Cold Vengeance - Lincoln Child [51]
“Yeah? And what course is that?”
“I must discover the whereabouts of my wife on my own.”
This was greeted by another, longer pause. “Um, Pendergast… I’m sorry, but you know where your wife is. In the family plot.”
“No, Vincent. Helen is alive. I’m as sure about that as I’ve ever been about anything in my life.”
D’Agosta gave an audible sigh. “Don’t let him do this to you. Can’t you see what’s happening? He knows how much she meant to you. He knows you’d give anything, do anything, to get her back. He’s messing with you—for his own sadistic reasons.”
When Pendergast did not reply, D’Agosta swore under his breath. “I suppose this means you’re not in hiding anymore.”
“There’s no longer any point. However, I’m still planning to operate under the radar for the foreseeable future. No reason to telegraph my moves.”
“Anything I can do to help? From this end?”
“You can look in on Constance at Mount Mercy Hospital for me. Make sure she wants for nothing.”
“You got it. And you? What’ll you do next?”
“It’s as I told you. I’m going to find my wife.” And with that, Pendergast rang off.
CHAPTER 26
Bangor, Maine
HE HAD CLEARED CUSTOMS AND RETRIEVED HIS BAGS without incident. And yet Judson Esterhazy couldn’t get up the nerve to leave baggage claim. He remained seated in the last seat of a bank of molded plastic chairs, nervously scanning the face of everyone who passed. Bangor, Maine, had the most obscure international airport in the country. And Esterhazy had changed planes twice—first in Shannon, and then in Quebec—in the hope of muddying his trail, frustrating Pendergast’s pursuit.
A man sat down heavily beside him, and Esterhazy turned suspiciously. But the traveler weighed close to three hundred pounds, and not even Pendergast could have duplicated the way the man’s adipose tissue bulged around his waistband. Esterhazy turned back to the faces of the people passing by. Pendergast could easily be among them. Or, with his FBI credentials, he could be in some security office nearby, watching him on a closed-circuit monitor. Or he could be parked outside Esterhazy’s Savannah house. Or even worse, waiting inside, in the den.
The ambush in Scotland had scared the living shit out of him. Once again, he felt blind panic wash over him, mingling with rage. All these years of covering his tracks, of being so very careful… and now Pendergast was undoing it all. The FBI agent had no idea how big a Pandora’s box he was prying open. Once they stepped in… He felt mercilessly squeezed between Pendergast on one side, and the Covenant on the other.
Gasping, tugging at his collar, he fought back the panic. He could handle this. He had the intelligence, he had the wherewithal. Pendergast wasn’t invincible. There had to be some way for him to handle this himself. He would hide; he would bury himself deep, give himself time to think.
But what place was too remote, too obscure, for Pendergast to find? And even if he did hunker down in some remote backwater, he couldn’t go on living in fear, year after year, like Slade and the Brodies.
The Brodies. He’d read in the paper about their ghastly deaths. No doubt they’d been discovered by the Covenant. It was a dreadful shock—but really, he should have expected it. June Brodie hadn’t known the half of what she’d been involved in—what he and Charles Slade had involved her in. If she had, she’d never have emerged from that swamp. Amazing that Slade, even in all his craziness and decline, had never betrayed the one, central, all-important secret.
In that moment of fear and desperation Esterhazy finally realized what he had to do. There was one answer—only one. He couldn’t go it alone. With Pendergast on the rampage, he needed that last resort. He had to contact the Covenant, quickly, proactively. It would be far more dangerous if he didn’t tell them, if they found out what was going on in some other way. He had to be seen as cooperative. Trustworthy. Even if it meant putting himself once again fully in their power.
Yes: the more he