Douglas Preston - Brimstone

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2004 by Lincoln Child and Splendide Mendax, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Original poetry on print book page 169 is from The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats 1921.

Original lyrics on print book page 122 are from Burning Love by Dennis Linde 1972 BMG Entertainment.

Original poetry on print book pages 197-98 is from Paterson by William Carlos Williams 1992 by Christopher McGowan.

Count Isidor Ottavio Baldassare Fosco is a character from the novel The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, first published in 1860.

Warner Books

Hachette Book Group, USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroupUSA.com.

First eBook Edition: August 2004

ISBN: 978-0-759-51206-1

Relic

Mount Dragon

Reliquary

Riptide

Thunderhead

The Ice Limit

The Cabinet of Curiosities

Still Life with Crows

BY DOUGLAS PRESTON

Dinosaurs in the Attic

Cities of Gold

Jennie

Talking to the Ground

The Royal Road

The Codex

BY LINCOLN CHILD

Utopia

Death Match

Dark Company

Dark Banquet

Tales of the Dark 1-3

Douglas Preston
dedicates this book to
Barry and Jody Turkus.

Lincoln Child
dedicates this book to
his daughter, Veronica.

Lincoln Child would like to thank Bruce Swanson, Mark Mendel, Pat Allocco, Chris and Susan Yango, Jerry and Terry Hyland, Anthony Cifelli, M.D., Norman San Agustin, M.D., and Lee Suckno, M.D., for their friendship and assistance. Ongoing thanks to Special Agent Douglas Margini for his advice on New York, New Jersey, and federal law enforcement matters. Thanks to Jill Nowak for an insightful reading of the text. Bob Przybylski was very useful in nailing down some of the firearms details. Thanks also to Monsignor Bob Diacheck for reading and commenting on the manuscript. Thanks to my family, nuclear and extended, for putting up with an eccentric writer. Special thanks to my wife, Luchie, and my daughter, Veronica, for their love and support.

Douglas Preston is greatly indebted to Alessandro Lazzi, who kindly invited me to observe a wild boar hunt on his estate in the Tuscan Apennines. I thank Mario Spezi for providing much useful information on the workings of the Italian carabinieri and criminal investigation in general. I would like to express my appreciation to Mario Alfiero for his help with Neapolitan dialect. Some of the settings in the novel would not have been possible without the kind help of many people: in particular, the Cappellini family, owners of the Castello di Verrazzano in Greve; the Matta family, proprietors of Castello Vicchiomaggio; the monks of La Verna and Sacro Speco, Subiaco. I would also like to thank Niccol Capponi for his help and our Italian translator, Andrea Carlo Cappi, for his advice and support. I thank Andrea Pinketts for the lending of his illustrious name. And last but not least, once again I thank my family, who can never be thanked enough: Isaac, Aletheia, Selene, and Christine.

And, as always, we want to thank in particular those people who make the Preston-Child novels possible: Jaime Levine, Jamie Raab, Eric Simonoff, Eadie Klemm, and Matthew Snyder.

In closing, we would like to distance ourselves from any misinterpretation of scripture by Wayne P. Buck, or any misapplication of the golden ratio by Professor Von Menck. All persons, police departments, corporations, institutions, governmental agencies, and locations both American and Italian mentioned in this novel are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

Agnes Torres parked her white Ford Escort in the little parking area outside the hedge and stepped into the cool dawn air. The hedges were twelve feet high and as impenetrable as a brick wall; only the shingled peak of the big house could be seen from the street. But she could hear the surf thundering and smell the salt air of the invisible ocean beyond.

Agnes carefully locked the carit paid to be careful, even in this neighborhoodand, fumbling with the massive set of keys, found the right one and stuck it into the lock. The heavy sheet-metal gate swung inward, exposing a broad expanse of green lawn that swept three hundred yards down to the beach, flanked by two dunes. A red light on a keypad just inside the gate began blinking, and she entered the code with nervous fingers. She had thirty seconds before the sirens went off. Once, she had dropped her keys and couldnt punch in the code in time, and the thing had awakened practically the whole town and brought three police cars. Mr. Jeremy had been so angry she thought he would breathe fire. It had been awful.

Agnes punched the last button and the light turned green. She breathed a sigh of relief, locked the gate, and paused to cross herself. Then she drew out her rosary, held the first bead reverently between her fingers. Fully armed now, she turned and began waddling across the lawn on short, thick legs, walking slowly to allow herself time to intone the Our Fathers, the Hail Marys, and the Glory Bes in quiet Spanish. She always said a decade on her rosary when entering the Grove Estate.

The vast gray house loomed in front of her, a single eyebrow window in the roof peak frowning like the eye of a Cyclops, yellow against the steel gray of the house and sky. Seagulls circled above, crying restlessly.

Agnes was surprised. She never remembered that light on before. What was Mr. Jeremy doing in the attic at seven oclock in the morning? Normally he didnt get out of bed until noon.

Finishing her prayers, she replaced the rosary and crossed herself again: a swift, automatic gesture, made with a rough hand that had seen decades of domestic work. She hoped Mr. Jeremy wasnt still awake. She liked to work in an empty house, and when he was up, everything was so unpleasant: the cigarette ashes he dropped just behind her mop, the dishes he heaped in the sink just after she had washed, the comments and the endless swearing to himself, into the phone or at the newspaper, always followed by a harsh laugh. His voice was like a rusty knifeit cut and slashed the air. He was thin and mean and stank of cigarettes and drank brandy at lunch and entertained sodomites at all hours of the day and night. Once he had tried to speak Spanish with her but she had quickly put an end to that. Nobody spoke Spanish to her except family and friends, and Agnes Torres spoke English perfectly well enough.

On the other hand, Agnes had worked for many people in her life, and Mr. Jeremy was very correct with her employment. He paid her well, always on time, he never asked her to stay late, never changed her schedule, and never accused her of stealing. Once, early on, he had blasphemed against the Lord in her presence, and she had spoken to him about it, and he had apologized quite civilly and had never done it again.

She came up the curving flagstone path to the back door, inserted a second key, and once again fumbled nervously with the keypad, turning off the internal alarm.

The house was gloomy and gray, the mullioned windows in front looking out on a long seaweed-strewn beach to an angry ocean. The sound of the surf was muffled here and the house was hot. Unusually hot.