Secret Passages

by Paul Preuss

  “Oh, oh! Very nice, very nice! You promise to be good,” Alain said to Anne-Marie. “What am I supposed to do when you cheat?”

  “I’m very sure everybody involved would prefer to keep the matter quiet,” said the lawyer.

  “You, not him,” Alain shouted at her. “Talk to me. Is that your idea of a guarantee?”

  Wordlessly Anne-Marie held up the safe-deposit box key.

  Alain glared at the key and then at her. He snatched the pen the lawyer offered him and almost violently scrawled his signature across the bottom of the papers.

  “We appreciate your cooperation, sir,” said the lawyer.

  “I can leave now?”

  The lawyer glanced at Anne-Marie. She still held out the key, unsmiling. Alain snatched it from her hand and left the room.

  He walked fast, pushing his way through midday crowds along the rue du Rhône toward the bank. He shouldered through the old-fashioned bronze-and-glass doors and marched to the nearest unoccupied teller. “I want to get into this safe-deposit box.” He laid his key flat on the marble counter and gave the young woman the number.

  “Certainly, sir. I’ll need some identification. And your signature on this card…”

  A minute later the bank guard stood by while Alain removed the drawer from the vault. He took it to a carrel, laid it on the table, inserted the key, and lifted the lid.

  The box was empty.

  Peter yawned and yawned again, shaking himself like a dog to stay awake, pacing the quays of Lac Leman, waiting and watching to see his wife and her brother leave the Banque Berthelier—waiting until the coast was clear.

  They had flown into Geneva late last night, and the first thing this morning she had dragged him to the bank where they’d rented the safe-deposit box, paid for it, signed for it—she signing with his last name, Anne-Marie Slater—and then they’d left to find a photo shop with one-hour processing, and finally gone to breakfast, which somewhat restored his spirits, although she was so adrenaline-rushed it would have been hard to notice the difference in her, and afterward she was off to make other arrangements—while he was off jewelry shopping.

  All of it happening so fast that Peter wondered, now that he had time to think, how she could have planned it so thoroughly. The only business she had not thought through was what to do with the pendant after Peter recovered it. An artifact divorced from its context, no matter how valuable, was a mere curiosity. Collectors and the museums that dealt with them did more to corrupt the past than to preserve it, were in fact a plague upon the past.

  Surely Minakis would have recorded somewhere the circumstances of his exploration of the shrine; if the kri-kri pendant could not be returned to the cave, its proper place was with his records. Peter and Anne-Marie would have to find Minakis’s executor, and meanwhile Peter would have to take the pendant back to Crete. This was their vacation.

  It was after noon when Anne-Marie and Alain came out of the bank on their way to the clinic on the quai du Mont Blanc. Peter watched them cross the bridge over the Rhône. Then he hurried to the bank, presented his identification to the clerk, signed his name, went to the vault, and removed its contents. What could be easier?

  But what was Alain Brand going to do when he found that he’d signed for a box in the name of Anne-Marie Brand that contained nothing? Would he realize that he’d inspected the contents of a neighboring box, one in the name of Anne-Marie Slater?

  Maybe she intended him to know; Peter hadn’t asked her. He was satisfied to embrace the passionate and loving and loyal side of her; the furies in her he would prefer to honor at a distance.

  He walked quickly to the railroad station on place Cornavin and took the next train to the airport. It was a short ride. Soon Anne-Marie would be in the terminal, on her way to Paris by way of Air France, but there was no risk they would encounter one another; his flight was to Athens. Last night she had smuggled the kri-kri pendant out of Athens, assuring him that she was an expert “mule.” By comparison he was worse than an amateur mule, but his burden was easy; all he had to do was smuggle a Greek treasure back into Greece, one nobody was looking for because nobody knew it existed. It rested in cotton in a cardboard box with a Cartier label and a sales slip listing its value as 750 Swiss francs, tax included.

  He had already passed through the security gate when a man with a blond ponytail came swiftly toward him in the crowded corridor. “Professor Slater, my name is Rudi Karl. There’s someone you should meet.”

