The Memorist (26 page)

Thursday, May 1
^st
—8:52 a.m.

H
e stood in the doorway to the bathroom, a towel around his waist, his hair dripping. The strong shoulders and delineated muscles in his arms and chest were tensed. “You figured it out?”

She nodded.

“Play it for me, please.”

“We don’t know what it can do.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“Beethoven was so convinced of how dangerous this was he went through an elaborate ruse to hide—”

Sebastian cut her off. “Beethoven lived over a hundred and fifty years ago and you don’t know for sure why he hid anything.”

“I do know. He was sure the song was a malevolent force. He’d heard it. He knew what it was capable of. He was right.”

“That’s not in the letter. He never explained that.”

“But I know it. Don’t you believe me?”

“If I didn’t believe you would I have come this far?
Would we even be here? Did you really figure out the song? Please, Meer. I won’t hold you responsible for anything that happens to me, just play me the song.” The plea in his eyes was even more desperate than the one in his voice, and she wished she could help him but she’d experienced memories without being prepared for them. Trying to run away from them had almost crippled her.

“Not without knowing what the full ramifications of your hearing it might be. Not while we’re alone. Not while we’re still in danger. Help me get out of here with the flute…get me to my father and Malachai…and then together all of us can figure out what we need to do next.”

Sebastian started to interrupt her again but she wouldn’t let him. “I know you want to play the music for Nicolas—and I want you to be able to do that. Nothing would make me happier than if the music works and brings him back but we need to do this safely. I can’t risk hurting him or you. I’ll go on blaming myself forever.”

Sadness overwhelmed her as her last words lingered in the air. She
had
been blaming herself forever, for much more than one lifetime, but why? And as soon as she asked herself the question, she knew the answer.
His death had been her fault
. But whose death?

Meer closed her eyes and searched the inestimable blackness until she finally saw the outline of a man. But who he was and who she had been when she was with him wouldn’t come into focus. Only the sickening horror that someone she’d loved had died because of her, and somehow this flute and its music were connected to that tragedy.

Thursday, May 1
^st
—9:00 a.m.

N
ine hours after leaving the same spot the night before, Lucian Glass met Alex Kalfus in front of the Sacher Hotel at 1010 Philharmonikerstrasse.

“According to our backup team, which has been trailing Meer Logan, she never returned during the night,” Kalfus told him when he got into the car at nine-fifteen.

“Can you find out from the hotel housekeeper if her room was used overnight? It is possible that your men missed her.”

Kalfus bristled. “Not likely.” But he made the call. “They are sending someone to the room,” he reported back.

While he watched the hotel entrance, Lucian sipped his second cup of coffee of the morning with the devotion of an addict, hoping the elixir would do more than the first had to shake him awake.

“The
fräulein’
s bed was not slept in and the towels and service in the bathroom showed no signs of being used. Not even a washcloth,” Kalfus reported.

“I think we should call the hospital and find out if
Jeremy Logan had a visit from his daughter yet this morning—and let’s see what we can find out about Sebastian Otto’s whereabouts while we’re at it.”

The voice on the other end of Kalfus’s phone crackled back to life.
“Ja?”
He listened, nodding, and then turned back to Lucian. “So, Jeremy only had one visitor last night and that was Malachai. The hospital’s record coincides with ours. He arrived at five o’clock and stayed until visiting hours were over at eight.”

Lucian checked his notes anyway. Malachai had left the hospital at 8:05 and taken a taxi to the Memorist Society where he stayed for three hours and fifteen minutes and then left at 11:22 with Fremont Brecht. The two of them got into Fremont’s chauffeured car, which dropped Malachai off at the Sacher Hotel at 11:52.

“Phone calls?”

“Jeremy Logan received one call last night and another this morning.”

“What time?”

“10:15 last night.”

“From where?”

“The call went to the general switchboard and wasn’t traced. The one this morning came in at 8:15 but Jeremy was sleeping so the call wasn’t put through—but it was traced and originated from a phone booth in the Spittleberg area.”

“Isn’t that near Jeremy’s house?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe she stayed there last night. Or in a hotel in that section. Could you get a patrol car to canvas the hotels in the area?”

Kalfus was about to make the call when he pointed to the front of the hotel. “There he is.”

Both men watched as Malachai stood outside, perusing
the street. Kalfus turned the key in the ignition preparing to pull out. Lucian knew they had to follow Malachai and not wait for Meer but he was angry with his quarry for choosing now to leave. Except he didn’t leave. Not yet.

“There’s something about the look in his eyes, as if he’s always planning two steps ahead,” Lucian said.

