The Magic Circle (35 page)

“Are you trying to tell me you think my
father
has something to do with all this?” I said in disbelief, withdrawing my hand. When I stood up, Sam remained seated, still watching me closely. My mind was reeling, but he wasn’t quite through.

He said, “I think you need to come up with some answers—if only for yourself. Why do you imagine, the moment he thought I was dead, Augustus contacted my estate executor, as you told me, to learn what I’d left you? Why did he hold a press conference in San Francisco to drag out in public the contents of my will? Why did Augustus phone you in Idaho for days and days, and once he reached you, why did he alert you to the fact that you should alert
him
the moment you received the manuscripts from my trust? How did Augustus come to know anything whatever about any manuscripts?”

“But we
all
knew about them!” I cried. “They were mentioned in your …”

I had started to say “… in your will.” Then I suddenly realized, with a cold and horrible shock, that throughout the reading of the will
nothing whatever
had been mentioned about the specifics of any such papers in the inheritance, only that I was to be sole heir. But this item raised an even bigger specter. If I
was
Sam’s sole heir, why was Augustus present at the reading of the will? Why
did
he hold a press conference? And since my father hadn’t seen Sam in years, nor his own brother for many years before Earnest’s death,
why was Augustus even at Sam’s funeral?

Sam was sitting there nodding—but he was no longer smiling.

“So now, based on your observation of his behavior during and after the funeral, have you guessed why it was so important that everyone in our family, especially your father, believe I was really dead?” Sam asked me. He got to his feet and looked me right in the eye.

“Are you crazy?” I said. “Okay, I admit Augustus is an asshole and his behavior needs some explaining. But you can’t really imagine he’d hunt you down and try to
kill
you for those manuscripts, regardless of what he might think they’re worth. Even wildly assuming what you suggest is true, that Augustus were capable of such a thing, why wouldn’t he have acted sooner to lay hands on the manuscripts? After all, Earnest inherited them decades ago and had them for nearly twenty years.”

“Maybe Augustus never realized my father had them,” said Sam. “No one seemed to know
I
did, until one year ago when I started being followed myself.…”

One year ago. One year ago someone started following Sam. One year ago Sam contacted his friend in the government and, possibly because of that, two of their employees were now dead. But what other important event had happened just one year ago? It was right at the edge of my mind. I racked my brain. Then all at once I knew—and a few more things got hammered into place as neatly as nails in a coffin.

The event that happened exactly one year ago, in March of 1988, was that Wolfgang Hauser met my aunt Zoe at an
Anschluss
reunion in Vienna. And Zoe revealed that she possessed another manuscript—a manuscript written in runes!

So Sam was right about one thing: If my father
had
inherited something from Pandora twenty-five years ago, and then somehow learned Zoe had inherited something too, it wouldn’t take much to figure out—as Sam and I had just done—that there was more than one piece to this puzzle. Or to arrive at the conclusion that other pieces, likewise, had passed through Pandora’s will to various members of our family.

Augustus had actually
told
me the manuscripts were Pandora’s, and that they were written in some kind of code. Swiftly followed, a bit too coincidentally, a call from Ms. Helena Lengthy-Moniker of the
Washington Post
—who’d obtained my private phone number directly from my father, and who told me the manuscripts might be Zoe’s instead. How did I know she really worked for the
Post
and not for my father? Still, none of this proved that Augustus was the culprit trying to piece together these divided manuscripts—much less that he might be a mad bomber.

“Do you know who was the executor of Pandora’s estate?” I asked Sam.

“Exactly! That’s the critical point.” He grasped both my arms. Pain shot up to my shoulder; I winced and couldn’t keep from crying out. Sam released me quickly, in alarm.

“What is it?” he said.

“Fourteen stitches. I almost collided with an avalanche,” I told him—one of the less dramatic of last week’s events that I’d managed to leave out of my earlier account. I drew in my breath and gingerly touched my twinging arm beneath the fabric.

Sam was looking at me with concern. He reached over to stroke my hair tenderly, shaking his head.

“It’s almost healed; I’m okay,” I said. “But it did occur to me that Pandora would have to be pretty confident to let anyone hand out documents, after her death, that she’d spent her life collecting and protecting.”

