City of Dark Magic

by Magnus Flyte

  When Max spun the sports car through the castle gates it was still early enough that the hordes of tourists had not descended. The massive verdigris bulk of St. Vitus Cathedral looked a little forlorn in the morning light.

  “I’ll leave you here,” Max said. “Do you have my cell number?” He took out his phone and then frowned. “I know this will sound paranoid,” he said. “But I think my phone is tapped.”

  “What, by the government or something?” Sarah raised an eyebrow.

  “I have enemies,” Max said, cryptically. “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

  “Semaphore flags?” Sarah quipped.

  “Meet me in front of Powder Tower at four p.m.,” Max said, seriously. “Try not to be followed.”

  Before Sarah could even begin to odiovf Powder form a sassy retort to this, Max sped away. Sarah walked slowly to the palace, where she handed the violin over to an ecstatic Miles, who greeted it like a lost child. She changed clothes and stopped in the kitchen briefly to snare a croissant and some coffee. She could simply call Sternberg Palace and ask for Andy, but then she’d have to trust whatever they told her, and besides, her Czech wasn’t good enough to inquire about anything more complicated than an order of potatoes. No, she would amble over to Sternberg like any other tourist, take in some paintings, and look for an opportunity to do a little covert sleuthing. The whole thing might look a little less suspicious if she took someone with her.

  Suzi. Sarah didn’t doubt her ability to take care of herself, but in a pinch she wouldn’t mind having a lesbian who could twirl firearms watch her back. She walked up the staircase to Suzi’s weaponry room and tapped on the door.

  “Have you ever seen anything more bee-yoo-tee-ful in your life?” Suzi greeted her, ushering her inside.

  At first Sarah thought Shuziko was referring to Nicolas Pertusato, who sat cross-legged on the floor atop a small cushion. But then she realized Suzi was indicating the table where an incredibly long gun of some sorts was displayed.

  “Seventeenth-century Spanish long barrel rampart,” Suzi crowed. “Doesn’t it make you just wet yourself? I swear to God it makes me hot just looking at it.”

  “It’s loaded,” said Nicolas, from the floor. “So be careful.”

  “He’s joking,” Suzi giggled. “Help me move it, though? I have to clear this room for the painters. I found the most gorgeous red. It’s gonna make you want to hump the guns, I swear. I’m taking over the Delft china guy’s room until they finish.”

  “There’s a Delft china guy?” asked Sarah, donning a pair of cotton gloves.

  “Arrives tomorrow,” Suzi explained, issuing orders as they lifted the gun. Nicolas trailed behind them as they moved into the adjacent room. “But I’m thinking china doesn’t take up much space so we can share.”

  “Yeah, and firearms and china make a great combo,” Sarah said. “Listen, you want to do a little sightseeing with me while your room is getting painted? I thought I’d go look at the Sternberg collection. Get a little culture.”

  “Cool.” Suzi gave the gun a final loving caress and leered at Sarah. “And afterward we could go for some Cream & Dream.”

  “I really hope you mean ice cream,” Sarah laughed.

  “I think the two of you require a chaperone,” Nicolas piped up. “And I know the collection well. I’d be happy to act as your guide.”

  Perfect, Sarah thought. Suss out the deal with Andy and get to know the little man a little better. Plus, Shuziko did seem a little overstimulated.

  • • •

  “This, as you can see, depicts the Rape of Helen.” Nicolas gestured at the large oil painting in front of them.

  “Rape?” Suzi snorted. “She looks more like she mot the larg’s getting goosed.”

  “And over here,” Nicolas continued, unperturbed, “a marvelous Last Supper by Jacopo da Montagnana. Note that the disciples and Jesus are all correctly brown-skinned.”

  They made a pretty odd threesome, Sarah thought. But Nicolas was a good guide. And she was grateful for Suzi’s unorthodox approach to art appreciation.

  “A superb portrait of Scipio Africanus,” Nicolas intoned.

  “Those boots are totally in now” was Suzi’s comment. “Hey, Nico, how come they always show Mary with her right boob out?”

  As they moved up the stairs to the second level, Sarah tried thinking of a way to discreetly inquire about Andy. The usual number of museum guards were posted about, but most of them were extremely grim-looking Czech matrons.

