The Memorist (16 page)

Vienna, Austria
Monday, April 28
^th
—8:10 p.m.

A
s the silver-and-navy Smart Car sped along the Graben, Inspector Alex Kalfus, dressed in civilian khaki pants, white shirt and a blue windbreaker that had seen better days, navigated with his right hand while smoking with his left. There was a Van Gogh portrait hanging in Amsterdam of a farmer who had the same curious expression on his face, Lucian Glass thought. Amazing how much of a man’s soul could be captured in rough strokes and applied color. There was a rough scar on Kalfus’s neck running from behind his ear down to his collarbone. So, the Austrian detective was a traveler on the same rough road Lucian had been stuck on his whole adult life.

Hanging a left, Kalfus drove into traffic, cursed and blew smoke out the window but the wind pushed it back into the car and Lucian inhaled it. He wanted to bum a cigarette off the Austrian, could already imagine how satis
fying the first drag would be…except all it took to be a smoker again was one cigarette.

“I’m coming up to a corner,” Kalfus prompted.

Checking the monitor built into the briefcase open on his lap, Lucian directed him to take a right turn at the next light. “As long as this surveillance equipment’s performing properly,” he added.

After landing that morning, Lucian had hooked up with Kalfus and together they’d waited an hour for Malachai Samuels to arrive from New York. From the minute the reincarnationist walked off the plane, picked up his luggage and got into a limo, the two lawmen had been tracking him. Lucian preferred working with his own team but the Austrian government had insisted this was the only way they’d allow the FBI to work on their soil.

“And now a left,” Lucian said.

Kalfus made the turn. A few blocks later another left and then a right. “I know where he’s headed now. This is the way to Jeremy Logan’s house which makes sense since you said he’d come here to see what Logan found.”

“And lost,” Lucian agreed.

For the last hour Lucian and Kalfus had filled each other in on the actual criminal activity and suspected criminal activity that had put them both on the same case.

“How did you plant the bug?” Kalfus asked.

“We had a few men take over airport security during the hours before the flight and when Samuels went through the screening process, one pulled him out of the line to check out why he set off the machines—which bought us some time. While he was being inspected, an agent inserted the transistor chip inside his billfold.”

“He won’t find it?”

“It’s microscopic and hidden inside a seam.”

“You have been doing surveillance on this man for how long now?”

“Nine months.”

“So even if Langley’s techniques are state-of-the-art, their efforts to find any hard evidence against Malachai have failed?”

“Not
their
efforts…
my
efforts. It’s been my case and I’m its last lone crusader.”

“Why haven’t you given up by now?”

“The man is a psychologist and amateur illusionist. He understands how to misdirect and manipulate. It’s more than just making coins disappear or disguising himself, he tricks everyone. I refuse to allow him to trick me.”

“Has he been calling many people here in the last few days?”

“Jeremy Logan several times and your ex-minister of defense, Fremont Brecht, twice. We think Brecht and Logan are members of the same Society. The Memorist Society. A small, nonpolitical organization with no criminal associations as far as we can determine. Originally it was formed as an offshoot of the Freemasons.”

“Here in Vienna?” Kalfus sounded miffed that the American was telling him something he didn’t know about his own city.

“There’s no reason for you to be aware of it, it’s deep under the radar.”

“And how does all this relate to this weekend’s murder and the robberies?”

“Based on what we heard on our phone taps, the Society was going to bid on the gaming box and Malachai was negotiating to go in on that purchase with them, in exchange for unlimited access to the object. But it’s possible he was only saying that to get information from them and that he
was behind the robberies. If that’s true, then following Malachai could lead us to the antique and the letter or to whoever has them. If it’s not true, we know he wants them and has the money to buy them on the black market if they’re for sale, which could also lead us to the antiques or whoever has them.”

“You seem certain one way or another he’s connected to what’s gone on here.”

Lucian nodded. He’d seen determination in Malachai’s eyes that was almost maniacal but he didn’t say that. Looking away from the monitor, he glanced out the window at the passing buildings, wondering what it would be like to actually spend a few hours being a tourist here.

“Instincts are important,” Kalfus said.

