“And please don’t take what Tomas says personally. He’s under big pressures like we all are. That’s not to excuse his behavior. I wouldn’t be able to go now if I didn’t think he was in good hands. He too will be sick when he hears about Laurel. He really liked her.”
Don’t talk about her in the past tense. I can’t stand the thought of that. “Tomas gives you a rough time as well.”
Ari chuckled. “What do you expect? I’m the older brother. There’s a lot of history for us to overcome. In my father’s eyes, I did no wrong. With Tomas, just the opposite. I’ve been paying for that for a long time. I can deal with it. I have, what is it you say in English, big arms.”
“Big shoulders.”
“Yes.” Ari laughed again and touched his shoulder. His aura was so strong that when his smile faded, as it did now, the light in the room appeared to grow dimmer. “Something else. I’m breaking a secret, but it helps for you to know. Tomas’s fiancée died recently.”
I looked up at him in surprise. “Laurel said they’d separated, that she’d married someone else.”
“Tomas is too ashamed to tell it, the real story. He’s taken the blame upon himself.”
“What happened?”
“Did Laurel tell you my brother once planned to become a priest?”
“Yes, and that he changed his plans because he wanted to marry.”
“Tomas could only have gotten away with that excuse over here.” He shook his head in a kind of world-weary gesture. “Assyrian priests are permitted to marry; that’s not what happened.
“His fiancée lived with her parents in Baghdad—Karradah District. When the bombing started she became terrified and begged Tomas to let her stay with him, but he was too busy helping Samuel and thought she would be safer at home. After we got the engraving Tomas and I went to see her.” Ari’s face sagged. “We found a disaster. The family apartment block crushed. Half was still standing. We could see the guts of the building’s insides. But the rest? All metal rods sticking up, hills of broken concrete.
“You see Tomas as a restrained man, and usually he is. But on that night he went berserk. The one time I had to stand to the side. I could do nothing to help him. They never found her body.”
“I know how bad it feels.”
“Of course—Samuel,” Ari said. “And also, I want you to know I won’t forget about your inheritance. I’ll see that you’re treated fairly.”
Ari made sure I’d truly calmed down before going to get Tomas. He took the gun with him. In truth, I think he wanted to give me some time alone to regain my composure.
I took advantage of the opportunity. I had no compunction about rifling through Tomas’s suitcase after his raid on mine. In it I found two passports, the Iraqi one in his own name he’d shown me at the Khyber Pass and a second stating that he was George Anapolis, a Greek citizen. Clothes, toiletries, an extra pair of shoes, nothing else of interest. I found a book zippered into a side pocket and flipped through it. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Adhered to the middle page was a white paper rectangle the size of a business card, and on it, an address in Baghdad. The fact that Tomas had hidden it like that told me he attached a lot of importance to it. I found a scratch pad, scribbled the address down, and shoved it in my pocket.
Thunder boomed again in a series of crushing blows alternating with spear shafts of lightning. Like giant hands, sheets of rain beat against the windows.
Despite the pain it caused, once I got back to my room I replayed the hostage video a few times in case I’d missed any sign about where they were keeping Laurel. The background consisted of standard tile walls and floor. It could be any bathroom, basement, or commercial building in the city.
I switched on the hotel radio, hoping to take my mind off my troubles. Songs from Dwight Yoakam’s aptly named Last Chance for a Thousand Years CD came on. It felt like both our last chances, mine and Laurel’s, had vanished that long ago.
Twenty-four
Wednesday, August 6, 2003, 7 A.M.
Whether because of the intense workout my emotions had gone through last night or the simple urgency of needing a solution, I decoded the first part of Hal’s puzzle in short order the next morning.
Owl la memoir converted to low memorial. As in Low Memorial Library, the Columbia University administration building. While the words didn’t fit seven spaces, I was convinced they led to the solution. The answer would be waiting for me on campus.
I checked my email again but there were no new messages. I sent one to my lawyer, Andy Stein, asking him whether it was too late to do anything about the sale of the condo.
Much as I would have preferred to avoid Tomas, it was still safer for the two of us to go to the library together. By now Ari would have told him about Laurel, and I counted on him being motivated to help her. I flung my things into my suitcase, phoned to warn him to be ready and got the message system. A knock on his door went unanswered.
At registration I hurriedly paid for our rooms and asked to leave a message for Tomas Zakar requesting that he meet me at Columbia.
The clerk looked him up. “He already checked out, sir, earlier this morning.”
“Are you sure?” Had the news about Laurel so scared him that he’d abandoned both us and the search? Had he left with Ari? Another mystery to wrestle with. A call to Ari’s phone got me nowhere. He wasn’t answering either. Likely he was already winging his way over the Atlantic and unreachable. I had no time to worry about Tomas. Laurel was all I cared about right now.
