He shook his head. “I see a woman struggling to move on. To do what’s right. You are stronger than you know, Maggs.”
She looked into his eyes. “I don’t know who I am anymore. The man I loved for so long is dead. The other great loves of my life, my son and my grandson, my godson, are all so far away.” She shook her head. “Now there is a new man in my life, and I’m fighting to bring my music back. But …”
“But conflict rears.”
“Conflict is an understatement.”
She took a deep breath and the sharp, lingering scent of incense filled her head. “What would you say if I told you that I almost killed a man in France? That I wanted to.”
His light eyes fixed on hers. “I would say … that you must have believed he deserved it. Sometimes death can right a terrible wrong. Is that what happened?”
“Yes.” She looked down at the fingers gripped whitely in her lap. “And no.”
“Tell me about the ‘no.’” He waited silently.
“Someone else’s bullet took his life,” she whispered. “But I wanted him dead.”
“Okay, then.”
She stared at him. “Okay? I just told you that I tried to kill a man, and that’s all you have to say?”
He looked at her expression and stood up. “Of course, there is more to say. Come with me, Maggs. St. Malachy’s was my first parish, and the pastor is a friend of mine. He knows how much I like being here so he’s given me an old desk in his office. We both could use a drink, and we will talk about this man you wanted dead.”
* * *
The pastor’s office, located off a hallway behind the altar, was long and narrow. At the far end, set beneath a simple wooden cross, was a scarred antique desk. The only items on its surface were a reading lamp, a well-worn paperback of the writings of St. Francis, and a small framed photograph of horses in dappled light, grazing near an ancient stone wall.
“This is for healing,” said Robbie from behind her shoulder. “When I saw it I thought of you.” He held out a silver gift bag.
She parted the tissue and withdrew a black t-shirt imprinted with the words, Honor Thy Music. “Oh, Robbie.”
He handed her a crystal glass engraved with the words Lux et Veritas, filled with two fingers of scotch. “To you,” he toasted. “To finding your way back to music, and to life.” He gestured to the straight-backed chair and leaned back against the desk. “Now. Tell me about this man who deserved to die.”
Maggie sat down and closed her eyes, pictured Victor Orsini standing in a convent garden in St. Remy. Pointing a gun at her. The sudden flash of light, the sharp pop of sound, the blossom of red on his chest, his slow-motion fall to the earth.
“His name was Victor Orsini. He was a brilliant and very cruel man, married to my best friend. Their son is my godson, Tommy. I blamed him for my husband’s death.” She swallowed the scotch, felt the burn. “But there’s more.”
“There always is, with you. You are a complicated woman, Maggie. Have been since I met you.” He motioned for her to continue. “I’m listening.”
“A priceless collection of art was confiscated from a Jewish art gallery owner named Felix Hoffman during World War II. In the chaos of war, the collection was dispersed—most of the art went to the Nazis’ treasure chests, but other pieces just disappeared. My friend Simon Sugarman, an agent from the Justice Department, has been searching for Hoffman’s collection for years. He believes that Victor Orsini inherited dozens of Hoffman’s canvases, and hid them. Now Simon thinks he finally might have a way to find them. With my help.”
“How is that possible?” Robbie Brennan tapped his fingers together thoughtfully. “Ah, of course. Did Orsini tell you the location of the art before he died?”
Maggie gazed at him with surprise. “Simon asked me the exact same question. The answer is no. But Victor did talk about his love for his son. Simon is convinced that Tommy Orsini could know where the art is hidden.”
“He would want to leave the collection to the person he loved the most.”
“Yes. But if Tommy knows, then he could be in danger. Finding the art is the best way to ensure Tommy’s safety. And I may have found a way to help. Gigi Donati has a Matisse, discovered at the end of World War II, from the same collection. It’s called Dark Rhapsody. One of the most beautiful paintings I’ve ever seen. Simon says it’s the jewel of the Hoffman collection.”
The light eyes flashed. “Now I’m intrigued. Do you think Gigi would let me see it?”
