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Star of Stone

Page 5

by Pierdomenico Baccalario


  “What’s that, old friend?”

  “If the tops are there,” Heremit Devil repeats, as if it were a strain for him to utter each word, “then your girls can intervene.”

  Twelve days is a long time. Twelve winter nights is even longer. But that’s how long Jacob Mahler has stayed perfectly still in the woods. He’s sucked up the last traces of snow. He’s eaten chestnuts. Raw mushrooms. Roots. Practically without ever moving.

  His greatest enemies have been the cold and his broken arm. The only way to defeat them is to stop thinking, to stay there, as motionless as a statue. Like the statues in the garden he escaped from.

  Those women were hunters.

  And they came for him.

  They got out of Joe Vinile’s car, already knowing what they were supposed to do: kill. They had a plan, a mission, an objective. But there was one little detail they lacked: They’d never seen his face.

  Twelve days and twelve nights ago, Jacob Mahler was being treated in a private clinic in a little town near Rome. Few people. Few questions. He saw Joe Vinile come out into the courtyard, accompanied by the hunter women. You idiot, Vinile! Mahler thought, moving as quickly as possible. It hadn’t dawned on Joe that he was invited to the feast, too….

  Then Mahler removed the bandages covering his face, which had been burned in the explosion, and wrapped them around the face of the man in the bed next to his. As the hunter women’s heels were bewitching the clinic’s staff members, Jacob Mahler slipped out through a back door. And he hid in the woods.

  Once the hunter women reached the room, the man in the bed next to his started shrieking, and Joe Vinile realized what a fool he’d been.

  Motionless in the woods, Mahler waits, ignoring the pain.

  One more day. Then he’ll move.

  6

  THE CLUB

  THE MONTAUK CLUB IS A STRANGE MIX OF GILDED SIXTEENTH-century Venetian and American country styles. Little white tables separated by wooden dividers, mirrors on the walls and sparkling chandeliers. Waiters wearing tuxedos gracefully gliding across the marble floor.

  At four o’clock on the dot, Harvey walks in. Hesitating, he looks around for Ermete but doesn’t see him. He chooses a booth in the corner and tosses his gym bag under the seat. He starts to flip through the menu.

  A hand rests on his shoulder. “Hey, kid.”

  Harvey leaps to his feet. He doesn’t recognize the man in front of him. A cream-colored raincoat, a wool turtleneck sweater and, most noticeable of all, a cascade of long, blond hair. The man smiles.

  “Ermete?” Harvey whispers uncertainly.

  “Shhh!” the engineer warns him, brushing the hair out of his eyes. “It’s a wig. Brilliant, isn’t it?”

  Ermete wedges himself in between the table and the stiff backrest, dragging a battered old briefcase behind him. He blows the hair out of his eyes and holds out his hand to Harvey like a suave businessman. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Harvey. I mean it. I was about to give up hope. My pigeons work like a charm, don’t they?”

  The boy smiles. “They’re great. Like real spies.”

  “This calls for the utmost attention,” Ermete confides in him, looking around. The raincoat and wig are making him sweat. “How do you like this place, huh? Doesn’t it make you think of Hitchcock movies?”

  “Hao, awesome!” Harvey approves, quoting Sheng.

  “Most importantly, it’s nowhere near my house. The only New York street written in code.”

  “Which would be …?”

  “A1 V4 E1 N1 U1 E1 14.”

  “Meaning …?”

  “The value of the letters in the word ‘avenue’ in the board game Scrabble. You know it, right? The man who invented it lived there, and the street sign was written like that in his honor.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  The two of them crack up and order some fruit juice. Then Ermete lies down on the booth and scans the room. “Wow,” he remarks at the end of his reconnaissance.

  “Wow what?”

  “Don’t turn around, but there are two drop-dead gorgeous women behind you. Oh, do I love America!”

  “You’re looking good yourself.”

  “What about you? You look … bigger. What’s up with that duffel bag of yours?”

  “I’m going to a gym. I signed up for boxing lessons.”

  “Boxing lessons?”

  Harvey brushes the hair out of his eyes. “Yeah. And my trainer’s a woman.”

