Century #4: Dragon of Seas (5 page)

“What do you want?”

“I have good news for you. Heh, heh, heh!”

Silence.

“First: I had Olympia’s gym burnt down. But I don’t think you’re interested in that. Let’s just say I did it mostly to … reestablish my priorities. Second: I’m about to do the same thing to your boy’s house.”

“Stop.”

“Stop?” Egon Nose protests, his big nose trembling. “I can’t stop! Not after what they did to me. Besides, you certainly can’t stop me.”

“I’m the one who had you released, Egon.”

“Heh, heh, heh! Of course, Heremit. You got me out of prison and I’m grateful to you. But may I remind you that you also got me in there, thanks to your orders: get my hands on a top and follow a boy from Grove Court … who, coincidentally, just left town.”

“When?”

“Half an hour ago.”

Silence.

“You still there, Heremit?”

“Do what you want, Nose. New York is no longer my concern.”

With this, the conversation ends. Heremit Devil has other things on his mind. Things that are unfolding. And things that don’t add up.

Harvey left town. To meet with the others in Shanghai, no
doubt. But where? There’s only one thing Heremit hasn’t yet learned: the Chinese boy’s identity.

The man paces his office on the second-to-top floor of his tall building and stares at the city spread out on the other side of the picture windows, trying to decide what to do. Then he picks up the phone again.

“Mademoiselle Cybel,” he says in a low voice, hanging up a second later.

Various objects are lined up on his desk.

“The Ring of Fire,” he says, going down the list as he strokes the object also called Prometheus’s Mirror. It’s a fragment of an ancient mirror set in a frame that can’t be more than a hundred years old.
Possible
, Heremit thinks. Its original frame might have broken. And the more recent one must have been designed to fit into the statue of Prometheus at New York’s Rockefeller Center.

“The Star of Stone,” Heremit continues. An ancient, primordial rock. A rock that’s hollow, like a vase.

“And then Paris …,” Heremit murmurs. The object from Paris is an old wooden ship.

Why a wooden ship?
he’s been wondering for weeks now.
And how are these three objects connected?

Next to the ship are six ancient wooden tops. Heremit runs his fingertip along their delicate engravings: dog, tower, whirlpool, eye … those are the ones that were in Professor Van Der Berger’s possession; rainbow, which was in the antiques dealer Vladimir Askenazy’s possession; skull, which has been in Heremit’s family’s possession.

“A hundred years,” Heremit Devil says aloud. “These objects
are useful only once every hundred years. The mirror, the stone, the ship and, finally …”

The underground level of his skyscraper.

Zoe told Heremit that last time, in the early 1900s, the objects weren’t found. Therefore, game over. The universe turned, the stars moved. And they had to wait another hundred years.

“But today,” Heremit Devil murmurs, “the objects should all be here.”

The elevator opens with a whoosh.

“Is something the matter, my dear? Is something the matter?” the mammoth Mademoiselle Cybel asks, gliding across the room in her flashy white-and-blue-flowered dress and butterfly-shaped glasses. Without waiting for a reply, she goes over to one of the two chairs in Heremit’s office and sits down on it with unexpected grace. “You asked for me?”

The man doesn’t turn around to look at her. He concentrates, as much as possible, on the objects on his desk. Finally, he breaks the silence. “I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand, Heremit, dear? What?”

The man sits down in his chair. “I need the kids.”

“Ah,” Mademoiselle Cybel remarks, straightening her glasses. Then something crosses her mind and she takes them off, pulls a little mirrored compact out of her purse and checks her makeup. “You said that—”

“I know what I said.”

Cybel snaps the compact shut, satisfied. No lipstick smudges on her cheeks. “As you like, dear, as you like. Let’s go get them, then. Do you still have someone in New York?”

“Miller is already on his way to Shanghai.”

“Then we can get Mistral Blanchard.” The woman chuckles. “From what I know, she’s probably at home. Or taking those singing lessons of hers. I’ll send someone at once, if you like.”

Heremit Devil doesn’t respond.

“I think we’ll need someone in Rome, too, for our Little Miss Electrical Current.”

Heremit Devil has perfectly combed hair. Black Bakelite glasses that frame his eyes. He wears a dark Korean jacket buttoned all the way up.

“Yes,” he says.

But something off-key lurks in that single syllable.

“N
OT BAD
, M
ADEMOISELLE
B
LANCHARD, NOT BAD AT ALL
! Y
OU
’
RE
my finest student!” Mistral says, laughing, as she lies on her bed in her room.

She’s changed clothes and now wears a sweat suit with tiny light blue flowers. She’s opened a notebook, the kind she uses to write down everything that happens to her, and is sketching Professor François Ganglof’s face. If she closes her eyes and thinks back to the audition, she can still feel her legs trembling. She was certain she got a number of notes wrong. And that her voice was too sharp, shrill, almost unpleasant. She was nervous, of course, but the professor told her, “Emotions are vital, Mademoiselle Blanchard. That is what one must convey when singing. The world is full of fine singers. Excellent singers. Powerful voices with perfect intonation. But not voices full of emotion.”

Mistral flips through her notebook, going back in time. Then she stretches and steps over to the window. Above it, just beneath the gutter outside, the beehive is closed now, sealed up with wax. Indifferent to the changing of the seasons, the bees have already decreed the end of summer.