Maggie shook her head. “She wants to return it to the rightful heir. She’s asked me to go to Vienna to help with the search.”
“Ah, Vienna. I was there a very long time ago, with a friend from the Divinity School. The city of music. And you think it’s possible Hoffman’s heir could know more about the other missing art as well?”
Maggie lifted her shoulders. “Simon thinks so.”
A long, low organ chord sounded in the church, reverberating throughout the office. A moment of silence, and then the notes of Bach tumbled like rain around them. Maggie lifted her face as if needing to be touched by the music.
Robbie leaned closer. “I know that look, Maggie. You’re going to take all this head-on. Even if it’s dangerous.”
“I won’t give in to fear, Robbie,” she said quietly. “But I have no idea what to do. That’s why I’m here.”
“I was afraid of that,” he muttered. “Okay. Start by doing what is necessary. Then do what is possible. And suddenly you are doing the impossible.”
She smiled into his eyes. “I love it when you go all ‘Thomas Aquinas-y’ on me.”
“Not Tommy. Francis of Assisi.”
“Oh. Well, I was in the right century.” She pushed her hair back from her face. “No one is going to scare me from helping the people I love.”
“The things that we love tell us who we are,” said Robbie.
“St. Francis?”
Laughter sparked. “Thomas Aquinas.”
Maggie stood, reached out to place a gentle hand on his arm. “Ah, Robbie. I do love you.”
As the unseen organist raced toward Bach’s triumphant conclusion, the new Cardinal of the Archdiocese of New York gazed down at her. “The Lord can give,” he said softly, “and the Lord can taketh away. I might be herding sheep next year.”
“Aha! Now that has to be Thomas Aquinas.”
His Eminence Robert Cardinal Brennan grinned down at her. “Elvis.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A VILLAGE IN TUSCANY
THE WOMAN WAS dressed in mourning.
The long black skirt swung about her ankles, white lilies were clutched against her breast, crystal rosary beads spilled like tears from her fingers. A dark shawl, draped like a veil over her hair, hid her face.
Pink dawn lit the sky and tiled rooftops of the remote hilltop village that hung so precariously over the deep gorge. Hidden in the shadows of the cemetery chapel on a grassy hill above the village, the old village priest stood silently, watching.
The woman made her way past dark passageways and ancient doorways, their coats-of-arms stained green with lichen. In the quiet piazza, a lone farmer set out cheeses and fresh rabbit for the morning’s market.
At last the woman passed through a medieval archway and emerged from the shadows into the brightening light. A steep path wound up through the parasol pines, where the priest waited, out of sight, in the white-walled Cimitero Comunale.
When she pushed the rusted gate aside, the priest stepped deeper behind stone columns. The long chain of the onyx rosary beads tied to his belt clicked against his thigh and he gripped them close to keep them silent. As a young child, the girl had played with the smooth, glittering jet beads while sitting on his lap in the chapel. God’s black diamonds, she would whisper.
Passing just yards from him, the young woman took a path crowded with aging headstones and weathered photographs. The grave she sought was new. There, in the north corner. The shadow from a high stone cross touche
d her face as she angled across the grass.
She stopped before a fresh mound of earth still crowned with flowers now brown and wilted in the Tuscan heat, the scent of their rotting petals sickly sweet in the morning air. Sweeping the wreathes aside, she gently set down the fresh lilies. Tears spilled from her eyes as she sank to her knees, touching the words so newly carved into the stone.
The old priest bowed his head, knowing the inscription. Guiseppe Falconi, Il Dottore. Incipit Vita Nova. The new life begins.
He had buried her father just yesterday—the village doctor, only fifty-two years old. Much too young to die. I want to comfort you, Beatrice, the priest told the daughter of his old friend silently. But still he remained hidden.
Closing his eyes, the priest heard once more the shriek of brakes as the doctor’s ancient Ford descended the steep, treacherous mountain road just after midnight three nights earlier. A sound like thunder, then a pillar of fire rising like a red banner from the gorge. The empty bottle of strong local wine discovered, the next morning, on his bedroom floor.
