The Witch of Babylon

by Dorothy J. Mcintosh

  “Maybe she genuinely doesn’t have the information.”

  “She knows. Just do it.”

  The man took aim, trying to judge where a blow might cause the least injury. The rock glanced off Hanna’s shoulder with a soft, ineffective thud.

  “You were trying to spare her!” he shouted angrily. “Shim, show him how it’s done.”

  A giant of a man stepped forward. Instinctively, the smaller fellow shrank back, having seen first-hand the damage his companion could inflict. The goliath bent stiffly at the waist, picked up two stones, and whipped them full force at his target.

  Hanna screamed. Her body jerked when one of the stones smacked into her face and the other tore into the soft tissue of her abdomen. After this wounding, all sense of time and place drifted away.

  As if in sympathy with her agony, the light appeared to change. The sun turned burnt orange; the sky, an unnatural ochre. In the fierce heat the ground seemed to ripple as though a giant serpent wound beneath its surface. The atmosphere grew weirdly still but for a faint buzz, an electric frissoning of millions of sand particles gathering together.

  The men looked north. “A shamal wind,” one of them said. “Look at that.”

  It appeared as though a mountain had suddenly formed on the flat horizon. At first the shape was just a dim bulge, but it grew rapidly before their eyes. In minutes a wave of sand hundreds of feet high became visible. It rolled toward them like a massive tsunami. Quick flashes of blue lightning forked through the reddish dust. The Arabs called the wind Kamasin, derived from the word for fifty—because when they’re strong, such storms can last for fifty days.

  They bolted, knowing that it would be nearly impossible to outrun the wall of sand. The smaller man stumbled and fell onto a sharp protruding rock. A stab of pain gored his knee. He raised himself up, clutching his injured leg, and staggered forward. The other two had already reached their battered GM pickup. They threw open the doors and climbed inside. The engine started up.

  “Wait!” the small man screamed. “What are you doing?”

  The truck doors banged shut; its tires spun on the sandy ground. The driver reversed. The wheels gained traction and the truck turned toward the south. The small man forced his legs to race, ignoring the wrenching pain. He stretched out his arms like a beggar pleading for mercy. The truck’s high beams flicked on, the glare momentarily searing his eyes. His last words were drowned out by the roar of the motor and the gathering storm.

  Hanna, on the edge of consciousness, caught a fleeting sense of a new wind on her face and the first assault of fine particles of grit. She drooped against the post like a broken doll, the stirring of her scarf a herald for the oncoming storm.

  Part One

  THE GAME

  For, lo, I will raise and cause to come up against Babylon an assembly of great nations from the north country: and they shall set themselves in array against her; from thence she shall be taken:

  Their arrows shall be as of a mighty expert man; none shall return in vain.

  And Chaldea shall be a spoil: all that spoil her shall be satisfied.

  —JEREMIAH 50:9–10

  One

  342 West Twentieth Street, New York

  Saturday, August 2, 2003, 10:30 P.M.

  In the weeks since the accident, I’ve kept away from the constellation of friends who knew and loved my brother, Samuel. If our paths did happen to cross, they managed to say, “It’s a miracle you survived, John,” in tones suggesting the opposite.

  I wore that one dark moment on the highway like a red-hot brand.

  To avoid any more chance meetings, I arrived at Hal Vanderlin’s party deliberately late, hoping the crowd had already melted away. I wouldn’t have bothered coming at all but Hal had proved elusive lately, not returning my calls or emails. He still owed me a significant amount of money and this party was the one sure chance I had of finding him.

  As a child I’d spent hours exploring the Vanderlins’ townhouse, losing myself in the dim labyrinth of its halls, opening doors to silent rooms. Most retained furniture from a bygone era—chairs upholstered in burgundy damask and framed with carved walnut, handmade lace on the arms and headrests. Wardrobes, bookcases, and desks gave off the aroma of camphor and old mahogany. A ghost house. That’s how it seemed to me then.

