I sat down beside him. “Then why is this a concern of yours?”
He began carefully rinsing the pond mud from his feet. “Plants are my passion,” he said. “Medicinal plants in particular.”
I started to ask him about the lotus, but decided to be patient and wait. Old Father Saturn was running on a slower clock. He had a kind of reverential aura about him, a peaceful composure that felt vaguely religious. Even the methodical washing of his feet seemed curiously ritualistic.
“A garden like this is a sanctuary,” he continued. “An oasis of the soul. Like the courtyard gardens of the medieval monasteries. Or the Mughal gardens of India. Even the garden of the Vestal Virgins, the pagan priestesses of ancient Rome.”
That last one I knew well: a weedy patch in the ruins of a colonnaded courtyard, a highlight of my scandal-mongering Roman Forum tour.
He reached out for help and I took his hand as he carefully climbed from the pond. The man was quite old, but neither thin nor frail, and he moved with a dignified, slow-motion grace, like a sloth slowly moving through a tree.
He sat down again to don his silk socks and shoes. “These enclosed gardens descend from the walled gardens of ancient Persia, sanctuaries of beauty and a link with the divine. It’s where we derive the word ‘paradise,’ from the Persian words pairi—‘around,’ and daeza, or diz—‘wall.’ Paradise, a place apart, separate from the world yet wondrously within it.”
We glanced around us. The garden was indeed a wondrous thing, and it struck me suddenly how strange it was: to be sitting in this peaceful place, listening to this peculiar man, his voice as transparent and mysterious as glass, while outside, beyond the looming wall, the world, as I had known it, had gone completely insane.
The refuge he was talking about was just another illusion. I thought of my landlord’s rooftop garden—his “piccolo parte di paradiso”—its walls had clearly been insufficient to keep out the modern-day Persians.
“You left a phone message for me,” I said. “And you arranged to meet here with Maya Ramanujan.”
“Yes. In fact I just left her another message not half an hour ago.”
I pulled out the piece of stationery with Maya’s directions and the hand-drawn map. “I found this in her hotel room.”
The doctor looked at me, and I could see from his eyes he knew something was wrong. He gently took the note and examined it on his lap.
“Last night,” I said, “a man broke into my apartment, and Maya was killed.”
His shoulders subsided. He continued staring at the note in silence.
“Did you know her?” I asked.
“We never met,” he said. He traced the lion symbol with his fingertips, as if he could feel its impression on the page.
“Do you know what that is?” I asked. “Or what that writing means?”
“‘Truth alone triumphs,’” he quoted. “It’s Sanskrit. This is the Lion Capital of Ashoka. It stood atop an ancient pillar erected by the Indian emperor, Ashoka the Great. The pillar marked the spot where the Buddha first proclaimed his truth to the four corners of the earth.”
“That circle beneath it looks familiar,” I said.
“The Ashoka chakra—the chariot wheel, known as the Wheel of Dharma. It is probably Buddhism’s most ancient symbol.”
“How do you know all this?” I asked.
“I’ve been a student of Buddhism for nearly forty years,” he said.
“Are you a Buddhist?”
“I’m on the path.”
“Was Maya?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s possible. But the vast majority of Indians are Hindu. Most likely, this is just government stationery. The Ashoka capital is the emblem of the state.”
I remembered now where I had seen that wheel: on the center of the Indian flag. “So she worked for the Indian government.”
Fiore neatly refolded the note. “Miss Ramanujan was employed by the intelligence service in Delhi.”
Maya was a spook. That made sense of the gun. “Why were you trying to meet her?” I asked. “Why did you telephone me?”
He lifted his eyes to mine. “By now you must know why,” he said.
I stared back at him without replying.
“Listen to me carefully,” he said. “This morning, near your apartment, I found parts of the lotus plant scattered on the street. As you have seen, there are people willing to kill for this lotus. It is vitally important we safeguard it from them. So please tell me truthfully: Are you in possession of any more of these plants or seeds?”
“No. Maya was dying—she told me to destroy it. How did you—?”
