The Magic Circle (37 page)

I went downstairs to heat some burgundy and soak a few
Glühwein
bags from my perpetual cache, to make my short-cut version of hot spiced wine. But as I was watching it heat up, something popped into my head that I’d nearly forgotten.

I crossed the vast, cold living room to the wall of books and flipped through the heavy volume H of my frayed
Encyclopedia Britannica
until I found the entry I sought. I was surprised to learn that, indeed, there
had
been a real person named Kaspar Hauser. His story was more than strange:

HAUSER, KASPAR

A youth whose life was remarkable due to the circumstances surrounding it, of apparently inexplicable mystery. He appeared, dressed in peasant garb, in the streets of Nürnberg on May 26, 1828, with a helpless and bewildered air.…

Two letters were found on his person: one from a poor labourer, stating that the boy had been given into his custody in October of 1812, that according to agreement he had instructed him in reading, writing, and the Christian religion, but that up to the time fixed for relinquishing his custody he had kept him in close confinement [and another letter] from his mother stating that he was born on April 30, 1812, that his name was Kaspar, and that his father, formerly a cavalry officer of the 6th regiment at Nürnberg, was dead.

[The youth] showed a repugnance to all nourishment except bread and water, was seemingly ignorant of all outward objects, and wrote his name as Kaspar Hauser.

The article went on to explain that Kaspar Hauser had attracted attention from the international scientific community when it was learned he’d been raised in a cage, and that neither his family nor the laborer who raised him could be found. At the time, there was apparently a huge flurry of scientific interest throughout Germany in things like “nature children” raised by wild beasts, as well as “somnambulism, animal magnetism, and similar theories of the occult and strange.” Hauser was put up at the home of a local schoolmaster there in Nürnberg, but:

On the 17th of October 1829 he was found to have received a wound in the forehead which, according to his own statement, had been inflicted on him by a man with a blackened face.

The British scientist Lord Stanhope came to see the boy and, taking an interest, had him removed to the home of a high magistrate at Ansbach where he could be studied more closely. His case was almost forgotten by the public when, on December 14, 1833, Kaspar Hauser was accosted by a stranger who wounded him deeply in his left breast. Three or four days later he died.

It seemed many books had been written about Kaspar Hauser in the ensuing hundred and fifty years, with wild surmises ranging from his having been assassinated by Lord Stanhope himself all the way to the belief that Kaspar Hauser was a legitimate heir to the throne of Germany, whose kidnapping at infancy led to upheavals in the political order. The encyclopedia hinted the entire story was “humbug,” dismissing its historical facts as “in any case in complete confusion.”

But
I
was confused about why Wolfgang K. Hauser—who was from Nürnberg like his namesake—would give the misleading impression that his middle name was related to the biblical Magi, with no mention of an historical figure sufficiently well known to deserve a full-page entry in the
Encyclopedia Britannica
. As for further connection with a boy who’d been raised like an animal—didn’t the name Wolfgang translate as “one who runs with the wolves”?

I glanced across the room and spotted Jason there, sniffing my bags beside the door. He could tell from two packed bags that I was going away longer than just a weekend trip—so I was afraid he might flagrantly piss on them, as he’d done in the past when he guessed he would not be coming along.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said. Scooping him up, I grabbed the bubbling
Glühwein
from the stove and trotted back upstairs to Olivier’s warm kitchen. “Olivier, you’d better keep an eye on my roommate here when I’m gone,” I told him. “I think he’s nursing a grudge about my leaving, and you know what
that
means.”

“He can stay up here in my place,” Olivier said, slathering a toast point with mousse and feeding it to Jason. “It will save on the heating bill downstairs. And what about your mail?” he added. “Will you have time to go stop it tomorrow yourself? Or would you prefer that I—what’s the matter?”

Bloody damned hell! I
knew
I had forgotten something! I opened my mouth for the proffered mousse point and chewed it so I couldn’t speak. I poured the steaming wine into mugs for us and swallowed a stiff slug of it as my brain did loop-the-loops trying to figure out this disaster fast.

