Dantes' Inferno (26 page)

“Then Dantes and M are enemies,” Sweetheart said, cool and matter-of-fact.

“That's not all they are.” Sylvia stood abruptly, scattering books and papers. “M is holding Los Angeles
hostage
—the city is the victim in this scenario.” She kept her eyes on the professor. “John Dantes isn't our perpetrator, he's M's puppet.”

“I don't buy it,” Sweetheart said sharply, dismissing her speculation.

Sylvia pulled back as if she'd been slapped.

8:44
A.M.
Luke and Gretchen stared at a monitor while a series of maps flashed lightning-fast across its face.

Without looking up, Luke said, “I've been running M's spatial pattern against the obvious base map—”

“LA,” Sylvia finished. She noticed a series of flashing neon orange dots overlaid on the screen. They looked like large grains of red pepper scattered at random: five spread out like petals, and a faint linear series.

“Right. But it's needle-in-the haystack stuff because we've got no idea of scale . . . whether it predates nineteen twenty-seven's standardization ratios or whether—”

But Sylvia was focusing on Gretchen. “You're the linguistics tech . . . your program obviously came up with
Dante Alighieri and the
Inferno
for the reference to
Limbo
. Are they mentioned in
Dantes' Inferno?
As in
John?
”

“Give me a nanosecond.” Gretchen moved to her computer and plopped down, fingers already flying across the keyboard. “MOSAIK already devoured the entire text of
Dantes' Inferno
, along with Dantes' thesis, his student papers, the trial transcripts, the psychological files, just about everything and anything.” She held up a well-thumbed copy of John Dantes' book as the computer purred into action, too high-tech for lights, bells, or whistles.

Sylvia took the book from Gretchen, then leaned over the other woman's shoulder. “At the hospital, Dantes said something like
Karen knows . . . ask the master
.”

Gretchen frowned. “In verbal communications, it's important to consider the influence—”

“Fallen civilizations—and lessons in literature,” Sylvia murmured, her mind booting up and zigzagging at hyper speed. Silently, she turned over phrases:
ask the master . . . the one who has mastered the field . . . ask the master, ask the teacher
.

Line up the elements: guilt, repression, stress, conversion . . .

Gretchen began to patter in Swedish but caught herself.

Thumbing through
Dantes' Inferno
, Sylvia found herself gazing down at the dedication:
“This is for my mother, Bella Dantes, who said good-bye much too soon . . . and for James Healey, Head Master, Oxford Academy . . . two who introduced me to Dante Alighieri, his Heaven and Hell, his Paradise and Purgatory.”

“Ask the master. Take a lesson in lit,” Sylvia whispered. “
Master
James Healey.”

9:27
A.M.
As Sylvia splashed water on her face in the small copper-and-bamboo bathroom, she thought about
the interaction with Sweetheart. He was rude, arrogant, aggravating. He was also very smart. She muttered to herself as she peed—muttered to herself as she dug through her briefcase. Lipstick and a comb made her feel better.

In the dining room, waiting for her host, she downed a cup of dense black coffee. By degrees, her cloudy mood was lifting. She left a message for Matt asking him to cancel his flight from New Mexico; she wanted him to stay very close to Serena until this mess was over. She was about to boot up her laptop to send e-mail and to review her notes on Dantes when Sweetheart appeared.

He signaled he was ready to move. Downing the last of the coffee, she gathered briefcase and computer, and she followed him along a corridor to a heavily secured garage. A dark green Mercedes purred in response to an electronic greeting.

As the professor revved the car's engine—and the garage door lifted smoothly—Sylvia said, “Before we go any further, I want to clear something up. You were an asshole back there. You owe me an apology.”

“You're right.”

“I know I'm right.” She waited.

“I apologize.”

She was silent for a moment before she nodded. “You asked for my intuition. Here goes: For all intents and purposes, Dantes is sick. He's withdrawn himself from the game, he's a passive participant.”

Sweetheart was listening carefully.

Sylvia continued, “Either Dantes is faking conversion disorder—and it's part of the plan with M. Or he's not faking, in which case M will blame us for taking Dantes out of circulation.” Sylvia pushed black sunglasses over her eyes.

“Here's my prediction: M is going to strike closer to home now. He'll go after one of us.”

“The sun gave me a frightful headache and I have to wear smoked glasses all the time. In other words, phooey on Cal. . . .”

Nathanael West

10:13
A.M.
On the winding canyon road, M tracks the green Mercedes from a distance.

Sweetheart's baby is a beauty—and she's custom fit for an antiterrorist cowboy: fast, fully loaded, 350 horses; vibration sensors, ultrasensitive radio alarm and paging system, bullet-proof glass, sheet-metal chassis undercoat, locking hood, locking wheel covers, locking gas tank, exhaust barrier.

If you sneeze within thirty feet of baby, she'll start bawling.

She needs a gentle touch.

M, a connoisseur of sophisticated technology and machinery, strokes his fingers lightly over the steering wheel of his truck.

Patience . . .

In this business, a man who wants to survive bides his time.

He also knows enough to remember those who were less than patient in the annals of explosive history . . .

