Was it 1980? Or ’81?
In the Pamirs, about two weeks before Easton died. He’d visited the village several times before, trying to learn what he could. The old man was surely dead by now. Even then he was well up in age.
But still.
The old man scampered barefoot up the liver-colored slope with the agility of a cat, on feet with soles like leather. Vincenti followed and, even through heavy boots, his ankles and toes ached. Nothing was flat. Rocks arched everywhere like speed breakers, sharp, unforgiving. The village lay a mile back, nearly a thousand feet above sea level, their current journey taking them even higher.
The man was a traditional healer, a combination family practitioner, priest, fortune teller, and sorcerer. He knew little English but could speak passable Chinese and Turkish. He was a near-dwarf with European features and a forked Mongol beard. He wore a gold-threaded quilt and a bright skullcap. Back in the village, Vincenti had watched while the man treated the villagers with a concoction of roots and plants, meticulously administered with an intelligence born from decades of trial and error.
“Where are we going?” he finally asked.
“To answer your question and find what will stop the fever in your friend.”
Around him, a stadium of white peaks formed a gallery of untouched heights. Thunder clouds steamed from the highest summits. Streaks of silvers and autumnal reds and dense groves of walnut trees added color to the otherwise mummified scene. A rush of water could be heard somewhere far off.
They came to a ledge and he followed the old man through a purple vein in the rock. He knew from his studies that the mountains around him were still alive, slowly pushing upward about two and a half inches a year.
They exited into an oval-shaped arena, walled in by more stone. Not much light inside, so he found the flashlight the old man had encouraged him to bring.
Two pools dotted the rock floor, each about ten feet in diameter, one bubbling with the froth of thermal energy. He brought the light close and noticed their contrasting color. The active one was a russet brown, its calm companion a sea foam green.
“The fever you describe is not new,” the old man said. “Many generations have known that animals deliver it.”
To learn more about the yaks, the sheep, and the huge bears that populated the region was one of the reasons he’d been sent. “How do you know that?”
“We watch. But only sometimes do they pass the fever. If your friend has the fever, this will help.” He pointed to the green pool, its still surface marred only by an array of floating plants. They looked like water lilies, only bushier, the center flower straining through the shade for precious drops of sunlight. “The leaves will save him. He must chew them.”
He dabbed the water and brought two moist fingers to his mouth. No taste. He half expected the hint of carbonate found in other springs of the region.
The man knelt and gulped a cupped handful. “It is good,” he said, smiling.
He drank, too. Warm, like a cup of tea, and fresh. So he slurped more.
“The leaves will cure him.”
He needed to know. “Is this plant common?”
The old man nodded. “Only ones from this pool work.”
“Why is that?”
“I do not know. Perhaps divine will.”
He doubted that. “Is this known to other villages? Other healers?”
“I am the only one who uses it.”
He reached down and pulled one of the floating pods closer, assessing its biology. It was a tracheophyta, the leaves peltate with the stalk and filled with an elaborate vascular system. Eight thick, pulpous stipules surrounded the base and formed a floating platform. The epidermal tissue was a dark green, the leaf walls full of glucose. A short stem projected from the center and probably acted as a photosynthetic surface because of the limited leaf space. The flower’s soft white petals were arranged in a whorl and emitted no fragrance.
He glanced underneath. A raccoon tail of stringy, brown roots extended out in the water, searching for nutrients. From all appearances, it seemed a well-adapted species.
“How did you learn that it worked?”
“My father taught me.”
He lifted the plant from the water and cradled the pod. Warm water seeped through his fingers.
“The leaves must be chewed completely, the juice swallowed.”
He broke off a clump and brought it to his mouth. He looked at the old man-rapier eyes staring back quiet and confident. He stuffed the leaf in his mouth and chewed. The taste was bitter, sharp, like alum-and terrible, like tobacco.
He extracted the juice and swallowed, almost gagging.
VENICE
CASSIOPEIA’S ATTENTION WAS DRAWN FIRST ACROSS THE NAVE TO the north transept where somebody was shooting at Malone. Beyond the waist-high railing she’d seen the head and chest of one of the guards, but not Malone. Then she’d watched as Zovastina fired her weapon, the bullet careening off the marble floor inches from Thorvaldsen. The Dane had stood his ground, never moving.
Movement to her right drew her attention. A man appeared in the stairway arch, gun in hand. He spotted her and raised his weapon, but never gained the chance to fire.
She shot him in the chest.
He was thrown back, arms flailing. She finished the kill with one more well-placed shot. Across the nave, forty meters away, she saw the other guardsman advancing deeper into the museum’s exhibits. She unshouldered the bow and found an arrow, but kept a position back from the railing so as not to give Zovastina a chance at her.
She was concerned. Just before the attacker appeared, Viktor had disappeared below into the lower transept. Where had he gone?
She mated the arrow’s nock to the bowstring and gripped the bow’s handle.
She retracted the string.
The guard winked in and out through the dim light of the opposite transept.
MALONE WAITED. HIS GUN WAS DRAWN, ALL HE NEEDED WAS FOR the guardsman to advance a few feet closer. He’d managed to retreat to the end cap of one of the exhibits, using the shadows for protection, his steps light on the wood flooring, three gunshots from out in the nave masking his movements. Impossible to say where they’d originated since the resounding echoes camouflaged any sense of direction. He really didn’t want to shoot the guard.
Booksellers, generally, did not kill people.
But he doubted there was going to be much choice.
He drew a breath and made his move.
