“The Cowled Men!” Steven exclaimed. “That’s all I need.”
Sara raised a hand, soothing him. “Take it easy. As long as we’re with other people, we ought to be safe. And no one followed me here on my way to find you—I’m sure of that.”
“Where’s Uncle Lu?” Steven asked.
“Stuffing himself in the restaurant and chatting up the waitresses. He can get on your nerves with his know-it-all attitude.” Sara made a face. “That’s why I walked around on my own, too, for a while, hoping the keyword would simply materialize on the ground in front of me.”
“My guess, anyway, is that if we find it at all, it’ll be in the castle,” Steven said. “And by this evening, I hope to have read the next passage.”
Sara smiled at him. All of a sudden the bookseller felt his heart rise. He wasn’t used to having women smile at him like that these days.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” she said in a low voice. “Reading that old book. You’d have liked to live in those days.”
Steven shrugged his shoulders. “What, having teeth drawn without anesthetic, getting TB, raking out the stove at five in the morning early in January, that sort of thing? Not to mention the high rate of infant mortality, and the filth and smoke in the cities. I don’t know if it’s as alluring as all that.” His eyes twinkled as he looked at Sara. “But you’re right. Sometimes I really do think I’d have felt more at ease in the nineteenth century. A poor poet surrounded by a great many books, in a little cottage. Not a bad lifestyle.”
“Quite a romantic one, anyway.”
Sara was looking at him in a strange way. She had now moved very close to Steven on the bench, and that made him feel hot and cold at the same time. Yet again, he had to admit to himself that his original dislike of Sara and her brash style had given way to a certain fascination.
For some time neither of them said anything, and there was nothing to be heard but the twittering of the birds in the trees. Steven felt the trunk of the beech tree behind his back, and he thought that Theodor and Maria could have sat in this very place, under the very same beech tree.
“This passion for books,” Sara asked, suddenly interested, “does it run in your family?”
Hesitantly, Steven nodded. “My . . . my father was a well-respected lecturer on literature in Boston, specializing in German Romanticism. I was always surrounded by books—my mother probably changed my diapers on a pile of them.” He laughed, but it sounded slightly forced. “She was always reading me German fairy tales and poems when I was a child. Then, when her parents died, we went back to Germany, to her parental home. I was six then. We always had a large library, first in the States, then in Cologne.”
Sara grinned. “I guess the only book my own mother possessed was a stained copy of One Hundred Cocktails to Mix at Home. But she never read aloud to me out of it. That would have been rather boring.”
This time Steven’s laughter was genuine. “I’m beginning to see why the Internet means so much to you,” he said finally. “It must have been a good, knowledgeable friend. Did your father at least read books?”
Sara smiled, but her eyes were curiously vacant. “My father . . . left us quite early. I see him only occasionally. When I do, I always take him a couple of illustrated art books.”
“Your father is interested in art?”
“Yes . . . oh yes, he is. Sometimes more interested than is good for him.”
Steven felt Sara’s attention slip away. In her thoughts, she seemed to be somewhere infinitely distant. Only after a while did she shake herself as if coming out of a cold shower.
“And your own parents?” she asked suddenly. Her voice sounded cheerful again, as if to drive away her own dark mood. “Let me guess. You visit them every week in their little house by Lake Starnberg. You have a cup of tea and read Shakespeare’s sonnets aloud to one another. And there’s probably a nice fire burning merrily in the hearth.”
Steven jumped. It was as if those last words had obliterated all the beauty around him: the shade of the beech trees, the red and yellow leaves on the woodland floor, Sara on the bench beside him. For a moment he closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
The crackling flames, single pages of books brightly illuminated. Thin gray layers of ash falling. The screams from the library as the firefighter carries the yelling, struggling boy away from his hiding place, out to the street swarming with onlookers. The hatred in the eyes of the blond girl, the soot on her braided hair, the charred hem of her dress . . .
