Dylan picked up Rowan's phone and dialed a number. It seemed a tacit agreement between them that even if the police were sometime to be called in on this case, there was nothing to find here, no forensic evidence that they could disturb.
From eavesdropping on Dylan's side of the conversation, Colin gathered that Ninian was surprised to hear from Dylan and hadn't known that Rowan was missing.
"He'll be here in about forty minutes," Dylan said, hanging up.
After that, there was nothing to do but wait. Colin was tempted to work on the manuscript, but restrained himself. The writing was safe for now—invisible. There'd be time enough later. Colin leaned back on the couch, closing his eyes. He had not slept well last night, and most of today had been spent traveling. The merciless inelasticity of age reminded him that he did not have the reserves of youth to draw upon; all strength was gone, taken by time, leaving only the skill behind.
But sometimes skill alone was enough, if the skill were great enough. . . .
He must have dozed off, because it seemed to Colin, with the reasonable il-logic of dreams, that he was reading Rowan Moorcock's dissertation, and that it held the answers to questions he had puzzled over in vain all through this life. So this is what it was all for. How simple—and how tragic. . . .
He was jarred awake by the sound of the doorbell ringing. Colin got slowly to his feet, shaking off the veils of sleep.
"I'll get it," Dylan said, and a moment later, "Hi, Nin."
Ninian Bellamy looked like a tubercular Victorian poet translated into the modern age. He had long straight black hair pulled back into a ponytail, and his skin was the milk-pale color of the Black Celt. His eyes were pale grey under straight black brows, and he wore a dark tweed jacket with a black band-collar shirt buttoned all the way to the throat. As an eccentric touch to his somewhat formal outfit, he wore high-topped Converse sneakers instead of dress shoes.
"Glad you could make it," Dylan said. "How's the dowsing business going?"
"Well enough," Ninian said, shrugging with awkward embarrassment. He did not seem so much hostile as simply confused about the reason for his presence.
"You remember Dr. MacLaren," Dylan said. "Colin, this is Ninian Bellamy, a former student of mine."
"Pleased to meet you," Ninian said formally, though he kept his hands in his pockets.
Colin nodded to himself. If Ninian was making a living as a water-witch—an ancient profession that modern business was willing to employ without understanding it—he undoubtedly had a fairly high degree of psychic potential, and most psychics didn't like to be touched.
"I attended a lecture series of yours a couple of years ago, though you probably won't remember," Ninian said.
"And stayed awake? I'm flattered," Colin said, making a small joke to defuse the gravity of the situation.
"It was interesting," Ninian said, as if by way of explanation. He looked back at Dylan. "You want to tell me why the police aren't here if Ro's been missing for a month?" he asked.
"Because"—Colin answered for Dylan—"we can't prove that anything's happened to her. I think she's in trouble—she left some information about it cached and a note saying you'd have the key to the depository."
"Me?" The young man was obviously startled. "I haven't seen Ro in over a year. I wasn't the one who went for a doctorate in forensic psychometry that'd take two extra years."
Colin picked up the bound manuscript containing Rowan's invisible ink message and passed it to Ninian. Ninian stared at it and shook his head, then looked at the other side of the page.
"Thanks a lot, Ro," he muttered, closing the manuscript and handing it back to Colin. "Look, do you mind if I make myself some coffee before I try to figure out what she was thinking—and I use the word in the loosest possible manner. I was up all night trying to find an old sewer line about ninety miles north of here, and I'm sort of bushed. I hate looking for water—it feels like banging on a sore tooth," he added, half to himself.
"The deli's around the corner," Dylan said, but Ninian shook his head.
"I might as well make it here. She owes me coffee, for dragging me out like this."
"You'll have to take it black," Dylan warned. "Val's cleaned out the refrigerator."
Ninian shrugged and walked off into the kitchen, still carrying the sheet of paper. He might not be Rowan's closest friend, but he seemed to know his way around her apartment.
