The Magic Circle Katherine Neville (top 100 novels of all time TXT) 📖

the bus to the landing strip, I went to phone Laf as I’d promised. Wolfgang said not to talk long, as we might board at any moment.

I was hoping it wasn’t too late to call, but I really wasn’t expecting the barrage I got, when the servant who’d answered found Laf and put him on the phone:

“Gavroche, for heaven’s sake—where are you? Where have you been?” said Laf, sounding in a tizzy. “We’ve been looking for you all the week. That note you sent with Volga—what were you doing at the monastery of Melk? Why couldn’t you phone me while you were in Vienna, or even from Leningrad? Where are you right now?”

“I’m here at the Vienna airport,” I told him. “But I’m on a flight to Paris that’s leaving at any moment—”

“Paris? Gavroche, I am extremely worried about you,” Laf said, and he certainly sounded it. “Why go to Paris—only because of what Volga told you? Have you spoken with your mother first about any of this?”

“Jersey didn’t see fit to mention anything to me, these past twenty-five years,” I pointed out. “But if you think it’s important, of course I’ll let her know.”

“You must speak with her before you speak with anyone in Paris,” said Laf. “Otherwise, how will you know what to believe?”

“Since I no longer believe anyone or anything I hear,” I said sarcastically, “what difference does it make whether I deceive myself in Idaho, Vienna, Leningrad, or Paris?”

“It makes a good deal of difference,” said Laf, sounding genuinely angry for the first time. “Gavroche, I am trying only to look after you, and your mother as well. She had excellent reasons not to speak of these matters earlier—it was really for your own protection. But now that Earnest and your cousin Sam are both dead …” Laf paused as if he’d just thought of something. “Whom exactly were you with at Melk, Gavroche? Was it Wolfgang Hauser?” he asked. “And did you happen to meet anyone else while you were here in Vienna? Other than your business associates, I mean?”

I wasn’t sure just how much I should say to Laf, much less over a public phone. But I was so sick of all this secrecy and conspiracy, even among my own family—especially among my own family—that I decided to have an end to it.

“Wolfgang and I spent the morning at Melk with a guy named Father Virgilio,” I said. When the line remained pregnant with silence, I added, “The prior afternoon, I had lunch with a handsome devil who claimed he was my grandfather—”

“That’s enough, Gavroche,” Laf snapped over the line in a tone wholly unlike him. “I know this Virgilio Santorini; he’s a very dangerous man, as you may live long enough to discover for yourself. As for the other—this ‘grandfather’ of yours—I pray only that he came to you as a friend. You must say no more—we cannot discuss it now, for you have made so many bad and foolish choices since we parted from one another in Idaho, I cannot think what to do. Though you have failed in all you’ve promised so far, you must swear to me one thing: that you will phone your mother first, before meeting with the person you plan to visit in Paris. It is of the utmost importance, no matter what else you may foolishly choose to do or not to do.”

I wasn’t sure what to say. I admit, I was chagrined; I’d never heard Laf so upset. But just then I heard the first call in German for our plane.

“I’m really sorry, Laf,” I whispered under the background noise of the public address. “I’ll phone Jersey the minute I get off the plane in Paris—I swear.”

There was a silence on the phone as the racket went on, the call for our plane first repeated in French, then in English. Wolfgang popped his head out the glass doors of the waiting area, gesturing frantically to me—but just then another voice came on the phone. It was Bambi.

“Fräulein Behn,” she said, “your Onkel is so unhappy by your conversation, I think he forgets some messages he was planning to give you. One is a computer mail for you, sent over here to us from Wolfgang’s office. The other is from your colleague Herr Maxfield. He has telephoned many times this week; he says you have never called him back, as he asked. He has a most important message for you. He sent a telegram.”

“But quickly,” I said. “Our plane is about to go.”

“I shall read them both to you myself: they’re very small,” she told me. “The first is from a place called Four Corners in America, and says, ‘Research phase completed. Take extreme care in handling K file. Data are suspect.’”

I knew the only thing in Four Corners, that remote spot in the high desert of the Southwest, would be the ruins of ancient Anasazi Indian dwellings. So this message was Sam’s way of telling me, based on what he’d learned from his researches in Utah, that I should beware of any “data” issuing from Wolfgang “K” Hauser. This seemed bad enough. But Olivier’s telegram was worse. It said:

The Pod took the next plane after yours to Vienna; he’s still there. Maybe you lost more than I did on our lottery. Jason’s doing great and sends his regards. My boss Theron sends his, too.

Love, Olivier

That packed a wallop: The only good news was that my cat was doing well. It was definitely not good that my boss the Pod had followed me to Vienna. This raised the specter of something that, for the entire past week in Russia, had been hovering at the back of my mind. Sam’s warning only seemed to confirm it.

Wolfgang was telling the truth in admitting I’d seen Father Virgilio earlier, before meeting him at the monastery of Melk. As he’d pointed out, I had seen Virgilio the day before, in the restaurant where the padre was disguised as a