The Lost Sisterhood (51 page)

At that, the long row of dominoes finally began falling in my head. “Of course!” I exclaimed. “That was your father! Mr. al-Aqrab!
He
was Chris Hauser from Baltimore, wasn’t he? That’s why you were so strange that day.”

“I was?” Nick looked a little bemused. “Well, can you blame me? I had no idea my dad had been there before, under a false name. Even now, I still don’t understand how Mr. Telemakhos made the connection. I don’t look like my dad at all. Do I?”

“He is the Oracle after all,” I said, diplomatically dodging the issue. “He said my handbag would turn up again, and it did.”

Nick glanced at me as if he wasn’t entirely sure to what extent I had forgiven him yet. Then, touching a hopeful hand to my cheek, he whispered, “He told me you were my soul mate. But I already knew that.”

I kissed the palm of his hand. “I wish we had had this conversation before we went to Istanbul. Or at least before we
left
Istanbul.”

Nick shook his head. “Diana. I didn’t
know
all this until last night. After you disappeared, I flew to Dubai to have a word with my dad in private, which is always a challenge—”

“You flew to Dubai? But I just saw your father at the Çira?an Palace Hotel with Mr. Ludwig—”

“He’s a slippery one,” said Nick, pouring us more wine. “I had asked him to explain everything to me—what the hell we were doing, what role you were playing, why Reznik was after your grandmother’s notebook—and that’s why he gave me that envelope, which
you
then appropriately stole from me.” Nick gave me a sideways glance. “He also, by the way, gave me the guns in case Reznik came knocking. It’s his way of showing his love.”

Struck by sympathy, I leaned my head on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry—”

“Don’t be. If you hadn’t run away like that, I’d never have gotten the truth out of him. I always knew my mother wasn’t the woman who gave birth to me, but as you said yourself, before I met you I could barely spell ‘Amazon.’ It wasn’t really until that night on the boat, when you told me about your grandmother and said something about Amazons giving up their baby boys that I began to suspect our trip had something to do with
me.
My dad had sent me on this strange mission—basically to stick close to you and see who came out of the woodwork—but hadn’t explained what it was he wanted.”

“Why not?” I asked. “Why all the hugger-mugger?”

Nick sighed deeply. “My dad is like that. He always says that those who control the present can rewrite the past. I just never realized he was talking about himself. I suppose once you start lying to people, and constructing an alternative reality, you can’t just suddenly pull it all apart.” He shook his head again, looking just about as glum as I remembered him from Algeria. “I know it looks like I’ve been lying to you from the start, but the fact is I was just passing on the lies my dad told
me.
I had no idea he had been looking for the Amazons for thirty-three years, and that his foray into archaeology was just an excuse to dig up every anthill in the Mediterranean—”

“Maybe he thought he was protecting you?” I suggested, thinking of my own parents. “But then … why did he want
you
to track down the Amazons? I’m assuming that’s what he was hoping I would help you do.”

“He claims he wanted to give my biological mother a chance to meet me.” Nick frowned. “Personally, I think it’s a power game. He wants to prove he was right after all, and that the Amazons
do
exist. He told me to keep an eye on you … follow you around … see where you wanted to go.”

I felt a stab of suspicion. “But you fired me. On day one. Why would you fire me if you were supposed to—as you say—follow me around?”

Nick nodded, acknowledging my point. “When you and I first met, my priority was the temple. I thought you were a liability because of your connection with Oxford and the Moselanes.” He smiled, perhaps in recognition of how dramatically things had changed since then. “I’ll admit it: I couldn’t wait to get rid of you. But when I talked to my dad, he made it clear that you were more important than the temple.” Nick put an arm around me and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “He had no idea how right he was.”

“Even though I’m a liability?”

“A liability with an Amazon bracelet.” Nick flicked a finger at the jackal. “That really heated things up. My dad was convinced that, sooner or later, you would lead me to the big Amazon mother ship. And when that was slow in coming, he figured we could somehow provoke the Amazons into action. That’s why he wanted me to give you back your phone that night in Algeria; he wanted to see who you would call, and what would happen. He already suspected that your connection at Oxford, Katherine Kent, was involved with the Amazons; he just didn’t know what role she plays.”

“Lovely,” I said. “Running scientific experiments with his own son. Boom! He certainly got some bang for his buck with that one. I gather this is also why he wanted you to spread the word about the Amazon Hoard? To make the Amazons feel some pressure?”