Colin sat down on the couch, prepared to be patient. Ninian wasn't one of his own people; he might not be used to working with the quick decision that Colin preferred. But on this occasion Colin had no choice: he needed everything that Ninian could tell them, however little that might be.
But Rowan must know as well as anyone the strange limitations that bound the use of the psychic gift. How could she expect Ninian to find what an ordinary search could not?
"Yuck," Ninian said comprehensively from the other room.
"What's wrong?" Dylan demanded apprehensively.
"I don't know who put this in the freezer, but it's time to throw it out. Ro'd never eat something like that, and it's already melted anyway—see?"
Ninian walked back into the living room, opening the carton of ice cream that Colin had noticed earlier. There was a thick fuzz of ice crystals atop a smooth white surface two inches below the top of the carton—it was as if the ice cream had melted into liquid and then been refrozen.
"Well, toss it, then," Dylan said. "Or put it back in the fridge—we can take it out with us when we leave."
Ninian went back into the kitchen, and the other two heard clattering as he looked around for coffee and sugar.
Invisible ink, Colin thought, still half-drowsy. Boys' Own Paper cloak and dagger stuff Why not believe in a literal key as well, hidden somewhere that Ninian would find, once he started looking for it? But he wouldn't come here unless someone found the note and called him—he said himself that he hadn't seen Rowan since he graduated. So someone would have to call him. But if it wasn't someone he trusted, he wouldn't be rummaging around the kitchen. . . .
Colin got up and walked quickly into the kitchen, an odd expression on his face. Ninian was leaning against the wall, apparently intent on disproving the adage that a watched pot never boils.
"Why wouldn't she eat the ice cream?" Colin asked. "Doesn't she eat ice cream?"
"Not that brand," Ninian said absently. "It's full of additives. She always buys Haagen-Dazs or something like that. That's why I was looking in the freezer. I hate black coffee."
"And you were going to use ice cream in it," Colin said, half to himself, "but only if it was a premium brand. Which is all Rowan Moorcock ever bought."
"That's right." Ninian was watching Colin, an odd expression on his face.
Colin opened the freezer and took out the carton, hefting it in his hands.
"Heavy," he said. Oddly heavy, for a half-full carton of air-puffed ice cream.
. . . but if Dylan found the message, he'd call Ninian, and the first thing Ninian would do would be to make himself coffee. But there wouldn't be any milk, because Rowan told Val to take the milk away. So he'd use the ice cream, the way he often did. . . .
Colin opened the carton, picking up the spoon that Ninian had laid out, and began digging into the ice cream. The spoon penetrated only an inch or so before hitting something hard.
"There's something in here," Colin said aloud, setting the carton into the sink. Reaching for the faucet taps, he turned the hot water on full strength.
The ice cream melted quickly away to reveal a slab of solid ice with something frozen inside, trapped like a fly in amber. Colin levered the ice out of the carton—wincing at the cold—and set it in the sink.
A block of ice, sandwiched between two slabs of ice cream. A ruse that would fool almost any searcher—even one who was tearing the house apart— but not someone who knew Rowan well.
But why such a large slab of ice, if all she needed to hide was a key?
The streaming water s
lowly melted through the cloudy ice. By now Dylan had come into the kitchen as well, watching the frozen contents of the block slowly appear. When the kettle boiled, Ninian poured the water over the ice, and then rinsed the objects with the tap to cool them.
"A necklace?" Dylan was baffled.
Lying in the sink were a small silver key and a heavy gold chain as thick as a pencil, made of squared-off links that looked vaguely similar to an anchor chain. It held a large pendant, roughly three inches long. Colin picked it up and laid it, faceup, on a square of paper towel to dry.
"It's a crucifix," Dylan said.
"It's broken," Ninian said, reaching out and trying to turn the carved ivory figure right side up. Colin stopped him before he touched it.
"No," Colin said. "Leave it alone. That's the way it was meant to be."
He gazed down at the red-haired, one-eyed figure hanging inverted from an upright cross, the body marked all over its surface with the bleeding rune-symbols.
