The Eighth Day (40 page)

Danny glanced at the professor’s curriculum vitae, looking for clues. Seeing his birthday, he plugged it in:

10-14-60

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He tried the college where Terio had done his undergraduate work:

georgetown

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He tried a number of variations, including johns-hopkins, then moved on to names and words that might have held a special place in Terio’s lexicon:
mani, zoroaster, sheikadi, shaykadi, yezidi, peacock, sanjak, mesopotamia, avatar . . .
It was hopeless, Danny decided. Even if he happened upon the right word, Terio might have spelled it backward—or added a 1 to it. The truth was, Danny didn’t know enough about the guy. Maybe he was obsessed with film directors:

louismalle

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or physics particles:

neutrino

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neutrino1

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It could be anything! It could even be one of those really secure kinds of passwords that mean nothing to anyone and which no one in his right mind could ever remember:

ljq3%7tf0’5

for instance. The cursor blinked at him.

Any password could be cracked, of course. LaBrasca laughed at them and said they were useless. All you needed was a decent computer and the right software program—and, eventually, you’d get in. But not the way Danny was doing it. Doing it Danny’s way—guessing words and typing them in—could take a hundred thousand years. It was like that fairy tale. Guess the little guy’s name. Rumpelstilskin. The chick in the fairy tale never would have guessed it. Danny didn’t remember exactly how she came up with it, some kind of insider knowledge.

With a dispirited sigh, he leaned back in his chair, spun once to the right and once to the left, his eyes on the ceiling’s acoustical tile. He was stymied, and there was no way out. Sheik Mounir, according to his dead grandson, was not the kind of guy who’d change his mind on the basis of
a story
. He required proof.

Closing his eyes, Danny searched his memory. What else did he know about Terio?

fertilecrescent

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He thought back to his conversation with Father Inzaghi, Terio’s one good friend in the world.

inzaghi

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The priest had talked about how surprised he’d been to learn of Terio’s “suicide,” how Terio had been a man in love with life, a man who liked to laugh.

unfertilecrescent

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larry

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moe

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curly

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Stop it,
Danny told himself.
You’re wasting money, sitting here. So what if he had a sense of humor?

shemp

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There was something about “a reminder question.” Some corny joke that Terio liked. A pun. What was it? Danny thought back. Like Rumpelstilskin, it had something to do with a nursery rhyme. Then he remembered:

Heigh-ho the terio

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He tried it without the hyphen and got the same result. Danny ran a hand through his hair (it was long enough now that he could do that) and stared at the words. The terio part was wrong, of course. That’s where the pun came in. That’s what made it
funny
.
(As if . . . )
The way the nursery rhyme actually went was
Heigh-ho the derio
. Which had something to do with a farmer.

Danny sat in front of the monitor, his eyes on the blinking cursor, and it came to him. He hummed the tune:

The farmer’s in the dell,
The farmer’s in the dell,
Heigh-ho the derio,
The farmer’s in the dell.

Farmer. Dell. What dell? What’s a dell? A glen. A glade. A computer!
The farmer’s in the Dell. In the Dell—not the dell.

And, in fact, the word was right in front of him, emblazoned on the monitor:
Dell
. That’s what the farmer was in. He was in the computer.

farmer

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thefarmer

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farmer’sinthedell

Instantly a long list of e-mails spilled onto the screen, scrolling down. Danny’s heart did a flip, and he saw at a glance that the unread e-mails went back nearly two months.

He scanned what was there. In orderly columns headed
Sender
,
Date
,
Size
, and
Subject
he saw that the professor had more than a hundred messages that he hadn’t read and perhaps a thousand others that he had read but failed to delete. As Danny did with Yahoo, Terio had used the university’s server as an on-line filing cabinet.

From the headers Danny could see that most of the messages were irrelevant—interdepartmental notes or queries from students and the like. But it didn’t take long to spot what he was looking for:

He clicked on it.

Dear Mr. Terio—

The AMS carbon results are back from Alpha Analytics. These results, coupled with the tree-ring comparison arrays that we’ve done in our own laboratory, establish that the tested artifact is no more than 111 years old.

