Fatal Tide

by Lis Wiehl

  He went to the closet in the mudroom where he kept his hat collection and donned a black fleece ski mask he sometimes wore when he rode his motorcycle in cold weather. To hide his eyes, he found a pair of mirrored sunglasses.

  He was about to answer the call when he heard Dani’s voice from the doorway.

  “What in the world are you doing?” she asked. “I heard a beeping that woke me up. Why are you wearing a ski mask and sunglasses?”

  “Someone’s calling the Guardian Skype number from Villanegre’s home,” he said. “I don’t want them to know who I am.”

  “You look like a bank robber,” she said. “Why don’t you just put a piece of paper over your webcam?”

  He considered what she said.

  “Next time,” he said. “Good idea. Move over by the sink so the camera won’t show you.”

  He clicked on the icon and answered the call.

  On his screen he saw an attractive young woman of indeterminate age, somewhere five years either side of twenty. She had bangs that fell in front of her eyes and long reddish-brown hair that fell over her shoulders, framing a round face with large brown eyes, a button nose, and Cupid’s bow lips. Her natural beauty was accessorized by piercings in her left nostril, right eyebrow, and each ear. She was wearing a heavy white turtleneck fisherman’s sweater.

  “Are you the footballer?” she asked. Her accent was Scottish.

  “May I ask who you were trying to call?” Tommy asked.

  “You look like a bank robber,” she said. “I’m trying to reach Tommy Gunderson, the football player. Who’s the woman standing by the sink?”

  “There’s no one standing by the sink,” Tommy said.

  “Yes, there is. I can see her in the reflection of your sunglasses.”

  “There’s no one here named Tommy Gunderson.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she said. “Really? Dr. Villanegre gave me this number and said I could reach him through you. You’re Tommy Gunderson, and I’d say the woman by the sink is Dr. Harris, yes? You can take your mask off. I know what you look like. All I had to do was Google your name.”

  Tommy took his mask off, and Dani joined him in front of the webcam.

  “That’s better,” she said. “My name is Helen Trumble. I’m the person Dr. Villanegre has been training to replace him.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Dani said.

  “We sent a message,” Tommy said. “I spoke with his housekeeper.”

  “Yes, I know,” she said. “I spoke with her too. I live here. The funeral arrangements have all been taken care of. I’m sorry to ring you up so late at night, but I’m afraid I have something rather urgent. He was quite keen to find a particular book …”

  “The Vademecum,” Dani said. “We have it.”

  “You have it?”

  “We do,” Tommy said.

  “So … which one of you is the Guardian, then?”

  “We both are,” Dani said. “The Guardian before us chose a successor, but he was murdered. The book fell to us. We were planning to call you and the others in the morning.”

  “He told you about the painting and the prophecy, didn’t he?”

  “He did.”

  “Well then, I suppose it’s you I should be telling,” she said. “I was to tell Dr. Villanegre just as soon as I’d finished my work, but I’m afraid I finished too late. Do either of you speak Merovingian Frankish, by any chance? … No? Old West Low Franconian?”

  “We’re new at this,” Tommy said.

  “He didn’t mention me, then?”

  “He did not,” Dani said.

  “I’ll make this as short as possible because I know it’s late there,” Helen said, “but the reason he needed to find the Vademecum Absconditus was because we found another text, sort of a commentary on the Vademecum, in the archives at St. Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury.”

  “Where St. Adrian was the Abbott,” Dani said.

  The girl on the screen nodded. “If you know about him, then you know about Charles the Black, I presume?”

  “Adrian’s warrior?”

  “Aye,” the girl said, “and originally a Frank. And the text we found was written in Merovingian Frankish, which led Dr. Villanegre to wonder if it belonged to Charles the Black, or was written by him. I’ve been working with a scholar friend here who’s studied Merovingian Frankish, and we just finished our translation. You’re aware that the Vademecum had been blessed and protects the Guardians who hold it, right?”

