Dantes' Inferno (2 page)

They were almost to the stairway leading to the museum café and the outdoor dining deck. Within seconds, the central garden would rush into view. Lush with primary color and geometric form (chaos and pattern all at once), it overflowed the space between the multilevel museum and the institutes.

Wanda felt a tug at her sleeve and turned in surprise, looking down at the agitated face of another of her kids.

“Please, Miss Davenport, I have to
go
,” a small voice announced.

“Break time, guys,” Wanda called out cheerfully. “When we reach the bottom of these stairs, we'll use the rest rooms and regroup for the garden. Carla, hands to yourself. Thank you. No
running
, Hector.”

They turned the corner, only to be welcomed by the sight of bougainvillea, jacaranda, orchid, daisy, iris, wild grasses, each as lovely and as ephemeral as a butterfly.

Wanda Davenport's last view in life consisted of the gardens she loved so much.

Jason Redding discovered the treasure chest beneath the stairwell. He opened it curiously, saw an intricate, whimsical, handmade collage—an infernal machine constructed of polished wood, ivory, colored wire, and spiked metal pipe filled with black powder.

The puzzled child heard a hissing sound, saw smoke and
soft petals, twisting and turning, floating upward:
initiation
.

One neon green sneaker survived unscathed.

1:03
P.M
.
Edmond Sweetheart didn't look at the bodies. He had nothing to offer the dead except his ability to focus—on the living, on an unknown bomber or bombers, on the wreckage that awaited him a hundred yards uphill. If he lost his center at this particular moment in time, his world would shatter.

Swift and surefooted, he moved through the garden on muscles that were taut and flexible, with arms held close, spine erect, with steps measured instinctively. His senses were painfully alert, ears filled with the implacable cry of sirens, dark eyes wide to the brightness reflected from the cloud-covered sky.

Los Angeles has a taste; here at the Getty, between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, Sweetheart registered an alkaline palate tinged heavily with carbons. There was comfort in the order of chemical compounds; he took no such comfort in the chaos of human motivation, action, reaction. The destructive evidence—now just a stone's throw away—was all too visible.

Out of choice, he rarely attended active crime scenes. Instead, his life was spent poring over printouts, comparing and contrasting data sets—a day's currency to linguistic morphology, four days to chemical compounds, an entire week to geographic spatial patterns. A dry exchange that made your eyes go red, your vision myopic. Unless it happened to represent both your passion and your sanity.

Sweetheart had spent more than a decade tracking terrorists and consulting with various federal and international agencies—he maintained research privileges at UCLA; he had an office at Rand Corporation—but because he was both practical and paranoid, his most delicate
jobs were undertaken from his own home in the Hollywood Hills, where he could control the flow of information.

The results of forensic analysis of physical evidence (extortion notes, digitized threat calls, re-creations of bombs and incendiary devices, blood spatter patterns—a criminal's work product) were far removed from the location of the destructive action.

But this midday in April, Sweetheart was present at a crime scene for personal reasons—however mentally contained, however psychically encased those reasons might be—and it was vital that he keep his emotional, if not physical, distance.

He'd left his car parked at the end of the fire road alongside various emergency response vehicles. The half-mile jog hadn't begun to test his lungs. As he navigated the last fifty yards to the scene of the bombing, a familiar-looking man in an FBI jacket passed by, moving swiftly down the path toward a mobile forensic van. The agent glanced with wary suspicion at Sweetheart, who kept his focus on a living, breathing target at the base of the damaged stairwell ahead: a red-haired man named Church, who was wearing an LAPD vest and a fierce expression.

Barely two hours ago, a child and his teacher had died when a pipe bomb exploded. No one had claimed responsibility. No clues to the identity of the terrorist or terrorists. Not yet. Sweetheart knew that much from a telephone message.

Now his heartbeat fluttered dangerously as containment threatened to fail. His pace slowed; he almost faltered. A child had died . . .

Cleanse the mind of all emotional distractions
.

