City of Dark Magic (41 page)

SIXTY-FIVE

T
he Secret Service did not like admitting that they had lost the senator, but when they went in to wake Boss Lady at five a.m., she was not in the hotel room.

“Well, where the hell is she?” demanded the head of the CIA, awakened from sleep back in Virginia by a panicked agent using the red phone.

“We think she snuck out,” said the head of her detail. “Do you want us to notify the president she’s AWOL?”

“No!” he snapped. “I’ll alert our people. The last thing we need out there is the news that the most powerful United States senator is loose in the world, unprotected. You better hope she went for a fucking jog.”

Except the head of the CIA was pretty sure she hadn’t gone for a fucking jog, because while he was talking to the idiot Secret Service agent, he was getting a text message that one of his own agents in Prague had found a briefcase sitting on his doorstep that morning, right on top of the
Financial Times
and the
Prague Post
. A briefcase full of documents linking Charlotte Yates—
Charlotte Yates!—
to the KGB. Had no one kept their nose clean during the cold war? The briefcase had belonged to John Paisley, the former head of the CIA who had been linked to both the Kennedy assassination and Watergate, and who’d been found dead in 1978, having committed suicide by jumping off his sailboat. Except that when most people commit suicide, they don’t tie their bodies down with diving weights
after
shooting themselves in the head. And their briefcases don’t mysteriously disappear. The Agency had always suspected that the KGB had offed Paisley, but frankly, with his disgusting swinging seventies lifestyle and his Russian connections, he had become an embarrassment to the Agency anyway. No one cared who had done the deed.

Now, more than thirty years later, the briefcase had resurfaced on the same night Charlotte Yates had disappeared. There was going to be major damage control to do. No way in hell did anyone want the news to come out that the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had been—wait for it—
a KGB agent
. The list of people who would be embarrassed by that would be pretty much the entire Washington phone book. And where the hell was the bitch?
Probably sitting on a cruise ship along the Volga, drinking vodka and eating caviar,
thought the head of the CIA bitterly. The Russians knew how to take care of their people. As he popped a Bromo-Seltzer and tied his tie, his phone beeped again with the news that a Secret Service agent had been found dead in St. Vitus Cathedral, just down the pew from a dead Italian socialite.

It’s enough to make you vote Democratic,
thought the head of the CIA, texting the agent to get a cleanup going.

•   •   •

S
arah and Max, lying in bed at Nela under the supervision of Nico’s wife, Oksana, who had had them admitted to Na Františku Hospital and then released without any record of their having been there at all, much less treated for gunshot wounds, were amazed to hear the news blazing from every TV, news website, and newspaper that Charlotte Yates had had a massive heart attack on an Air Force Gulfstream V C-37A while returning from her trip to Europe. A defibrillator and a doctor were onboard, but nothing could be done. It was hotly debated on every channel that despite heart disease being the number one killer of women, women’s cardiac health never got enough attention or research dollars. In the days after the quietly elegant funeral, insurance companies felt pressured to pay for mandatory echocardiograms for women over fifty.

“It was all for nothing,” Max sighed.

“What?” Sarah turned to him and gently straightened the collar of his pajamas. “Don’t say that.”

“Miles told me everything he knew about the letters between Charlotte Yates and Yuri Bespalov. I e-mailed it all to some reporter friends. But without the actual letters . . . it’s like Reagan. Now that she’s dead, people only want to hear nice things about her.”

“I’m glad Miles came clean,” Sarah said. “It wasn’t for nothing.
We
know the truth.” There were a lot of victims whose deaths had been avenged that night in the cathedral.

Sarah did wish Nico had copied the contents of the Paisley briefcase. He claimed there hadn’t been time.
Moy strahovoy polic,
Yuri Bespalov had called the briefcase when Sarah had encountered him in the library. Sarah had looked the phrase up.
My insurance policy
. Although it hadn’t been Àfor Yuri, in the end.

At least the items Nico had stored at Faust House were safely back in the palace, stored in a secret workroom. Max planned to go over them personally when he was back on his feet. He hoped to find some clue there about the Fleece.

Max’s Czech wolfhound entered the room, with what looked like a small chew toy in his mouth.

“Moritz, put that down,” Max ordered, and the dog opened his maw obediently. The damp Chihuahua yelped and skittered under the bed.

“Will you be attending Elisa’s funeral?” Sarah asked, as Max turned and began kissing her shoulder.

“Too distraught,” he said. “Oh, that reminds me. The police turned over Elisa’s personal effects to me, and there was something I wanted to give you.” Max turned to the bedside table and began rummaging in the drawer.

“I don’t want anything that belonged to that woman,” Sarah said.

“It didn’t belong to her,” Max said. “It belonged to the 7th.” He put something small but heavy in Sarah’s hand. She looked down.

It was an Aztec amulet vial on a thin gold chain, with a strange warlike figure on it. Beethoven’s gift to his Lobkowicz patron. And now a Lobkowicz was giving it to her.

“How . . . ?” Sarah began to ask.

Max shrugged. “Elisa must have stolen it.”

“It belongs in a museum,” Sarah said, tracing the pattern of the Aztec god on its surface. “It belongs in
your
museum.”

“Yeah, well, there wouldn’t be a museum or a me,” Max said, fastening the chain around her neck where it glowed darkly, “if it weren’t for you.”

“Max, can I ask you something?”

“Mmmhmm.”

“What did you have Nico take to Venice? You had something put in the safe at the Hotel Gritti Palace. I read the letter, actually. Remember? Jana gave it to me to give to you . . . ?”

