Bristol House (46 page)

Annie didn’t take the bet. “Okay,” she said, pointing to the vignette with the Hebrew letters. “If you’re right about this being the Knights of Malta building on the Aventine Hill, then this is the entrance to their gardens.” She wagged her finger at the scene to the right of the lettering. “Which means this is the Piranesi gate, which happens to be one of the best-known tourist destinations in Rome. Because when you look through the keyhole, you have a perfectly framed view of the dome of Saint Peter’s and—” She broke off.

Geoff was following her nonetheless. “So it’s Rome that leads to the code of the
A
’s,” he said, sweeping his hand toward the window on their right to indicate the progression. “But then what? What do you get after you have Maggie’s mezuzah?”

Annie scrambled to her feet. There was a sketchbook on the night table beside the bed. She grabbed it and a pencil and sat down and began drawing.

Geoff got up and went to sit beside her, watching as a quick-stroke suggestion of the mural appeared on the page.

“Here are the Roman scenes,” she said. A few dark lines appeared on the lower-left corner of the impressionistic drawing. “They lead to the
A
’s, which are pretty much like this.” Annie added a few black dots, glancing up once or twice to confirm her memory of the placements of telltale
E.R.
initials.

“No,” Geoff said. “That’s wrong.”

“How so?”

“It’s not the order of things. We’re looking the wrong way. With the wrong mind-set. My mother would say we need to think like the person who made the code.” He stood up and walked the length of the mural, moving from the door to the window. “Renard was a Hebrew scholar steeped in kabbalah. Our instinct is to read this way”—a wide sweep of his hand indicated left to right—“from the Roman scenes to the window. But if we’re supposed to read his message like Hebrew”—another wave of his hand—“it goes right to left.”

“So it’s reversed,” Annie said. “Meaning the
A
’s lead to Rome and Saint Peter’s, not the other way around.”

“Exactly.”

“And right now in Rome,” Geoff said, “the chair is about to be empty, and the Catholic Church is going to elect a new pope. So what if—”

Annie held up a hand to signal for silence. “Shush. Listen.”

The BBC was explaining that the word
conclave
comes from the Latin
con clavis,
“with a key.” “The cardinals,” a woman’s voice told them, “will be locked in until their meeting in the Sistine Chapel elects a pope and we see white smoke coming from—”

“The two most influential old cardinals!” Annie shouted the words. “Maggie was right about that as well. Those two old cardinals who were murdered by the quail egg crowd, by Weinraub and his people—they’re the key.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“It’s canon law,” she said, “at least for the last thirty or forty years. No cardinal over eighty is allowed to vote for a new pope. So the old ones don’t attend the conclave. But what if the ones who do go were somehow eliminated?”

“As in,” Geoff said softly, “the Sistine Chapel is set on fire or blown up or gassed or something with all of them in it.”

“Yes. Then the old cardinals would probably be called in as backup. And respected men like De Boer and Falcone would have a lot of influence. History shows silverbacks of that sort to be unforgiving about ancient schisms.”

“So if you wanted to manipulate that second emergency conclave, maybe you’d take out what you’re calling the silverbacks first.” Geoff was working his iPhone as he spoke.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for the number of the spook I met yesterday. The MI6 bloke. He said to call any time if I thought of something. Seems like sending him chasing the wrong wild goose is someth—”

The phone rang in his hand.

It was the hospital. There had been a sudden change in his mother’s condition. She was no longer stable. Mr. Harris should come immediately.

36

“You’re sure you’re going to be all right?” Geoff asked.

“Of course I am. I’ll close up here and go back to your place.”

“Do that, Annie. Don’t spend any more time with the mural. We’ll come back together later and—”

“Stop worrying about me.” She kissed him quickly. “Just go. Don’t forget to call the spook from the cab.” She closed the door behind him and turned right to the drawing room. They’d put the lights on in there when they came in, and she had to—

Jesus! What was she thinking? She was letting him go by himself to do the maybe hardest thing he’d ever do in his life! If it was the other way around, if she were the one facing a similar crisis, what was Geoff likely to have done? Annie whirled round and ran out of the flat, pulling the door shut behind her. She could hear his footsteps pounding down the stairs and running across the lobby. “Wait! I’m coming with you!” It was not quite a shout, rather a super loud whisper—all she could summon in the inhibiting nighttime hush.