A clang of metal signaled the city coming to life. Big trucks lifted the garbage bins, vans at curbside unloaded produce, store clerks rolled back metal window grates. I passed an entrepreneur getting ready for the day’s trade, lounging on a doorstep of one of the grandiose buildings lining Fifth Avenue. Two cats lay at his feet, a silver tabby and a coal-black Persian, each on a round blue bed with an open can of cat food beside them and a hastily scrawled sign reading PLEASE HELP. Judging from the expensive Kodiak boots the guy sported, people had been generous.
A Statue of Liberty waved flyers in my face, a man dressed head to toe in rubbery green latex, his flowing robes flapping in the breeze. His face was coated in matching green greasepaint, and on his head he wore a seven-pointed crown. The cats stared in amazement.
I joined the throngs crowding into the subway for the ride uptown and got off at the 116th Street stop and made my way over to the heart of the campus. I told myself that Laurel would be all right. They wouldn’t make any serious moves without the engraving. Still my anxiety mounted, dimming the swell of nostalgia that surfaced at the sight of Low Memorial. How many times had Hal, Corinne, and the rest of our friends gathered on those steps to joke around and hang out together? I’d had many good times at Columbia. In hindsight, too many.
A neoclassical beauty, Low Memorial was a temple at the crest of an imposing staircase. The architects had been inspired by Rome’s Pantheon. Ten Ionic columns soared to a vast granite dome.
I passed bronze renditions of Zeus and Apollo and stopped just inside the entrance. What was I looking for? Many classical elements had been incorporated into the interior. Which one was Hal pointing to? Circling the famous bust of Pallas Athena were the twelve zodiac signs. None fit the seven spaces of Hal’s puzzle. I reviewed the original words: owl la memoir. Perhaps Hal had used them simply to generate the building’s name, but I believed they had a further meaning.
The reference to owl tugged at my memory. Hal had intended the game for me, so something I would have known about had to relate to the answer. And then I recalled what it was. The statue of Alma Mater outside. The contest we’d taken part in as freshmen to find the owl carved into her cloak. The statue was modeled after the Greek Athena, the Roman goddess Minerva. The seven letters of Hal’s mother’s name.
I sat on the steps outside and filled Minerva into the seven spaces. Minerva’s name and the anagram faded, leaving only the diamond and the word transmutation, confirming that my answer had been corr
ect. So what did that mean?
I remembered the funeral urn I’d found in his townhouse and the dull gems inside. They could have been low-grade diamonds, but the urn had contained nothing else, no directions to a hiding place. I pondered this for ten minutes or so until something Corinne said came floating back to me.
Incredibly strange, what he did with her.
At the time I’d thought she’d simply been referring to their rather perverse relationship. Had she meant something different? She picked up right away when I called.
“John, I’m glad you phoned. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch yet.”
“No problem, Corrie. Listen, I’ve been wondering about something. When we talked before, you mentioned how it was strange what Hal had done with Mina. What did you mean by that?”
“Hal never told you?”
“No. He cremated her body, didn’t he?”
“For the first stage, yes.”
“The first stage?”
I heard her sigh through the phone. “I’m not surprised he didn’t want to broadcast it. It was so weird. Talk about being chained to someone. He had her ashes compressed and converted into a diamond, the solitaire on that ring he wore. So she’d have a kind of immortality, he said.”
“Are you serious?”
“They can do that now. An adult human body has enough carbon to generate dozens of small diamonds. The gems are synthesized from the ashes.”
“My God.”
Words deserted me.
Corinne broke through the silence. “There’s something else I have to tell you. About Hanna Jaffrey.”
“Did you find her?”
“Something came up on an Iraqi news blog. The picture it showed would have never made it into the mainstream media. It was stomach turning. Have you ever heard of a place called Tell al-Rimah? It’s somewhere in Iraq.”
The destination Tomas mentioned where he’d expected Jaffrey to go after she left their camp at Nineveh. “Yes, I know of it.”
“Apparently she and her boyfriend had gone missing from an archaeological team staying at Tell Afar. This was in April. A sandstorm hit the area, a big one apparently. After the storm cleared they searched for them. They found Hanna first, bound to a post. It was so brutal. She’d been stoned. One of the team members was quoted as saying her face was no longer recognizable.”
I felt sick listening to this. “Lord, that’s terrible. Did they catch who did it?”
“Her boyfriend’s body was recovered too, not much farther away. He’s suspected. His knee was damaged but they assumed he killed her and then got caught in the storm. Apparently they’d been fighting about something back at the camp.”
Or did the boyfriend have some help? It took me a few moments to feel calm enough to talk.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes. Just thinking.”
“John, I don’t want to pry into your business but this is really horrific stuff. Are you all right?”
“I’m being careful.”
“I hope so. I’ve dug out some other information too. It’s not much but maybe it will help. That woman—Eris Haines. Her real name is Eris Hansen and she wasn’t fired. She was a specialist in trans-humanism and left the DOD in good standing.”
“Trans-humanism. What does that mean?”
“Technologies to enhance the physical or mental abilities of humans. Think the bionic man or woman.”
Haines had said she’d attended MIT, so that fit. “Corinne, thanks for all this. You’ve really helped.”
“Not a problem. Keep in touch. Don’t be a stranger, okay?” “You’ve got my promise.”