Indeed, the 100-gram (cedar) sample is probably younger than that. If you would like, we can do further testing and perhaps establish its age more precisely. Such tests, however, would be time-consuming and relatively expensive. In light of the fact that your interest is confined to a single question—is the sample at least 800 years old—we have suspended our efforts, pending further instructions.

The public-address system crackled, and Danny heard his flight called. Ignoring it, he returned his attention to the monitor.

The artifact appears to have been carved from a tree that stopped growing between 1890 and 1920 c.e. Initial array comparisons indicate that the tree was probably native to the Yemen.

Accompanying this e-mail are several attachments, including: 1) a JPEG file, showing the compiled index cluster of comparison rings, the results of a computerized correlation scan, and a description of our methodology; 2) the digitized photo-analysis sheet, with explanatory notes suitable for a layman; 3) the Alpha Analytics report, which includes calendar calibration information, pretreatment methods, a statement outlining analytical procedures (in this case the AMS technique), and the lab’s conclusions.

A full invoice will be sent to your office by conventional mail.

While radiometric testing might further refine the date of the sample, the fact that tree-ring comparisons and AMS testing concur on a relatively recent range of dates rules out the possibility that the sample is as old as claimed. Accordingly, there would seem to be no reason to proceed with further testing unless litigation is involved. (Where antiquities and litigation are concerned, more experts and tests are always better!)

Nevertheless, if you would like us to undertake such tests, we remain at your service. (NB: In such an eventuality, the sample would be tested to destruction. Please advise on this point if further testing is in order.)

Finally, with respect to litigation, it has been my experience that false claims about the antiquity of objects sometimes provoke legal action. In this connection, you may be interested to know that Alpha Analytics can provide an expert witness, experienced in testifying about carbon-dating techniques. If similar testimony about tree-ring analysis is needed, I, too, am available as an expert witness (at 1,400 USD per day, plus expenses).

When you so instruct me, I will forward a hard copy of this report, accompanied by the 100-gram sample, to your office.

“United Flight One-sixty-one for Washington’s Dulles Airport, now boarding at Gate Twenty-three. United Flight One-sixty-one . . .”

Do let me know if you wish to utilize your own account number (or that of your institution) for the courier’s payment.

Best to you,
Ole Rolvaag, Ph.D.

Danny took a deep breath, blew it out, and fell back in his chair, at once galvanized and paralyzed. The proof of Zebek’s treachery was on the monitor in front of him.
Gotcha,
he thought. And added a second thought:
Now what?

He downloaded the e-mail and its attachments to a floppy disk, then printed out a hard copy to read on the flight to Washington. Each page, he saw, was slugged across the top with the words:
Oslo Institute—Mesopotamian Dendrochronology Project. “Nevazir Artifact.”
The pages themselves appeared to explicate the carbon-dating procedure and included a three-page explanation of how C-14 dating results were tied to a calendar year using known dendrocalibrations of tree rings.

It seemed solid enough. It would have been better, of course, if the report had said that the sample was taken from a tree that was exactly 82 years old (or something like that). But the point was, whatever else the artifact might be, it had not been taken from an object carved by Sheik Adi. Danny didn’t remember when the old boy lived, but he thought it was something like 1200
C.E
.

The public-address system sizzled, and Danny’s flight was called for the third time. Scrambling to his feet, he collated and stapled the various reports, then went out to settle up with the Ben Folds Five guy.

The kid eyed Danny’s stack of paper as he made change. “Hey—you want one of these?” he asked. He offered Danny a Tyvek envelope printed with the logo of a winged desk. Danny thanked him for it, slid the documents inside, and loped off in the direction of Gate Twenty-three.

It only took him a minute, and when he arrived at the gate, out of breath, the ticket agent gave him a smile that reminded him so much of Caleigh that he felt as if he’d been punched in the heart. Then her smile turned to a scolding look as she took his boarding pass and slid it through a machine atop the little podium in front of her. “You’re it,” she said. “The last passenger. I’ve been waiting for you.” The ticket popped out and she handed it to him. “Do you always cut it so close?” she asked, rolling her hand toward the jetway.

“Yeah,” he said, in a dazed voice. “I do. As a matter of fact I think I do.”

