Basilisk (25 page)

‘But the river water made the paste burn even hotter, and in the end the dragon drank so much water that it burst apart, and died.’

‘Great story,’ said Nathan.

‘And it has a moral, too,’ said Rafał. He stopped at a traffic light and a blue-and-white tram went moaning past, with faces staring out of every window, like a moving gallery of sad, pale portraits. ‘The moral is that just because we cannot see something, that does not mean that it does not exist. Like the dragon of Wawel Hill.’

He drove them to the Rynek Glówny, the huge market square in the center of the city, which covered almost ten acres. On the far side of the square stood the Cloth Hall, with a Gothic façade that had been built over seven hundred years ago; and the thirteenth-century Town Hall Tower. There were cafés and restaurants all around the square, with umbrellas and awnings that flapped in the rain.

‘What an amazing place,’ said Patti, and Nathan would have agreed with her, if it hadn’t been raining so hard, and they hadn’t come here to Kraków on such a dangerous and miserable mission.

Rafał drove them to Mikolajska Street and parked outside their hotel. The Amadeus was a flat-fronted eighteenth-century building, painted white, with a decorative porch. A porter came out to take their luggage, while Rafał gave Nathan another bear hug, and kissed Patti’s hand again.

‘I will see you six o’clock, yes? I have made some research for you which may help you. And I have been asking many people about Christian Zauber, if they have seen him or heard where he might be. If he is here in Kraków, I promise you that we will find him. I have many friends in many different walks of life. Students, tram conductors, shopkeepers, waiters. People who notice what is going on.’

They were checked in by a pretty, bosomy girl with blonde pigtails and intensely blue eyes. Patti nudged Denver and said, ‘Hey, Denver, she’s too old for you. And you don’t speak the lingo.’

‘Who needs to speak the lingo?’ Denver retorted.

‘I guess you’re right. A slack, goofy grin speaks a thousand words, even in Polish.’

Nathan eased off his shoes and rested on his bed until five forty-five p.m. His room had a high ceiling, but it was very gloomy, with a huge mahogany bed and a massive antique wardrobe that could have accommodated an entire family, as well as their pets. On the wall hung a dark picture of a peasant woman with a brown headscarf, walking through a field under a thundery sky. It suited his mood.

He closed his eyes but found it impossible to sleep. There were too many unfamiliar noises, like the elevator whining, and the wobbling sound of car tires on the cobbled street outside.

Eventually he picked up the phone and called the Hahnemann, and spoke to one of Grace’s nurses.

‘No change, Professor, I’m afraid. I wish I could tell you different.’

‘Well, if you could just tell her that Nathan loves her, even if she can’t hear you.’

‘Of course.’

He showered, and changed into black corduroy pants and a gray denim shirt. As he combed his hair in the bathroom mirror he thought how haggard he was.
And I thought that Rafał looked as if the years had beaten him down
.

He went downstairs in the cramped little elevator, surrounded on all sides by countless reflections of his haggard self. He walked through to the dimly lit restaurant and found Patti and Denver already sitting in one of the brown-leather booths together. He didn’t know what they were talking about but they were sitting with their heads very close together, and nodding to each other in unison, as if they were listening to the same inaudible song.

‘You want a beer?’ he asked Denver, as he sat down next to them.

‘A beer? Sure. Thanks. But I ordered myself a Coke already.’

‘Cancel the Coke and have a beer. If you’re old enough and ugly enough to help me track down Doctor Zauber, you’re old enough to have a beer.’

A few minutes later, Rafał arrived, smelling of carbolic soap and tobacco. They went through their now-familiar ritual of hugging and back-slapping and kissing Patti’s hand. Rafał sat down and ordered a glass of vodka and some dark chocolate cookies, which tasted of spice.

He knocked back his vodka and held out his glass to the waitress for another. ‘A half-hour ago,’ he announced, ‘I had a phone call from a friend of mine, a real estate agent who rents out property in the Kazimierz district.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘He told me that more than five years ago Doctor Zauber took out a lease on an old house near the intersection of Kupa and Izaaka Streets. It is very fashionable to live there now, but in those days not so much. It used to be very run-down. But Doctor Zauber did not live there himself. He sub-let the house to two couples, and also an artist. About a month ago, though, he gave his tenants notice to quit, and now he has moved back into the house himself.’

