The Hypnotist (19 page)

Using a strip of 600-grade sandpaper, Charlie Danzinger smoothed the underside of the sculpture’s thigh-length tunic, enjoying the process of putting the finishing touches on his reproduction. This new Hypnos wasn’t an exact replica, since a fair amount of the original sculpture was missing, but he’d based his reconstruction on passages from ancient Greek writings describing chryselephantine sculpture of the day.

Stepping back, he examined the piece. In the past week he’d made a lot of progress. Hypnos was only a few days away from completion, and he shone under the incandescent light. The gold and silver glimmered; the emeralds and rubies sparkled; the onyx, carnelian, lapis and other semiprecious stones gleamed. The Greeks who’d once prayed to this god must have been awestruck by his majesty and opulence.

While he worked, Danzinger listened to classical music, but the two brisk knocks that came one after another were loud enough to hear over the Chopin.

“Come in.”

Tyler Weil, Deborah Mitchell and Nicolas Olshling walked in, followed by the FBI agent Danzinger had met last week. The restorer’s heartbeat kicked up. Other than Marie, he wasn’t used to people coming here and didn’t like it. This area of the museum was out of the way and except for the other people in the department, there were so rarely interruptions. And Danzinger liked that. Interruptions made him nervous. So did change. Working on timeless art was soothing. Fixing things and making them whole again made him feel whole. Almost.

“We need your help—” Weil began without preamble, but then stopped to look at the sculpture—not the original, but the reproduction. The other two men with him did the same. Even though they’d seen it the week before, Danzinger could tell they were impressed and was pleased that his work elicited this reaction, especially from the director.

A great majority of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures had originally been highly ornamented and bedecked, but what had survived was stripped by time of its adornments and dulled down by the ages. People who didn’t know that were often shocked by the replicas that looked almost garish in comparison to the pale museum pieces. If the original Hypnos was a showpiece, the reproduction was an extravaganza.

“That sure is something,” Olshling said, understating the obvious.

“You’ve done a marvelous job,” Weil said and gave a long, deep sigh. “I’m afraid this is going to be a very difficult conversation.”

What kind of conversation could Weil possibly have with him that would be difficult? Danzinger listed the possibilities. The most logical would be firing him—but the director of the museum wouldn’t be the one to do that. Even if under extraordinary circumstances that was to happen, there was no reason
he’d bring Olshling or Mitchell or the FBI agent with him, unless they suspected him of something illegal. Danzinger’s heart started to pound again even though he knew he was an exemplary employee.

“Let’s sit down, can we?” Lucian asked, nodding at a table covered with books and art supplies in the corner of the large studio.

As Olshling sat he nudged a small box of rubies that fell to the floor. The stones rolled, bloodred against the white tiles.

“I’m sorry,” the head of security said with concern as he bent and started to retrieve them.

“It’s okay. They’re just paste,” Danzinger explained as he got on his knees and helped.

“Should have realized you wouldn’t have a cup of valuable stones sitting out in the open like that,” Olshling said as he dropped them back into their container.

“So how can I help you?” Danzinger was anxious to find out what this was all about.

“What we’re going to tell you is highly confidential,” Lucian warned.

“I told Agent Glass you’ve been with the museum for over fifteen years and everyone here has the highest regard for you and your work,” Weil said.

“Thanks.” Now that he knew he wasn’t being fired or worse, Danzinger relaxed a bit.

“We’re going to need you to do some more work on the Hypnos.” Lucian looked from the reproduction to the original, which stood in the opposite corner of the studio, carefully out of the traffic path. “How long will it take you to make the copy resemble the original?”

“The copy? I’m not sure I understand.”

“You know about the four paintings we’re being offered in exchange for the sculpture?” Weil asked.

Danzinger nodded. “Of course.”

“Well, we’re going ahead with the trade. We’re going to give the Monster the Hypnos. Those paintings are important masterpieces—we have to do what we can to save them.”

Looking from the director to the original sculpture and back to his beautiful reproduction, Danzinger realized what they were asking of him. They wanted to make the copy look like the original and then make the trade with the copy. He felt as if he were hearing about a death in his family.

“I can’t destroy it,” he blurted out.

Weil looked at him with surprise. “I know how hard you worked on it, Charlie, but we need you to do this.”

Danzinger didn’t trust himself to talk. Not right away. He concentrated on his breathing and then keeping his emotions in check answered the question. “I’m sorry. I can probably get it to the state you want it in less than a week.”

