ground, behind a fractured boulder.

He leapt catlike onto the rock, gun and light pointing downward together. He peered into the cavity beneath the boulder. And then, after staring for a moment, he holstered the gun, dropped down the far side, and laid a hand on the man who was curled in a fetal position in the lee of the rock. He was a small man, soaking wet, gibbering to himself. Lying next to him was a regulation-issue set of night-vision goggles and a helmet with an infrared spotter.

At the touch of Pendergast’s hand the man crouched farther, covered his head, and squealed.

“FBI,” said Pendergast quietly. “Where are you hurt?”