Chapter 59
NOW THAT THEY WERE well beyond civilization, Dorion Magnus exited the pilothouse and took the ladderway down to the hurricane deck. He strolled aft, arms behind his back, heading for the ship’s bell. His mind was clouded with thoughts roused by this fellow, Pendergast.
The thunderheads, he noted, were boiling up rapidly.
The weather report had predicted late-evening thunderstorms, and Magnus could spy some distant flashes of lightning, still too far away to hear.
It certainly felt like one of those humid, still summer evenings that preceded a storm.
He was not concerned: they were well protected from sea swell in these channels, and though refitting was still in progress, the boat was as tight and dry as on the day of its original launch.
He felt the boat begin a slow turn, heard the splashing of the paddle wheel as the three rudders swung to starboard, directing them into the channel leading to Goose Island Outside Pond.
It was a tight channel, and LaGrange was taking it slow.
Looking forward, Magnus could make out the channel that would take them to that distant pond, the water lying as still as a sheet of ebony in the darkening twilight.
… And now, glancing up, he noted the appearance of Venus in the western sky; the evening star, named after the goddess of love and beauty.
It was indeed beautiful, the brightest object in the night sky after the moon.
But even as he watched, the leading ledge of the storm blotted it out.
A dark, stormy night was precisely what he needed to securely dispose of two bodies.
On such a night, no stray fisherman would be lingering unseen in the distant channels.
He now strolled past a longboat and jolly boat stored near the stern under tarpaulin covers and took the ladderway down to the stateroom deck.
He walked forward, admiring the glistening mahogany doors of the newly refurbished staterooms, past the grand dining room—yet to be completed—to the double doors to the glassed-in saloon.
He entered the magnificent space and settled into the leather of his favorite banquette.
Mako John, his first mate, was standing watch at one of the windows.
Magnus signaled the man to bring him his usual from the bar.
He waited, tapping his finger on the mahogany table, until his drink arrived, and then took a deep draft. Pendergast. He had gone to some trouble digging into the man’s past and had been astonished at what he’d found—as well as what he’d not found.
It wasn’t merely this Pendergast of his acquaintance who was striking; his entire family, going back generations, was an assortment of mountebanks, criminals, quack doctors, madmen, and murderers.
And his brother, Diogenes—there was surprisingly little hard information on the fellow, but reading between the lines Magnus could tell he was a piece of work, to be sure.
It raised an interesting question: how in the world had a man like Pendergast become an FBI agent?
And why? The man was rich as Croesus, with more money than even Magnus himself.
Yet here he was, toiling as a junior agent under the thumb of an unexceptional man like Chambers, who—while not stupid—had an intellect dwarfed by Pendergast’s.
The man was a cipher… and a troubling one at that.
Their conversation in the saloon before and after the death of Chambers, though it would have seemed civil enough to an onlooker, had been, beneath the surface, a most serious battle of wills.
Magnus had never encountered a mind so resistant and devious, so slippery and evasive to his PSI powers—and it once again made him wonder if those powers might perhaps be waning.
After all, there was no precedent for what that experiment had done to him, and thus there was no case history to go by.
Either way, the confrontation had put him out of sorts.
He needed some time with Pendergast in proximity, to probe, push, unlock the mysteries of his mind—and to reassure himself this was a unicorn; a singular event.
But it could wait until he reached his destination; by then, his mind would be at peace again, and when the interrogation reached its end the body could be quickly and permanently dispatched.
Magnus turned his attention back to the passing landscape.
Spanish Island was hard by their starboard side, and Goose Island was coming up.
He could see the small notch that marked the channel leading to the isolated, rarely visited body of water called Goose Island Outside Pond: a perfect destination for the purposes Magnus had in mind.