by M. J. Rose
It happened instantly, without warning, without the cold embrace she was used to. There was no sense of time flattening out or turning over on itself. She simply knew how to find the memory song. In her mind’s eye she performed the magic: cut the symbol of ten circles in half and, as if they were made of string, laid them out horizontally into ten straight lines.
Ten lines with small marks on them in various places. Not an arbitrary abstract design but a perfect musical staff, and on each of the lines were marks that she now understood as notes.
C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A#-E#.
She studied the familiar musical sequence and so many different things she’d read, and her father had told her, and her teachers at Juilliard had taught, all coalesced. This was the Circle of Fifths Pythagoras had identified over 2500 years before, tying harmonic relationships to the human energy system. The fifth was also the interval found in most sacred music and said to harmonize human energy. Pythagoras had used music compositions based on this interval to heal illness, to effect mood changes. It was said that through exploring his past lives he’d discovered a constant: a universal life form inhabiting and connecting all living things: vibration. Everything, he said, from a grain of sand to the stars, was in a state of constant vibration.
As if she was reaching out into that collective unconscious that her father always talked about, and plucking the information like a grape from a cluster, she understood that these twelve notes that Devadas’s brother, Rasul, had engraved on the bone flute were his memory song in honor of a truncated life. A song he wrote to soothe the young girl Ohana, who had brought him her lover’s bone, whose heart had been cut down the middle and separated into before there was tragedy, and after. A song to help Ohana remember that before there was a death there had been a life, and before that life a death and that there would be a life after this death too. The circles would continue on without end and everyone who was once connected would be connected again.
Chapter 69
Wednesday, April 30th—11:03 p.m.
Lucian Glass and Alex Kalfus pulled up to the Sacher just after Malachai’s cab dropped him off and the two of them watched him disappear through the hotel’s front door. They’d trailed him all day, from the hospital early that morning to a bookstore with Sebastian and Meer, then to the Beethoven house and then into the Rathaus garden where the three of them had parted ways.
It was easy enough for the agent and the policeman to stay on Malachai’s trail even when he was out of sight thanks to the tracking device still in place. But the team following Meer didn’t have a tracking device, and after she and Sebastian jumped on the tram they’d lost her.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to wait a while and see if Meer returns,” Lucian said to Kalfus, who gave him a curious look.
“This isn’t just professional for you, is it?”
“It’s a case, Kalfus. A case I want to solve.”
“Are you personally involved with the woman?”
“I’ve never met her.”
The two law officers stayed on watch until one-thirty in the morning but when Meer still hadn’t arrived, Kalfus insisted they call in backup and each try to get some rest themselves.
Lucian couldn’t sleep, though, and sat in his hotel room with the television on and the sound off, sketching scenes from the day. One after another he ripped them off the pad before they were finished and let them fall to the floor until there was a pile of almost a dozen. He didn’t care about them; it was the action, the movement, and the release of the tension that he craved.
Where was she? And why, as Kalfus had asked, was he taking her disappearance so very personally?
Chapter 70
My life often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was an historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had been born again because I had not fulfilled the task given to me.
—Carl Jung
Thursday, May 1st—8:00 a.m.
“Good morning.”
The sound of his voice split the silence open, startling her and she jerked up into a sitting position.
It was just Sebastian.
“What time is it?” she asked. “I wasn’t supposed to fall asleep.”
“There’s nothing to worry about. We’re still here. So’s that.” He pointed to the flute. “It’s eight. The electricity’s back on—would you like coffee? Something to eat? You barely ate last night.”
“Does the hotel have room service?”
“They have a buffet downstairs, but I can ask them to bring up something. What would you like?”
“Coffee. Toast. Some honey for the toast. If they have eggs, I’d like some and juice too.”
When he came back from ordering he told her the manager was going to send someone up with the food right away. “It shouldn’t take long.”
“I need to call my father and find out if he’s all right. And Malachai.”
“All taken care of,” Sebastian said. “While you were sleeping I checked on Nicolas from the pay phone down the street, then called both Malachai and Jeremy. Your father was still sleeping. The nurse said he was resting comfortably and that his fever had dropped during the night. I asked her to tell him you’d be there later this morning. I assume that’s fine?”
“Yes, thanks. How’s Nicolas?”
“Improving. Well, the pneumonia is improving.”
When the food came Meer plucked the juice off the cart while Sebastian signed the bill. After the waiter left, Sebastian double-locked the door behind him, the precaution bringing back the edge of nervousness that her sleep had smoothed out.
“That’s great news about your son.”
“Yes…yes…but he’s still in so much danger. Every day that he remains lost inside his head is exponentially worse.” Sebastian poured himself coffee. “I’m sorry. I’m just so frustrated. I phoned Rebecca, too, but if she was there she wouldn’t take my call. Why is she doing this? I never abused him, never hurt him. When nothing else works, why not try an alternative?”