“Are you certain? I assure you I am willing to pay handsomely—”
“I told you: That one plant was all I had.”
“Very well,” he said. “I believe you.”
“Then tell me what you’re doing here. What is this all about?”
Fiore handed back Maya’s note. “Those are directions to an archaeological dig site in the desert of Turkmenistan. An earthenware jar recently uncovered there contained some 3000-year-old lotus seeds. The species was known in ancient India but has long been thought extinct. Many believe this lotus offers psychoactive properties that could make it extremely valuable. Five days ago the seeds were stolen, and the Indian government became involved in trying to track them down. That’s why Miss Ramanujan sought you out in Rome.”
“Why me?”
He gazed calmly into my eyes. “Because they believe the lotus seeds were stolen by your brother.”
Dan. Again. “Knowing my brother,” I said, “I wouldn’t put it past him. But believe me, Dan’s no killer. And you said they were stolen five days ago? The seeds I grew that plant from he sent me over a year ago.”
“Yes,” he said. “And unlike those found in the desert, his seeds were fresh and able to sprout—they were taken from living plants.”
His point slowly came home to me. “Which means...the lotus is not extinct.”
“Your brother has found it growing somewhere, a source that’s long been hidden. Unfortunately these people are aware of that now.”
“You mean...the Iranians.”
“Them, and others.” He stood up and worked himself into his jacket. “We must get you out of Rome immediately,” he said. “It won’t be safe for you here.”
He started through the labyrinth. I walked along beside him, still trying to figure out exactly what had happened. “Is that why you were meeting Maya?” I asked. “To buy the lotus if she got it from me?”
“She may not have agreed to selling it. But I had hoped to give it a try.”
“Someone removed her corpse,” I said. “And cleaned up the blood in my apartment.”
“That would have been the Americans, I would think.”
“The Americans?”
“When the Iranians are involved, they’re usually not far behind.”
“But why would they clean up after her murder?”
“You might want to ask your friend,” he said. “The fellow with the pretty lady.”
“Harry Grant? You saw him?” The old man seemed omniscient.
“I was waiting in my car near your apartment when the three of you arrived. Had you been alone, I would have introduced myself.”
I wondered what the doctor had to fear from Harry Grant. And how he knew who I was. “You must know my brother.”
“One does not soon forget him. Daniel and I met at a monastery in India. I discovered he shares a similar interest in the origins of religion.” His tone seemed tinged with irony.
“Do you know where he is now?” I asked.
We had reached the exit through the wall of the garden. The doctor looked out, then turned to face me. In his sunlit suit, with his blinding hair and shock of beard, he looked like a parody of God the Father—that, or a dissimulating devil.
I waited for his answer.
“You must return home to America,” he said. “You’ll be safer there.”
“Where is Dan?” I demanded.
Fiore hesitated.
I thought again of Harry Grant. “You know I won’t turn him in,” I said. “Dan’s my only brother.”
“Yes,” he said. “I understand. The problem is I don’t know where Daniel is—I’m looking for him myself.”
“Why?”
Again he hesitated. “Because I am afraid of what will happen if others find him first.”
I stared at him, uncertain. “Afraid of what’ll happen to the lotus—or what’ll happen to Dan?”
Distant voices came over the wall. Fiore peered out the doorway, then drew quickly back. “It’s the police,” he said.
I peeked out. Two uniformed cops and the hotel security man were heading up through the trees.
“They must have found your message on the hotel voicemail,” I said. “I stole the Iranian’s car and—”
“Go, quickly,” he said, gesturing back through the garden. “You can exit through the other side. I will delay them here as long as I can.”
“Where will you—?”
“I’ll contact you later,” he said. “When I find your brother.”
“But I don’t even know where I’m go—”
“You’re going home,” he insisted.
I looked at him a moment, then grabbed Maya’s suitcase and ran.
19.
Running Scared
A QUARTER OF AN HOUR LATER, a pair of eyes silently queried me from the rearview mirror of a taxi.