TWENTY-THREE

As the 747 soared toward the Continental Divide, Danny sat beside the window with a glass of red wine, staring out at the dark expanse of America. It was after midnight, but lights persisted in the inky darkness, occasionally flaring into galaxies when a town or city slid beneath the wings.

The flight was nearly empty. He had a whole row to himself, as, indeed, did most of the people on the plane. He was trying to remember what Barzan had said about the Elders and the meeting in Zurich. It was a board of directors meeting for Tawus Holdings, but since all the directors were Yezidi Elders, it had a different name too. A
shura
. And Barzan said it would be
a week from tomorrow
. At the Boar O’Lack.

Somehow Danny knew the Boar O’Lack was a hotel. But how long had it been since Barzan said the meeting would be “a week from tomorrow?” Six days, seven? Five? It was important. Obviously, there wouldn’t be any point in going to Zurich—and he
had
to go to Zurich, now that he had Rolvaag’s report and the JPEG files—if the meeting had already taken place.

So he sipped his wine and tried to remember.

It was practically the last thing Barzan had said to him before the shooting started. There was to be a meeting of the Elders in Zurich scheduled for
a week from tomorrow
.

Barzan’s “tomorrow” began with the night ride to Salim’s village. This was followed by a second truck ride, followed by a bus to Ankara. There was the night at the Hotel Spar in Ankara and a flight out to Washington the next day (which would have been day three of Barzan’s seven). After that, Danny had spent the night at his parents’ house (still day three) and flown to California the following afternoon. How many days was that? Four, counting the night in the Doubletree outside San Francisco. And then today, talking with Unger and Manziger. That was five (though, strictly speaking, “today” was now yesterday because it was just after one
A.M
.).

So this is day six,
Danny thought, the beginning of day six.
And the meeting is . . . tomorrow.
In Zurich, it was day six also, but it was already breakfast time. Still, even with the time change, he ought to be able to make it. He’d get into Dulles around nine. By two or three in the afternoon, he’d be on his way across the Atlantic. He’d land in Zurich in the early morning of the seventh day, the day of the meeting.

With a reassuring nod to himself, he finished the glass of wine and set it down on a tray two seats away. He shut off the overhead light, pulled a blanket up to his chest, and lay back with his head against the edge of the window, thinking,
Did I do that right?

The information desk in the Zurich airport was easy to find, marked as it was with a giant exclamation point. Danny learned from a smiling brunette whose proficiency in English outpaced his own that the best way (“by far!”) to get into town was by train. “Take the escalator down. Trains depart every twelve minutes for the Hauptbahnhof. That’s the main railway station.” She looked at a schedule. “There is one at 9:04, platform five, another at 9:16, platform three. Once you arrive at the railway station, you will find a taxi just outside. Or, if you don’t have too much luggage, it’s possible to walk. May I ask where you are stopping for the evening?”

“The Boar O’Lack.”

He caught the slight knitting of brows as her dark eyes took in his sweatshirt and jeans. His tooth. “Very nice,” she remarked. “Did you send them arrival information?” she asked. “Because this hotel usually provides transport for the guests.”

“No,” Danny told her. “I was in such a hurry . . .” He shrugged.

She looked at him with an inquiring expression. Finally, she said, “Well, it’s just off the Bahnhofstrasse, about a kilometer.” She unfolded a tourist map, reversed it on the desk so that Danny could read it, and drew circles around the Hauptbahnhof and—now he saw the proper spelling—the Hotel Baur au Lac.

He caught the 9:04, sat upstairs in the second-class carriage, and watched the burbs roll by. It wasn’t the Switzerland of his imagination. There were no cows that he could see, no Alps, no skiers or blondes with braided hair. The train swept past sturdy stucco houses with tidy vegetable gardens in the rear. Closer to the city, apartment blocks took over, with perimeter walls displaying lots of graffiti. It was a different style than he was used to seeing in the States, with lots of representational images and a vivid palette.

Nor was it the cool Swiss climate of his imagination. He walked out of the big station into the humid swelter of what might have been a summer afternoon on the Gulf coast. The air was tremulous, dense and gray, as if the sky were about to explode.

