Free Reliquary by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child Page A

it’s not what you think, either. These aren’t just a handful of burnt-out mainliners. There’re some pretty radicalized people down there, whole communities, Vietnam vets, ex-cons, hardcore SDS remnants, parole violators. There’s nothing they hate more than cops. We’ll need at least a squad.”
    D’Agosta found himself growing irritated at her brusque, disrespectful tone. “Look, Hayward, we’re not talking about D day here. We’re talking about a quiet peek. I’m going out on a limb as it is. If it looks like something, then we can make it official.”
    Hayward said nothing.
    “And Hayward? If I hear any talk about this little party of ours, I’ll know where it came from.”
    Hayward stood up, smoothed her dark blue trousers, straightened her service belt. “Understood.”
    “I knew it would be.” D’Agosta stood up, exhaling a jet of smoke in the direction of the NO SMOKING sign. He watched as Hayward glanced at the cigar with either disdain or disapproval, he wasn’t sure which. “Care for one?” he asked sarcastically, sliding another out of his breast pocket.
    For the first time, Hayward’s lips twitched in what might almost have been a smile. “Thanks, but no thanks. Not after what happened to my uncle.” “What was that?”
    “Mouth cancer. They had to cut his lips off.” D’Agosta watched as Hayward turned on her heel and walked quickly out of his office. He noticed she hadn’t bothered to say good-bye. He also noticed that, suddenly, the cigar didn’t taste as good anymore.

= 8 =
    He sat in the listening darkness, unmoving.
    Although the chamber was devoid of light, his eyes flicked from surface to surface, lingering with a loving glance on each object they encountered. It was still a novelty; he could sit motionless for hours, enjoying the marvelous acuteness of his own senses.
    Now he closed his eyes and allowed himself to listen to the distant sounds of the city. Slowly, from the background murmur, he sorted out the various strands of conversation, filtering the nearest and loudest from those more distant, many rooms or even floors away. Then those, too, faded into the haze of his concentration, and he could hear the faint scamperings and squeals of the mice as they carried out their own secret cycles of life within the walls. At times he thought he could hear the sound of the earth itself, rolling and churning, swathed in its atmosphere.
    Later--he was not sure how much later--the hunger started again. Not a hunger exactly, but the feeling of something missing: a deep craving, unlocalized, subtle for the time being. He never allowed the craving time to grow.
    Standing quickly, he stepped across the laboratory, surefooted in the blackness. Turning on one of the gas spigots along the far wall, he lit the attached nozzle with a sparker, then positioned a retort of distilled water over the burner. As the water heated, he reached into a secret pocket sewn into the lining of his coat and withdrew a slender metal capsule. Unscrewing its end, he poured a trace of powder onto the surface of the water. Had there been light, the powder would have shone the color of light jade. As the temperature rose, a thin cloud began to spread downward from the surface until the entire retort became a miniature storm of roiling liquid.
    He turned off the heat, then emptied the distillate into a Pyrex beaker. This was the point at which the decoction should be placed between the hands, the mind emptied, the ritual movements performed, the caressing vapor allowed to rise and fill the nostrils. But he could never wait; once again, he felt his palate burn as he swallowed the liquid greedily. He laughed to himself, amused at his own inability to follow the precepts he had set so sternly for others.
    Even before he was seated again, the hollow feeling was gone, and the long slow rush had started: a flush that began in his extremities, then spread inward until it seemed that the very core of his being was on