“My little Nancy Drew,” growled Max, diving below the covers.

“What was it?” Sarah sighed happily. “No, really, Max. Tell me.”

He popped up from under the sheet.

“A book,” he said. “By one Zosimos of Panopolis. He wrote the oldest known books on alchemy around
AD
330.”

“No more alchemy,” groaned Sarah.

“This one’s not about alchemy, it’s about the Golden Fleece,” said Max.

“Really?” Sarah sat up. “What does it say?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t f
ound anyone who speaks the language it’s written in.”

“What language is it?”

“No one can figure that out. There’s someone in Venice I want to show it to, but he’s away for the summer. For nÀow it’s sitting in a hotel safe.”

“So the quest for the Fleece isn’t over?”

“It’s my sworn duty to protect the Fleece,” said Max gravely. “Whatever it is. Which means I need to find it.”

Max’s assumption of the mantle of duty coincided with Sarah’s finally letting go of hers. For the first time in her life she felt free. Free of the sadness and the confused guilt over her father’s death. Free of the need to prove herself, rise above her background, show the world she was just as smart, smarter. Free of the little compartments she had put people and things in: work, ambition, sex, love.

“But you don’t have to find it today,” she said, firmly shoving Max’s head back down under the covers.

Because after all, time didn’t really exist.

•   •   •

A
few days later, tearfully, the governor of Virginia picked a close friend of the president’s to replace Charlotte Yates until the next election. The creation of a Charlotte Yates Library was announced. The nation’s period of mourning for its groundbreaking feminist hero ended as the World Series began.

SIXTY-SIX

S
arah picked up the envelope and sniffed it.

“It’s from Lobkowicz Palace,” said Bailey, grinning.

They had offered her a new office, but she had preferred to stay in the attic with Bailey, even though, since falling in love with a Korean harpist, his madrigals had gotten unbearably cloying.

It had been a busy year.

Max had offered her a position at his museum, of course. And of course she had said no. That wasn’t how she rolled, and she was determined to finish her PhD, anyway. Although if he wanted to offer her unlimited access to the archives . . .

She had come back to Boston and written a paper on the unpublished correspondence of Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowicz and Ludwig van Beethoven. She had
not
included the letters she had found in the violin. She hadn’t quite figured out how to explain it all. Yet. Still, she managed to make a pretty interesting thing of the relationship, and her paper had been widely talked about.
The New Yorker
had even printed an excerpt.

To everyone’s surprise, Pols had announced she was staying in Prague. Her parents bought a large apartment on Prokopova, and
she
accepted a job at the museum. Apparently she had developed quite a fondness for the city, and even taken, in her odd way, to performing. Max had hired her to play in the daily concerts that took place at noon in the Concert Hall for the tourists. She was proving to be quite the little tyrant in terms of music selection, additional musician hiring, and her salary. Max called her his “little LVB” and she called him “Fitzliputzli.” They both enjoyed the historical precedence for this kind of thing, and Max said he hoped Pollina would dedicate a symphony to him one day. Borisƀ and Jose had adapted to life in the Czech Republic very well. Jose was dating a fireman. Max had commissioned a portrait of Boris to hang in the Dog Room, in a place of honor. Boris and Moritz enjoyed long walks together in the Deer Moat, while the Chihuahua cleared the squirrels from their path.

Pollina had insisted that the Holy Infant of Prague be restored to its rightful place with the Carmelite nuns at the Church of Our Lady Victorious. Nico had arranged the transfer. Pols attributed her return to perfect health and a three-inch growth spurt to this act of piety, but Sarah thought it might have more to do with the extensive regimen of vitamins Oksana had prescribed.

Max had offered to help Stefania find her former lover, the American she had been separated from in the 1970s, but she had refused. Sarah suspected that Stefania, with typical Slavic pessimism, was certain that any meeting would be a disappointment. Perhaps she was right, although the new, begrudgingly romantic Sarah kind of hoped she would change her mind. At least Max had convinced her to let him pay for some orthopedic surgery and given her a generous pension. He was trying to arrange a position for her as a teacher at the Czech National Ballet. It wasn’t enough to be alive. Everyone needed something to live for.

Or die for. Sarah hadn’t heard from
Nico in a while. Max had found the ancient Italian scholar who seemed to be able to partially translate the mysterious book about the Fleece. Nico had been immediately dispatched to follow up on clues.

Max. He was an old-fashioned guy. He liked sending her handwritten letters. He sent flowers. He made a surprise visit to Boston and had gone down on her right here in her office. . . .

Sarah coughed and opened the letter. The first thing that fell out was a page from a book. Sarah smiled. Ever since she had parted from Max, he had been sending her one page a day from the children’s book his grandfather had written, the one about the house with the secret room. He could have just sent her the whole book, of course, but that was not Max. He was tantalizing her. Sarah read the page, on which Sally and Cindy find a mysterious hidden door behind an old bookcase. And then they take a break for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Sarah smiled to herself. She was putting the page back into the envelop
e when she noticed something else inside. She shook the envelope and it fell onto her desk.

“Hey,” said Bailey, grabbing for it. “An airplane ticket!”

“Give it to me,” she said, snatching up his bobblehead. “Or I will decapitate this troubadour.”

Bailey meekly handed her the envelope.

Stuck to the ticket was a Post-it note.
Think we found another Door That Should Not Be Opened. Bring the key!

Sarah looked at the ticket and smiled. Her nose was already twitching.