The Obsidian Chamber Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Also by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Epilogue

  One Week Later

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Also by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

  Agent Pendergast Novels Gideon Crew Novels

  Crimson Shore Beyond the Ice Limit

  Blue Labyrinth The Lost Island

  White Fire Gideon’s Corpse

  Two Graves* Gideon’s Sword

  Cold Vengeance*

  Fever Dream* Other Novels

  Cemetery Dance The Ice Limit

  The Wheel of Darkness Thunderhead

  The Book of the Dead** Riptide

  Dance of Death** Mount Dragon

  Brimstone**

  Still Life with Crows *The Helen Trilogy

  The Cabinet of Curiosities **The Diogenes Trilogy

  Reliquary† †Relic and Reliquary are

  Relic† ideally read in sequence

  By Douglas Preston By Lincoln Child

  The Kraken Project The Forgotten Room

  Impact The Third Gate

  The Monster of Florence Terminal Freeze

  (with Mario Spezi) Deep Storm

  Blasphemy Death Match

  Tyrannosaur Canyon Lethal Velocity

  The Codex (formerly Utopia)

  Ribbons of Time Tales of the Dark 1–3

  The Royal Road Dark Banquet

  Talking to the Ground Dark Company

  Jennie

  Cities of Gold

  Dinosaurs in the Attic

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, websites, government or corporate entities, penal institutions, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Splendide Mendax, Inc. and Lincoln Child

  Cover design by Flag.

  Cover photographs from Getty Images: clouds by Riccardo Mantero; building by DEA PICTURE LIBRARY; landscape by Jay Fleming.

  Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  grandcentralpublishing.com

  twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First Edition: October 2016

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Preston, Douglas J., author. | Child, Lincoln, author.

  Title: The obsidian chamber / Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2016. | Series: Agent Pendergast series

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016022192| ISBN 9781455536917 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781455541676 (large print) | ISBN 9781478938941 (audio book) | ISBN 9781478935278 (audio download) | ISBN 9781455536900 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Pendergast, Aloysius (Fictitious character)—Fiction. | Government investigators—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Thrillers. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3566.R3982 O27 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022192

  ISBNs: 978-1-4555-3691-7 (hardcover), 978-1-4555-3690-0 (ebook), 978-1-4555-4150-8 (int’l), 978-1-4555-4167-6 (large print), 978-1-4555-7172-7 (B&N signed ed.), 978-1-4555-7173-4 (reg. signed ed.)

  Printed in the United States of America

  LSC-C

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Also by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  Epil
ogue

  One Week Later

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Lincoln Child dedicates this book to

  his mother, Nancy

  Douglas Preston dedicates this book to

  Churchill Elangwe

  Even in our sleep

  pain which cannot forget

  falls drop by drop upon the heart

  until in our own despair

  against our will

  comes wisdom

  through the awful grace of God.

  —Aeschylus, Agamemnon,

  as paraphrased by Robert F. Kennedy

  Prologue

  November 8

  PROCTOR EASED OPEN the double doors of the library to allow Mrs. Trask to pass through with a silver tray laden with a midmorning tea service.

  The room was dim and hushed, lit only by the fire that guttered in the hearth. Before it, sitting in a wing chair, Proctor could see a motionless figure, indistinct in the faint light. Mrs. Trask walked over and placed the tray on a side table next to the chair.

  “I thought you might like a cup of tea, Miss Greene,” she said.

  “No thank you, Mrs. Trask,” came Constance’s low voice.

  “It’s your favorite. Jasmine, first grade. I also brought you some madeleines. I baked them just this morning—I know how fond you are of them.”

  “I’m not particularly hungry,” she answered. “Thank you for your trouble.”

  “Well, I’ll just leave them here in case you change your mind.” Mrs. Trask smiled maternally, turned, and headed for the library exit. By the time she reached Proctor, the smile had faded and the look on her face had grown worried once again.

  “I’ll only be gone a few days,” she said to him in a low tone. “My sister should be home from the hospital by the weekend. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

  Proctor nodded and watched her bustle her way back toward the kitchen before returning his gaze to the figure in the wing chair.

  It had been over two weeks since Constance had come back to the mansion at 891 Riverside Drive. She had returned, grim and silent, without Agent Pendergast, and with no explanation of what had happened. Proctor—as Pendergast’s chauffeur, ex-military subordinate, and general security factotum—felt that, in the agent’s absence, it was his duty to help Constance through whatever she was dealing with. It had taken him time, patience, and effort to coax the story out of her. Even now, that story made little sense and he was unsure what really happened. What he did know, however, was that the vast house, lacking Pendergast’s presence, had changed—changed utterly. And so, too, had Constance.

  After returning alone from Exmouth, Massachusetts—where she had gone to assist Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast on a private case—Constance had locked herself in her room for days, taking meals only with the greatest reluctance. When she at last emerged, she seemed a different person: gaunt, spectral. Proctor had always known her to be coolheaded, reserved, and self-possessed. But in the days that followed, she was by turns apathetic and suddenly full of restless energy, pacing about the halls and corridors as if looking for something. She abandoned all interest in the pastimes that had once possessed her: researching the Pendergast family ancestry, antiquarian studies, reading, and playing the harpsichord. After a few anxious visits from Lieutenant D’Agosta, Captain Laura Hayward, and Margo Green, she had refused to see anyone. She also appeared to be—Proctor could think of no better way to put it—on her guard. The only times she showed a spark of her old self was on the very rare occasions when the phone rang, or when Proctor brought the mail back from the post office box. Always, always, he knew, she was hoping for word from Pendergast. But there had been none.

