The Reincarnationist

by M. J. Rose

  “Yes, yes…but first, is Quinn all right? Tell me about Quinn.”

  Gabriella closed her eyes for one brief second, then opened them in an expression of relief, looked at Josh and nodded. He took her by the elbow and moved her away from the crowd over to the windows where it was quieter.

  Josh watched her gnaw her bottom lip. If this was like the last call, she’d hear a recording—a few words from Bettina, a quick sentence or two from her daughter—and then receive instructions from the nameless kidnapper.

  He looked at his watch. They only had ten minutes left to get to the gate and board the plane, and it was the last one out that night. But she was still on the phone, and then she laughed. It was such an utterly joyous sound it sounded almost obscene and was followed immediately by tears. She was working at not breaking down.

  “No. I don’t know yet.” Pause. “Yes, by Friday. Where am I supposed to go?” She listened, nodding. “No, of course I won’t bring the police.” Pause. “Can I have someone drive me, though?” Pause. “How do you know he’s not a policeman? I don’t know. How do I know Quinn will still be alive?” Pause. “Yes. I have the phone. It’s with me all the time. But please don’t—” Gabriella shut her eyes and slumped against the wall. The hand holding the phone dropped to her side. “He just hung up,” she said to Josh, her voice drained of emotion.

  “What did he say?”

  “He…he’s going to call sometime on Friday to tell us where to meet him.” She bit her lip and although her eyes shone damply, no tears spilled out. “That’s when he’ll tell me where to meet him. But Josh…he…” She took a deep breath as if to swallow her hysteria. “He knew where we were. That I’d…that I’d been to see Rollins. But I never told him. Never told him Rollins’s name. I never told him where we were going or who we were going to see.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure. Right before he hung up, he just said he hoped Mr. Rollins was as good as his reputation. We need to call Larry now and warn him,” Gabriella said as she opened her phone, punched in a number, and waited. “No answer. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything worse than he’s out of range, does it?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  But she couldn’t let it go. “If he’s hurt…”

  “He’s not hurt, Gabriella. Listen to me. If this lunatic is still waiting for you to get him the answers, it means he can’t get them on his own.”

  This logic becalmed her.

  Josh checked his watch. “We should get to the gate now.” But when they reached it, they found out that the plane had just been delayed for forty minutes. “Let’s get some coffee.” He didn’t want her just sitting there staring at the clock; even drinking weak, lukewarm coffee afforded something to do.

  “Do you think he’s listening in on my telephone calls?”

  “Too complicated to set up.”

  “Do you think we’re being followed to make sure we’re not going to the police?”

  Involuntarily Josh looked around. After Rome—where they’d been followed not just by the police but by the assassin and thief who himself was assassinated—he knew if someone wanted to get to you they could. Of course Quinn’s kidnapper could have someone trailing them.

  Josh led Gabriella to a table and then got in line, bought two coffees, two muffins and two apples, and set them down on the Formica table.

  “You need to eat something,” he said.

  Gabriella didn’t reach for the food, only the coffee. She took a sip and then asked, “Did you tell anyone where we were going?”

  “Only Malachai. And he might have told Beryl. All this madman had to do was search the Internet for archeologists who specialize in ancient languages. There can’t be too many, right? You, Rollins and Geller would come up in the first ten results.”

  Gabriella seized on his explanation, clung to it and, for a second, looked almost relieved. Then the momentary comfort was gone. “It was just a dig, another excavation and now…how many people are in danger because of me? Because of the stones? Rudolfo’s dead. The security guard is dead. My daughter and Bettina are missing. Alice may be in danger. Now Rollins—and he has a wife and three kids. Everyone who comes in contact with me is in danger now. You should warn Malachai and his aunt that they could be at risk. And you—you especially, Josh.”