“My God, what’s the matter?” Sara asked, looking at him in dismay. “You’re white as a sheet. Have I said something wrong?”
“It . . . it’s nothing,” Steven murmured. “Or, rather, yes, it is something.” Suddenly he decided to say more; it was far too long since he had talked about it. Too long since he had been inside his memories.
“There . . . there was an accident.” His mouth was dry as dust. The past broke over him like a wave. He had suppressed the images for such a long time, but now they were back. Nausea rose in him, and his throat felt constricted. “My parents . . . They died very early,” he whispered. “I was still a child.”
He got to his feet, unsteadily, and paced a few steps up and down. For a moment he felt as if he were in a ship at sea caught in a heavy swell.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Sara jumped up, too, and took him by the shoulders. “What possessed me to ask such a question?”
“You couldn’t have known.” Steven stopped under the canopy of a beech tree and looked up at the branches overhead. A single red leaf sailed down to him. Finally he tried a slight smile. “What’s more, at the age of forty I really ought to have gotten over it—or finally decided to spend some money on a therapist.”
“There are some things you never get over, even with therapy.” She stroked his cheeks, and he realized that it felt good. “And believe me, we all have our dark places. I mean, look at me. I’m a whole bundle of complexes. The best psychiatrist in the world couldn’t get rid of them.”
Steven couldn’t hold back an involuntary grin. “Well, that would mean letting someone get close to you for once. Are you capable of that?”
“It might be worth a try.”
Gently, Sara ran her fingers through his hair. Then her lips were on his, just a fleeting touch, but all the same Steven felt the little hairs on the nape of his neck stand up. Then the moment was over.
“I . . . I’m afraid it’s not the right time for this sort of thing,” Sara said, taking a step back, almost as if she herself were startled by what she had just done. For the first time, Steven saw something like awkwardness in her eyes.
“Yes . . . you’re probably right,” he replied after what felt like forever, pushing back a few strands of hair from his face. “I . . . I guess I’m rather nervous at the moment.”
Sara laughed. “Not surprising, with the police after you. I’d call those mitigating circumstances.” She offered him her hand. “Let’s be on first-name terms. After all, we’ve kind of been brought together by fate.”
“Yes, you’re right. We really ought to be friends.”
“Maybe even a little more.” She was smiling slightly. “Sara and Steven. Sounds good. I think we ought to seal the bargain.”
“Seal it? What with?”
Sara’s eyebrows shot up. “Well, what do you think, you idiot? With a proper kiss. That one was just a peck.”
She took his head between her hands and kissed him firmly on the mouth.
It was better than a book by Voltaire.
Much better.
THE WHITE YACHT rolled gently on the small, crystalline blue waves of the Chiemsee, while gulls flew above the deck, screeching. There was a strong wind, so that it looked as if the Alps, powdered with snow, stood right on the banks of the lake.
Lancelot was sitting in a deck chair much too small for him, leaning forward, and letting his gaze sweep over the yacht’s equipment. Each of the two engines at the stern was 435 h.p., th
e diesel tank could hold a good four gallons. At almost fifty feet, the yacht was about the length that Lancelot had planned for his own ship, but he would opt for Brazilian rosewood rather than teak for the interior fittings, and he would have a riveted aluminium seat built in for deep-sea fishing. But all things considered, the yacht was roughly what Lancelot imagined when he was planning to enjoy the evening of his days to the full. Apart from the girls in close-clinging bikinis, of course, although they might be a little scared of his new appearance. The black-colored eye patch that Lancelot now wore, together with his black braid and the scar on his right cheek, made him look like a fierce pirate captain—a more menacing Captain Hook.
Well, there is something exciting about fear . . .
Lancelot was so deep in his thoughts that he did not feel the pain until broken glass was lying on the deck around him. The king had thrown a half-full glass of champagne at him, and now the royal’s bright little eyes were bent on the vassal. Legs crossed and in a white fur coat, The Royal Majesty sat on the swiveling seat at the controls in the open cabin, looking down disparagingly, as if from a throne, on the giant in the deck chair.
