The Magic Circle

by Katherine Neville

  “That’s enough, Gavroche,” Laf snapped over the line in a tone wholly unlike him. “I know this Virgilio Santorini; he’s a very dangerous man, as you may live long enough to discover for yourself. As for the other—this ‘grandfather’ of yours—I pray only that he came to you as a friend. You must say no more—we cannot discuss it now, for you have made so many bad and foolish choices since we parted from one another in Idaho, I cannot think what to do. Though you have failed in all you’ve promised so far, you must swear to me one thing: that you will phone your mother first, before meeting with the person you plan to visit in Paris. It is of the utmost importance, no matter what else you may foolishly choose to do or not to do.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I admit, I was chagrined; I’d never heard Laf so upset. But just then I heard the first call in German for our plane.

  “I’m really sorry, Laf,” I whispered under the background noise of the public address. “I’ll phone Jersey the minute I get off the plane in Paris—I swear.”

  There was a silence on the phone as the racket went on, the call for our plane first repeated in French, then in English. Wolfgang popped his head out the glass doors of the waiting area, gesturing frantically to me—but just then another voice came on the phone. It was Bambi.

  “Fräulein Behn,” she said, “your Onkel is so unhappy by your conversation, I think he forgets some messages he was planning to give you. One is a computer mail for you, sent over here to us from Wolfgang’s office. The other is from your colleague Herr Maxfield. He has telephoned many times this week; he says you have never called him back, as he asked. He has a most important message for you. He sent a telegram.”

  “But quickly,” I said. “Our plane is about to go.”

  “I shall read them both to you myself: they’re very small,” she told me. “The first is from a place called Four Corners in America, and says, ‘Research phase completed. Take extreme care in handling K file. Data are suspect.’”

  I knew the only thing in Four Corners, that remote spot in the high desert of the Southwest, would be the ruins of ancient Anasazi Indian dwellings. So this message was Sam’s way of telling me, based on what he’d learned from his researches in Utah, that I should beware of any “data” issuing from Wolfgang “K” Hauser. This seemed bad enough. But Olivier’s telegram was worse. It said:

  The Pod took the next plane after yours to Vienna; he’s still there. Maybe you lost more than I did on our lottery. Jason’s doing great and sends his regards. My boss Theron sends his, too.

  Love, Olivier

  That packed a wallop: The only good news was that my cat was doing well. It was definitely not good that my boss the Pod had followed me to Vienna. This raised the specter of something that, for the entire past week in Russia, had been hovering at the back of my mind. Sam’s warning only seemed to confirm it.

  Wolfgang was telling the truth in admitting I’d seen Father Virgilio earlier, before meeting him at the monastery of Melk. As he’d pointed out, I had seen Virgilio the day before, in the restaurant where the padre was disguised as a busboy, keeping an eye on me all afternoon with Dacian Bassarides. Seeing Virgilio as a fleeting busboy might explain why, later, he would have seemed familiar to me—but not that familiar. Then I recalled Wolfgang’s evasive replies to my questions about his mysterious servant Hans Claus, whose name kept changing. It was there that I found the lie.

  How relieved he must have been when I believed it was Father Virgilio I had recognized from the back that night in the vineyard. But I realized now that the figure I’d seen moving away from me in the moonlight was not Virgilio but a figure I had often followed through the corridors of the nuclear site back in Idaho—a wiry figure that moved with the spry step of a trained boxer and Vietnam vet. I knew, with not the shadow of a doubt, that the man who’d met Wolfgang so clandestinely in the vineyard above Krems had been none other than my own boss, Pastor Owen Dart.

  In the wake of that came a flood of thoughts about just what such a connection might mean. For starters, I couldn’t overlook that it was Dart who’d hired me into the nuclear field right out of college, with no experience, then put me on this assignment with Wolfgang just after my return from Sam’s funeral. Now in hindsight, given everything else in the picture, that seemed more than exceptional timing.

