The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense (24 page)

“The police are doing everything they can to find Robbie.”

“The police?” the nun’s voice was surprisingly cynical. “Red tape will stop them from working with the speed necessary to accomplish this goal in time. We want to help you and Mr. L’Etoile’s sister to find him.”

Earlier today, after Inspector Marcher had left, Jac had asked Griffin to help her search for Robbie. She was certain that he was alive and trying to contact her. The phone call the first night she arrived in Paris, when she could hear someone breathing but no one answered. Robbie’s shoes and wallet being found in the Loire Valley. The Fragrance of Loyalty that hadn’t been there the day before. She was convinced Robbie was sending her messages: “I’m alive. Find me. Help me.”

But how could the lama or this nun have known what Jac and Robbie were planning?

“We must get to Mr. L’Etoile before the Chinese government does. They are actively doing whatever they can to discredit His Holiness by regulating reincarnation to ensure that no more lamas are found outside of their provinces. It’s not that they believe in reincarnation; rather they are determined no one outside of their control claims to rule Tibet.”

“I see.”

“The world sympathizes with us exiles but doesn’t act on their kind words. What Mr. L’Etoile found could be a powerful weapon in the struggle. Even if there is nothing left but a legend, words have influence. If we can even suggest there might be a way to ascertain who is a true incarnation and who isn’t, we can cast enough doubt on the Chinese government’s actions in Tibet since taking control of the government to energize our cause.”

“We’re talking about a myth written on broken pot shards.”

“What are myths?” the nun asked.

“Stories.”

“True stories?”

“No. They are emotional, spiritual and ethical maps laid out for people to follow.”

The nun shook her head as if the answer disappointed her.

“What makes you think Robbie is alive and that his sister is looking for him?” he asked. “How do you know what her plans are?”

“Do you know what tulpas are?”

“I do,” Griffin replied. It was curious: just that week, Robbie had mentioned tulpas: forms created by the thoughts of highly evolved monks.

“Do you think they are true beings?”

“No.”

“When my father was a boy, in the mountains in Tibet, winters were always brutal. But one year was especially bad, and my grandfather became very ill. My grandmother tried all the remedies she knew of, but to no avail. The snow made it impossible to go for help, and the family was in despair. On the third day of my grandfather’s illness, it seemed as if the storm was going to outlast him. The fever was eating him alive. Late that night, there was a knock at the door. My grandmother opened it to find a monk. He was very short and thin and had a big smile. Despite the terrible weather, he was dressed similarly to how I’m dressed now and didn’t appear to be at all uncomfortable. He was barefoot.”

The nun stopped to sip her tea.

Over the years Griffin had met a few natural-born storytellers, people who, once they started to spin a tale, managed with a steady gaze and an expressive voice to pull you in and keep you transfixed. This woman was one.

“The visiting monk sat down by my grandfather’s bedside and stayed there throughout the night. He sent the rest of the family off to their mats and even made my grandmother go to sleep. She fought him, but the truth was, she was exhausted and needed the rest.

“Mr. North, you are a smart man. So you can guess why I’m telling you this story. The next morning, my grandfather was improved. Though it would take over a week for him to regain his strength, he was no longer fevered, and his life was no longer in danger.

“The monk wouldn’t take anything from the family but a cup of buttered tea. Then he walked off, out into the storm. His job, he told them, was done.

“Six months later, my family set off to visit my great-uncle in his monastery. When they arrived, one of the first things my great-uncle asked was how my grandfather was feeling after his illness. My grandfather asked how his brother had known about that. ‘I dreamed it,’ my great-uncle said. ‘So powerful is the bond between us.’ My grandfather and his brothers were amazed,” the nun told Griffin. “They knew about the power of dreams, but this was the first time they’d seen proof.”

As she continued telling the story, the nun refilled their teacups.

“My grandfather, who had no trouble accepting that his brother had dreamed about his illness, asked if he could meet the monk he’d sent, so he could thank him. My great-uncle reminded him that it had been the dead of winter. There would not have been any way for someone to cross the mountains. The monk who had come to visit had been a tulpa. Created through prayer and meditation. Tulpas. Created when a highly disciplined disciple gives palpable being to a visualization through sheer willpower.”

