The door he leads them to is made of light, shiny wood. There are no plaques or names on it. After pointing to it, the doorman stands there, stock still.
“Do you mind?” Ermete asks him, trying to get by. “Oh, right,” he mumbles after a second, rifling through his pockets in search of a couple of dollars to tip him. He finds a five-dollar bill and hands it to him. “Thank you. Very kind of you.”
The man pockets the bill with professional swiftness and then, with another suspicious sneer, goes back to where he came from, staring at the wet tracks left behind by the tramp.
“Don’t worry about it!” Ermete calls after him. “I’ll clean that up myself.”
The golden key turns one, twice, three times. The lock lets out a clack and the door opens.
“Hao!” Sheng exclaims. “We guessed right!”
“They don’t call me Fountain Man for nothing,” Ermete jokes, pushing them all inside. The apartment is dark and musty smelling. Groping around for the light switches, the kids activate old chandeliers with half the bulbs burned out.
There isn’t a single piece of furniture anywhere. The apartment has been abandoned. It’s completely empty. Not a chair, a table, a rug … nothing.
The five quickly search all the rooms.
Sheng walks over to the picture windows looking out over Central Park and stares, breathless, at the expanse of natural beauty in the middle of the city. “How could anybody own this place and not live in it?” he asks aloud.
“Because they’re dead, maybe?” Harvey answers. He’s holding something in his hand.
“You found it!” cries Elettra when she realizes it’s a postcard. It’s an old picture of Rockefeller Center in the thirties. On it is written the name Robert Peary, without a mailing address. Its message looks very familiar:
56, 90, 102, 168, 241, 241, 34, 125, 81, 212, 201, 79, 67, 216, 28, 107, 69, 83, 102, 18, 56, 210, 212, 85, 100, 102, 45, 173, 128, 204, 38, 85, 206, 45, 168, 10, 171, 212, 128, 212, 14. Star of Stone, 4 of 4.
Egon Nose is pacing endlessly in his office. Then, exasperated by the wait, he throws open the door and hobbles down the long, black hallway. From there, he makes his way to the upper floor of his nightclub, Lucifer. It looks like a red cave, with oddly shaped divans, stalactite light fixtures, twisted shadows, fake stalagmites full of air bubbles. Relentless, ear-shattering music is pounding everywhere. People are thrashing around on the dance floor. Some girls are waiting on the tables while others are dancing on the stage, dressed as angels, all in black. Dr. Nose turns to the first one he comes across and screams into her ear, “I want them here. Now!”
The woman runs across the bloodred carpeting and disappears down an aluminum staircase. Fake candles are burning along the mirrored walls.
Egon Nose smiles. He stands there, watching his clients as they drink, dance and forget about the very existence of the outside world. He leans against the handrail and even manages to take his mind off things for a few seconds. Then he goes back to focusing on the present. His girls have arrived. His five predators.
Panther, Wolverine, Ferret, Mink and Mongoose.
Five magnificent, unscrupulous women.
Dr. Nose brought the newspaper clipping with him. He gives it to the woman closest to him. It’s from one of those free papers handed out in the subway stations. The article is brief, but there’s a color photograph. It’s entitled “Another Dive for the Fountain Man?” The picture is of a man being hauled out of the Bethesda Fountain.
“Recognize him?” The newspaper is passed from hand to hand and then returned to Egon Nose. “No? Well, I’ll tell you who he is. He’s the man you were following. The one who’s always calling his mother. Our carrier pigeon.”
The women stare at him without saying a word. Their glittering, beady eyes are the size of precious gems.
“Do you know what he’s doing? Heh, heh, heh. The article says that over the last few days, this illustrious stranger is said to have gone for a little swim in the fountain at Rockefeller Center and the one in Central Park. No one knows why. Not even us.”
The women stare at the old man without speaking. Five drop-dead gorgeous statues, all perfectly silent.
