The Magic Circle

by Katherine Neville

  But what about Augustus’s role? I asked Olivier if he knew.

  “Your father’s very high on our list,” Olivier told me. “Apparently, he hasn’t been involved with Bambi’s mother romantically in years—each has by now married someone else—but they do seem to understand one another extremely well. About ten years ago, your father helped set up Halle von Hauser in a position of prominence in Washington, D.C., from which she is now able to exercise significant political influence, both here and abroad. Indeed, there’s a delicacy involved in unraveling with whom these two have connections. In Halle’s position on the boards of several museums and a major newspaper, she’s the capital’s most influential social beast—”

  Holy shit.

  “That paper wouldn’t by chance be the Washington Post?” I interrupted. “And Halle’s new husband wouldn’t by chance be named Voorheer-LeBlanc?” It did sound Dutch-Belgian, part of the very region of Himmler’s nouveau paradis.

  Olivier smiled. “You certainly have been doing your homework.”

  Naturally she would have picked a different first name, like Helena, in case anyone ever mentioned a person with a memorable name like Halle. I recalled, too, how interested my father and stepmother Grace had been to see what I knew about my inheritance, at dinner that night in San Francisco. They’d thrown a press conference afterwards to try to dig out even more from the estate executor. That would also be a good cover motive for someone else to phone and pump me, maybe with more success, about just which manuscripts were included in Sam’s estate. When Ms. Voorheer-LeBlanc of the Washington Post phoned later, she never said she was a reporter, just that she wanted to buy my manuscripts. I had little doubt at this point that she was none other than Wolfgang’s and Bambi’s mother, Halle von Hauser.

  Did Jersey know her sister was alive, or what she and my father had been up to since they’d left the bedroom? She hadn’t told me, but Dark Bear soon explained why.

  “Naturally, I had many suspicions regarding the sudden, unexplained death of Earnest’s first wife and child,” he told me. “But I never had evidence they were alive, until Sam’s recent research trip to Utah. Sam thinks your mother and Earnest believed the best way to protect you children from the past was simply to maintain silence.”

  I was about to pursue the point when Dark Bear slowed the Land Rover nearly to a standstill and carefully pulled off the road into the woods. The forest floor, thickly padded with layers of pine needles, gave off a heady scent as we passed. Bambi and Olivier and I fell to a hushed quiet as we watched Dark Bear carefully maneuver the large vehicle through narrow passages among the trees, as tight as threading an embroidery needle. After what seemed ages, the land started to rise gradually, until at last we were headed straight uphill. When the rugged terrain became too steep, Dark Bear stopped at the edge of a narrow crevasse and switched off the engine. He turned to me.

  “I am to take you as far as the river, then my grandson will come and meet us,” he told me. “He is expecting me to bring only you, however—so perhaps these others should stay behind and wait here at the car.”

  I turned to Olivier and Bambi with a raised brow, to see what they thought.

  “I should like to accompany you,” Bambi told me. “And to help in any way I can. I consider myself responsible for much of what has happened to you and your cousin—our cousin,” she corrected herself. “Had I told you everything about my brother the moment I knew you had met him, it all might have been avoided.”

  “Well, that cinches it,” said Olivier, coating his québecois with a western drawl. “No self-respecting feller’d let two fillies like you run loose, alone in them thar hills.”

  But he dropped his jaw when Bambi whipped from her jacket pocket a small Browning automatic, which she pointed toward the roof with a professionalism rivaling Annie Oakley’s. Olivier had always claimed he was searching for the cowgirl of his dreams, but now he flung up his hands.

  “For heaven’s sakes,” he cried, “put that thing away before someone gets hurt! Where on earth did you get it?”

  “My grandfather Hillmann was advanced group trainer in the Ballermann Gewehrschiessen—the shootists’ club—of central Germany. Everyone in our family was required to learn to shoot,” she informed Olivier. “I am merit-qualified in the Walther, Luger, Mauser, and all models of the Browning—and I am licensed to carry this for my own protection.”

  Right. You never know when somebody might try to bump off a twenty-five-year-old blond girl cellist. Especially in a family like ours.

