by Steve Cash
Ten days later, on his birthday, April 26, Jack received a small package in the mail. The package had no return address, but was postmarked West Berlin. Jack tore open the brown paper wrapping to find a book titled The Gashouse Gang: The St. Louis Cardinals of the 1930s by Cappy Briant. That was Jack’s favorite period of St. Louis Cardinals history. Whoever sent the package knew a great deal about Jack, intimate knowledge that he shared with very few others, which would imply that whoever it was also knew everything about Jack’s family, including where they lived and what they did every day. It was a subtle message, yet it was there and meant to be noticed.
Stuck between the pages of the book was a handwritten note. It read:
Dear Jack,
Happy Birthday, Comrade. I hope you enjoy the book. I did. The American game of baseball is perhaps your best export. It has been a long time since Manchuria, has it not? You are an admirable adversary, Jack Flowers. You play a good game. On the back of this note are the instructions for the one called Zianno Zezen. I pray you follow them.
V.
The instructions were brief and simple. They told me to come alone to a certain intersection in West Berlin on a certain day at a certain time. The certain day happened to be May 4, my birthday, which sent another message that Valery knew much more than we suspected. But why had Valery surfaced now? And why me? Was it some sort of sacrifice, or trap, or exchange? Jack advised me not to go alone. However, that was the price and there was only one way to get the answers to my questions.
I waited the eight days, then boarded a plane in Paris and flew to Berlin, telling the stewardess and the woman sitting next to me I was on my way to spend the summer with my grandparents. After landing and clearing customs, I took a taxi to the designated intersection, only a block from the Anhalter Bahnhof train station. I was forty minutes early. It was a warm and sunny day, so I rolled up my shirtsleeves and leaned against the street sign, waiting. In exactly forty minutes, a blue Volkswagen pulled up to the curb and the passenger side door opened. The driver, a man about seventy or seventy-five years old, waved me inside. I got in and without ever saying a word to me the man drove across West Berlin to a checkpoint into East Berlin. The border guard waved us through, never looking at me and barely glancing at the man, as if he knew him well. We drove on to the outskirts of East Berlin, where the man stopped in a parking lot and pointed toward a pickup truck parked twenty yards away. The driver of the pickup was a woman at least as old as the man with the Volkswagen. “Danke,” I said and walked over and got in the pickup. From there we drove northwest for about thirty miles. The woman spoke to me occasionally, but it was with a thick accent and I didn’t understand a word. Finally, we turned off the highway onto a winding asphalt road that took us into a stretch of hills running along the east bank of the Elbe River. The hills were dotted with small farms and a few larger, older farms with landscaped terraces overlooking the river. After about five miles, the old woman slowed the pickup and turned into just such a farm. Two-hundred-year-old oaks and firs lined the driveway leading to and around the main farmhouse and a dozen other structures. All the structures had been built with stone sometime in the early 1700s and had been renovated many times since. She parked the pickup near a lavish flower garden. When we got out, she pointed west, past the flower garden and over a hill. Then she turned and walked away without a word.
I chose the central path through the enormous garden. The flowers were lush and well tended, especially the roses, which were in bloom, abundant, and all red—the fullest, richest red I’d ever seen. They looked beautiful in the bright glare of the sun. At the far end there was another path leading up the hill through a broad meadow full of wildflowers to a grove of oak trees. Beyond the trees the meadow sloped gently another fifty yards to a cliff overlooking a wide bend of the Elbe River. It was a stunning view, peaceful and magical.
As I came closer to the grove, I could see something moving in the dappled light between the trees. It was a man, or it looked to be a man. He wore a loose, baggy white suit, with oversize white gloves and a large white hat and veil, which completely covered his face and neck. He was tending to a long row of rectangular cedar boxes. I watched him lifting out panels or wooden frames from each box and scraping off a thick liquid, then returning the frames into the boxes. And then I saw the bees. They were swarming and buzzing around the man and the boxes. I got a sudden prickly feeling down my arms and legs. I reached in my pocket and took hold of the Stone. Was he the Beekeeper? I walked into the grove and the man kept working. He looked too tall to be the Beekeeper. Could he be Valery? I stopped twenty feet away and waited. The only sound was the buzzing of the bees. After he pulled and scraped one more frame, he took off his gloves and walked over to me. In my pocket I gripped the Stone a little tighter. He removed his hat and veil. He was not Valery. He was just a friendly old man, like the man in the Volkswagen and the woman in the pickup. He smiled and walked past me, making his way back up the hill through the meadow to the garden.
Then I turned and saw him. He was standing ten feet from the last wooden box in the row. I hadn’t seen him before because he was standing in the shade, but he was no taller than I was. He wore a baggy white suit, gloves, and a big white hat and veil. His “cane” was at his side. The Beekeeper.
Neither of us moved. The bees quit buzzing. I could not help but think of the horror in Dallas. He started out of the shade toward me, taking off his gloves as he walked. I felt a strange sensation as he came closer, but it wasn’t fear, it was something much more familiar. He stopped three feet in front of me. Slowly, deliberately, he raised his veil. I saw his green eyes, his ruby earrings, and his bright white teeth. I stared back at him.
