The Reckoning

by Alma Katsu

  He seemed triumphant, if a bit defiant, as he stared at Adair. “I have to admit, when I walked out of here the other night, I thought maybe you were . . . eccentric,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “No one’s ever given me a case like this. It sounded like a stunt of some kind. But then I started thinking about it, and I decided, what the hell? I like a challenge.

  “So, I caught one lucky break right up front: the First Bank of Boston is still around. It’s gone through mergers over the years, but the fact that it never went out of business meant there was a good chance that its records were still intact. I won’t go into the details, but suffice it to say that I found someone who could access the bank’s historical records and you were absolutely right: there was an account for this Jacob Moore guy.” Maurice poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the tray in front of him and gulped it down before continuing. “My associate was able to find out that all of Jacob Moore’s money was transferred a couple years later to an account in his name with an Italian bank.

  “It went on like this every decade or so, all over Europe. Then, in the early twentieth century, which would make Jacob Moore at least a hundred years old, he transferred all his money into an account for”—he consulted his notebook—“a Rolf Schneider, in Berlin. This happened right before World War I. And here’s where we run into a problem: bank records in Europe got messed up after the war, especially in Germany, because of the political turmoil. People started keeping their money close, in shoeboxes and such. . . . There were no further bank records for Mr. Schneider.”

  He fiddled with his notebook again, nervously. “So I leave the financial records and look elsewhere: marriage licenses, property records . . . One of my associates finds a record of a Rolf Schneider enrolled in a doctors’ college in Heidelberg. I’m wondering: could it be the same man? That’s when I remembered your advice.” The hacker looked Adair squarely in the eye. “So I hire a German speaker to look through microfiche of old newspapers, society pages, anything and everything we can think of, and sure enough, she finds these mentions of a good-looking medical student, Rolf Schneider, at these society parties.”

  Adair nearly lunged across the table. “Do you have a picture of this man, Schneider?”

  Maurice fumbled in his pocket and drew out a much-folded sheet of paper. He smoothed it with his palms before sliding it across the table.

  It was less like a photograph and more of a gesture drawing, a charcoal sketch of human forms—blobs of black on a white background—the image as vague as a brass rubbing of a weather-worn headstone. Adair could make out some of the room where the figures were gathered in the photograph, but he searched the indistinct faces with an air of futility, doubtful of seeing anything clearly through the graininess. . . . But no, there was no mistaking that face, even if it was just the shadow of a cheekbone and the arch of an eye socket on a half-turned face, graced by a fallen lock of dark hair. It was Jonathan.

  Adair sat back and let out the breath he’d been holding.

  The hacker continued. “So we kept looking for mentions of Rolf Schneider in the German records. We find him on the roster at one hospital, then another. . . . And then he disappears for a while. It’s not uncommon. Lots of records were lost in Germany after the war. But I tried everything. I even had a guy inside the Defense Department look up the records from the occupation. Still, the trail ran cold and I thought I’d lost him. Then, for grins, I try searching for Rolf Schneider in all the databases I can get into. There are a lot of databases out there. That’s why companies are putting everything they have into data warehouses right now, because there’s money in it. Airline ticket sales, credit ratings, insurance records, school records, voting records—you’d be surprised.

  “Anyway, I find a match, but it’s now decades after the end of the war. Some doctor by the name of Rolf Schneider is working for an aid organization, the kind of place that sends medical teams into war zones or where there’s an outbreak of some disease, you know? Anyway, I found a picture of the guy in one of their newsletters.” Hands shaking, the hacker reached into another pocket and pulled out a second piece of paper, which he slid over to Adair with an air of satisfaction.

  This photograph was much sharper than the first. It was a group shot of people lined up behind a table outdoors, someplace where it was very sunny. Adair saw three white people and five Moors, the white people looking depleted by the heat, the Moors smiling or affecting serious expressions. The tall, dark-haired man on the end of the row had his head turned, trying to cheat the camera and blur his image. But there was no mistaking the man for anyone but Jonathan: there could not be two sun gods in all of history. The caption underneath read “Mercy for Peace International team vaccinates two thousand against measles, Serrat refugee camp, Chad.” The date given was from the year before.

