Angelology (47 page)

“Nobody knows for certain what Abigail Rockefeller did with the lyre,” Philomena said, standing and heading toward the door. “Quickly, we must speak with Mother Perpetua at once. Something lies at the heart of the Adoration Chapel. Something of use to us.”

“Wait,” Evangeline said, her voice cracking from the strain of what she must say. “There is something else I must tell you, Sister.”

“Tell me, child,” Philomena said, halting at the doorway.

“Despite your warning I allowed someone to enter our library yesterday afternoon. The man who inquired about Mother Innocenta came to the convent yesterday. Instead of turning him away, as you instructed, I allowed him to read the letter I discovered from Abigail Rockefeller.”

“A letter from Abigail Rockefeller? I have been searching for fifty years for such a letter. Do you have it with you?”

Evangeline presented it to Sister Philomena, who snatched it from her fingers, reading it rapidly. As she read, her disappointment became clear. Returning the letter to Evangeline’s, she said, “There is not one piece of useful information in this letter.”

“The man who came to the archives did not seem to think so,” Evangeline said, wondering if her interest in Verlaine could be detected by Philomena.

“And how did this gentleman react?” Philomena inquired.

“With great interest and agitation,” Evangeline said. “He believes that the letter points to a larger mystery, one his employer has charged him to uncover.”

Philomena’s eyes widened. “Did you determine the motivation for his interest?”

“I believe that his motives are innocent, but—and this is what I must tell you—I have just learned that his employer is one of those who mean us harm.” Evangeline bit her lip, unsure if she could say his name. “Verlaine is working for Percival Grigori.”

Philomena stood up, knocking her teacup onto the floor. “My word!” she said, terrified. “Why haven’t you warned us?”

“Please forgive me,” Evangeline said. “I didn’t know.”

“Do you realize the danger we are in?” Philomena said. “We must alert Mother Perpetua immediately. It is apparent to me now that we have made a terrible mistake. The enemy has grown stronger. It is one thing to wish for peace; it is quite another to pretend the war itself does not exist.”

With this, Philomena folded the letters and cards in her hands and scuttled out of the library, leaving Evangeline alone with the empty tin of cookies. Clearly Philomena had a morbid and unhealthy obsession with avenging the events of 1944. Indeed, her reaction had been fanatical, as if she had been waiting many years for such information. Evangeline realized that she should never have shown Philomena her grandmother’s confidential letter or discussed such dangerous information with a woman she had always felt to be a bit unstable. In despair, Evangeline tried to understand what she would do next. Suddenly she recalled Celestine’s command about the letters:
When you have read them, come to me again.
Evangeline stood and hurried from the library to Celestine’s cell.

T
he driver rolled through rush-hour traffic, stopping at the corner of Forty-second and Broadway. Traffic had all but halted at the NYPD headquarters, where police were making preparations for the Millennial New Year’s Eve ball drop. Through the crowds of office workers on their way to work, Verlaine could see the police welding manhole covers closed and setting up checkpoints. If the Christmas season filled the city with tourists, Verlaine realized, New Year’s Eve would be a veritable nightmare, especially this one.

Gabriella ordered Verlaine out of the van. Stepping into the masses of people clustered on the streets, they fell into a chaos of movement, blinking billboards, and relentless foot traffic. Verlaine hoisted the duffel bag over his shoulder, afraid that he might somehow lose its precious contents. After what had happened at his apartment, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched, that every person nearby was suspect, that Percival Grigori’s men were waiting for them at every turn. He looked over his shoulder and saw an endless sea of people.

Gabriella walked quickly ahead, weaving through the crowd at a pace Verlaine struggled to match. As people surged around them, he noted that Gabriella cut quite a figure. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet tall, extraordinarily thin, with sharp features. She wore a fitted black overcoat that appeared to be Edwardian in cut—a tight, tailored, and stylish silk jacket fastened with a line of tiny obsidian buttons. The jacket was so tight that it appeared to have been designed to be worn over a corset. In contrast to her dark clothing, Gabriella’s face was powdery white, with fine wrinkles—the skin of an old woman. Although she must have been in her seventies, there was something unnaturally youthful about her. She carried herself with the poise of a much younger woman. Her sculpted, glossy black hair was perfectly coiffed, her spine erect, her gait even. She walked fast, as if challenging Verlaine to keep up.