“The question is, why don’t we know?” Egon Nose’s eyes shoot daggers. “Did we get something wrong? What? I don’t know…. But I have no intention of getting a phone call from Only-I-Know-Who, asking me what’s going on. So there’s a change of plans. I … I can’t stand … no … I detest the very idea of having anything to do with those damned kids. But we know where one of them lives, isn’t that right? Miller … Harvey Miller?”
The man begins to hobble back and forth, interpreting his girls’ silence. “But we don’t know anything about the others, because it seems the kids are pretty bright. They split up, they use spy tactics … and we aren’t following them closely enough. So I say we do a better job and make sure they come to us. How? Heh, heh, heh … What man could resist the right female charms? Yes, excellent, excellent plan, my sweet, sweet ladies! Go find me this Fountain Man. I think he’d enjoy a little company….”
24
THE RETURN
NIGHT IS FALLING ONCE AGAIN IN NEW YORK. VLADIMIR ASKENAZY’S tall, bony figure leaves the headquarters of the New York Times after an entire day spent reading through old newspaper articles. He’s worried. Very worried.
He looked into Lucifer and its shady, mysterious owner, and he tracked down some information he wishes he’d never even seen.
It’s worse than he thought.
Much worse.
Now, discouraged and frightened, he ponders what it would be best to do. He goes down to catch the subway to the Village, and as he’s waiting for the train, he tries to think of exactly what to say. He can’t explain everything. He can only suggest, guide, drop hints, point them in the right direction. But then they’ll have to walk that road all on their own. That’s part of the Pact.
“What difference does it make which road … you get wrong?” he groans, bitterly thinking back to many years before, when he, Alfred, Irene and that woman were faced with the same challenge. Without succeeding. Ignoring suggestions. Heading in the wrong direction.
It was 1908.
It was a century ago.
When Vladimir Askenazy gets out of the subway station, his face is painted with a smile. He’s always loved this neighborhood of Manhattan, with its low houses, its ailanthus trees, the warmth of its twisting streets.
Vladimir coughs, folds up the lapels on his overcoat and thinks back on the years gone by. They were spent keeping a secret that not even he understood completely: the secret of Century. An ancient pact made between man and Nature. A pact connected to the Earth and its elements, written with the trajectories of the stars and the wooden tops. A pact of silence and secrets to be revealed.
“Revealing means unveiling,” murmurs the antiques dealer, who’s lived for two centuries and is an expert on ancient philosophy. “And every secret that is unveiled reveals even more secrets. It’s like a snake biting its own tail.”
When he reaches the corner of Grove Court, Vladimir takes a quick step back. At the gate outside the boy’s house, Harvey and Elettra are wrapped in a warm embrace.
No one expected this, naturally, the antiques dealer thinks. Not even Irene. In a way, it makes him smile. Here, in the very heart of tragedy, young love has blossomed. One of those hopeless, wonderful loves that’s remembered your whole life.
But now what should he do? He looks around uneasily. Manhattan is dark and shadowy. A Native American wearing a mail carrier’s uniform crosses the street with his bag of letters to deliver. There’s a strange fog in the air and no sign of spring’s arrival. Vladimir holds back a shiver.
He finally comes to a decision and turns the corner.
“Mr. Askenazy!” the two kids greet him the moment they notice he’s there. “What are you doing here?”
Although they’re a little embarrassed about being caught like that, Harvey and Elettra preten
d they’re perfectly calm. They even manage to confide in the antiques dealer that they found a third postcard.
“Robert Peary?” he asks when they tell him who it was addressed to. “The explorer?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“He explored Greenland. He also donated one of the world’s largest meteorites to New York’s American Museum of Natural History.”
“Maybe Mistral was right, then!” Elettra exclaims when she hears meteorites mentioned. “The Star of Stone …”
Vladimir frowns slightly. “Maybe you should keep searching….”
“Do you have any suggestions?” Harvey asks him, wrapping his arms around Elettra’s waist.
“Actually, no. I came here to warn you.”
“Warn us?”
Vladimir looks around, then points at the gate. “Could we …?”