“I can’t decide if it makes him look intelligent or guilty.”

“Both, and he’s much more guilty and much more intelligent than you’d guess. The man hasn’t taken one misstep in nine months.”

“Well, certainly not one misstep while he’s been here. Visits with friends, a meeting at an archaeology society, out to dinner…all seemingly innocent.” Kalfus shifted into Reverse but Lucian stopped him.

“No, sit tight, he’s just going into the café next door.”

Seconds later, Malachai could be seen through the restaurant window and as he studied the menu, Lucian studied him.

“Whatever happened in those woods in Baden,” Kalfus said, “is it possible that Malachai was responsible, even though he wasn’t present? Do you think any of these robberies or attacks have been Malachai’s doing?”

“It’s possible.”

“Probable?”

“I’m not sure. Meer Logan is one of the few people Malachai’s shown any genuine affection for.”

“Do you think that his feelings would prevent him from going after what he wants?”

“No, but I don’t believe he would have to hurt her to get what he wanted. If she had it, she’d give it to him.” Lucian paused. “No one wants Malachai to be guilty more than I do but he was instrumental in bringing Meer here—he wanted her to look at the gaming box and hopefully
glean important clues from it—so why would he arrange to have the box stolen before she really got a good chance to study it? Nothing is straightforward with him, but Meer
is
the only link to where the flute might be and what the memory song is. Would he put her in jeopardy if she’s his best chance?”

“Who would?”

“Someone who doesn’t believe in reincarnation and just wants the objects for their monetary value.” Lucian finished what was left of the bitter coffee as a waiter in the traditional black suit and white apron served Malachai his breakfast. “Or someone who wants us to think that.”

“I’m not sure I follow.” Kalfus frowned, confused.

“I’m not either.” Lucian gave a halfhearted laugh. “How much do we know about Sebastian Otto?”

“Absolutely nothing to make us suspicious. He’s a musician with the Philharmonic here. Plays the oboe. Thirty-eight years old. Never has had any dealings with the police. Divorced, one child, age nine, who has been suffering a mental disorder for the last six months.”

“A son?”

Kalfus nodded.

So that was where Lucian had heard the name before. He was annoyed that he hadn’t remembered sooner. About three months ago Malachai had received a phone call from Sebastian Otto, calling at Jeremy Logan’s suggestion, to ask if the reincarnationist could come to Vienna and see his son. Lucian had remembered the call because of how frustrated Malachai had sounded when he explained he couldn’t make the trip.

“Sebastian believes that his son is suffering from some sort of past life crisis,” he told Kalfus. “There’s more than one connection here.”

Watching Malachai read through that morning’s newspaper, Lucian wondered what else he’d forgotten that might be important now.

Thursday, May 1
^st
—9:39 a.m.

“I
have some bad news,” Bill Vine said as he rushed into the makeshift office at the concert hall, slamming the door behind him.

Paxton stood up, ready to spring into action.

“The signal we’ve been tracking out of the Czech Republic, to Vienna and then to Durnstein has been taking us on a joyride. Apparently our buyer found the little gift we put on the knapsack and attached it to the underside of a car belonging to a couple from St. Mary’s, Georgia, who had the bad luck to visit the Moravsky Krumlov on Monday. He’s a lawyer and would-be novelist; she’s a Mary Kay executive. We’ve run them through every computer system we have and they are who they say they are with no connections to any known terrorist group. She grew up in St. Mary’s and her family practically owns the town. He’s been on the city council for ten years. Brother, are they brand-spanking clean.”

“So now we know the tracking device was on a holiday
and the device we lost in the subway was the damn Semtex,” Paxton said. “And we still don’t have a clue where that disappeared to, do we?”

It was a rhetorical question. They’d been obsessed with locating it since it dropped off the radar two days before and everyone knew they didn’t have any idea where the Semtex was.

“I thought we were using a global positioning system that would prevent this very thing from happening. You guaranteed it.”

“As long as the tracking device wasn’t taken out of range.”

“Well, how did someone get it so fucking high in the sky or deep in the ocean that we didn’t watch him on his way there to do it? Where’s the device, Bill?”

“We don’t care anymore.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“We’re wasting time now, Tom. It doesn’t matter where the hell the device is, we can’t find it. We can’t waste time looking for it. All we have time to worry about now is that no one with that block of Semtex winds up in the vicinity of this building.”

Paxton glowered at his employee. “And what are we doing to make sure that isn’t happening? We’re going to have top brass from twenty-five countries and every branch of our own government including the fucking Vice President—”

“We’re fine,” Bill interrupted. “We’re in good shape. We’ve had men combing through the tunnels under this place for days and have air traffic control on alert. We’ve doubled the teams. If anyone’s above us or below us, we’ll find them.”

