Part 12 (1/2)

I had those first glimmers that something might be terribly wrong. I tried to relax as I shoved some more crumpled paper under the nascent fires. But the timing of this unannounced soiree of Rodo's bothered me just a weekend away from my mother's in Colorado, a party that Rodo himself had actually known about, as I recalled from his voice mail.

'What exactly do you know about this party?' I asked Leda. 'Do you have any idea who these ”dignitaries” might be?'

'I heard it might be some high-level muckety-mucks from the government. n.o.body knows for sure,' she said. She was hunkering down over her blades as she pa.s.sed me a few more sheets of crumpled paper. 'They made all the arrangements with Rodo himself, not the catering manager. They're throwing it on a night when the restaurant isn't even open. It's all very hush-hush. '

'Then how did you learn so much?' I asked.

'When he heard you'd left for the weekend, Rodo threw a real hissy fit that's the first I learned that he wanted you and you alone for tomorrow night,' Leda explained. 'But as for the boum, we all knew there was some private function cooking. The cellar's been reserved for two weeks-'

'Two weeks?' I interrupted.

I might be jumping to conclusions, but this seemed more than synchronicity. I couldn't help hearing Vartan's comment: You and I have too many coincidences in our lives. I was growing horribly certain that there was no such thing as a coincidence when it came to the way my life was running these past few days.

'But why would Rodo single me out for this s.h.i.+ndig?' I asked Leda, who was kneeling beside me wadding newsprint. 'I mean, I'm hardly a seasoned caterer, just an apprentice chef. Has anything happened lately that might prompt this sudden interest in my career?'

Leda glanced up. Her next words confirmed my worst fears.

'Well, actually, there was a man who came by the restaurant a few times this weekend, looking for you.' she said. 'Maybe he has something to do with the gig tomorrow night.'

'What man?' I said, trying to quell that familiar adrenaline rush.

'He didn't give his name or leave a note,' Leda told me, getting to her feet and brus.h.i.+ng off her hands on her shorts. 'He was pretty distinguished tall and elegant, with an expensive trenchcoat. But mysterious, too. He wore blue-tinted sungla.s.ses so you couldn't quite see his eyes.'

Terrific. This was the very last thing I needed a man of mystery. I tried to focus on Leda, but my eyes went all crooked. I was nearly reeling from four days' deprivation of food, of liquid, of sleep. Synchronicity, serendipity, and strangers be d.a.m.ned, I needed to get home. I needed to lie down in a bed.

'Where are you going?' Leda said as I stumbled toward the steps in a blur.

'We'll discuss it in the morning,' I managed to say, as I grabbed my jacket and backpack from the floor on my way out. 'The fires will be fine. Rodo will survive. The enigmatic stranger may return. And we who are about to die salute you.'

'Okay, I'll be here,' Leda said. 'And you take care.'

I headed up the steps on wobbly legs and staggered into the deserted alley. I glanced at my watch: it was almost two a.m. and not a creature was stirring; the narrow, brick-paved lane was dead as a tomb. It was so silent that you could hear the waters of the Potomac in the distance, lapping the trestles of Key Bridge.

At the end of the alley I turned the corner to my small slate terrace bordering the ca.n.a.l. I fumbled in my pack for the key to my front door, illuminated by the golden pink light of the single streetlamp marking the entrance to the shadowy path that descended into Francis Scott Key Park. The low iron bicycle railing surrounding the terrace was all that kept one from toppling over the side of the sheer rock retaining wall that dropped sixty feet to the motionless surface of the C & O Ca.n.a.l.

My cliffside dwelling provided an astonis.h.i.+ng overlook across the vast expanse of the Potomac. People would kill for a view like this, and probably had in the past. But over the years, Rodo had refused to sell this weathered structure, due to its proximity to the Hearth. In exhaustion, I took a deep breath of the river and pulled out my key.

There were two doors, actually, separate entrances. The one at the left led to the main floor with its iron bars and shuttered windows, where Rodo kept important doc.u.ments and files for his flickering fireside empire. I unlocked the other the upstairs, where the slave laborer slept, always within handy availability to the fires.

