The Medusa Amulet (44 page)

“Why don’t you go on in now and talk it over with your wife? The nurse has given her a mild sedative, but she should still be fairly lucid. Decide what you’d like to do.”

What he’d
like
to do? What he’d like to do was yank Sarah out of that damn bed and run for their lives.

“I know this is hard,” Dr. Ross was saying, “the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do in your life. But it’s the right thing, for you, for your wife, and for your daughter. At least Emme can see her mother there in a much less frightening, and less clinical, setting. We have found it’s a lot less traumatic this way.”

Somehow, Gary was able to ask, without even looking at the doctor’s face, how long Sarah would be staying in the hospice. It sounded, even to him, as if he was asking how many nights she’d been booked at a hotel.

“It’s always hard to predict these things, but I’d say three, four days, at the outside. The hospice time is chiefly used to treat the pain and afford the patient a chance to say good-bye to loved ones.” The doctor put a consoling hand on Gary’s shoulder as the TV segued into a blaring car commercial. “It’s been a long road,” he said, “and I can’t tell you how sorry I am that we have wound up here. But I think you’ll be surprised. This stage of the journey can really be a very peaceful and healing one.”

Gary could do without the New Age spin.

Giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze before continuing on his rounds, Dr. Ross said, “I’ve left word at the nurses’ station. Once you’ve talked to Sarah, they can take care of everything.”

Gary remained on the sofa. The TV anchors were reporting a multicar collision on the Dan Ryan Expressway. His hand mechanically fished his cell phone out of his pocket and he hit the speed dial for David. There was no excuse for delaying any longer; David would have to know what was up and get back to Chicago on the double. Standing up, Gary moved to the far corner of the room, where the TV couldn’t be heard. As he waited for the phone to connect, he stared out the window at a view of a frozen parking lot. A guy was madly scraping the ice from his windshield. His call went straight into voice mail, and for a second Gary wasn’t sure how to say what he had to say. Finally, he just told him that even though they were doing everything possible to keep Sarah pain-free, the situation looked very bad. “If you want to say good-bye, you’re going to have to come back. Fast.” Then, for good measure, he called the last hotel that David had reported in from—someplace called the Crillon in Paris—and left pretty much the same message on the automated service there.

Returning the phone to his pocket, he went back through the double doors into the ICU. This was one trip he wouldn’t miss. Everywhere you looked, through parted curtains, you saw people in terrible trouble; every sound you heard was either a suction tube, a beeping monitor, or a visitor softly murmuring hollow words of encouragement.

Sarah’s head was turned toward him as he came in, and he realized that he had forgotten to consciously compose his features, as he always tried to do, into a more upbeat expression. But what would that even look like now? he wondered. How did you put a good face on
this
?

As he drew the plastic chair to her bedside and closed his hand over hers—God, her skin was cold—Sarah said in barely a whisper, “You talked to Dr. Ross?” and he nodded. Her eyes, once as bright and brown as buttons, were sunken into the hollows of her face, and her eyebrows and lashes, as well as her lush brown hair, were long since gone. She reminded him, disconcertingly, of the Visible Woman
model he’d had when he was a kid. She was so wasted away she was almost transparent.

“Good.” She closed her eyes, took a shallow breath, then said, “I could use a change of scene.”

Gary wondered if he would have been brave enough to be making a joke—any kind of joke—if he were the one lying in that cranked-up bed, with the IV lines running in and out of his arms.

“I hear it’s nice over there,” she said. “And I don’t want this to be the last place Emme ever sees me.”

“Then I’ll tell the nurses we’ve agreed, and we’ll get you moved.”

Her head nodded almost imperceptibly on the pillow. At least that was settled.

“How’s Emme holding up? Yesterday was awfully hard on her.”

“Mom’s keeping her busy. I think they went to a movie today. With Amanda.”

Sarah nodded again. “As soon as I’m settled into the hospice, bring her over there. I hate having her see me like this, but I also don’t want to just disappear into thin air, the way that they made my own mother disappear.”

Gary knew that the loss of her mom had haunted her all her days. How could it not? Sarah had always felt that she had been kept in the dark for too long, and that, in a well-meaning attempt to shield her from some of the trauma, the medical establishment had wound up leaving her with a more unhealable wound.

“And besides,” Sarah said, “I’m selfish.”

“You’re about the least selfish person on the planet.”

“I want every second with her that I’ve got left.” She looked as if she might cry, but her body seemed incapable of generating a tear. Every ounce of energy she had in her was being mustered in the fight for survival.

There was only one big question still hanging in the air, and Sarah finally asked, “Have you talked to David?”

Gary told her that he’d left him a couple of messages and expected to hear back any minute.

“Where is he now?”

“France.”

“France,” she said, with a wistful smile. “I’m glad one of us got there.”

“He’ll be home as fast as he can get here.”

“Good. Good. But the longer it takes, the better.”

Gary was confused.

“Because there’s no way I’m going anywhere without seeing him one more time.” She set her fragile jaw like a linebacker. “I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll wait.”

Gary believed her.

“I’ll wait,” she repeated, before slowly drifting off into a drug-induced sleep.

Chapter 32

The papers from his valise were pretty much ruined. The only good news David could think of was that the originals were still safe and sound at the Newberry.

Still, the marquis had laid the documents out on his desk in the center of his salon with all the care and respect one would accord a newly discovered codex by Leonardo. They lay atop a layer of soft, absorbent linen, and even now he was dabbing at their edges with a dry sponge.

The pages of the manuscript,
La Chiave Alla Vita Eterna
, might as well have been glued together; they would have to be dried out slowly over the next few days, their leaves delicately separated by scalpels and tweezers.

