City of Dark Magic

by Magnus Flyte

  And then there it was. Right there on the Charlotte Yates Wikipe Yates Wdia page. Charlotte Yates worked at the CIA briefly in the 1970s.

  It did not give any further details.

  Sarah looked around, then quickly clicked off the computer and sat back to think.

  It was purely circumstantial evidence. Sarah certainly had no proof that Charlotte Yates was ever in Prague, or that she was a double agent, or even an agent at all. She might have just been a low-level policy analyst working in Washington. But in her gut, Sarah felt that Pols might have been right. Or nearly right. Pols had been trying to warn her that Marchesa Elisa was enlisting the help of the senator in order to get to the Lobkowicz fortune. But maybe it was the other way around. The senator wanted to install the marchesa as heir to the fortune in case those letters surfaced. Perhaps it was Senator Yates who was pressuring Miles to make Max seem unstable. It was unclear how much Elisa knew about her powerful friend and her motives for helping her try to regain her family’s lost treasures. What Sarah felt certain of was that if Charlotte Yates had been a double agent, she would kill to get her hands on those letters.

  • • •

  Sarah slipped back into the palace, unable to stop herself from looking back every few steps to see if she was being followed. She tried to slow her heart rate as she shut the big door behind her. She must go to breakfast with the other academics. She must act normal. God, she was dreading Eleanor’s chirpy chatter. But at least it would cover her own distracted silence.

  Fortunately it was very quiet. Suzi was doing a crossword puzzle. Bernard was sewing seed pearls onto a costume for the masquerade ball. Daphne was methodically dismantling a sausage. Nicolas was fully clothed, and reading a hardbound ancient copy of Orlando Furioso. Fiona Upshaw the Delft expert was examining a map of Prague, and Godfrey was hanging over her, making suggestions. Moses Kaufman was forking eggs into his mouth while reading bits of the Herald Tribune out loud. Douglas, who never missed an opportunity to brush up against Sarah, offered her a plate with a lusty, “Sausage?”

  “Coffee,” she said, firmly. Suzi poured her a cup without looking up.

  Max entered with Moritz and began engaging Godfrey in a conversation about wild boar. Godfrey responded enthusiastically. Max did not meet her eyes.

  Sarah tried to put her thoughts into some kind of order. Who was missing this morning? Janek. Miles. Eleanor. The same three people who knew the contents of the letters.

  “Anyone seen Miles?” asked Douglas. “I need to have a chat about how to hang the Crolls. I insist on being well-hung,” he said with a knowing grin at Sarah. Max took a savage bite of toast.

  “Miles took an early plane to Washington,” said Daphne with a possessive tone. “Family emergency.”

  Fuck, thought Sarah, not looking at Max. Washington. Her suspicions about the senator tripled. Was Miles giving the letters back to their owner, then? And if so, was that the end of the story? Charlotte Yates would get her evidence and all would be peaceful in the palace? Was she obligated, in some moral sense, to tell what she knew? What did she know? What proof did she have?

  e?

  “I hope Miles is back for the costume ball,” Suzi said. “Bernie made him a Ladislav costume.”

  “Ladislav’s the one in yellow?” asked Moses Kaufman. “The one with the key stuck in his puffy pants?

  Daphne sighed as if they were all idiots. “Yes. Ladislav was Zdenek’s brother. He plotted against Rudolf II and died in exile.” Sarah remembered the painting now. There was something sinister about Ladislav, who had his cape tossed casually over his shoulders like a movie star, his hand on the hilt of his sword and a large medallion around his neck.

  There was another question troubling Sarah. How much of what she had figured out should she share with Max? What did Max know about his cousin?

  “If Miles doesn’t make it back in time, I’ll be Ladislav,” said Max amiably.

  There was a ripple of reaction around the table. They weren’t used to Max being friendly to their schemes. Everyone, Sarah realized, was wondering what it meant. And so was she.