“Fiumicino,” I told the driver. “T-5, per favore.” At the Aeroporto Leonardo da Vinci di Fiumicino, Terminal 5 was the point of departure for all U.S. carrier flights to the States.
It was obvious Fiore was right. I had to get out of Italy as quickly as I could, and certainly flying home to America offered the safest bet. The Roman police, now acutely aware that my stay was illegal, suspected me of having drug ties to the mob and connections with assassins in Iran. I had been the last person seen with an Indian businesswoman who had been murdered the very same night. If that wasn’t enough, I had broken into her hotel room, made off with her luggage and escaped in a stolen Mercedes.
Earlier, Oriana had predicted I’d end up in the clink. I seemed to be doing all I could to prove her right.
And yet the police were the least of my worries.
I turned and scanned the traffic behind, wondering if somehow the Iranian had followed me. He had not accompanied the two cops and the hotel security man. Had the involvement of the police made him nervous? Perhaps he had split off to pursue me on his own.
They’ll kill you, Maya had whispered. Your brother, too.
I recalled the Iranian’s cry—Arshan!—and his maniacal, spider-like attack on the car.
He’ll hunt me down, I thought. Facing forward I focused on the crowded road ahead, trying to think things through. What if Iranian intelligence had access to passenger lists? If I made a seat reservation, how quickly would they know? And if they discovered I was heading to the States, what would stop them from following me?
“May I borrow your cell?” I asked in Italian. The driver made a face in the mirror until I offered to pay him something. He wearily shrugged and handed over the phone.
I dialed the number scribbled on Harry Grant’s card. After two failed attempts at a connection, I finally made it through to the Agent’s voicemail. I told him the name on the Mercedes rental contract, Vanitar Azad, said he was the guy trying to kill me. Then I asked if he could find out anything about an aging doctor from Switzerland named Felix Fiore. Finally, I told him I would call him back later, though I couldn’t say exactly when.
Next I called Vincenzo Accidi. He had just arrived at his travel office, and the second he heard my voice on the line, he launched into a tirade of Italian obscenities. It turned out he had spent his morning at the central police station, trying to convince the Carabinieri to please release his car. They refused, saying the damaged Spider was potential evidence in a missing person’s case, involving burglary, auto theft, possibly even murder.
Vincenzo now demanded to know what the hell was going on.
“I can’t explain right now,” I told him. “But Vinny…I need another favor. I want you to book me immediately on the next flight out to the States.”
This brought a brief, astonished laugh. Then my friend hung up.
THREE CARS AHEAD, next lane over, Duran put down his phone. I pulled out a long stretch of the seatbelt and furtively sawed it with my knife.
The cabbie eyed me in the rearview mirror. “Tell me. This man we follow. He trying to steal your wife?”
“I have no wife,” I said.
“You are lucky. My wife, she cheating on me. More than once.”
I thought of my childhood friend Faraj and the unspeakable lies he later told about my parents. Fidelity in friendship and marriage is inviolable; the breaking of such bonds unforgivable. Faraj had earned the beatings we administered in prison. His mendacity was a betrayal to Islam.
“What will you do about your wife?” I asked the cabbie.
“‘Divorzio all’Italiana.’ You ever see this movie?”
“Marcello Mastroianni. Are you saying you’ll murder your wife?”
“No,” he said. “Not yet anyway. I only dreaming about it.”
I finished cutting and rolled up the strap, stuffing it into my pocket. “When my father married my mother, she was the most beautiful girl in his village. She was fifteen years old. He was fifty-three. But he never once had to question her fidelity. In his village, if a wife betrayed her husband...she’d be buried alive up to her neck and stoned to death.”
“Mamma mia!”
“That’s ‘Divorce, Iranian Style.’”
The cabbie smiled uncertainly, then stared ahead, unblinking. I could see him struggling to hide his fear. When again he caught my stare in the mirror he quickly looked away. Never would he dare to look into my eyes again.
“WHY ARE YOU RUNNING AWAY?” Vinny asked when I finally got him back on the phone.
