The Magdalene Cipher (40 page)

“I mean it has always been here.”

They were quiet for a moment, and then Dunphy said, “Unlike yourself.”

Gomelez gave him a quizzical look
.

“We visited the museum on the Rue de Mogador,” Clem explained
.

Gomelez closed his eyes and nodded thoughtfully
.

“What happened?” Dunphy asked
.

“Happened?” the old man replied
.

“To you. When the Germans came . . .”

Gomelez shook his head ruefully. “Everything that happened, happened
before
the Germans came.”

Clem settled herself in the seat by his side. “What do you mean?” she asked
.

Gomelez stared into the fire and began talking. “When I was a boy in Paris, I was taken by my father to meet with a group of men who, I was told, were powerful in the worlds of business, politics, and the arts. At that meeting, it was explained to me that my family was ‘different'—
I
a was different—and that we had special responsibilities. I was told that I would one day learn more of this, as indeed I have, but that they were there to swear allegiance to my cause.”

Gomelez took a sip of Calvados
.

“My cause? You can appreciate my reaction. I was ten!” he exclaimed. “What ‘cause' was this? I asked my father. And he explained the cause was
me
.
And why? I asked. Because while their veins ran with blood, salvation ran through mine. They said I was a prince who must become a king—or if not me, then my son. And if not him, then his.” Gomelez shook his head. “You can imagine how I felt. I was a child. And so, of course, what they had to say was less than a surprise. Like any child, I had always known—or, at least, suspected—that I was in some sense a magical being. And truth to tell, it seemed both natural and right that I should be the center of a secret universe, a dark sun orbited by swarms of faithful followers. And yet, as I grew older, I came to understand that there was a price to be paid for this, and that price was a terrible one: my life was not mine to live. It was simply to be waited out.”

Gomelez scratched Zubeida behind the ear and poured a second Calvados for himself. Dunphy grabbed an andiron and stirred the fire
.

“So I left—in '36. I went out the door for a pack of cigarettes—and kept going, looking for adventure, good friends, a just war—whatever. I was ‘political' then—everyone was political in the thirties. So it didn't take me long to find the headquarters of the Franco-Belgian Commune de Paris. Two days later, I was on a train to Albacete and the Spanish Civil War. A week after that, I was lying in a field hospital, gut-shot with shrapnel.”

Dunphy blinked. “When was this?”

“November 4, 1936.”

“So that's what he meant,” Dunphy said
.

“Who?”

“Allen Dulles. In a letter to Jung. He said there had been a catastrophe. I guess that was it.”

Gomelez nodded. “
Catastrophe
is the right word. My father's friends found me, and I was taken back to Paris. But the damage was done. Because of my wounds, I could never father a child—at least not directly. And the horror of this was that, as the end of the line, I became all the more precious to those whose cause I had become. The result was . . . this entombment.”

Neither Dunphy nor Clem knew quite what to say
.

“And, strangely enough, this injury seemed to galvanize my father's friends who saw in it the fulfillment of a prophecy.”

“ ‘His kingdom comes and goes,' ” Dunphy recited, “ ‘then comes again . . .' ” He couldn't remember the rest, but Gomelez knew it as well as his own hand
.

“ ‘Then comes again when, wounded to the root, he is the last, yet not the last, emblazoned and alone. These many lands will then be one and he their king till, past, he sires sons down all the days, while deathly still and celibate.' You know the
Apocryphon
a?”

Dunphy nodded. “I've seen it. But it seems to me it missed the boat with that last bit.”

“What do you mean?”

“The part about having kids and being celibate. How are you supposed to pull that off?”

Gomelez frowned. “That's the easy part,” he said
.

“How so?”

“I gave a sperm sample to the Eugenics Institute in Küsnacht. That was sixty years ago. It's been cryogenically preserved ever since.”

“You're
sure
a?”

Gomelez smiled. “Trust me. They never throw anything away.”

“Then why do they need you? The Society, I mean. Why can't they just—”

“The prophecy is explicit. The kingdom can only be restored to a lineal descendant who's wounded and emblazoned.”

“Emblazoned?” Clem asked
.

Gomelez shifted in his chair. “I have a birthmark on my chest,” he explained. “But that's not all. The restoration must take place in the lifetime of the one who is the last—”

“—‘yet not the last,' ” Dunphy added
.

“Exactly,” Gomelez said. “In light of which, you can imagine their enthusiasm for my candidature.”

Dunphy smiled despite himself
.

“What worries me,” Gomelez went on, “is that I'll live forever. Don't laugh! You've seen the hospital. It's fully staffed. They can keep me breathing until the end of time. And they intend to.” Gomelez paused and looked up. “Which brings us to the mystery of your coming here. Why
did
you?”

Dunphy glanced at Clem and shrugged. “There was nowhere else to go. I'd come from Langley. We'd been to Zug. And I got the feeling they'd follow us wherever we went. So I thought I'd go to the source.”

Gomelez nodded. “And did it occur to you that you might have to kill me?”

Dunphy shifted uncomfortably in his seat, as Clem protested. “It crossed my mind,” Dunphy said
.

Gomelez smiled. “Well, in that case, I have a proposition for you.”

Once again, Dunphy and Clem exchanged glances. “Look, Bernard—I'm not Dr. Kevorkian,” Dunphy said. “And, anyway, you don't look that bad.”

Gomelez laughed. “That isn't what I mean,” he said. “Though, if I said to you that I was tired of London, would you understand?”

Clem nodded. “It means you're tired of life.”