“You!” I snarled.
“Alles Gute zum Geburtstag,” he said. “Happy Birthday, mon petit.”
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
—LAO-TZU
It took them twelve long winters before they finished. Twelve winters were nothing compared to what lay ahead. They would leave their work here. The work was now complete, polished and carved in the Language, with proper greetings, instructions, and directions. They were the only ones, they were sure of it. Soon they would sail to their new home and wait … and wait … and wait.
“You … you killed the President! You murdered the President of the United States!” I wasn’t shouting, but I was close to it. “And with that!” I added, nodding back toward his “cane.”
“Calm down, mon petit.” The Fleur-du-Mal dropped his smile and looked away for a moment, through the oaks and down the steep slope to the Elbe River. “Regrettably, Zezen, your accusation is true, at least in a technical sense. The act was a necessary compromise, a necessary evil if you will.”
“A compromise? What kind of compromise could condone such an act? And with whom, or what? The Soviet Union? Valery?”
“Valery? You are aware of Valery?”
“Yes. And Sesine.”
“I am impressed. You and the others and your friend Jack Flowers have been busy.”
“What about Blaine Harrington, or should I say ‘Cowboy’? It was you who killed him, wasn’t it?”
The Fleur-du-Mal didn’t answer. He motioned me toward a small shed, where he climbed out of his beekeeper’s suit. “You are upset and you must be hungry after your trip. Come with me and I shall have one of the Mannheims serve us lunch in the garden.”
I started to say something else, then stopped myself. Instead, I followed him in silence along the path through the meadow.
The Fleur-du-Mal began talking as we walked. “I hope the Mannheims have treated you pleasantly,” he said. “That was Eric you saw tending the bees. He is quite good with them. His brother and sister were your chauffeurs from Berlin to here. I have hired the entire family and it has worked out well. I find you cannot trust the young these days. Do you agree, Zezen?”
I ignored the question and kept walking. The Fleur-du-Mal laughed out loud, a long, bitter
laugh, then continued talking about bees the rest of the way up the hill, describing in detail the different behavioral characteristics of apis mellifera mellifera and apis mellifera ligustica.
A portable table was set up in the garden with a full view of the surrounding countryside. Half an hour later, Bertholde, the oldest of the Mannheims, served us a light lunch of fresh trout with vegetables, and despite whom I was dining with, the meal was delicious. Afterward Bertholde delivered a chocolate cake to the table. It had twelve lit candles on top.
“Make a wish and blow them out, mon petit,” the Fleur-du-Mal said. “This is your special day.”
I paid no attention to the cake or the candles. Enough was enough. I looked the Fleur-du-Mal in the eye. “What do you want?” I asked. “Why am I here?”
He leaned over the cake and blew out all the candles. “You are here, my friend, because—”
“I am not your friend.”
He paused and feigned a look of surprise. “You disappoint me, Zezen. I thought we were close, although in Japan you left without even saying good-bye,” he said, smiling again. “Nevertheless, you are here because you, monsieur, are the Stone of Dreams, and though I hate to admit it, let alone say it, you may be able to help me.”
“Help you? That is impossible. I wouldn’t help you cross the street. We will never be friends and I will never help you do anything.”
“Do not be so certain. I think you might change your mind when you learn the nature of the task. I happen to know you are familiar with the problem.”
I looked away and tried to seem indifferent, but I wanted to hear more. “And what is the task?”
The Fleur-du-Mal’s green eyes flashed and his smile returned. “Reading the stone spheres,” he said.
I felt my heart beat a little faster. “Did you say ‘spheres,’ as in more than one?”
“Yes. I now have three of them in my possession.”
“Three!”
“Oui, mon petit—trois.”
I stared back at him and a half-dozen thoughts ran through my mind at once. I knew Valery had brought him the sphere found in the Caucasus, but what about the others? From where had they come, and how? Why would this “aberrant” assassin want them anyway? He had expressed his opinions about the Meq and the Remembering on several occasions, saying it meant little or nothing to him and we were wasting our time. So, why would he want to read the spheres? I knew one thing for sure. The Fleur-du-Mal never did anything that did not benefit himself. I asked him point-blank, “What’s in this for you?”
“Why, Zezen, you disappoint me again. My motive is simple curiosity. I want to solve the puzzle, break the code, find the message. After all, I am Meq, and I have had a change of heart regarding the Remembering.”
“You have a heart?”
“Oh, how clever! You are now a comedian as well as the Stone of Dreams. How do you do it?”
“Okay, then, why the change?”
The Fleur-du-Mal stood up and walked a few paces into his garden. He bent over a particularly beautiful red rose and examined it carefully, then snapped it off its stem and put it to his nose. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “I have my reasons,” he said, and dropped the rose on the ground. “The point is, mon petit, you and Sailor and the rest of you have no choice. If you want to see the spheres, you must deal with me. There is no option. Take it or leave it.”
He was right and he knew I knew it. There was no way around it. “You got one of the spheres from Valery,” I said. “Where did you get the other two?”