He didn’t hear her, and there was no reply.

Annie tore down the stairs. She’d reached the landing of the next floor down when she heard the front door of the building close. By the time she was on the street, his taxi—she could see Geoff’s profile in the rear window—was heading south toward Kingsway. Annie shouted and waved both arms, but he seemed to be talking on the iPhone and didn’t turn his head.

Another cab pulled up to the front of the hotel a few doors away. The curbside door opened, and a man got out, taking a few moments over it because he was hauling a couple of suitcases. Annie dashed toward him, then ran into the road and opened the cab’s opposite door. “Guy’s Hospital!” she shouted, hurling herself into the backseat. “Hurry.” She was fishing in all her pockets meanwhile and—thank God for the longtime habit—came up with a ten-pound note.

The man with the suitcases closed the door on his side. The driver pulled away. Annie sat forward, trying to see the taillights of Geoff’s cab up ahead. There wasn’t a lot of traffic at this hour, so she thought it might be possible. Then the light caught her cab at Theobald’s Road and banished any hope of catching up. There was, however, no better hour to speed through London. In less than ten minutes they were crossing London Bridge, and she had calmed down enough to begin wondering if Geoff would think it presumptuous of her to have come. Wouldn’t he have said, if that’s what he wanted? Too late. She didn’t have enough cash to tell the cab to turn around and take her back to Holborn. Besides, they had arrived.

The cabbie reached behind him to open the Plexiglas screen. He thrust the back of his head in her direction. “What entrance do you want, love? Casualty?”

That’s what they called Emergency here. “No, not Casualty. I want . . . damn, I’m not sure.” She knew where Geoff had taken her when they visited, but Maggie had been moved since then. And despite having been founded some nine hundred years earlier, Guy’s and the nearby, equally old and venerable St. Thomas’ were amalgamated into an enormous ultramodern teaching institution that sprawled over a number of city streets. A variety of buildings accommodated various departments and schools and faculty and student living accommodations. Threaded among them were the small bars and restaurants and shops that invariably attached themselves to any such urban campus.

The driver slowed down, as if to give her time to get her bearings, but offered no guidance. Annie patted her pockets again, this time looking for her cell. No luck. Because, she remembered, she’d left it at Geoff’s, when they first headed out to Bristol House. The cab’s screen was still open. She leaned forward, speaking in the direction of the cabbie’s ear. “Look, have you got a mobile, and can I use it for a moment?” The meter already showed seven pounds fifty pence. She couldn’t offer him a big tip as inducement. “I have to get to someone who’s dying, and I need to call and find out exactly where I’m to go.”

The driver pulled to the curbside. He held up a phone but didn’t hand it back to Annie. “What number do you want to call?”

“I don’t really know. I need the number for the central reception or switchboard or whatever they call it. Information . . . directory inquiries.”

“You don’t know where this dying person you need to be with is?”

“No. I told you, I—” Two young women were walking toward them, both wearing green scrubs. Annie rolled down the window and leaned out. “Please, can you help me?”

The one closest to the curb, a brunette who looked as if she might be Middle Eastern, stopped and leaned in. “If you want Casualty, it’s—”

“No, not that,” Annie said. “I need to know where someone is moved to when they’re dying.”

The girl looked skeptical.

“My boyfriend’s mother,” Annie said, praying for female solidarity. “He got a call saying she wasn’t stable, and he should come. I just want to be close by for him.” The girl nodded and looked a bit more understanding. “She’s dying of breast cancer,” Annie added, “and last week they moved her to what I guess would be called a palliative care unit. Does that help?”

The young woman turned to her companion, and the pair of them conferred for a moment. Then the one who hadn’t spoken to Annie offered the driver a series of directions, while the maybe–Middle Eastern brunette wished Annie good luck.

The cab sped away once more, this time taking a number of turns and cutting across a maze of small streets before pulling up in front of an unmarked redbrick building. The fare was ten pounds and twenty pence. Annie did what Geoff always did, got out on the driver’s side and proffered her ten-pound note through the window. “I’m sorry, this is all I have.” The cabbie rolled his eyes, took it, and drove away.

