Cold Vengeance - Lincoln Child [84]
Again, nothing.
Pendergast jerked back from the armoire as if he had been burned. He stood up, staring at it. One hand rose to his lips, the tips of his fingers trembling slightly. Then—after a long moment—he turned away and glanced around the library with an unreadable expression.
Maurice was a habitual early riser. It was always his practice to be out of bed no later than six, tidying up, inspecting the grounds, preparing breakfast. But this morning he stayed in bed until well after eight.
He had hardly slept a wink. Maurice had heard, as he lay in bed, Pendergast making muffled sounds all night: traipsing up and down the stairs, moving things about, dropping things on the floor, shuffling items from one spot to another. He had listened, with mounting concern, while the bumping, scraping, thumping, dragging, and slamming had gone on and on, from attic to parlor to morning room to back bedrooms to basement, hour after hour. And now, although the sun was fully up and morning well under way, Maurice was almost afraid to leave his room and face the house. The mansion must be in a dreadful state of disarray.
Nevertheless, it could not be put off forever. And so, with a sigh, he pushed back the bedcovers and pulled himself up to a sitting position.
He rose and went softly to the door. The house was intensely quiet. He put his hand on the knob, turned. The door creaked open. Gingerly—with mounting trepidation—he leaned his head out past the door frame.
The hallway was spotless.
Quietly, Maurice padded from one room to the next. Everything was in its place; Penumbra was in perfect order. And Pendergast was nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER 44
Thirty-five thousand feet over West Virginia
ANOTHER TOMATO JUICE, SIR?”
“No, thank you. There will be nothing else.”
“Very good.” And the cabin steward continued making her way down the plane’s central aisle.
In the first-class compartment, Pendergast examined the yellowing document he had—after hours of exhaustive and exhausting search—finally retrieved from the queerest place: rolled up inside an old rifle barrel, proving once again how little he really knew his wife. His eye traveled once again down the document.
República Federativa do Brasil
Registro Civil Das Pessoas Naturais
Certidão de Nascimento
Nome
Helen von Fuchs Esterházy
Local de Nacimento: Nova Godói, RIO GRANDE do SUL
Filiação Pai: András Ferenc Esterházy
Filiação Mãi: Leni Faust Schmid
Helen had been born in Brazil—in a place called Nova Godói. Nova Godói—Nova G. He recalled the name from the burnt scrap of paper he and Laura Hayward had come across in the ruins of the Longitude pharmacology laboratory.
Mime had said Helen’s native language was Portuguese. Now it made sense.
Brazil. Pendergast thought for a moment. Helen had spent almost five months in Brazil before they were married, on a mission with Doctors With Wings. Or at least that was what she had said at the time. As he’d learned the hard way, no assumption about Helen was safe.
He glanced again at the birth certificate. At the very bottom was a box labeled OBSERVAÇÕES/A VERBAÇÕES—observations/annotations. He looked at it closely, and then removed a small magnifying glass from his pocket to examine it further.
Whatever had been in this box had not merely been blacked out: the paper itself had been excised and painstakingly replaced with an unmarked piece of paper with the same engraved background pattern, microscopically stitched together with the utmost craft. It was an exceedingly professional piece of work.
He finally accepted, at that moment, that he truly had not known his beloved wife. Like so many other fallible human beings, he had been blinded by love. He had not even begun to crack the ultimate mystery of her identity.
With care bordering on reverence, he refolded the birth certificate and placed it deep in a suit pocket.