“It’s okay,” I finally told Olivier. “I suddenly thought of something I forgot to pack, that’s all. But I’ll have time tomorrow to handle all that, and to stop my mail, and to run by the office, too.”

Thank the merciful heavens it was actually true—the post office opened at nine o’clock, and I didn’t have to be at the airport to board my flight until nine-thirty. But it might have been otherwise, in which case I would have been in deep and serious trouble, with another two weeks of mail piling up while I was cavorting around in Soviet Russia. What in God’s name had I been thinking?

When we finished eating and I went back downstairs, I cursed myself colorfully for having had the presence of mind to pack an alarm clock and pajamas—while again nearly forgetting the one thing that might have gotten Sam and me both killed. What good was it to possess a photographic memory for trivia, I thought, when all the important stuff ended up getting squeezed out of your brain?

I went to the office at eight-thirty the next morning, bags and passport stashed in the back of the car. This time I parked at the far side of the building and went through the mantraps for site employees. I didn’t plan to get stuck outside again, with my warm coat inside, when I was about to take off for Soviet Russia. But when I got through the first set of doors and placed my badge on the monitor, there was no click to indicate that the security guard at the entrance across the building had opened my next set of doors. I was freezing. I swiveled to look up at the seeing-eye camera and yelled: “Is anybody there?” The damned guards were supposed to be on duty around the clock.

I heard a scratchy sound, then Bella’s voice coming through the intercom. “I can’t see you well enough to ID you against your badge,” she informed me in that snotty official tone. “You have to turn to the camera: you know the rules.”

“For Christ’s sake, Bella, you know who I am,” I said. “It’s freezing out here!”

“Turn your face the proper way and keep your badge flat on the monitor so I can complete my identification—or you’re not getting in,” her voice insisted.

Damned bitch. I contorted myself to “assume the pose.” Bella was undoubtedly one of those who’d learned that I’d been off skiing at Jackson Hole with Wolfgang Hauser last week, and was getting even by delaying me here. She sure took her time to complete the identification of somebody she saw every single day. When I heard the door click at last, I yanked it open. But as I went through, I smiled back at the camera and flipped my middle finger right into the camera’s eye. I heard Bella gasp; she was babbling hysterically behind me until the glass doors shut out her voice.

There was little she could do, as I knew. Premises security officers couldn’t leave a post until their shift ended. If she was on duty now, she’d be stuck at her post until ten
A.M
., when I’d already be in the air.

I went to my office and checked the mail messages. As I had hoped, there was one from Sam—“Great Bear Enterprises”—followed by a phone number with an Idaho area code, probably somewhere between Sun Valley and the reservation at Lapwai. I committed it to memory, deleted it from the computer, and was about to go visit the Pod to say goodbye when he popped his head in with a puzzled expression.

“Behn, I’ve just received a call from security asking me to send you to the director’s office at once,” he told me. “I’m surprised to see you here at all. Aren’t you supposed to be leaving with Wolf Hauser on the ten o’clock flight? But the director says there’s an infraction of some sort. Maybe you can tell me what this is all about?”

“I … yes, I’m on my way to the airport,” I said with a sinking feeling. “I just dropped in to say goodbye to you.”

Goddamned Bella—was she writing me up? I knew what a security infraction meant at a nuclear site. It could take hours just to go through the initial review. A security officer’s word was law. If her accusation stuck, I might be suspended from my job. What in God’s name was
wrong
with me? Why couldn’t I have let it go, just walked through the mantraps and forgotten her? Why did I have to flip her the goddamned bird?

Now the Pod was escorting me to the office of the director of security and I was wondering how on earth, even if I got out of this in time to catch my plane, I would ever get to the post office first to stop my mail. I wondered if you could get an IQ transplant or some kind of hormone supplement that would reduce female aggression. I wondered if I could fall on the floor and pretend I was having a fit.