  “Whoa! It must be fun to get slapped around by a girl.” Ermete smiles at the waiter.

  Harvey turns around to take a look at the women. “They sure are something,” he admits a second later.

  “Head-spinning.”

  “Speaking of spinning …”

  “The top! Explain it to me, from the start.”

  Harvey shows him the catalog and the card with the antiques dealer’s address.

  “That’s not far from my place,” Ermete remarks, turning it over in his fingers.

  “But don’t you think it’s strange?”

  “Very strange. Every time I look for something in this city, it’s always at least three hours away.”

  “No, I mean, don’t you find it strange that this catalog just turned up right in front of me?”

  “Not in front of you. In front of your father.”

  “But the antiques dealer highlighted the picture of the top.”

  “That’s true. But why?”

  “My dad doesn’t know exactly, but from what he remembers, it had already been sold.”

  Ermete holds the photo of the top up in the light to take a better look. “A rainbow?”

  “You got it.”

  “A passageway. The end of a storm …” Ermete rests the sheet of paper on the table and drums his fingers on the edge of his glass. “If you ask me, we’d better hurry up and see this … this Vladimir Askenazy.”

  “Have you heard from the others?”

  “I sent an encrypted e-mail to all three of them. Reply: They’re fine, they say hi and they’re happy to hear about the top in the catalog. They say they want to see us again.”

  “Me too. This might be our chance to get together….”

  Ermete rests his hands on his briefcase. “Yeah, but we need to be careful.”

  “What are you lugging around in that thing?”

  Ermete’s fingers fly away from the briefcase. “Summer homework. All human knowledge on Mithra, the Chaldeans, ancient religions, mirrors and comets.”

  “Find out anything new about the Ring of Fire?”

  “Nothing solid, actually….” The engineer leans on his elbows and lowers his voice. “I found a few leads. For example, the word ‘Mithra’ means ‘the pact.’ And naturally, the pact with this ancient god of the sun and light is a secret pact. Remember what was engraved on the back of the mirror?”

  “ ‘There is an invisible purpose behind the visible world …,’ ” Harvey repeats by heart.

  “Exactly. I figure that, sooner or later, invisible purposes will become visible.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I could bore you with details about the Mysteries of Mithra convention held in Rome on March 28, 1978, about the Iranian Magi and their relationship with the cult of light, the goddess Isis … but actually I haven’t come up with very much. Only legends.”

  “Like what?”

  Ermete hoists the briefcase onto his lap and opens it up, revealing a mass of papers. “I decided to call the Ring of Fire ‘Prometheus’s Mirror,’ because it was through a mirror that the Titan stole fire from the gods. But the story of Prometheus is complicated. Not only did he steal fire from the gods, but he also created man, by mixing together rainwater and clay.” The engineer sips his fruit juice. “And I discovered that there’s another figure in Greek mythology who has something to do with mirrors. His name is Hephaestus, and he’s the god of blacksmiths. He also used fire to forge Hercules’ shield and Achilles’ weapons. Depic
ted on Achilles’ shield, in particular, are the Pleiades and the seven stars of Ursa Major. The Greeks were convinced that the end of the world depended on Ursa Major. Stars, you see?”

  “The professor was obsessed with stars,” Harvey recalls.

  “Exactly.” Ermete clasps his hands together in front of his face. “It’s all connected, but I still can’t put my finger on how. Anyway, you know what happens when Prometheus steals fire from the gods? Zeus goes to Hephaestus and together they come up with the most horrible punishment imaginable. Prometheus is chained to a mountainside and a vulture gnaws away at his liver. As for mankind, which he created …” He shows Harvey the statue of a woman holding a vase. “Hephaestus fashions Pandora, the first woman.” He plops back against the backrest. “Could you have come up with a nastier punishment?”

  Having left the Montauk Club, Harvey and the engineer slip into the subway, heading for the antiques shop in Queens. “What I still don’t get,” Ermete admits, “is what I should be looking for, and where. Everything’s hazy, blending together, getting all jumbled up. Legends and the real world. Mythology and history …”

  “Anything in the professor’s books?”