***

Inside, another woman—this one graying and short and round, and wearing jeans and a loose multicolored smock as well as a stethoscope around her neck—took Annie by the hand. “Mrs. Harris is down here,” she said. They walked along a short corridor to a room with an open door.

Geoff’s back was to her. He was sitting beside the bed. Holding Maggie’s hand, Annie thought, though she had no precise view of Maggie herself. All she could see was the bottom half of what appeared to be a small and inconsequential disturbance beneath the sheets. An intravenous setup had been shoved into a corner. The only equipment still hooked up to Maggie’s wasted frame was a monitor mounted on the wall to one side of the bed. Annie could make out a series of small up-and-down squiggles and hear the low and constant beeps.

There was a couch against the wall opposite the door to the sickroom. The woman with Annie, a nurse she supposed, gestured toward it, and Annie sat down. The woman went into the room and murmured something to Geoff. Annie saw him nod, but he didn’t turn around. The woman went to the other side of the bed, put the ends of the stethoscope in her ears, and bent over Maggie. After a few seconds she straightened and said something Annie didn’t hear. Then she came out to where Annie was waiting. “I don’t think it will be long. I told him you were here.”

Annie thanked her, then added before the woman could walk away, “Is Mrs. Harris in pain?”

“No. I’m quite sure she’s not. She was conscious until a short time ago. I don’t think she is now, but she’s very peaceful.”

The woman left.

Annie didn’t have a watch, and there were no clocks anywhere she could see, but she didn’t feel any urgency about time. She was with him, and he knew it, and apparently it was okay that she had come to share this vigil, even if from a distance. At least he didn’t come out and tell her to go away.

On the other hand, neither did he turn around and acknowledge her.

For a long time the only thing that happened was that occasionally Geoff lifted Maggie’s hand to his lips. Then at last the monitor switched from beeps to a soft steady hum, and the little peaks and valleys flattened to a single and steady straight line. The nurse or whatever she was appeared at the end of the corridor and gazed in Annie’s direction, then went away.

More time passed. Maybe only a few minutes—Annie wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure either if she should go in and say something or maybe do something. Offer some comfort beyond mere presence. She was on the verge of making that decision when Geoff stood up and bent over and kissed his mother’s forehead. Then he came out to the corridor.

Annie got up off the couch. “I’m so sorry, Geoff.”

“I know. So am I. Really sorry. But I don’t think Maggie was. I think she figured it was time.”

He was holding a small, folded piece of paper. He took his wallet out of his hip pocket and put it away.

“Rabbi Cohen’s prayer?” Annie asked.

“Yes. But it turned out Maggie didn’t need a cheat sheet. She knew the prayer off by heart. I said the first word, and she took over and ran through the Hebrew like a pro.”

“The nurse said she was conscious when you got here. I’m glad about that.”

“Me too.”

There was not much emotion in his voice, but he was deathly pale. And they were still standing apart from each other. Like strangers. Or maybe just like English people. Annie nodded toward the room he’d just left. “If you want to go back, it’s okay. I’ll wait.”

Geoff shook his head. “No need,” he said. “Maggie’s not there any longer.”

Annie nodded toward the couch. “How about we stay here for a minute.” They sat down, side by side but still not touching. There were a few small bottles of water on a side table. Annie opened one and handed it to him.

Geoff took a long swallow, then handed it back to her. “It was as if she’d been waiting for me,” he said. “After I came in, she opened her eyes and smiled, then closed them again. I thought she was sleeping, but I started the prayer anyway. That’s when she chimed in and spoke every word clear as a bell.”

“You did good,” Annie said. “According to Rabbi Cohen, that prayer is supposed to be every Jew’s final words.”

“In the matter of Maggie Harris née Silber, not quite. Shall I tell you my mother’s last words?” He didn’t wait for agreement. “Maggie said, ‘I told you that cow Esther Cohen would see me out.’ It was wonderful.” He was chuckling as he spoke. Annie couldn’t help but chime in.

“It was pure, unadulterated Maggie,” Geoff said. Then, without warning, his laughter became quiet tears.