Angelology

by Danielle Trussoni

  As they returned to the upper level of the church, Vladimir hung back, shadowed in the recesses of the hall. His study of ethereal musicology had consumed his youth, driving him deeper and deeper into the closed world of angelological work. After the war he’d left the discipline. He had run a humble bakery, making confections and cakes, the simplicity of which gave him comfort. He had believed that his work was futile, that there was little humanity could do to stop the Nephilim. He returned only after Gabriella had come to him herself, pleading with him to join their efforts. She had said that they needed him. At the time he’d been doubtful, but Gabriella could be quite persuasive, and he could see the dark changes that had begun to occur. He could not say how he knew—perhaps it was the rigorous training of his youth or perhaps simple intuition—but Vladimir understood that Mr. Gray was not to be trusted.

  Mr. Gray walked haltingly up the central aisle of the nave, bringing Vladimir and Saitou-san into the cool dark church. The scent was instantly familiar to Vladimir, the mossy fragrance of incense filling the air. Despite innumerable stained-glass windows, the space remained dark, nearly impenetrable. Above, Gothic candelabras hung by thick ropes, oxidized-iron wheels of intricate fretwork topped with candles. A massive Gothic pulpit, ring after ring of sculpted figures climbing the sides, rose at the altar, while Christmas poinsettias, bright red ribbons tied about their pots, stood on pedestals throughout the church. Separated from the nave by a thick maroon cord, the apse lay in shadows before them.

  Mr. Gray unclipped the velvet rope and dropped it to the floor, the buckle echoing through the nave. Worked into the marble floor was a stonework labyrinth. Mr. Gray tapped his toe upon it, nervous, creating a frantic rhythm. “Mrs. Rockefeller placed it here,” Mr. Gray said, sliding his shoe over the chancel. “At the center of the labyrinth.”

  Vladimir walked the length of the pattern, examining the lay of the stones with care—it seemed impossible that anything could be hidden in it. It would have required breaking the stones, something he could not imagine that Mrs. Rockefeller, or anyone else involved in the care and preservation of art, would condone. “But how?” Vladimir asked. “It looks perfectly smooth.”

  “Ah, yes,” Mr. Gray said, moving to Vladimir’s side. “That is simply an illusion. Come, look closely.”

  Vladimir squatted to the floor and examined the marble. A thin, fine seam had been cut along the border of the central stone. “It is practically invisible,” Vladimir said.

  “Step away,” Mr. Gray said. Positioning himself over the stone, he applied pressure to its center. The stone lifted from the floor as if on springs. With a twist of his hand, Mr. Gray removed the central stone of the labyrinth.

  “Amazing,” Saitou-san said, watching over his shoulder.

  “There is nothing a fine stonemason and an abundance of funds cannot achieve,” Mr. Gray said. “You were acquainted with the late Mrs. Rockefeller?”

  “No,” Vladimir said. “Not personally.”

  “Ah, well, a pity,” Mr. Gray said. “She had a keen sense of social justice marked with the folly of a poetic nature—a combination quite rare in women of her stature. Originally she designated that when angelologists arrived to claim the object under my care, I was to lead whoever came here to the labyrinth and ask for a series of numbers. Mrs. Rockefeller assured me that whoever came would know these numbers. I have them memorized, of course.”

  “Numbers?” Vladimir said, baffled by this unexpected test.

  “Numbers, sir.” Mr. Gray gestured to the center of the labyrinth. Below the stone there was a safe, a combination lock at its center. “You will need numbers to open this. I suppose you might think of yourself as the Minotaur making your way into the stone labyrinth.” He smiled, enjoying the bafflement he had caused.

  Vladimir stared at the safe, its door perfectly flush with the floor beneath the labyrinth as Saitou-san bent over it. Saitou-san said, “How many numbers in each combination?”

  “That, I cannot tell you,” Mr. Gray said.

  Saitou-san turned each of the dials in succession. “Abigail Rockefeller’s cards were made specifically for Innocenta to decode,” she said, speaking slowly, as if searching her thoughts. “Innocenta’s responses affirmed that she had counted the lyre strings on the cards and had—I assume—written down the numbers.”

  “The sequence,” Vladimir said, “was twenty-eight, thirty, thirty-eight, and thirty-nine.”