  Of all its chambers my favorite was one I called the vanishing room. A large, open rectangle on the top floor, to a boy it looked immense. Two huge mirrors hung on facing walls. If I stood dead center between them I could see myself telescope away to nothing. When I tired of those solitary games I’d run out through the kitchen to the back garden, a jungle of trees and overgrown shrubs. I’d sharpen sticks and tie lengths of string to make bows and arrows then lie in wait for a Cyclops to charge out from the bushes or a giant to swing down from a tree.

  Even these innocent recollections seemed tainted now by Samuel’s death.

  By the time I walked into the party, only the serious hangers-on were left. Among them, Professor Colin Reed had zeroed in on a woman with white-blond hair and china-blue eyes who I assumed had just graduated and was therefore fair game. Tight pants and a clingy silk shirt showed off her firm, fit body.

  Reed headed off, to get drinks I assumed. As I was looking around for Hal she caught my eye. I sent her a smile back.

  “I’m Eris,” she said when we were close enough to hear each other.

  “John Madison.” She moved a little nearer to me.

  “Are you with the bride’s or the groom’s party?” I asked.

  I noticed her eyes widen when she laughed. They were a mesmerizing blue, so intense I wondered whether she used those contacts that enhance eye color. “Yeah, it’s funny,” she said. “Sometimes these university parties do seem as deadly as your second cousin once removed’s wedding.”

  “You’re at NYU?”

  “No, an MIT grad. You?”

  “Columbia. But some time ago. Hal and I go way back. We’re childhood friends and lately, business associates.”

  “Isn’t he a professor?”

  “Yes. I’m an art dealer. He’s sold some art objects through me.”

  “An art dealer. That’s exotic. You must be a millionaire then.” She chuckled to show this was just a tease.

  “Millions of dollars pass through my hands. It hurts always watching them end up in someone else’s bank account. Should have gone into hedge funds.”

  That produced another grin. “So you’re a friend of Hal’s?” she asked.

  “My older brother and his father were friends. Samuel would always bring me here on his visits, and whenever Hal came home from boarding school or summer camp we’d spend time together. He didn’t have a lot of other friends here in the city. How do you know him then?”

  She didn’t answer me and I saw her flick a glance across the room. Reed appeared in the doorway, his bushy fair hair that seemed to stand up vertically from his scalp, somewhat skewed, his reddened nose suggesting this was far from his first drink. He shot daggers at me from where he stood. A signal he was not amused by my monopolizing the object of his affection.

  Normally I’d stand my ground, but I had to find Hal. “Sorry I can’t stay and talk.” I pulled out my business card and handed it to her. “I’ve got to see Hal. Give me a call if you’d like to get together for a coffee or something sometime.”

  She gave the card a quick once-over and tucked it into her shoulder bag. “I don’t drink caffeine, but I love long walks on the beach and romantic dinners.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Looking forward to it,” I said. I left before Colin Reed came over to break the spell.

  In the kitchen, before I went out the back to look for Hal, I put David Usher’s “Black Black Heart” on, turned up the volume, and opened a window so the music would drift outside. Usher wrote the song about a woman, but I’d always thought how easily the title could apply to me.

  I walked outside on the stone pathway. Soft light glowed from the windows and floa
ted out onto the tangle of garden. The heat of the August night drew the scent from the aspens and spun it through the air.

  I took in a deep breath and felt almost content.

  I found Hal in the small stone pavilion, sitting in the same old wicker chair his father used to occupy. An oil lamp hung on the back wall, sending out the perfume of citrus. One of his sleeves was rolled up above the elbow, a cream-colored rubber strap binding his arm so tight it made his flesh pucker.

  When Hal saw me he flicked off his lighter and set a spoon down on the table beside a ziplock bag containing a grayish powder. “John, your timing is always perfect.”

  I stepped through the arched entranceway and took a seat on the edge of the stone wall that formed one side of the pavilion. I checked to see whether anyone else had come outside then reached up to pull down one of the blinds. A moth fluttered out, its white wings as thin as tissue paper.

