“Truthfully,” he said at last, “I don’t have a clue how I got involved in this. I don’t know why those men, or whatever they are, were at my place. I admit I’ve picked up some odd information about Grigori while working for him, but everyone knows that man is an eccentric. Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if I might simply be going insane. Can you tell me why I’m here?”
Gabriella assessed him, as if contemplating the appropriate response. At last she said, “I have brought you here, Mr. Verlaine, because we need you.”
“‘We’?” Verlaine replied.
“We ask that you help us recover something very precious.”
“The discovery made in the Rhodope Mountains?”
Gabriella’s face turned pale at Verlaine’s words. He felt a brief flicker of triumph-for once he had surprised her.
“You know about the journey to the Rhodopes?” she said, recovering her composure.
“It is mentioned in a letter from Abigail Rockefeller that Evangeline showed me yesterday. I gathered that they were discussing the recovery of some sort of antiquity, perhaps Greek pottery or Thracian art. Although now I see that the discovery was more valuable than a few clay jars.”
“Quite a bit more valuable,” Gabriella said, finishing the cigarette and putting it out in an ashtray. “But its worth is assessed differently than you might think. It isn’t a value that can be quantified with money, although over the past two thousand years there has been much, much gold spent trying to obtain it. Let me put it this way: It has an ancient value.”
“It is a historical artifact?” Verlaine asked.
“You might say so,” Gabriella said, crossing her arms against her chest. “It is very old, but this is no museum piece. It is as relevant today as it was in the past. It could affect the lives of millions of people, and, even more important, it could change the course of the future.”
“Sounds like a riddle,” Verlaine said, extinguishing the cigarette.
“I’m not going to play games with you. We haven’t the time. The situation is much more complicated than you realize. What happened to you this morning began many ages ago. I don’t know how you became enmeshed in this affair, but the letters in your possession place you firmly at the center.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will have to trust me,” Gabriella said. “I’ll tell you everything, but it must be a trade. For this knowledge you will give up your freedom. After tonight either you will become one of us or you will go into hiding. In any case you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder. Once you know the history of our mission and how Mrs. Rockefeller became involved-which is only a very minor component to a large and complex tale-you will be part of a terrible drama, one that there is no way of exiting completely. It may sound extreme, but once you know the truth, your life will change irrevocably. There is no going back.”
Verlaine looked at his hands, contemplating what Gabriella had said. Although it felt as if he had been asked to step over the edge of a cliff-commanded to jump over, in fact-he could not stop himself from continuing onward willingly. At last he said, “You believe that the letters reveal what they discovered during the expedition.”
“Not what was discovered but what was hidden,” Gabriella said. “They went to the Rhodope Mountains to bring back a lyre. A kithara, to be exact. Once, briefly, we had it in our possession. Now it has been hidden again. Our enemies-an extremely wealthy and influential group-want to find it as badly as we do.”
“That’s who was at my place?”
“The men at your apartment were hired by this group, yes.”
“Is Percival Grigori part of this group?”
“Yes,” Gabriella said. “He is very much a part of it.”
“So in working for him,” Verlaine said, “I have been working against you.”
“As I told you before, you really mean nothing to them. It is detrimental and extremely risky for him to be in public, and so he has always hired disposables-that is his word, not mine-to do his research for him. He uses them to dig up information and then kills them. It is an extremely efficient security measure.” Gabriella lit another cigarette, the smoke forming a haze in the air.
“Did Abigail Rockefeller work for them?”
“No,” Gabriella said. “Quite the opposite. Mrs. Rockefeller was working with Mother Innocenta to find an appropriate hiding place for a case containing the lyre. For reasons we don’t understand, Abigail Rockefeller ceased all communication with us after the war. It caused quite a lot of trauma in our network. We had no idea where she put the contents of the case. Some believe it was hidden in New York City. Others believe she sent it back to Europe. We have been trying desperately to locate where she hid it, if she hid it at all.”
“I’ve read Innocenta’s letters,” Verlaine said, doubtful. “I don’t think they will tell you what you’re hoping to find. It makes more sense to go to Grigori.”
Gabriella took a deep, weary breath. “There is something I would like to show you,” she said. “It may help you understand the kind of creatures we are dealing with.”
Standing, she slid out of her jacket. Then she began to remove her black silk shirt, her veined hands working over the buttons until each one had been unfastened. “This,” she said quietly, pulling first her left arm, then her right free of the black sleeves, “is what happens when you are caught by the other side.”
Verlaine watched Gabriella turn under the light of a nearby window. Her torso was covered with thick, ribboning scars that crossed her back, her chest, her stomach, and her shoulders. It was as though she had been carved with an exceedingly sharp butcher’s knife. From the width of the damaged tissue and the haphazard ridges of the scars, Verlaine guessed that the wounds had not been properly sutured. In the weak light, the skin was pink and raw. The pattern suggested that Gabriella had been whipped or, worse, sliced with a razor blade.
“My God,” Verlaine said, overwhelmed by the mangled flesh, the horrible yet strangely delicate oyster-shell pink of the scars. “How did it happen?”
“Once I believed I could outsmart them,” Gabriella said. “I believed that I was wiser, stronger, more adept than they were. I was the best angelologist in all of Paris during the war. Despite my age I rose through the hierarchy faster than anyone. This was a fact. Believe me-I am and always have been very, very good at my work.”
“This happened in the war?” Verlaine asked, trying to make sense of such brutality.
“In my youth I worked as a double agent. I became the lover of the heir of the most powerful enemy family. My work was monitored, and I was quite successful in the beginning, but ultimately I was found out. If anyone could have pulled off such an infiltration, I could have. Take a long look at what happened to me, Mr. Verlaine, and imagine what they will do to you. Your naïve American belief that good always overcomes evil would not save you. I guarantee: You will be doomed.”
Verlaine could not bear to look at Gabriella, yet he could not turn away. His gaze traced the scars’ sinuous pink path from her clavicle to her hip, the pallor of her skin registering through his body. He felt that he might be sick. “How can you hope to defeat them?”
“That,” Gabriella said, sliding back into her blouse and fastening the buttons, “is something I will explain after you have given me the letters.”
Verlaine set the laptop computer on the surface of Gabriella’s desk and turned it on. The hard drive clicked, and the monitor flickered to life. Soon all his files-including the research documents and scanned letters-appeared as icons on the glowing surface of the screen, bright-colored electronic balloons floating in an electronic blue sky. Verlaine clicked the Rockefeller/ Innocenta folder and stepped away from the computer, giving Gabriella ample room to read. At the dust-streaked window, he observed the quiet, cold park. He knew that beyond there were frozen ponds, an empty skating rink, snow-covered sidewalks, the winterized carousel. A phalanx of taxis sped north on Central Park West, carrying people uptown. The city carried on in its usual manic fashion.