The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense (37 page)

The nun’s whisper held so much pain Jac turned so she wouldn’t have to look at the expression on her face.

“And now you’re here,” Robbie said. Not as if he were astounded by the coincidence but rather as if he’d expected it.

Ani straightened her shoulders as if she were shaking off the blow of seeing him. In a normal speaking voice, with an almost impersonal tone, she said, “I have news for you. From His Holiness.”

Now Robbie bowed his head slightly.

“He would be very pleased to accept your gift.”

“That’s wonderful news. Especially being brought by you.”

After four days down here in hiding, he was a mess. His beard had grown in. Multiple scratches left thin lines of dried blood on his hands, cheeks and neck. And there were dark circles under his eyes. But a beatific peace suffused his face.

Jac was amazed by the transformation.

“When will I be able to see him? Where is the meeting going to take place?” Robbie asked.

Ani shook her head. “I’ve been instructed to take the gift to him.” She held out her cupped hands.

Before Robbie could say anything, Griffin said: “That’s not what you told me.”

She turned. “We had first thought we would be able to arrange an actual meeting. But because of security measures, that’s no longer going to be possible. I didn’t know that when I talked to you, Professor North.” She returned her gaze to Robbie. “I’ll give your treasure to His Holiness myself. I’ll be sure that he gets it.”

Robbie shook his head. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

The nun was surprised. “But you know me.”

“It’s been too long a journey. Too many centuries have protected it. I’m sorry. I can’t give it to anyone but him.”

“Robbie,” Jac said. “Give it to her. Then it’s safe and you can come out and go to the police and explain what happened. The worst of this will be over. The shards won’t be your problem anymore.”

“Einstein said that he wasn’t so smart; he just stayed with problems longer.” Robbie turned to Ani. “I’m sorry you had to come all this way, but I can’t give the pottery to you. It would be putting you in danger that is mine to bear.”

“Robbie,” Jac said, exasperated. “This is crazy.”

“Your sister’s right. There’s no way that you’re going to be given access to His Holiness. I’ve been instructed to take the gift to him. Please, may I have it?”

Robbie shook his head.

“Please.” The nun seemed to be begging.

“I really can’t.”

Ani reached out and grabbed his hands. “Please,” she repeated.

“I just can’t.”

Jac heard the nun make a sound like an animal in pain. The she shoved Robbie with stunning force and swiftness. As he fell on the ground, Ani turned toward Jac. While Griffin reached out to Robbie, Ani grabbed Jac around the waist and pulled her away from the two men.

Jac was startled by the strength of this tiny woman. Effortlessly, she was dragging her to the end of the cavern, opposite where Robbie lay, Griffin next to him. Robbie’s face was bleeding.

The operation had been executed so quickly and was so unexpected that neither Griffin nor Robbie realized what else had happened in the shadows.

“I am going to have to insist that you give me the pottery shards,” Ani called out. “There’s no other way to ensure the safety of your sister.”

Forty-seven

As the two men looked into the shadows, their helmets illuminated the scene. Jac watched shock register on their faces as they understood she was in grave danger.

“Ani? What are you doing?” Robbie asked. “Let go of my sister!”

“I need you to give me the shards. Now.”

“I thought I knew you.”

Ani shrugged as if his comment didn’t matter. But the woman’s body trembled against Jac’s back.

“This doesn’t have to end in disaster. I have a gun and I have a rope. Which I use is your choice. Let’s consider the most civilized scenario: I take the treasure, tie you all up, leave you here, and then once I’ve delivered the gift intended for His Holiness, I’ll call the police and tell them where you are.”

“There are three of us; one of you,” Griffin said in a voice that was as sharp as a knife’s edge.

“There may be two of you. But I have her. And I have the gun.”

Jac felt the air waving around her again. The scent of antiquity. Of icons turning to dust with one slight touch. The smells of the Nile Delta. Palm fronds. Women heady with power. Men thick with lust. The smell was making her sick. There was no question. Her sanity was being stolen by the scent.

She breathed through her mouth. Focused on her brother. He was pressing his sleeve against the flow of blood and looking at Ani with an expression of such confusion it made Jac’s heart hurt for him. She shifted her gaze to Griffin, who was breathing hard and trying to send her some silent message with his eyes.