“And are you one? Can you create these thought forms?”

“Sadly, I am not yet that learned. But my teacher is. Tai Yonten Rinpoche is from one of the oldest lineages of all reincarnated lamas.”

“And you’re saying that your teacher created a tulpa who has kept you informed as to our plans?”

“Yes.”

“Or maybe it wasn’t a bad guess that the sister of a man who’s missing would go in search of him.” Griffin drained his cup. “How do you propose to help? Having the tulpa find Robbie and lead us to him?”

“It’s your choice to believe whatever you see fit. But the Western way of thinking is narrow and constricting. You seem to be a cynic.”

“I’m not a cynic—I’m a researcher. I put my faith in stones and ruins. Record them and analyze them and make sense of them.”

“And turn them into the dust under our feet instead of the shine of the stars.”

“Lovely image.” He hadn’t meant to be sarcastic, but as his wife was fond of saying, it was his natural default position when he felt out of control.

The woman’s eyes locked on Griffin’s, her expression inscrutable. “We believe that your friend is alive and is in trouble with the police, and is probably trying not to be arrested before he meets with His Holiness, as intended, to give him the pottery.”

Griffin was taken aback. “You’re saying that Robbie was given an appointment to meet with the Dalai Lama?”

“That’s correct. He was waiting for us to confirm it and give him instructions on where that meeting would take place. We didn’t get to him in time. We know—and so assume he must too—that there are Chinese nationalists who do not want that meeting to take place. Even if you, or Mr. L’Etoile’s sister, find him on your own, it’s me he wants to talk to. I am the map to that meeting.”

Twenty-nine

4:09 P.M.

Jac was sitting in her old bedroom in front of the windows, looking down at the courtyard garden, trying to think like Robbie and imagine where he’d go and what he’d do if he were in trouble. When her cell phone rang and she saw it was Alice Delmar, she answered it.

“I’m sorry to hear about your Robbie,” Alice offered in her crisp British accent.

Jac nodded, then realized she couldn’t see her and thanked her.

“Any news?” Alice asked.

“No, none.”

There was a moment of transatlantic silence. Jac pictured the kind woman on the other end of the phone sitting in her office overlooking Central Park. Alice and her husband, who owned a large cosmetics company, were old friends of Jac’s father’s. They’d treated her like family, inviting her to their house on holidays. She’d have given anything to be back there with Alice, sitting over dinner in Sant Ambroeus, sipping wine, listening to her complain about overpriced ingredients and perfume sales that had dipped 14 percent in the last year.

“Is there anything I can do? Get on a plane and come and be there with you?” The suggestion was like an embrace, offering momentary solace.

“No, please don’t. The police are doing everything they can.”

“But it’s not enough, is it? Your brother is still missing.”

“That’s true. But there’s nothing I need now. Not right now, honestly.”

“I hear something in your voice. What aren’t you telling me? Is it about the loan? If the damn French bankers are breathing down your neck, we can arrange something.”

Alice ran the company’s fragrance division. She’d been the one to come up with the idea of buying Rouge and Noir in order to solve the House of L’Etoile’s financial crisis.

“Thank you, but we’re fine for a little while longer.” Jac was staring down at the garden. The topiary that was usually shaped into pristine pyramids hadn’t been trimmed in a long time. The shapes were losing some of their form.

“Then what is it?”

“The police think I’m involved in my brother’s disappearance because he was getting in the way of the sale and that I—” she couldn’t finish.

“That’s preposterous,” Alice’s voice blustered. “
You?
He’s your family. You adore him.”

Jac pressed her forehead against the glass, comforted by its cool smoothness and neutrality. The absence of scent was a relief.