He picked up speed again, shallow breath quickening, inhaling through his nose, exhaling through his mouth, the
athlete's nonverbal mantra. When he was ten yards from the stairwell, he willed law enforcement to make eye contact.

LAPD's Detective Frederick “Red” Church gazed intently back at Sweetheart. The detective was one of a cluster of investigators that included FBI and ATF cowboys; they had gathered at the base of the damaged stairwell and were engaged in the early stages of crime scene analysis, a laborious process that included the documentation and collection of forensic evidence. Breaking from the group and cutting quickly downhill over carefully shaped earth, the LAPD detective couldn't mask his discomfiture—shock, even—at the sight of Sweetheart.

When he was within tackling range, Church whispered harshly, “You shouldn't be—” But he didn't finish the sentence, breaking off as he sensed the wild emotions trapped in the other man's eyes.

“My niece called,” Sweetheart said distinctly. “I drove straight from LAX.”

Twelve hours on Nigeria Airways, most of that time spent on the ground in hundred-degree heat, 90 percent humidity; twenty hours on Japan Airlines, much of that spent in transit, first class, oh-so-fully insulated from the famine, disease, poverty that plagued the rest of the world. Then the emergency phone call as they were circling LA's international airport.

“I need access
now
. Before all these bastards trample the scene. It's already turning into a circus.” Sweetheart's voice was ominously controlled; no expression showed through the mask of his handsome face.

“I heard you were in Africa,” Church said, ignoring the declaration, using his body like a closed door. He kept a wary distance from the larger man; there was no way he could head off 280 pounds of solid muscle mass.

“Nigeria was pathetic.” Sweetheart was eyeing the scene possessively, as if it were his own private treasure. “Another embassy bombing.” Taking one step toward Church, he finished in a quiet voice. “Seventy dead, twice that injured. Nothing but rubble and bodies.”

“Bin Laden?” the detective asked, not budging. He was curious. He was adrenalized. He was also stalling. He didn't have the time or the strength for a confrontation—not with Edmond Sweetheart.

“We should send him a gift—a couple of Tomahawks.” Sweetheart waved one hand abruptly, perhaps deflecting the emotional impact of tragedy past and present—almost making the detective jump. He was too damn calm, too controlled as he gazed straight at Church. “We should do what we did in Afghanistan six months ago—turn the rebel camp to dust.”

He didn't have to add that the Afghanistan attack—which, in addition to wiping out a terrorist training camp, had also caused the death of an international fugitive—had been based on his intelligence. Antiterrorist circles were small and incestuous; players knew one another's business. Just like today, present circumstances, news would be circulating swiftly, Sweetheart thought, anger rising like a tide inside his chest.

Sensing movement, the detective stepped forward just as Sweetheart contracted his muscles. Church said quickly, “You aren't authorized to be here, Professor.”

Sweetheart's black-brown eyes glittered with a sheen not unlike compressed metal. His mouth was a flat line against smooth, naturally bronzed skin.

“I'm asking you to leave,” Church insisted in a low voice.

“No.” Sweetheart might have been a tree or a structural column, so rooted, so
embedded
was his energy. For all his
mass, he was powerfully agile, dauntingly strong, a formidable and athletic opponent. He said, “I'm not going anywhere,
Red
.”

Church heard his nickname used as a warning—he also heard the hard note that communicated Sweetheart's frightening level of self-control. The detective's blue eyes reflected tiny images of the surrounding world, including this man he knew as a hotshot data junkie, a free agent sought after by federal and international agencies. For the dozen times their paths had crossed, Edmond Holomalia Sweetheart remained a total fucking enigma.

If he—Red Church—had been in the other man's shoes . . .

In slow-blink motion Church's eyelids dropped like a curtain, then lifted again. His words, a reluctant gift of information, were expelled with a sighing sound. “We've got the end cap from the pipe—blew off in most of one piece.”

“Show me.”

Church turned heel, resigned, his uneasiness channeled into manic movement as he led the other man up the short incline to the damaged stairway, past emergency personnel, past the investigative team. He came to a standstill. Sweetheart stopped a half step behind.

