by M. J. Rose
Before Meer could respond, Inspector Fiske approached, nodded at Meer and Sebastian and asked Enid something in German.
“Sprechen sie Englisch?” Enid asked him.
“Yes, I do.”
“Then if you don’t mind, I’d prefer to speak in English—it will allow Mr. Logan’s daughter to understand what’s going on.”
“Yes, fine. There has been an incident at Mr. Logan’s home and we are looking for him. Can you tell us where he is?”
“An incident?”
“Is he on his way here? No one seems to know.” Fiske wanted to get answers, not give them.
“Yes. We expect him later today.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
She hesitated. “What kind of incident?”
“Miss Parnell, this is very serious. If you know where Mr. Logan is, please tell me. We need to be in touch with him.”
“I can give you his cell phone number.”
“We already have that. Mr. Otto gave it to us at Mr. Logan’s home. He isn’t answering. So we return to where we started. Full circle, I believe is the English expression. Where is Jeremy Logan, Miss Parnell?”
“Is he in danger?”
“Is there a reason to suspect he would be?”
“There is always the chance of it because of the objects he works with—all of us who work here are vulnerable.” She played with her watchband, opening and closing the gold clasp in an uneven rhythm.
“You’re interfering with an investigation.”
The metal snapping accelerated. “He’s in Geneva meeting with Dr. Karl Smettering, a graphologist.”
“Geneva?” Meer turned to Sebastian but he just shrugged.
The inspector asked for all the pertinent information about Dr. Smettering, including his phone number and address, and Enid reeled them off from memory. As she did a junior officer who had been hovering stepped away from the group and opened his cell phone.
Enid turned to Meer. “Why don’t we all wait in your father’s office? It’s this way.” As an afterthought she turned back to Fiske. “It’s all right with you if we wait in there, isn’t it?” Even though it was a question, from Enid’s tone it was clear she was informing, not asking, and he didn’t raise any objection.
Like his home library, Jeremy’s office was filled to capacity with books and catalogs heaped on top of every conceivable surface. Photographs of religious artifacts and maps of Europe were tacked to corkboards covering the three walls. His desk was organized but there was little empty space among stacks of thick files, catalogs, a computer, exotic-looking glass paperweights and a jug of pencils. Sebastian picked up a silver-framed photograph of a woman with dark hair bending over a five-year-old child whose hand was raised to touch her mother’s cheek. The pose was a reversal of the expected—the child was trying to comfort the mother, not the other way around.
He offered it to Meer, who took it and studied the informal portrait, instinctively putting out her hand to touch her mother’s cheek. What the photograph didn’t show was how in the very next moment, Pauline had taken Meer’s little hand off her face, unable to accept the sympathetic gesture even from her own child. Despite the rejection, Meer had never stopped trying to find a way to drive that lonesome look from her mother’s eyes. And when she was finally grown up enough to try a different way, it was too late.
Meer had been eighteen years old, a freshman at Juilliard, the afternoon her father had picked her up from class and took her for a walk in the park. They sat on a bench outside her old playground and as the sun set, he told her about her mother’s illness. Even though her parents had been divorced for six years by then, he’d come back from Vienna to take on this burden, offering his open arms and a fresh handkerchief to his stunned daughter. That Pauline had hidden her leukemia from Meer and then allowed her ex-husband to tell her about it was a bitter disappointment but not really a surprise. And afterward, in those last months, as Pauline continued to expend her energy and attention on the china and glass, the mirrors, rugs, chaises, armoires and étagères in her store, she shunned her daughter’s efforts to expend any energy on her. Pauline never admitted during all the weeks of treatments that anything was wrong or that she was suffering or was afraid, and then, without warning, she slipped into a coma and two weeks later was gone. Too late for mother and daughter ever to have the conversation that might have made a difference.
“You look like her,” Sebastian said. “So much like her.”
“Not really. She was beautiful—”
Sebastian began arguing when Inspector Fiske walked in. “There has been an accident,” Fiske said, looking right at Meer, who held to the picture frame more tightly as she listened to the news.
Chapter 16
Cyberspace
Saturday April 26th—12:25 p.m.
The screen saver was an infinite universe of navy blue dotted with stars swirling in a slow-moving circle. Only the e-mail icon was static. And that was worrying. According to the plan, the information should have arrived by now, winging its way through the fiber optics and—finally, the expected icon popped up. A double click of the mouse and the e-mail opened. A quick perusal. Just a banal description of a family vacation. No reason to read it in detail. Instead, it was cut and pasted into a decoding program, and forty-five seconds later the narrative about a week at the beach morphed into a letter written by Herr Beethoven to Antonie Brentano.
A first read.
A second.
