by M. J. Rose
The doorbell rang and the off-key chimes broke into her consciousness. And then a man shouted out: “Hello, hello,” in a deep voice with a German accent.
It wasn’t her father’s voice.
Chapter 11
Geneva, Switzerland
Saturday, April 26th—10:00 a.m.
“I appreciate you bringing me the original letter,” Dr. Karl Smettering said as he leaned over his worktable, scanning the spidery script in slightly faded black ink on parchment.
“The quality of the copy was near perfect,” Jeremy said regretfully.
“But still a copy. You’ve never been concerned before, why now?”
“Didn’t you hear about the substitution made at Sotheby’s in London last month just days before a sale? A forged signature sold for thousands. No one’s figured out how it happened but it’s made us all more cautious. And then yesterday a story about this letter was leaked to the Tribune…”
“You didn’t tell me. How did that happen?”
“Confidential information with news value commands a nice price. I logged it into the system at the auction house, which is password protected, but someone must have breached protocol to access my report. It’s happened before but I thought we had new firewalls in place so it couldn’t happen again.”
“Technology.” Smettering spat the word.
“Yes, but our privacy is sacrosanct. We owe our customers discretion.”
“Well, I’m sorry but working with a copy is like looking at a photograph instead of the painting itself. The answers I’m looking for are in the nuances.” The expert positioned the letter under a microscope and peered at the individual characters. “It’s not just the handwriting I need to see but how the ink holds the lines, seeps into the paper, the pressure the nib made, if there are rips, spills. Clues, Jeremy, they are all clues.”
“I know that. Still, traveling with an original is a risk.” Which was why he’d driven here rather than taking a plane; he wouldn’t travel with the document and without a gun.
“For a scholar, you’ve always been courageous. What’s going on? A letter from Beethoven to Antonie Brentano is definitely a breathtaking find, but there has to be more to this to explain your reaction.”
“You’ll understand once you read it.”
“Worth killing for?”
“You and I both know how little people will kill for.”
Smettering swung the scope out of the way and read the letter. When he finished he glanced over at Jeremy, shook his head slightly and sighed as if a burden had just settled on his shoulders. Without saying anything, he hunched over the letter again, this time reading not from left to right as the sentences had been penned, but from right to left, and not from top to bottom but bottom to top. It was critical for the expert to look at the words out of context because sometimes peculiarities were more noticeable with the change in focus.
Jeremy began to pace and take inventory of the room. In all the years he had been visiting the “master”—as he called Smettering—this Bauhaus clean and spare room had never changed. Not a painting or a plant had been added. There were only two objects on the blond wood desk: a black microscope and sleek black table lamp that offered six levels of halogen intensity; the other tools of the trade were in drawers.
Smettering had been working for over a half hour and still hadn’t offered up an opinion. Jeremy was once again struck by how much patience was required of him. He glanced at his watch. Meer was probably at his house by now and Ruth would be making her something to eat. Maybe he should step out into the hall and call and see if—
“This is a major find for you, congratulations,” Smettering said as he walked around to where Jeremy stood and patted his colleague on the back, drawing him away from the desk area over to the couch.
“It’s authentic?” Jeremy asked.
“I have no doubt.” Taking two snifters from a side table, he poured an inch of brandy into each and handed one to Jeremy. “I know it’s early in the day but you deserve a moment to enjoy this accomplishment.”
Accepting the glass, Jeremy thanked his friend.
“Although it is a very complicated accomplishment, isn’t it?” Smettering continued. “Beethoven very clearly admits he was involved in both a robbery and a forgery.”
“Which will make me the man responsible for exposing Beethoven as a criminal.”
“There will be dedicated Beethoven enthusiasts and scholars who’d rather destroy you, than let you destroy their hero’s reputation.”
Jeremy shrugged.
“Not concerned? You’d better be. This is Beethoven, the iconic master we’re talking about. Your revelation will be a powder keg.”
On the lawn a robin landed in the birdbath and the movement distracted Jeremy, who watched through the window as the bird put its head down and drank, concentric circles rippling out from where its beak broke the surface. While he watched, he saw a reflection in the window of someone walking in the room behind him and heard, almost instantly, an angry shout from Smettering.
Jeremy spun around.
A man wearing a black wool mask pointed a snub-nose revolver at Smettering’s chest.
“Stay where you are,” he snarled at Jeremy. “Don’t move away from the window.”
When Jeremy hunted for Torahs he always carried an Austrian-made Glock 17A that right now was locked in the glove compartment of his car outside in the driveway. Why hadn’t he brought it inside? He had to do something. Quickly. Estimating the distance between where he stood and the desk, he judged whether or not he could reach the man and force the gun out of his hand without risking Smettering’s safety.
Then, miraculously he heard footsteps approaching from the hallway. Footsteps coming closer. The man threatening Smettering didn’t seem to notice. Maybe this would be the distraction Jeremy needed. Once the man turned to see the intruder, Jeremy could rush him and wrest the gun from him.