Balanced below the edge of the terrace where the wall had been peppered by shrapnel, both men now stood at the inner perimeter of the scene. Behind them gardens filled the shallow canyon. Sweetheart registered the view, abstractly appreciating its formal symmetry, but his attention was on the twisted cap of metal twelve inches from his shoes. Amid chunks of wood, contorted steel, and other explosive debris, a small orange evidence marker with the numeral
1
had already been placed next to the cap. Sweetheart squatted, his thighs spreading until the linen
fabric of his slacks pulled taut over highly developed quadriceps. His fingers contracted, exposing the tension in his body.

The eight-inch-diameter, half-inch-thick metal cap was blackened, the lip stretched back in places as if it were a lid chewed off a can. The force of the blast had left pits and scratches in the surface. Balancing on the balls of his feet, Sweetheart eased closer, eyes intent and straining, mind blocking distractions. His breathing softened; he seemed almost asleep.

Detective Church remained standing, shifting nervously on the balls of his feet. He murmured, “It's scratched to all hell—but maybe something's there.” His watchful stare landed on two ATF agents examining numbered evidence ten feet away. Would Sweetheart's attendance be challenged? Fortunately, the professor's presence was a badge of sorts.

Church squatted down beside the bigger man and said, “The bomb came in a pretty package, but our perp—or perps—packed the casing with nails, scraps, made sure there was plenty of effective shrapnel, enough to rip the head off—”

With horror, Church registered his own words, but he glanced swiftly at Sweetheart and saw no reaction. That blank face was worse than any display of rage, the detective thought, swallowing hard.

After a moment, Church continued: “Until we reconstruct the device, this could be the work of a hundred different scumbags. The closest witnesses were kids—they're totally freaked out. No usable descriptions, but the Bureau's psychologist is going to keep working with them.”

Sweetheart knew Church was talking; he paid scant attention. Instead he studied the rough lines on the cap, fairly certain now that they predated the explosion. He
allowed their arrangement to guide his thoughts, noting the associations triggered by familiar configurations that dissolved immediately into
un
familiarity; it was like gazing at the clouds overhead as they created form and identity, then evanesced, all in a matter of seconds. The complexity of communication was on his mind; almost daily he studied symbols as arranged to build language—from morphology to lexicon to syntax, the process of word formation, meaning, and structure in a larger context.

Deftly, Sweetheart pulled a pencil and a small pad of paper from his jacket pocket. With his large body still perfectly balanced on the soles of his feet, he executed lines very slowly on the page. He reminded Church of a man playing a solitary game of hangman. Marks appeared in a pattern that seemed simultaneously random and ordered.

Why the hell couldn't he
get
it? Church wondered, looking closely at the end cap, studying the scratches until they did coalesce into a rough language, albeit one he didn't comprehend.

“C—a—n—t—o—l—l,” Sweetheart said deliberately.

“Who the hell is Cantoll?”

“Try
what
.”

“I'll bite.” Church nodded restlessly. “
What
the hell is Cantoll?”

“A letter, or a numeral, is missing, here at the end—where the metal was particularly twisted,” Sweetheart said, closing his eyes. “If we take
canto
, then we . . .” He ran his index finger through air, marking three strikes.

Church shook his head, expelling frustration with a harsh whisper. “You lost me.”

“It's famous poetry, Detective. The third canto,” Sweetheart said deliberately, as if speaking to a thick-skulled schoolboy. “‘Through me you enter into the woeful city, through me the way into eternal pain . . . ' A work
originally composed in fourteenth-century Italian, and posthumously retitled the
Divine Comedy
. In
Commedia
, the inscription over the gates to hell.”

Sweetheart's jet black hair was pulled back from his face; he fingered the knot with unadorned hands. As he waited, impatient for the obvious connection to be made, he turned to canvass the architecture of the building, in particular the graceful arched gate fronting the damaged terrace. His gaze moved with the linear curves, and the final line of the stanza returned to memory.