As I was about to step inside, I b.u.mped my toe on something I hadn't noticed, lying there on the step. It was a clear plastic bag with the Was.h.i.+ngton Post inside. I'd never subscribed to the Post in my life, and there were no other residents in the alley it might belong to. I was about to dump the bag, paper and all, into the nearby city trash can, when under the limpid pink light of the streetlamp I noticed the yellow stickie that someone had attached with a handwritten note: 'See page A1.'

I switched on my house lights and stepped inside. Dropping my rucksack on the floor of the foyer, I yanked the newspaper from its plastic bag and pulled it open.

The headlines seemed to be screaming at me from across time and s.p.a.ce. I could hear the blood beating in my ears. I could hardly breathe.

April 7, 2003: TROOPS, TANKS ATTACK CENTRAL BAGHDAD...

We'd taken the city at six a.m., Iraqi time only hours ago, barely long enough to get the news into this paper. In my dazed stupor, I could hardly absorb the rest.

All I could hear was Lily Rad's voice haunting the recesses of my mind: It was never the game of chess that your mother feared, but another Game...the most dangerous Game imaginable...based on a rare and valuable chess set from Mesopotamia...

Why hadn't I seen it at once? Was I blind?

What event had happened two weeks ago? Two weeks ago when Taras Petrossian mysteriously died in London? Two weeks ago when my mother sent all those invitations to her birthday party?

Two weeks ago on the morning of March 20 U.S. troops had invaded Iraq. Birthplace of the Montglane Service. Two weeks ago was when the first move had been made. The Game had begun again.

PART TWO.

Nigredo.

You...must search into the causes of things, and endeavour to understand how the process of generation and resuscitation is accomplished by means of decomposition, and how all life is produced out of decay...it must perish and be putrefied; again, by the influence of the stars, which works through the elements, it is restored to life, and becomes once more a heavenly thing that has its habitation in the highest region of the firmament.

Basilius Valentinus, The Eighth Key.

The Return.

Suddenly I realized that I was no longer a prisoner, neither in body nor in soul; that I was not condemned to death... As I was falling asleep, two Latin words were running through my brain, for no apparent reason: magna mater. The next morning when I woke I realized what they meant... In ancient Rome candidates to the secret cult of magna mater had to pa.s.s through a bath of blood. If they survived, they would be born again.

Jacques Bergier, Le Matin des Magiciens.

It is only this initiatory death and resurrection that consecrates a shaman.

Mircea Eliade, Shamanism.

Dolena Geizerov, Duhlyikoh Vahstohk.

(Valley of Geysers, the Far East).

He felt as if he were rising from a great depth, floating toward the surface of a dark sea. A bottomless sea. His eyes were closed but he could sense the darkness beneath him. As he rose toward the light, the pressure on him seemed to increase, a pressure that made it difficult to breathe. With effort, he slid his hand to his chest. Against his skin was a soft piece of cloth, some sort of thin garment or cover with no weight at all.

Why couldn't he breathe?

If he focused on his breath, he found it came more easily, rhythmically. The sound of his own breathing was something strange and new, as if he hadn't ever heard it clearly before. He listened as the sound rose and fell in a soft, gentle cadence.

With his eyes still shut, in his mind's eye he could almost make out an image hovering near him: an image that seemed so important, if only he could grasp it. But he couldn't quite see it. It was all rather vague and blurry around the edges. He tried harder to see it: Perhaps it was a figurine of sorts. Yes, it was the carved figure of a woman, s.h.i.+mmering in a golden light. She was seated within a partially curtained pavilion. Was he the sculptor? Had he been the one to carve it? It seemed so important. If he could just pull the draperies aside with his mind, then he could see within. He could see the figure. But each time he tried to imagine this task, his head was flooded with a brilliant, blinding glare.

With extra effort he finally managed to open his eyelids and tried to focus upon his surroundings. He found himself in some kind of undifferentiated s.p.a.ce filled with a strange light, an incandescent glow flickering around him. Beyond, there were impenetrable deep brown shadows, and in the distance a sound that he couldn't identify, like rus.h.i.+ng water.

Now he could see his own hand, which still rested upon his chest, faded like a fallen flower petal. It seemed unreal, as if it had moved here of its own accord, as if it were someone else's hand.