The sixth book in the Pendergast series

At Warner Books, we would like to thank the following: Jamie Raab, Larry Kirshbaum, Maureen Egen, Devi Pillai, Christine Barba and the Sales Team, Karen Torres and Marketing, Martha Otis and the Advertising and Promotions Department, Jennifer Romanello, Dan Rosen, Maja Thomas, Flag Tonuzi, Bob Castillo, Penina Sacks, Jim Spivey, Miriam Parker, Beth de Guzman, and Les Pockell.

A special thanks to our editor, Jaime Levine, for being a tireless champion of the Preston-Child novels. We owe much of our success to her fine editing, enthusiasm, and advocacy.

Thanks also to our agents, Eric Simonoff at Janklow Nesbit, and Matthew Snyder of Creative Artists Agency. Garlands of laurel leaves to Special Agent Douglas Margini, Jon Couch, John Rogan, and Jill Nowak, for their diverse and sundry ministrations.

And, as always, we want to thank our wives and children for their love and support.

It goes without saying that the characters, corporations, events, locales, police precincts, periodicals, museums, and governmental bodies described on these pages are all fictitious, or are used fictiously.

Dewayne Michaels sat in the second row of the lecture hall, staring at the professor with what he hoped passed for interest. His eyelids were so heavy they felt as if lead sinkers had been sewn to them. His head pounded in rhythm with his heart and his tongue tasted like something had curled up and died on it. He'd arrived late, only to find the huge hall packed and just one seat available: second row center, smack-dab in front of the lectern. Just great.

Dewayne was majoring in electrical engineering. He'd elected this class for the same reason engineering students had done so for three decades-it was a gimme. "English Literature-A Humanist Perspective" had always been a course you could breeze through and barely crack a book. The usual professor, a fossilized old turd named Mayhew, droned on like a hypnotist, hardly ever looking up from his forty-year-old lecture notes, his voice perfectly pitched for sleeping. The old fart never even changed his exams, and copies were all over Dewayne's dorm. Just his luck, then, that-for this one semester- a certain renowned Dr. Torrance Hamilton was teaching the course. It was as if Eric Clapton had agreed to play the junior prom, the way they fawned over Hamilton.

Dewayne shifted disconsolately. His butt had already fallen asleep in the cold plastic seat. He glanced to his left, to his right. All around, students-upperclassmen, mostly-were typing notes, running microcassette recorders, hanging on the professor's every word. It was the first time ever the course had been filled to capacity. Not an engineering student in sight.

What a crock.

Dewayne reminded himself he still had a week to drop the course. But he needed this credit and it was still possible Professor Hamilton was an easy grader. Hell, all these students wouldn't have shown up on a Saturday morning if they thought they were going to get reamed out… would they?

In the meantime, front and center, Dewayne figured he'd better make an effort to look awake.

Hamilton walked back and forth on the podium, his deep voice ringing. He was like a gray lion, his hair swept back in a mane, dressed in a snazzy charcoal suit instead of the usual threadbare set of tweeds. He had an unusual accent, not local to New Orleans, certainly not Yankee. Didn't exactly sound English, either. A teaching assistant sat in a chair behind the professor, assiduously taking notes.

"And so," Dr. Hamilton was saying, "today we're looking at Eliot's The Waste Land-the poem that packaged the twentieth century in all its alienation and emptiness. One of the greatest poems ever written."

The Waste Land. Dewayne remembered now. What a title. He hadn't bothered to read it, of course. Why should he? It was a poem, not a damn novel: he could read it right now, in class.

He picked up the book of T. S. Eliot's poems-he'd borrowed it from a friend, no use wasting good money on something he'd never look at again-and opened it. There, next to the title page, was a photo of the man himself: a real weenie, tiny little granny glasses, lips pursed like he had two feet of broomstick shoved up his ass. Dewayne snorted and began turning pages. Waste Land, Waste Land… here it was.

Oh, shit. This was no limerick. The son of a bitch went on for page after page.

"The first lines are by now so well known that it's hard for us to imagine the sensation-the shock-that people felt upon first reading it in The Dial in 1922. This was not what people considered poetry. It was, rather, a kind of anti-poem. The persona of the poet was obliterated. To whom belong these grim and disturbing thoughts? There is, of course, the famously bitter allusion to Chaucer in the opening line. But there is much more going on here. Reflect on the opening images: 'lilacs out of the dead land,' 'dull roots,' 'forgetful snow.' No other poet in the history of the world, my friends, ever wrote about spring in quite this way before."

Dewayne flipped to the end of the poem, found it contained over four hundred lines. Oh, no. No…

"It's intriguing that Eliot chose lilacs in the second line, rather than poppies, which would have been a more traditional choice at the time. Poppies were then growing in an abundance Europe hadn't seen for centuries, due to the numberless putrefying corpses from the Great War. But more important, the poppy-with its connotations of narcotic sleep-seems the better fit to Eliot's imagery. So why did Eliot choose lilacs? Let's take a look at Eliot's use of allusion, here most likely involving Whitman's 'When Lilacs Last in the Door-yard Bloom'd.'"

Oh, my God, it was like a nightmare: here he was in the front of the class and not understanding a word the professor was saying. Who'd have thought you could write four hundred lines of poetry on a freaking waste land? Speaking of wasted, his head felt like it was packed full of ball bearings. Served him right for hanging out until four last night, doing shots of citron Grey Goose.

He realized the class around him had gone still, and that the voice from behind the lectern had fallen silent. Glancing up at Dr. Hamilton, he noticed the professor was standing motionless, a strange expression on his face. Elegant or not, the old fellow looked as if he'd just dropped a steaming loaf in his drawers. His face had gone strangely slack. As Dewayne watched, Hamilton slowly withdrew a handkerchief, carefully patted his forehead, then folded the handkerchief neatly and returned it to his pocket. He cleared his throat.

"Pardon me," he said as he reached for a glass of water on the lectern, took a small sip. "As I was saying, let's look at the meter Eliot employs in this first section of the poem. His free verse is aggressively enjambed: the only stopped lines are those that finish his sentences. Note also the heavy stressing of verbs: breeding, mixing, stirring. It's like the ominous, isolated beat of a drum; it's ugly; it shatters the meaning of the phrase; it creates a sense of disquietude. It announces to us that something's going to happen in this poem, and that it won't be pretty."