“Only up to the entranceway,” answers Harvey. “My folks are home.”
“That’s better than out here in the dark.”
The three cross through the flowery garden, where the air itself seems warmer and the earth more compact. They step into the entranceway of Harvey’s building and stop at the bottom of the stairs.
“His name’s Egon Nose,” the antiques dealer begins. “He’s the problem. He’s the owner of Lucifer. A criminal. For years he’s been running nightclubs here in town and most of them were shut down for problems you can’t even begin to imagine. The worst of the worst. Nevertheless”—Vladimir rubs his hands together to warm his long, numb fingers—“he’s always gotten off scot-free. Friends in high places, it seems. Some say politicians, others say the police. One club shuts down, another one opens up, and the money starts flowing again. Those in the nightclub circles call him Dr. Nose because of his grotesque appearance. And his nose for business.
“I don’t know what it is you’re looking for,” the antiques dealer continues, “but you should watch out for him and his girls. It seems he’s surrounded by women who are just as dangerous as he is.”
Elettra shivers, holding on tighter to Harvey.
“Now do you see why I came here at once to tell you? I … I’ll try to get in touch with a few friends, but in the meantime, I’m asking you to … Well, I don’t know. Just be careful, promise?” As if he is uncomfortable about having said too much, the antiques dealer turns to leave.
“You be careful, too,” Elettra tells him.
The streetlights on Thirty-fifth Avenue are pale, glowing spots that look like they’re floating in the gray mist. It isn’t unusual for it to be foggy in New York at this time of year, but it’s unusual for it to be this thick.
Ermete walks along slowly. His feet are aching. Not only because he dipped them in the icy waters of the fountain, but most of all because he’s walked around half the city in search of a way to decipher the numbers on the postcards. Still, he hasn’t managed to find a book. No reference text. No further clue as to what the Star of Stone might be. In his pocket is a piece of paper with the twenty-five attempts he’s made so far.
All of them are crossed off.
Twenty-five dead ends.
“Maybe I’ll have better luck tomorrow,” he says, walking up to his house. If even one of them had a real stroke of luck, they could keep going. Otherwise, the only alternative is to cast the tops. A second time.
Ermete notices that someone’s there on the sidewalk in front of his house. There are shadows rising up through the fog.
“City by the sea? Gimme a break,” he grumbles. “This is like being in London.” Not that he’s ever been to London.
The first person he sees coming out from the fog surrounding his building is a young woman. He thinks nothing of it. No alarm bells are going off in his head. It’s when he sees the second one, and then the third, that he realizes something’s wrong.
Three women. Extremely tall, extremely beautiful. They’re wearing brightly colored ski jackets, wide scarves that cover their faces, army boots and woolen gloves.
“Oh, boy,” Ermete whispers, even more worried. He clenches his fists in his pockets, slows down his pace and checks the address on the building, but there’s no doubt about it. The three of them are right in front of his house.
What should I do? he thinks. Turn and run away, or ignore them and keep walking? Maybe they won’t recognize him. Maybe they’ll mistake him for just another tramp.
He hangs his head and keeps walking.
He takes five, ten, twenty steps.
Just when he thinks he’s gotten away with it, he hears the sound of the women’s boots breaking into a run. He doesn’t wait another second. He bolts. As he’s running, the engineer makes a mental list of what he has in his pockets: nothing. What did he leave back at home? The mirror. Everything else is in the kids’ hands.
He crumples up the sheet of paper with the numbers written on the postcards and throws it to the ground, where it disappears into the fog.
He runs awkwardly, almost staggering. He runs like somebody who’s never run before.
But not for long.
He feels something hit him in the back, and then the ground suddenly disappears from beneath his feet. He stumbles and falls forward. He crashes down onto the sidewalk.
Ermete rolls over twice. He’s left dazed, his lip and cheek throbbing. He hears footsteps approaching. He sees their boots. He can’t move. Something heavy is keeping him pinned down to the ground.
