Although he slept, and his dreams were free of Tibor, he found himself walking across the desert of the Maghreb, hand in hand with Judar and the Moorish brothers he had thrown into the pond. And he wondered whether that was Louiza’s hand behind him like Eurydice’s, and whether that was the hijacker’s fingerprints leading him on in front, and whether there really was a treasure at the end of the journey. Or simply a punishment for all he was, for all he stood for — Holy Roman Emperor, King of the Jews, Caliph of Islam.
When Malory awoke, it was to Bach, the music of Bach, the theme to the Goldberg Variations. Malory stood up from the bed, walked out into the hallway and down the stairs. The music was coming from the parlor, the baby grand. Another man was sitting at the piano, a broad expanse of tweed, the back of a head gone gray with only the memory of red in thick, polished staves running down to the back of his neck. The man was much larger than the man who had sat across the table from him asking questions the afternoon before. There was a walking stick propped up against the bass end of the keyboard. Malory had seen the man before, at TiborTina, climbing up towards the pond behind a man with a brush cut.
“I only play the Aria,” the man said without turning, without stopping. “Never bothered to practice enough to learn the variations.” The notes came out in measured doses. Measured, Malory thought, watching the hair on the man’s knuckles rise and fall in the morning shadows of the bay window, but not music. What the man was playing was Bach but was not music. It was a study for music, the notes leached of color as thoroughly as the cushions on the sofa. Nevertheless, the man played through, played through to the end of the Aria before he turned to Malory and stated his theme.
“Louiza,” the man said. “Shall we talk about Louiza?”
Malory washed quickly in the bathroom off the corridor and joined the man on the veranda. Another cup of tea, another scone. Malory was too keen on talking about Louiza to wonder whether these men had a greater variety of culinary information on him.
“My name is MacPhearson,” the man said. He was sitting back in his own wicker chair, his red knuckles wrapped around a mug of coffee. He made no attempt to rise, to shake Malory’s hand, or even to look at him, but Malory recognized the gift for what it was — a name he could attach to memories that dated back several decades. “You may remember meeting me on several occasions in the past. Cambridge, Rome.”
“Of course,” Malory said, trying to match MacPhearson’s professional coolness and masking his own eagerness with a bite of scone.
“As you are no doubt aware, I hired your friend Louiza straight out of Cambridge. She’s been working for me — doing excellent work, you can imagine — for all these years.”
“Twenty-three,” Malory said. “Nearly.”
“You’re also a numbers man,” MacPhearson said. Malory couldn’t tell whether MacPhearson was smiling beneath the mustache and beard, but he saw teeth stained with coffee and age.
“Yes,” Malory said, taking a sip, the tea too hot to say any more.
“The number of disasters your friend Louiza has prevented — do you have any idea how high it is?”
Malory set his cup down on the arm of his chair.
“But yesterday,” the man said, “she was on to something. Maybe she knew. When you saw her, maybe she was coming to tell you.”
“Tell me?” Malory said. “I hadn’t seen her in almost twenty-three years.”
“Maybe not. But she was looking for you. No question, case closed.”
“Are you certain?” Malory knew that his face was showing warmth and behind that warmth was pleasure, but he was incapable, at the moment, of discretion.
“The only thing we’re sure of,” MacPhearson said, “is that we don’t know where she is. When your friend Mr. Militaru shot himself …”
“Tibor,” Malory said.
“Tibor,” MacPhearson said. “When Tibor shot himself, all hell broke loose.”
“But wasn’t there a man with her? I saw someone chasing her, someone with you, with a brush cut?”
“A crew cut?” MacPhearson frowned.
“Yes!” Malory said, recognizing that his excitement was all about pleasing the red-headed man before him, even though this might be precisely the man who had been keeping him from Louiza for all these years. “The man with the crew cut. I saw him. I saw him with Louiza. At TiborTina, at Tibor’s house, just before.” Surely, Malory thought, this bit of information would buy him some reward. But Malory had spent the past quarter century studying physics and the internal workings of pipe organs and watching very few movies.
“I’m afraid that man is dead,” MacPhearson said, and took a sip of his coffee.
“But,” Malory said, “just the other day, the day before yesterday. At TiborTina.”
“He was in the North Tower,” MacPhearson said.
“The World Trade Center?”
“The first one to collapse.”
“He went from TiborTina to the World Trade Center?” Malory asked. “Right after Tibor?”
“He was following Louiza.”
Malory felt ill. Was this what the conversation was about? Had MacPhearson come to tell Malory that Louiza was dead?
“No,” MacPhearson said, in answer to the unasked. “We think Louiza was not in the towers. Maybe Vince was wrong.”
“Vince?”
“Louiza’s husband,” MacPhearson said, and watched Malory’s confusion with interest. “Ah,” he said, “she never told you?”
Malory said nothing.
“There’s no time to weep for poor Vince,” MacPhearson continued, far from tears. “Louiza. We have to find Louiza.”
Now it was Malory’s turn to be discreet. Louiza had married. Louiza had not married Malory. Louiza had married Vince. But Vince was dead.
“i = u,” Louiza had told Malory in the beginning. “The implications are potentially dangerous.” Vince was dead, but Malory was alive. Louiza was alive. Malory had a thought. “Mr. MacPhearson,” Malory said, and for the first time stood, “why is Louiza so important to you? What does she know?”
“We don’t know exactly who you are, Mr. Malory. I suspect we will find out, sooner or later. We know you are a physicist. We know that you know that 80 percent of what exists in the universe cannot be seen. But it’s what makes the universe stick. It’s what gives us weight, what gives us gravity. Our search used to be the same as yours — for that dark matter. But now we know that there is another force — a dark energy, an anti-gravity — that is dedicated to sending out its armies of galaxies on an endless jihad to the far corners of space, dedicated to blowing things up, as you saw yesterday, exploding towers, tumbling bodies in a perpetual freefall.
“For 13.8 billion years the universe has been expanding. And in that darkness we have never seen, sits the pitiful dribble of galaxies and stars and planets and mosques and churches and skyscrapers and gabled Victorian piles that we spend 99 percent of our time rebuilding and redecorating. But within that visible matter is one person who has a glimpse into that darkness. We have to find her.”
“Louiza?”
MacPhearson nodded.
“You think that what happened yesterday, the attack against the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, is the fault of dark matter?” Malory’s disbelief had given him a voice. “You think dark energy applies to the motives of people as well as the motions of stars and subatomic particles?”
“Do you think there’s anything else?” MacPhearson asked, and hummed the Goldberg Aria. “Come, Mr. Malory. I know who you are. I know what you’ve been looking for. I need your help.”
“My help?” Malory said. “You have been keeping Louiza away from me for twenty-three years and now you want my help?”