  “Do I know you? How do you know me?” Peter felt himself blush to the roots of his hair. He must be radiating guilt.

  “Please don’t worry, Professor. We have no intention of telling anyone about the pendant.” The man’s bright blue eyes were icily compelling. “If you’ll come with me…”

  The neat little man rose from his easy chair in the VIP lounge and dismissed Rudi with a nod.

  “I’m Richard Wingate, Professor Slater. Please sit down, I’ll only keep you a minute. I was a longtime friend and business partner of Manolis Minakis. I’m also the executor of his estate. I wanted to give you this in person.” He handed Peter a large brown envelope.

  Peter sat, feeling tired and distinctly rumpled by comparison to the tailored older man sitting opposite who smelled so freshly of cologne. He looked at the envelope warily. “What is it?”

  “His will. Subject to probate of course, so please regard it as confidential. He hoped you would be willing to work with him and, if necessary, take over his work. Unfortunately the need has arisen sooner than he expected.”

  Peter twisted in the heavily upholstered chair as if trying to distance himself from the envelope without dropping it. It was a message from the grave. “I hardly knew the man.”

  “A year ago Manolis decided to—if I may put it bluntly—recruit you. He was a very confident man who liked to keep his affairs current. Although the owner under Greek law is the Foundation for Research and Technology, Hellas, you are to have the use of his house in Ayia Kyriaki and the equipment he has set up near there. I believe you have acquaintances at FORTH?”

  Peter nodded, speechless.

  “Of course you are under no obligation,” Wingate said. “Whatever you decide, you will have my complete cooperation. I hope you will come to regard me as a friend.”

  Peter straightened in his chair. “Do you know what he was doing with that experiment? Do you understand the implications?”

  Wingate smiled thinly. “I believe I do. It will change the world, would you agree?”

  Peter said, “Mm.” A joke, perhaps, but not that funny.

  “Would you like a sandwich, a drink? Your plane doesn’t leave for an hour.”

  Peter looked at his watch. “All right, a drink if you’ll join me. Scotch, neat.”

  Wingate signaled an attendant. When he turned back, Peter was watching him.

  “You understand I’ll need confirmation.”

  “All sorts of legal correspondence will follow. Meanwhile, guard the kri-kri pendant. An awkward business, that, but I’m afraid Manolis didn’t understand your wife’s predicament when he wrote his will. Well, she wasn’t your wife then. Nevertheless, Rudi tells me she handled the matter deftly.”

  “My wife is a remarkable woman,” said Peter. “More remarkable even than she appears. What remains to be done can only be done by her, if it can be done at all.”

  Their drinks arrived. Peter raised his glass to Wingate. “Do you believe in reincarnation?” he asked. “The eternal return? The seamless continuity of past and future? The implicate order?”

  “I confess I have been unable to take these matters seriously.” Wingate raised his own glass. “To your health.”

  Behind them a silvery jetliner screamed into the sky against the backdrop of distant Mont Blanc.

  “Nor have I. But I intend to look a little deeper. I assume you’ll be going to Crete to see to Minakis’s affairs.”

  Wingate nodded. “Perhaps I’ll see you there.”

  Peter sai
d, “One of these days you must let me show you a photograph of Minakis’s mother.”

  A week later, on their way home from Athens to Paris to Honolulu, Peter and Anne-Marie and Jennifer stopped for a day in San Diego.

  Charlie Phelps’s office had thick oriental carpets on the floor and a glass wall overlooking San Diego harbor in the distance, thirty stories below. Charlie, looking efficient and relaxed, with a golfer’s tan, stood up from behind his desk as his secretary ushered his visitors in. “Anne-Marie, it’s very good to see you. And Peter, good to meet you at last.”

  “Charlie. Same here.”

  They shook hands, a quick firm shake. Charlie turned to Anne-Marie. “Dad called to report, soon as you dropped off Jenny. Says he can’t believe how much she’s grown. Certainly made his day,” he said affably. “Thanks for saving me a trip to Hawaii.”

  “Yes, your dad looks good,” Anne-Marie said quietly.