“My best knight,” the king hissed. “Loses an eye and lets the book be snapped up under his nose into the bargain. Snapped up by a woman.”
“She didn’t have the book,” Lancelot said, licking warm champagne and a few drops of blood off his lips. “That bookseller had gone off with it. She admitted it herself.”
“And you believed her?” The king laughed scornfully. “Women are crafty and cunning. Looking at your face in that state, I’m inclined to think that the woman is the one really pulling the strings. Who is she, anyway?”
“We . . . we don’t know that yet.”
The king raised an eyebrow. “And this man Lukas? What have you been able to find out about him?”
Lancelot was visibly uncomfortable. In his mind he saw his own luxury yacht foundering somewhere in the Atlantic. “Not much, except that he’s a rather eccentric antiquarian bookseller. Professor Liebermann apparently visited him by chance and then decided to hide the book among his wares.” Lancelot scratched under the bandage over his eye; the freshly disinfected socket itched horribly. “God knows why the lunatic is running all over with it now. He obviously guesses that the man Marot hid something. But he has no idea where.”
Lancelot still felt a slight sense of satisfaction to know that his assumption had been right. The brochures on the floor of the hotel room had pointed him in the direction of the next stop for the bookseller and his unknown girlfriend. There had been two possible destinations; he had posted men at both places. When they had told him at midday today that the couple they wanted had arrived in Prien, he had immediately passed the news on to his boss.
“Looks as if he’s found out something already, and now he’s curious,” said the king thoughtfully. “He’s thinking along the same lines as we are. Strange . . .” The king studied freshly manicured fingernails. “He comes from the United States, right?”
Lancelot nodded. “We’ve had his personal details checked. He has an American passport, although he’s been living in Germany since he was six.” The giant’s gaze was fixed on a place, some way off, where a couple of gulls were fighting over a fish just below the surface of the lake. “Unfortunately, he’s left hardly any traces on the Internet. No Facebook account, no e-mail contacts, no homepage. The man’s an oddball, if you ask me.”
The squawking of the gulls robbed Lancelot of the last of his nerve. Wearily, he wiped blood from his forehead where the king’s champagne glass had hit him. He was going to do just this one job, take the money, and then get away from all this lunacy forever. By now, he sometimes thought he was going crazy himself.
“The United States,” the king murmured suddenly, eyes curiously empty. “I’m sure it’s only a coincidence, but I must be sure. Find out everything you can about the man. His parents, any siblings. I want to know where he went to school, what he likes to eat, what his favorite books are. Everything.”
“How are we supposed to do that? The man’s a nerd, there are no friends we can pump, no . . .” At the same moment Lancelot knew that this remark had been a mistake. He only just managed to dodge the champagne bottle sailing through the air to smash on the rail of the yacht.
“What do I pay you for?” the king screeched. “To ask stupid questions? You’re my best knight, so come up with a good idea, and do it soon.”
Lancelot rose, with difficulty, and bowed.
Just this one last job, then I’m off to the Caribbean. But first I am going to wring this crazy bastard’s neck with my own hands . . .
“At Your Majesty’s orders,” he said, and moved in the direction of the stern, walking slowly backward as court ceremonial demanded. “I’ll get our people in Munich and New York on it. Meanwhile I’ll find the book for you.”
“Within twenty-four hours.” The king swiveled away from Lancelot and stared abstractedly at the picturesque Alpine range. “I want the book and the man within twenty-four hours. And I want the man alive. If I don’t get him, and alive, you can forget about that account in the Caymans.”
The one-eyed knight climbed down a ladder at the rail into the little dinghy and started the outboard motor. He was having difficulty controlling his breathing. One minute longer on the yacht and he’d probably have murdered the king—but then, of course, the account in the Caymans would be gone as well. He must get this thing tied up quickly; his employer’s lunacy was increasing to an ever greater extent. At first he had thought the king’s conduct was mere eccentricity, but by now Lancelot couldn’t be sure of anything. He must get out of here, fast. Just this one last job, and then the Caribbean beckoned.