  “We are,” Dani said.

  “That’s why I had to call you,” Helen Trumble said. “We were up all night. According to the text we found, that protection was supposed to last for a thousand years. We were stuck for a while because we didn’t know if our copy of the text was the original one by Charles the Black, which would have been using the Julian calendar, or if it was a later copy done after the Gregorian reform. We also didn’t know if he was factoring in the 250 leap days since then, but we think we know when the Vademecum was first blessed. I thought you’d want to know—if we’re right, your divine protection is going to expire in two days. Christmas Eve.”

  “You’re sure?” Dani asked.

  The girl on the screen nodded slowly.

  “I don’t suppose you know exactly what time of day, do you?”

  “No idea,” Helen said. “The Vademecum was first written here in Great Britain. Now I gather it’s in the eastern US time zone. I don’t know what that means.”

  “Does the name ‘Beast of Gevaudan’ mean anything to you?”

  “You mean those cave weasels from the painting?” she said. “That’s what Dr. V was calling them.”

  “He knew what they were?”

  “He was afraid those monstrosities from the painting were going to come to life,” Trumble said. “Don’t tell me they have?”

  “Okay,” Dani said. “We won’t tell you. Good work. Stay close to home. We’re going to need you soon. And, Helen …”

  “Yes?”

  “Arm yourself and raise the drawbridge. This is going to get real. Soon.”

  25.

  December 23

  2:21 a.m. EST / 8:21 a.m. CET

  Cass was dreaming. She was a girl, twelve years old. She was swimming in the ocean. Her mother was on a boat calling her. “Come back, Cassie—you’ve swum too far out!” Then her mother was lifting her from the water, kissing her as she dried her off with a large striped towel, telling her how brave she was, how fearless. And then, as she gazed toward the shore, she saw a boy with a stick, herding sheep.

  The phone woke her. For a second she didn’t know where she was. Then she heard the whisperings of conversations from the street below—in French—and remembered. She was in Paris. In a townhouse apartment on rue Guynemer in the 6th arrondissement, in Udo Bauer’s apartment, which had a view of the Jardin du Luxembourg. The dream felt more like a memory of something real than a fantasy. She’d often gone for swims in the open ocean, which always worried her mother because her mother was a poor swimmer. Cassandra was a strong swimmer. She swam, she’d been told more than once, like a fish.

  The phone rang again.

  It was Laurent, Bauer’s driver. He said he was in a car downstairs, ready when she was to take her to the airport for the next leg of her trip—a helicopter ride to the yacht, and to a waiting Bauer. Cassandra thanked the young man and said she’d be down in five minutes.

  It had been a whirlwind twenty-four hours.

  She’d risen early yesterday at Tommy’s house the morning after the party at the consulate and gone to the Peter Keeler Inn for coffee. She’d just finished reading the New York Times society pages, giggling out loud at the singularly unflattering picture of Jürgen Metzler the photo editor had chosen to run from the party (drink in hand, mouth open, eyes closed), when a silver Rolls Royce pulled up in front of the inn. Bauer’s, she discovered. As was the white Gulf V private jet waiting for her at Westchester County Airport in White Plains. Bauer wasn’t there, but there
was a handwritten note taped to a computer screen on board that said, Play me.

  Be careful what you wish for, she thought. When she played the video, the man appeared in all his smarmy, self-satisfied glory.

  “Welcome aboard,” he said on the video. “I’m sorry I can’t be there to greet you in person, but I hope you’ll have a pleasant flight nonetheless. Laurent will see to your needs—if there’s anything you want, please tell him.”

  Bauer went on to tell her he’d taken the liberty of having his assistant buy her all the clothes she would need for the next two days, at which time he would have to return to the States for a holiday party at his old alma mater and would be delighted to take Cassandra with him. Cassandra could spend the time during the flight choosing her wardrobe from the items his assistant had selected, he said, or if she preferred, Laurent had a credit card she could use if she wanted to go shopping in Paris.