  “I find this one a little frightening,” said Nicolas, pointing to St. Sebastian suspended by his wrists. “I remember my university friends and I used to play a most amusing drinking game: Who died worse, St. Sebastian or St. Jerome?”

  “Where did you go to college, Nicolas?” Sarah asked. Sebastian was pierced by an arrow and this reminded her, once again, of Andy.

  “Yale,” Nicolas said, smiling up at her. “Among others. But call me Nico. Everyone does.”

  “Is Yale where you met Max?” Sarah ran her eyes over a portrait of St. Francis, looking like hell. Religious art was pretty depressing, Mary’s perky boobs aside.

  “Oh, it was before Max’s time.” Nicolas waved a tiny hand. “It was a hundred years ago! I’m a relic, really.”

  Sarah hung back as Suzi wandered into the next room, willing Nicolas to stay with her.

  “I was wondering,” Sarah asked softly. “About that box you gave me? Sherbatsky’s box with his toenail inside?”

  “It was not Sherbatsky’s toenail,” Nicolas said. “That would be most improper.”

  “I know it wasn’t. Nicolas.” Sarah put her hands on her hips, emphasizing his name. “I think it’s a drug of some kind. What does it do? And why were Max and Professor Sherbatsky doing it?”

  “You should ask Max about that,” Nicolas whispered. “I haven’t tried it myself. Now, in this next room, you will see a lovely Van Haarlem Conversion of Saul, AND, you’ll notice, two dwarfs bring up the rear of this little processional. Isn’t that yellow hat just divine?”

  It was in the last room that Sarah found her mark. Suzi had collapsed gratefully into one of the chairs in the center of the gallery, and Nicolas perched beside her, pointing out details of the Rubens painting: St. Thomas getting whacked by various oily scoundrels, their crazed eyeballs highlighted gruesomely in white. Lounging in the corner was a young man, suited in the Sternberg Palace uniform. He locked eyes with Sarah and smiled. Bingo.

  “You have enjoyed visit?” he asked in halting but serviceable English. “The Brueghels, you see? The people are so tiny. I think it funny.” The young man glanced at Nicolas and turned beet red. Sarah gave him a reassuring smile.

  “I was supposed to get a tour by my friend who works here,” she said. “But I guess I got the date wrong or something. I haven’t been able to get in touch with him.”

  “Oh yes?” the young man replied, as if scripted. “Who do you know working here?”

  “Andy Blackman.” Sarah lowered her voice. “He was in charge of installing the new security system here? An American, like me. Maybe you know him?”

  “Yes!” The young man smiled broadly, clearly delighted to help. “Of course. Mr. Andy Blackman. He trained me. He is great guy. We listen to music and jam together. Old stuff. Rolling Stones, right? Classic.”

  “Did you see him yesterday?” Sarah asked.

  “Yesterday I am not working,” the guard apologized.

  “Do you know how to get in touch with him?” Sarah tried to keep the urgency out of her voice. “Is there an office number I can call?”

  “I check for you.” The guard smiled. “I return in one moment.”

  Sarah sat down on a small chair. Shuziko had slumped down in her chair and appeared to be dozing. Nicolas swiveled around and surveyed Sarah keenly.

  “Are you tired?” he asked, anxiously. “I fear I have talked too much. Some people get very sleepy in museums.”

  “I’m fine,” said Sarah.r />
  “You are m

  ore than fine,” the little man said, his bassoon voice trembling with vibrato. “You are magnificent. I should very much like to be alone with you.”

  Before Sarah could respond to this somewhat alarming proposition, the young guard scurried back into the room. He handed Sarah a piece of paper.

  “Mr. Andy Blackman return United States yesterday,” he said. “A family emergencies. This is e-mail to be reaching him. I hope this is helpful to you.”

  “Thank you, yes,” Sarah said, pocketing the paper.

  SEVENTEEN

  Charlotte Yates was not enjoying her trip to Venice. Even staying within the gilded confines of the Cipriani, she had still caught sight of the giant cruise ships that were pumping an endless stream of addictive euros into the blackened veins of the dying city. Personally, she felt the whole place should be bulldozed into the ocean. History should be studied but not worshipped. As to whether it should be exploited for profit, well, that was a matter of taste, not legislation.