Nick hung his head, looking just about as penitent as he ought to, on
behalf of his father. “To think I kept playing his hand, getting you into trouble. I simply didn’t realize what we were up against. And nor did he. Apparently, he was convinced that, at some point, my mother would realize who I was and make herself known to me. And if she didn’t … no harm done, since I knew nothing about her anyway. He certainly never imagined we would get caught up in the war between the Amazons and Reznik.”

We were silent for a while. It was odd to sit and watch the flames dancing in the fireplace knowing that while those logs had been burning, my entire universe had tilted on its axis. In the end I snuggled up to Nick and said, “You told me your father was a street musician. I liked it that way.”

Nick sighed. “Well, he was. And I really
was
the little monkey passing his hat around. When his family back in Iran heard about the baby—that is,
me
—they were furious. They wanted him to give me away and continue his studies at Oxford as if nothing had happened; when he refused to do that, they cut him off completely. And when he talked to his college, offering to work for his board and tuition, they told him no, he couldn’t stay there with a baby—it wasn’t ‘the Oxford way.’ He had no money, couldn’t go back home … and so he put me in a backpack and joined a group of traveling musicians. That’s how he ended up in Rio, where he started his first business and met the woman who became my adoptive mother. He’s a self-made man through and through. Very exhausting to be around. Needs to control everything.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me.”

I tried to smile. “He’s not exactly a favorite among people in Oxford. I get the impression he is quite … ruthless?”

Nick squeezed my thigh. “He’s not as bad as people like to think, just goal oriented. Have you ever heard of a successful capitalist who was
not
considered ruthless? It’s the unthinking herd’s favorite prejudice.”

“Even so, I’m guessing he won’t be too pleased if he discovers you’re dallying with an Oxford academic.”

Nick turned to look at me with a crooked smile. “He would understand
my need to conquer the ice princess who wouldn’t even shake my hand.” His smile fading, he ran his fingers down the length of my body as if to demonstrate the liberty with which that once-scorned hand could now travel.

“Is that what you’ve done?” I asked, when he leaned in for a kiss. “Conquered my glacial sovereignty?”

“Haven’t I?” Nick rolled on top of me. “Do I sense a rebellion?” He smiled when I softened beneath him. “It doesn’t feel like it.”

“Careful,” I warned him. “It could be an ambush. Any moment now, my Amazon sisters may kick down the door—”

“You’re right.” He pinned my arms to the bed. “I’d better hurry.”

So far (and here rumor speaks the truth), and so far only, does the world reach.

—T
ACITUS,
Germania

I
WOKE UP SUDDENLY, MY HEART RACING, FEARING IT HAD ALL BEEN A
dream. But when I saw Nick right next to me, sound asleep, I felt a relief as great as had I woken from a nightmare. Snuggling up to his savory warmth, I looked at him as he lay there bathed in the soft light of a dawning day. How was it possible that this glorious man who hadn’t even known me for a month had nonetheless discovered sides of me—if not an entire continent—I never knew existed? “Just give me a moment, Goddess,” he muttered. “I’m a mortal, remember?”

Despite his bruised nose, Nick looked statuesque even in his sleep, and it occurred to me that, for all his secrets, his body bore no marks of its unusual history. No scars, no jewelry, no tattoos gave any clues to his origins or the hands he had passed through before he fell into mine. Kamal al-Aqrab lived with a forged provenance and had by his own admission spent his adult life running away from preying sycophants who couldn’t see beyond the ritzy label to the man underneath.

In this, we were more alike than I had first acknowledged. Yes, we had grown up around very different campfires—if not in different sets of caves altogether—but we also had so much in common, most of all the running and the searching. While Nick had trekked across the farthest edges of the earth looking for an exit from his father’s imperial ambitions, I had galloped into the past to do battle with those who
claimed the Amazons were nothing but fading names on brittle parchment. How odd—how wonderful—that our paths had come together like this.

Too agitated to go back to sleep, I crawled out of bed and went over to the fireplace to see if I could coax the embers back to life. Then I turned to my grubby handbag at last, bracing myself for the devastation I might find inside. It was the third bag I had been using within the space of two weeks; would that the evil handbag fairy tire of me soon.

Fortunately, the
Historia Amazonum
had sustained only minimal damage; the object that had borne the brunt of my mudslide was Granny’s notebook. Limp and soggy, it had all but assumed the texture of a wet dishrag, and I felt like crying when I peeled away the front page and saw that the blue writing had been washed out so completely it was no longer legible.

Sitting down at the desk by the window, I carefully separated the middle pages in the hopes that the moisture had not penetrated to the core of the book … but it had. Of all the hundreds of words Granny had meticulously translated for me, not a single one was left.

Heavy with regret, I leafed around at random to see whether some trace of the words still lingered, and whether I could somehow reconstruct them. And then I saw it …

The invisible writing.

