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

own family. And also that Olivier had, as I’d hoped, been on my side. But my preoccupation with truth had led to a key observation—that the real danger in these documents might come from another quarter.

I couldn’t forget what Sam told me after describing how Theron Vane had been killed in his place by that bomb, an idea he’d repeated when warning me not to be obvious about haunting the post office or the mailbox. He said once anyone knew how and where to get their hands on a copy of these manuscripts, it might be easier if one of us were dead. I now understood that his cautionary reserve wasn’t because the parcel he’d mailed me was the only extant version of these documents—but rather because Sam was the only person who knew where Pandora’s originals were hidden. This strongly suggested to me that the folks who were after the documents didn’t just want to know their contents—but to be certain no one else did. So those documents now in the hands of Wolfgang and the Pod would be the unique version—if Sam were dead. It didn’t take much to figure out what came next in the scenario. For once, I tried not to shut my eyes.

“The Pod’s in cahoots. Your telegram warned me, but I got it too late,” I told Olivier. “Wolfgang has the manuscripts, though you both tried to warn me of him, too.”

“I believe that my brother has genuinely fallen in love with you,” said Bambi. “Had he met you earlier, this love might have forced him to reconsider his values and have saved him. Wolfgang is an educated person with high ideals, if the wrong ones. I think it surprised him to find he also has strong passions. But it’s far too late for salvation, or even for talk. Where is my brother right now?”

“He went to the office from the airport,” I said. “I was to meet him there shortly—”

“Then we must act at once,” Bambi said. “If he’s discovered that Olivier is not there either, he may come directly here. If he believes that you know where your cousin hid the original manuscripts, then you’ll be in terrible danger. My brother must be stopped before he kills anyone again.”

I stared at her in horror as Olivier put his hand gently on my arm. What in God’s name was she saying? But of course I knew. I suppose, somehow, I always must have known.

“We were never quite sure,” Olivier was telling Bambi.

I heard a slight buzzing in my ears as if I might black out. Then I heard Bambi’s voice off somewhere in the distance.

“Yes, I’m certain of it. My brother Wolfgang murdered Samuel Behn.”

The man with whom I’d passed those nights of tempestuous love-making was a cold-blooded killer who, all the while I was in his arms, had believed he’d murdered Sam. I felt like taking a big slug of absinthe laced with opium, or even some of that hemlock that carried Socrates off to nirvana—though it might be more propitious right now to take to the road. But to where?

Olivier seemed about to make a suggestion when we heard a strange sound. We looked at each other for an instant before realizing what it was: our rarely used front doorbell at the far side of the house. Since the front door was separated from the road by a ninety-degree dropoff “front yard,” most people came to the rear door, off the drive.

We rushed to the high dormer windows surrounding my potato-cellar living room and peeked out. We could see only the road, not the person who was standing on the front stoop. A large Land Rover with Idaho plates was parked up there behind Bambi’s car. It had the profile of a standing grizzly bear stenciled on the front fender. I smiled. Maybe things were finally starting to look up, after all.

“Do you recognize it?” Olivier asked me.

“Not the car—just the bear. You get the door,” I told him, “while Bambi and I round up Jason and grab some decent coats and shoes for all of us. We may be headed up-country for a while.”

“But who is it?” asked Olivier. “We can hardly afford to open the door at this point, unless you’re absolutely sure who it is.”

“I’m sure,” I told him. “It’s a bear who drove here all the way from Lapwai—five hundred miles. He’s an emissary of my dear, late cousin Sam.”

Bambi and Olivier both seemed a little taken aback by Dark Bear’s appearance. Like most Nez Percé, Dark Bear was an extraordinarily handsome man, with his straight nose, cleft chin, strong features, long legs and broad shoulders, his braids of dark hair ribboned with white, and those silvery eyes beneath dark brows that, like Sam’s, seemed like bright crystals that could see into the heart of time.

He was wearing a fringed, beaded jacket with a blanket tossed over one shoulder. He crossed to me and took my hand firmly but warmly in his.

As I’ve said, Dark Bear was never a huge fan of mine, due in large part to my strange side of the family. But this handshake was clearly intended to communicate his understanding and appreciation that I was helping Sam. Of course, neither he nor Sam yet knew how royally I’d already screwed up. I introduced Dark Bear to the others.

Dark Bear, never one to mince words, told me, “He has heard your heart and knows what decision you have taken. He approves. He asks you to come.”

Sam had somehow read my mind from afar. I wasn’t surprised: Sam had always been able to tap into my mind long-distance. And hadn’t I felt him walking in my psychological moccasin prints these past weeks?

“There was no mention of others,” Dark Bear added, motioning to Olivier and Bambi. “I was to bring only you.”

This put me in a quandary. Here were two people who were ready to tell me the truth—a truth that might prove instrumental not