The words tantalized but were inconclusive. Was that sentence true? What did this one mean? Beethoven named Stephan von Breuning and the Archbishop Rudolf and said he’d given them clues, but what clues? Was the gaming box itself a clue? This was a treasure map. It needed to be read again. More slowly this time. Starting with the salutation that in itself was a great find. A newly discovered letter written by Beethoven to the woman who many historians believed was his one true love would be worth hundreds of thousands of euros. Perhaps a million. But the monetary value was insignificant compared to the information it contained because ultimately this was about power and faith. About possibility and impossibility. It was about legends and myths and conjecture and hypothesis come to life. And it was about a flute that might prove to be a forerunner to a device using alpha and theta harmonics created in the 1970s by Robert Allan Monroe. What if there was an instrument that produced binaural beats that really could help people access past life memories? What would that mean?
All in time. All in time. All in time. Now he needed to read through the words again and work on a mystery that had eluded mankind for so many hundreds, no, thousands of years.
Chapter 17
Vienna, Austria
October 25th, 1814
Dear Beloved,
You may never find this letter, my Antonie, but as I write it, I can picture you visiting your cousins at their country house in the Vienna woods and your surprise when my boy delivers this gift. I imagine you opening it and seeing the note in my handwriting and hope it made you smile fondly and remember the sweetness of our times together; the words we spoke, the music I played, the deep abiding emotions we shared.
I can picture one of your children coming in and interrupting you and you putting the box on a side table in the drawing room and attending to your family—perhaps even showing them the gift and suggesting you all might want to play some of the games.
You wouldn’t have wondered at my odd choice of a gift because you are not a suspicious person. You take the moment and make love to it and live it the way I live my music. But ask questions? Be curious? Not really. That’s why I have chosen you as its recipient. That and because more than anyone I trust you, if the day comes, to do the right thing with my most important secrets.
Did you try playing any of the games inside? Most of them would not have given you pause. Except for one of them. What did you think? That my gift was defective? And what did you make of my request that you keep the token for remembrance’s sake even if it did n
ot please you? Romantic that you were, romantic that I trust you still are, I’m certain you did as I asked.
Now you will understand the true reason for my request.
If you are reading this, it is because I have died unexpectedly.
My friend and longtime patron, Archbishop Rudolf, has a sealed letter he has sworn he will only open if my death is suspicious. In it I have told him to come to you and ask to see the gaming box. My other most noble and trusted friend, Stephan, has a letter with similar instructions—to read only if my death is suspicious. His missive contains instructions on how to open the false bottom that contains this letter but without telling him where the box is. Only telling him to go to Rudolf and trust him.
So here, my friends, now that you are all together, now that you have opened the box, here is what I have done.
I have hidden a flute and its music. The flute was given to me by the Society of Memorists in hopes I could decipher the song that they believed would open a passage to the past and show us our previous incarnations. Having been able to decipher the music and having experimented with it, I’ve seen firsthand how extremely dangerous it is. Much too valuable and dangerous to put in the hands of men who want to use it for nefarious gain. At the same time too valuable to mankind to be destroyed. So I have chosen to tell you three, lest the secret be lost forever.
Herewith are the clues to where the flute is hidden.
The gaming box holds the heart of the puzzle, and the key to that puzzle is yours, Rudolf, to find.
Once found, Stephan, you will be able to unlock the treasure because it is already in your possession.
As for the music, Antonie, you alone will understand this. I’ve done the only thing I could with the music and have given it to our lord and savior. The same who sanctified and blessed our love.
One more note. Antonie, if you find this letter by happenstance, please put it away, forget you read it and don’t try to decipher it or attempt a treasure hunt on your own at any cost.
Know that I take pleasure in the memory of everything we have been to each other. Those memories bring me solace. I miss you still. I think of you always with my very heart and all of my soul. And I do believe in the soul. More now than I ever imagined. I have looked into mine and I have seen a great many things there: joy and sadness, opportunity found and lost, but the greatest gift is that I’ve seen your soul there. I know now that as humans, we don’t even begin to know what we know, and if we did, we would be so burdened with it, our very future would be at risk.
LVB
Chapter 18
Vienna, Austria
Saturday, April 26th—1:08 p.m.
“Your father is fine,” Inspector Fiske reported to Meer.
“Where is he?”
“At the trauma hospital in Geneva. There was a robbery. From what your father told the police there and what they reported to me, it appears chloroform was used to render both your father and Dr. Smettering unconscious.”
“But he’s all right?”
“Yes, please, don’t worry. He was taken to the hospital as a precaution and has recovered fully. Not so with Dr. Smettering. He’s in very serious condition.”
“What’s wrong?” Sebastian asked.
Fiske shook his head. “We need to speak to his family first.”
“What was stolen?” Meer asked.
The inspector shook his head again. “I’m sorry, but I can’t discuss anything about the case with you.”
“Did you speak to my father?”
“No, to the police officer who accompanied him in the ambulance. I have a phone number if you want to call. My associate will put your father on the phone.”
“Thank you, yes.” Meer took the slip of paper he offered.
“One last thing we overlooked at your father’s house. I need your address in Vienna, along with a phone number where we can contact you.” He opened a notebook.
“You can’t suspect her—”
“I don’t, Mr. Otto—” Fiske cut him off “—any more than I suspect you, and I am going to make the same request of you.”
He offered Meer the pad and pen and waited while she scribbled the name of her hotel and a series of numbers. “My cell isn’t turned on yet but that’s the number,” she said.
