Bestiary

“Not the kind of guy you’d forget,” Del replied, flopping back in the chair with a magazine on his lap. “But he could go a little easier on the aftershave.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Arter got lost three times on the way to al-Kalli’s estate. He was in too much of a hurry, he knew that, and he’d barely slept all night. And the road to the top of Bel-Air was a winding one.

At the gatehouse, he’d had to explain himself twice to the guard, who’d then called the main house, and after a minute or two, waved him through. Even then, he’d had to wait while one imperious peacock had strutted slowly across the driveway.

Jakob had opened the front door, smirking, and ushered him through the vast entry hall and then out again to the back. They’d walked across the flagstoned terrace, then to the side of the swimming pool. Al-Kalli was doing laps, methodically. Carter was shown to a seat at a glass-topped table, Jakob departed, and a servant appeared out of nowhere to offer him coffee. Carter accepted, gratefully.

The morning sun slanted across the green expanse of the lawn, the shimmering blue of the pool, the purple blossoms of the jacaranda trees nearby. Birds twittered in the branches overhead, a light breeze stirred the leaves — it was idyllic, it was paradise, and Carter thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to be rich.

Then he thought how strange it was that such a perfect setting should conceal such an astonishing thing as the bestiary.

Al-Kalli did one more lap, then drew himself up out of the pool in a swift, fluid motion. To Carter’s surprise, he was naked, and his body, the color of beaten copper, was as hairless as his head. He was also trim and muscular. He scrubbed himself vigorously from head to foot with a striped towel that was folded on the end of the diving board, then pulled on a white robe and came toward Carter as he fastened the belt.

“Even I didn’t expect you quite this soon,” he said, sitting down at the table. He raised his chin and the servant reappeared, this time with a large silver tray. On it were two crystal bowls of sliced fruit, a basket of muffins and breads, a frosted pitcher of what looked to Carter like guava juice. While everything was placed in front of them, al-Kalli asked, “What else would you like? Eggs, sausages?”

“No, this is plenty,” Carter said.

“When I was at school in England, I never could understand their passion for bangers and kippers and such stuff, especially first thing in the morning.” He poured some cream into his coffee, sipped it. A drop of water hung from his sapphire ring, then dropped onto the table. “English taste, in many things, eludes me.”

Carter had no strong opinion on the subject.

“But at least I don’t have to ask what brings you here,” al-Kalli resumed with a sly smile. “Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Not really.”

“I’m happy to hear it. It means you were as impressed as I’d hoped you’d be.”

“Impressed is not the word.”

“Perhaps not. But there really aren’t any good words, are there, to adequately describe the bestiary?”

“No, there aren’t,” Carter agreed. But he’d come here with some important things to say, and he didn’t want to hold off any longer. “I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what you said.”

“And?”

“And I can’t go along with everything you want. I can’t agree to keep this discovery secret. What you have here is one of the greatest and most miraculous… zoos”—he still hadn’t figured out what to call it and “bestiary” seemed strange—“in the history of the world. Do you even know what these animals are?”

“We know what my family has called them, for time immemorial.”

“I’ve spent the whole night researching them, and though I’ll need more time to study and confirm my initial take, I think I can tell you some things already. Would you like to hear?”

“Nothing would please me more.”

“Your basilisk?” Carter said, raring to go. “It’s probably what paleontologists would call a saichania. It means ‘beautiful one’ in Mongolian. It’s from the family of ankylosaurs, armor-plated, plant-eating dinosaurs that lived in the Late Cretaceous.”

Al-Kalli looked intrigued, and while spooning a piece of fruit from his bowl, said, “Interesting — go on.”

“Your griffin? Your griffin is — and again, I’m going to need a lot more time to make sure I’m right — your griffin is what we’d call a homotherium. A kind of cat, a close cousin of the saber-toothed cat, extinct since the end of the last ice age, about fourteen thousand years ago.”

“Or so you thought.”

“Or so we thought.” Carter had to laugh, too, though it came out sounding a little crazier than he’d expected. He had to key down; he had to get some sleep.

“And the phoenix?”

“Best guess? Argentavis magnificens. A full skeleton has never been found. It had a wingspan twice as wide as any living bird. It’s in the vulture family, and it dates from the Late Miocene.”

“It’s a great deal more beautiful than any vulture I have ever seen,” al-Kalli replied. He sounded slightly offended at the very suggestion.

“It is,” Carter said. “It is. But how could we have known that? No one has ever seen one before.” He was also talking too fast. He had to slow down; he had to calm himself.

“Have a muffin,” al-Kalli said, tilting the basket toward him. “The cook makes them fresh every morning.”

Carter took one, broke it in half, and began eating mechanically, without paying any attention. He hadn’t even mentioned the most amazing discovery of them all. “And then there’s the manticore, as you call it,” he said.

“Ah yes, the pride of the bestiary.”

Carter washed the muffin down, barely having tasted it, with half a glass of juice. “It’s a therapsid, a kind of reptile that was a direct ancestor of the mammals.”

“Are you saying it’s a dinosaur?”

“No, no, this animal was something else, something earlier. We don’t know much about it — its bones are extremely difficult to find, and the best place to look for them has been the Karoo Desert in South Africa, which is one of the least hospitable places on earth.”

Al-Kalli poured some more coffee into Carter’s cup, before refilling his own. “Then think how much easier it will be to study the manticore—”

“The gorgon,” Carter corrected him. “Gorgonopsian.”

Al-Kalli nodded, conceding the point for now. “Think how much easier it will be to study this gorgon in the flesh, and in the comforts of Bel-Air. Isn’t that precisely the sort of opportunity a man like you would prize?”

And it was. Carter could never have imagined such a thing—no one could have. The whole scenario, from start to finish, was quite literally impossible. How could creatures like this have survived? Anywhere? How could they have been brought together, and preserved, by one family, however wealthy, however powerful, inhabiting a palace in a desert waste? How could they have been brought, of all places, to Los Angeles, California? To the movie-star precincts of upper Bel-Air? None of it made any sense. Beth had told him some of the stories about the rich and mysterious al-Kalli clan — the sinister rumors of their barbarity, their occult powers, their lineage so old it was lost in the mists of time — but he had chalked it all up to superstition and hearsay.

Mohammed al-Kalli, he’d told her, was just a man — a man with a lot of money, there was no disputing that — but just a man. He wasn’t a wizard, he wasn’t Prospero, he wasn’t Merlin.

Or — and this was a thought he’d been entertaining for hours — was he?

“I can give you everything your work here could possibly require,” al-Kalli said. “Just name it and it’s yours.”

“Right now, I can’t even answer that question. What I need, I guess, most of all, is simply a chance to go back to the bestiary and see the animals for myself. Again.”

“You doubt what you saw last night?” al-Kalli said sympathetically. “That’s quite understandable. But I’m not running a tourist attraction here. You appreciate, I hope, that no one outside of my family, and a few loyal retainers,