1605: Guy Fawkes—arrested for hiding copious amounts of gunpowder under the House of Lords, London.

1886: Four anarchists—hanged for the deaths of seven officers in Haymarket Square.

1903: Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, New York City, director of the first official bomb squad, which focused on fighting the Mano Nera, or Black Hand—assassinated in Italy.

1922: Bomber John Magnusson—identified and captured through handwriting analysis and comparison.

A moment of silence, please . . .

M has no intention of joining the ranks of the impetuous, the foolish, the dead.

He's not about to mess with Sweetheart's fully armored baby.

And he doesn't have to.

Because the work is done—the bomb is in place, the timer is set, the clock is already ticking.

Many of the “estates” up along Outpost Drive belonged to people who conceived of themselves as homesteaders who happened to have six-figure incomes. . . .

Randall Sullivan,
The Price of Experience

10:33
A.M.
Just a stone's throw from the
other
bastion of southern California preppy WASP elitism, Oxford Academy had hosted the sons of LA's finest for a century.

Sweetheart guided the Mercedes off Mulholland onto Coldwater, and the shape of the landscape shifted markedly, as if the groomed trees, the acres of manicured lawns, the gardens—exotic even by LA's standards—belonged
to another, more civilized stratum of the urban ecosystem.

When he turned again onto a long, winding drive shaded by jacaranda, gnarled olive trees, and scarlet flame trees, Sylvia gazed out the open window, absorbing a retinal montage of wild color splashed against turquoise sky.

Here, they had risen above the layer of smog blanketing the Valley and nuzzling the flanks of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Here (one could easily come to believe) life for the chosen few was elevated to an entirely new and splendid level of entitlement.

They passed under an arched gate where a life-sized stone statue seemed to note their progress with fierce disapproval.

“Plutus makes an appropriate guardian for Oxford Academy,” Sweetheart commented dryly.

“Wasn't he the Greek god of wealth?” Sylvia asked.

“He was Demeter's son. He was also the challenger in Dante Alighieri's fourth circle of hell, which was reserved especially for the greedy.”

“Terrific.”

“Lambs to the slaughter?” Sweetheart finished.

The road continued for more than a mile, past an unmanned security station, past a cluster of single-story buildings, past several discreet student parking areas filled with showcase automobiles: Corvettes, Porsches, Rollses, Bentleys.

Neither Sylvia nor Sweetheart spoke as the Mercedes crept another hundred feet to come to a standstill in front of a Spanish-style administration building. Two willow trees framed the sloping red-tiled roof. A gleaming path led from the parking lot to the building. Date palms flanked
the walkway. Clusters of hot orange ginger blossomed around each whitewashed tree trunk. Cruising his domain—three acres of lawn—a small man in safari gear, respiratory mask, and goggles straddled a sleek mower, leaving behind the faint scent of gasoline and a trail of perfectly cut quarter-inch blades of grass.

Sweetheart made no move.

Sylvia glanced at him sideways as she climbed out of the Mercedes. She leaned against warm steel. “You ran a profile on me?”

“Mmm.” The low vibrato was affirmative. He opened his door slowly, stepping out as a group of students, all male, all white, all dressed in suits and ties according to dress code, approached. Two of the younger boys glanced surreptitiously at Sylvia; one stumbled, the other punched him lightly.

After the group had passed, Sylvia said, “I'm wondering if I should feel insulted, or violated. Oh, hell, why not both?” She stooped to collect a long, dark seed pod from the manicured grass. “When did you decide you needed to treat me as one of your subjects?”

“When you agreed to participate in the evaluation of Dantes.” Sweetheart didn't look at her, but his voice held impatience. “I make it my business to know everyone in the world of terrorism. More important, I need to know who I'm working with, whether I can trust them under pressure.”

“What's the verdict?”

“You're here.

“Fair is fair,” she said slowly. “When do I see
your
profile? Because you know what? I need to know who I'm working with, too.”

He had a way of
looking
—more tactile than visual—that felt invasive.

She turned her head away. “Did you guess Dantes would connect with me?”

“Leo Carreras guessed for me. He's a very intelligent psychiatrist, a good member of the team. I respect his judgment.”

Sweetheart held out a hand for the seed pod; his fingers closed around the mahogany-toned bud. “But it's gone much further than anyone could have foreseen, Dr. Strange. You've been chosen to serve as Dantes' confessor. M won't like that.”

“No,” she agreed softly. For a moment her eyelids hooded the energy contained in her dark golden irises. Her head dipped, her mouth relaxed. She was traveling to other worlds, her thoughts caught in the past.

Then—blink, blink—she was back, looking directly at Sweetheart.

She stepped away from the Mercedes. “Master Healey should be expecting us right about now. I told him we'd make it by eleven thirty.”

Sweetheart pointed to a neatly painted sign set a few feet above the grass:
Davis Avery Gymnasium
. An arrow directed pedestrians toward a large white structure about a quarter mile in the distance.

Sylvia started forward, but she swung around when Sweetheart made no move to follow. “Waiting for an invitation?”

“Oh, I'm perfectly happy to accompany you while you talk to the former headmaster.” His smile was cold. “Or I could stay right here in case M decides to drop by.”