The Devil's Triangle

by Catherine Coulter

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Nicholas took a huge breath in before he hit the water. He went deeper than he’d expected, the momentum of the dive off the cliff driving him farther down. He thought his lungs were going to burst before his face finally broke the surface.

  He dragged in as much oxygen as he could, treading water. The water was cold, dark. Where was Mike? She was an ace swimmer. “Mike?”

  No answer. He shouted her name again, once, twice. “Where are you? Answer me!”

  Silence.

  “Mike!”

  He started to swim, looking for her, but there was nothing around him. The bike was gone, sunk to the bottom. He grabbed the Maglite from his pocket—he couldn’t believe it hadn’t fallen out—and shined it over the water, looking for her.

  Nothing. No blond ponytail, nothing. She was still under.

  He dove, blindly, searching for her, coming up for breath only when he thought he might die if he didn’t. One minute passed. Two. Three. He was getting frantic, she was nowhere to be found.

  Four minutes now.

  Adrenaline pumped hard and fast, kept him together, kept him moving. Impossible to imagine Mike dead, drowned, and all because of him. He dove again and again, and he knew he was crying but it didn’t matter, all that mattered was finding her.

  Finally, his hand brushed up against something that felt like hair. He closed his fist tight and started to rise, heaving with relief when her weight nearly dragged him down.

  He got her to the surface and supported her so she floated on her back. She wasn’t breathing. Her face was covered in blood from a nasty wound in her scalp. Her skin was pale gray in the moonlight, her lips blue.

  He swam to the closest bit of land, counting the seconds, taking the breaths she couldn’t.

  It had been five minutes since they burst out of the mountain and off the cliff into the lake before he got her on dry land.

  Nicholas started chest compressions, counted to thirty, checked for a pulse, got nothing. Her legs lay still and relaxed in the water, her hands palm up. He started again. At thirty, he checked once more. Nothing. He tilted her head back, pinched her nose and gave her two deep breaths. He felt her chest rise, willed it to do so again, but there was nothing.

  He kept going, silently yelling at her to live, to breathe, cringing when he felt a rib give under the pressure of his hands. He drew her up and began pounding on her back, then shoved her back down and pushed again against her breastbone, again and again and again. He tilted her head back and breathed for her. On and on it went. Panic, fear, the impossible began creeping in, but he didn’t give up. He knew it had been too long, she’d been under too long, and then he felt it.

  A deep shiver moved through her, and she started to cough, spitting up water. He jerked her upright again and pounded her back. Water poured from her mouth, and she was heaving with the effort.

  He pulled her onto her side, wrapped his arms around her while she spit up more lake water. Finally she stopped heaving out water and began shuddering. He felt her pulse—slow and faint, but there. He closed his eyes a moment, giving thanks, holding her tightly against him. She was alive.

  She wasn’t conscious, but she was breathing, though it was shallow. He needed to warm her up, the water had been very cold. What he knew about hypothermia gave him hope—cold water preserved brain function.

  Nicholas pulled his jacket off and wrapped it tightly around her. He checked her eyes with his Maglite, swore he could see the pupils change, though one seemed bigger than the other. She had a concussion. Probably from the nasty cut on her head. And how had she gotten that? She’d struck something when she hit the water, a branch maybe.

  He gathered her to his chest and rocked her. He kissed her cold mouth, her forehead, her wet hair, said into her mouth, “Mike, you’re going to be all right, no thanks to me. Come on, do you want me to stroke out? Open your beautiful eyes and look at me. You’re warming up, sweetheart, that’s it.”

  Even after this night passed, Nicholas knew he would always believe this a miracle. He heard a young man’s voice—an angel’s—calling from the top of the bank in musical Italian, “Are you okay, do you need help?

  Nicholas called back in Italian, “We need a doctor and an ambulance. Now!”

  Time passed, then shouts, calls, and people swarmed over the bank. He was suddenly surrounded by Italians, all barking instructions. He heard the sirens start immediately, and then the ambulance was there, the two EMTs racing down the bank with their equipment. One started questioning him in Italian.