  Ermete shrugs his shoulders. “There’s one thing I found. Among the ancient Persians was a caste of learned astronomers called the Magi. They were very familiar with the sun god Mithra. A part of their secret doctrine reached the Western world during the time of the Greco-Persian wars, and it became the basis of the Egyptian dogmas. The Romans conquered both Greece and Egypt—”

  “And took it all over.”

  “They rediscovered an incredible heritage of secret knowledge … including the map of the Chaldeans and its tops. The Ring of Fire. Or all three things.”

  “What a big, confusing mess,” Harvey summarizes.

  “You have no idea. This calls for a serious scholar, not a dilettante like me.”

  “But only a dilettante like you would be crazy enough to keep going.”

  Ermete stops and stares at the boy. “I can’t tell whether or not that’s a compliment.”

  7

  THE ANTIQUES DEALER

  THE ANTIQUES SHOP DOESN’T HAVE A SIGN. THERE’S ONLY A POORLY lit, anonymous-looking picture window facing the street. Behind the glass, a board reads OLD THINGS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. There are also a few dusty items displayed on three different stands. Two wooden statuettes, a piece of coral jewelry, a couple of desk lamps, a little inlaid case with the profile of a heron and two vases with orange and black stripes.

  Ermete and Harvey push open the shop’s metal door, making a little bell jingle. A narrow opening between the walnut furniture leads into an open space dimly lit by a crooked neon ceiling light. Everything is cramped and chaotic, with dozens of old things piled up haphazardly, filling every inch of the room. Étagères and shelves lining the walls are crammed full of books; paintings and picture frames are stacked up against each other; wardrobes brim with colorful fabrics and rag dolls; African masks hang from the ceiling by festoonlike cords.

  On the opposite side of the room, Harvey and Ermete see a microscopic desk buried beneath a mountain of papers. Behind it is a little doorway with a curtain of rattling jade bead strings hanging over it.

  “Anybody here?” asks Ermete. He moves almost on tiptoe, worried he’ll knock something over.

  A long, bony hand slides out through the beads, gathering the strings of the curtain into a single cluster.

  “Hello,” croaks Vladimir Askenazy’s hoarse voice. Tall and thin, the antiques dealer creeps through the doorway like a spider and takes his place behind the desk. His face is gaunt, his hair sparse, light gray and disheveled. His eyes are the color of acacia honey. His mouth is wide and thin, his teeth small, closely set and frail looking. His nose is slender and measured. His dragonfly-like hands are so pale they look like they’re covered with talcum powder. He’s dressed completely in black. “What can I do for you?”

  Harvey looks at him carefully and lets Ermete do the talking.

  “Oh! Hello there!” the engineer begins. “We saw your catalog and we thought we’d come see you.” He hands the folder to Vladimir.

  The man looks at it with a certain curiosity and remarks, “Oh, of course.”

  “You gave it to my father,” Harvey explains.

  “Of course, of course.” The antiques dealer nods and doesn’t even bother to glance at the boy. He pulls out a pair of round-framed spectacles that glitter in the light and perches them on the tip of his nose. “I was working on promotion a bit yesterday. So … which of these items are you interested in?”

  “The wooden top,” Ermete replies without hesitating.

  Vladimir’s spectacles gleam in the light. For the first time, the antiques dealer turns to scrutinize Harvey. “Oh,” he says.

  “Have you already sold it?”

  “I haven’t exactly sold it, no…. But I can’t sell it to you.” Vladimir rests the folder atop the thousand others on his desk and turns to look through the beaded curtain, as if he’s heard a noise. Then he goes back to concentrating on his clients. “The fact is … Listen, let’s do this … if I may …”

  Stepping around the desk, Vladimir slips between Ermete and Harvey, flips over the little sign on the front door from OPEN to CLOSED and turns the key in the lock a couple of times.

  “Please, follow me,” he suggests, retracing his steps and pushing aside the beads in the little doorway leading into the back of the shop.

  “Watch your head,” the antiques dealer warns them, leading them down a dark, narrow hallway. “I’ve never gotten around to having this light fixed, but right here, halfway across, there’s a beam in the ceiling that—”

  A barely muffled thud tells them that Ermete’s forehead just found it. Behind him, Harvey tries to keep from laughing.