For a moment I couldn’t respond. I thought of that girl in the hostel I had abandoned the previous night. Then I thought of Phoebe running away, and Dan disappearing into Asia, and me now getting the hell out of Rome—
“Jack?”
“It’s not safe for me here anymore,” I said. I didn’t even try to explain what happened, and made no mention of Dr. Fiore, or Harry Grant and Oriana. The less Vinny knew, the better, I thought. I made him promise not to tell the police or anyone else where I was going. Grudgingly he agreed to check the airline schedules and call me back with a flight.
I shut the cell and stared out the window. The traffic to the airport had slowed and thickened. A growing anxiety gnawed at me.
Why are you running away?
It reminded me of something Phoebe said she used to argue about with her father. A research physiologist at the University of Amsterdam, Professor Auerbach had made his career studying the physiology of fear and anxiety. He believed that pain—or more commonly, the fear of pain or death—was the elemental stimulus that provokes a person to act. Hunger and thirst were the most obvious examples, but he believed the idea expanded to include virtually every form of human endeavor. Fear was the great motivator: fear of not having the thing we desire, or of losing a thing that we have.
His daughter abhorred this dispiriting notion. She argued there was too much it failed to explain: the love between two people, for example, or the human ambition for accomplishment and greatness, or more altruistic aspirations, like compassion, generosity, and the spiritual longing for God. All these, she believed, were attempts to fulfill a deeper craving, a quest toward expansion and cosmic unity—the dream of transcending physicality and death.
Love was the true motivator.
Another triumph of hope over experience, I thought as I anxiously glanced out the back. Her father’s view was a little too gloomy for me, too, but I couldn’t find a way to disagree with it. Pain is a reality we all know too
well, and while Phoebe’s more romantic notions seemed a bit abstract, I had no problem understanding fear. In fact, at that very moment, trapped inside that taxi cab creeping toward the airport, I could feel the tight whorl of fear uncoiling in my belly, wriggling like some hairy worm birthed inside my gut.
Why was I running away? Because I was scared to death, that’s why.
20.
Fractured Fairy Tale
ON THE TAXI’S RADIO, Violante Placido, in her sexy, guileless little girl voice, was singing her love song, With U. It was a favorite of Vinny’s and reminded me of my dream, the one of Phoebe waiting under the oak tree.
I searched my pack for the photograph I had found in Maya’s bag—Dan and me with Phoebe on the Acropolis. We’d all agreed to keep our Furies photos off the Net, and having searched out every image of Phoebe in existence, I knew this shot had never been uploaded. Maya could only have obtained the print from her.
Somehow Phoebe was caught up in all this; I felt certain of it.
In truth I really shouldn’t have been surprised. The captivating rose had its complement of thorns. Although she could be tender and sweetly softhearted, Phoebe was high-spirited and stubbornly strong-willed. Likewise, though a keen intellect and coolly analytic, she readily let loose with a fiery frankness, and her judgments could be scathing and dogmatic. This volatile combination of compassion and will often drew the Dutch damsel into trouble, and I had to wonder now if she had put her life in danger, and if she might be on the run with Dan.
I studied the photograph. Phoebe stood between Dan and me, her waist bared and slender, her boyish, blond hair tousled in the wind, her smiling eyes blue as the sky. My brother had not yet shaved off his long, shaggy locks; with one hand he was pulling windblown strands from his face while his other hand rested on the crook of Phoebe’s hip. I had an arm around her shoulders, and she had both her arms around us. At the moment the photo was taken, Phoebe and I were looking into the lens of the camera. Dan was looking at her.
Like me, Dan had been infatuated from the start; unlike me, he’d gotten to her first. They had met on a beach on the island of Crete, where Phoebe was in residence with an excavation team. By the time I caught up with them at Dan’s place in Athens, they’d been visiting each other, back and forth, over the spring and summer. A relatively brief term of courtship, you might think, but long enough apparently for Dan. Right in the middle of the media frenzy that followed the Furies blow-up, he asked the archaeologist to marry him.
The Assassin Lotus Page 8
