Cemetery Dance

but there was no sign of Nora.

With mounting frustration, he painstakingly retraced his steps by trial and error, ultimately returning to the central cryptorium. There he stood, trying to build a map of the cellars in his head, to mentally fill in the sections through which he'd moved half senseless. There were doors in all four directions; one led to the catacombs, another — he realized — to the dead — end passageway from which he'd recently emerged. That left two more to try.

He picked one at random and took it.

Again it opened into a tunnel. Immediately this one appeared to be more promising: the walls were of crude mortared stone. Not precisely like the stone in the video, but closer.

A foul stench wafted down this corridor. D'Agosta paused, flicking his lighter on briefly, trying to conserve its fuel. The passageway was filthy, the stones splattered with mud and oozing with mold and fungus, the floor giving way unpleasantly at his touch.

As he played the light around, from the darkness ahead he heard a faint muffled cry — short, high — pitched, and full of terror…

…Nora?

Holding the lighter before him, he sprinted down the corridor toward the sound.

Chapter 71

Plock led the protesters on a spree, tearing through the church, upending altars and fetish — festooned shrines. When their priest fell, the rest of the robed men fell back in confusion to the shadows, greatly outnumbered and temporarily at a loss. Plock realized that they had the initiative; the key was to seize it and keep it. With the crowd following, he swept toward the central altar. Here, there was a bloody, gore — flecked post where the animal sacrifices obviously took place — and a fresh pool of blood that awaited their outrage.

'Destroy this place of slaughter!' Plock cried as the crowd began swarming onto the elevated platform that held the altar and slaughtering pen, smashing down the post, breaking open boxes, and tossing relics.

' Blasphemers!' boomed the deep voice of Bossong. He was standing above the body of the fallen priest, who was out cold and had been badly trampled by the mob. Bossong was not unscathed, either — as he began walking down the central aisle, a trickle of blood was evident on his forehead.

The Ville leader's voice had a galvanizing effect on the robed crowds. They stopped retreating and paused in a kind of stasis. Knives appeared in some hands.

'Butcher!' screamed a protester at Bossong.

Plock realized that he had to keep the crowd moving, out of the church and into the rest of the Ville. A standoff here could quickly turn violent.

A robed congregant suddenly lunged forward with a shriek, slashing at a protester; there was a brief, violent struggle between the two that abruptly swelled into mob action, people from both groups rushing to the defense of their own. A ragged scream arose; someone had been knifed.

'Murderers!'

'Killers!'

The knot of people struggled and swirled, kicked and punched, all brown robes and khaki and pima cotton. It was an almost surreal sight. Within moments several were lying on the stone floor, bleeding.

'The animals!' cried Plock suddenly. He could hear and smell them, a muffled pandemonium behind a door at the head of the altar. 'This way! Find and free the animals!' He dashed toward the door, pounded on it.

The leading edge of the crowd fell against the door, the battering rams once more appearing. It gave with a splintering crash and they poured beneath a stone archway, their way into the next room barred by a massive wrought — iron grate. On the other side was a scene from hell: dozens of baby animals, lambs, kids, calves — even puppies and kittens — locked in a huge stone chamber, the floor covered by a thin scattering of straw. The animals broke into a pathetic caterwauling, the lambs bleating, the puppies yipping.

For a moment Plock was speechless with horror. This was worse than anything he had imagined.

'Unbar these gates!' he cried. 'Set free the animals!'

'No!' cried Bossong, as he struggled to approach, but he was shoved back and flung roughly to the floor.

The battering rams slammed into the iron grate, but it proved much sturdier than the wooden doors. Again and again they pounded the iron, the animals shrinking back and crying in terror.

'A key! Get a key!' cried Plock. 'He must have one.' He pointed at Bossong, who was on his feet again and now struggling with several of the protesters.

The mob rushed Bossong, and he disappeared in the swirl to the sound of tearing cloth. 'Here!' A man held up an iron ring with keys. It was quickly passed forward, and Plock inserted the heavy ancient keys into the lock, one after another. One worked. He flung the gate wide.

'Freedom!' he cried.

The vanguard of the crowd rushed in and herded out the animals, trying to keep them together, but as soon as the creatures were past the gate they scattered in terror, racing about, their cries rising to the massive wooden beams and echoing in the large space.

The dust had risen and the church had become a hellish scene of struggle and flight, with the protesters clearly gaining the upper hand. The animals stampeded down the nave, leaping as the congregants tried to grab them, rapidly disappearing through every doorway and opening they could find.

'Now's the moment!' screamed Plock. 'Drive out these vivisectors! Drive them out! Now! '

Chapter 72

The police speedboat, with Pendergast at the helm, tore down the Harlem River at fifty knots, curving around the northern tip of Manhattan Island and heading south. It flashed under a sequence of bridges: the West 207th Street Bridge; the George Washington Bridge; the Alexander Hamilton Bridge; the High Bridge; the Ma — combs Dam Bridge; the 145th Street Bridge; and finally the Willis Avenue Bridge. Here the Harlem River widened into a bay as it neared the junction with the East River. But instead of heading into the East River, Pendergast put the boat into a screaming turn and pointed it into the Bronx Kill, a narrow, foul creek separating the Bronx from Randall's Island.

Reducing speed to thirty knots, he headed down the Bronx Kill — more an open sewer and garbage dump than a navigable waterway — the boat throwing up a brown wake, the smell of marsh gas and sewage rising like a miasma. A dark railroad trestle rose up ahead and he passed underneath it, the diesel jet engine echoing weirdly as it went through the brief tunnel. Night had enveloped the bleak landscape and Pendergast grasped the handle of the boat's spotlight, directing the beam at various obstacles ahead as the boat slalomed among half — sunken hulks of old barges, rotting pilings of long — vanished bridges, and the submerged skeletons of ancient subway cars.

Quite suddenly the Bronx Kill widened again to a broad bay, opening into upper Hell Gate and the northern end of the East River. The vast prison complex of Rikers Island loomed directly ahead, the infamous X — shaped cement towers, bathed in pitiless sodium lights, rising up against a black sky.

Pendergast increased speed and the boat quickly left Manhattan behind; the Midtown skyline receded as he pounded up the East River toward the opening to Long Island Sound. Now, passing between Stepping Stones Light and City Island, Pendergast arced into the Sound and opened the boat up full throttle. The wind roared past, spray flying behind, the little vessel smacking the chop, swaying from side to side as it rocketed up the Sound, the full moon flashing off the water. It was a quiet evening, with only a few boats out and about. The channel buoys glowed softly in the moonlight.

Every minute counted. He might already be too late.

When Sands Point Light hove into view, he angled the boat near shore, crossed the broad mouth of Glen Cove, and headed straight for the mainland on the far side, keeping his eyes on the shorefront estates as they