Montaro Caine (26 page)

“Trustworthy?”

Caine paused, then sighed. “I trust him to come to the conclusion that his interests are compatible with ours.”

At the entrance to the dining room, Fritzbrauner fixed Caine with an intense stare. “Do you believe in God, Montaro?” he asked suddenly.

“Does dinner depend on my answer?”

“No.”

“Does anything else?”

“No.”

“Good. Then yes, I do.”

“Then you must be perplexed.”

“Perplexed? Why?”

“By the philosophical question Howard touched on earlier.”

“Which was?”

“Predetermined behavior versus free will. Both of which claim responsibility for human destiny.”

“Well, of course that question is inescapable in any serious contemplation of these unusual objects. But I’m not perplexed by it.”

“Do you, then, believe that human destiny was already written before man was created, as the theory of predetermined behavior argues, or that free will is the force that fashions individual as well as collective destinies?”

Not since those intellectual free-for-alls during his college days at the U of C, where heated, passionate arguments raged through the night at Hitchcock Hall, could Montaro Caine remember making such a plunge into the weighty philosophical issues that were being discussed here at the Fritzbrauner estate.

“Do your questions get easier as the night wears on?” Caine asked as the two men walked into the dining room where the others were already gathering around the table, “or do I need to ask our dean of philosophy here to coach me through the evening?”

Carl Spreight had seemed focused more on blowing his nose into his handkerchief than on the conversation and spoke for the first time since he had entered the dining room. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be of much help as I’ve been chronically perplexed by that question since I was five years old,” he said. “In fact, I’m beginning to think that the mere mention of it triggers my sinus allergies.”

“Well,” said Caine, addressing his words to Fritzbrauner, “let me
answer you by saying that I’m not one of those people who believes in waiting for proof before choosing one side or another.”

“Then, as I thought, for you it would be a matter of faith,” Fritzbrauner said.

“Any judgment I would make in that regard would be based on another belief I hold, which states that anything the human mind can conceive is possible, however impossible it may appear to the rational mind.”

“My goodness, Montaro,” said Carl Spreight with a slight sniffle. “I think you’re the guy to cure my sinus problems.”

Fritzbrauner laughed appreciatively. Caine liked the man’s laugh. By the time dinner was over, Caine was feeling more optimistic about the chance that Fritzbrauner would cooperate with him. The man’s intellectual curiosity was too strong for him not to, he finally decided.

Two days later, however, Caine and Mozelle were dismayed to learn that they had misread Fritzbrauner. They were in a suite in the Four Seasons Hotel in Geneva, where Caine had been teleconferencing with the members of the Fitzer board regarding the revelation that Richard Davis had acquired a large block of the corporation’s stock, when the phone in the room rang. The moment Caine picked up the phone and heard Herman Freich’s voice, he understood that the news would be bad; if it were otherwise, he knew that Fritzbrauner would have been calling him directly.

“I’m calling on Kritzman’s behalf to say that, after long and thoughtful consideration, he has decided to pass on your suggestion regarding the coin,” Freich said. “He sends his regrets.”

Long after Caine had hung up the phone, he and Mozelle sat in their living room picking at their breakfasts in glum silence while considering what could have happened. Had they said something to put Fritzbrauner off? Or was his decision a foregone conclusion? Had Fritzbrauner had a different scenario in mind from the beginning, one in which they were not meant to play a part? Was it all a game to Fritzbrauner? Was he more interested in winning than in doing what was right? Or had someone gotten to him first?

Caine called Roland Gabler in New York and was disappointed
but not surprised to receive a response that was just as shattering as Fritzbrauner’s. Gabler would not accept the terms they had offered.

Caine was nearly ready to call Cecilia to tell her that he would be returning home earlier than expected when he received a call from Gina Lao.

“I have Michen Borceau on the line for you,” she said. “Do you have time to speak with him?”

“Put him on,” Caine said, hoping that Borceau would have something encouraging to say, but upon hearing Borceau’s frantic voice, he understood that what his lab director was calling to tell him was even worse than anything he had heard from Fritzbrauner and Gabler. The normally jovial Frenchman sounded more deflated than Montaro had ever heard him.