The Bahnhofstrasse turned out to be a busy avenue crammed with expensive shops, private banks, and zipping trams. Danny followed the street’s gentle curve, covering a dozen short blocks in as many minutes, arriving finally at Borsen-Strasse. In the near distance, a passenger ferry steamed across Lake Zurich against a backdrop of spruce-clad hills.

Turning right on Borsen-Strasse, he suddenly found himself in a hushed and luxurious Eden. The Baur au Lac was a stately white stone building set in its own parkland, a block from the lake. Three flags flew above the central peak of the roof, the middle one—a red field with a white cross in the center—as familiar as a Swiss Army knife.

A uniformed man stood sentry at the entrance drive. They exchanged smiles, and Danny headed toward the front door, then veered off at the last second to enter the patio café. He stood there, apparently taking in the scene, in fact catching his breath. In the back of his head he could hear the voice of his old high school coach, Nilthon Alvarado, urging him to take it easy.
Tranquilo, tran-QUIL-o,
he used to say, patting the air in front of him with his open palms.

A scatter of well-dressed and expensively coiffed patrons—many of them Asian—sat at tables under white umbrellas. The whole patio was shaded by two enormous trees of a kind he didn’t recognize. Three extremely well tailored golfers—their golf bags occupying neighboring seats—sat nearby, cursing the weather.

“Buckets,” one man announced in an aristocratic British accent. “It’s going to come down
buckets
.”

In the garden beyond the patio burbled a fountain in the shape of a lyre, its “strings” formed by wire-thin streams of water. A waiter with a white napkin draped over his arm came to attention in front of Danny and executed a crisp theatrical bow. “May I help you, sir?”

Is it so obvious I’m American?
“No, that’s okay,” Danny said. “I’m just passing through.” With a smile, he turned toward the lobby, thinking,
Here goes
.

At the desk, a middle-aged woman, expertly made up and wearing a lacy white blouse, watched him from above a pair of half glasses. To each of his questions came a crisp answer.

The Tawus Holdings meeting was scheduled for four
P.M
. In the Winterthur Room. Third floor. And yes, Herr Barzan was indeed registered, but—she rang his room—the gentleman was not available at the moment. “Would you care to leave a message?”

“Yes.”

She smiled and presented him with a heavy piece of cream-colored stationery embossed with the hotel’s name and crest, along with a matching envelope and a white pen. She gestured toward the lobby, where a fleet of easy chairs floated on a sea of tiles. Ignoring the chairs, Danny stood at an antique escritoire with a burgundy leather inset and began to write.

What do you call a sheik?
Danny wondered.
What’s the salutation?

Mr. Barzan—

he wrote, then paused, trying to think of the most powerful way to put his case.

I have urgent information for you, information that you must have before the Tawus Holdings meeting.

He looked up into the room, trying to decide how much detail to include.

By now you have been told that your grandson—who came to be my friend in the few days that I knew him—has been killed. At four o’clock this afternoon, you will be meeting with the man who ordered his murder.

Before Remy died, he confided in me about his efforts to prove the Sanjak is a fake. He told me of your need for proof.

He paused again. How was Mounir going to contact him? He didn’t have a hotel or even a cell phone. Best, then, to suggest a time when Danny might call
him
. He glanced at his watch, but it was still on D.C. time. Which made it five hours earlier. Or was it six? Uncertain, he turned toward the desk, looking for a clock—and saw her standing there. The beautiful Paulina, her limpid brown eyes fastened on him with all the affection of a raptor.

The two of them stayed where they were for a long moment, ferociously dumbfounded. Then Paulina broke into a hurried walk, click-clacking across the tiled lobby toward the elevators where, Danny now saw, the Brow loomed with his back to the lobby.

Danny went the other way. He accelerated through the patio, hustling past startled men and women, and hit the grass running. He passed the lyre fountain, burst through the trees and plantings, and found himself at the edge of a canal. He turned left. Emerging on Tal-Strasse, he zigzagged between onrushing trams, crossing the street to a little park where vendors sold
rosti
and apertifs. With a nervous glance over his shoulder, he saw the Brow standing maybe fifty yards away on the Bahnhofstrasse, looking left and right.