In the ancient cemetery, the stillness was disturbed only by the distant rush of the River Serchio and the repetitive words of the prayers that tumbled from the young woman’s lips.
The priest glanced toward the rising sun. Later today, he knew, Beatrice would be free to return to her father’s house, and to the patient hidden in the cramped attic room. Today, his bandages would come off.
The patient …
He had learned of the patient from Beatrice herself, just hours before her father’s death. He had been sitting, half asleep, in the dark, closet-like chapel confessional. The only sound was the click-click of his jet beads, shifting through his fingers. Then the heavy curtains to his left had rustled, and he’d heard the sounds of someone kneeling, breathing, beyond the wooden wall.
A tiny light winked on, and he slid back the small slatted panel. Through the grate he saw the top of a woman’s dark head, bowed in the shadows. Then the whisper of a soft, familiar voice.
Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
Tell me, my child.
And she had told him of a night six weeks earlier, when a tall stranger had appeared at the back door of their cottage just after midnight. A brimmed hat pulled low over his forehead, silvered opaque glasses hiding his eyes, a scarf wound above his chin to hide the lower half of his face. Her father and the man had talked behind closed doors until dawn.
And the next morning, her father had performed the first of several complicated facial surgeries in the back room of their cottage.
I have been nursing him, Father, through the long pain-filled nights. His body is strong, hard, deeply scarred. Not young, not old. He speaks fluent Italian, but he is not one of us. In the night, when the nightmares strike him, he shouts out in Greek, in German, in French. When he is awake, he calls me Mon Ange. His angel. He quotes Shakespeare to me. His hair, above the bandages, is the color of summer corn …
The patient had made only three requests of her, soon after he regained consciousness: for a book of Shakespeare’s tragedies; a pair of gloves to protect the terrible, blistered burn scars on his right hand; and a player for the CDs he kept in his only possession, a worn canvas duffel bag.
He plays his CDs for me, Father. Such beautiful music. And he reads to me, from Shakespeare. When I told him my name was Beatrice, he said, “Then I shall be your Dante. And perhaps you will save me from my circles of hell.” A soft breath. “And I have called him Dante ever since.”
“But what is your sin, my child?” the priest had asked her.
And she had whispered the answer into the shadows.
Church bells sounding high above his head broke the silence of the cemetery, and drew the old priest back to the shaded chapel alcove. He watched as Beatrice stood, her hands moving in the sign of the cross. One last time, she looked down at the grave of her father. Then she turned away.
The priest waited silently until she descended the steps and took the turn for the clinic where she worked. Then he lifted his eyes. Her home sat alone on a small rise above the river, surrounded by slender cypresses.
It was time to confront the patient.
The old priest moved slowly toward the tall iron gate. Now the only sounds were the high cry of the crows and the click of rosary beads swinging against his robes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
NEW YORK CITY
TUESDAY NIGHT
MAGGIE SAT AT the grand piano in the borrowed town house on the West Side, a pencil clamped tightly between her lips, leaning forward to study the tumbling notes of Rachmaninoff’s ninety-page score. The dog-eared pages were now covered by her handwritten notes, sharp exclamation points, scribbled stars and arrows.
She had reached the slower movements of the middle section, Variations 11 through 18. The transition to love, the great range of moods, from intimacy to heroism to tenderness. The time for the pianist’s own improvisations. Like my life, she thought.
But Variation 17 was giving her trouble. The darkness, just before the light of the gorgeous 18th. She played a passage again, slowly, listening with her whole being. Gigi had suggested she try changing the tempo. “Bring in the pensive, the emotion,” she had said. “Envision a woman dropping a flower on a man’s grave.” Yes. Maggie wrote across the page of notes, sat back, played the same measures with a building, trembling intensity. Okay, better. Now if only she could—
A quick, loud knock at the front door.
