The Witch of Babylon

“Of course—Samuel,” Ari said. “And also, I want you to know I won’t forget about your inheritance. I’ll see that you’re treated fairly.”

Ari made sure I’d truly calmed down before going to get Tomas. He took the gun with him. In truth, I think he wanted to give me some time alone to regain my composure.

I took advantage of the opportunity. I had no compunction about rifling through Tomas’s suitcase after his raid on mine. In it I found two passports, the Iraqi one in his own name he’d shown me at the Khyber Pass and a second stating that he was George Anapolis, a Greek citizen. Clothes, toiletries, an extra pair of shoes, nothing else of interest. I found a book zippered into a side pocket and flipped through it. Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Adhered to the middle page was a white paper rectangle the size of a business card, and on it, an address in Baghdad. The fact that Tomas had hidden it like that told me he attached a lot of importance to it. I found a scratch pad, scribbled the address down, and shoved it in my pocket.

Thunder boomed again in a series of crushing blows alternating with spear shafts of lightning. Like giant hands, sheets of rain beat against the windows.

Despite the pain it caused, once I got back to my room I replayed the hostage video a few times in case I’d missed any sign about where they were keeping Laurel. The background consisted of standard tile walls and floor. It could be any bathroom, basement, or commercial building in the city.

I switched on the hotel radio, hoping to take my mind off my troubles. Songs from Dwight Yoakam’s aptly named Last Chance for a Thousand Years CD came on. It felt like both our last chances, mine and Laurel’s, had vanished that long ago.

Twenty-four

Wednesday, August 6, 2003, 7 A.M.

Whether because of the intense workout my emotions had gone through last night or the simple urgency of needing a solution, I decoded the first part of Hal’s puzzle in short order the next morning.

Owl la memoir converted to low memorial. As in Low Memorial Library, the Columbia University administration building. While the words didn’t fit seven spaces, I was convinced they led to the solution. The answer would be waiting for me on campus.

I checked my email again but there were no new messages. I sent one to my lawyer, Andy Stein, asking him whether it was too late to do anything about the sale of the condo.

Much as I would have preferred to avoid Tomas, it was still safer for the two of us to go to the library together. By now Ari would have told him about Laurel, and I counted on him being motivated to help her. I flung my things into my suitcase, phoned to warn him to be ready and got the message system. A knock on his door went unanswered.

At registration I hurriedly paid for our rooms and asked to leave a message for Tomas Zakar requesting that he meet me at Columbia.

The clerk looked him up. “He already checked out, sir, earlier this morning.”

“Are you sure?” Had the news about Laurel so scared him that he’d abandoned both us and the search? Had he left with Ari? Another mystery to wrestle with. A call to Ari’s phone got me nowhere. He wasn’t answering either. Likely he was already winging his way over the Atlantic and unreachable. I had no time to worry about Tomas. Laurel was all I cared about right now.

A clang of metal signaled the city coming to life. Big trucks lifted the garbage bins, vans at curbside unloaded produce, store clerks rolled back metal window grates. I passed an entrepreneur getting ready for the day’s trade, lounging on a doorstep of one of the grandiose buildings lining Fifth Avenue. Two cats lay at his feet, a silver tabby and a coal-black Persian, each on a round blue bed with an open can of cat food beside them and a hastily scrawled sign reading PLEASE HELP. Judging from the expensive Kodiak boots the guy sported, people had been generous.

A Statue of Liberty waved flyers in my face, a man dressed head to toe in rubbery green latex, his flowing robes flapping in the breeze. His face was coated in matching green greasepaint, and on his head he wore a seven-pointed crown. The cats stared in amazement.

I joined the throngs crowding into the subway for the ride uptown and got off at the 116th Street stop and made my way over to the heart of the campus. I told myself that Laurel would be all right. They wouldn’t make any serious moves without the engraving. Still my anxiety mounted, dimming the swell of nostalgia that surfaced at the sight of Low Memorial. How many times had Hal, Corinne, and the rest of our friends gathered on those steps to joke around and hang out together? I’d had many good times at Columbia. In hindsight, too many.

A neoclassical beauty, Low Memorial was a temple at the crest of an imposing staircase. The architects had been inspired by Rome’s Pantheon. Ten Ionic columns soared to a vast granite dome.

I passed bronze renditions of Zeus and Apollo and stopped just inside the entrance. What was I looking for? Many classical elements had been incorporated into the interior. Which one was Hal pointing to? Circling the famous bust of Pallas Athena were the twelve zodiac signs. None fit the seven spaces of Hal’s puzzle. I reviewed the original words: owl la memoir. Perhaps Hal had used them simply to generate the building’s name, but I believed they had a further meaning.

The reference to owl tugged at my memory. Hal had intended the game for me, so something I would have known about had to relate to the answer. And then I recalled what it was. The statue of Alma Mater outside. The contest we’d taken part in as freshmen to find the owl carved into her cloak. The statue was modeled after the Greek Athena, the Roman goddess Minerva. The seven letters of Hal’s mother’s name.

I sat on the steps outside and filled Minerva into the seven spaces. Minerva’s name and the anagram faded, leaving only the diamond and the word transmutation, confirming that my answer had been correct. So what did that mean?

I remembered the funeral urn I’d found in his townhouse and the dull gems inside. They could have been low-grade diamonds, but the urn had contained nothing else, no directions to a hiding place. I pondered this for ten minutes or so until something Corinne said came floating back to me.

Incredibly strange, what he did with her.

At the time I’d thought she’d simply been referring to their rather perverse relationship. Had she meant something different? She picked up right away when I called.

“John, I’m glad you phoned. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch yet.”

“No problem, Corrie. Listen, I’ve been wondering about something. When we talked before, you mentioned how it was strange what Hal had done with Mina. What did you mean by that?”

“Hal never told you?”

“No. He cremated her body, didn’t he?”

“For the first stage, yes.”

“The first stage?”

I heard her sigh through the phone. “I’m not surprised he didn’t want to broadcast it. It was so weird. Talk about being chained to someone. He had her ashes compressed and converted into a diamond, the solitaire on that ring he wore. So she’d have a kind of immortality, he said.”

“Are you serious?”

“They can do that now. An adult human body has enough carbon to generate dozens of small diamonds. The gems are synthesized from the ashes.”

“My God.”

Words deserted me.

Corinne broke through the silence. “There’s something else I have to tell you. About Hanna Jaffrey.”

“Did you find her?”

“Something came up on an Iraqi news blog. The picture it showed would have never made it into the mainstream media. It was stomach turning. Have you ever heard of a place called Tell al-Rimah? It’s somewhere in Iraq.”

The destination Tomas mentioned where he’d expected Jaffrey to go after she left their camp