Just a single word drawn across every third page or so, but that was enough to make me jump up and bounce around with silent exhilaration.

What had Granny used? White crayon? Whatever it was, it had been imperceptible while there was blue writing covering every page. But now, with nothing but smudges remaining, the white crayon—greasy as it was—stood out by repelling the watery blue. So simple.

All this time, I thought with a cringe, I had been carrying around Granny’s secret message, and had it not been for my ordeal in the wet Teutoburger forest the day before I might never have discovered the truth.

Sitting down again, I began working my way through the sodden
notebook from the beginning, holding up each individual page against the sun rising over the meadow outside in order to make out the hidden scribbles.

But it was not as easy as it seemed; at first glance, none of the words made sense. Intrigued, I searched the desk drawer, found a notepad and pen, and started transcribing the words in the exact order I found them:

After my initial confusion, I started attacking the list with all the textbook code-breaking approaches I knew: shuffling the letters around, moving syllables around, taking every first letter, or second letter … but none of my attempts resulted in anything remotely intelligible.

Particularly frustrating was that the words were vaguely familiar to me just as they were, even if they didn’t make any sense; I had a feeling that with some minuscule tweak or change of perspective everything would become beautifully clear. And yet, at the same time, the list had both a Greek and a Latin feel to it, and I doubted Granny had mastered those languages. Even if she had been trained as an archaeologist, would she really, after so many years, have been sufficiently fluent to compose a message? Furthermore, if it was indeed written in a mix of ancient languages, how could she be sure
I
would ever be able to read it?

Whatever the case, clearly she had wanted to make sure the message did not fall into the wrong hands. The question was, what did it take to qualify as the
right
hands? What knowledge had Granny wanted me to acquire before I was deemed worthy of her trust?

But of course.

There they were, as clear as the constellations on a cloudless night.

I was so absorbed in my discovery I jumped with surprise when Nick put his arms around me from behind. “If you don’t come back to bed right now,” he mumbled into my hair, “I’m going to report you to Amnesty International.”

“But I’m just on the edge of an enormous breakthrough,” I protested. “Give me one second—”

“Sorry.” He lifted me from the chair and carried me off, notes, pen, and all. “
I
am the god of enormous breakthroughs, and this is where they happen.”

Only later, after excavating my papers from the jumbled sheets, was I able to engage Nick in an actual conversation about Granny’s secret message.

“I figured it out!” I told him, waving my notes in the air. “It’s basically a list of Amazon names broken into pieces, with one letter missing in each.”

Scratching his unshaven cheek, Nick took the list, which read as follows:

After reading through the names, Nick handed the notepad back to me. “That explains everything.”

“Only someone familiar with the Amazon legends would be able to figure this out,” I explained. “The names are not obvious. See.” I handed him the last piece of paper, which looked like this:

“Sphinx?” said Nick. “Isn’t that an animal?”

“Yes.” I took the list from him again. “I’m guessing it’s a warning: ‘Beware of riddle.’ After that, it’s simply a list of Amazon names. If I remember correctly, Polemusa and Bremusa fought with Penthesilea, Molpadia took part in the raid on Athens and so on and so forth. The only name I don’t recognize is the last one: Vaburusi. But never mind. Look at the missing letters. They spell out ‘Suomussalmi.’ “

“Which still needs unscrambling,” said Nick, getting wise on the game.

“No!” I poked him with the pen. “Where did you go to school? It’s a town in Finland, just south of the Arctic Circle.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Please don’t tell me you want to go there.”

I sat up straight, still giddy with excitement. “Why not? Isn’t this amazing? Granny is telling us to go to Suomussalmi. I can hear it.”

“That’s strange.” Nick cocked his head as if listening to a distant call. “To me it sounds like she’s telling us to stay right here … in this bed. In fact—” He reached out for me, taking me by the arms.

Although I was mildly upset that he seemed so uninterested in my discovery, I couldn’t help laughing when he pulled me on top of him. “What happened to the faraway island?”

“Why don’t you start with
this
island?”

Just then his cellphone rang. He ignored it.

One minute later, the phone started ringing again. When Nick eventually checked the display, he grimaced and handed the phone directly to me. It was my parents.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re safe!” said my father, sounding unusually shaken. “We weren’t sure we could call you back on this number. Where are you? Whose phone is this?”

I hesitated, equally loath to answer either question.

“Never mind!” interjected my mother. “Sweetie, we got a call at four o’clock this morning, and we don’t know what to make of it.”

