Page 62 of Angel of Vengeance
Now Pendergast looked on as Leng sauntered into the room and took a seat in a wing chair. He adjusted himself, took out a cigar, trimmed and lit it, then settled back, turning intently toward Pendergast. The guards backed off, rifles leveled.
“I’m sorry,” Leng said. “I’d offer you a seat—but you’re a slippery devil, and I can’t feel easy unless you’re chained to that post. Now, we are going to have a rather important conversation. Are you ready?”
While Leng was speaking, Pendergast noticed in his peripheral vision the flash of a single violet eye. It was shrouded in darkness, peering out for a brief moment from a tiny hole formed in the library’s intricate wallpaper. Then it vanished—and where it had been, only wallpaper remained.
55
ENOCH LENG SET DOWN his cigar and removed a notebook from his pocket, into which Humblecut’s long telegram, cut into leaves, had been bound. He opened it and began perusing it, turning pages covered with his own extensive notations in a tiny, perfect hand.
“Well, well, Aloysius,” he said. Then he added: “May I call you Aloysius? You may call me Enoch. That is the name I prefer now. We are, after all, blood relatives.” He smiled at Pendergast. “But I’m not quite clear how we’re related. My father was Hezekiah Pendergast… who must have been, let’s see, your great-great-grandfather?”
Pendergast said nothing.
Leng took a long moment to examine Pendergast. It was the first time he’d really had a chance to examine the man at leisure, and he was somewhat unsettled by the resemblance to himself, and by the keen intelligence evident in those silver eyes; the lean physique; the patrician visage. He was indeed a Pendergast, through and through. All the more reason to take the most extreme care.
“Since I have no children,” Leng continued, “and have no intention of fathering any, you must be descended from one of my brothers. Comstock? Maurice? Or… Boethius?” He leaned forward, gazing into those silvery eyes, but could not interpret the expression. “I would guess Boethius. He’s the only one who has married so far. Atia is the name of his wife, and they just had a strange little child named Cornelia. Atia must be your great-grandmother. Which makes you my great-grandnephew. And I, your great-granduncle.” He smiled. “So glad that’s settled.”
Pendergast remained silent.
“Amazing how the Pendergast likeness follows the generations.”
Sitting back, he took a long, slow puff on his cigar, laid it down in the ashtray, and crossed his legs. “Now, Aloysius, are you in the frame of mind for this important—indeed, for you, decisive—conversation? How it goes will determine whether you and your associates live or die. If you plan on remaining silent, I shall have you taken back to your cell immediately, so no more of my time will be wasted—and you will all be disposed of accordingly.”
“I do not object to a conversation,” said Pendergast coolly.
“A wise decision. Have you guessed my plans?”
“You wish to extinct the human race.”
At this, Leng gave a little laugh. “Wrong. The word isn’t ‘extinct.’ The word is ‘cleanse.’”
“What do you mean by that?”
“The idea is to eliminate the vast bulk of humanity, leaving behind a small group to continue the species in a superior way. Purified. Decontaminated. Perfected.”
“And you, naturally, are to be part of this small group.”
“Naturally. Do you think my plan is evil?”
“Is the mass murder of innocents evil?”
Leng smiled broadly. “Human beings—innocents? I think not.” He licked his finger, turned another page in the notebook. “Let us review the century to come, the twentieth, and what will happen. It featured two so-called world wars, correct?”
“Yes.”
“In the first, forty million people died. In the second, eighty million. Correct?”
“Approximately.”
“Among the dead were six million Jews, murdered in a coldly systematic and scientific way by Germany under a man named Hitler, in an attempt to eradicate an entire people. Men, women, children, helpless old people, babies—everyone. And it went beyond Jews: Romani, homosexuals, the retarded… Anyone considered genetically or intellectually inferior was liquidated. Correct?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“The second war was ended by the use of a new weapon called an atomic bomb, which killed two hundred thousand people in just two explosions. After that, an even more devastating weapon called the hydrogen bomb was developed, which in your current day a dozen or so countries possess. Correct?”
“Where are you going with this inquisition?”
“You know perfectly well where I’m going. Also in that century of yours, there was a man named Stalin, who killed nine million of his countrymen. Another named Pol Pot, who killed a third of the entire population of his country, and a man named Mao, who killed forty to eighty million in China—through mass starvation, prison camps, and executions. A truly staggering figure. Again, correct me if I’m wrong.”