“There’s nothing here of any great value,” Smettering stammered, lying, Jeremy thought, unconvincingly. “There are some books…there…that pile…first editions. Take them.”
The man in the mask eyed the parchment on the desk. “What’s that?”
Smettering didn’t answer.
Pushing the gun deeper into the elderly man’s chest, the gunman repeated his question. “What is that?”
Despite the gun, Smettering put his hand down on the Beethoven letter.
The footsteps were coming closer. Whoever it was was almost there.
“Let him take it, Karl,” Jeremy said. His friend was old and frail and he was worried for him.
Smettering didn’t lift his hand.
“Karl! Let go.”
But Smettering didn’t release the letter.
The footsteps finally reached the door. Jeremy watched, ready to shout out a warning that hopefully would also be a cry for help. His heart raced. The man stepped over the threshold—damn. Jeremy should have anticipated this possibility. Damn his optimism. This second man was also wearing a black wool ski mask and he too held a gun that he pointed at Jeremy while the man at the desk used his revolver to force Smettering’s hand up. The Beethoven letter, streaking like a lightning bolt in a zigzag across the tabletop, was the last thing that Jeremy saw.
Chapter 12
Vienna, Austria
Saturday, April 26th—10:36 a.m.
Inspector Fiske, who had sad, basset-hound eyes and a full mustache, asked Meer yet more questions she couldn’t answer. One after the other. No, she didn’t know where her father was, and no, she didn’t know the woman whom she’d found in the kitchen. No, she didn’t know if anything was missing. No, she’d never been at the house before; she’d never been in Vienna before.
Finally he gave up and left her in her father’s living room. She sat there for a minute, not sure what she should do next while she watched police swarming through the rooms, making their way around the small house; taking photographs, dusting for fingerprints, peering into corne
rs, closets and behind doors. It seemed an intrusion her father would have resented but she couldn’t stop them.
“I just talked to the inspector. He said you’re free to go.”
Meer looked up. It was the man she’d opened the front door for right after she’d found the woman on the floor.
“She has no pulse. I don’t know what to do” was all she’d said to him, and he’d taken over, calling an ambulance and then starting CPR and sticking with it until the paramedics arrived. Maybe it was Meer’s fault the woman had died. If she’d started CPR in those critical seconds when she first found the woman perhaps she’d still be alive.
“It was too late even by the time you found her,” the man said to her now.
He was an uncomfortable paradox: a familiar stranger. She didn’t recognize anything about him: not the soft-spoken voice, high forehead, golden brown hair waving over the collar of a pale yellow shirt or slightly cool blue-gray eyes and not the mouth that either hinted at a secret or the capacity to be mean. She was certain she’d never seen him or met him before today—except she knew him. And he knew her. Hadn’t he just answered a question she hadn’t asked out loud?
Two policemen walked with an empty stretcher in the direction of the kitchen and the man moved so that his body blocked her from seeing it. “There’s no reason for you to stay here. Is there somewhere I can drop you off? Your hotel?”
“Thank you—” she started, then stopped. “I don’t even know your name. Or why you showed up.” She lifted her hands and let them drop in a helpless gesture. “Or anything.”
“I’m sorry.” Now the corners of his mouth moved into a smile and the secret was gone. “Sebastian Otto. I’m a friend of your father’s. He phoned me early this morning and said you would be arriving before he could get back. He told me his housekeeper would be here to let you in, of course, but since she doesn’t speak English, he asked if I would mind making sure you were all right and explaining his absence.”
“Making sure I was all right? His words?”
Sebastian nodded.
“The inspector wouldn’t tell me, do you know if the police have any idea what happened here? An arbitrary burglary gone awry? Or more complicated than that?”
“I wish I did, but I don’t. Except your father’s so smart—and he certainly knows how to protect himself…I’m sure wherever he is, he’s fine.”
“Do you have children?”
He nodded, and she thought she noticed a flash of pain in his eyes. “Why do you ask?”
“The way you’re reassuring me, you sound so paternal.”
“I think I was trying to reassure myself as well.”
“My father, he’s fine. He’s impervious.” That was how she used to see him: an adventurer who vanquished dragons, a swashbuckling pirate who stole stolen treasure. She had to remember he was a sixty-five-year-old, very religious, slightly eccentric curator who was far too comfortable taking chances. She was making herself nervous.
Coming from the direction of the kitchen, the two policemen reentered the living room with the gurney. Even with Sebastian in the way, Meer could see, under a sheet, the outline of the woman she’d found in the kitchen. She shuddered.
“I’ve got a car outside. Is there somewhere I can drop you?”
“The inspector said he’ll be going to the auction house when he’s finished here to see if they know where my father is. Could you take me there?”
Police cars crowded the narrow street in front of Jeremy Logan’s house and it took Sebastian a few minutes to maneuver his Mini out of his parking space.
At the end of the block, Meer looked back. “Did you know her?”
“Only to say hello when she answered the door. Or to thank her when she brought in tea or served dinner.”
“What was her name?”