  “It’s got to be the guy’s descendant. I mean, he’s the spitting image. . . .” The hacker motioned to the first photograph. By the tone of his voice, a mix of awe and fear, he wanted to be reassured.

  Over the years, Adair had discovered that whenever someone stumbled too closely to his secret, that person could usually be dissuaded from pushing the matter any further: the idea that someone might live forever was too fantastical, too heretical. Ordinary men were afraid to pursue this line of questioning to its end, no matter how strong the evidence; it seemed to lead to madness. The hacker didn’t want to be told that Jacob Moore had indeed lived for centuries; he wanted to be given a logical explanation. “Of course it’s his descendant,” Adair said back to him. “Who else could he be?”

  Maurice looked from Jude to Adair and then lowered his eyes, relieved.

  Adair turned to him. “So, where’s Moore’s descendant now? Is he still in . . . Chad?”

  Maurice shrugged. “I don’t know. You said to follow the money. The trail went cold in 1914. I have yet to verify his whereabouts or his demise, but I still have five days left on the clock,” he said quickly.

  Adair couldn’t help but smile as he turned to Jude. “Pay him. Five hundred thousand dollars. I value good work, and you’ve done a very good job,” he said to Maurice, who quivered in disbelief. “But do not forget, you’re not to say a word of this to anyone. If I find out you’ve talked about this, piqued anyone’s interest in Rolf Schneider, alerted any authorities . . .”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. I know that you expect discretion.”

  Adair took the two photographs, leaving Jude to wrap things up, and went to Jude’s office. He tried to ignore the feelings of triumph rising inside him, tried not to let his mind race ahead optimistically. He was a step closer to capturing his quarry but knew to expect more obstacles lying in wait, ones that he couldn’t begin to imagine.

  But first he had to find Jonathan. He closed the door behind him and went to the computer to search for Mercy for Peace International, then dialed the phone number given on the website.

  “Hello? I’m trying to find an old friend who works for you. . . . Yes, I’ll hold. . . .” He swiveled in the chair as he held the cell phone to his ear. (Unlike computers, he had instantly seen the utility of cell phones, a magic he would never have dreamed possible.) “Hello? Yes, I’m looking for a friend who works for your organization and I was told you might be able to help me. His name is—” Adair said the name carefully and precisely, then listened as the woman on the other end explained that it was their policy not to give out information on their employees.

  As easily as that, yet another obstacle was thrown in his path. He was tired of being frustrated. In pursuit of Lanny, he’d risen to every challenge—witness the lengths this Maurice, this clever thief of information, had gone to to bring Adair this much further—only to be stymied now by an insignificant clerk. To be tripped up in this way made him mad. Anger rippled under his skin as faintly but unmistakably as thunder on the horizon. He would almost swear that he felt sparks ignite in the air, and the connection between him and the voice on the line lit up as though on fir
e.

  And suddenly, unbidden, the woman continued, saying that the doctor had taken an extended leave and couldn’t be reached, but he had mentioned to a colleague that he was visiting an old friend in the town they’d grown up in. Barely remembering to thank her, Adair put the phone down, amazed by his luck. Had he been able to make her do his bidding merely by wishing, or had it been a slip of the mind? Or was she perhaps a gossip? He thought of the feeling that went through him and the electricity in the air, and resolved to think more on it later.

  Because now he had a trip to make. Lanny’s childhood home—why hadn’t he thought of that earlier? He’d seen this so many times before in those he’d transformed: the impulse to return from whence you came and feel the comfort of home again, even if you know it will only be a shadow of the way it used to be. All of his subjects felt it at one time or another; some, overwhelmed by the wider world, had been unable to leave the embrace of the past, and he had been forced to kill them for their own good.