  “Let her bring it along,” I told Olivier. “It might come in handy.”

  We followed Dark Bear on foot up the long, rocky defile. The going got rougher toward the top, as big chunks of rock broke loose from the rubble and slipped away under our feet. I really wasn’t looking forward to another avalanche. You couldn’t even out-ski ten thousand tons of crumbling rock.

  We got to the top of the cliff overlooking, about two hundred feet below, a thickly forested valley cut by a broad, glassy ribbon of river, and something I recognized at once that told me precisely where we were: Sam’s favorite spot in northern Idaho, the upper Mesa Falls.

  The river was wide here, and the falls dropped in a single burnished sheet, as golden in the sunlight as Bambi’s hair. Only the constant roiling mist rising from its base gave any indication of the volume of pounding water crushing the ancient rocks down there into pebbled sand. I’d come here years ago, as a teenager, with Sam. It was my last outing before I went away to school, and he wanted to show it to me.

  “It’s my secret place, hotshot,” he’d told me. “I found it when I was out fishing on my own once, when I was quite young. Nobody’s been here for a very long time, maybe thousands of years.”

  Holding hands, we’d waded the shallow waters just above the falls and climbed down the crooked rock face at the far side of the cliff. There we found a narrow seam in the rock, nearly invisible until you were right upon it, and so close to the pounding water that its sides were slimy with green mosses from the constant spray. Sam slipped sideways into the crack, pulling me by the hand after him.

  We were inside a large cave, behind the roaring waters that fell like a veil in front of our very faces. We went back into the cave a few yards until we were swallowed in darkness. Then Sam took out a flashlight and switched it on.

  It was absolutely breathtaking. The walls and ceiling of the cave were a fairyland of crystals in rainbows of colors. Real rainbows were cast everywhere, refracted from the churning mist swirling around us and the myriad prisms.

  “If I ever wanted to hide myself, or you, or anything else of value to me,” Sam told me in the breathless silence that was swept beneath the vacuum of roaring waters, “I couldn’t think of a better place to do it than right here.”

  And now, as I stood on the high cliff overlooking the falls with Dark Bear and Olivier and Bambi, I knew beyond question why we’d been brought here. I knew exactly what must be hidden down there in that cave.

  It took half an hour to reach the river from the cliff, picking our way through forest and thick underbrush over rocky terrain. When at last we reached a clear level spot on the embankment above the falls, I turned to the others and said over the sound of the water, “We have to wade across here. Our spot is at the far side of the falls. There’s no other place for miles where it’s shallow enough to safely ford the river.”

  “There isn’t any place at all that’s safe for me, I’m afraid,” Olivier said, regarding me with large dark eyes. “I hate to have to reveal it at this late hour—but I’ve never learned to swim!”

  “Then it’s too risky,” I agreed. “Even though the water will only be up to about our knees here, the current is terribly strong and swift so close to the falls. You’d better stay here while we cross it and find Sam.”

  Dark Bear, no spring chicken, agreed to wait on the bank with Olivier. As Bambi and I took off our shoes and rolled our trousers to wade out into the river, I set my backpack
on the ground beside Olivier. To my astonishment, Jason’s furry black head popped out—I’d completely forgotten him! His eyes lit on the silently moving waters just beyond me, and his ears twitched with enthusiasm at such a large swimming pool.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” I informed him firmly. I shoved him back in the pack and handed it to Olivier. “That’s all we need right now—a cat swept overboard. You’ll have to be the boss.” I pointed my finger at Jason and added, “No more kippered herring from your landlord here, if you misbehave while I’m gone.”

  As Bambi and I waded out into the waters, hand in hand, I felt my first flash of panic. The water was far colder, the current stronger than I’d recalled from the other time I’d tried this. Suddenly I understood why. Sam had brought me here in late summer—the hottest time of year, and so dry that it actually marks the start of forest-fire season.

  But now we were here just after spring thaw, when the rivers were at their swiftest and most swollen. The water was shoving against us so hard I had to slide my feet along the pebbled bottom. If I lifted one foot only slightly, I might easily be swept away. Much worse, it was clear from the force of the waters—only up to midcalf at this point—that if we got in more than knee deep, we might not be able to advance at all.