“It was a very unpleasant person,” said my father, “who instructed us to inform you that”—he paused to recall the exact wording—”you have three days to hand over the notebook. There was mention of a specific park bench in Paris. If you do not comply”—my father cleared his throat, trying to sound businesslike—”harm will come to people you love.”

I was so shocked, I didn’t even try to pretend the situation wasn’t serious. “I know it sounds frightening,” I admitted, “but we’re working on a solution.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” my father wanted to know. “Is this all about Bex?”

“No,” I said. “It’s all about Granny.” I suppressed a childish impulse
to add, “And we wouldn’t be in this pinch if we had just
talked
about some of these things.” For really, that was unfair. Instead, I said, “But don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I’ll explain when I see you. Meanwhile, isn’t it time you finally had that seaside weekend? I know it’s November, but why don’t you drive out to some cozy little B&B in Cornwall and stay there for a while? Under a different name. Please.”

“Reznik,” said Nick, as soon as I had hung up. “Always a bench. Always a crowd. And classic Moselane to tell him where your parents live.”

I felt an absurd sting of irritation. “Why not the Amazons?”

Nick got out of bed and started hunting around for our clothes. “The Amazons are not at war with us; they’re at war with
him.
If they had really wanted that notebook, you can bet they would have stolen it a long time ago.”

“Perhaps they didn’t know it existed.”

Nick pulled the T-shirt over his head, grimacing in pain. “Good point. How does
Reznik
know about it? Through James?”

“James knows nothing about the notebook,” I said. Then something occurred to me, and I groaned. “The envelope! The one I took from you. The thugs from Geneva must have checked it out in my hotel room in Bramsche. If you recall, there was a medical article written by a Dr. Trelawny—”

“I never got that far,” said Nick with a scowl. “All I saw was the detective report on you and the letter from Reznik to his informant network—”

“You mean the letter to Jumbo? I thought it was a message to a hit man. Actually, I thought it was for
you.
”

“Jumbo. Big ears.” Nick demonstrated with his hands. “Reznik was trying to gather information. The million-dollar bounty came later. Because he’s paranoid, he has cameras everywhere, and the poor bastard caught his own son’s murder on tape. I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say Alex Reznik knew who was killing him, and why. That was what triggered Reznik’s Amazon fixation. I don’t know how close he is to tracking them down, but his interest in your grandmother’s notebook tells me he is hot on their trail.”

“Not as hot as we are,” I said.

Nick looked at me with narrow eyes. “Meaning?”

“Think about it.” I sat up on my knees, urging him to understand. “If we give Reznik the notebook, he’ll see the secret writing right away. And considering his Amazon obsession he just might be able to unscramble Granny’s riddle, too. God knows, maybe ‘Suomussalmi Vaburusi’ is all he needs in order to find the big Amazon mother ship, as you call it, and”—the thought made me shiver—”blow it up.”

Nick walked over to me, graver than ever. Lowering his hand to touch my cheek, he said, “And are you sure that would be such a bad thing?”

W
E BROKE THROUGH THE
clouds to find Finland covered in snow. Even as we walked to our rental car, large, fluffy flakes kept falling from the sky like a welcoming puff of confetti. “Not exactly the sandy beach you were hoping for,” I said to Nick.

As we rolled out of the parking lot, the snow fell so heavily against the windshield I had to put the wipers on top speed. “Isn’t it wonderful, though?” I said, doing my best to be jolly. “I can almost hear the cheers of Finnish children.”

“You hear a lot today.” Nick turned on the cabin lights to better see our map. “Are any of the voices telling you whether to go left or right when we hit the Oulun Lääni—whatever that is?”

I touched the brake a few times to determine exactly how slippery the road was. “I told you we should have taken the GPS.”

“Real men don’t use GPS,” he reminded me.

“And that,” I pointed out, “is why we have so few real men left. They keep crawling out of the gene pool and can’t find their way back.”

We were silent for a while. I knew Nick was still irked by my decision to go to Suomussalmi, but then, he hadn’t been able to propose any viable alternatives. The one positive thing was that he hadn’t deserted me, and for that I was immensely grateful.

Before leaving his cottage that morning, I had called the Kalkriese Museum to ask for Dr. Jäger’s phone number. She was, after all, the
closest I had been to a humane Amazon so far. But Felix told me she had left unexpectedly, to stay with a sister no one knew she had. Not surprisingly, she had given him no contact information.

Considering the way they had treated us both, neither Nick nor I were particularly fond of the Amazons anymore. But unlike Nick, I felt an obligation to side with them, if only out of love for Granny. I simply couldn’t give Reznik—or anyone else—the notebook. And yet if I didn’t, I would forever worry about my parents’ safety.