by M. J. Rose
“Yes,” she said, “in fact I’ve been approached by the agent of a powerful family who wishes to buy it from me.”
“Why don’t you show it to me first,” the Tsar said. “I’d like to see it before you sell it to anyone else.”
Chapter 47
Vienna, Austria
Tuesday, April 29th—10:58 a.m.
Meer resurfaced—that’s what it felt like—coming up for air having been underwater for too long. It took another minute for her to connect to where she was and who she was with and remember what had been going on before the lurch began. Someone was talking. Her father. What had he just said? How long had she been lost in the daydream? A daydream? What an inappropriate word for the hallucination she’d just experienced. But there was no word for a nightmare that you experienced while you were wide awake, was there? Or the residue of real grief she felt for a man she didn’t know and would never meet.
Malachai’s eyes were on her. Understanding, offering comfort, and curious. It was too soon to tell him or her father the details of what had just happened or that she no longer believed she was having false memories. Not until she had some time to absorb the disturbance. Yes, that was a better word, disturbance. The forcing away of her present, the inexplicable replacement of people and places for a memory that felt like hers, even though she knew it couldn’t logically have any connection to her.
Meer concentrated on what her father was saying.
“Please, I want you all to go now. There’s a puzzle to piece together and you can work on it at my house and let them fuss over me in peace. You need to figure out what the key is for.”
“I can’t leave you here,” Meer said, unable to let go of the nagging feeling that he was hiding something about his condition. “What kind of tests do they want to run?”
“I’ll make a deal with you,” Jeremy said in his most reassuring voice. “I’ll tell you, but then you have to do what I ask.”
She half smiled, despite herself. He always negotiated. “Okay.”
“I am fine but I did have a very minor heart attack ten months ago. I take medication for it and it’s not serious but the doctor thought she detected a slight irregularity on the EKG today and wants to run some additional tests to make sure everything’s completely fine. At the most I’d need my meds adjusted.”
Scared, she searched his face. He smiled, took her hand. Was he really all right? She thought back to ten months ago…trying to remember if she had talked to him then, if she had missed any clues? “Are you really all right?” Her voice trembled a little.
He nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“It was a very mild attack. It happened and then it was over. Nothing to tell.”
Looking over at Malachai she asked, “Did you know?”
“Yes.”
One look at Sebastian and she didn’t have to ask him. “You told a stranger and not your daughter?” Meer accused her father.
Getting up, Sebastian walked to the door, mumbling that he had to make a call. Meer was glad he was leaving but Jeremy stopped him. “You don’t have to go on our account.”
“I really do have a call to make. I’ll rejoin the argument in a few minutes.”
Jeremy smiled, Meer didn’t.
“This isn’t funny,” she said to him. “Why would you keep your health issues a secret from me?”
“I made a choice based on what I thought would be the best thing for my daughter.”
“I’m an adult.”
“That doesn’t change the fact it’s still my prerogative to choose what I burden you with. I don’t want you to take on my medical issues and worry about me the way you had to worry about your mother.”
“How could I not worry about my mother? She was dying. Are you dying?”
“No, of course not. That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”
“What do you think will happen to me if I know the truth? Don’t you have any faith in me?”
“I’ve always had faith in you,” Jeremy said in a voice subdued by emotion. “From the very first time you ever gripped my finger in your little hand.”
“If you had any faith in me you wouldn’t try to control what I know and what I don’t.”
Chapter 48
Tuesday, April 29th—12:00 p.m.
They were all sitting at the round dining room table in Jeremy’s house and trying to make sense of the clues they’d amassed, Meer’s memories and information Sebastian was looking up in books from Jeremy’s library and on the Internet.
“You mentioned a staircase in the Society,” Malachai said. “Where did it go?”
“It was a hidden staircase that led to an underground vault,” Meer said. “I think Caspar must have told Margaux where it was because she knew where to find it, but the flute wasn’t there.”
Talking about the memories now—with some distance from when she’d experienced them—was easier than she’d expected. This was like recounting a scene from a movie or a chapter she’d read in a book.
“I wonder if it’s still there? I never heard about a hidden staircase,” Sebastian said curiously. “But I haven’t been a member that long. Where in the building was the staircase?”
Meer closed her eyes and concentrated. “Inside a closet in what I think must have been a library.”
“And down that staircase is the vault?”
She nodded. “In a small room with stone walls and a door with iron bars.”
“It sounds medieval,” Sebastian said.
“Anything else about being down there that you remember?” Malachai asked.
“No, there wasn’t much that mattered once she found out the instrument wasn’t there.”
“I’d like to focus now on what you noticed when you were in the auction house looking at the gaming box,” Malachai said to her. “You said there were two nines of hearts in one deck and both had been slightly damaged. Do you remember how you noticed the aberration? Were you looking for something?”
