The Charlie Parker Collection 5-8: The Black Angel, The Unquiet, The Reapers, The Lovers

by John Connolly

  “That’s two pieces, excluding Fontfroide.”

  “Three more pieces, one from Bohemia, one from Italy, and another from England, have been missing for centuries. The contents of the Italian section have long been common knowledge, but the rest are almost certainly in the wrong hands. Yesterday, we received information that a fragment, possibly the missing piece from Fontfroide, may have been acquired in Georgia. Two veterans of World War Two were found dead in a swamp. It’s not clear how they died, but both were survivors of an attack by SS soldiers near Fontfroide, the same SS soldiers who were subsequently killed at the monastery.”

  “Was Stuckler responsible for the deaths of the veterans?”

  “He may have been, although it would be out of character for him. We believe that he has at least one fragment, and possibly more. He is certainly driven in his quest.”

  I couldn’t see Murnos colluding in the deaths of two old men. He didn’t seem like the type.

  “Is Stuckler a Believer?”

  “We have no evidence to suggest that he is, but they keep themselves well hidden. It is entirely possible that Stuckler is one of them, or he may even be a renegade, one who has chosen to take his chances against his fellows.”

  “So it could be that he’s competing with them for possession of this map?”

  “A fragment is due to be auctioned this week at an obscure auction house in Boston run by a woman named Claudia Stern. It is our understanding that this is the Sedlec fragment, although we cannot prove it. The map and the box went missing from Sedlec before a proper examination could be made, and their authenticity verified. We have investigated the possibility of taking legal action to stop the sale until its provenance can be determined, but we have been instructed that any such attempt would fail. We have no proof that it was taken from Sedlec, or that the Cistercian order has any claim to its ownership. Soon, all the pieces will be available for examination; and then they will go hunting for the statue.”

  I watched them leave as the evening grew dark and quiet. I hadn’t learned as much as I had hoped, but neither had they. We were still circling one another, wary of giving too much away. I had not mentioned Sekula to Reid and Bartek, but Angel and Louis had taken on the task of checking out his office once they returned to New York. If they found out anything more, then they would tell me.

  I closed the door and called Rachel on her cell. My call went straight to her message system. I thought about trying her parents’ number, but I didn’t want to have to deal with Frank or Joan. Instead, I walked Walter along the marshes, but when we came to a copse of trees at the farthest extreme of the woods he would go no further, and grew agitated until we turned back to the house. The moon was already visible in the sky, and it was reflected in the waters of the little pond, like the face of a drowned man hanging in its depths.

  Reid and Bartek drove toward 1-95. They did not speak until they were heading south on the interstate.

  “Why didn’t you tell him?” asked Bartek.

  “I told him enough, maybe too much.”

  “You lied to him. You said that you didn’t know what it meant to be ‘found.’”

  “These people are deluded.”

  “Brightwell isn’t like the rest. He’s different. How can it be otherwise, the way he keeps reappearing, unchanged?”

  “Let them believe what they want to believe, Brightwell included. There’s no point in worrying him more than he is. The man already looks weighed down by his burdens. Why should we add to them?”

  Bartek stared out the window. Great mounds of earth had been torn up for the widening of the highway. Trees lay fallen, waiting to be cut up and transported. The outlines of digging equipment were visible against the darkening sky, like beasts frozen in the midst of some great conflict.

  No, he thought. It’s more than a delusion. It’s not merely the statue that they’ve been seeking.

  He spoke carefully. Reid had a temper, and he didn’t want him sulking in the driver’s seat for the rest of the journey.

  “He will have to be told, regardless of any other problems he may have,” he said. “They’ll come back, because of who they believe he is. And they’ll hurt him.”

  Ahead of them, the Kennebunk exit was approaching. Bartek could see the parking lot of the rest stop, and the lights of the fast food outlets. They were in the fast lane, a big rig on their inside.

  “Bugger,” said Reid. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought you along.”

  He floored the accelerator, cut in front of the truck, and made the exit. Seconds later they were heading back the way that they had come.

  Walter was already barking by the time their car pulled up. He had learned to respond to the warning noises from the motion sensor at the gate. Now that Rachel was gone, I had opened the gun safe and placed one gun in the hall stand and another in the kitchen. The third, the Smith 10, I tried to keep close to hand wherever I was. I watched the big priest come to the door. The younger one stayed by the car watching the road.

  “Lose your way?” I said as I opened the door.

  “A long time ago,” said Reid. “Is there somewhere we can go to eat? I’m starving.”

  I took them to the Great Lost Bear. I liked the Bear. It was unpretentious and inexpensive, and I didn’t want to be stiffed on a pricey meal by a pair of monks. We ordered hot wings, and burgers and fries. Reid seemed impressed by the selection of beers and went for some British import that looked like it had been bottled in the time of Shakespeare.

  “So where were you stricken by remorse at your dishonesty?” I asked.

  Reid shot Bartek a poisonous look.

  “The voice of my bloody conscience started up somewhere beside a Burger King,” he said.

  “It wasn’t quite the road to Damascus,” said Bartek, “but then you’re no Saint Paul, apart from a shared bad temper.”

