The Magdalene Cipher (38 page)

They were in the Hotel Royal (more expensive than which it does not get), and Dunphy suggested that Clem might like to “take the waters or whatever they do around here” while he went into town. She agreed enthusiastically and soon found herself naked, prone, and covered from head to toe with gobbets of mud from the Dead Sea
.

Meanwhile, Dunphy found himself in the port, looking to rent a sailboat. He wanted something with a cabin, in case the weather kicked up, as it was threatening to do. Even now, cumulus clouds were piling up on the backs of the Alps, like so many cotton balls
.

The difficulty lay in finding a sailboat that was more than a day-sailer and less than a yacht. He needed something stable that he could handle by himself. As he explained to the salesman at the marina, he was no Vasco da Gama and would not last long in a J-24. On the other hand, neither did he want any of the fourteen-foot Limousins that the marina was renting. He needed something bigger, something that would stand up to the wind
.

In the end, the salesman made a couple of telephone calls and got permission for Dunphy to rent a twenty-three-foot Sonar that its owner hoped to sell. The fee was steep—one thousand francs a day, plus a five-thousand-franc security deposit—but the boat was ideal. It was just the right size, had a cuddy cabin with two bunks, a full complement of sails, and a self-bailing cockpit. The salesman asked when he needed it, and Dunphy told him right away
.

The man looked skeptical. It was 4
P.M
.
a, there were clouds on the horizon, and the sun would set in a couple of hours
.

“We want to take it down to Thonon,” Dunphy told him, naming a town about ten miles away. “Our friends have a house on the lake. My wife thinks it would be an amusing way to arrive. And I think she's right. They haven't seen us in years.”

Hurrying back to the hotel, he found Clementine in the spa, wrapped in a heated plastic sheet, looking remarkably like a corn dog dipped in chocolate. He persuaded the attendant to hose her down with what turned out to be ice water, then led her back to the room
.

“Where are we going? What's the rush?” she demanded. “I was about to get a pedicure. And I've already charged it to the room!”

“We're going sailing,” Dunphy told her
.

“What?”

“I rented a sailboat.”

She looked at him as if he were insane. “But I don't want to go sailing.”

“We have to.”

“It's almost night,” she complained. And when it was obvious he wouldn't relent, she asked: “Do you even
know
how to sail?”

“Sure,” he told her. “I'm a great sailor.”
Well . . 
.

It wasn't rain, exactly. Just drops of water that fell, one by one, to the surface of the lake—a gray mass, quilted with concentric circles that increasingly overlapped. Dunphy pulled in the jib line and cleated it off. Then he pushed the tiller away from him and loosened the mainsail
.

And Clem watched with a skeptical eye. “It's going to pour,” she said
.

“That's why we have a cabin,” Dunphy told her. “Not to mention some bread, a little cheese, a bottle of wine. We'll be okay. It'll be fun.”

“It's going to
pour
a.”

“You mentioned that,” he said
.

“Yes, but I think you should know it's also going to blow.” She paused and added, “Like a banshee.”

Sitting in the cockpit with his back to the coaming, Dunphy hoped that she was wrong. He was really quite comfortable. “What makes you say that?” he asked
.

“ ‘Red sky in morning?' ”

“Ye-aah?” What was
that
supposed to mean?

Clem shook her head disbelievingly. “ ‘Sailors take warning.' ”

Dunphy acknowledged the saying with a grunt and took her point. She was thinking of the spectacular dawn they'd seen outside Annecy
.

“It goes on,” Clem continued
.

“Jesus,” Dunphy muttered
.

“ ‘When the wind is in the north, the fisherman goes not forth.' Hmmmnn,” she said, and licking a finger, held it in the air—though that was hardly necessary. The wind had begun to kick up, and there was no doubt about the direction from which it was coming. It was blowing off the far shore, straight out of Lausanne. “Which way is north?” she asked coyly
.

“Very funny,” Dunphy said as the boat picked up speed and began to heel—just a bit. “Whooaaa,” he said, surprised
.

Clem giggled. “I'll just get the life jackets,” she said, crabbing down to the cuddy cabin. “We really should wear them. It's a big lake.”

She emerged from the cabin a minute later, wearing an orange vest and carrying another. She tossed it to Dunphy
.

Who frowned. He didn't want to seem like a wimp, but—
whoaaaa
,
the boat was turbocharged now as it sliced through the water, foam curling at the edge of the coaming. A shuddering sound came from under their feet as the boat began to tremble. Maybe the jackets aren't such a bad idea, Dunphy thought. Anyway, they can't hurt. Giving the tiller to Clem, he struggled into one that seemed a little too small
.

“Where are we heading?” Clem asked, raising her voice above the wind, which was now gusting from ten to twenty knots
.

“The other side,” Dunphy replied
.

“Of what?”

“The lake! I don't want to go through Customs. They'll probably have my picture.”

“So you're going to sail there—at night?”

Dunphy nodded. “Yeah. That's the idea.”

“It's a long sail,” she said. “Where do you expect to land?”

“Near Lausanne,” Dunphy answered. “Which is right over there . . 
.

“Where the wind's coming from.”

“Right.”

“Well, that will make it harder.”

It was dark now. The temperature was dropping, and the rain was falling in long, sweeping lines across the water. They could see the lights of Lausanne on the far shore, but getting there was another matter. The wind seemed to be blowing straight out of city hall, forcing Dunphy to head so far up that the boat repeatedly stalled, going into irons again and again
.