Peterson Flange, the security director, was sitting behind his desk when we came in. Since I’d never seen Peterson Flange when he
wasn’t
sitting behind his desk, I’d often wondered if he had any legs.

“Officer Behn,” said the security director, scowling at me, “an extremely serious charge of security infraction has been brought against you this morning.”

The Pod looked at me with raised brows, clearly wondering just how I had incurred a serious infraction when I’d only been on the premises a few moments. I was wondering the same thing myself: I’d definitely flunked another intelligence test. “Behn is scheduled to leave this morning on a critical project,” he informed Flange, checking his watch. “Her plane leaves in less than an hour. I hope this isn’t as serious as you suggest.”

“The security officer who reported the infraction is being relieved right now at her post, and will join us shortly,” Flange said.

Just then Bella came storming in. “You flipped me off!” she screamed, waving one long mauve lacquered fingernail in my face the moment she saw me.

“I did exactly what
you’re
doing right now,” I pointed out. “Only I might have used a different finger.”

“What is this woman taking about?” the Pod asked, indicating Bella. He had that dangerous don’t-mess-with-me edge to his voice as he glared at the security director.

But I knew I was in trouble. Though the Pod was head of the whole nuclear site, security personnel reported directly to the FBI’s National Security wing. Peterson Flange could override the Pod and stop me cold if he decided to make it an issue, and that would incense the Pod with me too, since he’d have to lecture me and fill out reports and a lot of other nonsense. I really had to think fast.

“Officer Behn,” said Peterson Flange, “our security officer here has charged you with making an obscene and threatening gesture to her through the security camera in the mantraps, when she, in her line of duty, was only trying to ID you against your badge.”

“I have it on film,” Bella sneered at me, “so don’t bother to deny it.”

Her attitude really pissed me off. I turned to Peterson Flange and asked pleasantly, “What exactly did your security officer think that, by my gesture, I was threatening to do to her?”

He stared at me in astonishment, jumping to his feet. So he did have legs, after all. “Security is the most serious business of this site, Officer Behn!” he stormed. “It’s hardly a subject for levity!”

I was trying to recall exactly what levity was, whether it was something heavy or something light, when the Pod interrupted our interesting chat. “What is it you did to her, Behn?” he asked me directly.

“I flipped her the bird through the security camera, sir, when she wouldn’t let me in through the mantraps,” I said. “She was being a pain in the ass, and I was afraid if we screwed around much longer, I might be late for my plane.”

“A
pain
in the …!!!” Peterson Flange was hyperventilating. He collapsed back into his chair—so maybe he just had springs under there.

Pastor Dart was staring at me with his hand covering his mouth. If I didn’t know better, I might have guessed he was laughing. Finally, things settled down and the Pod took command.

“My opinion,” he announced in his best screw-with-me-and-I’ll-fuck-you voice, “is that Officer Behn deserves a verbal warning but nothing more. Speaking privately, I feel I must mention that she’s just had a death in her family, only to return from the funeral and learn she was scheduled to leave in one week for an important assignment overseas in support of Doctor Hauser, our liaison with the IAEA. She pleaded not to go on this assignment, but I—” He stopped, for Bella had thrown herself across the director’s desk and was screaming in his face.

“You have to let me write her up! You can’t let her go on this trip with him!”

Peterson Flange shot Dart an embarrassed look and waved his hand. “I’ll look into this further myself,” he conceded, as the Pod and I turned and went out the door.

“Behn, you’ll explain this later to my satisfaction,” said the Pod, “but you’d better be on that plane this morning with Hauser.” As I was leaving, the Pod shook his head with a grin. “I really can’t believe what you did. But please, just don’t try it again.”

I had only twenty minutes to get from my office to the airport, which was a good ten minutes away not counting the detour I still had to make. I screeched up to the front of the post office and didn’t bother to park. I jumped out of my car and ran up the steps. George the postal clerk was behind the counter when I came in, but there were a few people already standing in the queue.

“George, I have to stop my mail for a few weeks,” I called over their heads. “I’ll just fill out the form, but is it too late to stop it for today, too?”