  Saitou-san turned each of the four dials to correspond with the numbers and pulled at the safe. It didn’t open.

  “This is the only sequence of numbers we have,” Saitou-san said. “They must work in some combination.”

  “Four numbers and four dials,” Vladimir said. “That makes twenty-four different possible combinations. There is no way we can try all of them. There isn’t time.”

  “Unless,” Saitou-san said, “there was a designated order to the numbers. Do you remember the chronology in which they were given? Verlaine told us the sequence in which numbers appeared on the cards.”

  Vladimir thought for a moment. “Twenty-eight, thirty-eight, thirty, and finally thirty-nine.”

  Saitou-san moved each dial, aligning the numbers carefully. Wrapping her finger around a metal lever, she pulled the handle of the safe. It lifted without resistance, exhaling a soft gush of air. Reaching into the cavity, she withdrew a heavy bundle of green velvet and unwrapped it. The sound chest of the lyre threw waves of golden illumination over the stone labyrinth.

  “It is lovely,” Saitou-san said, turning it to examine it from all angles. The base was round. Two identical arms bowed out and then curled, like the horns of a bull. The golden surfaces were smooth and polished to a gleam. “But there are no strings.”

  “Nor is there a yoke,” Vladimir said. He knelt by Saitou-san’s side and looked at the instrument cradled in her hands. “It is just one piece of the lyre. A most important piece, but alone it is useless. This must be why we were sent to four locations. The pieces have been scattered.”

  “We need to tell the others,” Saitou-san said, carefully returning the lyre’s body to the velvet bag. “They need to know what they are looking for.”

  Vladimir turned and faced Mr. Gray, who stood trembling between them. “You didn’t know the combination. You’ve been waiting for us to come and give it to you. If you had known, you would have taken it yourself.”

  “There is no need to worry about what I know or do not know,” Mr. Gray said, his face growing red from perspiration. “The treasure belongs to neither of us.”

  “What do you mean?” Saitou-san asked, incredulous.

  “His meaning,” said a voice at the far end of the apse, a familiar voice that sent chills of terror through Vladimir, “is that the game has been over for many years. It is a game that the angelologists have lost”

  In his fright Mr. Gray’s monocle fell from his eye, and without a moment of hesitation, he scurried from the apse and into a side aisle of the nave, the fabric of his gray suit appearing and disappearing as he traversed puddles of light and shadow. Watching Mr. Gray flee, Vladimir made out bands of Gibborish creatures along the aisles of the church, their white hair and red wings visible in the dull light. The creatures turned to watch as Mr. Gray passed, avid as sunflowers to the movement of the sun. Before he could escape, however, a Gibborim seized Mr. Gray. As Vladimir watched, all doubt cleared about the nature of the meeting: The angelologists had fallen into a trap. Percival Grigori had been waiting for them.

  The last time Vladimir had met Grigori was many decades before, when Vladimir was a young protégé of Raphael Valko. He had seen firsthand the atrocities the Grigori family had perpetrated during the war. He had also witnessed the great pain they’d inflicted upon angelologists-Seraphina Valko had lost her life because of Percival Grigori’s machinations, and Gabriella had come close to dying as well. Back then Percival Grigori had cut a startling, fearsome figure. Now he was a sickly mutant.

  Grigori gestured and the Gibbor
im brought Mr. Gray forward.

  Without warning, Grigori cracked the ivory head of his cane from the shaft, twisting the steel blade of a dagger from its mooring. For a second the knife glinted in the weak light. Then, in one swift movement, Grigori stepped forward and plunged the dagger into Mr. Gray’s body. Gray’s expression changed from surprise to disbelief and then to wilting, disconsolate anguish. As Percival Grigori withdrew the knife, Mr. Gray collapsed to the floor, whimpering softly, blood collecting about him. In a matter of moments, his eyes held the watery gaze of death. As swiftly as he’d unsheathed the knife, Percival wiped it clean on a white square of silk and inserted it back into the shaft of the cane.

