The Reincarnationist (15 page)

No. Don't go there,
Josh told himself.
Not yet. Not here. Not where you might not be able to deal with the emotional turmoil that could overtake you if you let yourself give in to it.

The next photograph showed the carved wooden box that the security guard had thrown on the ground and broken.

Under that shot was another. Against a white background was a close-up of six glittering, multifaceted, large stones: three matching emeralds, one blood-red ruby, and two deep-blue sapphires.

He stared at them.

The Memory Stones.

On the surface of each were unintelligible markings. Nothing like any hieroglyphics Josh could ever remember seeing. No. Not true.

You've seen these before. Longer ago than you have a conscious memory. Look at them. Know them for what they are.

“What do you think you are doing?” Her voice was icy cold.

T
he doorbell rang, postponing the conversation, or argument, that Gabriella and Josh were about to have about his snooping. She looked through the peephole, cursed under her breath, walked over to the desk, scooped up the notebook along with the photographs, and turned them over. She opened the door.

If Inspector Tatti was surprised to see Josh there, he did a good job of hiding it.

“Professor Chase, I am quite apologetic to intrude.”

“Is this necessary? It's very late.”

“I would much rather be home myself.”

“Come in,” she said, gesturing.

He walked in, nodded at Josh and took a seat on the couch. She sat opposite him, and Josh stood by the desk where he'd been caught prying.

“The guard who was supposed to be on duty early yesterday morning was found a few hours ago. His name was Tony Saccio. He was shot, dragged into the grove of oak trees up high behind the site and left there. My men found him. Naked.”

Gabriella took the news badly. After the past two days,
with her mentor in critical condition and her treasure missing, this was one too many crises to cope with.

“Tony? No!” She closed her eyes.

Tatti waited for a moment and then asked her for a glass of water, not because he wanted it, Josh was sure, but rather to give Gabriella a chance to leave the room and compose herself.

After she came back with it, he drank it all, then launched into his first request: “I need you to tell me what was stolen.”

“What does it matter now? It's gone.”

“I need to know for whom the stolen goods would have the most value.”

It was a question Josh could have answered, but it might have put him under suspicion again—it would have given the detective the motive he needed. Josh looked at Gabriella. Was she going to name him and Malachai?

“There are hundreds of thousands of collectors of antiquities. Everything in the tomb would have been of value to them,” she said blandly.

“What kind of value? How much money are we talking about?”

“How much do you need to sell something for to make it worth the lives of two men?”

“You tell me.”

“I don't know. It doesn't matter. It can't. I have no way of estimating what the black market value of an ancient artifact is.”

“I'm sorry, it's absolutely necessary for us to know what was taken from that crypt. A full list. Exact descriptions. We need to alert the authorities here in Italy, as well as Interpol and the world's art organizations. If we don't know what is at stake and who might want it, he will slip through our fingers. We will never find our villain.”

Gabriella looked into space, focused on a point outside the window, beyond the detective. Her voice was low, almost unintelligible. Tatti leaned forward to hear what she was saying.

“They appeared to be ritual objects, but we don't know their significance.”

“Can you describe them?” He didn't remind her that she had lied to him before. He'd probably assumed that all along.

“We didn't have time to discover their base, but they looked like ordinary glass beads typical of the period.”

“And that period is?”

“We were estimating they dated back to at least 1000 B.C., maybe further, but we hadn't run any tests yet. It was all too fast. We'd just found them.” She sounded as if it just didn't matter; as if she'd used up what little energy she'd had left explaining as much as she had.

“How many?”

“How many what?”

“Of these glass beads?”

“Maybe five. Maybe seven. A handful.”

“And what do you think their value was?”

Priceless. The value of my life
. The value of my soul, Josh wanted to answer for her, but he didn't, stifling his voice instead with a long swallow of brandy while he listened to Gabriella tell a new lie.

“Other than the fact that they were very old—which is what made them important to us—they're only worth fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. Museum quality, of course. But they were just bits of glass, not the Holy Grail.”

“Then you're going to have to tell me what else was taken. Because twenty thousand dollars is not enough of a reason to shoot two men, is it?”

She never went into any more detail than that. Over and over, no matter how many times Tatti asked variations of the same questions, she always gave him back the same answer.

Glass beads.

They had not gotten to the stage of carbon-dating them.