  “Stop now.” He wiped the tears from her face and brushed a stray strand of hair off her forehead. “We’re going to get through this and come out of it fine. All of us. You and me, and especially Quinn. Whoever has the stones is using Quinn to force you into giving him the information he needs but doesn’t want to hurt her. Or Bettina. Or Rollins. I know he didn’t intend for Rudolfo to be killed. I saw that happen. The thief was on his way out. He was running away. He never would have shot Rudolfo if the professor hadn’t gone after him.”

  But he could tell from the expression in her eyes that she couldn’t believe him, and he didn’t blame her.

  For the next half hour there was simply nothing to do but give in to the tedium and wait. Gabriella took a thousand deep breaths and looked at her watch an equal number of times. Josh took a few minutes to check his phone and saw he had three messages.

  Two were from Malachai asking what was going on with Rollins, what they’d discovered and when they’d be back. The last message was from Rachel, but as he started to listen to it there was an announcement that their flight was boarding, so he only heard snatches of what she was saying.

  “Another flashback…Blackie and another man…in Rome and was killed. Please, Josh. Just consider what I’m asking. Please.” Her anxiety was so familiar, and so was the way she was acting as if she were his responsibility. But how could that be possible? He’d met her only three days ago.

  The plane ride back to New York was uneventful, and Josh was thankful that Gabriella could find some escape in sleep. He’d spent a long day looking into her eyes and seeing too much pain.

  “When you look into the eyes of someone you’re photographing and glimpse a terrible suffering, don’t turn away,” his father had once told him. “It’s a gift to see into the depths of grief, because only when you realize that someone can be in that much pain and still function, speak civilly, shake your hand and tell you how nice it is to meet you, do you understand why you can’t ever give in or give up. There’s always another chance, another day. That’s the miracle of the human spirit. Take on the pain, Josh. Give it its due. That’s the only way to beat it.”

  His father’s face in sleep, when he was dying, had been as serene as Gabriella’s was now.

  Josh tried to sleep, too, but he couldn’t stop thinking that there was some clue to what was happening that he was missing. Something kept bothering him. What was it?

  Pulling a notebook and pen out of his knapsack, he wrote out the list of numbers that Rollins had translated—1, 3, 4, 5, 7—and left an x for the one he hadn’t been able to read. Even if the missing number was a 2 or a 6, the numbers still didn’t fall into a logical sequence.

  Why would six stones be numbered that way?

  His head was pounding and he felt the first hint of a migraine. Reaching into his pocket to grab the pillbox, his fingers brushed against his cell phone. There’d been no time to call Rachel back in the midst of Gabriella’s ongoing crisis. As much as he wished he could help Rachel reconcile Harrison with the man in Rome—

  Josh stared out of the window, into the deep black sky. Black without any hint of color. Black…was that the name of the man she’d mentioned? Black? No. Blackie. The name was familiar, but he couldn’t remember why. Shutting his eyes, he leaned his head on the window and let his mind go blank. There was something, but it was so indistinct, like a whisper, he couldn’t grab hold of it.

  Blackie?

  He was sure now he’d heard the name before Rachel had used it. Black? Blackie? Blackness? Blackwell? Yes. That was it.

  It wasn’t a name Josh had ever heard before, he was certain of that. But it was a name that Percy Talmage
knew. Titus “Blackie” Blackwell had been one of the members of the Phoenix Club and the man who’d gone to Rome to oversee the archeologist who was—the rest exploded in a burst.

  Percy’s sister, Esme, had gone to Rome. She was Blackie’s lover. Was it possible Rachel was remembering Esme’s life? That she was Percy’s sister? Suddenly it all came together; a swirl of colors and shapes that finally settled down into a recognizable image.

  “What’s wrong?” Gabriella asked.

  “I thought you were sleeping.”

  “I woke up a few minutes ago. You look like you saw a ghost.”

  “Is it at all possible that the tomb had been opened before, a hundred years ago?”

  “No.”

  “What if they’d used that tunnel I found?”

  “No, that was undisturbed, too. We’d have some evidence. Why?”

  “What about the box of stones? Could that have been opened before?”

