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.