Jac looked back at Robbie. “Give her the pottery. It’s worthless,” she told him.

“It’s not. You know it’s not. I saw your face, I saw—”

“Robbie!” Griffin shouted. Jac knew he was interrupting him to keep him from giving away information.

“Your time is about up,” Ani said. “I guess you need some incentivizing.”

Suddenly Jac felt the cold nose of Ani’s gun pressed into her temple.

“A gun going off down here could set off an avalanche. We’d all get trapped. Even you,” Griffin said to Ani.

“I’ve taken worse chances.”

“If you hurt us, how will you find your way back?”

The nun laughed. It was low and guttural, and Jac felt it in a hot breath on the back of her neck.

“I marked our trail with infrared ink. I won’t have any trouble getting out. Robbie, please give me the pottery.”

Griffin turned to Robbie. “Do what she says. Put the pottery down. There on the floor. Then back up, away from it.”

Robbie shook his head. “I know her. She won’t hurt Jac. She’s not capable of doing something like that.”

Jac felt the woman shudder.

“We can’t trust she’s who you think she is.” Griffin pointed to a spot on the ground. “Put the pottery down. There.”

The nun’s grip on Jac tightened. Jac stared at her brother. Robbie took a step forward and gingerly placed the silk pouch on the dirt floor.

“Get back now, out of her way,” Griffin instructed.

Robbie stepped backward. As he did his face caught in Griffin’s headlight, and Jac could see that her brother had tears on his cheeks. She wanted to go to him and hold him. Comfort him they way they had consoled each other as children. Instead she looked at Griffin. His eyes were on her again. But his attempt at silent communication was failing. Whatever he wanted was impossible for her to glean.

Ani moved. Inched toward the pouch, pulling Jac with her.

Griffin had been so specific about where Robbie should put the pouch. Scanning the ground, Jac tried to figure out why Griffin had chosen that spot. There had to be a reason. What did he know about the cavern that she didn’t? What had he noticed that she’d missed?

As she neared, the pottery’s scent grew in intensity. Reached out to her with its accents of smoke. A cloud of pungency. Even from a few feet away, even under these circumstances, she felt the pull of the strange and elusive ancient aroma. A river of sadness. A desert of promise. The decipherable spicy notes and undecipherable ones that worked on her mind beckoned. Determined to remain conscious and present, she pushed back. Refused to give in to the scent. Surprisingly, at least for a time, she remained on the other side of it.

Jac judged they were two and a half feet from the pouch. Once they reached it, Ani was going to have to bend over to get it. Or she was going to make Jac get it for her. Either way, the nun was going to have to loosen her grip. What should Jac do when she did? Grab the gun? What it if went off? An explosion down here, as Griffin had warned, could cause a cave-in.

Her brother was still hovering near the pouch, unable to leave.

“Robbie.” Griffin’s voice was softer as he tried to pull her brother away with his words. “Let it go. Just let it go.”

Robbie seemed unable to leave the object.

In the midst of these terrifying moments, with Ani’s arm wrapped tight around Jac, digging into her, with a black gun shoved into her temple, with a hundred things to be worried about, what Jac thought about was the miracle of her brother’s belief. What must it be like to care about something so much, to believe so deeply—that even faced with this kind of danger, you still had trouble giving up? It was ironic. Her only conviction was a commitment to nonbelief. To seeing stories as being nothing but stories. To deconstructing them to metaphor and nothing else. She was a realist: man created faith to light up the darkness. To gain a foothold into the crater of nothingness.

The pouch was within reach now. Jac felt Ani hesitate. Was she figuring out how to get it?

Across the room, Griffin’s eyes bored into Jac. What the hell was he trying to tell her to do? He tilted his head to one side. What was he saying?

She was only going to have one chance to—

Ani’s grip loosened. Jac wrested free. Backed away as fast as she could.

Ani reached down.

Griffin leaned forward. Picked something up off the ground. In the dark, Jac couldn’t see what it was. He raised his arm. Then a loud crack reverberated in the chamber.

Ani fell. Sprawled on the ground. Her gun skidding.