  “What happened? Why in the world did you go swimming in this weather?”

  “Not swimming. It was an accident. We drove off the mountain, into the lake. She hit her head. She was underwater for several minutes.”

  They already had Mike on a stretcher, wrapped in a silver blanket, and the other EMT had an IV line started and an oxygen mask in place. “She needs the hospital, immediately. It will be very close. You come with us. The polizia will want to speak with you about the accident.”

  So long as it wasn’t more of the Kohaths’ guards or Major Russo’s thugs in the Carabinieri, he was fine with it.

  Through the interminable ride, he held her hand, talked to her nonstop, and thankfully, finally, he felt her begin to warm.

  PART TWO

  Whence, then, does it come? Who knows? Who can assign limits to the subtlety of nature’s influences?

  —NIKOLA TESLA

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  The Kohath Letters

  Venice, Italy

  September 18, 1901

  Dear Nikola,

  I have made a discovery that might change the course of history.

  I was having dinner in a small café when I heard the cook telling his brother that there was a new shipment from the Orient for the Collezionista—the Collector.

  You know me, I had to see what the man had, and so I went immediately to his shop, which, at first glance, was a jumbled mess. His name is Melzi. He’s ancient, at lease ninety-eight years old, but thankfully, with all his faculties intact.

  He had no idea what most of the pieces were in his rooms. Most was rubbish, but I spotted a few terra-cotta statues that might have Etruscan roots.

  I found the folio while searching through a stack of old dispatches from the Franco-Austrian War. A thick parchment, very old, and on the cover was a large, hand-drawn lightning bolt. Then I saw small black stains along the top edge—I’m certain it is a blood froth. I undid the twine and very nearly passed out from excitement. You will never imagine what I was holding.

  Drawings, from the great man himself, Leonardo da Vinci. I asked Melzi where he got them, and he said they were in a trunk of family papers. Then of course I remembered why the name Melzi was familiar to me. It seems he had an ancestor who was a painter, and lived for a time with Da Vinci. The Melzi from that period, as I knew, was Francesco Melzi, and not only was he a painter himself, he was Da Vinci’s lover and was with him when he was dying. I assume he was archiving Da Vinci’s work.

  Melzi took the folio probably because he could not stand having nothing left but memories of his master. I would have done the same had I been in his shoes. After Da Vinci’s death, Melzi returned home to Italy and evidently hid them with his most precious things. No one in the Melzi family are scientists, and the papers had been stored in the family trunks for centuries. So I knew this was no forgery, for Melzi was a direct descendant.

  There was a warning that came with the papers—and this teases the mind—the power that could be derived is incalculable. And what exactly does that mean?

  What I’ve seen so far is mind-boggling. Not only have I discovered a lost trove of Da Vinci drawings, there is more, as you will see in the enclosed Da Vinci papers. You will know what to do with this incredible invention. Do you feel my excitement? Does your amazing brain already envision possibilities?

  Appleton

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  London, Englandr />
  Present Day

  After his mad scramble to JFK to make the British Airways flight from New York to London, Agent Ben Houston was happy to arrive the following morning at the beautiful home of the late Elizabeth St. Germaine. The house was on Westbury Road in Ealing, West London. It was a lovely old red brick, with a balcony over the front door and a turret to the left. It was as British as Ben could have imagined.

  He was let into the house by a soft-spoken woman named Annalise and shown into a bright, sunny conservatory and brought a cup of tea. Ben knew this was urgent, and he asked when Ms. St. Germaine was coming. Annalise said, with a smile, “The earth is not falling off its axis, I hope. Agent Houston, I assure you, Madam is coming. Drink your tea.” Then she disappeared. To keep himself from pacing the beautiful Tabriz, Ben checked his email—nothing new from Nicholas or Gray or any of the rest of the team. He was about to call Nicholas when Melinda St. Germaine came in.

  Ben stood immediately, without thinking, and held out his credentials.