No idea what they were used for or what their value was.

Gabriella never glanced at Josh during the interrogation. Never acted as if she was worried that Josh might tell Tatti that she was lying, that she had photographs of the stones that she was keeping from him, never alluded to the ancient legends about the
glass beads
. Never suggested that, used with a certain mantra, these
bits of colored glass
might take you back through the veil of time to the lives you had lived before and give you a glimpse into a past long gone.

The detective pushed as hard as he could and then accepted he'd hit a wall. With a sigh, he stood up and bowed to her in a funny formal way that was familiar. Like Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in
The Pink Panther
.

Tatti offered to drop Josh off at his hotel. “It would be safer for you if you had an escort.”

“But I do have one, don't I? A gray sedan?”

Tatti feigned innocence, but a wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows. “As you wish.”

Josh had no desire to get into the detective's car with him. The last time that had happened he'd wound up in a jail cell overnight. Nor did he want Tatti to ask him any questions that he had the answers to. Josh wasn't a good liar, although he was learning.

For instance: when your wife asks you if there is someone else, and the someone else isn't anyone whose
face you have ever seen except in your unconscious dreams, it would be useful to be able to lie convincingly.

But there was another reason Josh turned the detective down. He had no intention of leaving Gabriella's apartment without getting another look at the photographs of the round objects that he was sure were not made of glass and that he was also sure, to some people, were worth murdering two men for. Or five. Or ten.

With Tatti gone, Josh expected Gabriella to thank him for not telling the detective that she was withholding information.

She didn't. Which made what he asked her all the more difficult.

“I know you think a lot of what's happened is my fault, but I'd like you to let me help you find the stones.”

“How do you think you can do that? You don't speak Italian. You don't know Rome or the antiquities market. What can you possibly do?”

“Let me see the photographs, Gabriella.”

“How will that be helping?”

“Malachai and Beryl have spent their whole lives studying reincarnation. There has to be some way that the foundation can help. We have money and contacts. We'll leave no stone un—” He broke off and grimaced comically at the unintended pun.

Despite everything that had happened to her in the past two days, she managed a half laugh.

It seemed he'd heard that laugh before. That he knew the cadence of it. No. He was just tired. Too tired. He was trying to force her into the role he wanted her to play because she'd been so easy to talk to earlier. Josh looked at her face, at her hair, at her high cheekbones and the slightly full mouth.

He forced himself to be honest.

No. He didn't know her. Even if he thought he was certain that her lips would burn if he kissed her, that was just normal attraction. Not something that had survived through time. He didn't care, he tried to tell himself. He caught her scent: grass and herbs and honey. Nothing like jasmine and sandalwood.

When I think of all the things I never had time to say to you…

For one terrible second he thought he had said it out loud.

What did it mean?

Where did it come from?

It was only his imagination.

Sometimes what seemed familiar only
seemed
familiar. Déjà vu does happen to people. So much had transpired in the past two days, this latest insight could just be a trick his mind was playing because he was exhausted.

Was it?

“What's wrong?” she asked, genuinely concerned.

“I'm just tired. So are you. Tomorrow I'll talk to Malachai and try to come up with a plan. Maybe we can help.”

“Are you going?” Her hand went up to her throat and she fingered the simple gold chain that lay there, following the graceful line of her clavicle bones.

His own fingers twitched.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. I'm fine.” Her voice sounded a little afraid.

“You're worried about the professor. Do you want me to stay?”

She shook her head. “Thanks, but no, I'll really be fine.”

He left, glad that she hadn't asked him to stay. He didn't know what might have happened, what kind of mistake he would have made, if she'd said yes.

A
lthough Gabriella had offered to call a taxi for him, Josh declined. He needed to walk, to take in huge gulps of the cool air, to stare up at the sky—at the constant sky—the one thing that would not have changed in the past two millennia. He assumed the gray sedan would follow after him, and if it didn't, he'd just stick to the main thoroughfares Gabriella had mapped out for him.

“Hope I didn't keep you waiting too long,” Josh said sarcastically when he walked out of the building and saw Charlie Billings there.

“Let me walk with you?”

“Sure.” Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea to have company.

“I know the guard's body was found. I know some box was taken. Or that the contents of the box were taken. That's not quite clear. Can you fill me in?”

“Why would I know?”

“You were down there.”

“The professor never got around to showing it to me.”