Griffin’s weapon, a hollow-eyed, yellowed skull, rolled toward Jac.

Then Griffin was on top of Ani, pinning her down, grabbing her hands and pulling them behind her. His knee on her back.

The nun fought hard. Griffin fought harder. She bucked. He pushed her back down. Got her by the neck.

“Jac, grab the gun!” Griffin shouted.

She reached for it, groping in the dark.

“Robbie, get the—” He didn’t have to finish. Robbie had already scooped up the silk pouch.

Ani fought wildly. He yanked her arms behind her. She kept struggling. He increased his pressure. She came out of her jacket. She bucked again. Tried to kick him. Griffin wrenched her arms farther behind her. The nun let out a piercing cry. In seconds, beads of sweat dotted the woman’s upper lip and forehead. He’d hurt her badly. Maybe dislocated a shoulder.

“Jac, look through her robe. She said she brought rope with her to tie us up.”

“Don’t bother,” a voice boomed out from the far side of the vaulted chamber. Angry. Strident. “She brought me with her, too. So let her go. And step away.”

Forty-eight

5:55 P.M.

Most of the students and chaperones were unpacking and relaxing after the plane ride. In an hour a bus would arrive to take them to a private opening reception with Chinese and French dignitaries at the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries gardens.

There was no way that Xie could relax in the small hotel room he shared with Ru Shan, so he suggested to Lan and the professor that they unpack later and instead see something of the city. Walk from the small hotel on the Île Saint-Louis to the museum. Professor Wu, who wanted to get in as much of Paris as he could, was happy to chaperone.

The three of them stood outside the hotel, getting their bearings. Up and down the street were small shops, windows artfully designed to show off their wares.

“It’s all so lovely,” Lan whispered as they walked by a florist’s storefront. A dazzling array of roses, poppies and peonies spilled onto the sidewalk. Reds and oranges and pinks all fighting and complementing each other at the same time. Colors on fire.

Xie was too concerned to truly appreciate all of it. He had to struggle to pay attention to what Lan was saying.

“Everywhere you look, there’s something to see.” She pointed at the window of a candy shop. Yellow cookie and candy boxes were stacked on top of one another, creating an Eiffel Tower.

Xie had been exhausted by the time their plane landed. The stress of getting through security with the contraband phone had worn him out. And it had been wasted anxiety. There hadn’t been any trouble. The cell phone remained safe in his pocket. And now he was safe in France.

Strolling along the quai, Lan stopped to watch a tourist boat cruise by, then led them across a small bridge to Ile de la Cité.

“Look how the river shimmers. How the clouds drift by the sun. Like a Monet,” she said. “Or a Pissarro. Or Sisley.”

Xie saw only the shade under the trees where people whose faces he couldn’t make out looked like they could be lurking.

Paris was a living canvas, and the artist in him wanted to thrill to the sights that filled his eyes. But he was worried about these last two days. About all the things he didn’t know. When was the meeting going to take place? What was he supposed to do?

This wasn’t smart. He knew his emotions were going to drain him, create an aura around him that would attract negativity. For the time being, for the time he was on this walk, he couldn’t think about what lay ahead. He had to be here, in this moment, in Paris.

There was a phrase he’d learned at the monastery when he was a little boy, presented to him like a puzzle along with the lessons in deep meditation:

The no-mind not-thinks no-thoughts about no-things.

He intoned it silently now as they walked toward Notre Dame, and felt his energy returning. The majestic Gothic cathedral was a prayer made out of stone, one that demanded attention. Offering succor and refuge. Hundreds of people milled about it. Groups of kids, smoking and skateboarding and texting and being free.

As the three of them passed by, the church’s bells began to ring out. Deep, booming, tremendous, and splendid; the sound reverberating inside of Xie’s body.

Xie stopped walking. Slowly he turned. Took in the ancient rooftops and windows, bridges, the pulsing river.

“Professor,” Xie said.

The venerable calligrapher turned to him.

“Thank you for all of this.”

“You earned all of this.” He bowed his head slightly, and Xie saw there was a smile playing around his mouth.

Wu would be in danger if Xie failed. This amazing artist who had taken the teenage boy under his tutelage was risking his life to help him.