City of Lost Dreams (9 page)

“I feel like . . . skipping,” said Renato. “Is that crazy?”

“No!” said Sarah. Skipping sounded incredible! Why didn’t she skip anymore?

“Come on!” Renato clapped his hands. “I’ll show you my favorite room in
my
wing.”

They skipped through the beautiful rooms.

“Wheeeee!” said Renato, slapping the ass of a life-size Zeus.

They came to a room shrouded in darkness.

“Stand here.” Renato positioned her in the middle of one wall and then flicked a switch. Beams of illumination shot out from the ceiling. The room was full of pillars of different heights, from waist to shoulder high. Atop each pillar, in its own individual spotlight, was a sculpted head. They were all pure white marble, and all incredibly lifelike. She was staring at fifty disembodied heads.

“Sarah Weston, I would like you to meet my friends,” said Renato, walking among them. “This is Vespasian, and this is Marcus Aurelius, and this is a commodore I like to call Bob. And this is Julia and this is also a Julia, and this is little Knabe, dear Mädchen, and this is Gay Face. Tell me this
ragazzo
wasn’t the toast of the taverna on a Saturday night!”

As Sarah laughed, the marble face of the young man with huge beautiful eyes seemed to frown for a second.

And then the fifty disembodied heads began to talk.

“Hey,” said Marcus Aurelius angrily, “I feel funny.”

“Did he just say that?” asked one of the Julias. “Or did I?”

“The heads are talking,” said the other. “Wait. What’s happening?”

“Be quiet!” cried Gay Face. “I need to think!”

“Renato?” whispered Sarah. “Are you hearing this?”

But Renato wasn’t listening. He was staring at his hands.
“Guarda,”
he said. He held his hands up and then touched his face. He turned to Sarah. The blotchy patches of skin were fading, evaporating. His skin was luminous.

“Oh,” gasped Vespasian. “You look wonderful.”

Renato whipped off his sweater and T-shirt and Sarah saw the angry red skin all over his torso. But the weals were fading, replaced with healthy, olive-colored skin.

“Madonna santa,”
said Renato. “I’ve tried every drug—prednisone, cyclosporine, every immune suppressant out there—and nothing’s ever worked. Sarah, this is a miracle.”

The marble heads were all admiring his physique. Bob the commodore whistled.

Renato dropped to his knees and began to thank every holy figure Sarah had ever heard of.

“San Franceso, Maria, Gesù, Buddha, Giove, grazie, grazie, grazie,”
Renato was crying.
“Grazie Minerva, Diana, Zeus, Dio, Gaia! E tutti i dei africani e indiani, grazie!”

Sarah looked at her own hands. They seemed the same, but of course she didn’t . . .

“Grazie,
Apollo!”
Renato shouted.
“Grazie,
Zeus!”

The heads were now all talking at once, shouting, calling to each other, demanding to be heard. Renato leapt to his feet.

“How long will it last?” he shouted to Sarah over the din.

“I don’t know!” she yelled back. “I don’t understand what’s happening!”

“Thomas.” Renato grabbed his sweater. “If I have only five minutes like this, I want to be touched.” He rushed for the door.

“Wait!” Sarah called.

“I’m sorry,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll come back!”

As the door clicked behind him, several of the male voices burst into laughter and shouted encouragement after Renato. “Men!” said a Julia. “Always thinking with their cocks!”

“Did Bettina rig the clock with some kind of drug?” Marcus Aurelius wondered.

“Or was it something from Rudy II’s time?” one of the child heads piped up.

“Rudolf had a lot of ailments,” said Gay Face. “Why not seborrheic dermatitis?”

“This is crazy,” said Bob. “It’s like LSD or something!”

“Why would Bettina put a drug in a clock?” asked Vespasian. “That makes
no
sense.”

“What if the drug cures more than skin disorders?” Mädchen wondered.

“They are speaking my thoughts,” said Julia. She smiled at Sarah. “Yes, I just said that. And yes, we are.”

“What if the drug acts on the whole immune system?” Septimius Severus shouted.

“Or is this all a hallucination?” Marcus Aurelius whispered.

“What if it is Bettina’s drug?” interrupted the North African soldier. “What if it could help Pols?”

Sarah ran to the door.

“I hope I don’t set off any alarms!” shouted Bob.

“I don’t care!” Julia shouted back.

Sarah staggered through the rest of the antiquities display, but quickly became disoriented. Statues in various rooms called out to her, confusing her even more. “Did I come through this one?” they cried. “This doesn’t look familiar!” The life-size Zeus muttered, “I remember that,” as she ran by him.