Outside, the wind picked up, the leaves in the trees danced for her, and the sun hit the seven-foot obelisk in the maze’s center. The object supposedly dated back to Egypt at the time of the pharaohs. In yet another family legend, Giles L’Etoile had brought the limestone needle back from Egypt along with the rest of the treasure. Jac knew it was just as likely a nineteenth-century copy. No one had ever bothered to find out. Her family preferred to believe the fantasies that were the cornerstone of the House of L’Etoile. She knew the shaft’s tip was white like the rest of it, but from the window, its top looked like it had been capped with something black.

After finishing the call with Alice, Jac went out to the garden. Walking down the allée created by the centuries-old cypress hedges, she breathed in the refreshing perfume; the spicy, clean scent. She’d traversed this labyrinthine pathway hundreds of times when she was a child. Its smell was as intrinsic a part of its design as the pebbled pathway.

At the maze’s heart, she looked up. So it wasn’t a shadow or a trick of light. The triangular tip of the column was darkened. Standing up on the stone bench, she reached out. Just managed to touch the tip. Her fingers came away black. She smelled them. It was dirt. Probably from the garden. Why would someone have smeared dirt around the needle’s top?

Jac sat down on the bench. It had been misting, and her hair was already curling around her face. The air felt suddenly chilly, as if this new mystery had affected the very atmosphere. She wished she’d brought a sweater, but she wasn’t going back now. She had to figure out what was happening.

Why was there dirt on the obelisk?
Jac looked at the ground for some kind of clue. And that’s when she noticed. The black and white pebbles forming the ancient ying-yang symbol had been disturbed. Their separate fields were mixed together. The teardrop shapes bled into each other.

Someone had
done
this. Deliberately. She stared at the stones as if they had the answer. Clouds rolled across the sun, showing the garden in darkness. Then the sun peeked out again. Something on the ground glinted. Metal? She looked closer. A patch of pebbles were brushed aside, exposing—what was it?

Dropping to her knees, Jac swept away the stones, revealing more and more of what lay beneath them. A large, circular plate came to light. At first she wasn’t sure what it was, then realized: a manhole cover. And it wasn’t fitted tightly into its ring but gapped as if someone had slid it back in a hurry.

After escaping down the shaft?

Jac leaned down and sniffed the space between the metal plate and the edge of the hole. The cool air smelled of vinegar and decay and maybe something woodsy, too. Yes. She could identify the same scent that had filled the workshop a few hours before, when she’d broken the bottle of the Fragrance of Loyalty.

Thirty

LONDON, ENGLAND
THURSDAY, MAY 26, 6:30 P.M.

Xie sat on the edge of his bed in his hotel room in Kensington and stared at the telephone. It seemed such a simple act. All he had to do was pick up the receiver and make the call. But he remained immobile, his hands useless by his sides.

Was this an emergency?

The thin bedspread wicked up the sweat on his palms. Ten more seconds passed. Twenty. Soon he’d run out of time. All the students were going to a reception at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He needed to be downstairs in ten minutes. If he wasn’t, someone would come looking for him. He couldn’t let them find him like this, nervous and bathed in perspiration.

Xie crossed the room in six steps, threw the lock, and opened the window. Noise from the busy street below wafted in with a warm breeze. The traffic sounds were less ominous than the silence. When it was too quiet, he could hear his own heart.

Since he’d left China, meditating had failed him. Anxiety was his constant companion. He’d waited so many years to take this trip. Made so many preparations. Took so many chances hiding messages in his calligraphy. Put Cali’s and his teacher’s lives in jeopardy.

Now he was behaving like a frightened child. He’d been told not to make contact unless it was an emergency. Was it?

An hour ago, he’d caught his roommate looking through his drawers. Ru Shan had claimed he’d gotten mixed up.

Xie looked down at the phone as if it were a sleeping dragon he was afraid to wake. What if the call was traced? What if his government was monitoring all calls the students made? Could they do that here in London? What if Xie’s roommate came in while he was talking?

Ru could be waiting outside the room now, ready to follow if Xie went anywhere not on the itinerary. It wasn’t allowed, of course. The students were forbidden to leave the hotel except as a chaperoned group. But most of them had been sneaking out late at night. So far no one had gotten into trouble.