“You must be wondering why I’ve brought you here, into all of this madness,” Gabriella said, gesturing to the crowd. Her voice resonated with the same calm equanimity she’d had on the telephone, a tone he found both eerie and deeply comforting. “Times Square at Christmas is not the most peaceful place for a stroll.”

“I usually avoid this place,” Verlaine said, looking around at the neoninfused storefront windows and incessantly flashing news ticker, a zipper of electricity dripping information faster than he could read it. “I haven’t been around here in nearly a year.”

“In the midst of danger, it is best to take cover in the crowd,” Gabriella observed. “One does not want to call attention, and one can never be too careful.”

After a few blocks, Gabriella slowed her pace, leading Verlaine past Bryant Park, where the space swarmed with Christmas decorations. With the fresh-fallen snow and the brightness of the morning light, the scene struck Verlaine as the image of a perfect New York Christmas, the very kind of Norman Rockwell scene that irritated him. As they approached the massive structure of the New York Public Library, Gabriella paused once again, looked over her shoulder, and crossed the street. “Come,” she whispered, walking to a black town car parked illegally before one of the stone lion statues at the library’s entrance. The New York license plate read ANGEL27. Upon seeing them approach, a driver turned on the engine. “This is our ride,” Gabriella said.

They turned right on Thirty-ninth and drove up Sixth Avenue. As they paused at a stoplight, Verlaine looked over his shoulder, wondering if he would find the black SUV behind them. They weren’t being followed. In fact, it unnerved him to realize that he felt almost at ease with Gabriella. He had known her all of forty-five minutes. She sat next to him, peering out the window as if being chased through Manhattan at nine o’clock in the morning were a perfectly normal part of her life.

At Columbus Circle the driver pulled over, and Gabriella and Verlaine stepped into the freezing gusts of wind blowing through Central Park. She walked swiftly ahead, searching traffic and looking beyond the rotary, nearly losing her impenetrable calm. “Where are they?” she muttered, turning along the edge of the park, walking past a magazine kiosk stacked high with daily papers, and into the shadows of Central Park West. She kept pace for a number of blocks, turned onto a side street, and paused, looking about her. “They are late,” she said under her breath. Just then an antique Porsche rounded a corner, stopping with a sharp squeal of tires, its eggshell white paint shining in the morning light. The license plate, to Verlaine’s amusement, read ANGELI.

A young woman bounded out of the driver’s seat of the Porsche. “My apologies, Dr. Gabriella,” she said, placing a set of keys in Gabriella’s hand before walking quickly away.

“Get in,” Gabriella said, dropping into the driver’s seat.

Verlaine followed orders, squeezing into the tiny car and slamming the door. The dash was glossy burled maple, the steering wheel leather. He arranged himself in the cramped passenger seat and shifted the duffel bag so he could reach the seat belt, but found that there wasn’t one to fasten. “Nice car,” he said.

Gabriella gave him a cutting look and started the engine. “It is the 356, the first Porsche made. Mrs. Rockefeller bought a number of them for the society. It’s amazing—all these years later we’re still surviving off her crumbs.”

“Pretty luxurious crumbs,” Verlaine said, running his hand over the caramel-brown leather seat. “I wouldn’t have suspected Abigail to like sports cars.”

“There are many things about her one wouldn’t have suspected,” Gabriella said, and pulled into traffic, spun around in a U-turn, then headed north alongside Central Park.

Gabriella parked on a quiet, tree-lined street in the mid-Eighties. Sandwiched between two similar buildings, the brownstone to which she led him appeared to have been squeezed vertical by sheer force. Gabriella unlocked the front door and waved Verlaine through the entrance, her movements so sure that he hadn’t a moment to get his bearings before Gabriella slammed the door and turned the lock. It took him a moment to register that they’d made it out of the cold.

Gabriella leaned against the door, closed her eyes, and sighed deeply. In the granular darkness of the foyer, he could see her exhaustion. Her hands shook as she brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and placed a hand upon her heart. “Really,” she said softly, “I am getting too old for this.”