Sarah was now at the main staircase of the museum. In front of her was the giant Canova.
The museum guards,
Sarah thought,
they must be patrolling around.
Would they be able to hear the statues, or was it just her?
Don’t speak,
she thought furiously at the centaur-slaying soldier.
Do not say a word.

The soldier raised his head, narrowed his eyes at her, and then thrust his pelvis forward. He had sprouted a ten-foot-long erection. Sarah ran down the stairs and then ducked behind a pillar. She could hear footsteps and saw the sweep of a flashlight across the marble floor. She looked back at the Canova, who was still watching her, and stroking his massive erection.

Sarah tried hard to think of nothing at all, in order to keep Canova quiet. She was trembling all over. Her body was burning up. She was . . . dear God. She was having an orgasm.

She needed to get back to Renato’s office. She should take the clock with her.

She needed to . . .

Sarah clamped her hand over her mouth, trying to stifle the moan that was coming from deep inside her chest. She stumbled across the hall and groped for another door. Unfortunately, this one set off an alarm when she opened it, and Sarah crashed through two more doors and then suddenly she was outside, in the cold air. The statue of Maria Theresia loomed up before her. Sarah ran toward it, hoping she wouldn’t be followed by a squadron of security guards.

Or that she would be. And they would lay her down here, right here on the ground in front of Maria Theresia’s horsemen.

“Me, me, do me,” said the four horsemen in chorus. Sarah started running again.

The second orgasm came as she reached the gates of the Volksgarten. “Ohhhhhhh,” she groaned, passing a pair of older women. “Sorry, ate some bad chicken.” They didn’t quite believe her, she feared.

She wanted to tear her clothes off, touch herself all over, grab any other person . . .

Where was she going in such a rush anyway? This could be the best night of her life.

Another orgasm came as she pulled out her phone. She needed to get a message to Bettina. Did she know what was in the galleon? Sarah had another orgasm, right under a statue of Empress Sissi. Every cell in her body was filled with intense joy, vibrating in unison. Sarah sang out in ecstasy, all thoughts banished. She finally knew the truth. It had been revealed. Nothing else mattered but this feeling.

“Pull yourself together,” Sissi snapped. “I am no prude, but . . .”

“Anyone who starts a sentence with ‘I am no prude’ is a total prude!” Sarah shouted. God, even her fingernails felt pleasurable. “You were a melancholic. You didn’t even like food! There is nothing wrong with me!”

“Is the drug stimulating the vagus nerve?” asked Sissi. “That’s how they treat epilepsy and depression, both of which Rudolf II may have suffered from.”

Sarah stared at the empress.

“You read this online last month when you were researching a cure for Pols.” Sissi sounded very smug. “The vagus nerve acts on several parts of the brain and nervous system in ways we don’t yet understand. They’re exploring the use of vagus nerve stimulation in other diseases, including Alzheimer’s. It has anti-inflammatory properties that may make it useful in treating heart disease, colitis, and arthritis. And it’s very long, connecting the brain to the—”

“Okay!”
Sarah shouted. She fought down another orgasm and dialed a number on her phone.

“You should call Max and admit you’re still in love with him,” said the empress.

“Fuck off, Sissi,” said Sarah. “It’s not that simple.”

The call went through at last. “I’m sorry to bother you but it’s an emergency,” she told Alessandro. “I need a drug test.”

TEN

M
ax Lobkowicz Anderson, shifting uncomfortably under the stern gaze of a priest, was trying to pinpoint the exact moment when his life had gotten really weird. You could, he thought, go all the way back to the day five years before, when his father had called him to say that the Czech government had decided to restitute twenty-two castles and palaces that had been seized from the family in 1948. In a single gesture he had been transformed from a guy taking a few years off to find himself (drums, weed, Southern California) to landowning European aristocracy.

Max looked around him at the somber and magnificent interior of SS. Cyril and Methodius’s Cathedral and tried to concentrate on the mass. He wasn’t raised religious and, though he enjoyed the rituals, had never quite been able to decipher these things. He had come with Pols and Jose. After a few minutes of rest, Pols had been able to finish her concert, but Max was really worried about her. He was doing everything he could to keep her from getting overtired, which today meant bringing them to the mass in his car rather than have them take the tram. And that way he could get a good lunch into her afterward, too, at a restaurant she liked next door to the church. Nico, back from London, had used the offer of lunch to tag along, though Max was sure he, too, was keeping an eye on Pols.

