‘Hello.’
The voice at the other end of the connection brought him to full wakefulness quickly. ‘Thomas?’
‘Alice?’ Not believing he was hearing her voice after so many years, Lourds sat up.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. Just surprised to hear from you. You’re not the last person I expected to hear from, but you would have been near the top of the list.’
She laughed and the sound was so pleasant it wiped away a decade and placed him at picnics and dig sites he’d gone to while at university in one country or another.
‘I can’t believe you recognized my voice so easily.’
‘I will never forget your voice, my dear.’ After losing Lev so suddenly and so brutally, being contacted by someone else from his past buoyed Lourds up for a moment. Then the probability of both things happening out of the blue brought him crashing back down. If he was having that kind of luck, it was time to go to Monte Carlo. ‘How’d you get this number?’
‘It wasn’t easy. I managed to get hold of one of the film crews still in the mountains, then asked them to let me speak to Professor Hu. They did. I explained to him that I needed to speak to you on a matter of some importance and he helped me. Terribly nice man.’
‘David’s one of the good ones. So he gave you my number?’
‘Yes. Thomas, I’m calling you about Lev.’
Lourds stood and paced. ‘I’d only gotten the news yesterday.’
‘The first I’d heard of it was this morning. Otherwise, I’d have called earlier because I knew the two of you were very close.’
‘Yes.’
Alice hesitated. ‘This isn’t exactly a social call, Thomas. I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. On the surface, it appears my husband had something to do with Lev’s death.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Because many of Lev’s things have turned up in our house. I thought maybe you’d like to come and have a look.’
Lourds immediately thought of the candelabrum. ‘Yes, I would.’
28
Getting a flight from Tel Aviv to Vienna was pretty easy, as long as a passenger flew either by midmorning or late evening. EL-AL and Austrian Airlines both had regular flights out of the city, but they were gridlocked on their takeoffs and landings.
Lourds spent the rest of the afternoon and evening on his computer, researching everything he could find on Mohammad and a purportedly lost Koran written in the Prophet’s own hand. There wasn’t much. What he did find tended to turn up on the same sites that talked of a hollow earth and Lost Lemuria.
The long day and the hard rush after the Himalayas finally took their toll, and he’d slept. Then he’d gone to Ben Gurion International Airport and taken one of the scheduled flights to Vienna. He’d left his bags at the hotel and remained checked in there for the time being.
He was certain he’d be back to Jerusalem before the hunt was over. Lev had been there, not somewhere else. Wherever the clue in the candelabrum led, Lourds was certain it’d be in the city.
Now, standing on the street that circled Vienna’s old town, Lourds tried to remember the last time he’d been in the city. The Wiener Staatsoper looked beautiful. The state opera house’s blue-green curved roof standing out against the dark blue sky.
He paid the taxi driver, shouldered his backpack, and strode to the Albertina Museum just behind the opera house. After paying the admittance fee, he went up to the open terrace where he was supposed to meet Alice. He was surprised at how rapidly his heart was beating, but he didn’t know if it was from the coming reunion or the fact that his life could potentially be forfeit soon.
At the top of the steps, he stood in the shadow and gazed out across the terrace. The statue of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I and his high-stepping mount occupied a central location, and the old warrior gazed out over his city with sword in hand.
‘You had quite the life, didn’t you, old fellow?’
‘Talking to yourself, Thomas? They say that’s a bad sign.’
Startled, Lourds turned around and found Alice standing a short distance away. He hadn’t even noticed her as the city’s horizon had come into view because the sight was so breathtaking.
‘Alice.’
He had just a brief impression of her dressed in an emerald green evening dress that was so light it seemed ready to blow away in the breeze. The flyaway halter top and thin spaghetti straps revealed an expanse of honey gold tanned skin, and the chiffon looked like fairy’s wings wrapped around her curved hips. She held a flowered sunhat in one gloved hand.
Then she was in his arms, holding him tight, and kissing him hard enough to bruise his lips. Lourds’s reaction was uncontrollable and immediate, and it made itself known as she pressed against him.
‘Well, it appears some things never change.’ She leaned back and laughed. Her expression sobered as she gently touched his face. ‘Oh, Thomas, your poor eye.’
‘It’s nothing. You should see the other guy.’
‘Seriously, Thomas. You were never a fighter. You were always a lover. Was it a soccer injury? Did you walk into a door? You’ve done that before, as I recall.’
Lourds didn’t want to go into the whole story, but he knew Alice deserved part of it. ‘I got this in Namchee Bazaar.’
‘In the Himalayas?’
‘Close enough. Two men tried to kidnap me. Fortunately, I had a guardian angel. Unfortunately, she killed them both, so no one knows who sent them. But … I don’t think they were merely muggers. Then there’s the second mystery of the woman that saved me.’
That sobered Alice up even more. She stepped back out of his arms, looking nonplussed. ‘“Woman”?’
‘I never even got her name. I don’t know who she was, either.’ Lourds doffed his hat and ran fingers through his hair, then resettled it on his head. ‘Everything about this affair concerning Lev has been mysterious, Alice, and I’m thrown from one confusing event to another. You have to believe me.’ He paused. ‘Your phone call was confusing as well. I have to admit, I didn’t know if I could even trust you. I half expected to be snatched the minute I saw you.’
A sad look twisted Alice’s full lips. ‘Thomas, if there’s one person in this world you can trust right now, it’s me.’
Part of the knot in Lourds’s stomach relaxed, but the sour taste at the back of his mouth hovered. ‘I hoped I was right about that. That’s why I came.’
‘To answer Lev’s mystery?’
‘And to see you.’ Lourds smiled. ‘You look gorgeous, Alice. The years have been very kind to you.’
‘That hasn’t come without effort, I’ll have you know.’ Alice took him by the hand and led him to the terrace’s edge. ‘You were talking to Franz Joseph when I so rudely interrupted.’
‘Casual conversation.’
‘No discussion of history is ever casual with you.’
Lourds shrugged good-naturedly. ‘Perhaps not. You are aware that his reign of sixty-eight years places him third, after Louis XIV and Johannes II, as the longest and most influential?’
‘I was aware of that, but I didn’t know the exact number of years. That’s something you would know.’
‘He was an impressive man. A warrior, a scholar. He fought off Prussia’s attempts to create a new German Confederation in their image. Survived an assassination attempt that would have taken his head off, and lived to see the completion of the church built to commemorate the event.’ Lourds pointed off in the distance toward Votivkirche. ‘That one, in fact.’