  Moses turned to Max, his thick Buddy Holly glasses flashing in the morning sun just beginning to stream through the windows. “I found something yesterday. Since Miles isn’t here, I suppose I should give it to you? It might interest you, if you’re going to be Ladislav. I’ll go get it.”

  Moses left the kitchen. General conversation about the costume party continued. Douglas was planning something special for the music. Godfrey wanted to know if it was okay to invite locals; he had become friendly with some members of the Czech Department of Wildlife. Fiona asked Bernie if he might help her with her costume, but Bernard shook his head, frowning over his piece of embroidery.

  Moses returned with a small wooden box. He opened the box and produced a large golden key. It glimmered, and every eye in the room was drawn to it as he held it out to Max with a smile.

  “I found it in a compartment in the ebony altarpiece that Rudolf gave Polyxena and Zdenek as a wedding gift,” he said. “It looks like the key in Ladislav’s pants, doesn’t it, Daphne? From the portrait? Although I hardly think it can be the same one. You should get a replica made for your costume, Max. This one’s kind of heavy, although it’s not actually gold. I think it’s lead, covered with gold paint.”

  “That,” said Daphne, “should be locked in Miles’s office now. Ve should all be giving vatever ve find to Jana. And you should be vearing gloves.”

  “I’ll give it to Jana,” said Nicolas. Sarah noticed his outstretched hand trembled slightly, and his eyes were glittering. Max stood up and reached for the key. He exchanged a look with the little man.

  “You should be wearing gloves,” Daphne said, almost spitting.

  Nicolas turned to her. His bassoon voice was low but unexpectedly harsh and Sarah was surprised at the anger in it.

  “The key is the property of the Lobkowicz family. You will remember that everything in this palace is the property of Maximilian Lobkowicz Anderson. He can touch whatever he wants, however he wants to. You will be quiet.”

  Daphne stalked from the room.

  The room was silent.

  “What’s a four letter word for ‘steinbock’?” Suzi asked, after a moment.

  “Ibex,” said Godfrey.

  They were all still watching Max.

  “Thank you,” he said simply to Moses. “It’s probably an old house key, but I’ll check the database and have it sent out for dating.” He turned to address the silent academics. “If you find anything new, please bring it to Jana or myself. And for the record, I have turned the majority of my . . . my family’s castles and properties over to the local governments where they are situated. Nelahozeves and Lobkowicz Palace will become museums. When Roudnice is restored it will be leased to film companies and the revenues from these may provide employment for many people, including many of the people in this room. Good morning.”

  He left the kitchen, with Nico close at his heels.

  But he still put the key in his pocket, Sarah noticed.

  “Shee-it,” said Suzi.

  “He is correct,” Fiona said in her clipped voice. “This is a private museum, not a government one. It is all his personal property.”

  There was a brief silence as everyone absorbed this.

  “It’s hard to remember,” Godfrey said, peacefully. “All of this belongs to one man.”

  And it doesn’t seem right, Sarah thought. And we’re all thinking it.

  But she was curious about the key, and Nico’s reaction to it. Every item in those family portraits was important, signified something, Daphne had told her that. What did the key signify? Or was it really just an old house key?

  Nothing in Prague was that simple.

  “I need some air,” she said. “Anyone want to take a jog in the Deer Moat?”

  • • •

  A few minutes later, she found Max, as she somehow knew she would, loitering by the Toy Museum, his arm
s full of papers. He unclipped Moritz’s leash and the dog disappeared in the direction of the Deer Moat. They started walking together. At this early hour, the castle grounds were still empty.

  “The last time all the windows were glazed was when my grandfather had it done in 1937,” Max said, nodding at the papers he was carrying. “It’s going to be expensive.”

  She brushed her hand against him. Max looked at her and narrowed his eyes. Sarah wasn’t sure she could trust him, but she was sure about some other things.

  Max pushed her into a stone alcove.

  The way his breath moved the hair around her ear was just too much to take.

  “Hopefully I’ve established my credentials if we get caught again,” Max said.

  He pulled her skirt up and shoved his hand under it. His look of triumph at how wet she wasw wet sh made her want to slap him. Who did Max think he was?