“Good. You have three days,” Lucian said. “But it doesn’t have to be perfect. From what I understand, other than a half-dozen people who work here at the museum, no one has seen Hypnos since sometime in the 1890s, and there’s only one photograph from back then, which is in even worse condition than the sculpture. Right?” He looked at Weil and Mitchell, who both nodded.

Danzinger stood quickly, not taking his eyes off his…off the sculpture he’d been working on for six months. His life was restoration. Even though the Hypnos he’d created was just a copy, it was still going to be the most difficult assignment the museum had ever given him. “If I only have three days…” His voice wavered. He cleared his throat. “I’d better get started.”

Of all of them, Lucian was the one who seemed the most
sympathetic to what the restorer was facing. Before he left, he stopped and put a hand on Danzinger’s shoulder. “It’s a shame. You’ve created something astounding. I wish there was another way for us to do this.”

As Elgin Barindra unfolded the second to last letter in the box, its left corner flaked off and fell onto his lap. Lifting it carefully with tweezers, he placed it on a felt pad. Even if this letter didn’t turn out to be written by anyone of importance, he’d have to catalogue the corner, so before he read the missive he glanced at the lower left quadrant of the one sheet and struggled to make out the signature. At first it was unintelligible squiggles and lines, but he kept at it and slowly was able to make out the individual characters.

Dieter M. Loos

The name didn’t mean anything to him, but he slipped the corner between two sheets of plastic, tagged it, then did the same to the letter and proceeded to read it through the protective covering.

Elgin’s pulse raced as he read the letter for a second time. This was a clear reference to the list of tools that related to the robbery in Vienna. The fact that it also named an active member of the original Phoenix Club who had funded dozens of digs was important, too. There were threads running through all of this correspondence connecting people, places and discoveries, but it was taking a long time to unravel them. With so many boxes still to go through, Elgin felt a twinge of impatience.

Putting the letter aside, he stood, stretched and walked up the stairs. He needed to get some fresh air and report in with Glass or Richmond.

Upstairs in the wide hallway, illuminated by the art glass that cast a warm yellow glow on the polished wooden parquet floor, he slowed as he walked by Dr. Samuels’s office, listening for any stray information he might glean, but it was quiet. He was halfway down the passage when he heard footsteps and saw Dr. Bellmer turn the corner and head in his direction, with a man by her side. Under other circumstances the stranger wouldn’t warrant scrutiny—medium height, glasses, slacks, blazer and briefcase—except that Elgin recognized something in the man’s
gait, a relaxed way he had of walking as if lights stopped for him and not the other way around.

“Elgin?”

The voice came from behind him, and he spun around. Malachai Samuels was standing in the doorway to his office.

“How’s today’s mail?”

“I found a very interesting letter that mentioned a list of Memory Tools engraved on copper sheets from ancient India.”

Elgin thought he heard one of the sets of footsteps in the hallway slow.

As Malachai ushered the librarian into his office, chastising him about talking in public, Elgin could still hear the conversation in the hall.

“So how have you been, Mr. Ryan?” Dr. Bellmer asked in a concerned voice. “How are the headaches?”

Lucian withdrew a sketchpad from his briefcase, opened it to a certain page and handed it to Dr. Bellmer.

The doctor examined the old woman’s face. “She looks terribly frightened.”

“And I’m the one she’s scared of. All of them are.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t have the faintest idea.”

Lucian had finally admitted to himself that he was no longer coming here just to spy on Malachai Samuels’s lair. The agency had Elgin Barindra to do that now—and do it much better than he could. From what he’d just overheard, Elgin was making great progress.

“What the hell is happening to me? Isn’t it possible I read a book or saw a movie that’s inspiring these regressions? Maybe
the accident in Vienna did cause some brain damage?” No matter how hard he fought Bellmer’s hypnotic suggestions, he’d succumbed every time, and the realism of the episodes that played out in his mind was very disturbing.

“I know how complicated it is to accept for someone as logical as you are, James. But I can’t give you the kind of rationale you want. If you can just stick with it a little longer, for a few more sessions, I believe that what we’re doing here will ultimately bring you peace and understanding.”

“How? Let’s say I believe the unbelievable and every one of the women I’m drawing is someone I knew in a past life and mistreated. Even if we find out who they were, what good will that do me now? From what I’ve been reading about reincarnation and past-life therapy, don’t I have to know these women in this life to work out my karmic responsibilities with them?”