  A certain high-level entity in the FBI had arranged to keep the search for Pendergast, and the attendant official investigation, out of reach of the news media. Nevertheless, Proctor had taken it upon himself to gather all the information he could about his employer’s disappearance. The search for the body, he learned, had lasted five days. Since the missing person was a federal agent, exceptional effort had been expended. Coast Guard cutters had searched the waters off Exmouth; local officers and National Guardsmen had combed the coastline from the New Hampshire border down to Cape Ann, looking for any sign—even so much as a shred of clothing. Divers had carefully examined rocks where the currents might have hung up a body, and the seafloor was scrutinized with sonar. But there had been nothing. The case remained officially open, but the unspoken conclusion was that Pendergast—gravely wounded in a fight, struggling against a vicious tidal current, weakened by the battering of the waves, and subjected to the fifty-degree water—had been swept out to sea and drowned, his body lost in the deeps. Just two days before, Pendergast’s lawyer—a partner in one of the oldest and most discreet law firms in New York—had finally reached out to Pendergast’s surviving son, Tristram, to give him the sad news of his father’s disappearance.

  Now Proctor approached and took a seat beside Constance. She glanced up at him as he sat down, giving him the faintest smile. Then her gaze returned to the fire. The flickering light cast dark shadows over her violet eyes and dark bobbed hair.

  Since her return, Proctor had taken it upon himself to look after her, knowing that this was what his employer would have wanted. Her troubled state roused uncharacteristically protective feelings within him—ironic, because under normal circumstances Constance was the last person to seek protection from another. And yet, without saying it, she seemed glad of his attentions.

  She straightened in her chair. “Proctor, I’ve decided to go below.”

  The abrupt announcement took him aback. “You mean—down there? Where you lived before?”

  She said nothing.

  “Why?”

  “To…teach myself to accept the inevitable.”

  “Why can’t you do that here, with us? You can’t just go down there again.”

  She turned and stared at him with such intensity that he was taken aback. He realized it was hopeless to change her mind. Perhaps this meant she was finally accepting that Pendergast was gone—that was progress, of sorts. Perhaps.

  Now she rose from her chair. “I’ll write a note for Mrs. Trask, instructing what necessities to leave inside the service elevator. I’ll take one hot meal each evening at eight. But nothing for the first two nights, please—I feel over-ministered-to at present. Besides, Mrs. Trask will be away, and I wouldn’t want to discommode you.”

  Proctor rose as well. He took hold of her arm. “Constance, you must listen to me—”

  She glanced down at his hand, and then up into his face with a look that prompted him to immediately release his grasp.

  “Thank you, Proctor, for respecting my wishes.”

  Rising up on her toes, she surprised him again by lightly kissing his cheek. Then she turned, and—moving almost like a sleepwalker—headed to the far end of the library, where the service elevator was hidden behind a false set of bookcases. She swung open the twin bookcases, slipped inside the waiting elevator, closed it behind her—and was gone.

  Proctor stared at the spot for a long moment. This was crazy. He shook his head and turned away. Once again, the absence of Pendergast was like a shadow cast over the mansion—and over him. He needed time to be alone, to think this through.

  He walked out of the library, took a turn down the hall, opened a door that led into a carpeted hallway, and mounted a crooked staircase leading to the old servants’ quarters. Gaining the third-floor landing, he walked down another corridor until he reached the door to his small apartment of rooms. He opened it, stepped inside, and closed it behind him.

  He should have protested her plan more forcefully. With Pendergast gone, he was responsible for her. But he knew nothing he said would have made any difference. Long ago he’d learned that, while he could handle almost anyone, he was hopeless against her. In time, he mused, with his subtle encouragement, Constance would accept the reality of Pendergast’s death—
and rejoin the living…

  A gloved hand whipped around from behind, seizing him around the rib cage and tightening with immense force.

  Taken by surprise, Proctor nevertheless reacted instinctually with a sharp downward movement, attempting to throw the intruder off balance; but the man anticipated the reaction and thwarted it. Instantly Proctor felt the sting of a needle jabbed deep into his neck. He froze.

  “Movement is inadvisable,” came a strange, silky voice that Proctor, with profound shock, recognized.

  He did not move. It stunned him that a man—any man—had gotten the drop on him. How was it possible? He had been preoccupied, inattentive. He would never forgive himself for this. Especially because this man, he knew, was Pendergast’s greatest enemy.

  “You’re far better versed than I in the arts of physical combat,” continued the smooth voice. “So I’ve taken the liberty of evening the odds. What you’re feeling in your neck at the moment is, of course, a hypodermic needle. I have not yet depressed the plunger. The syringe contains a dose of sodium pentothal—a very large dose. I will ask you once, and once only: signal your acquiescence by relaxing your body. How you react now will determine whether you receive a dose that is merely anesthetizing…or lethal.”

  Proctor considered his options. He let his body slacken.

  “Excellent,” said the voice. “The name is Proctor, I seem to recall?”

  Proctor remained silent. There would be an opportunity to reverse the situation; there was always an opportunity. He only had to think.

  “I’ve been observing the family manor for some time now. The man of the house is away—permanently, it would seem. It’s as depressing as a tomb. You might as well all be wearing crepe.”

  Proctor’s mind raced through various scenarios. He must pick one and execute it. He needed time, just a little time, a few seconds at most…

  “Not in the mood for a chat? Just as well. I have a great many things to do, and so I bid you: good night.”

  As he felt the plunger slide home, Proctor realized his time was up—and that, to his vast surprise, he had failed.

  1

  SLOWLY, PROCTOR SWAM back up toward consciousness from inky depths. It was a long swim, and it seemed to take a long time. At last he opened his eyes. The lids felt heavy, and it was all he could do not to close them again. What had happened? For a moment he lay motionless, taking in his surroundings. Then he realized: he was on the floor of his sitting room.