  Then it was again Dart who’d supposedly spoken with the Washington Post about my “inheritance,” and whose idea it had been to send Olivier quickly to the post office to retrieve my package. It was Pastor Dart, too, who’d sent Wolfgang chasing after me across two states to Jackson Hole, and who’d gone up against even federal security to make sure I was on that plane with Wolfgang. What else could it possibly mean, if the Pod himself had jumped on the very next flight to Vienna? Furthermore, his secret night meeting with Wolfgang, just after we’d hidden the manuscripts, coupled with Olivier’s message that the Pod was still there in Vienna seemed to have obvious implications—though there was bloody little I could do about them by myself, tonight.

  As we boarded the plane to Paris, something strong and cold was forming inside me. I tried to swallow what bitterness I might feel over the depth of Wolfgang’s treachery, until I could wade to the bottom of this quagmire of lies. But there was something more important I really couldn’t bear to think of, though I knew I must. I was terrified to learn what the rest of Olivier’s message meant, the part at the very end, since it might prove the most dangerous of all.

  For the man who’d been killed in San Francisco in place of my cousin Sam was named Theron, like Olivier’s “boss.” His name had been Theron Vane.

  FIRE AND ICE

  DISCIPLE:

  Lama, about the Great Stone we have many legends.… From the old Druidic times many nations remember these legends of truth about the natural energies concealed in this strange visitor to our planet.

  LAMA:

  Lapis Exilis … the stone which is mentioned among the old Meistersingers. One sees that the West and East are working together on many principles. We do not need to go to the deserts to hear of the Stone.… Everything has been indicated in the Kalachakra, but only few have grasped it.

  The teaching of Kalachakra, the utilization of the primary energy, has been called the Teaching of Fire. The Hindu people know the great Agni—ancient teaching though it be—shall be the new teaching for the New Era. We must think of the future.

  —Nicholas Roerich, Shambhala

  Some say the world will end in fire,

  Some say in ice.

  From what I’ve tasted of desire

  I hold with those who favor fire.

  But if it had to perish twice,

  I think I know enough of hate

  To say that for destruction ice

  Is also great

  And would suffice.

  —Robert Frost, Fire and Ice

  It was not yet midnight when we arrived, but Charles de Gaulle airport was pretty deserted. The money changers had locked up their booths and gone home, and the moving escalator tracks inside their clear glass tubes had been shut off for the night. Luckily, we hadn’t arranged to meet with Zoe until tomorrow morning.

  But midnight here meant it was before six P.M. at Jersey’s elegant New York penthouse—early enough in the cocktail hour that she might still be able to focus if I phoned her right away. It had also occurred to me that it would be better to call from a public phone at the airport than wait to try from whatever hotel accommodations Wolfgang had arranged for us. Back then, a week ago, my principal thought had been when and where we could spend another long, liquid night of lust before a castle fire—but now I tried to push all that from my mind.

  I figured out how to use my calling card at the pay phone. Wolfgang waited for our bags to arrive at the nearby international carousel, where I could see him through the glass wall. After a few rings, Jersey came on the line. Her voice was as crystal clear as if she were only two feet away, and she sounded uncharacteristically sober.

  “Bonsoir
from Paris, Mother,” I greeted her politely—but not too warmly. “Laf insisted I phone you as soon as I got here from Vienna. I’m standing in a phone booth in the middle of Charles de Gaulle, it’s past midnight, and I’m not alone. But you’ve probably guessed what brought me here—a little family matter it seems you forgot to mention these past twenty-five years. Maybe you’d be willing to save us time and hassles, and let me know what you think I need to know?”

  Jersey was silent for so long that I thought maybe she’d dropped the phone.

  “Mother?” I said at last.

  “Oh, Ariel honey, I’m so sorry,” she answered in a tone that seemed genuinely contrite—though naturally I hadn’t forgotten for a moment that divas are also actresses. “Sweetheart, it’s just that I hoped if I kept you apart from all of this, despite everything, maybe at least you’d have some chance of a normal life.” She laughed and added, a little bitterly it seemed, “Whatever that might be.”