  Of course she was in a bad mood after the way Marchesa Elisa Lobkowicz DeBenedetti had handled what should have been a very small favor. Some months ago, in a rendezvous at the George V in Paris that did not appear on any official schedule, Charlotte had offered Elisa a present: an Aztec amulet that contained a vial filled with a nearly undetectable form of strychnine. It was darling Yuri who had given Charlotte the amulet and informed her of the poison the vial contained: a special little concoction the KGB had invented. Yuri had meant it to be protection, in case her secret was ever discovered. A gesture of 1" de" face="love. Fortunately, she had never needed to use it. Giving it to Elisa had felt poetic—not only because the amulet had been stolen from Elisa’s own family, but also because it was like Yuri was reaching out from the past to help her.

  Charlotte had presented Elisa with the amulet as a pledge of their friendship, and with the promise that she would move heaven and earth to see the marchesa’s rightful fortune returned to her. All Elisa had to do in return was put a drop or two of the vial’s contents into the glass of a person Charlotte referred to as “a very bad man.” There was no reason to tell the marchesa that the bad man was a major Republican donor who was strongly against the party choosing Charlotte as their next presidential candidate. He and Elisa would both be attending the Save Venice fund-raiser; she could do it easily then. The party would be crowded, the contents of the vial untraceable, the man would die of an apparent cardiac arrest, nothing could be more natural and simple.

  Asking this of Elisa was standard operating procedure: If you wanted to make someone loyal, implicate them in something that could prove very sticky should it come to light.

  And the marchesa had done what was requested, but she had grossly overstepped her orders and created a ridiculous clusterfuck, putting the poison in the champagne fountain, where, diluted, it apparently caused its victims to hallucinate that they were on fire before killing them. That little side effect was unexpected, but not entirely surprising. The KGB had a strange sense of humor.

  Now Charlotte wondered if Elisa wouldn’t be better off disposed of in some discreet way. Well, not yet. The marchesa still had her uses.

  Charlotte’s team had done an excellent job of mopping up the mess over at the Ca’ Rezzonico. Thanks to some well-placed evidence planting, it was now clear that Al Qaeda operatives had put a form of strychnine in the champagne fountain, killing the seven guests and one tippling waiter at the Save Venice fund-raiser. One of the lovely things about operating in Italy was the culture’s universal embrace of the conspiracy theory. Thus, when it was quickly uncovered that the magistrates had been bribed to leak covert Arabic chat room chatter, no one was surprised at all, and the wild accusations that followed, though they included “massive coverup by the U.S. government,” and “CIA assassination,” also found evidence to support Iranian, Israeli, Russian, Chinese, Mafia, German, communist, and Martian involvement. It was really too easy, Charlotte thought. Especially with Al Qaeda so delighted to accept responsibility for knocking off the American president’s biggest campaign contributor and other assorted infidels. She hated giving terrorists the gift of publicity, but it couldn’t be helped. Only Al Qaeda took pride in wholesale slaughter of innocents.

  Now that Venice was resolved, there was the news from Prague to deal with. These researchers were so painfully slow! No wonder American universities were in such bad shape—not only were they cesspools of liberalism, but they were populated by people who couldn’t even get simple tasks done. Unpack, catalog, locate, record, store—it was basic librarian stuff, for God’s sake. The Nazis had cataloged every piece of Lobkowicz treasure in a couple of months. The communists had taken longer and not been as thorough, which was not surprising. But that was convenient for everyone.

  Restitution was such an absurd idea, Charlotte thought. Only that playwright Havel would come up with such an idea. Not that Charlotte didn’t love the theater, but intellectuals hatelch d no place in government. They didn’t have the stomach for it. Did no one read Hamlet anymore? It was all spelled out in black and white: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Too much thinking had been the downfall of many American presidents, but it wasn’t going to be hers.

  Several problems had surfaced in the past forty-eight hours.