‘So he
is
here,’ said Nathan.

‘What did I tell you?’ Patti put in. ‘We should schlep round there, pay him a visit?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t want to scare him off. If he disappears again, he may disappear for good.’

Patti said, ‘You think? He doesn’t sound like the kind of guy who scares easy.’

‘What do you think we should do, Rafał?’ Nathan asked him.

‘It is difficult for me to say. Doctor Zauber was always a very unpredictable man. One minute all smiles, the next minute angry like a volcano. He may welcome your arrival here in Kraków, on the one hand, because he wants so desperately to pick your brains. On the other hand, you have told him that you will have no part in killing old people, for this so-called “life-energy” that he needs to keep his creatures alive. In final analysis, I don’t think he will trust you.’

‘Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. That’s a chance I’ll have to take. But I do have some leverage over him. The Philadelphia police are very anxious to talk to him, and if he had anything to do with that bus fire—’

‘Yes, the Polish Policja would probably be very interested in talking to him, too.’

‘I think we just have to play it by ear,’ said Nathan. ‘I’m not going to do anything until I find out how to bring Grace out of her coma.’

‘I think to be cautious is right,’ Rafał agreed. ‘Particularly since you suspect that Doctor Zauber may be breeding another basilisk, and maybe other creatures. It is not wise to go hunting for basilisks at night. Or gryphons, for that matter, or any of those beasts. Much safer in the daytime, when most of them are sleeping.’

Rafał took them to the Wierzynek Restaurant on the Grand Square, only a short walk away, because it served food in the traditional Polish style. It had stopped raining and when they reached the restaurant it was warm and noisy and very crowded, with candles burning everywhere.

They sat at a circular table in the corner, and Rafał ordered beetroot soup and cheese
pierogi
and crayfish, as well as roast duck and saddle of venison and river pike.

Then he raised his glass and said, ‘
Jedzcie, pijcie i popuszczajcie pasa
! Eat, drink, and loosen your belts!’ Nathan raised his glass, too, but his mouth felt dry and he had very little appetite. He couldn’t help feeling guilty because he was sitting here in this lively restaurant, eating good food and drinking wine, while Grace was still lying unconscious in hospital. At least he hoped that she was unconscious, and that she wasn’t trapped inside some terrifying nightmare.

Rafał carefully wiped his moustache with his napkin. ‘I have left until last the most important evidence that I have discovered,’ he said. ‘You remember that I told you that when Doctor Zauber was obliged to leave the Jagiellonian University he gave up mythology and said that he was turning instead to archeology. I found at the university one of the students he paid to help him – although this student is now a lecturer. Doctor Zauber and his students excavated many different historical sites all around the city, but the most important was the vault underneath Saint Casimir’s Basilica, a small church which overlooks Zygmunt Square.

‘According to this gentleman, Saint Casimir’s Basilica was constructed in the late fifteenth century on top of a much older church. But the builders used the existing vaults and the ruins of the older church as their foundations. This was common in Kraków, and some churches even have glass panes set into the sidewalk next to their walls, so that you can look down and see the more ancient layers underneath.’

Nathan was beginning to see where this was going. ‘So what was Zauber looking for, exactly?’

‘He told his assistants that he was looking for holy relics. After all, there is a story that all of the nails that were taken from the true cross were sealed in a casket and eventually found their way to Kraków, brought here by pilgrims from the Holy Land. It is also rumored that the gold medallion worn by Pontius Pilate is secreted somewhere in the walls of the Basilica of the Virgin Mary. There are supposed to be many more artifacts, such as hair from the beard of John the Baptist.

‘Doctor Zauber and his assistants dug down through three vaults, each of which had collapsed on top of the other. In the very lowest vault they discovered the skeletal remains of three monks, still in the rotted remnants of their habits. They also found a parcel of leather tied up with cord, and sealed with black wax.