“Montaro,” Borceau said, his voice soft and shaky. “Do you remember the tiny particles of those strange coins you asked me to examine?” he asked.

“Yes,” Caine said, fearing what Borceau would tell him next.

“The particles have disappeared. They’ve been stolen.”

“Stolen? How?”

“I don’t know.” Borceau explained to Caine that ever since Colette Beekman and Herman Freich had left the Fitzer Lab, he had kept the slivers of the coins in a tiny plastic container in his safe at the lab. They had still been there that morning. But before he had left the lab, he had checked the safe once more, just to make sure the slivers were still there. He had found the plastic container exactly where he had left it; the particles inside, however, had vanished.

“I have no idea how this happened,” said Borceau. “No one else knows the safe’s combination. I haven’t even told it to Gina. I didn’t leave my desk all day. I didn’t even leave for lunch.”

“Objects can’t just disappear,” Caine said.

“I can’t for the life of me figure out how someone could have gotten in here without my knowing.”

After he hung up the phone, Caine slumped on a couch in the suite, dejected. For the first time in his adult life, he felt the self-pity his grandfather P. L. Caine always warned him against succumbing to,
the helplessness that Montaro always counseled his own daughter against. He tried to slam the door on those feelings, and yet he could feel them trying to shove their way inside him. He tried to drink, but his heart wasn’t in it; he tried to eat, but he had no appetite. His phone rang frequently. Cecilia called; so did Gordon Whitcombe and Nancy MacDonald. He avoided all of them; he didn’t want to talk to anyone, not even to Howard.

Mozelle left Caine to take a walk through Geneva, and when he returned near sundown, Caine was still in the same nearly catatonic state, seated by a window, staring out at the gorgeous lake. Caine kept replaying in his mind the words that his grandfather had told him when he was just a boy—“The difficulties of life can lick a man or they can strengthen him; it’s the man’s choice”; “A man has to face hard times, no matter what”—but all those words sounded empty to him now. Everything seemed to be falling apart—his company, his family, all his quixotic hopes. Flawed judgment and wrong turns had brought him aground to flounder on the rocks of his mistakes. He thought of the conversations he had had at Kritzman Fritzbrauner’s estate—purposeless coincidence versus purposeful design. The answer to that riddle seemed to be beside the point—life itself felt purposeless to him now.

Montaro’s mind went back to the grim news he had received from Michen Borceau. “Objects don’t just disappear,” he had told Borceau. And yet now, as he considered the statement he had made, he recalled the first time he encountered the coin at M.I.T. He had thought that objects weren’t supposed to behave the way this one did. And as Caine continued to ponder, an idea occurred to him, one that at first seemed absurd. But anything the human mind could conceive of was possible, he had often told himself, and so perhaps what he was beginning to think might not be so absurd after all.

Mozelle was packing his belongings in preparation for the trip back to New York. He had given up trying to buoy Caine’s spirits, for it had become clear to Mozelle that Caine wasn’t even listening to him; and besides, he, too, was feeling hopeless. Yet after the doctor finished packing his suitcases, he was surprised to see Caine standing
in the bedroom doorway with an awed, almost otherworldly look on his face.

“I’ve had a thought,” Caine said in a loud whisper.

“What?” asked Mozelle.

“We’ve got to go back,” said Caine.

“Where?”

“To Fritzbrauner.”

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

W
ITH THEIR PLANE SCHEDULED TO DEPART THAT NIGHT
, M
ONTARO
Caine called Herman Freich on his cell phone to ask if Kritzman Fritzbrauner might agree to one more meeting before he and Mozelle left for the airport. When Freich called back to report that Fritzbrauner was willing and ready to meet with them, Caine and Mozelle hired a car to drive them back up the mountain to the Fritzbrauner estate. Herman Freich met the car in the driveway and escorted the men to the terrace where Fritzbrauner and Colette awaited them.

“The doctor and I came a long way to seek a partnership with you to explore the issues raised by the existence of these mysterious coins,” Caine told his hosts after they were seated. “Needless to say, we are disappointed that you have decided not to join us and we still hope that one day, you will change your mind about that. But for now, we must live with your decision. We are here again only to ask one small favor. Would you allow me to just look at the coin? It would take no more than a minute.”