  “Let’s sit.” Charlie waved them to the library corner, furnished with a leather sofa and chairs and a low round table. “Coffee, tea, mineral water? Anything? No?” There was a moment’s leaning back and fidgeting, a straightening of seams, a clearing of throats. Charlie kept his eyes on Anne-Marie, working at seeming unhurried.

  “Thanks for seeing us like this,” she said hoarsely. Her voice was threatening to desert her.

  “I only wish it could have been sooner. There’s something you wanted to tell me about Carlos?”

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “Happy and healthy, except for two scabby knees. Fiercest soccer forward I know, for a six-year-old.” He paused. “Can’t wait to visit his mother next month. Wants to know if you’ll teach him to surf. I said I hoped so. Wasn’t sure.”

  Anne-Marie smiled tightly, avoiding Charlie’s eye. Peter said, “We’ll see what we can do.”

  The silence stretched, and no one chose to end it until Anne-Marie turned her gaze back onto Charlie, her smile gone. “I had to see you. To give you some bad news. Something I should have told you a long time ago.”

  He tilted his head. “Shoot.”

  She leaned forward, nervously circling her wrist with her fingers. “Do you remember the morning after we met on Crete, how I was cut up, had all those bruises? I told you I’d been hit by a scooter, that I’d fallen down in the road?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “It wasn’t true. I mean, it was true, except that it wasn’t an accident. I made sure that boy hit me—I threw myself in front of him—to cover up what really happened. I was raped and beaten that night. I didn’t want you to know.”

  Charlie looked concerned, ready to do what he could to help. “I’m very sorry to hear that.”

  “Charlie, listen to me. Carlos isn’t your son. You’re not his real father.”

  His friendliness faded. “Anne-Marie, whatever you have in mind, I intend to abide by the court’s decision. I urge you to do the same.”

  “I was pregnant when we were married. That’s why I married you—because I was pregnant. Even though I didn’t want to be, even though I was a bad Catholic, I couldn’t do anything about it because abortion was murder. I believed that. And there you were.”

  “You had already agreed to marry me, when this hadn’t happened yet,” he said sharply.

  Anne-Marie tossed her head and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I said yes that night to get rid of you. I was going to run away. You weren’t ever going to see me again. But then, after the rape, you were…insurance, I guess.”

  “You tell me this now.” Charlie stared at her in disgust. “Is this some kind of sick revenge? Because if you think it makes any difference in the way I feel about Carlos…”

  “Charlie, please. You have to hear the truth.”

  “The truth is, Carlos is my son. From the minute he was born I’ve loved him. He is my son, and nothing you can say, nothing you say can change that.” He stood up. “In fact I think you’ve said more than enough already.”

  Peter said, “It’s important that you hear her out.”

  “I don’t believe I asked for your advice.”

  “Please, I’m not saying this to hurt you.” Anne-Marie looked up at him. “I’m sorry I lied to you. No more lies now, I promise.”

  “There’s more? What next? You’re going to tell me who the guy was? Like it makes any difference?”

  Anne-Marie looked at Peter, then back at Charlie. “No, it doesn’t make any difference. I came to say I’m sorry, Charlie. Not just for the lies. For hating you when you were doing the best you could for me and Carlos…”

  Charlie paced in circles, shaking his head. “Wait, wait. You kick me in the gut, and then you apologize?”

  Her voice gathered strength. “I’m sorry I couldn’t let you love me, Charlie. I couldn’t forgive myself. All that hatred rubbed off on you. It made me blind. And I was wrong, wrong.”

  “Why are you here? What do you want?”

  “I want you to know. A little while ago I met a man who made me realize it doesn’t much matter who a person’s real parents are. But it took time for the lesson to sink in.”

  Anne-Marie stood up unsteadily. Peter, caught off guard, stood quickly and put a hand on her arm.

  “I don’t want anything, Charlie,” she said, “except your help in giving Carlos and Jenny the best life we can give them. All three of us. That’s all I wanted to say. We’ll go now. But I hope we can talk later.”

  “Imagine my surprise,” Peter said as they waited at the curb for their taxi. “Any second I was expecting Alain’s affidavit to come out of your purse.”