‘My informant at the university tells me that he remembers this parcel well, because Doctor Zauber opened it immediately, which of course is not the usual practice with valuable historical relics. Usually, they are wrapped up and taken carefully to a laboratory to be examined under controlled conditions.

‘Doctor Zauber also refused to allow any of his assistants to take photographs of this parcel. He told them whatever it was, it was undoubtedly a fake, and he did not want to be made a fool of in the academic journals.’

‘So what was inside this parcel?’ asked Patti. ‘Did your friend manage to get a look?’

Rafał nodded. ‘He said that it was a collection of large bones which looked as if they had come from a large animal like a horse, perhaps, and also some smaller bones, like black branches. But there was also a fragment of skin, scaly and thick, like that of a large snake. It was dark gray or black, he thinks, but Doctor Zauber wrapped it up again very quickly, and the light was poor.’

‘Did he have any idea what it was?’

‘No – none whatsoever, although one of his fellow students thought that it looked like the bones of a demon. He said maybe it had been exorcized and killed by priests, and its remains sealed with black wax to prevent it from ever escaping and reconstituting itself. But he was just trying to give everybody the heebie-jeebies. That is right, yes? “
Heebie-jeebies
”?’

Nathan said, ‘That student was nearer the mark than he realized. It wasn’t a demon, but it was something pretty close to a demon. And if there was any DNA left in those bones or that skin, then it
was
capable of being brought back to life.’

‘Then you think the same as I think,’ said Rafał. ‘Doctor Zauber was searching for the remains of a basilisk, and he found them.’

Denver said, ‘OK, so he found them. But he didn’t have any kind of laboratory, did he, like Pops?’

‘No . . . but that is why he went to the United States. He had obviously read about your father’s work in cryptozoology, and he wanted to take advantage of his expertise. But he must have realized that your father would not condone the killing of elderly people to take their life-energy, or their soul, or whatever you want to call it. That is why he bribed your father’s assistant to steal his research.’

Nathan said, ‘All I want now is to find out how to bring Grace out of that coma. I’m not interested in what happens to Zauber, so long as he tells me that.’

‘That is very gratifying to know,’ said a thickly accented voice, very close to his ear.

He turned around in his chair, knocking over his glass of red wine, as if blood had suddenly splashed across the tablecloth. Standing close behind him – unnervingly close – was Doctor Zauber, grinning at him so that his eyes sparkled and his teeth glistened in the candelight. He was wearing his usual black suit and a black silk shirt, with a black bow tie.

‘Please . . .’ he said, lifting one well-manicured hand. ‘Please – you don’t have to get up.’

Nathan stood up all the same, and Rafał did, too, dropping his napkin on to the table, and aggressively bunching his fists.

‘Well, well,’ said Nathan, even though he felt breathless. ‘The good Doctor Zauber. How did you find us?’

‘The same way that you found me, I expect. Intuition. Putting two and two together. I have an exceptional talent for it.’

Doctor Zauber smiled at Denver and Patti, and said, ‘So invigorating to see young people getting involved in scientific exploration, don’t you think? I sense that this young man is your only son, Professor. And this young lady is a
very
wayward spirit.’

‘
Hey
,’ Patti protested.

‘No offense meant,’ said Doctor Zauber, soothingly. But then he turned back to Nathan and said, ‘I knew you would come, sooner or later. If you hadn’t, I would have had to visit you again, and give you more encouragement.’

‘Why don’t you cut out the crap,’ Nathan retorted. ‘You need to tell me how to get my wife back, and I need you to tell me right now.’

‘I understand your anxiety,’ said Doctor Zauber. ‘But
you
need to understand that everything in this world has a price. You have eaten this fine meal, you will be billed for it. Your wife, sad to say, was billed for her intervention in my affairs. This account now needs to be settled.’

‘She did nothing to you. Nothing at all.’

‘Of course she did, Professor. Maybe it was you who shot and mortally wounded my creation, and not your wife, but she aided and abetted you, did she not? It was only by sheer chance that both of you weren’t killed where you stood. You deserved it, God knows. Even a basilisk is a living creature, with a right to life.’