  “Are you hurt?” Vladimir asks, although he shows no signs of stopping.

  “No, it’s nothing! Don’t worry! I’m a hard-headed guy.”

  “We’re there,” the antiques dealer announces a second later. Now his face is lit up by daylight. They’re inside a large room with glass walls, quite like a greenhouse. Twelve metal supports are holding up its clear ceiling. The whole back of the shop looks like a transparent party tent set up in a courtyard. With its full view of the sky above, the room is well illuminated by the outdoor light. Warm and dusty, it shines down on the furniture, statues, paintings and other antiques.

  “This is my kingdom,” explains Vladimir, whose body seems to have lost a bit of its frailness as he makes his way through his favorite objects.

  Harvey clutches his gym bag tighter and looks up at the silhouettes of the buildings looming overhead on the other side of the glass ceiling. “Awesome,” he remarks.

  The antiques dealer mutters something unintelligible, opens an old cabinet and pulls out some cases. “The item you’re looking for should be right here …,” he says softly, resting one of the cases on a workbench cluttered with picture frames and stuccos to be restored.

  “Do you have any others, by chance?” Ermete asks, staring nervously at the antiques dealer’s long fingers as they fiddle with the case.

  Vladimir shakes his head. “No, no. That would be a true stroke of luck, given their value.”

  “Oh, are they worth a lot?” Ermete inquires.

  “I should say so,” the man replies, finally pulling out the wooden top. He holds it firmly in his fingertips for a moment and then hands it to Harvey. “I presume you were the one who noticed it.”

  Harvey lets his gym bag slide to the floor. He takes the top and peers at it. His heart has started to beat faster. He turns it over and over in his fingers, admiring the engraving of the rainbow and its metal tip. There’s no doubt about it. It’s one of their tops. The fifth one.

  Although he senses the same thing, Ermete feigns indifference and remarks, “I don’t get what’s so valuable about it. It just looks like an old toy to me.”

  “Ah!” Vladimir exclaims, raising
a finger. “You’ve managed to make two mistakes in a single sentence.”

  “I’m an expert in—”

  “That top isn’t old. It’s ancient. And it isn’t a toy. It’s a theurgic instrument.”

  “Theur … what?”

  “Theurgic. It’s a derivative of a Greek word describing the ability to accomplish things thanks to the intercession of the gods. That top, my friend, was used in a complex series of rituals. It served to put people in contact with the gods and obtain their response. It was an oracular top.”

  “Did you hear that? It’s an instrument of the gods!” Ermete says to Harvey, who’s always been more reluctant than the others to accept how the tops work and how they can be used on the wooden map.

  “A mysterious oracle, to say the least,” Vladimir Askenazy adds. He looks around for something on the workbench, then picks up a small tattered booklet and thumbs through a few pages. “Michael Psellos, an ancient Byzantine scholar gifted with encyclopedic knowledge, wrote something about these very tops. Here’s his treatise on the Chaldean oracles….”

  “Chaldean oracles?” Ermete repeats with a start.

  “You’ve heard of them?”

  “Of course! Who hasn’t?” The engineer smiles.

  Vladimir chuckles. Then he grabs an old ring set with a ruby. “You know,” he says, holding it up, “all women should know about the Chaldeans. They’re the ones who had the idea of wearing engagement rings on the fourth finger of the left hand. They believed that a line of energy began at that finger and was connected directly to the heart.”

  Ermete makes a face.

  The antiques dealer walks halfway around the workbench and points at the face of a clock hanging on the wall. “They also introduced the system of calculation based on the number twelve. As well as the sixty-minute hour. And the signs of the zodiac and a great deal of the names of the stars.”

  “We know that,” Ermete interjects, a hint of pride in his voice. “Just like we know about the Magi …”

  “Knowledgeable priests, but not exactly Chaldeans,” Vladimir Askenazy begins again. “They were keepers of ancient traditions. They knew … they knew something, which they passed down through oral tradition to those who came after them. Something that might even be lost to us today.” The man sighs. “Poor Magi! The only thing people remember about them now are the three who went to Bethlehem following a star. Soon enough, children will even forget about them … and about the most important of the three gifts they brought with them.”

 

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