  “As you seem aware, I wasn’t entirely forthcoming about certain matters,” said Reid. “My young colleague here appears to feel that we should make clear the risks that you’re facing, and what Brightwell meant by your being ‘found.’ I stand by what I said earlier: they’re deluded, and they want others to share their delusions. They can believe what they want to believe, and you don’t have to go along with it, but I now accept that those beliefs can still be a threat to you.

  “It goes back to the apocrypha, and the fall of the angels. God forces the rebels from heaven, and they burn in their descent. They are banished to hell, but some choose instead to wander the nascent earth, consumed by hatred of God and, eventually, the growing hordes of humanity that they see around them. They identify what they believe to be the flaw in God’s creation: God has given man free will, and so he is open to evil as well as good. So the war against God continues on earth, waged through men. I suppose you could term it guerrilla warfare, in a way.

  “But not all of the angels turned their backs on God. According to Enoch, there was one who repented and believed that he could still be forgiven. The others tried to hunt him down, but he hid himself among men. The salvation he sought never came, but he continued to believe in the possibility that it might be offered to him if he made reparation for all that he had done. He did not lose faith. After all, his offense was great, and his punishment had to be great in return. He was prepared to endure whatever was visited upon him in the hope of his ultimate salvation. So our friends, these Believers, are of the opinion that this last angel is still out there, somewhere, and they hate him almost as much as they hate God himself.”

  Found.

  “They want to kill him?”

  “According to their tenets, he can’t be killed. If they kill him, they lose him again. He wanders, finds a new form, and the search has to start over.”

  “So what are their options?”

  “To corrupt him, to make him despair so that he joins their ranks again; or they can imprison him forever, lock him up somewhere so that he weakens and wastes away, yet can never enjoy the release of death. He will e
ndure an eternity of slow, living decay. An appalling thought, if nothing else.”

  “You see,” said Bartek, “God is merciful. That is what I believe, that is what Martin believes, and that is what, according to Enoch, the solitary angel believed. God would even have forgiven Judas Iscariot, had he asked for his forgiveness. Judas wasn’t damned for betraying Christ. He was damned for despairing, for rejecting the possibility that he might be forgiven for what he had done.”

  “I always thought Judas got a raw deal,” said Reid. “Christ had to die to redeem us, and a lot of people played a part in getting Him to that point. You could argue that Judas’s role was preordained, and that, in the aftermath, no man could have been expected to bear the burden of killing God without despairing. You might have thought that there would have been a little room for maneuver in God’s great scheme for Judas.”

  I sipped at an alcohol-free beer. It didn’t taste great, but I wasn’t about to blame the beer for that.

  “You’re telling me that they think I might be this angel they’ve been seeking.”

  “Yes,” said Reid. “Enoch is very allegorical, as you’ve surely learned by now, and there are places where the allegory bleeds into the more straightforward aspects. Enoch’s creator meant the repentant angel to symbolize the hope of forgiveness that we all should hold within us, even those who have sinned most grievously. The Believers have chosen to interpret it literally, and in you they think they’ve found their lost penitent. They’re not certain, though. That’s why Brightwell tried to get close to you.”

  “I didn’t tell you when we first met, but I think I’ve seen someone who looked like Brightwell before,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “In a painting from the fifteenth century. It was in Claudia Stern’s workshop. It’s going to be auctioned this week, along with the box from Sedlec.”

  I expected Reid to scoff at my mention of a similarity to Brightwell, but he didn’t.

  “There’s a lot that is interesting about Mr. Brightwell. If nothing else, he — or ancestors who looked startlingly like him — has been around for a long, long time.”

  He nodded to his companion, and Bartek began spreading upon the table pictures and photographs from a file by his feet. We were right at the rear of the Bear, and the waitress had been told that we were okay for the present, so we would be left undisturbed. I drew the first picture toward me with my finger. It was a black-and-white photograph of a group of men, most of them in Nazi uniforms. Interspersed with them were civilians. There were about twelve men in all, and they were seated outdoors at a long wooden table littered with empty wine bottles and the remains of food.

  “The man at the back, on the left, is Mathias Stuckler,” said Bartek. “The other men in uniform are members of the Special SS group. The civilians are members of the Ahnenerbe, the Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society, incorporated into the SS in 1940. Effectively, it was Himmler’s own research institute, and it was far from benign in its methods: Berger, its race expert, saw the potential for experimentation in the concentration camps as early as 1943. He spent eight days at Auschwitz that year, selecting over a hundred prisoners to measure and assess, then had them all gassed and shipped to the anatomy department at Strasbourg.

  “All Ahnenerbe staff held SS rank. These are the men who died at Fontfroide. This photograph was taken only a few days before they were killed. By this point, many of Stuckler’s comrades from Der Führer Regiment had died trying to halt the Allied advance after D-Day. The soldiers with him in this picture were all that remained of his most loyal cadre. The rest ended up in Hungary and Austria, fighting alongside the flotsam of the Third Reich until the last day of the war. They were committed, albeit to the wrong cause.”