  “Mother, I’m not asking you to explain the motives for all you’ve done or not done these past many years. That can certainly wait until later.” Much later, I thought. In fact, if I got lucky I might even get to forgo the pleasure of hearing that particular confession forever. “But what I would like tonight is some cold hard facts,” I suggested. “Just a mini-recap, a clue here and there, of what might be going on with your family—our family. If it isn’t too much to ask?”

  “I don’t know why I irrationally hoped this day wouldn’t arrive,” Jersey said, almost irritably. “But I certainly never conceived I’d be ambushed long distance by my own daughter, before I’ve even had a chance to toss down a preparatory drink! Do you expect me to apologize for my entire life in three minutes?”

  “Okay, take your time,” I told her. “Laf wanted me to speak with you first—but that gives us all night, since I’m not actually meeting Granny dearest till morning.”

  “Very well. Exactly what sort of ‘cold hard facts’ did you have in mind?” she asked me coolly.

  “Things like why your mother ran off to France and deserted you during the war, and why you then married, or lived with, not one but all three of her brothers—”

  “For that, I need a drink,” Jersey cut in abruptly, leaving me dangling on the line three thousand miles away, and on my nickel.

  When she came back a moment later, I could hear the ice cubes clinking in her glass like tiny punctuation marks as she spoke. Perhaps it was the liquor talking, but her voice had taken on a steely tone, as if she’d just stepped into a full suit of armor.

  “Exactly how much have you been told?” Jersey asked me.

  “Far too much for my own good, I’m sure, Mother,” I said. “So you needn’t worry about pulling any punches at this late date.”

  “Then you know about Augustus,” was her reply.

  “Augustus?” I said.

  Though it seemed clear she must be referring to Dacian Bassarides’s true paternity of my father, wasn’t I the one who was supposed to be asking the questions? Nor was I at all sure I should just blurt out everything I knew to a woman—mother or no—who’d kept me in the dark so long about her own parentage. With Jersey’s next unexpected comment, I was relieved I’d had the sense, for once, to hold my tongue.

  “I mean,” said Jersey, still able to phrase her words carefully despite the drink, “has Lafcadio explained why I left your father?”

  Now, I hadn’t a clue where all this was leading, but of one thing I was positive: Whatever was coming down the pike, it was too critical for me to screw up now.

  “Why don’t you put it in your own words?” I suggested—the only compromise I could think of between simply answering yes or no.

  “It’s clear you don’t know,” said Jersey. “And to be frank, if it’s to be left in my hands, I’m not sure exactly what to do. I know it would be far better not to tell you any of it. Yet, considering that you said you’ve just been to Vienna and you’re now in Paris, I’m afraid keeping it all secret any longer might only place you in serious danger—”

  “I’m already in serious danger, Mother!” I exploded between clenched teeth. Jesus, how I wanted to wring her goddamned neck!

  Wolfgang had glanced over at me with one raised eyebrow through the glass wall of the booth. I shrugged my shoulders as if nothing were amiss, and I tried to smile.

  “Of course, I realize you have every right to know,” said Jersey.

  But she lapsed into silence again as if trying to sort her thoughts. All I could hear was the tinkle of ice cubes in the background thousands of miles away. I’d thought by now I was braced for anything anyone could possibly throw at me. But at last my mother spoke, and as always with my family, I wished to God she hadn’t.

  “Ariel, sweetheart, I have a sister.…” Jersey began. When I said nothing, she added, “I should rather say I had a sister. We weren’t close, I hadn’t seen her in years, and now she’s dead. But due to an—unforgivable infidelity on your father’s part all those years ago—” She choked on her next words, as well she might! “Darling, you have a sister too, nearly your own age.”

  I really couldn’t believe this was happening. Why hadn’t anyone told me? All these generations of lies and deception spewing from the operatic throat of my diva mother truly sickened me—though clearly the blame was far from hers alone. Augustus had done a pretty good cover-up job, too.

  I probably would have done well to hang up and pretend we’d been cut off. But somehow I sensed this was just the left hook, that the right to the jaw was still coming. So I held my breath and waited. I knew that the mother in question—the “corespondent” in my father’s infidelity—couldn’t have been his current wife, Grace. She’d have been too young, twenty-odd years ago when Jersey left my father. But Jersey was still speaking.