  “They open the gates for the service workers in eight minutes,” said Max. Sarah unzipped his fly. He was already as hard as she was wet. He pushed her against a bronze bas relief of St. Catherine being martyred on the wheel and put one hand under her left thigh, lifting it up and inserting himself into her in one motion. She groaned, desperate to feel his skin, running her hands under his shirt along his back, pulling him as deep inside her as she could. St. Catherine dug into her back. She felt a surge of satisfaction as Max’s list of windows fluttered to the ground.

  Six and a half minutes later, they were once again on their way toward the front gate. Sarah’s legs were a little wobbly, but she felt amazingly refreshed and no longer irritable. Even Max’s whistled rendition of “Fly Me to the Moon” didn’t annoy her.

  The sun was making the stained-glass windows in St. Vitus’s glow as if there were a bonfire within.

  “Uh-oh,” said Max, looking up at the windows. “Hang on.” He dashed back for his dropped list. “My windows.”

  When he returned, he glanced around and then started speaking quickly and quietly.

  “So, I was actually waiting out here to tell you something, before you decide to jump me again.”

  “Oh please,” Sarah said, haughtily. “You are the one who keeps shoving me up against statues at all hours of the day and night.”

  “Lucky for me there are a lot of statues around.” Max grinned, wolfishly.

  “So what were you wanting to tell me?” Sarah asked. She could see service workers at the gates now. “Is it about the key that Moses found? I thought Nico seemed kind of amped about it.”

  “What? Oh no.” Max frowned. “Nico gets excited about anything shiny. It’s about these.” Max waved the drawings. “When they reglazed the windows in 1937 there were 518 of them. Now there are only 517.”

  They walked along in silence for a beat. A missing window. Like the children’s book from fourth grade. For Cindy and Sally the missing window meant only one thing: a secret room. Max had been in her fourth-grade class. Would he remember the children’s book? She was sure he would have no idea what she was talking about, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  “The 6th Prince Lobkowicz walled off part of a room at Roudnice,” said Max. “During the Silesian Wars. His library was walled off for thirty-six years. The occupying army never knew it was there.”

  “Maybe your granddad did the same,” Sarah said. “Maybe he walled his library up here, before the Nazis came.”

  “And with the threat of the communists, he would have left it walled up even after he was back in the palace in 1945. And been glad it was walled up when he fled in 1948. And never told anyone about it. Sarah, listen. Do you remember that book, from the fourth grade?” Max said. “You probably don’t. It was about—”

  “Remember?!” exploded Sarah. “I’ve been looking for that book my whole life.”

  “My grandfather wrote it,” said Max. “He had only a few copies printed up,s printe just for the family. I brought it in and gave it to the teacher to read.”

  Sarah tried to process this.

  “But the kids in the story . . . Cindy and Sally . . . they were American.”

  “I think . . .” Max worked it out in his mind. “It was a message to his descendants, in case we ever got back here . . . Trying to tell us there’s a hidden room in the palace.”

  Max was already turning back toward Lobkowicz Palace. Moritz ran up and rejoined them, tongue lolling.

  Sarah grabbed Max’s arm. “Do you still have a copy of the book? I never got to hear how it ended. Because, you know . . .” Sarah was horrified. Her eyes were filling with tears.

  “I’ll find one for you,” Max said, pulling out one of his ridiculous handkerchiefs.

  And then a shrill scream punctuated the quiet morning. There were shouts coming from the second courtyard.

  It’s not over, thought Sarah. She and Max began to run.

  •

  • •

  They came around the corner of St. Vitus and ran through the arch into the second courtyard just as the first security guards and vendors were arriving from the other direction. There was a fountain, but that wasn’t what was catching the workers’ attention. A few paces from the fountain was the ancient well Eleanor had pointed out that first day, with its huge ornate metal cage. Sarah had always thought the cage was large enough to hold a person, and now she had her proof.

  A woman’s naked body, caked with blood, hung from the hook suspended in the cage. The courtyard became a blaze of activity as security guards began shouting into their radios.