  Vladimir saw that Saitou-san had edged away from him with the sound chest in hand, slinking silently toward the rear of the church. By the time Percival noticed, she was within reach of the door. Percival lifted his hand and ordered the Gibborim after her. Half of the creatures turned upon her, while the remaining Gibborim stepped forward, the hems of their robes brushing against the floor as they surrounded the apse. With a second gesture, Percival instructed these creatures to take hold of Vladimir.

  Clutched tightly in their grasp, Vladimir inhaled the scent of the creatures’ skin; he felt the chill of their bodies behind him. A cool gust of air swept the nape of his neck as the creatures beat their wings, steadily, rhythmically.

  “She will take the lyre to Gabriella!” Vladimir cried, struggling against the hold of the creatures.

  Percival looked upon Vladimir with contempt. “I was hoping to see my dear Gabriella. I know that she is behind this little recovery mission. She has become quite elusive over the years.”

  Vladimir closed his eyes. He recalled that Gabriella’s infiltration into the Grigori family had been a sensation in the angelological community, the largest, most influential undercover job of the 1940s. Indeed, her work had paved the way for modern surveillance of the Nephilistic families and brought them useful information. But it had created a dangerous legacy for all of them. After so many years, Percival Grigori still wanted revenge.

  Leaning heavily upon his cane, Grigori hobbled to Vladimir. “Tell me,” he said. “Where is she?”

  Percival leaned close to Vladimir, so that he could see the purple pouches under Percival’s eyes, thick as bruises on his white skin. His teeth were perfectly even, so white they seemed plated in pearl. And yet Percival was aging—a net of fine lines had developed about his mouth. He must have reached at least three hundred years.

  “I remember you,” Percival said, narrowing his eyes as if comparing the man before him with one in his memory. “You were in my presence in Paris. I recall your face, although time has changed you almost beyond recognition. You helped Gabriella to deceive me.”

  “And you,” Vladimir said, recovering his equilibrium, “betrayed everything you believed in—your family, your ancestors. Even now you haven’t forgotten her. Tell me: How badly do you miss Gabriella Lévi-Franche?”

  “Where is she?” Percival said, staring into Vladimir’s eyes.

  “That I will never tell you,” Vladimir said, his voice catching as he spoke. He knew that with those words he had chosen to die.

  Percival released the ivory-headed cane from his grip. It fell to the floor, sending a sharp echo through the church. He placed his long, cold fingers upon Vladimir’s chest, as if to feel his heartbeat. An electrical vibration surged through Vladimir, shattering his ability to think. In the last minutes of his life, his lungs burning for air, Vladimir was drawn into the horrifying translucency of his killer’s eyes. They were pale and ringed with red, intense as a chemical fire stabilized in a frozen atmosphere.

  As Vladimir’s consciousness dissolved, he remembered the delicious sensation of the lyre’s body, heavy and cool in his hands, and how he had longed to hear its ethereal melody.

  Rockefeller Center Ice Skating Rink, Fifth Avenue, New York City

  Evangeline glanced at the rink, following the skaters’ slow, circular progress. Colored lights fell upon the glossy surface of the ice, skittering under blades and disappearing in the shadows. In the distance a tremendous Christmas tree rose against a solid gray building, its red and silver lights glinting like a million fireflies captured in a glass cone. Rows of majestic herald angels, their wings delicate and white as lily petals, stood below the tree like a legion of sentries, their wire bodies illuminated, their elongated brass trumpets raised in choral praise to the heavens. The shops along the concourse—bookstores and clothing stores, stationery shops and chocolatiers—had begun to close, sending customers into the night with gifts and shopping bags tucked under their arms.

  Pulling her overcoat close, Evangeline wrapped herself in a cocoon of warmth. She cradled the cold metal casket—the crossbars of the lyre tucked safely inside—in her hands. At her side, Bruno Bechstein and Alistair Carroll scanned the masses beyond the rink. Hundreds and hundreds of people filled the plaza. “White Christmas” played through a tiny overhead speaker, its melody punctuated by laughter from the skating rink. Fifteen minutes remained until the designated meeting time, and the others were nowhere to be found. The air was crisp, smelling of snow. Evangeline inhaled, and a fit of coughing overtook her. Her lungs were so tight she could hardly breathe. What had begun as simple discomfort in her chest had grown in the past hours to a full-blown hack. Each breath she took felt labored, giving her only the slightest bit of air.