Max was eager to get back to his grandfather’s secret library in the basement of the palace, where he’d found some books about Philippine Welser. He was intrigued by Philippine’s husband, too. Archduke Ferdinand (Order of the Golden Fleece, naturally) had been a courageous soldier, but seemed ambivalent about his princely duties and a lot more interested in alchemy.

There weren’t many people in the cathedral today, though it was an impressive place. Like much of Prague, it was steeped in a complicated history and awash with emotions great and terrible. It was here that the Czech patriots who had assassinated the Nazi
Reichsprotektor
Reinhard Heydrich had made their last stand on June 17, 1942. Despite a misfiring pistol, they had managed to wound the bloodthirsty and cruel Heydrich on May 27, and the squad, which had parachuted in from London, had evaded capture while he languished. But when Heydrich finally kicked the bucket, the Gestapo had gone into high gear, and tortured people until they got answers, including showing one child his mother’s head in a fish tank. Once the Nazis knew that this church was the hideout, they began to try to force out the squad with tear gas and bombs. You could still see the bullet holes in the walls and visit the crypt where the squad had committed suicide rather than be captured. All that had happened right here, where Max was sitting, not paying attention to the priest.

You could say his life had really gotten weird when he had first taken the drug Westonia. After the drug, Max had never been able to see anything quite the same again. Walking around the palace (his palace) in Prague or the castle (his castle) in Nelahozeves, he knew he was surrounded by the energy of great lives, great passions. Like it wasn’t intimidating enough to be surrounded by portraits of your illustrious ancestors sporting the Order of the Golden Fleece on their fucking doublets.

And then there was the knowledge that his ancestors had been part of some
secret
Order of the Golden Fleece, a book containing the mystical theory of everything, or spells of ultimate power, or maybe just a load of crap. None of his ancestors had bothered to leave Max any clear instructions about what it was. Or where it was. Or how he was supposed to protect it. Or if there were any other members to the secret order other than him. Or what the secret handshake was, or if there were annual meetings. If they had left instructions, they had been destroyed or misplaced. Or hidden. Or used to line pie tins by an illiterate housemaid, like some of John Dee’s papers had been.

Every other day he got an invitation to join a secret order. It was part of who he was now, the thirteenth in a line of princes. He had been courted by the Knights of the Triangle. The Brotherhood of the Rooster. Gentlemen of the Bronzed Codpiece. Maybe the secret Order of the Golden Fleece was just another version of those. An excuse to dress up in costumes and try to pretend you were as cool as the people who founded your dynasty.

Maybe one of those books in the basement would contain something helpful.

Max looked at the little man seated next to him. Nico believed that the knowledge contained in the book of the Fleece was science, but an advanced science that, four centuries later, modern science was only beginning to catch up to. Like Westonia, which activated glial cells in the brain and allowed you to experience nonlinear time. Which turned out to be the real nature of time. Now it was understood that particles could be in more than one place at one time and that there were probably multiple universes. What else was spelled out in the Fleece? Did the knowledge go all the way back to the Greeks or further? Was it some kind of basic manual for use of the planet, like the unified field theory that Einstein had dreamed of? Had the alchemists, unfettered by the strictly labeled confines of modern science, students of physics, medicine, biology, chemistry, and astronomy, as well as philosophy and religion, discovered the basic laws that dictated the universe and the way to manipulate them?

Nico had been helping him track down clues to the Fleece, but right now the only quest that mattered was finding something to help Pollina. Nico was now planning on going to Vienna to help Sarah.

Sarah. She was unlike anyone Max had ever met. She was tied to these deep mysteries of his life, she understood them better than anyone else, and yet she was constantly rejecting them, too. And rejecting him. She had made it clear she had no interest in joining their lives, which he knew she imagined would be some sort of prince consort tedium of fund-raisers and parties and inherited, unearned privilege. He had been too irritated with her uncompromising certainty to try to make her see it all differently. Also she wasn’t totally wrong. Max had quickly learned that being the head of a museum meant you spent at least five nights a week either asking people for money at your own fund-raisers or trying to poach potential donors from other nonprofits.

Yes, he was still in love with her, but if he was honest, it
was
hard to picture Sarah in his world. He could picture her delving into a manuscript with a look of intense concentration or pulling him into the cloakroom of a restaurant, putting one hand over his mouth and the other hand down his pants. But helping him to arrange catering for a fund-raising event? Being diplomatic and charming to investors? It was like putting pearls around the neck of an eagle: the combination diminished both things.

