Fever Dream

He slowed as the boat came to the silted-over end of the channel. Esterhazy shut off the engine, swiveled it up out of the water, and began poling. The very mosquitoes he had just been thinking about now arrived in swarms, clustering about his head and landing on his neck and ears. He slapped and cursed.

The silty channel divided, and he poled into the left one; he knew the swamp well. He continued, checking the fish finder to monitor the depth of the water. The moon was now high in the sky, and the swamp was almost as clear as day. Midnight: six hours to dawn.

He tried to imagine the scene at Spanish Island when they arrived, but it was depressing and frustrating. He spat into the water and put it out of his head. It didn't concern him anymore. Ventura had allowed himself to be captured by Hayward, the damn fool, but he'd said nothing before Judson put a bullet through his brain. Blackletter was dead; all those who could connect him to Project Aves were dead. There was no way to put the Project Aves genii back in the bottle. If Pendergast lived, it would all come out, they might ultimately get wind of it, there was no help for that; but what was now critical was erasing his own role from it.

The events of the past week had made one thing crystal clear: Pendergast would figure it out. It was only a matter of time. That meant even Judson's own carefully concealed role would come to light. And because of that, Pendergast had to die.

But this time, the man would die on Esterhazy's terms, in his own good time, and when the FBI agent least expected it. Because Esterhazy retained one critical advantage: the advantage of surprise. The man was not invulnerable, and Esterhazy knew now exactly where his weakness lay and how to exploit it. Stupid of him not to have seen it before. A plan began to form in his mind. Simple, clean, effective.

The channel deepened enough to drop his engine. He lowered it and fired up, motoring slowly through the channels, working his way westward, constantly monitoring the depth below the keel. He would be at the Mississippi well before dawn; he could scuttle the boat in some backwater bayou and emerge from the swamp a new man. A line from The Art of War surfaced in his mind, unbidden:

Forestall your opponent by seizing what he holds dear, and contrive to strike him at the time and on the ground of your choosing.

So perfectly apposite to his situation.

76

THE SPECTER THAT PRESENTED ITSELF IN THE doorway froze Hayward with shock. The man was at least six and a half feet tall, gaunt, his face hollow with sunken cheeks, his dark eyes large and liquid under heavy brows, chin and neck bristling with half-shaven swipes of bristle. His hair was long and white, brushed back, curling behind the ears and tumbling to his shoulders. He wore a charcoal-gray Brooks Brothers suit jacket pulled over a hospital gown, and he carried a short stock-whip in one hand. With the other he wheeled an IV rack, which doubled as a kind of support.

It seemed to Hayward that he had almost materialized out of thin air, so quiet and stealthy had been his approach. His eyes--so bloodshot, they looked almost purple--didn't dart around the room as one would expect from a lunatic; rather, they moved very slowly from one person to the other, staring at--almost through--everyone in turn. When his eyes reached her, he winced visibly and closed his eyes.

'No, no, no,' he murmured, his voice as whispery as the wind.

Turning away, June Brodie retrieved a spare lab coat and draped it over Larry's muddy shirt. 'No bright colors,' she whispered to Hayward. 'Keep your movements slow.'

Sluggishly, Slade opened his eyes again. The look of pain eased somewhat. Releasing his hold on the rack, he slowly raised a large, massively veined hand in a gesture of almost biblical gravitas. The hand unfolded, the long fingers shaking slightly, the index finger pointing at Pendergast. The huge dark eyes rested on the FBI agent. 'You're the man looking to find out who killed his wife.' His voice was thin as rice paper, and yet it somehow projected an arrogant self-assurance.

Pendergast said nothing. He seemed dazed, his torn suit still dripping with mud, his pale hair smeared and tangled.

Slowly, Slade let his arm fall to his side. 'I killed your wife.'

Pendergast raised his .45. 'Tell me.'

'No, wait--' June began.

'Silence,' said Pendergast with quiet menace.

'That's right,' breathed Slade, 'silence. I ordered her killed. Helen--Esterhazy-- Pendergast.'

'Charles, the man has a gun,' said June, her voice low but imploring. 'He's going to kill you.'

'Poppycock.' He raised a finger and twirled it. 'We all lost somebody. He lost a wife. I lost a son. So it goes.' Then he repeated, with sudden intensity, in the same faint voice, 'I lost a son.'

June Brodie turned toward Pendergast, speaking sotto voce. 'You mustn't get him talking about his son. That would set him back--and we'd made such progress!' A sob, immediately stifled, escaped her throat.

'I had to have her killed. She was going to expose us. Terribly dangerous... for all of us...' Slade's eyes suddenly focused on nothing, widening as if in terror, staring at a blank wall. 'Why are you here?' he murmured at nothing. 'It isn't time!' He slowly raised the whip up over his head and brought it down with a terrific smack on his own back, once, twice, three times, each blow causing him to stagger forward, the tatters of the torn suit jacket fluttering to the ground.

The blow seemed to snap him back to reality. He straightened, refocused his eyes. The room became very still.

'You see?' the woman said to Pendergast. 'Don't provoke him, for God's sake. He'll hurt himself.'

'Provoke? I intend to do far more than that.'

Pendergast's menacing tone chilled Hayward. She felt trapped, helpless, vulnerable, stuck in the bed with IVs. She grasped the tubes, pressed down on her arm, and yanked them out. She swung up and out of bed, momentarily dizzy.

'I will handle this,' Pendergast told her.

'Remember,' Hayward replied, 'you promised you wouldn't kill him.'