Gomelez agreed. “Though, actually, I've never really been to London.” He paused and thought about that. “Even so, I
would
like to let nature take its course. So, what I'm suggesting is simply this: if I show you a way out, will you take me with you?”

“Of course,” Clem said
.

“But what good will it do?” Dunphy asked. “They'll find us eventually, and then what?”

Gomelez shook his head. “You'll be safe when I'm dead,” he said. “When I'm gone, this comes to an end.”

“This?” Dunphy asked
.

“The Society,” Gomelez explained. “I'm its only raison d'être.”

Dunphy thought about it. “I see what you mean,” he said, “but—don't get me wrong—I don't mean to be insensitive, but, uhhh . . . that could take a while.”

“Jack!”

Gomelez laughed. “No,” he said, “once we leave here, I won't have long. I think you know, I suffer from anemia. Without the B12 shots . . .”

“And in the meantime?” Dunphy asked. “Where would we go? They'll look for us in every country on earth.”

“Oh, of course, they will,” Gomelez told him. “But that's exactly where we
won't
be.”

“What?!”

“I said we won't
be
in any country on earth.”

It was two in the morning when the old man came into their bedroom, trailed by the dogs. “It's time to leave,” he whispered
.

Together, they went into the hall and down the spiral staircase to the library. Turning left at Judaica, they entered the little room where Gomelez was monitoring signals from outer space. Flicking on a light, he rolled up to the desk and switched the printer off. Then he flicked a couple of toggle switches and slowly turned a series of dials on the spectrum analyzer. In front of him, an oscilloscope's green light began to tremble and spike
.

“What are you looking for?” Dunphy asked
.

“The bracelet's frequency and amplitude,” he said. “I think it's around eight hundred fifty kilohertz, but they change it every so often, and it would be—well, it would be murder if I got it wrong.”

Dunphy and Clem watched as the old man tuned through the spectrum. Every so often, the oscilloscope would spike and Dunphy would think, That's it! But it wasn't
.

“There's a pirate radio station in Zuoz,” Gomelez said, “and the rangers have radios, as well. There's a couple of hams in the area, and some military sources—There! That's it! Got it.” Removing a small notebook from the top desk drawer, he checked the frequency against the digital readout on the machine. “It's the same as it was last week,” he said, reaching into the bottom drawer of the desk
.

When his hand returned into view, it held a cigar box. Inside the box was an object wrapped in tissue. Gomelez removed the tissue
.

“What is it?” Clem asked
.

“A transmitter,” Dunphy told her. “I think he's going to try to duplicate the signal on the monitoring device. Then he'll substitute it for the one he's wearing—so it will look like he's here when he's gone.”

“Excellent,” Gomelez remarked, “only I've already done the work. The hard part wasn't so much identifying the carrier, but demodulating it. There's an encoded signal built into it—”

“Which is why you needed the converter,” Dunphy said
.

“Right,” Gomelez said
.

“So this whole thing of yours with the telescope—”

“—was an excuse to buy a spectrum analyzer,” Gomelez replied. Then he attached a pair of batteries to the little transmitter on his desk. “They last about six or seven hours,” he said. “By then, we'll be to hell and gone.”

Dunphy and Clem looked at him
.

“Joke,” he said, connecting the transmitter to the batteries. Then he took a pair of scissors from the top drawer and, reaching down, cut the bracelet in half and let it fall to the floor
.

Gomelez showed them an underground passage that was reached through a false door on the ground floor of a turret in the Villa's west wing. The passage took them down to the subbasement, where a four-person subway car waited on a set of narrow-gauge tracks. At the old man's direction, they ignored the car and followed the tracks into a dimly lighted tunnel
.

“Know anything about subterranean military architecture?” Gomelez asked
.

Dunphy shook his head. “Another hobby?”

“The Swiss are crazy about it,” Gomelez explained, slowing his wheelchair so that Dunphy and Clem could more easily keep up. “The entire country is honeycombed with secret installations. Whole mountains have been hollowed out to accommodate tanks, missiles, and fighter planes. This particular tunnel was built by the Air Force. If there is ever an invasion, the Villa Munsalvaesche will be the emergency headquarters of the Swiss general staff.”

“And where does it lead?” Dunphy asked
.

Gomelez shrugged. “There's a chalet in Il Fuorn. At least, it looks like a chalet. The tunnel comes out there.”

Dunphy winced. “They'll be waiting for us,” he said. “They wouldn't leave something like that unguarded.”

“Of course they wouldn't,” Gomelez replied. “But we're not going there, so it doesn't matter.”

They continued walking for another twenty minutes until Gomelez put the brakes on his wheelchair. “There,” he said, pointing to an iron ladder that climbed the smooth concrete walls to an air shaft. “If you'll carry me,” he said, “we can get out that way. They don't watch the air shafts—there are too many of them, and there has never been a problem, in any case.”

Hoisting Gomelez onto his back, Dunphy began to mount the ladder, one rung at a time. Behind him, he could hear Clem muttering under her breath. “What's the matter?” he whispered
.

“Heights,” she gasped. “Not good at them.”

And, indeed, the air shaft was much longer than Dunphy would have expected. He asked Gomelez about it. “How far did you say it was to the top?”

“Thirty feet,” he answered. And then, in a lower voice, added, “Maybe it was meters.”

Right the second time
.

When they reached the top, Dunphy was trembling with muscle fatigue and fearful that the grill would prove impossible to move. But there was no need to worry about the grill. As he soon discovered, it had been made with typical Swiss efficiency. Three compression locks were all that held it in place, and they were easily opened with the thumbs alone. Pushing the grill aside, he rolled, exhausted, out of the hole. Clem emerged a minute later, white as paper
.