  “Ariel, I know your father and I should have told you long ago.…”

  She paused, as if she had to put down a healthy slug of her drink before she could go on. As I watched Wolfgang pacing near the carousel I was grateful the French baggage system was one of the slowest in Europe, so I still had time to get to the bottom of this—though I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to.

  “You asked why my mother deserted me,” Jersey said. “She didn’t, exactly. Zoe had gone into France to fetch my sister Halle, who’d been brought by her father to Paris. It was wartime, you know—”

  “Her father?” I interrupted. “You mean your sister’s father wasn’t the same as your father, the Irish pilot?” But why should that be surprising, given Zoe’s reputation?

  “My mother was married, or I should say, she had a child—my sister—by another man. With fathers on opposite sides in wartime, Halle was understandably raised apart from me, we had separate lives. But when you said just now you’d recently been in Vienna, I thought your uncle Lafcadio had introduced you to her—”

  “To her?” I said, as I felt the blood clotting in my chest. The two girls’ fathers were on opposite sides in the war? But if Jersey’s sister was dead now, who could be the her whom Laf might have introduced me to in Vienna? Then Jersey delivered that right cross I’d been expecting.

  “I can never forgive your father Augustus, nor my sister, for their betrayal,” she said. “But the child they had together—your sister—has become a truly beautiful girl, and exceptionally talented too. These past ten years, Lafcadio has been her guardian and a kind of Svengali. That’s why I thought you might have met. They travel everywhere together.”

  I clutched the phone to my chest, hyperventilating, praying the airport would collapse on me or something. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I slowly brought the phone back to my ear just as Jersey said, “Ariel, your sister’s name is Bettina von Hauser.”

  “I hope you will be like sisters,” Laf had said—hadn’t he?—when Bettina Braunhilde von Hauser and I first met. Then the same night, when she came to my room in the Lodge, Bambi spoke of her brother Wolfgang’s “dangerous involvement” with me—though at the time, as I recall, she’d sa
id it might endanger us all. Good lord, did this mean Wolfgang was my brother too?

  Luckily, no. Wolfgang’s mother Halle was married to an Austrian who died sometime after Wolfgang was born—but mercifully before she’d made her intimate acquaintance of my father, Augustus. But that didn’t simplify the family complexity.

  By the time I rang off the phone with my mother, some twenty minutes later, I was immeasurably wiser about family matters. To my shopworn line “My family relations are rather complex” I thought I might now be justified in adding the tag line “Little did she know.” But this time as the stew bubbled—thanks to a little heat applied to Jersey’s feet by me—more than hot air floated to the surface.

  According to Jersey, her mother Zoe Behn, youngest child and only daughter of Hieronymus and Hermione, had run off with Pandora and, by the age of fifteen, had developed into an excellent dancer. Like the generation-older Isadora Duncan, who’d become her friend, tutor, and patroness, Zoe soon created her own unique style of performance. By the time of Isadora’s tragic death in 1927, when Zoe was only twenty, my young grandmother was already a star of the Folies Bergère, Opéra Comique, and numerous other venues. It was the year she met Hillmann von Hauser.

  Hillmann von Hauser was in his late thirties, rich, powerful, a knight of the Teutonic Order, a member of several underground Germanic nationalist groups like the Thule Society and the Armanenschaft—and already, in 1927, a strong financial backer of the National Socialist Party and of Adolf Hitler. He was blond like Zoe, handsome, strapping, and for the past ten years had been married into an old, respected noble family like his own back in Germany—a marriage that had yet to produce a child.

  Young Zoe was a wild exhibitionist of easy virtue, who for five years had danced nude onstage before the public each night—all attested to in her own memoirs, the scandalous exposé of an already scandal-riddled Roaring Twenties. Apparently Zoe was only too happy to provide empirical proof that the von Hauser’s barren marriage could not be the result of his own sterility. My mother’s older sister, Halle von Hauser, was born to Zoe in 1928.