  He was disappointed that the woman he’d always found so unpredictable had resorted to such predictable behavior. But then, Adair could understand the appeal for Lanore of going home with Jonathan on a cozy trip. He pictured them returning to the places they used to go as teenage lovers and re-creating those impassioned moments, and the thought made him briefly upset.

  On his way to bed, Adair told Jude to book him passage to St. Andrew, Maine.

  ELEVEN

  CASABLANCA

  By the end of my third week in Casablanca, I was ready to leave. The idea of traveling made me nervous, as if any movement would draw Adair’s attention and put him on my scent, but living with Savva had become unnerving enough to make me want to risk it. I didn’t mean to be cruel or ungrateful, but I think I’d forgotten what it had been like to deal with him on a daily basis, or perhaps I’d idealized our time together.

  The truth was he had been difficult to live with even then, frequently getting us in trouble with his mercurial temper. He would make snap judgments when he met strangers, either loving them as though they were long-lost brothers or hating them as intensely as he would a sworn enemy. He could go on manic sprees for days before crashing in exhaustion. He spent our money impetuously, without a care as to how we’d find more, and I would become exasperated with him, thinking it was within his power to change. I should’ve known there was more than recklessness to his behavior, for the signs were all there. Back then, though, we didn’t understand bipolar disorder. Instead, we let people like Savva run to physical or emotional exhaustion, dosing themselves with laudanum or alcohol, until they committed suicide or were locked up in prison or an asylum.

  Savva was much worse now. He was clearly too much of an addict to medicate responsibly; he had worse demons to fight than his chemical imbalance, and very little willpower to draw upon. His mood swung unpredictably, and he was often angry and unreasonable and paranoid, though he was slightly less hostile when he was high. He shot up so frequently that he was more efficient with a needle than any nurse. He ate whatever pills he could get his hands on and alcohol was the only liquid he’d ingest. It was frightening to be around him and yet hard to leave him in this condition. Drug therapy might’ve been able to help whatever disorder he had, but I couldn’t see a way to get him under a doctor’s care. It made me angry to think Adair might have seen this weakness in Savva and chosen him anyway, condemning him to an eternity of suffering for the sake of a few introductions to Russian aristocrats.

  After these weeks in Savva’s presence, I now understood why he lived the way he did. We rarely left the apartment. He slipped out when he needed to score, though occasionally we were visited by a young man with dark, suspicious eyes, and the two would go into the hall to conduct their transaction in mumbled Arabic. Sometimes a friend would come by, a pretty young man or a thuggish older one, and I’d leave to give them privacy. When I got back, he’d be asleep on the sour mattress that served as his bed.

  It was understandable, then, why I was relieved when Savva came to me one day to tell me that he thought he had the answer to my situation. He’d come to the conclusion that if I wanted help, I had no choice but to turn to the ones who had served as Adair’s minions. “You need a better adviser than me, Lanny. Adair never loved me enough to bring me close—not really close,” he explained. “He never told me his secrets. You need someone who spent a good deal more time with him. I think you should go see Alejandro.”

  My heart sank at his recommendation. “Alejandro? I don’t think he’ll talk to me. He thinks Jonathan and I took Adair away from him.”

  “Well, you’ve no choice but to tell him the truth and convince him to help you. Would you rather go to Dona? Alej’s the only one you’ll stand a chance with. Besides, of all of us, Alej has always been the most conciliatory, the one to smooth over any conflict in the group. He knew best how to handle Adair.”

  I thought of Alejandro. He’d been the kindest to me of all the members of Adair’s household, that was true. But the sin that had damned him was betrayal: he had given over his sister to the inquisitors to save himself. I hoped for his sake that he had changed, and maybe even found redemption. In my heart, rightly or wrongly, I distrusted him.