The three of them returned to the Bidney Institute after that. Ninian had come along. Though Colin really didn't want him involved, there didn't seem to be any real way to discourage the boy.
"This should take care of our secret writing," Dylan said, laying the stack of papers—Rowan's unbound dissertation—on a long table in the lab. "I suppose running the pages through a laser printer might have the same effect, but it'd be a little riskier."
Reaching up, he pulled a rack of lamps into position over it, and switched them on. The table was suddenly bathed in hot orange light.
"Infrared," Dylan said. "From what you've said, this should make Rowan's notes become visible." He took a paper from the top of the pile and lowered the lamps over it. After a few seconds, faint brown writing began to appear.
"Okay," Ninian said, watching the writing darken. "I'd kind of like an explanation. If Ro's fallen into the clutches of the Committee to Reelect the President or some other bizarro cult, I want to know what we're supposed to do about it."
Dylan looked expectantly toward Colin.
Toller Hasloch was dead. He had been dead for more than two decades— since Christmas Day 1972, over a quarter of a century ago. That his perverse, twisted doctrine was still alive was something Colin had never doubted— why, then, was seeing this symbol again such a profound and unwelcome surprise? It did not mean he was alive, Colin told himself, but the certainty he fought felt very much like fear. He took a deep breath.
"I'm going to make a long string of assumptions, which might change once we've read Rowan's dissertation and the notes she concealed in it—and Dylan, if you can remember any of the names of the people who talked to you about her, that would be a great help."
Colin walked over to the table and reluctantly picked up the rune-cross again. It was heavy, ceremonial, made of gold and enameled ivory—an expensive piece of custom jewelry at the very least. The back was plain smooth gold, decorated with a series of shallow holes like a pattern of buckshot or a fragment of a star map.
Who had it belonged to? How had Rowan come to have it, and why had she kept it? Colin turned it over in his hands, but the tiny, tortured figure gave him no answers.
"Rowan began by investigating the historical Thule Group. Somewhere along the way, her investigation shifted to its modern descendant, which to my certain knowledge is still active in this country. As she became aware of the Thule Gesellschaft, it also became aware of her, and began investigating her in turn. She's been missing now for about six weeks." The vast empty space of the Bidney Institute's main laboratory seemed to take the words as he spoke them and blot them out, even from memory. Most of the light came from the heat lamps, and their furnace-mouth illumination made the three men look like demons on holiday from Hell.
"We have every reason to believe she's the one who mailed the annotated copy of the dissertation to Dylan a month ago, indicating she was free then."
Ninian shifted uneasily at Colin's choice of words, running a hand over his hair. In the orange light, his expression was difficult to read.
"We have three possibilities open to us. She may still be hiding, she may be a prisoner of the Thulists, or she may already be dead. In any of these scenarios, the police—or, I suppose, the FBI, since this is a kidnapping—will be of no help."
Colin did not mention his conviction, evolved slowly over the decades, that the higher one went in the ranks of the government intelligence community, the more likely it was that any inquiry about the Thule Group would be reported directly to the people Rowan had been investigating—the Thulists themselves. To say such a thing aloud still seemed tantamount to irresponsible paranoia in his mind.
"I can't find her," Ninian said, a little desperately. "You know that, Dylan. That isn't what I do." He covered his eyes with his hand, as if he wanted to blot out everything he was hearing—and thinking.
"For my part—and, I know, for Dylan's—we'd prefer that you simply forgot all about this and went back to your own life," Colin said, though he doubted his words would have any force.
"No," Ninian said reluctantly. "Not if Rowan asked for my help. Space-Nazis from Hell . . . with all due respect, Professor MacLaren." The young man sounded frazzled, as anyone might, having been suddenly presented with such a ludicrous and horrible idea. "It's just . . . There must be something I can do to help besides defrost her freezer."
"There has to be something we can both do," Dylan said urgently. "You said you're familiar with the modern group, Colin—how do we find her?"