“Why, Montaro?” Fritzbrauner asked, looking perplexed.

“I have reason to believe it will answer some questions for me.”

But before Fritzbrauner could formulate a response, his daughter interrupted. “Show it to him,” Colette said. She turned to Caine with
a smile, but he acknowledged her intervention on his behalf with only a polite nod; his mind was stuck on the theory that had occurred to him the previous night.

In Fritzbrauner’s study, Caine picked up a magnifying glass that had been lying near an open dictionary on the desk and examined the object. He took only fifteen seconds before he slid the coin across the desk back to Fritzbrauner.

“What did you see?” Colette asked him.

“I saw what I imagined I would see,” said Caine quietly, his eyes filled with wonder. He took a step back from the desk so that he could direct his attention to Fritzbrauner. “Thank you for allowing me to take another look,” he said.

Colette asked Caine what he had seen, but he demurred, unwilling to reveal more.

When they got back into the car, Mozelle looked at Caine curiously. “So now, are you ready to tell me what the heck’s going on?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Caine said. He looked more certain of himself than Mozelle had seen him; for the first time, the doctor could easily see how this man had climbed to the top of Fitzer Corporation and how, even now, he might remain there. Back at the hotel, Caine excused himself to place a call to Dr. Richard Walmeyer. When he finally returned to the suite, Mozelle was waiting at the door.

“So, tell me!” Mozelle said. “What sent you running back to look at the coin? I know you saw something when you looked at it.”

“It was something out of the past,” said Caine. He grabbed the animated hands of the excited older man and held them gently. “Listen to me, Howard. I was right. It’s alive!”

“What is?”

“The coin. It’s alive.”

Mozelle smiled in disbelief. “Explain that to me,” he said.

“Those tiny particles I set aside, the ones that Borceau was working on that disappeared, they’re back in place on the coin. Back in the very same place I dislodged them from. Each and every sliver is back where it used to be.”

“My God, that can’t be true.”

“It can’t be true, but it is,” said Caine. “Son of a bitch! It’s true.”

“My God, but how could it be?”

“I don’t know.”

Caine explained that his conversation with Professor Walmeyer had further confirmed his findings. Twenty-six years earlier at M.I.T., Walmeyer had also dislodged a small number of particles from the coin that was now in Roland Gabler’s possession. “That original coin was sent back to Dr. Chasman, who, in turn, sent it on to you,” Caine told Mozelle. “But we kept the dislodged particles in the lab for weeks until we decided that they were too small to have any further research value. Chasman put them back into his research files. When I called him today, I asked him to see if the particles were still there.”

“Were they?”

“No. They’ve disappeared, too. My hunch is that they’re back in place on the original coin that Roland Gabler has. If my hunch proves correct, we may have to pray for guidance, my friend.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because that would put us at the center of something so monumental we might wish we had never heard of the coins.”

Mozelle’s mouth hung open as if to speak, but no words came. His head bobbed back and forth in a rhythmic nod as if confirming what was in his mind. Yes, ever since he had first seen that coin in the hand of the newborn Whitney Carson, he had felt premonitions, signs of some unimaginable power lying in wait.
The son shall hold the coins
—he still had no idea what Matthew Perch’s words might mean. He looked up to ask for some answers to all the questions that were swirling through his mind, but Caine was already heading for the bedroom; he was making another phone call, this time to the one person upon whom he had always relied when he needed the sort of guidance that no one else, not even his wife, could provide.

“Grandpa?” Montaro said after he heard P. L. Caine pick up the phone. “I need your help.”

P. L. Caine, at nearly one hundred years old now, was living in Carmel, California, with Rosalind Twichell, a spry young woman of seventy-five. Though his mobility was severely reduced and he had lost a good deal of his hearing, his mind was still sharp and his advice
was still sound. After Montaro had left home for Chicago to start college, he had maintained few contacts with his Kansas City past; now, P.L. was the only one who remained. Hearing the elderly man’s voice filled Montaro with such a flood of memories and emotions that he had to struggle to keep his attention focused on the reason he was calling.