But it was the sketch of
La Medusa
that had immediately drawn Sant’Angelo’s full attention. Professor Vernet at the Mineralogical Museum had said the marquis was an expert in these matters, and the fact that he had instantly focused on this remarkable sketch only confirmed it. He was smoothing out its wrinkles as tenderly as a father would handle his infant child.

The man himself was like no one David had ever met. He wore an imperious expression and, beneath a prominently hooked nose, a luxuriant dark moustache. To David, he looked like a throwback to some earlier era. And despite his pronounced limp, he bore a powerful
physical presence. Still wearing his formal clothes, the black tie dangling loose around his neck, he brooded over the papers. His pleated white shirt was fastened, David could not help but notice, with glittering sapphire studs and matching cuff links.

“In future,” he said, “you should really keep things like this out of the water.”

“In future,” David replied, “I hope to avoid being shot at.”

David had filled him in quickly on how they had come to show up at his door, soaking wet and out of breath, but when Sant’Angelo had asked who would be chasing him so intently, and why, David had been unable to supply the answer.

“They wanted that,” Olivia had jumped in, gesturing at the drawing.

“This?” Sant’Angelo said. “It’s just a sketch—and a copy at that.”

“They want the actual object, the looking glass,” she said, glancing at David to make sure he was okay with her being so forthcoming.

David nodded his acquiescence. Like Olivia, he was sitting in silk pajamas and a velvet robe supplied from the marquis’s own wardrobe. They had changed in a sumptuous bedroom suite upstairs and come down to steaming cups of hot chocolate.

“A little mirror, made out of what?” Sant’Angelo said skeptically. “Silver?”

“But by a great master’s hand,” David replied.

The marquis nodded. “Ah, so you do know. Cellini’s hand is always unmistakable, is it not?”

David shouldn’t have been surprised. He had the sense that this man knew far more than he was letting on.

“I have a client, and she has commissioned me to find it,” David said. “At any cost.” As a dealer in these things, the marquis would surely be intrigued by that mention of a commission.

“She has, has she? May I ask her name?”

“I’m not at liberty to divulge that,” David said, feeling that it was best to keep at least one or two cards close to his vest, especially with someone as cagey as Sant’Angelo.

The marquis nodded, no doubt accustomed to people keeping the names of their employers to themselves. But he wasn’t nearly done with his questions—and David wasn’t done with him, either. It was all a matter, David knew, of who divulged what and in what order.

“But what brought you to me in the first place?” Sant’Angelo said, leaning back in his chair, his fingers steepled in front of him.

David saw no harm in answering this one directly, telling him about some of their discoveries at the Mineralogical Museum. “Cagliostro seemed obsessed with someone by the name of Sant’Angelo, then, there it was—your name, in gold leaf, on the plaque listing the Board of Governors.”

The marquis acknowledged as much.

“So I have to ask,” David said. “Your family has apparently been in Paris for many generations, and working in this trade. Did one of your ancestors come into possession of
La Medusa
?”

Sant’Angelo didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”

Olivia nearly leapt out of her chair, and David felt like the wind had been knocked out of him. Here was the most concrete proof yet that the thing had existed, not to mention some indication of where it had been. He was almost afraid to speak again.

“You don’t, by any chance, have it in your possession now?”

“No.”

“But you know where it is?” Olivia said, perched on the front of her chair.

This question, however, did give Sant’Angelo pause. “Yes,” he finally admitted.

David hastily drained his china cup, then placed it on a corner of the desk, well away from the drying papers. “Where?” he asked. “Where is it now?”

But Sant’Angelo clearly had given as much as he was prepared to give; now it was his turn, and he leveled his gaze at David.

“First, tell me why you—or your client, excuse me—wants it so badly.”

“It’s extremely valuable, as you know anything from the hand of Cellini would be.”

The marquis waved the comment away like a buzzing fly. “If you don’t speak honestly, we are done here.”

“Tell him,” Olivia said.

But David was hesitant, afraid that once he launched into the whole story, Sant’Angelo might think him as mad as his mysterious client.

The marquis waited.

“She believes that the Medusa holds a secret power.”

“Of what?”

And when David paused again, Olivia said, “Immortality.”

But if he thought the marquis would react badly, he was again mistaken. He sat stock-still, absolutely inscrutable.

“And you?” he said to David. “What do you think? Do you think it holds the power of immortality?”

“I have to.”

This response did surprise him. “You have to? Why?”

“A life is at stake.”

“Your client’s?”

“My sister’s.”

As the marquis listened raptly, David poured out the rest of the story. Hang the consequences, he thought. He didn’t have time—more importantly,
Sarah
didn’t have time—for him to play games. As he recounted the furious search he had so far undertaken, Olivia occasionally broke in with various asides, but if David worried that her mentions of the Third Reich, and Hitler’s own fascination with occult objects like
La Medusa
, would distract Sant’Angelo, or put him off in some way, he soon saw that he should have no fear on that score. Indeed, there was no part of the story that seemed to unduly surprise, appall, or even astound him. He was either the most trusting man in the world, or he knew that what they were saying was true. Though how it could be the latter was still a total puzzle to David.

When the narrative had finally drawn to a close, Sant’Angelo had
a faraway look in his eye, and when he got up from his chair and walked, slowly, leaning on his cane, to the fireplace, he put one hand on the mantel and stood there, staring into the flames. He spoke without turning around.

“I once knew a woman,” he said, “years ago, and in another country. She was lost at sea, or so I was told.”

The logs crackled in the grate, an orange spark exploding onto the fire screen.