And he wasn’t going to turn his back on his life to follow her. First off, he was pretty sure she didn’t want anyone following her. And second, the museum would fall apart, and everything his grandfather had tried to save would be lost again. This time forever, sold at auction. He couldn’t be responsible for losing a four-hundred-year-old fortune. If his future children wanted to walk away, he’d be fine with that, he wouldn’t force it on anyone, but Max’s parents were gone, and he had no siblings, and this was apparently his lot in life.

What were you supposed to do when the person you loved didn’t fit into your world?

Max’s thoughts were interrupted by a shout coming from the nave. People turned in their seats, scuffling and shushing.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” a man was shouting in Czech. The priest stopped in midsentence. All around Max, heads were craning to see what was happening. He stood up.

A wild-eyed man in a tattered and dirty gray pinstripe suit and blue and white tie was being restrained by one of the church functionaries, a slender young man who was no match for him. Max strode forward to help, with Nico at his heels.

“Max Lobkowicz!” exclaimed the man, grabbing at Max’s jacket. “Thank God! But you shouldn’t be here—it’s too dangerous. They’ll kill you, too. It’s terrible, sir; we’ve heard on the radio what they’ve done . . . the families, all dead . . .” He started to cry.

Max, taken aback, turned to look at the church functionary, who was calling for security.

“Sir,” the man whispered, still clinging to Max and staring at him with panicked eyes, “I can’t find my cyanide capsule! You must help me. Shoot me now before they get me! Shoot me!”

And then a security guard was grappling with the man and hauling him away. After a brief speech of apology from the priest and a blessing on the poor man’s soul, the mass resumed. Max noted that Nico had disappeared.

“You knew that man?” whispered Jose.

“No . . .” said Max. “But he seemed to know me. He called me by name.”

Pols said nothing, lost in prayer. Max wasn’t sure if she had even been aware of the whole thing until she asked about it after the service was over.

“Someone off his meds, I guess,” Max said.

“And Harriet was here?”

“Harriet?” Max was surprised. “No.”

“Oh. I thought I smelled her.”

Max decided to let that one go.

 • • • 

T
he incident was the talk of the family-style restaurant next door, which was where most of the congregation adjourned for Sunday lunch at long tables with pitchers of beer. No one had gotten a good look at the individual in question, and so the interruption was largely blamed on drugs. The Czech Republic had the most liberal laws concerning drug possession in the EU, but there was always grumbling about the African narcotics peddlers in Wenceslas Square. The popularity of violent American films and television was also mentioned and decried.

Max, happy to see Pols tucking into a bowl of soup between Jose and the priest, found himself in conversation with a young man from the church. It turned out he was part of the staff who worked at the museum run out of the crypt. “Oh, these reenactors,” he said, shaking his head. “They make us crazy. I don’t know how he got into the crypt. We usually keep it locked during mass. His costume and makeup were very accurate, I will say.”

Max tried to remember what he had learned about Operation Anthropoid, the plot to assassinate Heydrich. He knew it had originated in England, where Czechs who had fled formed a government-in-exile to work with the allies to infiltrate the Nazis. He knew that because his grandfather had been a part of the government-in-exile. His grandfather Max Lobkowicz, whom he resembled closely.

Jan Kubiš, a paratrooper, had thrown the grenade that killed Heydrich. After the assassination, the Nazis suspected that the men had been sheltered in the town of Lidice before escaping to Prague and hiding in the church. Hitler had every man in the town of Lidice executed and the women sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. The town was burned to the ground and then the ruins were leveled. Five thousand people died in the reprisals.

Max walked to the cashier to pay as Jose helped Pols get her coat on.

“Thoughts, my friend, on our little interruption?” It was Nico, pulling him into the hallway of the restaurant.

“The man was dressed in old clothes,” Max said. “About seventy years out of date. And did you see the look in his eyes?”

“Remind you of anything?” The little man seemed uncharacteristically intent and serious.

“Yeah, the whole thing was exactly like when Sarah pulled Saint John of Nepomuk out of the river. What happened? I assumed you followed them?”

“The security guard took him out and told him never to come back. The man took off running through the streets. Seemed terrified out of his mind. I tried to keep up, but . . .” Nico shrugged.

“I don’t think it was a historical reenactment,” said Max.

“Nor do I. And I made some calls, to see if anyone was able to identify Saint John at the morgue.”

“And?”

“The body has disappeared.”