She answered the last part of his question first. “I must have been but the only reaction I remember is the one I had when Dad first told me about the Heart Crypt. At the auction house I was so stunned at seeing the box…”
“I can imagine,” Malachai said with a hint of what sounded like envy. “I’m certain even if you don’t remember it, you were drawn to the deck of cards for a reason. Like you were always drawn to the cards in my office when you were little…” He paused for a moment to think about that and then continued. “Were you curious about any of the other items in the chest? Did you feel a sense of urgency while you were looking at them? Did you focus on any of the other game pieces?”
“I don’t remember.”
“What about anything to suggest there were other clues in the gaming box?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know but even if I did, the box is missing.”
“Yes, it is. Let’s turn our attention to Jeremy’s copy of the Beethoven letter. He said it mentions a metaphorical key. Sebastian, can you find that section and read it to us…or maybe it would be helpful if you read the whole letter. There might be something that would otherwise have been elusive but will now be obvious,” Malachai said.
Sebastian found the letter and glanced at it for a moment. Even though it was a copy, seeing the words written in the maestro’s hand, he was moved and he took a moment before he began to read.
“‘Dear Beloved.’”
As he listened, Malachai reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a well-worn deck of cards. Their presence was no surprise to Meer, who was used to his habit of shuffling when he was deep in thought. The soft slapping noise, rather than being a distraction, was like a musical accompaniment to the words Sebastian was reading.
“‘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.’”
Sebastian put the papers down on the table. “And it’s signed with his initials.”
Meer reached for the letter and looked at it, not sure why since she couldn’t read German, but the scrawling curves and lines moved her. Across the centuries she imagined the man who wrote these words struggling with something he didn’t understand. That she still didn’t understand.
Malachai didn’t waste any time on an emotional reaction and was already reasoning out the cryptic instructions. “Well, clearly Beethoven didn’t divulge the hiding place of the flute in the letter itself. Was there any question Beethoven died under suspicious circumstances?” he asked Sebastian. “Do you know?”
“Not then, no. Although there were always rumors. Recent tests done on his hair prove he was indeed quite ill but interestingly it seems the medicines that he was taking might have hastened his death.”
“So there’s a possibility the individual letters Beethoven left for these men were never opened and the fact that this letter was still hidden in the false drawer suggests that no one ever found it. Thus one might assume no one ever found the flute either.” Malachai had stopped shuffling the cards at some point during the reading of the letter but now began anew.
“The monk mentioned the Archduke Rudolf this morning in the crypt, didn’t he?” Meer asked.
“Yes, and it’s well documented that he was one of Beethoven’s closest friends, as was Stephan von Breuning whose son, Gerhard, was very important to the composer in the last year of his life and—”
“Maybe there’s something in Beethoven’s papers or letters,” Malachai suggested, interrupting, excited by the idea. “Where are they?”
“Didn’t my father say he had access to them on his computer?” Meer asked.
“Yes, but he can only read extracts online,” Malachai reminded her. “Where are the actual letters?” he asked Sebastian as he stood up. “We need to see them. As soon as possible.” He was putting his cards back in the pack. “Are they here in Vienna?”
Chapter 49
Tuesday, April 29th—1:30 p.m.
David walked out of the National Library in the same section of the old city where the Heart Crypt was located, and descended the steps, distracted by a woman coming up in the opposite direction. What was it that made him pay attention to her? The way the sun made the auburn highlights in her dark hair dance? Her unnaturally straight back as she climbed the steps? The intensity of her gaze? The closer she came the more he felt pulled toward her. He wanted to stop and figure out what it was about her that was so arresting but he needed to keep moving. He shouldn’t even be aboveground during the day where he could be spotted with the concert looming so close.
As she passed him he looked away but she’d been close enough that he could smell her fragrance. It wasn’t the same perfume his wife wore but it reminded him that he’d once had a wife whose skin was always warm to his touch and whose eyes had always smiled for him. And then while he was seeing her in his mind she turned into a grotesque mask of charred flesh.
No, not again. He didn’t want to see it all again. Couldn’t bear it to see it all again.
Hurrying, David reached the bottom of the steps and headed toward the Kolhmarkt. This last effort had reassured him there were no drawings or maps of the tunnels among the city’s records. And that was good. If David couldn’t find any details, neither could anyone else. There were a hundred other things that could go wrong between now and the night of the concert but at least a blueprint left in some archive wouldn’t lead Paxton’s men to him. If he could feel happiness, he thought, he might be happy that this was almost over, but David couldn’t exactly remember what happiness felt like.
His pace accelerated. He needed to get back to the crypt, away from these memory triggers. The woman on the library steps had disturbed him even more than he realized. Tonight, he decided, when he went back underground to the tunnel beneath the music hall it would be to stay there with his rats until the night of the concert, and then long, long after it.