  “How, if the tomb was closed? No, that box was sealed shut. It definitely hadn’t been opened in over a thousand years.”

  Then there were no other possibilities, especially if Rollins was right about the numbers on the stones.

  “There aren’t six stones,” he said.

  “What?” Gabriella said. “I don’t—”

  He didn’t let her finish. “Listen to me. You and Rudolfo didn’t find all of the stones. I can’t believe I didn’t figure it out before now. There is another set of stones…another six stones that must have been buried in a different tomb. One that Neely did find. Altogether there are twelve stones, Gabriella. That’s why the numbers are out of sequence.”

  He watched a light flash in her eyes, then watched it go out.

  “No. That can’t be true. Don’t you realize what that means? If you’re right? If we give this lunatic Larry’s translation he’ll know there are twelve stones and think that Rudolfo and I found them and hid them and this horror won’t end. If we try to give him a phony translation and it doesn’t work—”

  “Gabriella, this man has to know that he’s dealing with a legend, and—”

  “Maybe you’re wrong. The numbers could mean something else. Why wouldn’t all the stones be in one place?”

  He put his arm around her shoulder, encircling her grief and frustration with his arm. He wished his palm could wick up her pain, that he could absorb it into his own body, his own skin.

  The moment wasn’t familiar. Gabriella’s grassy, citrusy scent wasn’t, either. But how he felt? That was different. He shut his eyes against the onslaught of emotional memory. He had shared a grief like this once, with the woman he had lost. It was one of the silken threads that wove them together in the past and through time. Julius and Sabina had faced the unknown fate of their unborn child, and had ached over it in each other’s arms.

  “What am I going to do?” Gabriella asked.

  “You’re going to give this lunatic all twelve stones, along with a full translation.”

  “How?”

  “I’m going to find them for you.”

  Chapter 59

  New York City—Wednesday, 2:00 a.m.

  “I feel so helpless,” Gabriella said to Josh as they walked out of the terminal. “Everything is out of my control. I can’t even help you with this next part.”

  The car service she’d called from New Haven was waiting for her by the curb. The driver took her overnight bag, placed it in the trunk and opened the door for her. She held on to it, looking so worn out, Josh thought, the only thing that was keeping her standing was the car’s support.

  “Will you call me tomorrow? As soon as you know something?” she asked with a tremor in her voice.

  “I hate that you’re going home to an empty house. I wish you’d called your father and asked him to come back from his conference.”

  “Why? So he could sit and worry with me?” She was hesitating, not quite ready to get in the car, waiting for something.

  Josh took her hand. Her confident stance and the courageous glint he’d seen in her eyes when he’d first met her at the dig in Rome were gone.

  How could a figment, a fragment of a woman he didn’t know, matter to him as much as this woman might? As much as she already did? Flesh and blood versus a concept of destiny? He was a fool.

  “I’ll be up there as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll be all right. You don’t need to—”

  “No. I don’t need to. We’re past words like that, Gabriella.”

  She blinked back tears, found some hidden reserve of strength and stood up straighter.

  Josh was relieved. He needed to know she’d be okay, that she could take care of herself until he could get back to her, because it was urgent that he find Rachel and take a journey with her now—one that didn’t involve cars or planes but that might take him much farther away.

  Thursday, 10:05 a.m.

  Josh walked up the stone steps toward the Metropolitan Museum’s main doors, where Rachel was waiting for him in her uncle’s office. She looked anxious; she was smoking a cigarette and had deep circles under her eyes.

  She greeted him impatiently.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked when he saw her.

  “I didn’t tell you over the phone,” she said, sipping from a cup of steaming coffee. “I am definitely being followed, and I—”

  Josh stopped listening. He wondered if Rachel’s tail had been following him and Gabriella, too, if there was another connection to all this that he’d missed.

  “No,” she said. “No one could have followed you. How would they know you out of the tens of thousands of people who come to the museum every day?”

  How had she had known what he was thinking?

