Bristol House (50 page)

It wasn’t 911 in England, she reminded herself. It was 999. She put her finger in the dial, but she didn’t move it. How could she explain who she was? Where she was? Who was threatening her? A second went by. Two. She made up her mind and began dialing. Each clattering return of the old-fashioned wheel sounded thunderous in the silence. She stretched the telephone cord to allow her to get as close as possible to a short flight of steps leading up to a door. It was closed, but she had to hope for the best. That door was the only way out of here, other than the sliver of a passage that led back into the darkness. She finished dialing and waited. Nothing happened for what seemed like an eternity. Then it was ringing.

Pick up. Pick up. Pick up.

“Geoff Harris here.”

“It’s me. I’m—”

“Annie, where are you? I’ve been—”

“I’m in the spy tunnel. Not far from the restaurant with the painted-on windows. In a switchboard room. Weinraub’s down here. And Jennifer and—” Voices. Coming toward her. “I’ve got to go. They’re coming.”

“Try and get to those gates!” Geoff shouted into her ear. “The ones at the top of Kingsway!”

The voices were louder. Annie dropped the phone and dashed for the door at the top of the stairs. She reached for the handle. It turned. The door opened, and she pelted down yet another tunnel.

Running, running, running. No sense of direction left. Get to the gates, Geoff said. So he’d know where to find her. They were locked and chained. Never mind, he would find a way in. Geoff was coming for her from the direction of the old gates. But Theobald’s Road might as well have been in Tibet. She had lost any ability to figure out where she’d been or where she was going.

It seemed to Annie she had been fleeing for a lifetime, running in a nightmare that was stuck in an endless loop: tearing down one passage after another, always pursued, always coming up against a dead end, never finding a way back to a world she understood.

That wasn’t true. She’d found the phone and called Geoff. Help was on the way. And she hadn’t heard anyone coming after her in some time. Maybe five minutes. Maybe ten, maybe twenty—she didn’t know anymore. It didn’t matter. She had to keep running. She turned yet another corner and half-ran, half-staggered down a short passage. Her sneakers felt like lead boots, and each step echoed in her ears. The tunnel ended in a door. There was nowhere to go except back the way she came. She opened the door on yet another room. This one was large, with bright lights, and a wooden floor covered in a film of dust, but it still looked like what it had once been: a gym of sorts. A pair of disused soccer goals were pushed against the far wall, with a stack of balls lodged between them. The place they’d played the indoor football Maggie talked about. What good did it do her to know that? None.

The blood was pounding in her ears. Her chest was on fire. Annie leaned against the wall and bent over and clutched her knees, gasping as she tried to suck in enough oxygen to keep from passing out. She had to stop somewhere long enough to catch her breath. Try and figure out where she was. But not here. There was no way out of this room except the way she’d come in. If she were caught here, she—

“So, Dr. Kendall, I believe you may at last have a report for me.”

Philip Weinraub was standing in the doorway smiling at her. There was something in his hand. It was very small, but Annie knew at once it was a gun.

He moved the weapon, as if to be absolutely sure she saw it. “Tell me, please. Then you can go.”

She knew he was lying, that she was slated to have a quail’s egg put in her mouth, but there was no point in saying so. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But you do, Dr. Kendall. I congratulate you on a remarkable feat of scholarship. It is apparent to me that you have discovered the whereabouts of the mezuzah I have been seeking for most of my life. And I suspect you know it contains the Agnus Dei consecrated by the last true pope. That was the meaning of the chant we heard. It was a message from Almighty God, not just alerting me to your presence, but signaling that now, at this most opportune moment, the mystery has been solved and I am His anointed. Tell me everything, please. Then we can conclude our business.”

“You’re insane. You killed the old cardinals and that poor women in Strasbourg because of your obsession. I’m not going to—”

“I sincerely regret the need for anyone to have died, but to save the Holy Catholic Church . . .” Weinraub was staring at her. His arm came up. She was looking straight into the barrel of the gun.

Protects from all malign influences . . . pestilence, fire, flood, and sudden death.

Annie shoved her hand into her pocket and clutched the sacramental.