  “Thanks for reminding me.” She pulled a thick envelope from her purse, walked to the nearest sidewalk trash bin, and tossed it in. When she came back she looked at him almost shyly. “I hope you’re not disappointed. After all I put you through.”

  “Far from it. You have a big heart. Bigger than I knew.”

  She laid cool fingertips on the back of his hand. “It was you Minakis was talking about when he said that about parents, not himself. And when I thought about you and the way you love Jenny—and Carlos, knowing everything you know—it finally clicked. Poor Charlie, all those years. I was such a harpy. He never did do anything really wrong.”

  “He bored you.”

  She gave him a wry look. “That’s true.”

  “Tell me, is an investment banker inherently more boring than a theoretical physicist?”

  “You wish.”

  29

  Dimitris had finished lashing the plastic-wrapped computer monitor to the top of Irini’s packsaddle when Peter leaned out of the chapel door. “Why don’t you go on down? I’ll catch up.”

  “Nai, kyrie.” Dimitris slapped the donkey on the rump, raising a cloud of dust; the careful beast stepped off daintily over the stones.

  Peter went back inside the chapel. The bare floor and stone vault gave no hint that anything as strange as an optics experiment had ever occupied the serene space. Where the steel test bed had stood there was only a crudely painted icon of the Metamorphosis resting on a wooden stand. Peter took a match from the box on the stand, struck it, and held it to a wick floating in a dish of oil.

  He watched as the transparent yellow flame took hold. Then he smothered the match in the sand tray in front of the icon. He emptied his pockets of coins, leaving them in the sand. Outside, he locked the door against the gusting wind and put the iron key back on the lintel, where the next person who needed to worship could find it.

  Approaching the village from above, Peter inhaled the early-summer landscape, the sweet blossoms on the feathery green branches of the almond trees dappling the plain. Below he saw Dimitris and the donkey nearing the courtyard of Minakis’s house. Suddenly the gate was flung open and a dark-haired little boy raced out, calling to Dimitris in a high, clear voice. Dimitris halted, and Irini the donkey did likewise. The boy ran up and took the halter Dimitris offered him and tugged hard; the donkey understood what was required and followed the little boy down the street.
r />   Anne-Marie came out of the courtyard and watched the caravan pass on its way to the village square but made no effort to follow. Jennifer ran out of the gate and clutched at her mother’s skirt, pointing excitedly toward the retreating donkey. Anne-Marie scooped her up in her arms and turned and looked up the hill, in Peter’s direction.

  He waved and hurried to meet them.

  They were sitting down to lunch at the table Anne-Marie had spread in the sunny courtyard when Carlos came back through the gate, leading Dimitris by the hand. “Eat with us, Dimitri,” Anne-Marie said to him in Greek. “You’ve done too much work this morning to go hungry.”

  “Thank you, kyria, but I have no appetite.”

  “All right, but take some of these stuffed peppers with you.” She scooped a pair of them from a serving dish into a shallow bowl. “Peter made them himself, last night.”

  “If you wish, kyria.” Dimitris peered into the bowl as if this were not a recommendation, but he took the bowl, sketched a wave, and was gone.

  “Takis isn’t hungry because he wants to play with his new computer,” Carlos informed them, leaning across the table for the stuffed grape leaves.

  “Aussi, je veux le poivron ça,” Jennifer announced, clambering onto her chair to reach for one of the oil-drenched peppers in the dish.

  “Doucement, Jenny, attends un moment.” Peter deflected her grasp and emptied the spicy rice filling of the pepper onto her plate. When he set the plate before her, she beamed with satisfaction.

  “Merci, Dada.”

  Peter was Dada to both children now, a name that made him feel ten years older and too whiskery. But since Charlie Phelps was Daddy to Carlos, and Anne-Marie wouldn’t have them addressing Peter by his first name, and Father was a stern antique, Dada he was.

  “Dada, why can’t you understand Greek?” Carlos asked. “You understand lots of other languages.”

  “I learned the others when I was still a boy, like you.” To the extent that he had learned them at all. “It’s hard to learn new languages when you’re a grown-up. So learn all the languages you can right now. As for me, give me time.”