  Alistair Carroll removed his scarf and placed it gently around Evangeline’s collar. “You are freezing, my dear,” he said. “Protect yourself from this wind.”

  “I’ve hardly noticed it,” Evangeline said, drawing the thick, soft wool about her neck. “I’m too worried to feel anything. The others should be here by now.”

  “It was at this time of year that we came to Rockefeller Center with the fourth piece of the lyre,” Alistair said. “Christmas 1944. I drove Abby here in the middle of the night and helped her through a terrible storm. Luckily, she had the foresight to call the security personnel herself, informing them that we would be coming. Their assistance proved most useful.”

  “So you are aware of what is hidden here?” Bruno said. “You’ve seen it?”

  “Oh, yes,” Alistair said. “I packed the tuning pegs of the lyre into the protective case myself. It was quite an ordeal, finding a case that would allow us to hide the pegs here, but Abby was certain that this was the best place. I carried the case in my own hands and assisted Mrs. Rockefeller in locking it away. The pegs are tiny, and so the case is merely the weight of a pocket-watch without its fob. It is so very compact that one cannot conceive that it could hold something so essential to the instrument. But it is a fact: The lyre will not produce a note without the pegs.”

  Evangeline tried to imagine the small knobs, envisioning how they fit onto the crossbar. “Do you know how to reassemble it?” Evangeline asked.

  “Like all things, there is an order one must follow,” Alistair said. “Once the crossbar is fitted into the arms of the lyre’s base, the strings must be wound about the tuning pegs, each at a certain tension. The difficulty, I believe, is in the tuning of the lyre, a skill that requires a trained ear.”

  Directing their attention to the angels collected before the Christmas tree, he added, “I assure you that the lyre looks nothing at all like the stereotypical instruments held by the herald angels. The wire angels at the base of the Christmas tree were introduced to Rockefeller Center in 1954, one year after Philip Johnson completed the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden and ten years after the treasure’s interment here. Although these lovely creatures’ appearance here was purely coincidental—Mrs. Rockefeller had passed away by then, and nobody, save myself, knew about what had been hidden here—I find the symbolism rather exquisite. It is fitting, this collection of heralds, wouldn’t you say? One feels it the moment one enters the plaza at Christmastime: Here is the treasure of the angels, waiting to be uncovered.”

  “The case was not placed near the Christm
as tree?” Evangeline asked.

  “Not at all,” Alistair replied, gesturing to the statue at the far end of the skating rink, where the statue of Prometheus rose above the rink, its smooth gilded-bronze surface wrapped in light. “The case is part of the Prometheus statue. There it lies, in its gilded prison.”

  Evangeline studied the sculpture of Prometheus. It was a soaring figure that appeared to be caught in midair. The fire stolen from the hearth of the gods blazed in his tapering fingers, and a bronze ring of the zodiac encircled his feet. Evangeline knew the myth of Prometheus well. After stealing fire from the gods, Prometheus was punished by Zeus, who bound him to a rock and sent an eagle to peck at his body for eternity. Prometheus’s punishment was equated with his crime: The gift of fire marked the beginning of human innovation and technology, harkening the gods’ growing irrelevance.

  “I have never seen the statue up close,” Evangeline said. In the light of the skating rink, the skin of the sculpture appeared molten. Prometheus and the fire he’d stolen were one incendiary entity.

  “It is no masterpiece,” Alistair said. “Nevertheless, it suits Rockefeller Center perfectly. Paul Manship was a friend of the Rockefeller family’s—they knew his work well and commissioned him to create the sculpture. There is more than a passing reference to my former employers in the myth of Prometheus—their ingenuity and ruthlessness, their trickery, their dominance. Manship knew that these references would not be lost on John D. Rockefeller Jr., who had used all his influence to build Rockefeller Center during the Great Depression.”

  “Nor are they lost on us,” Gabriella said, surprising Evangeline as she appeared among them, Verlaine at her side. “Prometheus holds fire in his hands, but thanks to Mrs. Rockefeller he holds something even more important as well.”

  “Gabriella,” Evangeline said. Relief overcame her as she hugged her grandmother. Only then, feeling Gabriella’s frail embrace, did she realize how worried she’d been.