  From Miles’s latest report, the Weston girl had stumbled across a note from Friedrich Gottlieb making some noise about missing items from Nela. Gottlieb! She had forgotten about him. An odious little troglodyte. But her cigarette case and the Aztec amulet were mentioned. Charlotte was increasingly suspicious of Miles. He was such an . . . academic. He might get very uppity about the letters. Miles was her watcher inside the palace, and it would be prudent to have someone to watch him. Another job for Marchesa Elisa, perhaps. Charlotte had to admit she had redeemed herself with taking care of the Russian agent.

  A Russian agent! Sniffing around Lobkowicz Palace and Nelahozeves, searching vehicles going in and out, dressing up in disguises, tapping phone lines, just like the old days. What the hell did the Russians think they were doing, planting someone like that practically under her nose. It was almost like a taunt. She barely had an appetite for the plate of risotto alla seppia the waiter was setting out on the table on the terrace, snapping the white linen napk

  in with a pleasing thwack. She allowed herself a poignant smile as he poured her a glass of Prosecco.

  • • •

  “The senator from Virginia ate only black food out of respect for the dead,” La Repubblica would report the next day. “She carried out her sad task of accompanying the body of the dead American tycoon back to the United States on Air Force 2 with great dignity, in a black Valentino suit with a lovely matching hat.”

  EIGHTEEN

  “It’s an ars moriendi,” said Miles, holding up the leather-bound book Sarah had found in the box at Nela. “In the fifteenth century, after the Black Death killed off half the population and most of the priests, the Church let secular writers produce volumes that used woodcuts to get the word out about how to die a good Christian death.” He put the book down and turned back to his computer. Sarah glanced around the office.

  Max had not shown up at Powder Tower yesterday as they had arranged. After some hesitation she tried his cell, but it went right to voice mail. So Sarah trudged back through Old Town Square and across Charles Bridge with an increasing feeling of dread and paranoia that was all the more strange for the happy international mélange of tourists photographing one another in front of the statues, and loading up on cheap watercolors of Prague scenes, marionettes, and “Czech It Out!” refrigerator magnets.

  Today, Sarah decided to inquire about the book as a pretext for finding out if Miles had seen Max.

  “Actually I was wondering if I could borrow it. I’m interested in the drawings,” Sarah lied. “So was Max. Have you seen him, by the way?”

  “Not since yesterday morning when you two came back from Nela,” said M
iles. He looked narrowly at her and Sarah tried to keep her expression blank.

  “I’ll bring it back,” said Sarah. “But I want to learn how to die a good Christian death.”

  Miles laughed.

  “It’s not actually incunabula,” he said. “It’s an eighteenth-century copy and in horrible condition, not worth much, but treat it carefully anyway.” Sarah promised and left his office, still anxious and unsatisfied.

  After spending ten minutes staring at a single sequence of notes from the Sixth Symphony, Sarah gave up. As she went down a hallway, she could hear Eleanor and Daphne chatting about the upcoming masquerade ball, so she ducked out a side door and decided to take a walk. If she stayed in the palace she would be pulled into conversations she’d be unable to focus on, and people would ask her what was wrong. It would be hard not to answer, “Oh, you know . . . murder.”

  Outside, she considered walking over to Strahov Monastery to look at the famous library there, but decided she had had enough of ancient books. She turned instead toward the Royal Garden.

  As she passed the old Riding School (now a contemporary art museum), she heard one of the ubiquitous tour guides addressing a group of tourists.

  “This spot was once Emperor Rudolf II’s private zoo,” squawked the guide. “You will find a double-tailed lion on all the heraldic emblems of this country. Rudolf was particularly fond of lions. There is a story that the astronomer Tycho Brahe, who served as the emperor’s private astrologer, predicted that the emperor’s fate was tied to that of his favorite pet lion, Oskar. And the day after Oskar died, so did the emperor.” The tourists gave a little “oooh.”

  She strolled through the gardens, trying to clear her head and simply be a tourist for a few minutes. The gardens, she knew, had been closed to the public during the communist era. But the commies had left their mark. Peering through a line of fir trees at the façade of Ball Game Hall, she ran her eyes over the robed allegories of Astronomy, Agriculture, Virtue, Industry, and the Elements. Carved next to Industry’s head was a hammer and sickle. What would this generation add to it? A “For Sale” sign, probably.