One of the women leans over until her face is a palm’s width away from his. She has long, long red hair and eyes as green as emeralds. At any other point in his life, Ermete would’ve fallen in love with her on the spot. But now, all that face does is scare him. Her perfect mouth looks like it’s about to devour him.
“What—what do you want?” he stammers. A thin line of saliva drips down from his mouth. It feels like he’s broken a tooth.
He isn’t given an answer.
Sheng’s in bed, dreaming. He knows perfectly well it’s a dream, but he can’t wake himself up. He’s afraid, because it’s that same dream again. The dream that comes back to him from time to time.
He’s in the jungle with Harvey, Elettra and Mistral. It’s a tropical forest, sweltering hot and perfectly silent. There are no insects, no birds. It’s as if it were empty. Here and there, an ancient monument peeks out from behind the plants—a building, a column, an obelisk—as if the forest grew right over a city. Then the tropical vegetation makes way for an expanse of fine, pure white sand that crunches beneath his feet.
On the other side of a narrow inlet of clear, blue water is a tiny island covered with seaweed. All four of them dive down into the silent waves.
Waiting for them on the island is a woman. Her face is covered by a cloak and she’s wearing a close-fitting gown with all the world’s animals drawn on it.
Sheng can’t get out of the water. The woman steps over to him, her dress billowing. She makes him open his right hand. Sheng realizes he’s holding the body of a dead pigeon.
With this, Sheng’s eyes open wide.
A flutter of wings and the soft tapping on the glass of the roof light are signs that Harvey recognizes now, even when he’s fast asleep. He sits up in bed as though he weren’t even sleeping and goes up to the attic without switching on the light. He throws open the window. It’s one of Ermete’s pigeons.
Still groggy, Harvey lets it in, putting it in the cage beside the other bird.
He unfolds the message and reads it:
We’ll be expecting you tomorrow night at the party at the old City Hall station. Your friend is here with us. If you want to see him again, bring everything we need.
25
THE PARTY
THE NEXT EVENING ARRIVES IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE.
Sitting in his study, Mr. Miller looks up from his papers. “Come in,” he says. It’s his wife. As always, she moves cautiously and closes the door gently behind her. “Is he gone?” the professor asks, taking off his glasses and resting them on the desk.
“Yes. He looked
so handsome. Unrecognizable,” his wife replies. “I think he even combed his hair.”
Mr. Miller gets up from his chair and steps around the desk, glancing out the window. “I’m happy to hear that.”
His wife walks over to him. She leans against his shoulder and sighs. “You aren’t worried?”
“About what?”
“It’s after dark and he’s going out to dinner all alone.”
“He’s thirteen. Besides, he isn’t alone. He’s going with his friends.”
“Yes, but …”
“But what?” The professor turns around slowly and hugs his wife. “No, don’t say it. Don’t even think it.”
“I try not to be nervous, but it isn’t easy….”
“It’s difficult for everyone. Even for him. But if he’s decided to go out and have fun for once, let’s let him do it. Let’s trust him. After all, he’s our son, right?” he says.
“Dwaine would’ve been happy to go there with him … to keep an eye on him,” she says.
“Who says he isn’t?”
Mrs. Miller lets out a sob, burying her face in her husband’s shirt. “You, of all people, saying that …”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’re the most rational, most logical man on Earth.”
Mr. Miller gently frees himself from the hug. “Sometimes being rational isn’t enough.” He steps back to his desk and picks up a handful of papers. “Do you remember my talking about the ocean temperatures?”
“The research that needed to be redone?”
“It’s all been confirmed. A half-degree increase!” Mr. Miller rolls his eyes. “What kind of logic could help anyone understand something like this? The sea is heating up like a giant pressure cooker. It isn’t simply the greenhouse effect. It’s the mankind effect to the nth degree.”
“It is serious?”
“No. It’s more than serious. It’s disastrous. If the Earth were a patient in the hospital, we’d be sitting down to read his will right now. That’s what we adults should be worried about, not about our son going out to dinner.”
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