"I've run into them before," Colin said, staring down at the pendant in his hand. "But I don't want to see any amateurs—any more amateurs—put at risk. If I can find out who to approach—if Rowan is still alive—I think I may be able to arrange for her freedom."
"You?" Dylan said, and Colin could see all his objections as though they were written on his face: You're a frail old man, Colin, and World War II was a long time ago. She's my student—this is my responsibility—
"It has to be me," Colin said firmly. "You'll have to agree to that now, Dylan, or I won't help you any further. I've been involved with these people for over fifty years and I can assure you: they have the inclination and the resources to kill for very little reason or none at all with no expectation of discovery. I won't be responsible for feeding any more helpless innocents to that evil."
"I'm hardly a helpless innocent—" Dylan began, but Ninian stopped him, putting a restraining hand on Dylan's arm.
"Let him, Dylan. This is a kind of... negotiation, isn't it, Dr. MacLaren? You're saying that they know you. And they don't know Dylan. Right?" Ninian said.
"Something like that," Colin said, grateful for the support, even if it came from such an unexpected source. "Dylan, if you start trying to find Rowan— If they've got her, and you spook them, they might kill her on the spot."
"You said she might already be dead," Dylan said tightly.
"I don't really think so. She would have talked before she died, and they would have come after you," Colin said matter-of-factly. He spoke without realizing how the words sounded, but Dylan's face went white. "See if you can find your notes," Colin told him gently. "Ninian and I will finish developing these pages. Maybe they'll tell us something."
When Dylan was out of earshot, Ninian turned to Colin.
"Do you really think she's still alive?" he asked.
"I think that if she isn't, she died very recently," Colin said. "Because I can't imagine them leaving these things"—he indicated the key and the necklace—"in our hands."
Near midnight local time—but only nine p.m. by Colin's internal clock, still set to West Coast time—he sat in the spare bedroom of the house Dylan and Truth shared, going over the pages of the unbound dissertation. One side of the pages was covered with neat laser-printing, the other in straggly brown handwriting. Colin read both carefully.
Rowan's dissertation was solid, cautious stuff, but the lemon-juice notes were far less so. In them, she covered names, dates, places, that Colin had thought
hidden or lost forever—documenting the failed occult ritual that had stranded Hess in England; the secret talks with Dulles that began in Switzerland under the guise of meetings of the BIS, the Bank for International Settlements; the Thule Group's transfer to America. She went on to document ties between the Peronistas, Colonia Dignitad, and important members of both American political parties—if even half of what Rowan had written here were published, she'd be defending against libel actions well into the next century, whether it was true or not.
And the picture she painted with her collage of names and dates was worthy of the wildest conspiracy theory.
But haven't conspiracy theories been discounted lately? As if someone—or something—wants to make the whole idea of conspiracies into a joke? So that any conspiracy, no matter how real, is automatically questionable at the moment of its disclosure. . . . Between Watergate and Roswell, nobody even cares what the truth is, anymore. Reflexively, Colin groped for his pipe before remembering—as he always did—that he didn't have it. He'd given it up years ago, at the combined nagging of Claire and his doctor—a pity, as this was what the great detective Sherlock Holmes would certainly have called a "three-pipe problem."
He took off his glasses and fussed with them, polishing the lenses and then settling them back on his nose. Sometimes they proved to be an adequate substitute, giving him something to fiddle with while he gathered his thoughts. He put them back on his nose and peered at the pages on the desk. Not tonight, though. Tonight nothing would help.
His watch beeped, reminding him it was time for his pills. Colin sighed, and rummaged through his bag until he found the bottle. His life was circumscribed by medical advice—the alchemy of Time making him no longer Roland but Don Quixote.
For a moment Colin thought of calling Claire now instead of tomorrow. At least Colin could share his thoughts with someone who could understand the horror and the powerlessness he felt. It was something he would have to do soon—if Rowan had been seized, her family would also be at risk. But Colin dreaded having to tell her—as if ignorance alone could be a shield against whatever evil had taken Rowan.
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