She glanced up. The shine of rain on the window, glistening against blackness. Rain? And when had it gotten so dark? She checked her watch. Good Lord. Eleven p.m. already. Who on earth could be knocking on her door at this hour?
The knock again, louder. She thought she heard someone call her name. She glanced around in panic. Where was a hammer when you needed one?
She reached for the heavy bronze sculpture of the conductor and moved to the front door. Please, no more roses.
“Who’s there?”
“Open the damned door, Maggie. It’s me. Zander!”
“Zander? Hold on.” She set down the sculpture with relief—wouldn’t do to shatter such an expensive piece of art—and fumbled with the dead bolts.
Alexander Karas, her godfather, stood on the front steps in a soaked raincoat, water glistening on his forehead, scowling down at her.
She couldn’t stop the sudden bubble of laughter as she pulled him into the room. “Come in, I’m so sorry.”
Rain dripped from his cap as he brushed by her. She reached for his coat, still smiling. “What on earth are you doing here at this hour?”
“Don’t look so amused, dammit. Another interminable dinner party, just down the street. I saw your lights on.”
She slipped off her glasses, rubbed her eyes. “Rachmaninoff is keeping me sleepless.”
He snapped his umbrella shut and slipped out of his raincoat and hat, hanging everything on a wooden coat tree by the door. Then he turned to her.
“Do you have any scotch?”
“Good idea.” She moved to an oak sideboard and held up a bottle of Spanish red wine. “Will a Rioja do?”
“It will have to.” He came to stand behind her, took the bottle from her hand, and poured the wine into two glasses. “I’ve been thinking about your father.”
She shook her head, gesturing Zander toward the facing sofas. “You should have called and saved yourself a trip in the rain.”
Zander Karas sank into the white linen, held up his glass in a perfunctory toast, and drank deeply. “I wanted to see you. We didn’t finish talking about Finn.”
Her thoughts flew to Simon Sugarman and his questions. “Apparently everyone is interested in my father all of a sudden.”
Zander leaned toward her, his gaze surprised and intense. “Who is everyone?”
“My friend Simon Sugarman, for one, an agent for the Justice Department in DC. He’s searching for a missing art collection, questioning people who attended Yale some years back, especially
those who might have been members of a secret society—Skull and Bones.” She eyed her godfather over the edge of her wineglass. “He asked to meet you as well.”
Karas’ face became a mask. “Did he, now? And why is that?”
She shrugged. “You’d have to ask him.”
“I will. Set up a meeting.”
“Were you a member of Skull and Bones at Yale, Zander? Was my father?”
He drank again. “The thing about secret societies, Maggie, is—they’re secret.”
She looked out at the rain. “Not the denial I was expecting. Surely you can tell your only goddaughter something?”
He drained his glass and looked at her. “I can tell you what I do know about Skull and Bones. It’s Yale’s most elite society, almost two hundred years old. They choose some fifteen members every year—based on leadership, influence, and breeding, I suspect, and the chosen become lifetime members of the ultimate club, most going on to positions of great power. I’m told there are almost seven hundred living Bones alumni, so there have to be quite a few elderly members as well. They meet in a windowless mausoleum on the Yale campus called ‘The Tomb.’”
Maggie leaned in to refill his wineglass. “Simon Sugarman went to Yale in the early eighties. He told me that there has always been a strong relationship between Yale and the Intelligence community.”
Karas shrugged. “It’s a known fact that the Bones members include titans of industry, politicians, theologians, filmmakers, authors, statesmen—and spies. John Kerry, James Angleton of the CIA, Rockefeller. Three presidents that I know of, including the Bushes senior and junior. Some of the most powerful men of the twentieth century are Bonesmen, Maggie, and their children as well. It’s a vast social, political, and powerful network.”
“With everyone committed to each other …”
Zander lifted his wine and looked at her with speculation over the edge of the crystal. “It would seem so. They work for the success of each other in the post-college world. Eventually they wield tremendous influence in US and world affairs. It’s said that they don’t do time in jail, only at the White House.”
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