Think of the girls, the champagne, fishing for tuna. Damn big tuna. Their blood will dye the sea red . . .
Lancelot suddenly remembered that he was to deliver that bookseller alive. His glance fell on the small crate at the stern of the dinghy, and he couldn’t keep back a grin. A good thing he had kept some of the gear he’d used in Serbia; he had a hunch that he could use it today. At least it would speed things up a good deal; the man wouldn’t have the faintest chance of defending himself.
And no one had said a word about letting that woman leave the island alive.
FOR THE FIRST TIME in days, Steven didn’t feel afraid of anything.
They were lying side by side on a carpet of red and yellow leaves, watching a spotted woodpecker send its messages out into the wood in Morse code. Steven could smell the nicotine seeping through the pores of Sara’s skin. Curiously enough, he found it exciting, like a new perfume that he didn’t yet recognize.
She had kissed him for a long time, and then placed a finger on his lips to close them, as if any wrong word spoken now would destroy the magic between them. Eventually, they began talking about their favorite songs, about American soap operas unknown to him, and the stupidest weather forecasters they’d seen. They disagreed on whether Psycho or North by Northwest was the best Hitchcock movie of all time. They talked about everything except the present and their own past lives, and for just under an hour they were far, far away from Marot’s diary, the Cowled Men, the magician, and the blinded giant. Only now did Steven realize how long it was since he had exchanged more than a few words with another human being. He had retreated into his books as if into a cocoon.
“What’s it like to grow up without books?” he asked Sara, who was cracking beechnuts beside him and munching the kernels with relish.
She laughed. “Is that how I seem to you? A female nerd raised by computers?” She looked at him, shaking her head. “What on earth do you think of me? I’m more interested in the contents of a book than its form, that’s all. Why would I need a library when I can download all those volumes to my tablet instead?”
“Maybe because it’s pleasant to leaf through books, smell them, sleep with books beside you?” Steven said. “Because books are like nourishment for oddballs like me, and I’ve always had
them around me? Somehow I can’t get used to the idea that all that will soon be a thing of the past.”
“You’re incorrigibly nostalgic,” Sara said with a sigh. “But guess what? I like that. You’re someone a person could hold on to when time goes racing by too fast.” She spat out a couple of beechnut kernels. “Besides, it’s not what you think. I did read a lot as a child. I often went to the municipal library in Wedding instead of going to school; I told them I had to study there for my homework.” Lost in thought, she cracked another of the dry nuts. “I immersed myself in adventure stories to forget the world outside. Later, my father brought home illustrated books on painting. If you have graffiti and dog turds on your doorstep, a painting by Caravaggio is like a warm, refreshing shower.”
“Is your father a painter, then?” Steven asked.
This time Sara’s laughter was a touch too shrill. “A painter? I think he’d have liked to be an artist. To this day he’s addicted to art. My mother is addicted to alcohol and my father to art, and it hasn’t necessarily made either of them happy.” She abruptly got to her feet and picked up a heap of colorful leaves, dropping them again to rain down on Steven.
“If you were marooned on the proverbial desert island,” she asked him, “which three books would you take with you?”
Steven swept the leaves off his forehead. “Only three? That’s a difficult question. Let me think.” He paused, and then finally went on. “Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, even though I’ve read it three times already. Robert Musil’s thousand-page epic The Man Without Qualities, at least that would last a long time, and then . . .” He stopped, his expression suddenly darkening.
“You’d take Marot’s diary, wouldn’t you?” Sara whispered. “The book’s gotten under your skin.”
Steven did not reply for a long time, and then he hesitantly nodded. “There’s something about it. It’s like black magic, a kind of curse, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to shake it off until I’ve come to the end of the diary. Sometimes I think . . .”