“Darn you,” the girl grumbles, thinking of everything she detests about autumn and winter. She walks to the living room.

Her mother is out doing a little shopping. The purse made of soda can tabs is there, where Mistral left it. The Veil of Isis is draped over the backs of two chairs like an old blanket hung out to air. Sophie’s photographs are scattered over the table, next to the books on calligraphy and alphabets and the one on the language of animals that Agatha, Professor Van Der Berger’s friend, sent to her from New York. Mistral opens her purse to look for the MP3 player Madame Cocot gave her.

She turns it on, plugs in her earphones and goes back to her room, whistling. She scrolls down the list of songs saved on it: titles and artists she’s never heard of. Classical music, it seems. She sets it on shuffle mode and tumbles into bed.

Murmurs, applause, and then a piano strikes the first notes of a nocturne by Chopin. Mistral listens to it, enchanted. A loud symphony follows, and she skips over it. Again, a piano. Sweet and extremely slow.

In the background, a few coughs from the audience. Fourth piece: powerful and romantic. Mistral looks at the display and reads the artist’s name.
PRELUDE AND FUGUE BY SHOSTAKOVICH, PERFORMED BY VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY
.

Mistral reads it a second time. She knows that name, but …

The pianist plays, then coughs, the audience bursts into applause. The MP3 player moves on to the next track.

“Hello, Mistral,” a voice suddenly says. “If you’re listening to this, it means I had to leave.”

Mistral barely manages to hold back a shriek. She bolts upright in bed and rests her feet on the floor.

“I just pray you’re still in Paris,” the voice continues. “Listen carefully: you need to do something important. There’s a small square on Boulevard de Magenta. It’s called Jacques Bonsergent. Go there as soon as possible. But be careful … because
they’re
probably already following you.”

Mistral is on her feet now, standing stock-still in front of her mirror. Her eyes are open wide with fright.

“In the square you’ll find a newsstand,” the voice from the MP3 player continues.
VLADIMIR ASHKENAZY
, the display reads.
PIANIST
.

But what Mistral hears is a voice she knows all too well.

It’s the voice of the antiques dealer from New York. Vladimir Askenazy.

T
HE WELL IN THE
D
OMUS
Q
UINTILIA
’
S COURTYARD IS ANCIENT
. A stone cylinder a meter and a half tall that rests on two steps and is topped with three intertwined wrought-iron bars with a pulley attached to them.

Elettra stares at the light coming from the well. But only for a few seconds, because then the light disappears and everything—the well, the courtyard, the wooden terrace, the vines, the four statues that guard the Domus Quintilia—goes dark again.

Elettra steps outside, barefoot. She walks over the old, smooth paving stones, then over the gravel, where weeds stick up impertinently around her father’s rickety old minibus. In the air, the distant sounds of horns honking, people laughing.

Elettra climbs up the two steps on her tiptoes. She rests her hand on the stone rim and peers down into the well. The opening is covered by a black grate. And below the grate, only darkness. No light, not even a distant one.

“Can you hear me?” a voice says just then from inside the well, almost making her lose her balance.

Elettra looks around. She counts the windows with their closed shutters. She counts the floors of the Domus Quintilia. She counts the doors, the arcades. The statues.

Her jaw drops. Who said that?

She leans even farther down over the well and rests her hands on the grate. She listens.

The voice echoes out again. “Linda, can you hear me?”

Elettra claps her hand over her mouth. She can’t believe what she just heard.

“Linda, answer me, please,” the voice in the well whispers.

Then it falls silent. Everything falls silent. And the distant sounds from the boulevard along the Tiber River return to the courtyard. For the second time, a faint light comes up from the well. A creak, like one from wheels. The sound of the elevator doors.

Elettra looks through the windows into the dining room. She sees light from the elevator rise up from belowground and stop on the second floor. Its little doors open and close. Aunt Irene’s wheelchair glides across the floor. Her bedroom door opens and closes.

Elettra sits down on the steps of the well, trying to decide what to do. How do you make the elevator go down another floor? And what’s down there?

She goes back inside the hotel and steps behind the reception desk. She picks up the green lighter next to her aunt Linda’s pack of cigarettes, the flashlight, opens the basement door and shines the light on the steep stairs that lead down into the maze of dusty rooms.

Elettra flicks the light around on the sheet-covered furniture. She remembers Aunt Linda calling to her while she was down there last year. Elettra was hunting a mouse.

“You sure are stupid,” she tells herself, wondering where the underground room might be. “You never noticed a thing, did you?”

She starts walking down the stairs.

“I just want my cell phone back,” Harvey hisses on the intercontinental flight once they’ve taken off and the seat belt sign has been turned off.

The Air China flight attendant is opening and closing aluminum drawers full of soft drinks. She’s very cute, petite and smiling.

“Of course, sir,” she replies, “but I need to inform you that making phone calls is not allowed for the duration of the flight.”

“That’s eight hours!” Harvey exclaims. “And for me, eight hours might be too long.”

“I don’t make the rules. During the flight, you can use a computer on condition that it isn’t connected to a printer, listen to music from a portable media player or watch one of the movies we’re showing. We have all the latest releases and—”

“Don’t you understand what I’m telling you?” Harvey snaps. “I need to call home and I need to do it now. My mom might be in danger!”

He shows the flight attendant the article in the
New York Times
. “You know why somebody set fire to this place? Because of me.”