“The exact conclusion I arrived at—more so, given the odd circumstances,” said Sam. “My own mother, Bright Cloud, had died only a few months before Pandora did. Father and I were both in shock and in mourning, and I’d never traveled so far away as Europe. Father therefore requested he be sent by mail any legal papers he needed to sign for the bequest. To his surprise, he was told it wouldn’t be possible: that under the terms of Pandora’s will, he must sign for and receive his legacy from the executor in person. So father and I went to Vienna.”

“Then the executor did have an important role,” I said. “Who was he?”

“The man we’ve just learned was Laf’s first violin teacher,” said Sam. “Pandora’s dark, romantic cousin Dacian Bassarides, who joined her and the children on the merry-go-round at the Prater, then went with them to the Hofburg to see the weapons. When my father and I went to Vienna for the will, I was only four years old and Dacian Bassarides was in his seventies, but I’ll never forget his face. It was wildly handsome. Wild—just as Laf described the young Pandora.

“It’s interesting, too, Laf’s mentioning that business on the merry-go-round about Hitler telling the children that
Earn
meant eagle in Old High German, and
Daci
meant wolf. Such words seem important. Quite a few of the manuscripts I’ve translated involve the family of the Roman emperor Augustus. I’d love to learn who it was that gave your father that same name. And of course, you know what Pandora’s family name, Bassarides, means in Greek?”

I shook my head.

“The skins or pelts of foxes,” said Sam. “But I’ve learned that the root is from a Libyan Berber word,
bassara
, which means vixen—the female fox. Very much as Laf had described Pandora, a wild animal. Ironic, isn’t it?”

“‘Take us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes,’” I quoted from the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s.

Sam glanced up in astonishment, followed by the dazzling smile of approval that always made me feel, as a child, that I’d just done something intolerably clever.

“So you
did
understand my message!” he said. “I knew you could do it, hotshot, but I didn’t think you’d have time to put it together that quickly.”

“I didn’t,” I said, though my mind was still racing. “I only deciphered enough to figure out our meeting place this morning—not whatever else it was you wanted me to know.”

“But that’s
it
, don’t you see?” said Sam. “That’s the irony. The cunning little vixen, Pandora, actually
did
spoil the grapes—for at least the last twenty-five years—by keeping these manuscripts so successfully apart. I didn’t begin to realize what she’d done until after I’d already sent you that parcel.” Then his smile faded as he looked at me in the dim light of the fire with his silvery eyes. “Ariel,” he said softly, “I think we both understand what we must do.”

My heart sank, but I knew he was right. If this puzzle was so dangerous and ancient that everyone wanted it, we wouldn’t be safe till we knew what it was all about.

“If the parcel you sent never shows up,” I said, “I guess you’ll have to reconstruct everything from those originals you’ve hidden; and Zoe’s runes—”

“That can wait, since at least we know there
are
originals,” said Sam. “But, Ariel, if someone has been so desperate to get these manuscripts that our lives are in real danger, our first priority is to learn what the four divided parts are, and why Pandora collected them in the first place. I need to go see the one person who can answer that question: her cousin and executor, Dacian Bassarides.”

“What makes you believe Dacian Bassarides is still alive?” I said. “If he was close to Pandora’s age, way back in Vienna, by now he’s pushing a century. And how do you expect to find him? After all, twenty-five years have passed since you saw him. The trail’s a bit cold by now, I should think.”

“To the contrary,” Sam said. “Dacian Bassarides is alive and well at ninety-five, and still remembered in some quarters. Half a century ago, he was a noted violinist in that tempestuous Paganini style: they used to call him Prince of Foxes. If you haven’t heard of him, it’s only because for some reason, though he performed in public, he refused to record. Until this morning, I’d never known he’d taught Laf, too. But as to where he can be found today, I’d have thought your friend Hauser might have told you. It’s my understanding that for the past fifty years, even throughout the war, Dacian Bassarides’s permanent base was in France, and that he’s great chums with Zoe, who’s now in her eighties. If anyone could arrange a tryst with him, she should be able to.”