It was annoying, at first, and then it began to seem dangerous. The once-black lake was covered with whitecaps now, and the waves were getting larger. It was becoming harder and harder to hold the course that he wanted, and when he did, the ride was like a roller coaster, lifting them gently into the air, then slamming them back down. At other times—when he sailed too close to the wind—the sails emptied, and soon the boat was broadside to the waves. When that happened, it was like the spinning-teacups ride at Disney World—except the lake was cold and dark, the ride was never-ending, and it would not have been hard to drown
.

“It's getting rough,” Clem said in a voice that surprised Dunphy with its coolness. She was hunkered down across from him, smiling even as the water poured across the coaming. Dunphy himself was seated across from her, high on the side of the boat, using his weight to keep the keel as even as possible
.

He wasn't sure where they were. It was hard to see. The rain was flying into his face, and with one hand on the tiller and the other holding the jib line, it was difficult to brush it away. Meanwhile, the boat was pitching and yawing, except in those moments when it began to roll
.

Clem shivered. “The water's freezing!” she said
.

Dunphy nodded regretfully. “It's from the mountains,” he said. “Snowmelt.”

“Well, I don't think we'd last long in it,” Clem told him, beginning to bail with a plastic Clorox bottle whose bottom had been cut away
.

“It's got a self-bailing feature,” Dunphy said. “I checked.”

“Well, the feature needs help,” Clem replied. After a few minutes, she looked up at the sails, which seemed ready to explode, and turned to Dunphy. “Do you mind if I make a suggestion?” she yelled, tossing half a gallon of water over the side, then scooping another from the deck. “Before we lose the rigging?”

“What?!” The wind was even stronger now, howling in tune with the vibrating stays
.

“Reef the mainsail, let out the jib, and fall off to starboard,” she ordered
.

He gaped at her. “What?” The wind tore the word from his mouth
.

“I said, reef the mainsail—”

“All right! Okay! I heard you the first time.” Clamping the jib line between his teeth, he untied the figure-eight knot that tied the halyard to a cleat on the mast, and let the mainsail drop. Then he reefed the sail until there was only a rag showing, and tied it off. Finally, he let the jib out and turned to her, abashed. Already, the boat was on an even keel. “Which way is starboard?” he asked, knowing she'd never let him forget it
.

A radiant smile from Clementine. “That way,” she said, still bailing, her hair whipping back and forth in the wind
.

As he pushed the tiller away from him, the jib filled with air. The boat turned gracefully away from Lausanne and began to sail more smoothly with the wind. Even the rain seemed to abate
.

After a while, when his heart rate was closer to normal, Dunphy asked her, “Where did you learn so much about sailing?”

Clem smiled and put the Clorox bottle down. “My parents had a cottage in Kinsale,” she told him. “We went there every summer. I crewed a lot.”

“You what?”

“Crewed,”
she said. “Like you.”

“Just checking.”

“I got quite good at it,” she added
.

“I'm sure you did.”

“If you'll let the jib out a little more,” she said, “I think we may be able to run with the wind—almost. Do you have a chart?”

“No.”

“Clever lad. No need for charts.” She frowned. “I think that's Rolle over there,” she said. “Switzerland, anyway. I suppose we could head for it . . .”

Dunphy gave her the tiller
.

They beached the boat a little after ten on the lawn of a large and darkened house about fifteen miles southwest of Rolle, just past Coppet. A truck driver gave them a ride into Geneva, where they checked into the first hotel they found, telling the desk clerk that their car had broken down
.

In the morning, Dunphy found his way to the
Handels-register
in the Old Town and, with the help of a friendly clerk, looked up the Institut Mérovée. There wasn't much
.

According to the paperwork, the Institut had been founded in 1936 with a gift from Bernardin Gomelez, a resident of Paris. Its purposes were “charitable, educational, and religious.” In 1999, the Institut declared assets of “>SF1 billion.” This was, by quick calculation, more than $700 million. But how much more? What did the > really mean?
More than
.
Well, Dunphy thought, two billion Swiss Francs was
more than
one billion Swiss Francs. And ten billion was more than that. And so on. And so forth
.

There was no way to know, in other words, just how rich the Institut was—though it was certainly very, very rich. Its president appeared to be Gomelez's son or grandson. At least, they had the same name: Bernardin Gomelez. The address of both the Institut and its president was given as the Villa Munsalvaesche in the town of Zernez
.

Dunphy asked the clerk, a sixtyish blonde with deep laugh lines around her eyes and teddy bear earrings, where Zernez was. She laughed
.

“This is in Graubünden,” she exclaimed, as if the canton was somewhere off the coast of Fiji. “It is very remote, this town. I think, mostly, they are speaking Romansch—not German. Not Italian.”

“But where is it?” Dunphy asked
.

She rolled her eyes. “East. Below Austria. Past Saint-Moritz.” She thought about it for a moment. “But, of course,” she said, determined to clarify the matter, “this is where Heidi lives!”

It was impossible to fly into or anywhere near Zernez, so they rented a car at the Zürich airport and set off the next morning on their own. It was a two-hundred-mile drive, more or less, traversing Switzerland west to east, and they hoped to make it in seven or eight hours. In any event, they lost track of the time, because it was so beautiful. The road wound its way through one spectacular vista after another, clinging to the sides of mountains, then racing through valleys next to ivory-colored rivers foaming with glacial melt. Clearly, Dunphy thought, we're in paradise. The mountains were as green as Donegal and fizzing with wildflowers. There were no cities to distract them—just glaciers, lakes, and cowbells
.

At Chur—with a population of thirty-three thousand, the Gotham of the Alps—they turned south to Zuoz, then followed a narrow little road through the Inn Valley to Zernez, arriving just as the sun was going down behind the mountains
.