  She smiled at him, and he found himself smiling back. “That won’t be necessary. I believe you’re the only American law enforcement gentleman I’m expecting today. So sorry to keep you waiting, traffic was beastly. Why Mother wanted to live so far away from central London I have no idea.”

  Melinda St. Germaine was small, compact, with an athletic body and an angel’s face, a pointed chin and clear gray eyes. Black heels put her only at his chin. She was a redhead, just like him, her hair in a high ponytail. He appreciated her well-fitted black suit. Probably made for her.

  “It’s fine, really, I’ve only been here for a few minutes. I’m Ben, Ben Houston, Agent Houston, I mean. FBI.” He shut his mouth, he was being a git, as Nicholas would say.

  She nodded. “Yes, I imagine you’re jet-lagged. I know I always want to fall over when I fly home from the States. You told me you wanted to look at my mother’s papers. Annalise told me you looked like you were going to jump out of your skin, so I suppose you’re in an all-fire rush to get into my mother’s shed, aren’t you?” As she spoke, she fixed herself a cup of tea, two sugars and milk, and watched him, holding the saucer in one hand and the cup in the other. She took a sip and set the cup in the saucer with a gentle clink.

  “Annalise is right,” Ben said. “We’re on a case that’s breaking quickly and we think there may be some answers in your mother’s files. I’m so sorry for your loss. I was told your mother died of a heart attack?”

  Melinda buried her nose in her cup. “Yes, two weeks ago. I still can’t believe it. I thought, we all thought, her doctor included, that she was in wonderful shape, she’d been steeplechasing the day before she died. But the postmortem showed cardiac arrest. At her age, I suppose it’s common enough.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “She died alone. Out in the shed. I suppose it’s how she’d want to go, surrounded by her books and papers.”

  “I’m truly sorry.”

  She brushed away the tears. “Yes, well. Since we all thought she was in good health and she was alone when she died, and I’m in bloody Parliament, the coroner opened an inquest, did an autopsy and ran a toxicology screen. They’re still waiting on the toxicology results, but he’s ruled the preliminary cause of her death was, as I said, cardiac arrest.

  “The police took a number of her things for testing. It’s all been very disturbing. But the biggest thing, I’m afraid I’m not all accustomed to the idea I’ll never see her again.”

  Ben said, “I lost my dad last year, and I don’t know that I’ll ever get over it.”

  “So you understand. You keep waiting for them to come into the room, or the phone to ring, and realizing it won’t happen—well, it’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?”

  Ben nodded. “I still pick up the phone to call him. Maybe we aren’t supposed to get over it. Maybe we’re supposed to remember them always and appreciate what we had.”

  She was quiet for a moment, then. “Just so. If you’re finished your tea, follow me. Mother’s shed is a bit of a train wreck, I haven’t had the heart to go in there. The lawyers have been squawking at me, so you will find everything as she left it.”

  “Her estate is still being worked out?”

  “Oh, you don’t know?” Melinda stopped in a long hallway and took a left, out double glass French doors into the gardens. “I thought you called because of the lawsuit.”

  “What lawsuit?”

  “The Kohaths are suing my mother—now my mother’s estate—for defamation and theft. David Maynes, the father of the deadly duo, as I call them—Cassandra and Ajax Kohath—approached my mother after the original biography released, with ‘new information’ as he called it. Mr. Maynes happily cooperated with my mother to draft a second volume. She’d always been fascinated with Appleton Kohath—not only was he a great archaeologist, he was also a scientist, spent time with all the brightest minds of the day. This was around the turn of the last century. He was the one who created the Genesis Group.

  “David Maynes showed up with notebooks and letters he claimed were from the family archive. Mother read them and was keen to write a new book, a sort of companion to the first biography of Kohath. One of the new things she’d discovered was Appleton Kohath and Nikola Tesla were great friends and worked together on several major projects before having a falling-out. Mother was interested in what drove the two apart and what their major projects were. The publisher was thrilled with the idea—the original book did very well indeed, and they thought another volume, adding in the Tesla connection and their projects, would make for more in-depth treatment, a second bite at the apple.”