  I was about to yell to Bambi over the roar of water that we ought to beat a retreat to Olivier back on the bank—but just at that moment I saw a flicker of motion more than fifty feet ahead, across the river. I glanced up and saw Sam’s tall, lean outline on the opposite bank, silhouetted against the brilliant sunlight. He held his hand up, motioning us to stop where we were, then kicked off his moccasins and stepped into the river. When he got close enough to Bambi and me, I saw he had a length of rope about his waist that must be secured on the far bank. He reached us, grasped me by the shoulders, and yelled over the crash of water, “Thank God! Let me get this anchored over there, then I’ll help you across.”

  When Dark Bear had lashed the other end to a tree, Sam and Bambi and I started to pull our way along the rope, across the river to the opposite bank. When we reached it in safety, though the water had never come higher than midthigh, about three feet deep, I was exhausted from the strain and tension required to hold the rope and my balance. Bambi seemed much the same.

  Sam scrambled up first onto the rocky slope and helped us out in turn. Then wordlessly—we were now too close to the waterfall to hear, even if we screamed—Sam clambered down over the rocky side of the falls to a small standing space and reached up his hands for Bambi. He took her by the waist from beneath as I tried to help steady her precarious descent from above. Then, all at once, something horrible happened.

  Sam stood there, barefoot in the roiling mist on that narrow ledge of rock, only inches from Bambi, his long dark hair swirling out in the mist and mingling with her golden strands. As he looked down, his hands still on her waist, his silvery eyes smiling into her golden ones, I felt a sudden sharp pain.

  What in God’s name was wrong with me? This was hardly the time to get mauled by the talons of the ugly green dragon of jealousy. Besides, who was I to feel this way? I, who’d almost destroyed everyone by disregarding pleas for sanity from all sources, to go trotting off on my own little lust-ridden sexual odyssey? Further, I had to recognize that Sam had never, never—not once, by word or deed—actually told me he and I might be anything more serious than blood brothers. So why couldn’t I be detached enough, or even concerned enough for him, to show the same love, openness, trust, and support that he’d shown me, the moment he realized exactly how I felt about Wolfgang Hauser? But, God, I just couldn’t do it. As I watched them, I felt as if someone had plunged a knife into my heart and twisted it. But this was hardly the time or place to lose control.

  These thoughts rushed through my mind for the few short seconds—though it seemed like hours—that Sam and Bambi appeared to be hopelessly lost in each other’s gaze. Then Sam slipped Bambi through the slot in the rock and reached up his arms for me.

  When he lowered me to the platform of rock, Sam put his lips to my ear and yelled above the roar of the waters: “Who’s that?”

  I put my mouth likewise to his ear and yelled back: “My sister!”

  He drew away to stare at me, shook his head, and laughed, though I couldn’t hear a sound. Then he slid me into the cave and quickly followed.

  Sam’s flashlight led us back through the glittering labyrinth that had been cut over the aeons out of the solid rock and decorated by dripping water. It twisted back farther into the mountain until we reached a place where we could speak over the distant sound of the waters. Then I introduced Sam to Bambi.

  “Well, my friends.” Sam’s voice echoed against the stalagmites of the crystal cave. “I’d really like to pause and admire all the pulchritude that’s crossed the wilderness in my behalf. But I’m afraid we have a rather big task before us.”

  “Bettina and I have plenty to fill you in on, and Olivier does, too,” I told Sam. “It might be dangerous to remove Pandora’s manuscripts—I’m assuming they’re here—until you hear what we have to say. Besides, where could you find a better place to hide them safely than this?”

  “I don’t plan to hide them at all,” said Sam. “They’ve been hidden long enough, it seems to me. Honesty’s the best policy: that’s your motto, hotshot, you taught it to me.” He smiled at Bambi and added, “Did you know the mountain lion is your sister’s totem? I wonder what yours will turn out to be.” As Bambi smiled back, I felt my fingers tingling—perhaps with the damp cold here in the cave.

