Brimstone (Pendergast #5)(151)
A dark furor passed over Fosco’s face, rapidly clearing as Pinketts carried in the next course, a bistecca fiorentina, sizzling from the fire. Fosco carved off a piece of almost raw meat, placed it in his mouth, chewed.
“I was perfectly willing to buy it from Bullard, even paying a handsome price, despite the fact it was mine to begin with. But I never got to the point of making an offer. You see, Bullard was going to destroy the violin.”
“To crack Stradivari’s secret formulas once and for all.”
“Exactly. And do you know why?”
“I know Bullard was not in the business of making violins, nor did he have any interest in music.”
“True. But do you know the business his company, BAI, was into? With the Chinese?”
Pendergast did not reply.
“Missiles, my dear Pendergast. He was working on ballistic missiles. That’s why he needed the violin!”
“Bullshit!” D’Agosta interjected. “There can’t possibly be a connection between a three-hundred-year-old violin and a ballistic missile.”
Fosco ignored this. He was still looking at Pendergast. “I sense you know rather more than you let on, my good sir. In any case, I penetrated their laboratory with a mole in my employ. Poor fellow ended up with his head crushed. But before that happened, he did tell me just what Bullard planned to do with the violin.”
He leaned forward, eyes flashing with indignation. “The Chinese, you see, had developed a ballistic missile that could theoretically penetrate the United States’ planned antimissile shield. But they had a problem with their missiles breaking up on re-entry. To make the missile invisible to radar, you know, one can’t have any curved or shiny surfaces. Look at the strange angular shapes of your stealth fighters and bombers. But this wasn’t a bomber flying at six hundred miles an hour: this was a ballistic missile re-entering the atmosphere at ten times that speed. Their test missiles broke up under uncontrollable resonance vibrations during atmospheric re-entry.”
Pendergast nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Bullard’s scientists realized the solution to this problem lay in the Stradivari formula for the varnish. Can you imagine? You see, the key to the Stradivari varnish is that, after a few years of playing, it develops billions of microscopic cracks and flaws, too small to be seen. These are phenomenally effective in dampening and warming the sound of a Stradivari. This is also why the violin must be played regularly—otherwise, the cracks and flaws start knitting back up. Bullard was designing a high-performance coating for those Chinese missiles that would do the same thing—a coating that would have billions of microscopic flaws to dampen the vibrational resonance of re-entry. But he had to figure out precisely what the physics was, why those cracks and flaws did what they did. He had to know how they were distributed three-dimensionally in the varnish; how they made contact with the wood; how wide, long, and deep they were; how they connected to each other.”
Fosco stopped talking long enough to eat some more steak and sip his wine.
“To do that, Bullard needed to cut up a golden period Strad. Any would do, but none were for sale—especially to him. And then along came the black-market Stormcloud. Ecco fatto!”
D’Agosta stared in mingled repulsion and disbelief as the count wiped his red and greasy lips on an oversize napkin. It seemed outrageous, impossible.
“Now you see, Pendergast, why I needed to go to such lengths. It was worth a billion to Bullard on the Chinese deal alone. With more money to come as he resold the technology to a host of other eager buyers. I had to get the violin quickly, before he destroyed it. He had already brought it to his Italian laboratory, where it was guarded under truly impenetrable security. And that’s when it came to me. I’d use the only leverage I had: our first and only encounter, thirty years ago. I’d frighten Bullard into giving up the violin!”
“Through murdering the others who had been at the staged devil raising.”
“Yes. I would kill Grove, Beckmann, and Cutforth, making it look in each case like the devil had finally come for their souls. Beckmann seemed to have disappeared, so that left only Grove and Cutforth. Only two. Whatever I did, it had to be utterly convincing. Bullard was an ignorant, blustering man with few religious impulses. I needed a way to kill them that was so unique and dreadful that the police would be baffled, that would generate all kinds of talk about the devil—and most important, that would convince Bullard. It had to be heat, naturally. And that was how I came to invent my little device. But that is another story.”
He paused for another sip of wine.
“I prepared the scene of Grove’s death with great care. I began by calling and alarming him with a story of a terrible visitation I’d had; how I feared Lucifer was coming for us because of the ceremony years before, how we had to do something. He was skeptical at first, so I had Pinketts set up a few bits of stage business in his house. Strange sounds, smells, and the like. Remarkable how a few props can undermine the conviction of even the most arrogant man. He grew frightened. I suggested some kind of atonement for his sins; hence, the peculiar dinner party. I loaned him my beloved cross. The poor fool gave me the keys to his house, the codes to the alarm system—everything I needed.
“His death worked like a charm. Almost immediately Bullard was on the phone to me. I was careful to ensure all my calls were made from an untraceable phone card. I continued playing the role of terrified count. I told him of strange things that had happened to me, sulfurous smells, disembodied sounds, uncomfortable tingling sensations—all the things, of course, that would happen to him later. I pretended to be convinced the devil was coming for all of us: after all, we had offered our souls in the compact we made thirty years before. The devil had completed his side of the bargain; now it was time for us to fulfill ours.