“Basic theory suggests that we come back in each life into a circle of souls we’ve been with before. We don’t have to go searching for them. They’re the primary reason we were born into these fragile envelopes in this time and place.”

“Envelopes?”

“I think of our physical bodies as envelopes. Poor, fragile holders for our real beings—our souls. When we pass on, it’s our envelope that’s ripped up and thrown away, not our souls. Those move on, find a new envelope, slip inside and start again.”

“You’re sounding a lot like a preacher.”

“Too spiritual? Okay, let me put in it in more scientific terms. We’re made of energy. Energy can’t be destroyed, only transformed. So what happens to our energy, our potential, when we die? Isn’t it possible that it moves from body to body? Deepak Chopra calls it a creative, quantum nonalgorithmic jump and says life doesn’t end, can’t end, because it never began.”

“You’re asking me to adopt a new belief system.”

“Chopra uses a wonderful analogy. The
you
in your present life, your last life and your next life are all the same—and that
you
is your soul. He says to think of it as water. A drop of rain and a pond are both water, and water doesn’t lose its wateriness no matter its form. If it’s an ice cube, a drop of dew or the vapor in a cloud, it’s still water, beyond beginnings and endings. It’s transformations.”

“This is all theory. Dreams I don’t understand and can’t remember wake me up every night and propel me to draw this crap.” He kicked the pad Bellmer had returned to him and that he’d put on the floor. It slid across the room. “You said you could help me.”

“I can.”

“How? With more hypnosis?”

“Yes.”

“Does a soul have to be reborn in an infant?”

Iris looked confused by the non sequitur but answered without hesitation. “No, souls can enter a host body that’s already been born and settle there. Usually it’s a body in a state of unconsciousness, but there have been cases of drug addicts, alcoholics and attempted suicides who’ve given over their bodies to another soul, and the new entity has gone on to have a productive life.”

“Unconscious as in a coma?”

“Yes.”

“Why not be reborn in an infant?”

“Sometimes it’s because the soul belonged to someone who died before their time, was in the midst of accomplishing something important and is impatient to come back. Is something about this bothering you, James?”

“Not at all. I read something and was curious.” He settled back in his seat and in defeat said, “We might as well do this.”

There was a frustrated, plaintive quality to his voice that reached Dr. Bellmer. She reacted to this patient more personally than most, almost as if
she’d
known him in another lifetime and had been one of these women he was drawing. She pointed to the spot between his eyebrows with her fingertip and suggested that he focus on his third eye while she talked to him in a voice that she hoped would be soothing.

Once he appeared to be deeply under, she asked him to think back to a time when he knew the woman he’d drawn that morning. When his forehead creased into a frown, she asked him if he’d found her.

“Yes.”

“You see her?”

“She’s angry.”

“Where are you?”

“In the crypt.”

“Where is the crypt?”

“In Shush.”

She didn’t recognize the name. “Where’s Shush?”

“Persia.”

Persia? Wasn’t he in Greece?

“What year is it?”

“1885.”

Bellmer felt a jolt. This was a different lifetime. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Serge Fouquelle.”

“And what are you doing in Shush?”

“I’ve been here for two years on an archaeological excavation being financed by my country.”

“What country is that?”

“France.” He sounded surprised she didn’t know.

“Have you made any discoveries?”

“Many…but this one is the most important because it’s the first site that I found on my own.”

“You must be proud.”

He wasn’t; he was angry. “This stupid old woman and her husband are trying to stop me from performing my duties and taking what’s mine.”

“What have you found?”

“A cache of very rare old pieces—jewelry, pottery, serving pieces made out of silver and gold and the pièce de résistance is a rare sculpture. It must be at least fifteen hundred years old and is quite extraordinary. Wooden sculpture usually rots over time, but this piece is intact. Perhaps being buried down here in this cave, it had more of a chance.”

“Where are you now?”

“In the crypt. I broke through several weeks ago and have been making preparations to remove these antiques since.” He frowned again.

“What’s wrong?”

“The couple who live in the house above this place claim all of these pieces belong to them.”

“Do they?”

“Of course not. I am not a robber, madame. The minister of culture said that they have rights to the house but not the land itself, and certainly not what is buried beneath it. His position, which I think is well taken, is that these Jews did not bring these treasures here, did not know they were here when they built their house on top of them and so cannot claim ownership, no matter how long they have lived here.”

Serge laughed derisively.

“What is it?” Iris asked.