Chapter 50
Tuesday, April 29th—1:44 p.m.
The violin’s cry was driving Tom Paxton nuts. Music even in the background was distracting but it was necessary to them to have an office inside the music hall. “Where are we with the Semtex tracking?” he asked Vine. “Damn it, if you haven’t had any luck, make some. We only have two days left. Way too close for comfort, my friend.”
They were seated at a table covered with papers, coffee cups, glasses and a few laptop computers while Alana Green and Tucker Davis conferred over a computer screen at a desk shoved into a corner where there was barely room for it. The one window in the room faced into an alley that offered almost no ambient light and by itself the hanging brass lamp with its mediocre lumens wasn’t enough to brighten the gloom, all of which added to Paxton’s sense of impending disaster.
“We have three of the buyers under heavy surveillance—not anywhere near Vienna by the way. Two of them bought Semtex and the third—”
“I know all that—what I don’t know is what we’re doing about the fourth buy,” Paxton interrupted. “Why didn’t your contacts tell you they’d arranged another sale? What damn good does it do us if we don’t even know how many buys we need to track?”
Vine didn’t even bother responding but continued explaining what he did know. “Yesterday, for about a half hour, we were able to track the fourth buy to a hotel here in the city. And we just found out that it seems to have been coming from a room registered to one of the press.”
“Who’s the reporter?”
“David Yalom.”
“Shit. He’ll do anything to protect a source. I’ve known the guy for years and he’s fearless. Meeting with a known terrorist wouldn’t faze him, especially after what he’s gone through. Can you ask Kerri to call him and ask him to come in and talk to us, and in the meantime also put a tail on him to see who he’s talking to and what he’s doing?”
“Will do.”
“You said you only caught the signal in his room for a short period of time. What happened to it?”
Vine only hesitated for a fraction of a second but Paxton was all over him.
“Are you saying you don’t know?”
“We lost it.”
“How do you lose a tracking device?”
“We followed it from the hotel to the subway and then lost it.”
Paxton got up and walked around the small room, inspecting every computer screen he passed while the melancholy violin solo tested his patience. “We should have been able to read signals at the subway level, shouldn’t we?”
“Yes. That’s what makes no sense. We’re still investigating.”
“And what about this area?” Paxton pointed to one of the screens that showed a darkened area under the concert hall. “Tucker, you said you couldn’t get a reading past a certain point in that shaft. Is that right?”
“Right. We haven’t even been able to ascertain how deep the shaft goes but it’s so narrow—not even two feet wide—that we’re not focusing on it.”
Paxton took a deep breath, trying to ease the tension gripping his chest.
“Well, I’m focusing on everything within five blocks of the
concert hall now that we might have missing explosives. Bill, get on the phone and find out if anyone has even the most rudimentary next-level test model GPR that can get us a deeper reading—”
“Nothing out there exists that we don’t have.” Vine cut Paxton off somehow, managing not to allow even the thinnest vestige of aggravation in his voice although he’d had this conversation with his boss several times in the last few hours.
“Then we’re vulnerable. We’re unprepared. And that’s unacceptable.” Paxton put extra emphasis on the first syllable of unacceptable so the un was almost its own word.
“You don’t need to tell me. Regardless, the machines you are asking for don’t exist.”
Kerri walked in with a tray of fresh coffee, bottles of water and a plate of cookies and had to shove papers out of her way to put it down. Just as she did, Paxton responded to Vine by banging his hand on the table and shouting, “Fuck that.”
China and silverware clattered.
“Getting angry isn’t going to get us deeper readings or find that fourth tracking device,” she said as she twisted open a bottle of water and handed it to him. “I think you wanted this about four screams ago.”
There was an imperceptible shift in Paxton’s expression as he took a long drink. Coming up for air he looked over at Alana Green. “Can you show me the tunnels you already have mapped leading into and out of the area?” His tone was back to even, his drawl was smoothed out and everyone in the room relaxed a little. But only a little. This was still what it had been from the beginning: a high-level security situation. Thursday’s concert was a target. There was no other way to look at it. No smarter way to look at it. There may or may not be a terrorist threat but Paxton’s plan was to operate as if there were.
Green hit some keys on her keyboard and pulled up a series of computerized graphics illustrating the underground world she’d been charting since arriving in Vienna. Paxton and Vine were riveted to the screen, as was Kerri, but Tucker Davis was still working on his own laptop. Since he’d announced his wife was pregnant, Paxton had noticed Davis had been preoccupied a couple of times and that made him nervous. He couldn’t afford for a senior member of his team to be lax about any part of this job. “I think we need to get more men down there,” Paxton said.