I knew it was too dangerous for Sam to go to Paris seeking Dacian Bassarides. He’d have to clear immigration and security in two countries using false IDs. But I soon found the solution to the problem:

Hadn’t Wolfgang Hauser said he wanted to help “protect” my inheritance, and that he hoped I would meet my aunt Zoe in Paris to learn more about it? Since the Pod was sending us to Russia on government business, maybe we could arrange a layover for the two of us to visit with Zoe in Paris. Though Sam didn’t sound thrilled at the idea of my April-ing in Paris with Wolfgang, it was after all Sam’s idea that we interrogate Dacian Bassarides. This seemed the simplest way to do it.

We concurred that Sam should spend the next weeks, while I got my Franco-Russian trip set, shaking our family tree on the sly to see if he could knock down a few rotten apples—and that it would be a good idea to visit his grandfather, Dark Bear, on the Nez Percé reservation at Lapwai. Though neither of us had seen Dark Bear in years, we thought he might provide insight into Sam’s father, when Earnest lived at Lapwai before Sam was born—information that might shed more light on at least one member involved in the family schism that we knew had inherited manuscripts.

But I understood that my family added up to more than eccentricity, fame, and feuding war parties. There was something mysterious that seemed to lie buried at its very core. To explore that core we needed fresh data gathered through an impartial outside source. It was then that I thought of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Few outsiders or “gentiles” are aware that the Mormon Church maintains extensive genealogical facilities near Salt Lake City, containing records on family lineage that date back to the time of Cain and Seth. Olivier told me these records were kept on computers, the world’s bloodlines woven in microchip technology, hidden deep in bomb-proof caves within a Utah mountain—like the rune tapestries of those fabled Norns of Nürnberg, I thought.

Though we had our missions laid out, Sam and I still had the problem of how to make contact after we left this cabin and parted ways—not easy, when we couldn’t guess where either of us might be tomorrow morning. Sam had a plan: Each day, wherever he happened to be, he’d find a copy center and fax my computer at work leaving a fake name but a real number where I could fax
him
. I’d go to a copy shop and send him any new info with a key to decrypt it and a number where he could reply. This would work in the short haul, since there were copy shops in every town around the globe—except maybe in Soviet Russia, once I got there.

When Sam extinguished our fire and we came out of the cabin, though we’d been inside little more than an hour, the sunlight glittering from the snow in the high meadow was already dazzling. Just before I put on my dark glasses against the glare, Sam tossed his arm around my neck, drew me to him, and kissed my hair. Then he held me away.

“Just remember I love you, hotshot,” he told me seriously. “Don’t run into any more avalanches; I’d like to get you back in one piece. And I’m not at all sure about this business of your going to Paris.…”

“I love you back,” I told Sam, smiling. Putting my glasses on, I took his hand. “Meanwhile, blood brother, may the Great Bear Spirit walk in your moccasin prints. And before we part, you must swear to me on her totem you’ll take care of yourself the same way.”

Sam smiled too, and held up his hand, palm toward me.

“Honest Injun,” he said.

I was coming over the top of the high meadow when I saw his outline against the shadowy blue snow in the lower meadow, an athletic form in a sleek dark ski suit and goggles, his shaggy hair moving in the morning breeze. I didn’t need to see his face. No two people could move with that grace and agility on the snow. It was definitely Wolfgang Hauser. And he was headed toward me, following my tracks, the only ones that had yet been cut down there, I was sure, in last night’s new snow.

Holy shit. Thank God we’d decided to take separate routes out. But at the speed Wolfgang was moving, it would only be moments before he reached the place in the woods where Sam’s tracks and mine joined this morning. How in hell was I supposed to explain why and with whom I’d decided to go skiing in this isolated spot before dawn? The question of what Wolfgang himself was doing here, when he was supposed to be six hundred miles away in Nevada, would just have to wait.

In panic, I bolted off the rim and slashed down through the woods. It had never occurred to me that I should return by the same path I’d used that morning. I wasn’t even sure where my old trail was in these woods, or—since it had still been dark—exactly where Sam and I had met. My only ambition was to find Wolfgang before he himself reached that spot and we would have something very, very difficult to discuss. I was moving so fast through the blur of woods that I skied right past him.