In that instant he knew. His face glowed with triumph. “God be praised. You have it with you. I should have had more faith. Of course the prophecy was exact. When the time comes, we will have the most precious Agnus Dei in the world. Give it to me, Dr. Kendall. It is meant for me. I think you know that as well. Give me what you have.”

“No, I won’t. You—”

“
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
”
Once more the ancient petition echoed through the tunnel; sung, it seemed, by the voices of the entire world. “
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
”

Annie heard as well another voice, this one whispering in her ear. Or perhaps only in her mind.
Fear not. Give him what you have. He will never possess what he seeks.

The chant, meanwhile, rose to make a great crescendo. “
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.”
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.

Annie withdrew the paper-wrapped sacramental from her pocket. The singing cut off without an echo.

Weinraub was still pointing the gun directly at her. His arm was remarkably steady. He stretched out his other hand. “
Deo gratias,
”
he murmured. Then, more forcefully: “Move very slowly, Dr. Kendall. Nothing sudden. I assure you, I serve a cause much greater than the life of any individual. I will not hesitate to pull the trigger. Now, put what you have in my hand.”

She did so.

Weinraub started to close his fingers around the small parcel. It burst into flames. He screamed and jumped back. Ashes drifted from his clenched fist. “Whore of Babylon! What pact with Lucifer have you—”

When she was a teenager growing up in New York, Annie had taken a self-defense class.
If you’re looking down the barrel of a gun, your best chance is to present a moving target.
She propelled herself off the wall, headlong toward the only possible weapons, the goals and the soccer balls. Weinraub swiveled in place, growling in fury, following her with his eyes and with the hand holding the weapon. Annie darted to her right and then her left. She felt rather than heard a bullet pass by her cheek. He made another low growl, then took a few steps in her direction. For the length of perhaps two heartbeats she had the advantage she was after, the one where she was younger and many times more athletic.

She sprang for the nearest goal and pulled the metal post toward her. The netting came with it. Weinraub was running toward her. Unable to pull just the post free, Annie tried to shove the whole apparatus into his path. The balls were jarred loose and rolled in every direction. Annie kicked one out of the way, trying to aim for the madman who wanted to shoot her, but failing miserably. Instead her foot became tangled in the goal’s side netting and when she tried to twist free she tripped and fell. Weinraub was standing above her now, the little gun raised and pointing at her heart.

“What fiendish thing did you give me? Where is the real—”

A soccer ball sailed across the room, lifting high before it dropped in an improbable swerving bend. The strike was perfectly on target. The ball smacked into Philip Weinraub’s head and knocked him sideways. Then Geoff was on top of him, wresting the gun from his hand.

Two men were behind him. Guys with much bigger guns.

Typical boy stuff, Annie thought. Mine’s bigger than yours. And she knew they were spooks, even though they weren’t wearing sunglasses or trench coats.

40

She slept in his arms for twelve hours, then came gradually awake over a “breakfast” he brought her in bed—his—at what turned out to be seven p.m.

“So how are you?” he asked, handing her a second cup of strong tea laced with milk.

“Okay,” she said. “Grateful.” Maggie’s voice played in her head:
Geoffrey requires someone strong enough to need him.
She had not expected such a graphic demonstration. “Thank you for rescuing me.” Then she remembered not just the hell in the tunnel but everything that had gone before. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think . . . how are you?”

“Holding up. I keep reminding myself of what Maggie said, that she’d had a good run.”

“I think if you’d pressed the point, she’d have said a great run. She had you.” Annie drank the last of the tea.

Geoff took the mug out of her hands. “What now? Are you ready to talk?”

“Not a lot, but there’s something I have to tell you. I took the Agnus Dei from Bristol House. After the hospital, when I was locking up, I went into the back bedroom and . . . I was supposed to take it. I knew.”

“Okay. I get that. Are you trying to tell me you lost it down there? We could—”

“I didn’t lose it. I gave it to Weinraub. Even though I knew he’d shoot me anyway. The monk—at least I think it was him—told me to.”

Geoff had been standing, now he sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. “It’s okay. Weinraub’s going to stand trial and—”

Annie shook her head. “He doesn’t have it. It burned up in his hand. I saw the ashes.”