“What do you have so far in your investigation?” Lucian asked.

“Many details. Many suppositions. No tangible evidence. No mistakes on the thieves’ part,” Kalfus complained.

“No obvious mistakes, you mean.”

Kalfus shrugged. Lucian noted the Austrian did that often and wondered if it was the way he got rid of the uncertainty that every law enforcer and investigator lived with.

“The question I’ve never gotten a good answer to is how come it’s so easy for us to see those mistakes in retrospect?” Lucian said.

“Self-deprecating? It’s not a personality trait I associate with American FBI agents.”

“Left up ahead.”

Conversation came to a halt as Kalfus reached the corner, turned and they both watched the black Mercedes at the end of the block as it slowed down and parked.

Kalfus shifted the car into idle in front of number 59:
a white stucco house with black shutters, while in front of number 83 Kirchengasse, a uniformed chauffeur got out of the car, went around to the passenger side, opened the door and helped the passenger out.

The front door opened and a tall man with tousled hair walked down to the curb to greet his visitor. “Is that Jeremy Logan?” Lucian asked.

“Yes.”

Logan put his arms around Malachai then Meer stepped forward and embraced him.

Kalfus put the car into Drive and slowly made his way down the street toward number 83. “That’s Jeremy’s daughter, Meer Logan,” Kalfus explained. “The gaming box was pulled out of her arms during the tear gas attack.”

“Do you have surveillance tapes of what happened at the auction house?”

“There are tapes but the smoke bombs make it impossible to see anything helpful.”

Kalfus hadn’t told him if Meer was hurt but Lucian didn’t bother to ask. By now they were driving by and Lucian could see her clearly. She didn’t look physically hurt but he had the distinct impression that she was even more troubled than the last time he saw her.

It must have been the jet lag that made him suddenly more tired than he could remember feeling for a long time. A bone-tired exhaustion that he imagined would take years to recover from. Kalfus was asking him something that required a response but Lucian had no idea what the Inspector had been saying for the last minute or two. That must have been the jet lag, too.

Vienna, Austria
Monday, April 28
^th
—8:20 p.m.

S
itting in the living room, Jeremy poured wine while he briefed Malachai on the details of what had transpired, starting with the robbery in Geneva and ending with the one at the Dorotheum. Malachai listened, sipped from the cut-crystal glass, nodded and then when Jeremy finished, asked Meer, “Now, tell me what’s been happening to you?”

She hesitated.

“It’s understandable that after all these years of not believing, what’s occurring is disturbing, but it will help if you can talk about it. Meer, tell me.”

She recounted what transpired then and also what happened during the second episode when she was with Sebastian in Beethoven’s apartment. And then what happened at the cemetery.

“Did you already know the woman in the memory lurches was named Margaux before you found the tombstone?” Malachai asked.

She nodded.

“Margaux’s husband found the flute in India and then died there,” Jeremy explained.

The icy bands were encircling her, tugging at her, trying to pull her into their vortex. Meer put her head down in her hands and felt a tsunami of sorrow come over her.

“No!” Meer almost shouted. “He’s alive. In India. That’s why I need to raise the money. To fund a search party to find him.” She missed Caspar. Missed a man whose name she never knew before Sunday. A man she would sacrifice everything for if she could just find him and save him and bring him back to her.

Then from a distance she heard her father’s voice breaking through.

“Malachai—stop. Look at what this is doing to her.”

“This is important, Jeremy. She’s remembering.”

“No!” Jeremy raised his voice in anger but Malachai ignored his friend and was talking to her again.

“Margaux, what’s happening?”

She made an effort and reached down into the blackness to find the answer. “Beethoven had the flute and was trying to figure out the melody from the markings carved into the bone.”

Even from inside the icy fog, Meer was surprised. The carvings were the key to the song?

“Do you know if Beethoven found the song?”

It was dark again. A familiar darkness worse than any of the memories. When she was a child, this was the darkness that surrounded that one memory that repeated over and over—a woman on horseback wearing a man’s coat, racing through the woods in a storm while being followed. She could hear the sounds of the horse’s breathing and the rain and smell the wet wool of her coat. But
then the scene would fade to black and leave her enveloped by this same force field of sadness.