Thursday, May 1
^st
—10:00 a.m.

W
hile the hot water beat down on her, Meer played the elusive music in her mind. After a lifetime of not being able to grab hold of it, now she couldn’t let it go. Seemingly disparate information connected the flute’s music to the rest of her life, almost as proof that she was meant to make this discovery one day.

She remembered being in the hospital after the spinal fusion and her father showing her a book with a drawing of the Tree of Life in it. All circles. Had all of these circles separated by thousands of years come together for her now? And why her?

She quickly finished washing her hair with the hotel-provided shampoo. She wanted to get to the hospital as fast as she could and talk to her father and have him explain some of those lessons she’d always been too busy for. Stepping out of the shower stall, she put on one of the hotel’s thick bathrobes and wrapped a towel around her head.

“I’m anxious to get out of here—” she was saying when
she walked into the suite’s living room expecting to find Sebastian eating his breakfast. But he wasn’t there.

She walked over toward the open bedroom door and stood outside.

“Sebastian?”

No answer.

Maybe he’d gone downstairs to pay the bill, to arrange for a car, for any one of a hundred reasons. Tightening the belt around the robe, she padded back into the bathroom to finish drying her hair and get dressed, playing a childish game with herself: when she finished and went back outside he’d be there.

Thursday, May 1
^st
—10:20 a.m.

M
alachai walked out of the restaurant, walked the five steps to the front of the hotel, nodded to the doorman and waited while he hailed a cab.

Following at a safe distance, neither Kalfus nor Lucian was surprised when they arrived at the hospital.

They’d just settled in for another interminable wait when Malachai came back outside after only five short minutes, looking distraught and confused. It was the first time Lucian had seen him with his mask askew and not in total control.

“Something’s up. Call the floor. Find out if Logan’s all right.”

Malachai was just getting into a taxi when Kalfus said, “Jeremy Logan left the hospital about ten minutes ago against his doctor’s orders.”

“Was he alone?”

“No, he was accompanied by a man.”

“And from the looks of it Malachai didn’t know a thing
about it and was expecting his friend to still be in his room. We have a problem, Alex. We’re going to need backup. We have to find Logan. Fast.”

Thursday, May 1
^st
—10:42 a.m.

S
ebastian was still missing. None of the reasons Meer had come up with would explain why he’d been gone more than forty minutes. Unless, no…after everything he’d done for her… Something must have happened to him. Unless he was so angry she’d refused to play the memory song for him, he’d walked out in frustration and was sitting in some café stewing. So what should she do now? Go to the hospital on her own? She had Inspector Fiske’s card in her bag. Should she call him? No, not the police. What could she tell him he’d even believe? Besides, he might want to take the flute away from her as evidence and she couldn’t take that chance. Her father and Malachai had to see it before anyone else did. She’d ask the concierge to call her a taxi and go to the hospital.

Sitting down at the desk, Meer wrote Sebastian a note. Just a few lines, telling him where she was going. Then she started to take an inventory of the room—a habit of her mother’s she’d picked up—except she’d come here with
nothing but what she wore and the pocketbook she carried. There wouldn’t be an errant bottle of cologne or vial of pills by the side of the bed. Everything she had that mattered was across the room on the piano bench where she’d left the flute beside her purse when she went to take a shower.

She bent to pick it up. Yes, the bag was there. But the flute wasn’t.

Maybe Sebastian had put it inside her pocketbook before he’d gone out in case housekeeping came in while she was showering. Frantically she emptied her bag onto the floor. But it wasn’t there either.

Halfheartedly she checked the rest of the room, almost certain the flute wasn’t going to be there and was in despair when the suite’s doorbell rang. She rushed toward the living room. As she reached the door she heard a man call out, “Fräulein Juska?”

It had to be Sebastian using the name they’d checked in with. He’d apologize and tell her where the flute was and explain that—

Meer jerked open the door without looking through the peephole. A man wearing a bellman’s uniform with the hotel’s insignia on his breast pocket held out an envelope. Suddenly Meer remembered Sebastian’s warning from the night before not to let anyone in, to be suspicious even past logic. This man might be the assailant, might have knocked out the real bellman, stolen his clothes—she slammed the door in his face and threw the lock, the clicking loud in her ears.

“No—please—I’m very sorry,” the man on the other side of the door said in awkward English. “Herr Juska asked me to deliver to you this note at ten-forty-five.”

“Will you…will you slip it under the door?”

“Certainly.”