  “If you don’t plan to hide them,” I asked Sam with numb lips, “what will you do? Everyone in the world has been after these damned manuscripts of Pandora’s.”

  “My grandfather has a terrific idea. Did he tell you?” said Sam. “He thinks it’s high time for the whole Indian Nation to do something for our reservations—something that might be a big boon to Mother Earth too.” When Bambi and I made no reply, Sam added, “Dark Bear thinks it’s time to open the first Native American electronic publishing house!”

  Sam had sealed the manuscripts in slender, opaque, airtight lucite tubes that were stacked toward the rear of the cave. If you didn’t know exactly what you were after, in the dim light they’d seem just another clutch of stalagmites rising from the floor.

  Sam had told me, that morning up on the mountain above the Sheep Meadow, how he’d painstakingly transcribed onto plain paper Pandora’s collection, inherited via his father, of ancient parchments, thin wood panels, and copper scrolls. Then he said he’d sealed the originals in “hermetic containers” and hidden them in a place where he thought they’d “never be found.” The plain paper copy Sam had made—the only copy, as he’d described it—was that set of documents he’d taken from his bank in San Francisco right after Theron Vane was killed, and tossed in a mailbox, addressed to me. Those were the manuscripts I’d now dragged around the world, and painstakingly inserted into books at the Austrian National Library. Documents that now, according to Wolfgang, were in the hands of Father Virgilio and the Pod.

  Dark Bear’s idea, Sam explained, was for us to collect all the ancient original manuscripts sealed in containers here in the cave, and once again to transcribe them and translate them into English—this time, along with the rune manuscript of unknown provenance I’d gotten from Jersey. Then we’d publish these translations, one by one, on a computer network, for the edification and enlightenment of the public at large.

  After publication, Dark Bear thought we should parcel out the ancient source records—the delicate tin plates and parchment scrolls—to various American Indian museums and libraries, whichever ones possessed the wherewithal to preserve and handle them properly.

  Unlike the famous Dead Sea Scrolls of similar antiquity, which had been closely held in the hands of a few totalitarian data-mongers these past forty years, Pandora’s and Clio’s wonderful trove of exotica would be made available for study and analysis to qualified scholars in every field. If we tra
nslated these things ourselves, we’d at least know nothing was swept under the rug. And if we did learn of something dangerous—for instance if there were spots on Mother Earth that could be manipulated, but that were sacred or vulnerable or both, like Wolfgang’s hints about Tesla’s inventions—we would make that knowledge public too, so action could be taken to protect those places.

  We three formed a relay to remove the lucite tubes: Bambi handed them out through the crevice of the cave to Sam, who knotted them together with twine in three big bunches while I ascended the steep rock to the top of the cliff. Then Sam lifted the bunches, and I hauled them from above by sturdier rope. I set them beside the waterfall until the others clambered up.

  Though individually each lucite tube was light as a feather, their combined weight was fairly hefty; I estimated my parcel and Bambi’s to weigh close to twenty pounds apiece, and Sam’s seemed heavier. Further, though the tubes were tightly sealed, Sam feared that, due to the delicacy of many of the items, if anything leaked or even sweated, some of their valuable contents might be destroyed.

  So we carried our bundles on our backs, well above waterline, the tubes stacked horizontally from waist level to just above our shoulders. Sam secured them to our backs with a buntline hitch such as mountaineers use, in case one of us went down and had to quickly shed the pack. The awkwardness of our loads, we hoped, would be offset by weight, helping to provide a firmer grip on the river bottom against the onrush of water.

  Just before I stepped into the river, I looked across at Dark Bear waiting on the opposite bank beside a tense-looking Olivier—who was wearing my backpack with Jason inside it. Then I climbed carefully down into the icy waters and we moved out into the river single file—Sam leading the procession to keep the rope taut, Bambi in the middle, and I bringing up the rear—all of us clinging tightly to the rope. I had to concentrate as hard as I could to keep my knees flexible, my body balanced, and my feet planted firmly as I felt my way along the slippery, uneven rock on the bottom of the riverbed. So I was well out into the river before I suddenly realized something was terribly wrong. Sam had stopped dead in midriver.