  There was nothing very distinctive about any of the figures in the group, although Stuckler was taller and bulkier than the rest, and a little younger. His features, though, were harsh, and the light in his eyes was long spent. I was about to lay the photograph to one side when Bartek stopped me.

  “Look beyond them, to the people behind.”

  I examined the background. There were military men at some of the other tables, sometimes accompanied by women but more often surrounded by others of their kind. In one corner, a man sat drinking alone, a half-empty glass of wine before him. He was discreetly looking at the SS group while the photograph was being taken, so his face was partially visible.

  It was Brightwell. He was marginally slimmer, and with slightly more hair, but his tumorous neck and the slightly feminine tilt to his features dispelled any doubts as to his identity.

  “But this photograph was taken nearly sixty years ago,” I said. “It must have been doctored.”

  Reid looked dubious. “It’s always possible, but we think it’s authentic. And even if this one is not, there are others about which there can be no doubt.”

  I drew the rest of the images nearer to me. Most were black-and-white, some sepia-tinted. Many were dated, the oldest being from 1891. Frequently they depicted churches or monasteries, often with groups of pilgrims in front of them. In each photograph the specter of a man lurked, a strange, obese figure with full lips and pale, almost luminous skin.

  In addition to the photographs, there was a high-quality copy of a painting, similar to the one Claudia Stern had shown to me, possibly even by the same artist. Once again, it depicted a group of men on horseback, surrounded by the clamor and violence of war. There were flames on the horizon, and all around them men were fighting and dying, their sufferings depicted in intricate and striking detail. The men on horseback were rendered distinctive by the marking on their saddles: a red grapnel. They were led by a man with long dark hair. He was dressed in a cloak, beneath which his armor could be seen. The artist had painted his eyes slightly out of scale, so that they were too large for his head. One had a white cast to it, as though the paint had been scratched to reveal the blank canvas beneath. To his right, the figure of Brightwell held a banner marked with a red grapnel in his hand. His right held the severed head of a woman by its hair.

  “This is like the painting that I saw,” I said. “It’s smaller, and the horsemen in this one are the focus, and not just an element, but it’s very similar.”

  “This painting depicts a military action at Sedlec,” said Bartek. “Sedlec is now part of the Czech Republic, and we know that, as the myth has it, this was the site of the confrontation between Immael and the monk Erdric. After some discussion, it was decided that it was too dangerous to keep the statue at Sedlec, and that it should be hidden. The fragments of vellum were dispersed, in each case entrusted only to the abbot of the monastery in question, who would share this knowledge with just one other of his community. The abbot of Sedlec was the only member of the order who knew where each box had been sent, and once they had been distributed he sent the statue on its journey to its new hiding place.

  “Unfortunately, while the statue was in the process of being moved, Sedlec was attacked by the men in the painting. The abbot had succeeded in hiding the Black Angel, but the knowledge of its whereabouts was lost, because only he knew the monasteries to which the map fragments had been entrusted, and the abbots in question were sworn to secrecy under threat of excommunication and perpetual damnation.”

  “So the statue remains lost, if it ever existed?” I said.

  “The boxes exist,” said Reid. “We know that each contains a fragment of some kind of map. True, it may all be a great ruse, an elaborate joke on the part of the abbot of Sedlec. But if it is a joke, then he was killed for it, and a great many others have died for it since.”

  “Why not just let them look for it?” I said. “If it exists, they can have it. If it doesn’t, they’ve wasted their time.”

  “It exists,” said Reid simply. “That much, in the end, I do believe. It is its nature that I dispute, not its existence. It is a magnet for evil, but evil is reflected in it, not contained within. All of this” — he indicated the material on the table
with a sweep of his hand — “is incidental. I have no explanation as to how Brightwell, or someone who resembles him to an extraordinary degree, came to be in these images. Perhaps he is part of a line, and these are all his ancestors. Whatever is the case, the Believers have killed for centuries, and now is the time to put a stop to them. They’ve grown careless, largely because circumstances have forced their hand. For the first time, they think they are growing close to securing all of the fragments. If we watch them, the order can identify them, and take steps against them.”

  “What kind of steps?”

  “If we find evidence linking them to crimes, we can hand that information over to the authorities and have them tried.”

  “And if you don’t find evidence?”

  “Then it will be enough to make their identities known, and there will be others who will do what we cannot do.”

  “Kill them?”

  Reid shrugged.

  “Imprison them, perhaps, or worse. It’s not for me to say.”

  “I thought you said they couldn’t be killed.”

  “I said that they are convinced that they can’t be destroyed. It’s not the same thing.”

  I closed my eyes. This was madness.

  “Now you know what we know,” said Reid. “All we can ask is that you share with us any knowledge that might help us against these people. If you meet with Stuckler, I would be interested to hear from you what he had to say. Similarly, if you succeed in finding the FBI agent, Bosworth, you should tell us. In all of this, he remains an unknown.”

  I had told them about Bosworth on the journey into Portland. It seemed that they were already aware of him. After all, he had tried to tear apart one of their churches. Still, they did not know where he was, and I decided not to tell them that he was in New York.

  “And finally, Mr. Parker, I want you to be careful,” said Reid. “There is a controlling intelligence at work here, and it’s not Brightwell.”