  Sarah was trembling, and felt sick. Max had tried to grab her, to shield her.

  But Sarah had seen the face of the woman in the cage. It was Eleanor.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Charlotte Yates reached for her jewel-encrusted cigarette case. She was up to a six- or seven-straw-a-day habit now. A sign of stress. Really, though, people were acting so stupidly. It was disappointing. It was dreary. And yes, it was a little stressful. She was woman enough to admit it.

  Take Miles, for instance. Miles was a boor. Did he think he could stand morosely in plain sight on Charles Bridge at five-thirty in the morning with a briefcase under his arm and not be spotted? He was lucky her agent didn’t push him into the river, a time-honored Czech tradition, as she recalled. Of course it would have been better for him if he had tossed the briefcase over, if that’s what he was thinking. Instead, he added foolishness to foolishness and took himself to the airport. Her agent followed, presumably along with whomever the Russians had assigned to watch the hapless Miles. Didn’t the man have a masters in art crime? You would have thought he’td have picked up a few ingenious ways to smuggle over the years. One supposed he was opting for the “hidden in plain sight” school of intrigue. Well, security at Ruzyne Airport wasn’t going to blink twice at a sheaf of letters, but what exactly was he thinking, booking a flight to Amsterdam? Was he planning on hiding her letters at his little Dutch girlfriend’s apartment? Clearly Miles wasn’t firing on quite as many pistons as she had thought. It was a good thing the letters had been found now, before things got really complicated. The body count was still at a manageable number, but it wasn’t like she could devote endless hours to this project. She had a country to covertly run, for Christ’s sake.

  There had been some confusion at the airport as a Russian agent had attempted to intercept Miles on his way to the KLM ticket counter. Luckily her agent was a former decathlete.

  Miles had been gently persuaded against a flight to Amsterdam. She hoped he had enjoyed his flight to Washington. Naturally she had given her agent instructions that Miles be put in the coach section. She was a Republican, after all! First class was for friends, lobbyists, and donors, not lily-livered minions. She had given her agent instructions that Miles wasn’t to have anything broken, but it can’t have been too comfortable not being allowed to go to the bathroom for eleven hours. You just never knew what people might have down their pants, and she had told her agent: no mistakes. Of course, the agent could have simply relieved Miles o
f his briefcase back in Prague, but it was better this way. Charlotte liked to employ the personal touch.

  It was irritating that Miles thought he could cross her. Her! This was what came of wearing fake glasses and eggplant-colored pantsuits. People started to think of you as unthreatening. Moderate. Empathetic. It was like during her Senate campaign, when she’d had to compromise by adding caramel highlights to her hair and getting a couple of bichons frises. Oh, it was all such crap, but you had to give the “voters” these sorts of tokens or they’d never get over your being intelligent and a woman. Charlotte briefly wondered what happened to those dogs. What were their names?

  Miles was waiting outside her office now. He’d been waiting for two hours. They’d let him use the bathroom, poor dear, since the video surveillance in the johns here was excellent. You could even zoom in. Which is how she knew that Miles wasn’t very impressively endowed, although she should be charitable and allow for some shrinkage. Fear could do that to a man, and he had had eleven hours on a plane with a gorilla-sized agent breathing pretzels in his face.

  Charlotte gnawed her straw. Truth was, now that her letters were within her grasp (right outside her office!) she was feeling a little dizzy with relief. And the memories were flooding back.

  Oh, Yuri. What a lover he had been. She remembered making love standing up in a shadowy corner outside the palace one night, some forgotten piece of statuary jabbing her in the back as Yuri held her by the throat, muttering Russian words of endearment. He had given her the hammer and the sickle, by God. Charlotte crossed her legs. They just didn’t make them like that anymore. Nowadays she was lucky to get some mild flirtation from some leather-faced NRA lobbyist. Forget about doggy-style on an eighteenth-century canopied bed by a certified KGB agent who said things like “beg for it, my little Yankee poodle.”