After I hung up I thought about the trans-humanism angle and wondered whether it had anything to do with the motherlode Nahum’s engraving led to. I’d assumed transmutation meant converting base metals into gold, since that was the most common application of the word. But it could refer to any form of change, even evolution. When I’d researched the word I’d learned that Darwin had initially been called a transmutationist. Hal’s play on words: from human flesh to a diamond. From the human animal to an entirely new form of being. Was this the supernatural element Tomas had hinted at? These questions led nowhere and left me as much in the dark as ever.
I had to make it back to Sheridan Square, the last place I’d seen a ring. Before I left the library I checked my email, hoping to hear from Tomas. There was nothing from him, but my lawyer had responded:
John,
First off, what happened with Reznick? I set you up with one of the best criminal lawyers in town and you didn’t bother to show up for your appointment. Reznick is totally po’d and I’m not too happy either. As far as the condo’s concerned, a New York firm acted for the purchaser so I got in touch. The sale has been executed and is final. Nothing can be done on that end. I explained your situation and they’re willing to let you stay until August 26th. Under the circumstances, this is generous. All your possessions have to be cleared out by then or they’ll be forfeited. That’s the best I could get out of them. I’ll send you a confirmation letter along with my invoice.
My last shred of hope died like a rained-out fire. I could scare up some money by selling off Samuel’s collection, something I hated to even think about. Otherwise, I was bankrupt, hunted, and completely alone.
Part Two
THE SECRET OF NAHUM
Upon the eleventh day,
When Lucifer had dimmed the lofty multitude of stars,
[The King] and Selenius went from there,
Joyful together to the Lydian lands.
There [the King] put Silenius carefully,
Under the care of his beloved foster-child,
Young Bacchus, he with great delight,
Because he had his foster father once again,
Allowed [the King] to choose his own reward.
—OVID, METAMORPHOSES XI:85–146
Twenty-five
Andy’s note made my next call ten times harder. The situation was out of control and I could no longer cope on my own. I would have to tell the police about Laurel, but I needed someone with me they’d believe. I dialed his private line and he answered right away.
“Reznick here.”
“It’s John Madison calling.”
“Well. You’re only a day late. There’s a long line of people wanting my help, Madison. I’d bumped you up strictly as a favor to Andy.”
“Look, I really apologize for missing our appointment. A friend of mine is in serious trouble. She’s—”
“Legal trouble?”
“In a way.”
“If she wants an appointment I hope she has better manners than you.”
“It hasn’t actually reached the legal stage yet. She’s been threatened and now she’s missing.”
“Don’t tell me you want to go to the police on her behalf?” “Yes, that’s what I was thinking.”
“Ever been in the Tombs?”
“No.”
“You soon may be and I’ll tell you, they’ll eat you for break fast in there. I warned you last time we talked not to contact the police voluntarily for any reason, and that was before I got the new information.”
An alarm went off in my brain. “What new information?”
“A warrant will soon be out for your arrest.”
“Why?” I could feel my heart sinking.
“Apparently a neighbor of Hal Vanderlin’s found some drug paraphernalia thrown over his fence. A silver spoon. The police have it. It has traces of heroin on it and your fingerprints.”
He took my silence for an admission of guilt. “I’m willing to offer you another chance. Come into my office to give me a full statement and I’ll accompany you to the station. You’ll be charged and probably have to spend a day or so in the lockup, but I’ll get you—”
“I can’t do that. You don’t know the whole—”
“Then I’m not able help you anymore, Mr. Madison. Goodbye.” I felt like I was caught in the middle of eight lanes of
expressway traffic. All my potential moves had just been cut off. Every cop I passed by now would be a threat. Once I had the engraving, I’d have to find some way to negotiate with Eris and her crew entirely on my own.
Gip greeted me when I entered the lobby of Laurel’s building. “Good morning, John. Nice to see the weather’s cleared up. You’re here for Laurel, I assume. Is she okay? I understand she took ill last night.”
“Turned out to be just a bad migraine. She’s fine now but not at home. She’s meeting with Hal’s lawyers and needs a document she forgot, so I’ve come to get it for her. Is that okay with you?”
Concern darkened his expression. “I hate to tell you, but the board is strict about these things. She should have called me to authorize it. Can you get hold of her now?”
Hell. I’d counted too much on him trusting me. “They’re buried in that meeting, and you know what receptionists are like, not always willing to break in.”
Like a granite boulder settling into a riverbed, his face told me he was not to be moved. How to get around this?
“Gip, do you have security in the building? They could go up with me.”
“We only have a service on call. Look, since I know you I can be a little flexible. Our maintenance guy is here fixing the air conditioning. Let me get him to accompany you.” He spoke into his cellphone and made the request.
“Thanks. Laurel’s been so upset about Hal it’s no surprise she’s forgetful.”
“A very sad business. I watched him grow up.”
“I know. It’s been hard on all of us.”
The elevator pinged and the maintenance man leaned out and waved. I trotted over and got inside. Thankfully, I remembered the penthouse entrance code.
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