Danny wanted to run, to leave his bag where it was and
sprint
for the busy plaza on the other side of the Limmat River. If he could cross the bridge without being noticed, it wouldn’t be hard to get lost in the crowd. But that meant walking.

Joining a queue to buy Italian ices, Danny stripped off his sweatshirt and stuffed it in the pocket of his carry-on bag. Paulina and her friends would be scanning the crowd for a red top, not the white T-shirt he now wore. Looking up, he saw that the Brow had been joined by a second man. The two of them were on their toes outside a camera store, looking in opposite directions, up and down the Bahnhofstrasse. A few feet away, Paulina whispered into a cell phone.

Danny took a deep breath, then turned on his heel and walked slowly in the direction of the crowded plaza. To his right was Lake Zurich, to his left the Limmat River. If he had to, he could vault the railing, make a splash among the swans.

The short walk across the bridge seemed to take forever. As in Rome, the challenge was to keep his back to those who were searching for him. This meant not looking back, and
that
meant not knowing where
they
were. He was pretty sure, though, that if he was spotted, one of them would shout to the others—and Danny would hear that. In which case, he’d drop his bag and run.

But what if he was wrong? What if the Brow saw him walking across the bridge and didn’t say a thing? What if he just . . . came on? In that case, death would come as a surprise. A knife in the ribs. A bullet behind the ear. An arm around his neck, a quick twist.

I’m racewalking,
Danny thought, and, gritting his teeth, slowed his pace. He could feel their eyes on his back, a kind of visual gravity pushing gently against his shoulder blades.

Then he was across the bridge and picked up his pace. He followed the path of least resistance, zigzagging between cars and pedestrians, heart hammering. Soon the plaza was behind him and he found himself in a warren of ancient streets, too narrow for cars and trucks. The streets were lined with expensive shops and restaurants, with tiny alleys ramifying in every direction. He followed a long flight of steps to a small park overlooking the river. In the center of the park was a circular fountain fed by three lions, spouting arcs of water from their maws. A girl with long blond hair stood by the fountain, washing a thermos. Suddenly she frowned, and for a moment Danny thought it was the way he looked, ragged and out of breath.

But no.

It was raining. You could see it on the stippled surface of the fountain. The first few drops were so big and slow, it seemed to Danny that he could walk between them. Then the pace of the shower picked up and he couldn’t. Moments later, it was pouring, raining so hard that it
stung
. Everywhere people massed in doorways and under overhangs, seeking shelter from the deluge.

He ducked into an unoccupied doorway and pressed himself against the wall. The rain was a torrent, flooding the gutters. Four inches in front of his face, a curtain of water sheeted off the overhang into the street.

He needed a hotel—a place to make phone calls. The message he’d been writing to Mounir was crumpled in his pocket, incomplete and unaddressed. He’d have to call the Old Man and try to meet him.

So . . . A hotel, then. But which one? Danny squinted into the gray downpour.
Not here,
he thought.
I need something in a different part of town.
The warren of streets that had worked in his favor a few minutes earlier could just as easily work against him a few minutes from now. This part of Zurich, the old part, was a maze of byways and alleys—the kind of place where you’d be likely to “bump into” someone you knew.

Danny did not want to bump into anyone he knew.

When the rain stopped, the cobblestones streamed and he followed the streams downhill. Soon he turned a corner and emerged into a wide and busy street where people stood with umbrellas, waiting at a tram stop. A sleek trolley with the number 23 on it was just pulling in, and he ran for it, hopping onto the back car through a pair of accordion doors. It was crowded—which was good. And no one seemed to pay. The driver drove. There was no conductor.

All of the seats were occupied, as was most of the standing space. Pools of water trembled on the floor. Windows ran with condensation. Soon they were at a complicated intersection where a lot of the lines seemed to converge. An electronic voice announced: “Bellevueplatz.” Through the open door Danny could see a huge Ferris wheel standing beside the lake. On an impulse, he joined the exodus, crossing the tracks with a crowd, then boarding another tram. The number four. He took a look this time, squinting through the fogged windows at the crowd, looking for Paulina and her friends. As the train pulled away from the plaza, he thought he saw the Brow, soaked and walking by himself beside the river. But maybe not.