  “And if you are hungry during the flight, the chef will make you whatever you like. Except German food—I have given him strict instructions not to do so. I look forward to seeing you again, aboard the Freiheit. Where you can show me your sailing skills,” Bauer leered.

  The video ended. Bauer’s assistant, Laurent, a thin young man in his early twenties, appeared. Cassandra was to regard him, he said, as her personal assistant for the entire trip (she was, it turned out, the only passenger). He showed her to the state room toward the front of the plane, where she saw dozens of dresses and high-end fashion items by Max Mara, Carmen Marc Valvo, Hugo Boss, and Michael Kors, and swimwear by La Perla, more than she would need for a two-week vacation, let alone two days. She chose what she needed and returned to her seat.

  Laurent also acted as her chauffeur when they arrived in Paris, driving her to the apartment, where she found another Play me note taped to a video screen. Cassandra hadn’t bothered; instead, she’d tuned the television to one of her old movies, a romantic comedy in which her character was unlucky in love. She still had a hard time watching herself. She’d done the film during the period when, on the advice of her acting coach, she’d been singularly focused on the Stanislavsky method, a technique in which the actor, as much as possible, becomes the role, on camera and off. The technique had carried over to real life for a while.

  Never again, she told herself. She’d been like one of those poor people in the nightclubs whom the hypnotist tells, “When I snap my fingers, you’ll wake up”—except the hypnotist had never snapped his fingers. Cassandra was doing her own snapping now. Writing her own scripts, guided by prayer and the Bible—in every sense, she was on the right page.

  Right now, she thought as she checked herself in the mirror, she looked something like a young Audrey Hepburn, bright-eyed and eager. The princess from Roman Holiday. Except her props were a little different.

  She reached into her purse and checked to make sure the Beretta .32-caliber Tomcat was still there, and still loaded. Dani had insisted she bring the pistol. She would never have gotten the weapon on board a commercial flight, but she’d known that to men like Bauer, making a date fly commercial was inconceivable.

  Cassandra checked her makeup one last time, then boarded the elevator to take her to the car.

  “Ms. Morton,” Laurent said, opening the door for her with one hand and taking her suitcase with the other. She noticed how easily he lifted the heavy suitcase and loaded it into the trunk. He was surprisingly strong for a man with such a slender frame.

  26.

  December 23

  7:33 a.m. EST

  Quinn had taken the second watch of the night, relieving Tommy at four a.m. By the time Tommy made it down to the kitchen, Quinn had figured out a way to turn the keystroke tracking program embedded in his thumb drive to their purposes.

  “Any device that links to something else leaves a return address,” he explained. “We use that to reverse the program. The spy becomes the spied upon, something like a two-way mirror.”

  “You figured that out on your own?” Tommy said, impressed.

  “Not even close,” Quinn said. “I have a friend—do you know the group Anonymous?”

  “Only by name,” Tommy said. “You mean the hackers who’ve been pranking government and corporate computer systems?”

  “My friend—if you can call someone you’ve never met whose name you don’t know a ‘friend’—told me last night how to do it and helped me set it up. But I trust him. Or her. I haven’t run it yet, but it should give me access to the passwords I need to get into the basement of Building C.”

  “Just be careful,” Tommy said. “We’ve got a meeting with Ed Stanley this morning to see if we can get some help, but we need you too.”

  The Miss Salem Diner shone like a merry-go-round on a day that broke gray and stayed dreary, with a steady rain that washed away whatever snow remained in the shaded places and at the edges of parking lots. The trees on all four sides of the town commons had been decorated with small white Christmas lights, as were the gazebo in the center of the green and the huge Norway pine next to it. The latter served as the official town Christmas tree; the lights for all were regulated by photo-optical sensors. They were supposed to turn off at dawn and back on at dusk, but the day was so overcast that they’d remained lit well past sunrise.