  She always knew. You two were like that.

  The answer came from Percy, across the years. Josh shook his head, trying to shake loose the voice.

  “What is it?” Rachel asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m sure it’s my uncle, but I don’t know why. He’s being so obsessive about my flashbacks. Instead of being worried about me, he’s pressuring me to explore them, to go to a hypnotherapist. He’s even found someone he wants me to see…and I will if you won’t help me. But I want you to do it. I trust you. That’s another crazy thing…that I trust you. I don’t really know you. But if you won’t help…I have to do something, especially now…”

  “Especially now? Did something else happen?”

  “Yes, but it’s very confusing. I can’t figure it out, but it’s important…. Someone died, Josh.”

  “Who?”

  She paused. He waited. She looked into his face, fastened her dark blue liquid eyes on his.

  “I think I did. I think I died.”

  Chapter 60

  Rome, Italy—1884

  Everything changed after Wallace Neely’s murder.

  The playful lover who had taken her swimming at midnight in the villa’s pool, had filled her bed with rose petals and had her serenaded by a La Scala singer, was gone, replaced by a nervous man who had become obsessed with buying art. During their last week in Rome, they met with half a dozen of the city’s best dealers and Blackie bought a Botticelli, a Rembrandt, a Tintoretto and a Velázquez.

  It seemed to Esme that he was collecting other treasures to make up for the one that he’d lost, but when they had dinner he didn’t want to discuss the paintings. He didn’t even appear interested in the history of the masterpieces he now owned. When she asked why he was spending such a fortune on artwork if it wasn’t important to him, he told her that it was a good investment. She knew he was depressed over the robbery and murder and worried about what the Phoenix Club’s reaction was going to be when he told his fellow members. He had, after all, come to Rome expressly to watch over their excavation, and he’d failed.

  Esme was relieved when he finally told her he was going to book his passage home and asked if she wanted to go with him. She was glad to get out of Rome early. Her grand tour had ceased to be an adventure. She was worrie
d for her brother and missed her mother. She had nightmares about the archeologist’s murder. Her painting lessons weren’t going well; the teacher wasn’t as qualified as he was supposed to be, and she preferred the Art Students League in New York. But worse than all that was that whenever Blackie touched her now, she grew cold and slightly afraid.

  They set off on their transatlantic journey the following week, and once they were at sea her spirits rose a little. They’d be home soon.

  * * *

  The second night out, as they were leaving dinner, Blackie surprised her. “I bought a gift for you in Rome before we left. Would you like to see it?”

  “Of course.” She was intrigued, despite her recent misgivings.

  Inside his cabin, Blackie used a small gold key to open one of his three trunks. He rifled through the hanging clothes, finding and then pulling out a well-wrapped rectangular package approximately two-and-a-half feet wide and almost four feet tall.

  Using his mother-of-pearl pocketknife, he cut the strings and slit open the rough wrapping, revealing a package covered in finer paper, which he gave to Esme to unwrap.

  She had studied art with a passion since she was twelve, and she knew there were hundreds of thousands of paintings in the world. Her teacher had once told her that of all those, maybe tens of thousands were breathtaking. Of them, thousands were masterpieces. Of those, perhaps a mere hundred or two hundred exhibited the rarest of talents—the ability to use a simple brush and pigment and re-create life. To present a moment of human suffering or madness or ecstasy and offer it up as a mirror. To show man how brutal he could be, how sublime, how passionate or how profound. Only a few dozen painters could make you forget for a moment that what you were looking at was not flesh and blood—that the coal eyes would not blink, that the pink lips would not part. Caravaggio was one of them. And so, Esme thought, the painting she was looking at must be one of his.

  It depicted a young and sensual god whom she recognized from other paintings of his that she’d studied. Bacchus was creating havoc, invoking sex and debauchery, delight and deceit. The grapes hanging above his shoulder were so real, Esme was sure she could pluck one and eat it. The god’s smile was so lascivious she was certain he’d blink at her any second.