“Forgive me for asking,” Verlaine said, his curiosity getting the better of him, “but how old would that be?”

“Old enough to raise suspicion,” she said.

“Suspicion?”

“About my humanity,” Gabriella said, narrowing her eyes—startling sea-green eyes lined heavily in gray shadow. “Some people in the organization believe that I am one of ‘them.’ Really, I should retire. I’ve dealt with such suspicions all my life.”

Verlaine looked her up and down, from black boots to red lips. He wanted to ask her to explain herself, to explain what had happened the previous evening, to tell him why she’d been sent to his apartment to watch him.

“Come, we haven’t time for my complaints,” Gabriella said, turning on her heel and walking up a set of narrow wooden steps. “We’ll go upstairs.”

Verlaine followed as Gabriella climbed a creaky stairway. At the top of the steps, she opened a door and led Verlaine into a darkened room. As his eyes adjusted, he saw a long, narrow room filled with overstuffed armchairs, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, Tiffany lamps perched upon end tables like precarious, brightly plumed birds. A series of oil paintings in heavy gilded frames—it was too dark to make out their subjects—hung upon one wall. An unevenly canted roof peaked at the center of the room, its plaster stained yellow with water damage.

Gabriella gestured for Verlaine to sit as she drew back the curtains of a series of tall narrow windows, filling the room with light. He walked to a set of straight-backed Neo-Gothic chairs near the window, set the duffel bag lightly at his side, and sank into the rock-hard seat. The chair’s legs creaked under his weight.

“Let me be clear, Mr. Verlaine,” Gabriella said, taking a seat in the matching chair at his side. “You are lucky to be alive.”

“Who were they?” Verlaine said. “What did they want?”

“Equally fortuitous,” Gabriella continued, nonplussed by Verlaine’s questions and growing agitation, “is the fact that you eluded them completely unharmed.” Glancing at his raw wound, the scab of which had begun to congeal, she said, “Or nearly unharmed. You are lucky. You have escaped with something that they want.”

“You must have been there for hours. How else would you have known they were watching me? How did you know they would break in?”

“I am no psychic,” Gabriella said. “Wait long enough and soon the devils come.”

“Evangeline called you?” Verlaine asked, but Gabriella said nothing. Clearly she was not about to divulge any of her secrets to the likes of him. “I suppose you know what they were planning to do once they found me,” Verlaine said.

“They would have taken the letters, of course,” Gabriella answered calmly. “Once they had them in their possession, they would have killed you.”

Verlaine turned this over in his mind for a moment. He couldn’t understand how the letters could possibly be so important. Finally, Verlaine said, “Do you have a theory as to why they would do this?”

“I have a theory about everything, Mr. Verlaine.” Gabriella smiled for the first time in their brief acquaintance. “First, they believe, as I do, that the letters in your possession contain valuable information. Second, they want the information very badly.”

“Enough to kill for it?”

“Certainly,” Gabriella replied. “They have killed many times for information of much less importance.”

“I don’t understand,” Verlaine said, pulling the duffel bag onto his lap—a protective movement that, he could see from the flicker in her gaze, did not escape Gabriella’s notice. “They have not read Innocenta’s letters.”

This information gave Gabriella pause. “Are you certain?”

“I didn’t give them to Grigori,” Verlaine said. “I wasn’t sure what they were when I found them, and I wanted to be certain of their authenticity before alerting him. In my line of work, it is essential to verify everything beforehand.”

Gabriella opened the drawer of a small escritoire, took a cigarette from a case, fitted it into a lacquered holder, and lit it with a small gold lighter. The scent of spiced tobacco filled the room. When she held the case to Verlaine, offering him a cigarette, he accepted. He considered asking for a strong drink to accompany it.

“Truthfully,” he said at last, “I don’t have a clue how I got involved in this. I don’t know why those men, or whatever they are, were at my place. I admit I’ve picked up some odd information about Grigori while working for him, but everyone knows that man is an eccentric. Frankly, I’m beginning to wonder if I might simply be going insane. Can you tell me why I’m here?”