  While she talked, Ben hanging on every word, they’d crossed a lovely English garden, brimming with early spring flowers, white and purple and yellow, and were now hiking up a small rise toward a stone cottage.

  He paused a moment, looking around. “Fabulous gardens.”

  “Yes, they are, aren’t they? I used to hide under that stone bench over there and Mother would pretend she couldn’t see me, would wander the garden calling my name.” Her voice was thick with tears, and Ben reached out and squeezed her shoulder. A few moments later, she gathered herself. “Ah, here we are.”

  Ben supposed he’d been expecting what she’d said—a shed. But not this. The “shed” was a charming white cottage with black shutters and a stone fireplace.

  “It’s practically falling down around our ears. I think it was originally used to store grain or something. Mother took it over, added a fireplace, and made it her office. She couldn’t work in the house, said it was too distracting. She liked having a completely private space of her own.”

  Ben was amused, seeing as the St. Germaines’ house was nearly as big as his apartment building in New York, and the “shed” was large enough to comfortably shelter a family of four. Nicholas’s friends and their British money was something he was going to have to get used to.

  Melinda took a deep breath and pushed open the wooden door.

  The inside of the cottage was simple. A tiny efficiency kitchen with tea service in one corner, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves all around, holding both books and small treasures, a few pieces of art, a fireplace, and a beautiful white wood desk the size of a door in the middle of the room, perfectly situated to see both the fire and the gardens outside the windows. There was a table behind the desk made from the same wood, and on this, stacked three-feet-deep, were books and notebooks and papers of all shapes and colors and sizes. It was a huge amount of material, but it was in clearly delineated piles.

  A small staircase wound up to a second level. “The loft,” Melinda said, “in case she needed a lie-down while she was working, or was up late and didn’t want to disturb my father coming back to the house.”

  “It’s a nice space.”

  Melinda said, “She loved it. And don’t let the piles scare you. She was a horizontal filer. It might look a right mess, but she knew where every piece of paper was in those stacks. They are organized by subject, person, a
nd date. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding your way through to whatever you need. You’re welcome to muck about through everything. What the Kohaths don’t know won’t hurt them. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “So the Kohath family sued over the book?”

  “No, they’re up in arms because they’re claiming their father was coerced into giving my mother the Kohath materials. They’ve demanded to read all Mother’s notes, her draft, and insist all the source materials be returned. They are trying to discredit her, to prove her dishonesty, and they have good lawyers who have tried everything to shut the whole book down.

  “They’ve cited family privacy, but they’re off their rockers. David Maynes was the one who approached my mother. He was the one who sat down and gave interviews and turned over the notebooks and letters. According to our lawyers, he was completely within his rights to do so. However, the deadly duo forced an injunction, delayed the release, bad-mouthed Mother in the press, said she was a hack who conned their father, who, they insisted, was not mentally well.

  “I wanted to tell them to bugger off—as if my mother would do anything not completely aboveboard.”

  “So what happens to the book now?”

  “The million-dollar question.” Melinda toyed with the ends of her ponytail. “Technically, it’s still tied up in the courts. The publisher wants to go ahead with it, the family wants it pulled. We’ve only just buried her, and as I said, I haven’t been ready to tackle the business. The publisher has been very kind, understands I need some time to sort things out.” She waved her hand around her. “I simply haven’t had the heart to get started.”

  “I understand,” Ben said. “Absolutely.”

  She gave him a smile. “You are very kind. Now, let me warn you. I wouldn’t do this for anyone but Nicholas, so I’m trusting you to keep it to yourself if at all possible. Despite what we’ve told the lawyers and the publisher, Mother was very close to finishing the draft. The manuscript will be in there, most likely in the top drawer of her desk, where she keeps a running version. You can’t take it with you, I’m not willing to defy the lawyers that much. But if you want to read it, I’m fine with that.”