“But you've been with Gabriella Chase all day, all night. She must have told you what—”

“Listen, I know what this gig is like,” Josh interrupted. “But I can't help you out. The best I can do is promise that no one else will get this story from me before you do.”

“Why is everything about this excavation so hush-hush?”

“I don't know. It's not my dig.”

“But you were down there. Damn it, Josh, what did you see taken? Why can't you tell me?”

“I wasn't down there.”

“I didn't pressure you before, but I
saw
you coming up from the tomb.”

“Because I ran down when I heard the shot, but I wasn't in the tomb long enough to catalog it. There is no story. No statement. You can count on me—if and when I have something to say to the press, I'll call you first, but you need to back off now and leave me and Gabriella alone for a while. Is it a deal?”

Billings thought about it, then stuck his notebook back in his jacket pocket. “I'll give you tonight. But I'll probably be back in the morning.”

“How about the morning after that?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I don't doubt it. You know, Charlie, I never knew you were such a prick.”

“Of course not. You were on our side.”

“Wish I still was.”

“See, this is what I mean. Something is going on with you. Why the hell don't you just level with me?”

Josh thought if it were up to him alone, he might. But when Malachai and Beryl had agreed to let him study with them, he'd given his word that he would keep the foundation out of the press. And there was Gabriella, who'd asked him not to reveal the tomb's secrets. Not yet. Not to anyone.

At the next corner, Charlie and Josh parted ways. At first the streets were busy despite the hour, but then the neighborhood changed and he found himself alone in a fairly deserted piazza. He heard a loud bang, spun around, saw a cat running away from a broken wine bottle. Chiding himself for giving in to anxiety, he continued on, sticking close to the curbside and speeding up his gait. Not a single car drove by for the next two blocks. Every time he saw a storefront window across the street, Josh watched his own reflection pass. If anyone was following him, he'd see him, too, but he was alone.

According to Gabriella's instructions, he should have reached the hotel by now. Should he keep going or backtrack? Looking around, trying to figure out which way to go, he saw a reflection oscillate in a store window across the way.

There was no time to judge if he was overreacting or not. Josh sped up but kept his eye on the window. It hadn't been his imagination, or the branch of a tree blowing in the wind. When Josh broke into a jog, so did his stalker.

As he ran, Josh searched for an escape. Not a car in sight. Every storefront and restaurant he passed was closed for the night. He weaved in and out as he ran, abruptly veering to the right, then left, then left again, so as not the give his hunter a clear shot if that's what his intention was.

Suddenly he was in the old part of the city, where he'd walked with Malachai the first night they'd arrived, just seventy-two hours before. The broken cobblestones made for a tough running track, but he didn't slow down, couldn't slow down now that he remembered there was a building up ahead that connected to a hidden tunnel system. A temple.

If he could just reach its entrance without his stalker seeing where he went, he'd thwart him. It should only be another hundred yards away, to the right…. He sped up. He'd gotten a good lead…he was going to make it…just up ahead…but…where was it? There was no temple here, only ruins. What was going on? No time to stop and figure it out. If he could just find the temple, he'd be able to get away. If he saved himself, he could save her. She was counting on him. He must have gotten confused in the dark. Maybe the temple would be around the next corner…but it wasn't. Nothing was there. Worse, he'd given up his cover. He'd run right into an open theater, its shell in rubble around him. He spun around. Everywhere he looked, everything was crumbling.

Where was
his
Rome? The familiar landmarks? What had happened to
his
city? He had to get out of this exposed space where he was nothing but an easy target. Stumbling on a rock as he took off, Julius tried to steady himself, but failed and went down. Rocks ripped at his already torn hands, chewed his bruised knees. His heart beat wildly; his breath came in harsh, painful gulps. Behind him he heard footfalls and hoarse panting getting closer.

There was no way out now.

Slowly, he rose and turned around.

His pursuer wasn't wearing a toga or a robe, but was dressed in clothes that Julius had never seen before and holding an unusual metal object Julius was unfamiliar with but somehow knew was a weapon.

And then, staring at the black barrel, Julius felt a deep wrenching inside of him: a cessation, a great giving up as Josh broke free of the memory lurch to see the man
who had been in the tomb with him, who had stolen the Memory Stones and shot the professor, probably with this same gun, staring at him with a satisfied smirk on his face.