The Obsidian Chamber by Douglas Preston

Author:Douglas Preston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2016-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

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FOR MANY YEARS, Diogenes Pendergast had scrupulously maintained four different and fully realized false identities. In certain ways, for him, they had actually become real, allowing him to become another person, but one that could act out various expressions or aspects of his complicated personality. Being able to slip into another identity was a kind of relief valve, a vacation from his own tortured and complicated self.

These personalities had been diverting to set up, develop, and curate. Creating a new identity in this digital age had at times proven a challenge, but once completed, maintaining the digital trail was easy. It required more than computer work, however: it required his physical presence. Keeping his doppelgängers up to date and busy, with visible and productive lives—and no suspicious gaps—took up a great deal of his time. That, along with establishing Halcyon, had provided the lion’s share of his life’s interest and amusement. Two of his identities had been “parked,” for want of a better word, in the United States; the other was in Eastern Europe, where anonymity was easier to buy and maintain. This last identity he had recently allowed to go dormant, as it would no longer be necessary.

He had lost his favorite identity—that of Hugo Menzies, curator at the New York Museum of Natural History—during the events that culminated in the disaster atop the Stromboli volcano. He deeply regretted the loss: Menzies had been the first of his false identities and one that he had devoted enormous effort to maintaining, a distinguished staff member of a great museum. After Stromboli, of course, he had been forced to focus his attention for several months on merely clinging to life. But now, restored to health, he had been able to revisit the two remaining false identities and ensure they were intact, updated, and uncompromised—with suitable explanations for their absences during his recovery.

Petru Lupei was the remaining identity of longest standing. But the other identity would now prove of particular use to him. For the last eleven years, he had been (among other things) Dr. Walter Leyland, physician, living in Clewiston, Florida, on the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee. Clewiston was far enough away from such major population centers as Palm Beach and Miami to make his fiction easier to maintain. He had a deep knowledge of medicine as a result of his studies; Dr. Leyland was single, and he had a private practice catering to a limited number of wealthy clients; he spent most of his time abroad, donating his services to Médecins Sans Frontières—and as a result he was an infrequently seen, but respected, member of the Clewiston community. It had been remarkable, actually, how naively the professional community had accepted his bona fides at face value. More to the point, he had arranged a history of accreditation—medical school, a pathology residency, a forensic pathology fellowship—that allowed him to, under certain circumstances, act as a substitute consulting medical examiner for Hendry County.

His aim in doing so had been to get

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