“I remember how angry my mother was when my father first took me to Malachai.”
“He told me he didn’t have an easy time of it.”
“None of us had an easy time of it.” Meer picked up the toast and took a bite. She’d been ravenous a few minutes ago but now the food held no interest for her. A surfeit of memories—ones she wished had faded—flared: the bickering behind their bedroom door at night, the hushed arguments, the icy stillness in the house that kept them all separated and isolated during that last winter. What would have happened if she hadn’t told them about the dreads? Would they have stayed together?
“All I know is she’s stopping me from trying to do everything I can for my son and I am not going to let her.” He stood. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Once the door closed behind him she was sorry she hadn’t told him the amazing news that she’d uncovered the memory song. Wasn’t he the reason she’d worked so hard last night? To find the song so he could play it for his son and help him the way no one had been able to help her? Yes. Of course, but after so many years of searching for the music through the fog of endless dreams and half-waking nightmares, she wasn’t quite ready to give it up and give it over. She needed to hear it just once by herself. Last night she couldn’t play it for fear she’d wake him up, but he wouldn’t be able to hear her now over the sound of the shower.
Holding the ancient piece of bone gingerly in her hand Meer waited to hear the water’s steady pounding and only then put the crudely crafted instrument to her lips and arranged her fingers.
Covering one of the holes she blew air into the cylinder and played a C, a G and then a D. The notes sounded rough, a primitive call brought up from the earth, a tone that contained rain and smoke and fire and cold that filled the room
and then slipped outside and encircled the city and the country and then the planet, going wide into the galaxy. So disturbing and complicated were the first three notes, Meer put the crude flute down. Throughout history people had played those same notes on a wide variety of instruments. So it wasn’t just the notes but these particular vibrations that were different. She could still feel them in the room and how they were taking a longer time than was usual to dissipate. Were these the binaural beats her father had talked about?
The steady shower reminded her that she had a limited amount of time.
She had to do this now.
Trying again, she blew with more confidence, holding the C note longer, and then played the second note, this new sound mingling with the restive tone already lingering in the air and the third and the fourth. The beats of the blended music verged on difficult and unqualified noise.
She stopped playing. This wasn’t a game. Not a theory on paper. Beethoven was right. She played the next two notes and the next. An unholy blackness settled on her. A treacherous miasma. An awful preamble but she had to do this…get it over with once and for all.
Meer started at the beginning of the song and blew out the first note again, and then the second and then—
“What are you doing?” Sebastian asked.
Chapter 71
Thursday, May 1st—8:52 a.m.
He stood in the doorway to the bathroom, a towel around his waist, his hair dripping. The strong shoulders and delineated muscles in his arms and chest were tensed. “You figured it out?”
She nodded.
“Play it for me, please.”
“We don’t know what it can do.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“Beethoven was so convinced of how dangerous this was he went through an elaborate ruse to hide—”
Sebastian cut her off. “Beethoven lived over a hundred and fifty years ago and you don’t know for sure why he hid anything.”
“I do know. He was sure the song was a malevolent force. He’d heard it. He knew what it was capable of. He was right.”
“That’s not in the letter. He never explained that.”
“But I know it. Don’t you believe me?”
“If I didn’t believe you would I have come this far? Would we even be here? Did you really figure out the song? Please, Meer. I won’t hold you responsible for anything that happens to me, just play me the song.” The plea in his eyes was even more desperate than the one in his voice, and she wished she could help him but she’d experienced memories without being prepared for them. Trying to run away from them had almost crippled her.
“Not without knowing what the full ramifications of your hearing it might be. Not while we’re alone. Not while we’re still in danger. Help me get out of here with the flute…get me to my father and Malachai…and then together all of us can figure out what we need to do next.”
Sebastian started to interrupt her again but she wouldn’t let him. “I know you want to play the music for Nicolas—and I want you to be able to do that. Nothing would make me happier than if the music works and brings him back but we need to do this safely. I can’t risk hurting him or you. I’ll go on blaming myself forever.”
Sadness overwhelmed her as her last words lingered in the air. She had been blaming herself forever, for much more than one lifetime, but why? And as soon as she asked herself the question, she knew the answer. His death had been her fault. But whose death?
Meer closed her eyes and searched the inestimable blackness until she finally saw the outline of a man. But who he was and who she had been when she was with him wouldn’t come into focus. Only the sickening horror that someone she’d loved had died because of her, and somehow this flute and its music were connected to that tragedy.
Chapter 72
Thursday, May 1st—9:00 a.m.
Nine hours after leaving the same spot the night before, Lucian Glass met Alex Kalfus in front of the Sacher Hotel at 1010 Philharmonikerstrasse.
“According to our backup team, which has been trailing Meer Logan, she never returned during the night,” Kalfus told him when he got into the car at nine-fifteen.