“That’s fine. Now, Mr. Otto, shall we take care of this in the hall and give Miss Logan some privacy to call her father?”
A man answered on the second ring. She asked for her father and, during the long silence, Meer imagined the policeman getting up and walking over to her father who she tried but failed to picture in a hospital bed—
“Meer, I’m sorry you were the one who found Ruth. Are you all right, sweetheart?”
She had an instantaneous visceral reaction to his voice that, like a giant breeze, blew away all other sound and she bit the inside of her mouth to keep her emotions in check. It had been a long time since she broke down and cried and she wouldn’t let it happen now with the police and Sebastian and her father’s coworkers waiting for her outside.
“Me? Yes, I am. Are you? What happened? The police said it was a robbery?”
“Yes, but I don’t want you to worry. The doctor tells me the thieves knocked us out with chloroform. I have a slight headache…but it’s nothing at all.”
She could hear his efforts to hide his weariness from her. Picturing him, she imagined he was wearing the mask, her name for his default expression, taught to him, he’d told her, by his own father. A legacy from Hitler’s troops. Never show the depth of what you are feeling. Don’t give yourself away. Don’t give the enemy ammunition.
Jeremy wore the mask too often when it came to Meer. Donning it, she knew, to spare her pain. He’d hidden or tried to hide so much from her—his worry over her dreads and the doctors’ failure to help assuage her anxiety, then his concern during the weeks she was in the hospital, uncertain what kind of mobility she’d have once her spine healed. Later, he’d worked so hard to conceal why he and her mother were separating, and then divorcing. But she knew what had broken their relationship. The same thing that had broken her spine.
“Sweetheart, my friend Dr. Smettering has had a stroke. He…the stress was apparently too much for his blood pressure… The hospital is trying to find his son, who is traveling. I should stay here until we can find him, except I’m very concerned about you and don’t want you to be there alone.”
Her mother tried to keep her out, her father tried to keep her safe.
“There’s no reason to worry about me,” she said in an eerily calm voice, using the same words she had said to him hundreds of times before.
“I can’t help it.”
“Please. I’m staying in a lovely hotel that has room service. I’ll be fine.”
“I wish I’d been there. Wish more than anything that you weren’t the one to find Ruth. Poor Ruth…”
Meer heard the sadness and guilt in his voice. Staring down at the picture of her with her mother she recognized that even though she’d tried, she’d never been able to ease anyone’s pain. “I’m so sorry.”
“Did Sebastian find you?” her father asked.
“Yes. He did. He got there a few minutes after I did. He’s still here.”
“I’m glad. If you need anything, please ask him, all right?”
“Yes, but I’m fine.”
“Meer, the doctor’s asking for me, I have to go now.”
“Wait. Why was Ruth killed? Does it have something to do with what happened to you in Switzerland? Dad, what are they looking for?”
She heard him suck in his breath.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow…tomorrow when I see you,” he said. “Hopefully, I’ll be back by the morning. The doctor needs to talk to me now. I’ll call you later.”
“One more thing—” She needed to know.
“What, sweetheart?”
“It’s connected to the gaming box, isn’t it?”
Chapter 19
New York City
Sat
urday, April 26th—9:45 a.m.
Lucian Glass and ACT’s supervisor, Douglas Comley, sat behind a two-way mirror watching NYPD Detective Barry Branch talk to Malachai Samuels. On the scarred table between them was a slim, navy leather booklet approximately five inches square. On the front, stamped in gold letters, was the word Passport, the eagle insignia, and in smaller type: The United States of America.
Malachai hadn’t reached for it or looked down at it once. Lucian knew that because he’d been sketching the myriad expressions that had been passing over the reincarnationist’s face.
Over the past several months he’d seen Malachai almost every day, but there had been few opportunities to study his subject this closely. Now he was mesmerized by the man’s inscrutable gaze and self-possessed manner. Malachai was too calm. Even the innocent were nervous when the police questioned them. Was it possible that Malachai had hypnotized himself to sustain this level of equanimity? He was, after all, a master hypnotist who used the technique regularly when he regressed his young patients.
Lucian turned a page and started a new sketch.
“And so we’re officially closing our investigation.” Detective Branch sounded annoyed, as if he blamed Malachai for this. He pushed the passport ferociously over an invisible halfway line on the table.
Unhurriedly, Malachai pocketed the booklet without once looking at it. “So, you’ve finally found your villain? Who did it turn out to be?”
For months Lucian had listened to Malachai’s mellifluous voice and still found something unsettling in the slow, measured way the doctor spoke. It was too premeditated. Like the man’s relaxed manner, it was designed to conceal. The way he sat there, he could have been a seventeenth-century Spanish nobleman painted by Van Dyck, all authority and aristocracy. Lucian was convinced that everything about Malachai was a deliberate and elaborate smoke screen. What people saw was what Malachai wanted them to see: a dedicated psychologist and an iconoclastic researcher. Behind the self-assured, pretentious facade Lucian saw a troubled man desperate for…what? Lucian could only see the desire, not what was desired.