  You’d think it was Hal who’d just survived an accident, not me. I was struck by how frail he looked. A pattern of purple bruises dotted his bare arm, entrance wounds for old injection sites. At thirty-three, only a year older than me, he looked closer to fifty.

  He frowned. “You’re still a free man.”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “The papers hinted at criminal charges. They said you were way over the speed limit.”

  “The accident was more than six weeks ago and nothing’s happened. You know they always exaggerate. I’ve driven that route a million times. I could do it blind.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Well, it’s only your word for it now. Samuel can’t argue his side of the case.”

  “Hal. You’re about to shoot up. Don’t lecture me about risk.”

  He laughed. “There’s no danger unless you have the bad luck to get the pure stuff.”

  His addiction was no secret to me. It had started out as a lark, but the odd occasion had become a daily event. Our commercial venture selling off his father’s collection did not have a long future. We’d ripped through most of the family wealth already.

  He pointed toward the spoon. “Part of a complete set assembled by Mother. Commissioned by the Spanish royals, so she was told. Sixteenth century, House of Borbón y Grecia. A wedding gift to celebrate the union of Castile, Aragon, and Navarre.”

  I picked up the spoon carefully, knowing Hal would freak if I spilled its precious cargo. I could see the crest on the handle: a shield in the lower half, the lion rampant and a castle in the upper two quadrants, a crown at the top. My experience as an art and antiquities dealer had taught me some hard lessons about spotting counterfeit material.

  I set the spoon back on the table and sighed. “You know this set is a fake or you’d have sold it by now.”

  “You’re right, of course. The one thing Mother purchased with no advice from us. She was so pleased with herself. Father knew right away it was a copy. ‘Badly done, too.’ I can still hear him saying that; it entertained him for an entire fortnight. As always I rose to her defense. I don’t have the heart to sell it.”

  “Hal, I only came tonight because you’ve been avoiding me. You owe me almost two thousand for that loan I gave you. When am I going to see it?”

  “I have a long list of creditors. You’re welcome to stand in line.”

  My voice went a notch louder. “Funny. That’s not what you said when I gave you the money.”

  Hal winced as though I’d touched a particularly sensitive nerve. “You’re so aggressive, Madison. So unlike your brother. Samuel taught me to appreciate the beauty of old objects, their stories. It’s been hard to sell off my father’s possessions, but with you, it’s all about the dollars. It’s always been like that between us. ‘Me first,’ that’s your motto.”

  Our relationship had always blown hot and cold, but this time I had no patience for his bad temper and my irritation flared into anger. “I’m still trying to recover from the crash. I lost my only brother. Don’t dare use him against me.”

  “And I’m about to lose my job. Colin Reed, who this minute is partaking of my hospitality, quaffing down my best liquor and leering at the females, gave me my walking papers late this afternoon. I found out about it too late to cancel the party. I knew they weren’t going to grant me tenure, but I never expected this. And he’s got the gall to show up here. So I’m seriously broke. Even you can’t suck blood from a stone.”

  I mumbled a few words about that being unfortunate news.

  He waved my remarks away. “You’ll get your money soon. I have something else, anyway, worth vastly more than a hunk of silver.”

  “What?” I was a little surprised to hear he’d kept something back from me. “You’re not trying to sell it yourself, surely?”

  He tightened the rubber strap on his arm again, ignoring me.

  “Hal. Before you float off to never-never land, listen to me. You’ve been satisfied with the prices I’ve gotten for you before. If this thing you have is really valuable you could end up getting ripped off. Sell it through me and you can pay me back that way. For crying out loud, don’t be so stubborn.”

  “You’ve made enough off me. This time it’s my turn.” Hal managed a smile and resumed his preparations, a ritual he seemed to enjoy almost as much as the high.

  He picked up the syringe and pulled off the cap, dropping it onto the table. The needle looked no wider than a human hair. He drew the liquid into the syringe and cleared the air bubbles. Curling up his left fist, he jabbed the tip of the syringe into his skin, flagged it, and pushed down the plunger. A dribble of blood emerged at the puncture site.