Geoff didn’t respond for a few moments. Then: “Just like that?”

“Just like that.” She wanted to tell him about the chant as well, but she was too tired.

“I need to sleep some more,” she murmured, turning over. The last thing she remembered was his pulling the covers up to her chin.

The next morning he said he had to deal with funeral arrangements. “More papers I need to go and sign. Will you be all right on your own for a while?”

“I’m fine. Truly. I may go for a run.” And when he raised his eyebrows: “A short one. Just so I don’t seize up.”

The truth, she realized an hour later, was that she needed to walk into Bristol House alone and confront any lingering demons.

There were none. She avoided the elevator, but she seldom took that anyway. Instead she climbed the two flights of stairs with no sense of pursuit, certainly not fear. When she opened the door of the flat, for the first time ever, she felt no compulsion to reach for the remote.

“Hello.” She spoke the word aloud in the silence and waited. Then, after a few seconds: “You’re not here, are you? I thought you might not be.”

A few pieces of mail had been pushed through the slot. Annie reached down to claim them, shuffling quickly through three advertising circulars, then pausing at an oversize postcard with a glossy picture of a motorcycle in front of a large sign that said “Harley-Davidson Chicago.” She was almost afraid to turn it over.
This is the Sportster 883. Dad says maybe for my sixteenth birthday. I take art too.
The words were neatly printed, almost drawn, and carefully spaced. He’d not left much room for his signature, however.
Ari
was squeezed in at the bottom, as if it were an afterthought.

Annie wept.

***

“Oh, Annie.” Geoff flipped the card a few times, looking at the picture and rereading the message. “Fantastic. I can’t imagine how you must feel.”

“I’m not sure myself,” she said. “I have to keep remembering that it’s real. Contact. Finally. Despite everything.”

He’d come to Bristol House after completing the funeral arrangements, and they were eating a late lunch she’d brought in ready-made from the nearby supermarket—chilled sorrel soup and beef and horseradish sandwiches. Geoff drank the last of his soup and looked at Ari’s postcard yet again. “He knows who you are, you know. That’s what he was trying to say when he mentioned studying art.”

Annie knew she was beaming and couldn’t stop. “I know.”

“Have you decided on your next move?”

“Already made it. Sent a card saying I thought the eight eighty-three was a terrific choice. And that summer seemed finally to have arrived in London.”

“Slow and easy,” Geoff said.

“Exactly. All the hard things I need to say, to tell him, they’ll come later.”

***

It was called
Seudat Havraah,
a meal of condolence, traditionally prepared for the family by friends and neighbors, food to await their return from the cemetery. In this case, it was a crematorium, and Geoff was the only blood relative. His house, however, was crowded with people who had loved Maggie and now mourned her.

Annie knew few among the guests. Clary, of course. He gave her a big kiss, then introduced his wife. She was gorgeous, a young Lena Horne, Annie thought. And she recognized two of the waiters from the Greek restaurant in Primrose Hill. They were casting a professional eye over the impressive buffet spread out on Geoff’s dining room table. It was the work of the friends who met for what Annie had likened to a sing-along with pots and pans. One—a tall skinny guy with a shock of blond hair—was a big-time soccer star as well as an amateur chef. He was also Jewish. He’d alerted the group to what should be done. “I was going to have a local restaurant send in a meal,” Rabbi Cohen told Annie, holding tight to her wrist as if she might try to get away. “But Yossi here was way ahead of me. Who knew he could cook as well as, thank God, put Spurs into the final of the FA Cup? Or that he and Geoffrey were friends. The world”—the rabbi smiled in Annie’s direction—“is full of wonders. Like Maggie,” he added. “Maggie was one of the world’s wonders.”

“I wish I’d known her longer,” Annie said. “But I’m glad for the time I had.”

“In the Talmud it says—”

Cohen didn’t have an opportunity to repeat what some ancient rabbi had said about the duration of friendship. Geoff nudged past Yossi the footballer so he could stand next to Annie. “You two are not permitted to steal my girl.” He put an arm around Annie’s waist. “There’s no special offer for strikers or clergymen.”