  Inside the diner, Tommy and Dani sat opposite each other in a booth, studying the menu, even though the menu hadn’t changed since they were kids and the diner was their after-school hangout. Eddie had turned the diner over to his daughter Gail, but he still showed up every day to man the grill, and he still told her what to do, and she still grumbled. Dani’s friend Clair Dorsett was seated alone in a booth by the door, reading something on her Kindle. Tommy nodded to Frank DeGidio; the cop was stopping at the diner to fill his thermos and pick up an egg sandwich before starting his day.

  Right on time, a black Escalade with tinted windows pulled up to the curb, and an older man in a camel coat got out.

  Ed Stanley hung his coat on a rack by the door and threw his white silk scarf over it. He was in his midseventies and cut a dapper figure in gray wool pants, a tweed sport coat, an oxford shirt buttoned at the neck, and a Western-style bolo tie.

  He sat down next to them, took a quick glance at the menu, and then ordered coffee and an English muffin with honey. Tommy ordered coffee as well, Dani tea.

  “Got your Christmas shopping done yet?” Stanley asked them. “My wife wants one of the new GPhones, but I keep telling her we don’t have cell coverage where we live, so what would be the point?”

  “You can get them with satellite uplinks,” Tommy said. “That way they work anywhere.”

  “Really?” he said. “Good to know.”

  As a forensic psychiatrist, part of Dani’s job with the DA’s office was to evaluate potential witnesses and to assist with interrogations by giving her informed opinion as to whether or not a witness or a criminal was lying. Both her intuition and her training told her Stanley was doing just that. If his wife truly wanted a GPhone, he would have researched them. His naiveté was feigned. Ed Stanley was anything but naive.

  “We’ve been pretty busy,” Dani said. “We were hoping you could help us with the photographs we sent you—any luck?”

  “A little,” he said, pausing as the waitress brought him his food and set down two coffees, a tea, and a small pitcher of milk. “What a lousy day, huh? It’s supposed to stay warm all week.”

  When the waitress was gone, he moved the saucer aside and set his cup down on the table. “Can I ask where you got those pictures?”

  “We—” Tommy began.

  “—got them from an anonymous source,” Dani said.

  “An anonymous source,” Stanley said.

  Repeating what someone said, Dani knew, was another sign of deception, a way to buy time while the liar tried to think of what to say next.

  “Anonymous to us,” Dani said. “We don’t know who sent them.”

  Tommy’s expression said he was playing along without following her. They�
�d discussed the idea of bringing Ed Stanley into the circle and agreed that it might be necessary.

  “Can I ask why you want to know who these people are?” Stanley countered. “Is this part of an ongoing crime investigation? Something to do with Amos Kasden?”

  He was fishing, Dani realized. Trying to find out how much they knew, so that he’d know how much to tell them.

  “I can’t really say,” she told him.

  “Well,” he said. “I’m afraid—”

  “Mr. Stanley—”

  “Ed, please,” he said. “Call me Ed.”

  “Ed,” Dani said. “We’re getting off on the wrong foot here, and I don’t know why. You’re dancing around my questions and I’m dancing around yours, so maybe we should just not try. I appreciate the help you’ve already given us. There’s obviously a reason why you came here in person instead of using the phone or e-mail, so either we’re honest with each other and you tell me the truth and I’ll tell you the truth, or we get on with our days.”

  Ed Stanley sipped his coffee and smiled. “Your grandfather told me he could never fool you,” the older man said. “He’d try to tell you about the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, and you’d just look at him like he was saying the silliest thing you’d ever heard. Even when you were little.”

  “I’m a big girl now,” she said. “I’m not trying to be confrontational. There’s just too much at stake to waste time. For instance, did you know that Amos Kasden, born Alex Kalenninov, has a brother?”

  “He has three,” Stanley said. “I told you that.”