“Margaux?” Malachai asked.

“Enough, Malachai,” Jeremy insisted.

Malachai half turned to respond. “If this flute really does still exist and if we can confirm Margaux Neidermier was studying with Beethoven at that time—”

“You don’t have to bother Meer for that. I can confirm she was a student of Beethoven’s during 1814. I searched through a database of his letters when we came back from the cemetery this afternoon and she’s referenced several times.”

The cold was disappearing and the shivering stopped. Meer was listening to her father explain about Margaux’s studying with Beethoven.

“Did you find out anything else about her?” Malachai asked.

“I don’t have access to the complete letters. The database only gives me highlights but she first appears in a letter dated September of 1814.”

This was what it had been like when she was a child and under their constant scrutiny—a discussion topic and not a person at all. She stood up. “I can’t listen to any more of this now. I need a break.”

“Of course you do,” Malachai said. “We all need a break.”

Meer heard the concern in his voice but she also heard the hope…always hope. She looked at her father. Despite himself, the same hope shone in his eyes.

Monday, April 28
^th
—8:50 p.m.

“I
can’t see how far down the shaft goes.” The American’s words echoed in the underground chamber.

David sucked in his breath. What was going on? There hadn’t been any music coming from the concert hall tonight: no performance, no rehearsals. Only the occasional scurrying of a rat or a rock falling. And now suddenly these voices were reaching him down in the crypt from men who sounded as if they were deeper and closer than could be possible.

“Let me send down a probe,” a second voice, also American, responded. “See if we can hit bottom.”

Were these men working for Global Security? Part of Tom Paxton’s effort to look for trouble before it showed itself? How far down were they?

David glanced over at the cage he’d brought into the cave with him tonight and the three rats he’d already beguiled into the trap.

“Any luck with that reading? What’s going on?” the American called out.

David pulled on the heavy gloves. If his plan worked the rat would offer an explanation for any infrared patterns that might show up on Global Security’s monitors. He knew from his interview with Paxton that their GPR system was not only generations more sophisticated than the ground-penetrating radar first used in the Viet Cong tunnels, but the most sophisticated equipment available. The basic methodology was so commonplace now everyone used it, from crime scene investigators searching for graves to construction companies investigating sites before building. Of course Paxton, a man obsessed with winning, would have the most advanced system available. In every news story David had written about the security business, in the war against terror, Global was consistently far ahead of the rest in innovation and results.

“This shaft must go down into some sewer system,” the American called out. “I’m past twelve meters and still dropping.”

David looked at his watch. Ten to nine. Why were those bastards still working? But he knew the answer—because that’s what Paxton demanded.

“Can you get down any deeper and shine some light down there?”

“The opening’s too narrow,” the first man’s voice echoed. “No way.”

David imagined the man trying to lower himself down the shaft that ran perpendicular to where he was hiding. But he’d looked through the cracks and knew it wasn’t even large enough for a child to fit in. From what Wassong had told him and from the blueprints David had found, it was part of an archaic turn-of-the-century heating system, long ago abandoned but still in place.

Reaching into the cage, he grabbed one of the rats and
shoved the vermin through the narrow crack in the rock wall that separated his hiding space from the shaft. David could hear the rat scurrying up the wall. He waited.

“I’m getting a reading here that I don’t like.” The American sounded alarmed.

David imagined the Global employee noticing the activity on his monitor and checking his diagnostics. They were seeing the rat. He was sure of it. But what if the system had other sensors? Could it be detecting the Semtex he’d picked up in the Czech Republic? No, he reasoned, he was using the older type that had virtually no radioactive material they could detect.

“You sure there’s no way you can shimmy down any farther?” one American called out to the other.

David opened the cage and pulled out another rat: the biggest one this time, and as he did, the creature sank his teeth into David’s hand. It didn’t tear through the glove but he still felt the pressure of the sharp little fangs. He didn’t waste any breath cursing it as he released it; he owed the rat only thanks for playing its part as a diversion. He wondered if on Thursday night when the last notes of Beethoven’s symphony rang out, any of the rats would survive.