  He leaned his head back against the wicker chair as if he wanted to rest. I walked away in disgust, leaving him there, dreamy eyed and slack jawed. Had he found anything of real value? I doubted it. But why would he want to hide it from me?

  Two

  Back at home I grabbed an ice-cold bottle of lager from the fridge and took it out to the balcony. The unmistakable scent of marijuana drifted up on the warm night air. This was one of the great benefits of living near the Greenwich clubs: you could get high just by breathing. An amorphous yellowish light filtered down from the signs and streetlights. Knots of club-goers passed by, calling out to each other, girls in their four-hundred-dollar jeans and five-inch spike heels, guys trying to pick them up and failing.

  Although Samuel and I had shared the condo, we’d been more like two ships in the night these last years, with him so often away on a dig and me always flying off somewhere to meet a client. We’d loved the place; it was a refuge for us both. Surprisingly, given our professions, our furnishings had a contemporary look. We did have a few older pieces though—precious Turkomen rugs, the sixties Scandinavian teak furniture I’d scored from a dealer going out of business, our Eames lamps and chandelier. The high ceilings gave a sense of spaciousness, and during the day, light poured in from our large windows. On the rare winter evenings I’d spend alone, I loved to sit in front of the gas fireplace, listening to music and watching the snow drift outside. I’d put on the great Roy Orbison or Diana Krall and let their voices sink into my soul.

  Just remembering the good times we’d had putting our place together over the years brought the hurt ramping back. And when memories of Samuel swamped me, as they did often, it took a long time to regain my balance. Since returning from the hospital I’d not found the courage to venture into Samuel’s suite. His belongings lurked there defiantly, daring me to open the door and sort through them. Most were pieces gathered over decades of travel to the Aegean and Near East. Among them, a rare Jaf tribal rug with brocaded selvedges, the threads of vermilion and cobalt as brilliant as the day they were first woven. A bride belt of hammer-beaten silver from the Ottoman period in Anatolia. His books. A copy of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, signed by T.E. Lawrence, first editions of Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet, a set of four. I’d been a willing accomplice to the raid on Hal’s inheritance, but I would never part with anything of mine.

  Thinking about my inhe
ritance took me back to my seventh birthday, a blustery November day when Samuel and I traveled to a favorite haunt, a town on Lake Ontario where a close family friend lived. Beyond the forty-year gulf between our ages, how different the two of us were even then. Me, impetuous and demanding; Samuel, reserved and measured. I sometimes believed he’d think about it before he put his foot down to take a step. I would grow to be taller than he, with a sturdy build and the dark hair and eyes of our shared Mediterranean heritage. He had light gray eyes and the pale complexion more characteristic of northern Europeans.

  There’d been almost no one around that day, just a solitary jogger and a couple with their Labradors. The dogs chased sticks thrown into the lake, oblivious to the freezing water. Samuel held my hand and I leaned in toward him as we trudged out onto the gritty sand. “You know, John,” he said, “there are wonders all around us, but most people never take the time to see them. They’re too caught up with their day-to-day concerns.”

  The parks people had already set up a rust-colored fence of wooden slats to stop the winter winds from blowing snow onto the boardwalk. A ribbon of fallen leaves ran along its perimeter. The water was steely gray. Spray shot into the air as waves collided with the rocks. No tang of salt hung in the air, nor was there any kelp thrown up at the water’s edge; otherwise, you’d swear you were at the ocean.

  I thought about what he’d just said and remembered a summer afternoon on the shore filling two jars with bits of colored glass worn smooth and round by the waves.

  “Like the jewels I found last summer?” I asked him. It amazed me that such beautiful objects lay on the ground just waiting to be picked up. The most plentiful green ones were my emeralds, the blues my sapphires. Occasionally I’d find an amber or a rare ruby.

  “Yes, like that,” Samuel said. “Let’s look near the rocks. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find something.”

  It didn’t take long to spot the bottle wedged between two boulders. Samuel had to help me pull it out. It was a corked glass bottle, a pale aqua colour. Inside I could see a piece of ivory paper rolled up. The cork was loose and I soon fished out the paper.