“Ruth…” He hesitated. “I don’t know her last name.”
Meer looked at the fine blond hairs on the back of his hands on the wheel, noticed the long fingers and hard veins that stood out in relief and questioned her immediate sense of intimacy with this man she’d never seen before today. Not at ease with most people, never comfortable with small talk, instant simpatico with a stranger was alien to her. And yet, that’s exactly how she would describe her reaction to Sebastian—as if together they’d traversed the same treacherous shadows.
“You’ve been in my father’s house before. Did you notice if anything valuable was taken?” Then she amended the comment. “Nothing could be as valuable as that woman’s life. I didn’t mean—”
“It’s all right. I know you’re not heartless.” His accent wasn’t heavy but it was enough to make everything he said slightly inscrutable.
“How would you know that?”
“I would have seen it in your eyes.”
“That’s impossible,” she said, because if it wasn’t, then the pain she saw in his would be hard to bear.
He looked away from the road to face her and the connection when they made eye contact unnerved her.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she wasn’t sure why he’d apologized. For the discomfort he’d just caused? The lack of pretense in their exchange? People didn’t meet for the first time and talk like this, even under extenuating circumstances.
He negotiated the traffic and Meer examined the sights. Her father’s residential neighborhood had given way to a more commercial part of the city where the past mixed with the present. An occasional neon sign or familiar brand name emblazoned on a building did nothing to mar the sense that here, history was vitally alive.
From the car’s stereo, strains of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony filled the silence, but something was wrong with the sound, as if two separate tracks were playing over each other, one slightly slower than the other. The overlaps created jarring contrasts that corrupted the piece.
“Would you mind shutting that off?” Meer asked. She opened her window and let the cool breeze blow on her face.
He turned off the stereo. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.”
He hesitated, then: “Your father told me.”
“Told you what?”
“About your childhood. Your memories. The music you heard but could never remember. The accident. How close you came to being paralyzed when you broke your spine and what a trauma it was.”
Meer was exposed in a way she wasn’t used to and didn’t know how to respond.
Again, as if he could read her mind, Sebastian apologized. “Please understand, he only told me because of what my son, Nicolas, is going through.”
“How old is he?”
“Almost ten.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“At first…” Sebastian shrugged. “We don’t know. Dozens of medical doctors have confirmed it isn’t anything physical. My ex-wife is a psychologist and believes it’s a psychotic break but I don’t agree. Not anymore.”
Meer knew what was coming and wanted to stop him from telling her. She didn’t want to hear about another child who was lost the way she’d been lost, who suffered with the mystery and isolation that she’d endured, but Sebastian was already explaining.
“My research led me to past life trauma and the Memorist Society. After I described what had happened to my son, your father shared what had happened to you.”
Unused to discussing her private hell with anyone, Meer didn’t respond. Forgetting to be worried about her father for a minute, she was instead angry with him. Who was Sebastian to him that he’d shared all this?
Either not noticing her hesitancy or choosing to ignore it, Sebastian continued. “My son is now in very bad shape and is living at the psychiatric hospital where my ex-wife works. He can’t even talk to me anymore.” Anguish scarred his voice.
“I’m sorry.” Meer was filled with empathy for him but even more for his child.
“Thank you. It’s horrible. Not for me, for Nicolas, for every day that he loses. And what’s making it all worse is that Rebecca and I don’t agree on
what the next steps should be…she’s a rational woman who looks at things one way only. I went along with her and the other doctors at first but too much time passed with no improvement…there are other things we can try and I want to try them all. We have to try.”
“You mean regression therapy?”
Sebastian nodded and made a right onto a wide street. Taking the corner too hard, his wheels screeched in revolt. He turned the stereo back on. Mozart’s Prague Symphony filled the car with its rich complexity. “I’m sorry. You have enough on your mind right now. I should be distracting you, not depressing you. Why don’t I tell you something about where we are instead of my problems.” His voice was slightly forced but determined as he launched into a detailed description of the area. “This is the Ringstrasse, the boulevard that circles the inner city. It was built in 1857 when the Emperor ordered the thirteenth-century walls that were here to be torn down.”
It was strange, given the circumstances, but also a relief to pay attention as Sebastian pointed out the large twin museums—one art, one natural history—and Emperor Ferdinand’s palace.
“A personal tour,” she said lightly. “How lovely.”
“My mother ran a travel agency and gave tours. Over the summers, when the tourists descended, I was often drafted to help out. It comes naturally.”
“I spent those same summers in my mother’s antiques store. You probably had more fun. At least you were outside.” She looked out the window. “It looks so much like somewhere I’ve been before. Paris maybe?”
“Yes, a lot of the Emperor’s Vienna was based on Parisian design. For a European city, much of what you see is relatively new, built in the 1800s. It was this rebuilding and the fortune the Emperor spent that led to his losing popularity with the people. And now, we’re entering the inner city,” he said as he steered the car down yet another twisting street.
“That building looks out of place here.” She pointed to an art deco bank on the corner. “Too new.”