“Can you find out from the hotel housekeeper if her room was used overnight? It is possible that your men missed her.”
Kalfus bristled. “Not likely.” But he made the call. “They are sending someone to the room,” he reported back.
While he watched the hotel entrance, Lucian sipped his second cup of coffee of the morning with the devotion of an addict, hoping the elixir would do more than the first had to shake him awake.
“The fräulein’s bed was not slept in and the towels and service in the bathroom showed no signs of being used. Not even a washcloth,” Kalfus reported.
“I think we should call the hospital and find out if Jeremy Logan had a visit from his daughter yet this morning—and let’s see what we can find out about Sebastian Otto’s whereabouts while we’re at it.”
The voice on the other end of Kalfus’s phone crackled back to life. “Ja?” He listened, nodding, and then turned back to Lucian. “So, Jeremy only had one visitor last night and that was Malachai. The hospital’s record coincides with ours. He arrived at five o’clock and stayed until visiting hours were over at eight.”
Lucian checked his notes anyway. Malachai had left the hospital at 8:05 and taken a taxi to the Memorist Society where he stayed for three hours and fifteen minutes and then left at 11:22 with Fremont Brecht. The two of them got into Fremont’s chauffeured car, which dropped Malachai off at the Sacher Hotel at 11:52.
“Phone calls?”
“Jeremy Logan received one call last night and another this morning.”
“What time?”
“10:15 last night.”
“From where?”
“The call went to the general switchboard and wasn’t traced. The one this morning came in at 8:15 but Jeremy was sleeping so the call wasn’t put through—but it was traced and originated from a phone booth in the Spittleberg area.”
“Isn’t that near Jeremy’s house?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe she stayed there last night. Or in a hotel in that section. Could you get a patrol car to canvas the hotels in the area?”
Kalfus was about to make the call when he pointed to the front of the hotel. “There he is.”
Both men watched as Malachai stood outside, perusing the street. Kalfus turned the key in the ignition preparing to pull out. Lucian knew they had to follow Malachai and not wait for Meer but he was angry with his quarry for choosing now to leave. Except he didn’t leave. Not yet.
“There’s something about the look in his eyes, as if he’s always planning two steps ahead,” Lucian said.
“I can’t decide if it makes him look intelligent or guilty.”
“Both, and he’s much more guilty and much more intelligent than you’d guess. The man hasn’t taken one misstep in nine months.”
“Well, certainly not one misstep while he’s been here. Visits with friends, a meeting at an archaeology society, out to dinner…all seemingly innocent.” Kalfus shifted into Reverse but Lucian stopped him.
“No, sit tight, he’s just going into the café next door.”
Seconds later, Malachai could be seen through the restaurant window and as he studied the menu, Lucian studied him.
“Whatever happened in those woods in Baden,” Kalfus said, “is it possible that Malachai was responsible, even though he wasn’t present? Do you think any of these robberies or attacks have been Malachai’s doing?”
“It’s possible.”
“Probable?”
“I’m not sure. Meer Logan is one of the few people Malachai’s shown any genuine affection for.”
“Do you think that his feelings would prevent him from going after what he wants?”
“No, but I don’t believe he would have to hurt her to get what he wanted. If she had it, she’d give it to him.” Lucian paused. “No one wants Malachai to be guil
ty more than I do but he was instrumental in bringing Meer here—he wanted her to look at the gaming box and hopefully glean important clues from it—so why would he arrange to have the box stolen before she really got a good chance to study it? Nothing is straightforward with him, but Meer is the only link to where the flute might be and what the memory song is. Would he put her in jeopardy if she’s his best chance?”
“Who would?”
“Someone who doesn’t believe in reincarnation and just wants the objects for their monetary value.” Lucian finished what was left of the bitter coffee as a waiter in the traditional black suit and white apron served Malachai his breakfast. “Or someone who wants us to think that.”
“I’m not sure I follow.” Kalfus frowned, confused.
“I’m not either.” Lucian gave a halfhearted laugh. “How much do we know about Sebastian Otto?”
“Absolutely nothing to make us suspicious. He’s a musician with the Philharmonic here. Plays the oboe. Thirty-eight years old. Never has had any dealings with the police. Divorced, one child, age nine, who has been suffering a mental disorder for the last six months.”
“A son?”
Kalfus nodded.
So that was where Lucian had heard the name before. He was annoyed that he hadn’t remembered sooner. About three months ago Malachai had received a phone call from Sebastian Otto, calling at Jeremy Logan’s suggestion, to ask if the reincarnationist could come to Vienna and see his son. Lucian had remembered the call because of how frustrated Malachai had sounded when he explained he couldn’t make the trip.
“Sebastian believes that his son is suffering from some sort of past life crisis,” he told Kalfus. “There’s more than one connection here.”
Watching Malachai read through that morning’s newspaper, Lucian wondered what else he’d forgotten that might be important now.