  “I don’t know, Savva. I never really knew what to think about Alej. At least I always knew where I stood with Tilde and Dona. Alej kept his true intentions to himself. I’m not sure if he’ll help me once he finds out I was responsible for Adair’s disappearance. He worshipped Adair.”

  Savva was firm. “I wouldn’t assume he feels the same way now. You remember what it was like living with Adair: it was like being a kidnap victim, always tense, always afraid. You would do whatever it took to avoid being the object of his attention or bringing his wrath down on you. Alejandro has had a long time to heal, to put that time in perspective. He’s a different person now.” Savva kissed my hand and gave it a pat. “I’m no use to you. Not in my condition. Go see Alejandro. I know where he lives; I’ll tell him you’re coming to see him. We’ll have to go into town, though, for me to do that: there’s no cell phone reception here, none at all. We’ll need to go to the hotel where the tourists stay.”

  The hotel turned out to be very exclusive, the sort of place where rock stars and the jaded rich stay while taking in the city. I regret to say I felt conspicuous there with Savva, who looked odd in his hodgepodge of make-do clothes. I was afraid they wouldn’t allow us to stay—the hawkeyed attendants rushed to shoo us out as we attempted to settle in the lobby—but I asked to have some very pricey tea and cookies brought to us and that seemed to assure them that we fit in, that Savva was merely eccentric and not a derelict.

  Savva went off by himself to make his call, while I checked email. I was waiting for my computer to boot up after its long dormancy, when my cell phone leapt to life, buzzing and vibrating for attention. I checked the tiny screen to see twenty voice mails from Luke in the queue. Warily, I pressed the phone to my ear and listened to the first message.

  “For God’s sake, where are you? Why aren’t you answering?” It was his voice, but vulnerable in a way I hadn’t heard before, and it hit me like a baseball bat to the stomach.

  “Pick up, Lanny. Don’t play games with me. . . .”

  “I didn’t mean to lose my temper. . . .”

  “Call me. At least let me know that you’re safe, that nothing has happened to you. . . .” And his voice choked to silence, as though he was remembering what I’d told him about Adair and wondering if my fears had been realized. That sickening pause was almost enough to make me dial his number, to reassure him and apologize for causing him worry. Almost.

  There were emails, too. One long one in particular struck me, obviously written after the barrage of phone calls, when he’d had time to think about how to persuade me to return to him. It was clinical, as though his professional self—Dr. Findley—had evaluated me and was ready to give his diagnosis. He laid out my psychological motivation for leaving him, explaining that I was acting out of fear
and had run away because, subconsciously, I was afraid he was going to leave me as Jonathan had. By leaving, he wrote, I was testing him, but I had to realize that he wasn’t Jonathan and he’d never do that to me. We could disagree and argue, but if I trusted him, I would come back and we’d work through our differences. It read strangely for a love letter, lacking passion.

  I saw in that instant that he was, like so many men, removed from his emotions. He was unable to abandon himself to passion, as though he’d given up on it a long time ago. The closest he had come was when he’d run away with me, but that dangerous anomaly had been corrected and the old Luke had crept back in place. He wasn’t perfect, as I’d thought at first: he was damaged in his way, a part of his psyche amputated, and that might’ve been why I had been drawn to him. Not for his steadfastness, but because he was broken and I wanted to protect him.

  By now I was crying and reached for a napkin from the tea tray to wipe my tears. Yet, I did not dial his phone number or reply to his email.

  “What’s wrong?” Savva asked as he came back from his corner of the lobby, pocketing his cell phone.

  “There’s a man,” I sniffed, too weary to fully explain and half-afraid of what Savva would say anyway. “I left him as soon as I felt Adair’s presence, as soon as I knew Adair was free.”

  Savva listened as I read Luke’s email to him. “How very romantic of him.” His tone was droll, as though he found Luke’s analysis anything but romantic. “You are right, however: with Adair coming for you, you can’t afford to keep him around just for the solace of his company. You need to travel light. He’ll only slow you down. It’s all part of the curse: we’re doomed to be alone.”