He nodded and said, “A fair question, and I suppose you have a right to know. I acquired the first one nearly eighteen hundred years ago on Cyprus from a man with whom I often traded various services for … well, things I desired. That day, I traded for an object that had once been the possession of a Meq known as ‘the Thracian.’ He was an old one and he had perished on Thera, now known as Santorini, when the island exploded.” The Fleur-du-Mal paused. “Perhaps the Ethiopian told you about him. He was rather notorious.”
“If you mean Susheela the Ninth, she mentioned him, but she never knew him.”
“Yes, well, ‘the Thracian’ kept a hidden cache of properties on Cyprus. This cache was later discovered and passed down by the family of the man who sold it to me. The sphere itself was and is in a condition of deterioration, and many of the markings are worn away. It is without a doubt the oldest of the three. The second sphere, the one brought to me by Valery, is in a very good state, and in fact is quite beautiful.”
“I agree.”
The Fleur-du-Mal raised one eyebrow. “You have seen it?”
“Yes, but just briefly.”
“Well, well, well, you must tell me the story, mon petit.”
“Maybe someday,” I said. “What about the third one?”
“Ah, yes, the third one.” He plucked another deep red rose from its stem and twirled it between his fingers, admiring each velvet petal. “The last sphere I acquired only recently. The craftsmanship is exquisite and sublime, and it is the most mysterious and complex of the three. It was uncovered six years ago in a cave near the Portuguese coastal town of Marinha Grande. From there, its history is a bit murky until it was brought to my attention through the man you know as Sesine. In order to obtain it, I was forced to perform an odious task for an objectionable man who was quite insane, but the disservice has since been rectified. He made the unfortunate mistake of believing he had, shall we say, ‘won the chess match.’ ”
“Blaine Harrington?”
“Checkmate,” the Fleur-du-Mal said with a smile. “Now, come with me and I will take you to the milk barn.”
“To see the cows?”
Laughing, he threw the rose over his shoulder and said, “No, mon petit. To see the spheres.”
• • •
The milk barn was anything but a barn and the only cow around was in the leather that covered the furniture throughout. Every chair and couch was designed in a distinctly western American style, and the exposed cedar beams as well as the pine flooring made it look and smell more like Montana than East Germany. The vast space inside had been transformed into a combined studio, laboratory, library, workshop, spa, and a few other areas for various arcane pursuits. I glanced around, but I couldn’t take in everything at once. It was obvious, although his flaws and crimes were countless and beyond endurance, that the Fleur-du-Mal was not lazy.
He flipped a switch on the wall and an area in the center of the room was lit from all sides by a bank of lights. Three stainless-steel cylinders about a foot in diameter and three feet tall stood in a line. They were anchored to the floor and shining brightly in the lights. Perched and resting atop each cylinder were the stone spheres. “There they are, Zezen,” he said. “Go closer.”
I stepped toward them. I couldn’t look away. I felt an instant connection and sense of awe. I remembered something Star had told me years earlier when she and Willie Croft were living in Cornwall at Caitlin’s Ruby. She said one weekend Willie drove her to see Stonehenge and she had an experience unlike any she’d ever had. Star said as she approached the megaliths, she became almost intoxicated with a presence, an “intelligence,” she called it. She said it was undeniable, silent, and overwhelming, and it emanated directly from the stones. As I gazed at the three spheres, I felt the same thing. The three of them together had a power that was profound.
The Fleur-du-Mal flipped another switch and the steel cylinders began to rotate, so slowly it was barely perceptible, but just enough to give the spheres another dimension. They seemed to float or drift, and the markings seemed to swim as the stones turned in the light. We both stood mesmerized by their beauty and mystery. Then he said, “You may not agree, mon petit, on how I procured them, particularly the last one, yet this is perhaps the lone true instance where the end does justify the means.”
I didn’t agree; however, I did feel a sense of guilt because I was so excited about seeing the spheres and I couldn’t wait to study them.
The Fleur-du-Mal must have read my thoughts. “You need to lose your anemic, pathetic, obsolescent Giza morality, Zezen. Doing so would allow you to be much happier and probably do much better work. And while we are on the subject, I need to make one thing clear. I want you to tell Jack Flowers if he or any of his friends in Washington take any action whatsoever against Valery or me for the incident in Dallas, then they will sincerely regret it. I happen to have in my possession certain documents I removed from Blaine Harrington that clearly implicate several people in the Pentagon and other branches, people who could and would eliminate Jack and his entire family in one day. Jack is a smart man and I am sure he knows this to be true. But just remind him, mon petit, if you will.”
With little or no expression I told him I would relay the message. I then asked him to turn off the rotation of the cylinders and leaned over and felt the oldest sphere with my hands. Wherever it had been found, the stone had suffered from countless thousands of years of exposure to the elements. It was also the largest of the three, and its markings, or what was left of them, were spaced farther apart than on the other two. I walked around the sphere from Portugal and marveled at its sheer perfection. It was the smallest one, and its granite surface was infused with a reddish hue and had been polished until it was nearly smooth as glass. It looked as if its creators had only finished yesterday. The carved script was complex and sublime in every way. I glanced at the sphere delivered by Valery and thought back to the exhibit and Geaxi’s reaction to the Neanderthal bones.
